The Happy Ending of PT : A Video Essay

foreign [Music] a development team that didn't even know what game they were making a rogue game designer publishing a secret game under a pseudonym a mystery that set the internet on fire before quickly being scrubbed from existence and allegory exposing corporate politics that were intended to be kept secret and one of the most intensely horrifying games ever created these are the ingredients to the story behind hideo kojima's PT Metal Gear Solid V was the last game that hideo Kojima developed under Konami supervision and while that Masterpiece was in development kojima's status at the company had been challenged another employee at Konami had developed one of those crappy mobile games with loads of microtransactions and in just a few weeks it had already earned Konami enough to fund the entirety of mgsv none of this stuff would come out until much later but in response to that Kojima was shifted off of konami's board of directors and replaced with this new guy say what you will about kojima's games love him or hate him the man is an artist with a vision and as successful as every metal gear game had been they couldn't compare to the income of predatory mobile Skinner box games one thing was clear kojima's high risk High reward Arts had no place at Konami he and his Studio Kojima Productions wouldn't be around after mgsv his budget was cut and presumably his time was as well and mgsv had to be pushed out the door as quickly as possible so that Konami could turn it into a profit and get him and his idealistic team off of their payroll as soon as possible it was around this time that an impressive little indie game called PT from a company called 7780s appeared for free on the PlayStation Store after a day of tens of thousands of players poking at the game eventually players managed to finish the game and they saw this Silent Hills starring Norman Reedus directed by hideo Kojima with assistance from junji Ito and Guillermo del Toro this was sure to be the most amazing game ever created if PT this playable teaser proved anything it's that this was a team that was very capable of handling the Silent Hill property with the same respect the fans had given it for all these years but here's the really interesting thing Konami had no idea that this was a thing they had no idea that Kojima was developing this thing they had no idea that it was going to be released on the PlayStation store and I'd imagine that they had no idea it involved their intellectual property their game and their development studio until the game was first completed in other words the reveal of Silent Hills was as much a surprise to Konami as it was to any of us hideo Kojima managed to bring in Norman Reedus to be 3D scanned he managed to get confirmation that junji Ito and gelmo Del Toro would be willing to collaborate on the project and he managed to develop it without anyone at Konami even knowing even the team that worked on PT was kept in the dark for some of the game's development having been told that they were instead working on a dream sequence for mgsv not a separate project altogether in other words there was a guy at PlayStation who would allow for this game to be posted onto the store and the few developers and the credits here but everyone else in the world was kept in the dark about kojima's plans to revive the Silent Hill franchise the question is why sure Kojima is a pretty weird guy if his games are anything to go by but there's always a method to The Madness of meaning behind everything so why all the secrecy if this game was just a viral marketing campaign the people at Konami would have known about it well the most common theory is that this was kojima's way of showing his bosses that he would be able to make more and more profitable games for them by wrapping the game in so much mystery PT and more importantly Silent Hills had about as much hype as any game had ever gotten however I propose a different interpretation I proposed that PT was a message to all of kojima's fans and in order to dissect that message I think that it's time we talk about the game itself and before you click off this video thinking that you've already heard everything there is to say about this game I expect I'm going to offer some perspectives on the game that nobody else has my boyfriend is absolutely obsessed with this game and it's a legacy and as I've run my interpretations by him he said multiple times that he's never heard anybody else saying the things I'm saying after a lot of time I think I finally discovered the happy ending in this game of course the game's been out for nearly a decade and it's been in my thoughts for almost as long so it's going to take us a while to get there but I consider that to be the point of this video I know it's a lofty goal and that it's actually impossible for me to achieve this but I am to be the person that solves PT and whether or not I come out of this project with a complete universal theory of PT doesn't matter as much as the fact that I'm trying to I want to take all of those loose ends and all these half truths and unfinished disconnected ideas and explain just what PT is and what it means I want something that you could apply to every Last Detail in the game and find rewarding correlations so without further Ado let's get into it now