P.T.'s Hidden Meaning

[MUSIC: Chelsea McGough - Carousel Lights] BOB: So the thing that makes talking about P.T. tricky is… well, it’s Kojima himself. If you’re not into videogames or specifically Metal Gear or Silent Hill, you’re probably wondering what this video’s gonna be about, so to be quick: Kojima likes playing games with his audience. He’s “cancelled” his Metal Gear Solid series many times, tricked people into thinking Metal Gear Solid 2 featured a different playable protagonist than it actually did, and he even wore a mask and pretended to be the head of “Moby Dick Studio” who made a game called “The Phantom Pain” which ended up being the fifth Metal Gear Solid. Because of this, Kojima fans have a habit of going overboard when analyzing his games and statements in an attempt to understand them or scry some hidden message. And I’m allowed to say that because I'm one of those people. My original video for how to solve P.T. was, at least in part, an exercise in insanity that turned out to not even be right. Though it did lead to people shouting “Jarith” at their TV’s so maybe it was worth it. ABBY: Jarith! Jarith- VINNY: That's two! Turn to the- ABBY: Jarith! Jarith! Jarith! VINNY: -the left. Turn the other way! ABBY: Jarith! Jarith! Uh, you- Jarith! VINNY: [LAUGHS] ABBY: Jarith! VINNY: I don't see her, do you? ABBY: Ohhh! My controller rumbled! My controller rumbled! VINNY: Don't move! Don't move! ABBY: ... ABBY: Jarith! VINNY: [LAUGHS] ABBY: JARITH! JARITH! JARITH! BOB: This kind of nuttery isn’t entirely our fault - Kojima practically encourages overwrought analysis of his works. But that doesn’t excuse the volume of theories regarding Kojima’s work that I can only describe as “intense”, nor does it excuse the absurdity of those theories - both of which give me pause when deciding to make a video like this. I mean, no matter how much research is backing my theory or how much sense it makes on its face, I’m still rubbing elbows with gonzo shit like this. [CREEPY MUSIC PLAYS] Look - I wouldn’t be making this video if I didn't think it was at least somewhat based in reality and interesting to think about. I believe I met those requirements. So, here we go. [BREATHES DEEPLY] I don’t think P.T. was a teaser for Silent Hills. [MUSIC: Chelsea McGough - Particles] Let’s get a few things out of the way. 1. Many people worked on all of the games Kojima has made and I do not intend to put him on a pedestal like he’s the only one who matters. All of Kojima Productions, both past and present, deserve recognition for the time and energy spent on Kojima’s various ayahuascan vision quests. 2. I will mention certain Konami staff by name here, but this is not an invitation to harass them. 3. Konami please don’t sue me. Recently during Giant Bomb’s E3 2019 coverage, former Kojima Productions member Ryan Payton explained his thoughts on Kojima’s upcoming game ‘Death Stranding’. RYAN PAYTON: Here’s something that shouldn’t be too much of a surprise: like, when Hideo works on games it’s very autobiographical. [LAUGHTER] Clearly the Konami separation experience was not a pleasant one, I think there’s a lot of metaphor with what’s going on. I see it a little differently because having worked there. I don’t know if you remember but it has Norman Reedus in handcuffs, and then they’re broken, and there’s a baby, and he’s naked, and it’s Hideo, Naked Snake - this was his baby Metal Gear - and it’s taken away from him, it disappears - and he's got like, the handcuffs off and he’s looking off into the future and there’s this creepy horizon and to me it was completely autobiographical. BOB: This.. actually makes a lot of sense. Even Kojima has said that the Metal Gear Solid games are largely him working through his relationship with his father who passed away when Kojima was 13. So it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that Kojima’s work can be autobiographical at times, or that Death Stranding is possibly just a giant metaphor for his breakup with Konami. Put another way: if Kojima were a musician, Death Stranding might be seen as a break-up album. I’d posit even the name “Death Stranding”, which is when sea creatures beach themselves and die for unknown reasons, is directly referencing Konami management’s willingness to kill off Kojima Productions for seemingly no good reason. There’s a lot more to say about Death Stranding, but what if we examined P.T. knowing Kojima’s penchant for autobiography? VOICE: Dad was such a drag. Every day he'd eat the same kind of food, dress the same, sit in front of the same kind of games... Yeah, he was just that kind of guy. But then one day, he goes and kills us all! He couldn't even be original about the way he did it. I'm not complaining... I was dying of boredom anyway. BOB: Something that a lot of people have already picked up on is that this finale to P.T. is seemingly directed at Konami. The “dad” being referenced can be seen as Konami itself, while the person speaking could be viewed as Kojima. This is a favored theory among fans, who have made a habit of replacing the “dad” in this sequence for “Konami” - “Konami was such a drag”, etc. But if we follow this idea through, that Kojima was really saying these things about Konami, remember that P.T. came out 5 years ago in August of 2014. Kojima’s last day at Konami was