Kojima Productions’ recent Beyond the Strand livestream gave us our first proper look at OD, the developer’s horror game that’s being produced in collaboration with Xbox Game Studios. While the project’s first trailer features barely more than a couple of minutes of gameplay and is set entirely in a single room, it’s already creating quite a buzz. That’s because it’s distinctly reminiscent of P.T., Hideo Kojima’s famous 2014 “playable teaser” for a Silent Hill game that never was. P.T. went on to influence an entire wave of dread-fuelled horror games, but it seems like Kojima is finally returning to those ideas himself for OD.
While there’s no suggestion that OD and P.T. are directly related, it’s already clear that this new Xbox exclusive horror is reusing and reinterpreting many of the themes, motifs, and designs that were established in the Silent Hills teaser. From ominous knocking to terrifying babies, let’s explore the significant connecting threads between these two projects.
Suburban Terror
Perhaps the most clear link between OD and P.T. is their perspectives and settings. P.T. is played from the first-person perspective and takes place in what (at least initially) seems to be a mundane and unremarkable suburban home. OD appears to be following that approach, at least with the sequence we see in the trailer. The area in which the terror unfolds could be a room in anyone’s house – the dull walls, herringbone flooring, and miserable weather outside suggest another boring day in suburbia. But, like P.T., there are unnerving elements that pierce through the mundanity. For one, why is the room only furnished with two armchairs, both of which are oddly positioned? Secondly, and most importantly, why is there a shrine of burning candles?
Cryptic Puzzles
P.T. earned widespread acclaim because it approached horror in a way largely unseen in video games prior. While its first-person perspective and complete lack of combat may well have been influenced by 2010’s Amnesia: The Dark Descent, P.T. went several steps further and avoided any sense of traditional video game enemies. Instead, your foe was the environment itself: an endlessly looping corridor that holds you hostage until you can solve its many mysteries. With no tools provided aside from a simple flashlight, these puzzles were cracked through the use of simple observation. Find the right clues, and the house would morph on your next loop, slowly revealing the disturbing components that pieced together to tell the story of a murdered family.
While there’s no suggestion that OD will feature any kind of looping hallway, it does appear to take a similar approach when it comes to puzzles. The trailer opens with the protagonist, played by Sophia Lillis of It and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, being told to “Light the fires to celebrate their [redacted]”. She then proceeds to light a number of candles using a box of matches, with each new flame causing changes in the environment.
Hush, Little Baby
Perhaps the most obvious and immediately scary element of this puzzle is its use of crying infants. As Lillis lights a baby-shaped candle, the shrieks of a crying newborn immediately fill the room, causing her to flinch and drop the match.
Kojima, of course, has a famous connection to babies via Death Stranding, in which “Bridge Babies” are used to detect spirits. However, P.T. also prominently featured crying babies, as well as the more horrifying image of a mutated, bloody fetus lying in a bathroom washbasin. The trailer does nothing to explain how babies are related to OD’s story, but it’s clear that Kojima is once again turning to the chilling sound of a distressed infant to give you goosebumps.
Who’s There?
While the baby’s cries are certainly disturbing, the more ominous noise is the constant knocking that becomes increasingly louder and more frantic as the trailer progresses. This will clearly be a significant element – as revealed as part of the Beyond the Strand livestream, OD is subtitled “Knock”.
“I really am afraid of big knock sounds," explained Kojima. And, once again, we can see that expressed in P.T.. Since the entire game takes place in a corridor, the environment is naturally filled with doors, and creepy knocking echoes through the hallway as you complete loop after loop.
Of course, it’s not the knocking itself that’s frightening, but what it signifies: someone (or something) that wants to get inside. It’s a warning that your safety is about to be breached. And considering that you have no weapons in P.T., that’s a terrifying prospect. The same seems to be true of OD – Sophia Lillis’ character has no ability to defend herself from whatever is trying to get through that door.
Don't Look Back
If it wasn’t already obvious from the oppressive atmosphere and screaming babies, it’s generally considered a bad idea to conduct a ritual about which you know nothing. Sophia’s candle lighting seems to summon something – we never see it, but after all that knocking, we hear that it opens the door and slowly, dramatically approaches. While neither we nor Sophia can see this foe, something else does: an image of an eye stuck to the window. As the man (or monster?) closes in, we see the image change – the eye opening wide in horror at what it observes.
Once again, there’s a link to P.T. here. During one of the loops, all the pictures mounted on the corridor’s walls are replaced with images of eyes that move and change as you walk through the house, as if they are observing you.
P.T. also preyed on the idea of a malevolent figure lurking behind you. The house is haunted by a spectral woman known as Lisa, who appears in a variety of frightening sequences. But beyond those scripted moments, there’s always the unsettling feeling that Lisa is close by – flickering shadows and eerie sound effects make it seem as if she’s just beyond your peripheral vision. And that’s because she quite literally is: her character model is tethered to you, constantly following behind you as you explore the house. While we have essentially no information on how OD will play, the final moments of the trailer do suggest that the fear of someone being right behind you will be explored, just as it was in P.T..
The Hills are Silent
As the unseen enemy approaches Lillis, you can hear the increasingly erratic sound of a Geiger counter. It seems to act as some kind of proximity sensor, akin to the motion detector used in Aliens. Or, perhaps more appropriately, the screeching static of Silent Hill’s radio.
P.T., of course, was both a “playable teaser” and reveal for Silent Hills, a collaboration between Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro that would have been the next, potentially revolutionary chapter in Konami’s Silent Hill series. And while there’s absolutely no chance that OD is a secret Silent Hill game – Konami is not involved at all – there do appear to be a few nods to the series throughout this trailer.
Aside from the Geiger counter replicating the function of Silent Hill’s enemy-alerting radio static, there’s also the fact that the message that begins the trailer’s ordeal is delivered on a card through a gap in the door. This is reminiscent of Silent Hill 4: The Room, in which cryptic messages are slipped under the locked door of protagonist Henry Townshend’s apartment.
The door through which OD’s mysterious message is delivered may also be hiding a small nod to Silent Hill – the design features nine red panels arranged in a three-by-three grid. This resembles the same three-by-three grid of red squares seen in Silent Hill 2, which featured on the game’s Japanese box art and can be found in-game as the story’s final save point.
It wouldn’t be surprising to see a number of other subtle references to Silent Hill in OD, but once again, this certainly isn’t Kojima finally making Silent Hills. And so while there are clear parallels between OD and P.T., the two are not canonically connected. It seems more likely that OD will relate to P.T. in the same way that Death Stranding – particularly its sequel, On The Beach – relates to Metal Gear Solid. DS2 features a refreshed approach to combat that echoes the stealth sandbox of MGS 5, and one of its central characters, Neil Vana, is a clear nod to Kojima’s most enduring hero, Solid Snake. While Kojima no longer has any official ties to his former workplace at Konami, it’s clear that he still enjoys making connections with his past projects, and so it’s only logical that OD – his first horror project since Silent Hills – will echo P.T. in a number of ways.
But it’s not how OD replicates P.T. that’s the interesting thing – the more exciting prospect is how it will build on P.T.’s successes. And so now we look forward to learning much more about this project. After all, we know so little about it. We do know that Get Out and Nope director Jordan Peele is involved, but that he’s working on a separate OD experience, one that will replace the “Knock” subtitle with a different kind of fear. So is this an anthology of games, each one exploring unique phobias? Or will OD be a collection of different media, breaking boundaries between games and films? P.T. reimagined the shape of horror over a decade ago, of course, so we’re more than ready to see Kojima do it all over again.
Matt Purslow is IGN's Executive Editor of Features.
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