I'm not the type to take half measures and write a whole video about a game that I haven't even played unfortunately actually playing PT is difficult see nine months after PT was quietly uploaded to the PlayStation Store Konami took the game down and so the only way to play the game is to get your hands on a PS4 that still has it installed and hasn't had a firmware update in the last few years there aren't a lot of those left they go for about double to Triple to even quadruple the price of a normal PS4 on eBay multiple people have attempted to remake the game on PC but given their limited resources and The community's Limited understanding of the game these remakes strike me as incomplete to say the least but by some miracle an extremely generous viewer of this channel was willing to send me her PS4 and in a moment that may very well be the highlight of my entire career on YouTube a career which was partly defined by kojima's work I finally got to play The Lost hideo Kojima game before we go any deeper into this game and get into the really opinionated subjective and meta stuff we should establish some basic facts basically you're in this liminal space and endlessly looping hallway resembling a house but with uncanny nonsensical architecture there's a second floor but no way to access it a bathroom directly in front of the front door a grandfather clock tolls away at midnight but the only clock that can be seen in the place is this tiny little digital one countless abstract formless pictures hang on the walls in place of family photographs a chandelier casts its own shadow an ancient looking radio is a few feet away from a digital clock seriously I'd see it between the radio the clock and the telephone there's about a 20-year spread of the technology in this house so anyways it's an uncanny nonsensical house our character is stuck looping through it over and over again being toyed with and tormented by four distinct entities the voice on the radio the baby the ghost of the baby's mother named Lisa and in a manner of speaking the game itself so the baby and the mother are pretty self-explanatory but the voice on the radio is a bit of an anomaly that we'll get into by the end of this anyways you play along with their torments until the game quote unquote crashes and then when you reset things are quieter and based on two sets of cryptic Clues from the first section of the game you have to complete a difficult esoteric set of tasks at which point the voice on the radio calls your phone says you've been chosen and you get to leave and see the reveal that this was a hideo Kojima game and that he wants to make Silent Hills that's all what literally happens in this game funnily enough it's the simplest video Kojima storyline to date but it's in the subtle details that things get a little bit more complicated you know players still haven't exactly solved PT we've figured out some ways to beat it and sometimes those methods work but some players have beaten it without following certain crucial steps others have followed them to the letter without beating it and nobody really knows why at least not yet so to start off let's talk about that difficult esoteric set of tasks that are into that in the two ways first off there's this text that pops up whenever you collect a different piece of Lisa's torn up photograph when you translate all of this text written in a series of different languages you get this during the inert waiting I stopped moving I whispered his name then he slid his index finger over my hand it was a cold hand my body was shivering I waited for it to pass never moving a step his hand and mind and fading through a fog of Consciousness I believe I heard a phone and throughout the game specifically in this final never-ending Loop you'll occasionally hear the radio spout off these backwards messages reversing them reveals other Clues as to your goals the literal meaning of these messages basically can be summarized as follows after the game crashes you want to wait until midnight As Time finally progresses normally for that one important turn of a minute after the Bell Tolls you want to stand near this picture of a guy named Jack our wife murderer and you'll hear a baby laugh that's your cue to start hunting Lisa basically you want to put on headphones and wait for these hauntings to occur I'll play the sound of one of them in the background as I continue at this point you want to use directional audio to trace the source of the noise it can either be coming from the radio the telephone the mirror or one of these two spots if it's one of these two spots that means that Lisa has manifested physically and is a direct threat to you give her some space however if the haunting sound is coming from the mirror or the radio or the telephone you want to rush over there and stand by it that's what this line in the list of Clues is about from here you want to chant to your microphone until you hear a second baby laugh or until Lisa goes quiet foreign what you're meant to say into the mic is vague some people say that they got this to work by calling out to Lisa others say it works if you ask for help personally I don't think the game is too picky about it the first person to solve this game didn't even know that her PS4 was listening to her she just happened to be streaming and was talking