October 9th, 2015, and he started up his new company, an independent Kojima Productions, on December 16th, 2015. So ending P.T. by saying “But then one day, he goes and kills us all,'' Kojima was predicting Konami would disband Kojima Productions a year before it actually happened. Of course someone in a high position at Konami as Kojima would’ve known this - after all who knows Kojima’s contract better than Kojima himself - but it seems like he hid this information in P.T. via metaphor. Was Kojima trying to tell us what was going to happen between him and Konami? And was that the only thing he hid in the game? [MUSIC: Tru Genesis - Lights Out] About a year ago, game journalist Joel Couture (I hope I'm pronouncing that right) released “P.T. - A Videogame Ghost Story” - an e-book detailing P.T.’s release and aftermath. In it, Joel interviewed an anonymous source at Konami who had a lot to say about the company’s fallout with Kojima. They tell the story of a Kojima productions in early 2011 deep in the process of building a game engine for the next installment in the Metal Gear series. ANONYMOUS KONAMI EMPLOYEE: [Kojima Productions] had been working on the Fox Engine and what came to be known as Metal Gear Solid V for many years. I think he had dumped like one-hundred million dollars, or some crazy amount, building that engine and the game. Konami, understandably, wanted to use that engine for multiple things: more Metal Gear games, and I guess they’re using it for Pro Evolution Soccer right now. From what I’ve heard, it’s a really difficult engine to use. I think Kojima initially said that they were going to license this engine out so students could use it. Kind of on the same level as Unreal. That didn’t get followed up with anything because it was really tough to work on. BOB: But on June 14th, 2011, Konami released a mobile game named “Dragon Collection”. The game was a microtransaction-filled free-to-play gachapon produced by Hideki Hayakawa, an up-and-comer within the company. According to my own anonymous sources, around this time Hayakawa approached Kojima about using Metal Gear’s “Solid Snake” in Dragon Collection in some way. Kojima refused, and - according to Joel’s source - took it a step further. ANONYMOUS KONAMI EMPLOYEE: Now, another thing that I heard was that Kojima was very condescending toward the mobile guys when they weren’t proven successful yet. He was working on the next big thing, and they were working on a mobile game, and while this is all rumored, someone may have said something to Kojima, and he said something condescending back about their game. BOB: Regardless, Dragon Collection would go on to become a huge success for Konami. Fun fact: Hiroyuki Owaku, writer of Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3, also worked on Dragon Collection as a producer. The development costs of the game were small, but more importantly - it made money hand over fist, supposedly generating “something like a million dollars a day.” The money Dragon Collection was making compared to the development costs of the Fox Engine and Metal Gear Solid 5 began to sew doubts about Kojima in Konami executives’ minds, including that of Konami’s chairman of the board and co-founder - Kagemasa Kozuki. ANONYMOUS KONAMI EMPLOYEE: In this situation, a lot of the higher ups were thinking ‘This low-cost game is making millions of dollars a day, and we have Kojima’s studio asking for millions and millions more to finish this game.’ Seeing it from the executives’ point of view, this is crazy. They had built up three new studios – had suddenly gone from one studio in America to three or four on the West coast alone, so they were just hemorrhaging money. So, I think this whole thing with Kojima was at a boiling point already. BOB: Looking at archived news releases on Konami’s site that have now been erased, we can track Hayakawa’s meteoric rise within the company. On November 2nd, 2011, 5 months after Dragon Collection was released, Hayakawa was promoted to Corporate Officer. On October 31st, 2013, Konami announced that Hayakawa would be promoted to Senior Corporate Officer, and on July 3rd, 2014 he was promoted to Vice President of Konami Japan, replacing Hideo Kojima. July 3rd 2014 is also the date the management structure at Konami was split between clearly “Executive” and “Content Officer” roles. Hayakawa was put on the Executive team while Kojima was shifted to the “Content Officer” team. Hayakawa’s promotions and the shifting of Kojima’s role within the company clearly show how Kagemasa Kozuki and Konami’s Board of Directors felt about Kojima’s game production philosophy vs. Hayakawa’s, and on April 1st, 2015, Hideki Hayakawa - the man who came to represent a mobile-first, bottom-line focused future - became the president of Konami. A month later, Hayakawa announced in an interview that Konami would be doubling down on the model that made Dragon Collection so profitable. HIDEKI HAYAKAWA: We will pursue mobile games aggressively. Our main platform will be mobiles. Following the pay-as-you-play model of games like Power pro and Winning Eleven with additional content, our games must move from selling things like "items" to selling things like "features." BOB: The same month this was said, Silent Hills was officially cancelled, and P.T. was removed from the PlayStation