into her mic when it happened however I think if we look back at our Clues it's pretty clear that what we're meant to be saying is Jack's name the clues all say I whispered his name and the only he whose name we know is Jack one case before Jack after doing this successfully we hear the second laugh and the vibration in the controller according to the clues this vibration would represent a chill down our spine and Were Meant to stand perfectly still until the baby laughs a third time at which point we get the phone call that signifies the end of the game so I've still got some theories to test I'll finish this segment of the video after I've done so but some of these steps aren't exactly what's written in any guide so first off every guide I've ever seen says you need to take 10 steps after the midnight Bells finish and that will trigger the first lap secondly most guides say you're meant to Simply chant into your mic while staying in this position during a haunting but that only sometimes works see at this position we're right next to the phone and if Lisa chooses to haunt the phone at that point then boom we're already in position and the game considers us as having Tracked Down the location of Lisa's haunting however if she isn't in the phone it doesn't work thus explaining that discrepancy luckily the last one just stands still is pretty cut and dry no ambiguity there so thankfully I don't have to test that one too as this footage will show testing all of this stuff has really had me at my wit's end but frankly I want to be the person that solves PT's ending I don't want to Parrot some vague guy that occasionally works I want to solve this thing and be able to explain why my solution makes sense we only ever solved this game by Brute Force I want to figure out how we were meant to figure this out I've already got the third step down the node says to stand still when Jack touches your hand and you feel a shiver down your spine and the Second Step makes sense too that moment of sharing space seems to refer to tracking down Lisa's haunting locations simple enough but why do certain names other than Jack's work in other words if the note says I whispered his name why does saying Lisa work but saying totally random names or phrases doesn't work at all then you've got the 10 Paces thing that isn't written anywhere in the notes the backwards message says I stood a pace away from Jack well if we take 10 Paces away from the alarm clock we're about a pace away from this photo of Jack but that's not it either you can take 10 Paces in any direction from anywhere on the map and it'll work and what's more sometimes I was able to trigger the first baby laugh just by standing near Jack's photo and not taking 10 Paces at all so what the hell the major difficulty of this whole video for me has been solving for those in discrepancies I'll be on a decent track with a lot of ideas and interpretations of the clues that make sense and then something like this will happen I take my 10 steps get the first baby laugh and then this foreign Lisa can't haunt the store in fact I believe that in this clip she was all the way over here in the bathroom mirror and yet I got the second baby laugh I wasn't even chanting sure enough my controller started vibrating I Stood Still Got The Third laugh and was able to complete the game moments like this remind me that in PT even after all these years we can't be sure of anything this game is trying to make me think I'm crazy and because moments like this where standing next to Jack's photo triggered the first laugh only happened just as I stopped recording it's kind of working the game is playing my own Prudence against me making fun of me for doing so much testing instead of just progressing to the ending me and my player character were experiencing the horror of this Purgatory together testing this stuff has been draining on me I don't scare easily but the fact that about I don't know a 30th of the time Lisa does something that I didn't expect and can't explain keeps me on the edge of my seat as I learn more and more about the game I get more confident but even now I frequently cover my eyes while turning the camera and just peek between the gaps and my fingers to nullify any jump scares not a lot of things give me nightmares but I'm afraid of nightmares nonetheless so as happy as I am to finally be playing this game for real I have to keep it at an arm's length especially since I do most of my riding and testing at night I mean hell even as I wrote this I was simply driving through the night narrating to my phone's voice to text and getting ready to edit it all down later stopping the car in some dimly lit empty Park in the dead of night like I usually do when I write just seems to well scary for this subject matter anyways here's what I found in my interpretation this is how you beat PT without relying on random chance and strategies that only work sometimes if you want to be PT you want to go through a linear sequence of scares up until you get to this Loop where the phone says hello next to it then you zoom in on that text walk away and repeat this until you've moved the word hell over to this part of the wall zoom in on this text and you'll hear Lisa laugh that's your cue to keep moving once you get to the red running hallway look for this spot where a painting has fallen off of the wall revealing a peephole zoom into the people until the murder audio stops and continue until you've got to the final Loop where time progresses normally until midnight and Lisa harms you every now and then at any point after the midnight bellstoll you'll want to take 10 steps in any direction you'll hear a baby's laugh plug in your headphones and use directional audio to tell where Lisa's haunting you from either the radio the phone the mirror or these two locations where she can manifest physically go to the source of the haunt and chant either Lisa Jack Jay jareth or one of the other names that randomly works until you hear a second baby laugh then stand perfectly still until the controller stops vibrating and you'll hear a third laugh after that just walk to the ringing phone zoom in to answer it and walk out the door to complete the game this is a completely foolproof strategy if for whatever reason the mic doesn't like how you were chanting you can just wait until the next haunting and try again at least his next location and by the way the mic isn't just looking for random noise I tried various other names that had no presence in the game's lore as well as chanting a day of Kojima and Koji mahideo and not once did any of those names work the fact that chanting Lisa instead of Jack works so reliably seems to be a deliberate decision by the devs we'll see if I can make some sense of facts like that by the end of this video so why does any of this matter this isn't exactly the usual fare for my channel well after my first playthrough where I was just blindly following a guide once my memory stopped being specific enough I remarked afterwards that it felt like I had done the video game equivalent of summoning Bloody Mary or one of those other spooky tears you'd get as a kid I was taking part in a ritual while obviously it's a great shame that it's so hard to get your hands on this game its status as a last game adds to the Mystique in a way that I can hardly describe it felt like I had just played through been drowned or some other equivalent video game Creepypasta this was a last game something that I just wasn't meant to be playing it's a game that has completely eluded everybody nobody knows how it works nobody knows what makes Lisa do one thing and one person's playthrough and another thing entirely in another players and even as I was playing it my boyfriend and I kept on swearing that we saw these things out of the corners of our eyes and in the shadows that might have been there or might not have been even writing about this game as I was sitting on my porch looking out into the tree line at the dead of night it just felt like I was doing something dangerous simply by engaging with this game it reminds me of how I felt watching horror movies as a kid thinking about how poetic it would be for this to be the exact moment that I discovered that ghosts and monsters were real and vengeful I promise you that this is not something common for me I really don't scare easily I love watching horror movies I love playing horror games and I love sleeping like a baby after playing something like Silent Hill too but this was just different this time it felt like the thing I played wasn't even created to be enjoyed but to literally haunt my world it was meant to follow me even after I quit playing the game and as I drowned myself in the work of this video and surround myself fully with the intricate details of this game that's what it feels like like this genuine horror that goes beyond any piece of media is just surrounding me before I get into who that voice on the radio is I'd like to talk about the fourth entity that's tormenting our character as he navigates these Halls the game itself see while the most immediately obvious example of a classic hideo Kojima fourth wall break in this game would be the moment when the game crashes just before the final puzzle that's only the tip of the iceberg though there are a lot of things in this game that I simply can't justify as being part of the fiction why does zooming in the camera cause our character to interact with things why is a critical part of the game's story delivered to us through this text that flashes on our screen as we pick up the pieces of Lisa's photos why does the radio in the game itself chantadeokojima's birthday at us foreign there's another big example but that opens a can of worms that I'm not really ready to talk about at this point in the video the simple answer is that much like the psychomantis boss fight in hideo kojima's first 3D game Metal Gear Solid the horror here is being experienced less by the player character and more by the player themselves that text on the screen quickly flashing whenever you pick up one of Lisa's photo fragments I don't think our player character really cares about that or can even see it to the actual player however it's just a reminder that even though they've just found one of these intricately hidden puzzle pieces they still aren't really anywhere near being able to actually crack this thing and understand what it is that they're doing that feeling just adds to the horror however I'm getting dangerously close to talking about the meta side of this game and I think that we need to pair that with some of the more literal details remember I see this game not primarily