store. Later that year, Kojima - the man who advocated for the ‘old way’ of making videogames at Konami - no longer worked for the company, but not before the release of Metal Gear Solid 5, which was criticized for featuring microtransactions and not being fully complete. When the gaming media caught wind that Kojima’s name was being removed from Konami marketing materials in March of 2015, their proof that Kojima was really on his way out the door was a list of executive appointments on Konami’s site. There, it was found that Kojima was no longer listed among executives at the company, and this was taken to mean that Kojima had been demoted - supposedly a first for the renowned producer. But in doing my own research, I found evidence that this wasn’t the beginning of Kojima’s long 2 year divorce with Konami. In the years leading up to P.T., Kojima’s name can be found among executive appointment announcements on Konami’s archived site - the earliest of which was on March 17th, 2009, where Kojima is listed as being promoted to Executive Corporate Officer. This position would remain unchanged for two years, when on March 30, 2011 he was promoted to Vice President of Konami. Again two years would pass before Kojima would get another promotion - this time to Executive Vice President on March 18th 2013. These promotions happening every 2 years in March seems to indicate that Kojima was on a 2 year contract with Konami - but then something strange happened. On October 31st, 2013, Kojima was demoted to Senior Corporate Officer - a huge step down from his previous role as EVP of Konami, and not on schedule with his previous title changes. This might mean that his contract was renegotiated from the one made earlier that year. Considering Dragon Collection had proven to be a considerable moneymaker for more than a year by this point and Hideki Hayakawa was promoted to Senior Corporate Officer the same day Kojima got demoted, we can guess why Konami did this... but the thing that makes this strange is the timing. P.T. was released on August 12, 2014, and Kojima was demoted and his contract potentially renegotiated in October 2013. That means Kojima was demoted 10 months before P.T.’s release. FETUS: You got fired, so you drowned your sorrows in booze. She had to get a part-time job working a grocery store cash register. Only reason she could earn a wage at all is the manager liked how she looked in a skirt. You remember, right? Exactly ten months back. ANONYMOUS KONAMI EMPLOYEE: [...] around the time that Kojima first announced P.T. (Gamescom 2014), what I was told was that Konami had said not to show it at Gamescom. They had told him not to show it, and the main reason for that was that Konami didn’t have the whole contract lined up. Kojima, being the tail that wagged the dog, did it anyway. There might be a reason he was so adamant about showing it at Gamescom even though it wasn’t supposed to be shown there. Maybe there is a special reason. You never know with Kojima, right? There may have been a specific date, or another reason, offering some meta-level clues. [MUSIC: Falls - Runner] BOB: A month following P.T.’s release, Guillermo del Toro did a short video talking about his involvement in the Silent Hills project - noting that there was an initial version of P.T. that was quite different than the one that was released. GUILLERMO DEL TORO: To collaborate with a master storyteller like Kojima was irresistible. We talked - for concepts, we talked about tools, we talked about many things in his headquarters in Tokyo. And then he sent me the first version of his playable teaser, which was very different from the one you played now. I saw it, loved it, and commented so. And then time passed and we continued exchanging ideas, and then came the version of the playable teaser that you saw now. BOB: Cross-referencing this with Kojima’s various interviews and tweets reveals a rough idea of P.T.’s development timeline. On September 27th, 2012, Kojima announced that he’d be making a new Silent Hill project, saying: HIDEO KOJIMA: In the past I've mentioned Silent Hill in interviews, and as a result of that the president of Konami rung me up and said he'd like me to make the next Silent Hill. BOB: On April 29th 2013, Kojima voiced his interest in having Norman Reedus play a part in a new game. Then, on June 10th 2013, Kojima tweeted about having met with Guillermo del Toro and a month later on July 20th he posted a photo of him and Norman Reedus. Based on these tweets, it seems likely that production on a Silent Hills teaser was in full swing by July 2013. The prototype teaser that Guillermo mentioned in his interview, which was later shown at TGS 2014, was probably sent to him mid-2013. How do I know this? In the final version of P.T., there are two overt references to the 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast from “75 years ago”. But by 2014, the time P.T. was released, that infamous broadcast was 76 years old. Why keep this seemingly inaccurate reference in the final version of the game? I propose that this was done to point out the original intended release date of the Silent Hills teaser: October 30th, 2013 - which was meant to coincide with the War of the Worlds radio broadcast, as well as Halloween. After all, what better time to release your horror game? But, as we found out earlier, this would be the month that Kojima would get “fired” or demoted - throwing his plans into disarray. Anonymous sources at Konami have said Kojima’s firing had to do with him spending too much money without making it back. So imagine being a Konami executive, already frustrated with Kojima’s antics and reckless spending, getting the news that not only is he not finished with the Fox engine or Metal Gear Solid 5, but now he wants to start what will likely be years of development on a new Silent Hill game that will involve a big-name film director and star an incredibly popular actor who will almost certainly cost a massive amount of money. It’s really not hard to see an exec at least pumping the breaks on Silent Hills, or at most being entirely fed up with Kojima’s disregard for Konami’s bottom line and convincing the board of directors that he needs to go. Why? Because there’s this new guy named Hayakawa who’s making us an insane amount of money with his Dragon Collection game, and he says he can keep doing it with other mobile games. Look, we’ve already spent all this money on Metal Gear Solid 5 and the Fox engine, but we have yet to make our money back on it. So let’s give Kojima 2 years to finish MGS5 - our final contract with him will end October 9th, 2015 but we’ll make him sign a 2 month-long non-compete so his contract won’t officially end until December. If the press asks where he is during the non-compete, we’ll just say he’s on “vacation”. And let’s make sure MGS5 has microtransactions, because all those profitable mobile games have those! Oh, and “Silent Hills”? I don’t want to hear anything more about it. Exactly 10 months back from P.T.’s release date was October 12th, 2013. Based on his Twitter, Kojima at that time was in America visiting his L.A. studio. If I’m right, at some point that day, he got a phone call from Konami HQ in Japan… [PHONE RINGING] [MUSIC: Falls - Hawkins] Imagine being Kojima at this point. The company you’ve given your life for 27 years just informed you that you have 2 years to wrap up what you’re working on and get out. That annoying dude who kept saying “mobile’s the future”? He just got promoted and will replace you as Vice President. It’s very likely you were forced to sign an NDA, aka a non-disclosure agreement, so you can’t talk to anyone about this as to not affect your former employer’s bottom line. Plus, you’re going to lose all rights to the game series you’ve helmed for 26 years, and the game engine you’ve poured all your hopes and dreams into for 5 years will no longer be yours. It’s gonna be used to make pale imitations of Metal Gear and soccer games. I’d be pissed. Months later, Kojima would meet Nicholas Winding Refn, the director of the movies ‘Drive’ and ‘The Neon Demon’, and the two became fast friends. The first time Kojima met with Nicholas on Twitter is March 11th, 2014, saying the two “talked over creation”. The tweet ends with an emphatic “FIST!” and features Kojima and Nicholas posing as if the two were preparing to battle. When Ground Zeroes released a week after that tweet on March 18th, 2014, things between Kojima and Konami seemed fine to the outside observer. But with the benefit of hindsight, we can look back on this game and notice some oddities. On the mission Déjà Vu, which was a PlayStation exclusive mission and one giant trip down MGS memory lane, certain tasks you’re meant to complete have taken on a different meaning. Like when you’re supposed to use a bluelight attached to your gun to erase logos of real Metal Gear games, and not the various fake Metal Gear games that are strewn about. At a certain point, Kaz will say: KAZ: You might be able to erase the markings, but the memories will never disappear. BOB: A hint at what would happen almost exactly a year later when Kojima’s name was erased from MGS5 marketing materials. And after you erase all the logos to real Metal Gear titles, Kaz says: KAZ: You did it! You erased all the markings. But every one of them will always be with you. You seem to be a fan of Hideo Kojima games. BOB: That last part’s interesting considering that Psycho Mantis’ original line that’s being referenced here was: PSYCHO MANTIS: I see that you enjoy Konami games. BOB: Also during this mission you can find a “Kojima Productions” logo without the Fox in it for both the main and L.A. studios - hinting that there would be a point in the future where Kojima Productions would lose the Fox engine, the Metal Gear franchise, or both. Three months later on June 12, 2014, Kojima was interviewed by Time, who asked him why he came back to the series when he said he’d stop making Metal Gear Solid games after MGS4. Kojima responded by saying he originally wanted his younger staff to helm MGS5, but numbered MGS games turned out to be too big for them. He ended his answer by saying: HIDEO KOJIMA: And this time — I'll say it again — this is the last one. Not the last Metal Gear, but the last one I'll work on. BOB: But Kojima wasn’t going out without a fight. At some point before or around this time Kojima realized his staff had already done all this work on a teaser for Silent Hills back when it was actually going to happen. The concept trailer was neat and it was an absolute shame it would never come to pass… but what if he could tweak it to