as a proof of concept or as a pitch to Konami or even as a playable teaser I see this game's main point as being a message from hideo Kojima directly to his most dedicated fans so hopefully this section will be as interesting to you all as this is to me basically the story of PT strongly connects with that of Silent Hill 2 in particular I think that what makes that game work so well is the crossroads between a very modern story of a man being unfaithful to and eventually killing his terminal cancerous wife and an ancient cult that somehow manages to predict this sort of behavior while the cold stuff is strictly kept in the background of both games it's an important part to understanding either of them in PT our radio personality talks about a trend of similar incidents in which a husband disgruntled with the system and the circumstances of his life snaps and kills his wife and child according to the radio host it's something that's really been on the rise lately with a series of similar crimes spanning the last 100 years or so whether it was our player character who killed Lisa or this Jack person who seemingly isn't the same person we're playing as seeing as we don't look anything like his portraits that doesn't matter as much as the fact that this trend of wife murdering has been going on for a while point is Jack was yet another perpetrator in this trend of wife murdering as the baby explains in the sink Jack was fired from his job and he drowned his SARS and booze upset that his wife had to take a part-time job where she was oglet by her manager he snapped we get to hear the moment of the murder when we peek through the peephole into the bathroom during the running section I'm going to play the audio here fair warning it's pretty gruesome when you see our perspective emerge from the people let's safe to unmute if you don't want to hear this [Music] [Music] did he catch that and the background of this murder that presumably took place several years earlier we hear that exact same radio host with the exact same age behind his voice encouraging Jack to kill his family this is where we get into the mystical side of things something along the lines of straight-up cult recruitment tactics basically in my mind because the radio host is describing multiple murders with conflicting details I think that our player character is the most recent perpetrator in this string of similar murders and as we hear about all these murders as we're surrounded by The Echoes of these murders we write I can hear them calling from Hell on the wall because that's exactly what's happening these murderers are essentially speaking to us through that voice on the radio well in the next loop after that a different voices on the radio a Swedish voice I'll translate it as we go along but listen to this bit in particular [Music] ly he says something about a famous broadcast from 75 years ago around when the murder started he's referring to the infamous War of the world's radio drama from 1938 which many people thought was real and so they began barricading their homes and stockpiling for an alien invasion it's a lesson in just how susceptible people are to suggestion and it's a lesson that I think the radio host is capitalizing on as he encourages Jack to kill his family he has Jack convinced that this is something akin to a movement an uprising something that all the guys are doing once they get tired of feeling like sheep in other words for whatever reason this radio host is part of his own self-fulfilling prophecy he's creating a reality where husbands are murdering their families and Jack was just another piece of that scheme he's making the world the world's radio drama broadcast into the real thing the Gap in the door it's a separate reality the only me is me are you sure that the only you is you this is the quote that opens up the game and I think that this reality that the other host is creating is that other world there's only one radio host but there's two versions of you the one that got fired from his job and used booze to cope and the one that went on to kill his wife opening that door and listening to that radio host is what moves you from one version of yourself to the other if we want to get a little bit less abstract with this let's look at it this way how would the radio host know all of these intricate details of these murders he's saying things that even the police wouldn't be able to know about how the killer lured his daughter out of the bathroom by saying it was just a game that's not going to be on any police report for any of these murders especially on a house that's seemingly in the middle of the woods like this it all gives off the vibe of some guy in his basement making up stories on an unlicensed and illegal radio broadcast in order to encourage people to do awful things so anyways why does this strange Swedish voice tell us about the War of the Worlds broadcast and why does he say it was real well listen to the next bit of dialogue from him see it 'll be tired [Music] don't trust the news don't trust the police they're already controlled by them as they have been for 75 years well the news would of course be the radio host reading off stories about all of these murders see he's trying to control us like I said before by telling all of these stories he's brainwashing these men into