create a small, unrelated game with a hidden a message - a gauntlet of absurd puzzles with a trailer for his unfairly cancelled Silent Hills project at the end. After all, as long as his staff kept the secret, none of the execs actually played videogames so they wouldn’t beat it and shut it down prematurely. Besides, once people found the trailer, the cat’s out of the bag. Kojima could get his Sony contacts to silently put this new game on the Playstation Store and announce it at Gamescom 2014. But what about the other people outside Konami who were involved with the Silent Hills project? After all, Kojima didn’t have any of their contracts finalized - he’d have to meet with them to let them in on what he was planning, and gain a little confidence along the way. July 22nd, 2014. Had reunion with one of my soul warriors, Nicolas Winding Refn who visited our LA studio. Now I'm in fully charged. July 24th, 2014. Reunion with my another soul warrior, Guillermo del Toro. Had soul fight&hug. I feel I'm charged! July 24th, 2014. Had reunion with one of the soul warriors, Norman Reedus. It's been for half year. I feel I'm charged. This game Kojima Productions was making was no longer a teaser for Silent Hills. The previous version was, absolutely - but not this new one. This new one was Kojima publicly shaming Hideki Hayakawa, Kagemasa Kozuki, and the rest of Konami’s execs for a long list of huge mistakes he felt they were making, up to and including firing him. It was autobiographical but shrouded in metaphor, with one of the only ways of deciphering it being through its references to specific dates. P.T. was more than a great little horror game. It was an extremely creative way of getting around an NDA. [MUSIC: Hill - Broken Toys] One of the reasons I like this theory so much is because it doesn’t just explain bits or pieces of the game - all of a sudden everything about P.T. comes into focus in a way it never has before. From the cryptic lines to the colored flashlights - all these things that were once mysterious have newfound meaning. Take, for example, Lisa. What was once P.T.’s defacto YouTube thumbnail, Lisa can now be interpreted as the Fox engine itself. Killed by Konami, potentially her “husband” in P.T., through their limited vision of gaming’s future and the ousting of Kojima, Lisa is shown resurrected and pregnant - meaning Konami still wanted to use the Fox engine to create more games after they fired the people that made it. The sink fetus’ monologue hints at this: FETUS: She had to get a part-time job working a grocery store cash register. Only reason she could earn a wage at all is the manager liked how she looked in a skirt. BOB: This seems to say the only reason Konami execs wanted to use the engine was because they liked how it “looked” - a reference to its graphical quality and rendering capabilities - despite how difficult it was to use. The “working a grocery store cash register” line may reference microtransaction-heavy games it would be used for, or other games that weren’t utilizing the full potential of the engine. The sink fetus could also be seen as representing the Silent Hills project itself - a game for the Fox engine that wasn’t allowed to come to full term. “204863” represents Kojima - being that 24-8-63 is Kojima’s birthday. With this number's inclusion in P.T., Kojima seems to be saying that Konami execs, or possibly Kagemasa Kozuki specifically, became enraged by Kojima, largely due to him spending all of Konami’s money on the Fox engine, MGS5, and other ventures while not being profitable, and that they were driven to destroy Kojima Productions because of Kojima. This is all mirrored in P.T., where a father is driven to murder his family because of the number he kept hearing over the radio: 204863. RADIO VOICE: Several days before the murders, neighbors say they heard the father repeating a sequence of numbers in a loud voice. They said it was like he was chanting some strange spell. BOB: In fact, the first time you hear 204863 in the game, it’s said on the radio by a voice urging the listener to give in to paranoia. DEMONIC VOICE: You can't trust the tap water. Look behind you. I said, look behind you. 204863 BOB: As if to say Kagemasa was paranoid about Kojima taking all the credit for his company. The reason I’m singling out Kagemasa Kozuki is because another anonymous source at Konami sent some emails to YouTuber Super Bunnyhop and said: ANONYMOUS KONAMI EMPLOYEE 2: Kagemasa Kozuki, the CEO of Konami hates Kojima. Some say that Kagemasa has just gone bat shit crazy and doesn't care much about the company anymore. BOB: Forbes has also gone on the record and said: FORBES: The first thing you need to understand about Konami is that it is a family business. Kagemasa Kozuki co-founded the company back in 1969, with the “Ko” of Konami coming from his surname in case you didn’t know. Kagemasa [...] is the chairman while his son, Takuya Kozuki, is president. The board of directors has Kozuki’s nephew and son-in-law with seats, and fully four out of the seven internal directors of the company are part of Kozuki clan in some form or another. So the likes of Hideo Kojima was already somewhat of an outsider to that arrangement. He’s also been very adept at handling PR and subsequently creating a “great man myth” around himself. BOB: And