killing their wives and he's making the world of Worlds broadcast a reality so to speak I think it's safe to say that 204-863 is a sort of activation phrase that makes these brainwashed Men start the killing like a sleeper agent don't trust the police also makes sense as these stories of the radio host is broadcasting seem to be citing police reports I think that the most reasonable connection here is that the quote-unquote aliens that are hinted at in the Swedish man's dialogue are in fact the order or as I'll call them for simplicity's sake The Cult of Silent Hill you know the guys who worship the town and kidnap Terry Mason's daughter to be a midwife for their God in the first Silent Hill game so in my mind the cult of Silent Hill are the ones who are essentially egging on all of these murderers the radio host is one of them hold on to that it'll be important in a moment well next up we need to see some raw evidence of this brainwashing taking place so right after the Swedish voice comes in on the radio to warn us is when we hear that murder audio through the people and we can literally hear the same radio voice egging on the murderer so all that's left to do now is see which kind of man is most susceptible to this brainwashing what kind of man this cult is targeting right after the peephole scene the baby in the sink talks about how you were fired from your job and started to drown your sorrows and booze your wife had to get a job where she was ogled at by her boss and one day you snapped and killed the whole family that's essentially our player character's backstory but as I'll get into in a moment it also lines up surprisingly well with something that happened to Kojima himself anyways at this point we know too much we know not to trust the radio we know why we killed our wife and we know that some group The Cult of Silent Hill has been brainwashing guys like us to do the same and we can even infer that 204-863 is the activation phrase knowing that activation phrase means that it won't work on us anymore what happens next is that the game starts glitching out then a voice which isn't coming from the environment but from the game itself says eight six three two zero four eight foreign [Music] crashes basically I think the PT was in terms of its own lore a game that was created by the cult of Silent Hill to brainwash us players into killing our loved ones just as the player character did but because this strange Swedish voice was able to inject itself into the game PT's brainwashing didn't work on us we're no longer sticking to the script and so the game crashes that sounds like a pretty insane off-the-cuff Theory I know but what has me really convinced that this is what Kojima Productions was going for is simple the loading icon these three circles here's a symbol from Silent Hill lore called the Halo of the sun basically it's the symbol of the order the cult of Silent Hill these three circles while of course this isn't literally the case and the fiction of this game we as players are engaging with software that was designed to make us kill our families so now we can get into the autobiographical side of this game the metaphor that drives all of these events that are described to us over the radio and through the visions and the words of the fetus in the sink I'm going to start with the most concrete connections so that I can convince you that there is some Merit to what I'm saying here when the fetus is telling us the story of Jack losing his job he says you remember right exactly 10 months back well 10 months before PT was published is exactly when hideo Kojima was kicked off of the board of directors at Konami it's when he essentially found out that Metal Gear Solid V would be his last game with the company yes he was still the lead of Kojima Productions but he lost his job 10 months back from this game's release date just like the baby says and this trend of guys losing their jobs the one that the radio host says is sparking all of this violence well hideo Kojima lost his job because some crappy mobile game that nobody remembers made more money than his art cut and that is most definitely a trend that's taking place not just in the gaming industry but all over the world films social media apps fast food deliveries you name it and the world of business heart and soul is being shifted out in exchange for quick and dirty cash I don't mean to sound too preachy but look at companies like EA and Ubisoft McDonald's blizzard Google or Facebook and look at how far they've all strayed from the original more noble intentions that they had when they were founded look at how many governments have been bought by lobbyists it's a trend and it's one that if continued perpetually can only end in the death of human nature and it's a trend that Konami is embodying just as well as any of those others throughout his whole career Kojima was seemingly told do what you want with metal gear because we love you and it generates a nice profit now suddenly the message he was getting from Konami was simply we hate you because we found a way to generate even more profit I mean you can look up the development hell that Metal Gear Solid V went through while PT was being quietly developed in the background it's an ugly ugly story of a company trying their damnedest to make a man hate his job going to lengths