then there’s this: BAG VOICE: I walked. I could do nothing but walk. And then, I saw me walking in front of myself. But it wasn't really me. Watch out. The gap in the door... it's a separate reality. The only me is me. Are you sure the only you is you? BOB: Was Kojima telling us how he felt when he was let go by Konami? When he was given 2 years to finish MGS5 - all he could do was move forward. But then he saw his replacement as VP and member of the board: Hideki Hayakawa. He couldn’t just let them get away with this - he had to fight back. He was Hideo Kojima, after all. No one can replace him. And that “separate reality”? That was the one where Silent Hills actually came to be - the game that the trailer at the end of P.T. is for. Another message hidden in P.T. was one only Konami employees would understand - the Konami you knew is gone. Now, they monitor everything you do. They even have special ‘’police” that will report you to higher ups if you do something they don’t like. You can stay at Konami and live this way, or you can become one of “us” - the people who will be leaving with Kojima to form a new Kojima Productions. This is all reflected in the Swedish broadcast: SWEDISH VOICE: Do you hear my voice? Can you hear your own soul's scream? Let us choose. My voice that tells the future. Or your tortured mind. Well, what do you choose? You can choose. Your life, your future. Wise as you are you might already have discovered it. Yes, the radio drama from 75 years ago was true. They are here on our earth and they monitor and see all. Don't trust anyone. Don't trust the police. They are already controlled by them. That's the way it has been for 75 years now. Only our best will prevail. You have a right. A right to become one of us. So, welcome to our world. Very soon the gates to a new dimension will open. 204863. 204863. BOB: These “aliens” or “others” being referenced here might not make sense until you take into account what Kojima would later say after debuting his new independent Kojima Productions in December of 2015: HIDEO KOJIMA: Even if the earth were stripped of life and reduced to a barren wasteland, our imagination and desire to create would survive--beyond survival, it would provide hope that flowers may one day bloom again. Through the invention of play, our new evolution awaits. Kojima Productions -- We are Homo Ludens. We are those who play. BOB: Those “others” that have invaded? Those are the people who don’t play - the executives at Konami and people who worship the bottom-line. That anonymous Konami employee from earlier in this video mentioned this: ANONYMOUS KONAMI EMPLOYEE: A lot of the executives spend their whole lives learning business and accounting to the point where they don’t really play games themselves. A lot of these businessmen who are taking over at Konami, they don’t even know the Konami characters. BOB: There’s also this: "Knowing you, I was sure you'd notice this game and play it. I will never – can never – forget that day 20 years ago." Because of the “75 years ago” line, we can infer that the events in P.T. take place in 2013 - the 75th anniversary of the War of the Worlds radio broadcast. 20 years before 2013 was 1993. HIDEO KOJIMA: I was in Kobe, and it was in 1993 when the precursor to Kojima Productions, Kaihatsu Gobu (開発5部 trans: Development Section 5), was formed. The original PlayStation was released the next year and I remember it well because the section had just been formed. Even the colored flashlights that appear randomly during P.T’s final loop can now be seen as Kojima telling us what he was planning to do after he left Konami - the red, yellow, blue and green lights are the same colors used in the original Sony PlayStation logo. He was going to use his contacts at Sony to partner with them and start his own independent studio. After all, both P.T. and the “Deja Vu” mission in Ground Zeroes were PlayStation exclusives. I always wondered why exactly Konami made the decisions they did after P.T.’s release. Why did they lock Hideo Kojima in a room away from his staff for the development of MGS5? Why was every decision he made micromanaged by Konami execs? Why was P.T. scrubbed so unceremoniously from PSN? And why have the news articles Konami keeps on their site been scrubbed of everything before 2014? Now it all makes sense: Kojima was putting hidden messages in his games to bypass his NDA and tell the world what Konami and Kagemasa Kozuki were up to. He had effectively outplayed everyone at Konami, and P.T. represented Kojima burning his bridge with his former employer. Konami couldn’t risk him doing any further damage to their brand. They had to lock him down and get rid of the evidence. So - happy birthday P.T.! It took 5 years but I think we finally got you mostly figured out. If I’ve missed anything or you wanna add to this theory, please leave a comment - I’d love to hear it. And if all of this info was hidden in P.T., I can only imagine what’s going to be in Death Stranding. Kojima’s “soul warriors” from P.T.’s development are going to be in the game, after all - and it seems to be way more overt with its metaphors. I mean, the main character, Sam Bridges, works for a company named “Bridges”. Must be a coincidence that Hideo Kojima also works for a company with his name on it, right? Yeah. Must be.