against Kojima that I haven't heard of from even the most outwardly Evil game Publishers in the world pointers Jack is today okojima and in my mind that whole thing about are you sure the only you is you is about Kojima facing that crushing blow to morale that was losing his job to a crappy game with no passion or Soul behind it my personal interpretation of this game's events is that we're playing as this version of Jack that killed his wife and the version of Kojima that gave up on game development and abandoned his career after he was shunned from Konami and rather than summoning Jack through our chanting like a lot of people think I think that we're contacting the other version of Jack who took his lumps and kept on trucking I don't like to say things like this must be how Kojima felt because this is how I interpret this game but it seems to me that PT is the story of hideo Kojima feeling like everything is hopeless and his career is over but at this moment when we chant Jack into the face of our dead wife we're connecting with the version of Kojima and of Jack that didn't give up because of this major setback PT as depressing and dark as it is feels like a story about never giving up even when all feels so hopeless and pointless such an optimistic message arising from such a dark story is really on brand for Kojima more on that in the outro I don't think that Kojima wanted to make Konami look bad by hyping up the fan base for a new Silent Hill game knowing full well that it would be canceled that would be Petty and frankly mean to the fans I do think that this was an honest-to-god pitch to Konami saying hey look how many people are going to buy the out of this game if you let me make it but within that pitch was the cynical and half correct assumption that it wouldn't matter to them and that Kojima production's time at Konami was going to die at this moment and yet beneath all of that cynicism is still the determination that message I'll be back and I'm bringing my new toys with me Kojima wasn't giving up on game development then you've got that big can of worms I warned about earlier as I said earlier just before you enter the final puzzle in PT the game crashes with one of six error messages popping up like I said in my mind this means that the Swedish voice essentially packed himself into the game and messed up the brainwashing procedure and so the game crashed well that's what I think the literal meaning behind these crashes is but there's a lot more to dissect here so out of these six error messages the most telling is simply development halted due to inexplicable bug as far as I'm concerned this one outright confirms that Kojima doubted that Silent Hills would ever see the light of day I mean development halted that's not an error message that's a game being canceled but there's another message that I'm super fixated on knowing you I was sure that you would notice this game and play it I will never can never forget that day 20 years ago I have something to tell you contact me Jay so J must be Jack and Jack is a stand-in for hideo Kojima himself so the only question that remains is who this message was meant for who did Kojima know would play this game and who shared that Unforgettable moment with him 20 years ago well it seems to me that this message was meant for one specific person after spending a disgusting amount of time researching hideo kojima's early career and even trying to figure out who this J might be if it isn't Jack I came to the conclusion that few people other than Kojima and the person that this message was meant for would know what this was about it's not satisfying but it's understandable however as I was driving home from the park where I was doing my research I decided to watch the at the time latest episode of hideo kojima's podcast brain structure which featured a long-standing friend of his director of The Ghost in the Shell film adaptation mamadouoshi frankly I don't give this Theory a lot of credence and I don't think that it's important to anyone but Kojima and this mysterious friend of his but the timeline does line up everything from their first introductions to Oshi and Kojima connecting again two years after this game came out and that message was left to be found oh she seems to be a man with great respect for the medium of video games and kojima's work he even made an adventure game of his own around the time that kojimo was developing police thoughts so again don't take that as an answer mamadouoshi is just the best candidate that I can find to tie off this frankly tangential loose end so now it's time to talk about that ending not the big reveal at the end but the radio voice coming back one last time dad was such a drag every day he'd eat the same kind of food dressed 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 Ford in any way [Music] but guess what I will be coming back and I'm bringing my new toys with me I was really tempted to say that this was referring to hideo Kojima feeling like he had killed his family Kojima Productions that line about sitting in front of the same kinds of games it really sounds like he was talking about Metal Gear and how bored he was with the series which is a well-documented fact it also lines up with my idea that Jack is a stand-in for Kojima and that Jack literally did kill his family that was