Channel: TheGrateDebate

Views: 1,046,058

Rating: 4.9558053 out of 5

Keywords: silent hill, thegratedebate, konami, silent hills, p.t., hideo kojima, kagemasa kozuki, hideki hayakawa, hidden meaning, non-disclosure agreement, death stranding, metal gear, p.t. theory, silent hills theory, P.T. - A Video Game Ghost Story, lisa fox engine, ragnarrox Kojima-P.T. Conspiracy, gvmers silent hills

Id: yr4RvdREwl8

Length: 31min 18sec (1878 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 16 2019

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This video deserves all the views

[u/TutuutuT]

I’m very skeptical about all P.T. theories, but this one makes a lot of sense

[u/HideoKojimaAmStart]

This video is absolutely incredible. I think it finally gives me some closure on that entire fiasco.

[u/Vinc3rec]

That was so well done.

[u/-dingus]

Front-loading the video with "PT is not a teaser for Silent Hills" had me concerned I was delving into some conspiracy shit.

Thankfully this was actually very sensible, and wouldn't be out-of-character for Kojima. Kojima referring to Refn, Del Toro and Reedus as "Soul Warriors" years prior was especially interesting to me.

[u/Draanil]

While not really Death Stranding related this is way more plausible and thoughtout then everything that ever came from /r/NeverBeGameOver.

[u/RuseCruise1984]

While I'm like u/TutuutuT and have always had an extreme skepticism and almost distaste for PT theories because of their shoddy attempts at connecting Silent Hills and MGS-Zero theories and the like (looking at you Python Selkan), this is actually good. In fact it's the best argument I've seen to date for Death Stranding-related significance in P.T. However, this isn't so much an argument for P.T. having significance for D.S. as it is a very cogent and compelling argument for why P.T. was designed the way it was and how P.T. can teach us about the history of the Kojima-Konami fall out.

[u/Grommett]

My god, I love theories but this one fits unbelievably well - I cannot wait for DS to release and see what Kojima can do without being too held back.

[u/JaSamZmija]

Even if not true, a very interesting theory here.