one of those takes that nobody else had apparently put forward yet that my boyfriend was super impressed by but I think I have to concede on this one I think it's most definitely about Konami Konami were the ones that were making Kojima work on metal gear for so long when clearly he had other ideas Brewing I guarantee that PT wasn't the first time he tried to Pitch A Silent Hill game to them the dad in the story just plain has to be Konami it's the only explanation that makes sense Konami is the one that killed Kojima Productions not hideo Kojima and Kojima is the one that's speaking here even viewing Kojima as a stand-in for our wife killer Jack it makes sense given how much emphasis the game puts on the fact that this wife murdering thing is a trend a cycle Konami killed kojima's family Kojima Productions and that made Kojima want to quote unquote kill his family by giving up on game development but as the radio host says at the end of the game he will be coming back so now we get to the big question that I've seen a lot of people asking before immediately getting shut down is death stranding Silent Hills well I don't think so but there's a lot more to it than a simple no this is where we get into one of the major motifs of the Silent Hill series two parallel realities as you can see here in Silent Hill 3 this normal Pedestrian Mall suddenly turns into a nightmare version of the same environment they both exist at the same time and place but they're parallel to each other much like the beach and the normal world and the lore of death stranding well that's happening in PT also there's a whole lot of talk in this game about two separate realities in my mind the metaphor these two realities are the two different futures for Kojima Productions there's one where this ridiculous plan to keep a studio in the AAA space actually works and he gets to make the Silent Hill game of his dreams and there's another where Kojima Productions goes into and produces death stranding with the help of Sony who had already proven their willingness to help him achieve his goals and the simple fact that they publish this game without konami's knowledge or consent the title silent Hill's plural of course refers to the Multiverse adjacent idea that everyone sees Silent Hill in their own way monsters they look like Monsters but it also hints the fact that Kojima was in a way teasing two separate games two separate realities with this reveal trailer at the end of this game there's the reveal of Silent Hill and then there's the reveal for the other Silent Hill death stranding death stranding of course heavily leans into these themes of two separate realities existing at the same time the Multiverse is a confirmed thing in that lore and of course you've got the beach on top of that the beach being parallel but opposite to the normal world is exactly like the nightmare version of Silent Hill running parallel to the mundane version but I think it goes a bit further still I mean hell in PT you've got a fetus that was robbed of its life by an abusive father whose Drive was destroyed by an evil company and in death stranding you have a happy well nurtured fetus that becomes player character's best friend I don't think Kojima had all of these fine details worked out six or seven years before deathstrand and came out he's not a superhuman but the connections are there and to write off those connections is simply Kojima thinks fetuses are freaking in a good way is super reductive and above all else boring as hell my favorite connection of all though after the game that predicted the end of kojima's time as a triple A game developer a voice said I will be coming back and three years later when death stranding was revealed Kojima walked into the stage and simply said everyone I'm back it's time for me to return this PS4 and this copy of PT to its rightful owner over my time with it I learned a lot of things some of them are even brand new discoveries as far as I can tell I may not have been able to solve every last mystery about PT I haven't figured out why the ending sequence sometimes solved itself without me doing anything special I haven't figured out why chanting Lisa works but other names don't when the clues specifically say I whispered his name I haven't figured out who Norman Reedus character is given that he looks nothing like Jack I haven't figured out the significance of the blue yellow green and red tinted flashlights you get occasionally or what that zipper sound is when Lisa kills you or what exactly kojima's new toys were that he mentioned in the final cut scene or why these handprints are in the basement stairwell or why kojima's birthday randomly had an O inserted between the two and the four but I've got faith that wants a more detailed oriented person than myself finally solves this game's last mystery all that we've learned will slot perfectly into the following summary PT is a game in which we walk through the guilt of a family murderer who was fired from his job and encouraged towards Violence by a man who sees murdering as an almost religious ceremony we complete a ritual connecting ourselves with the alternate version of ourselves that didn't lose hope when he was fired and didn't kill his wife and finally the radio operator who tormented us for so long lets us out of the house and PT is also a metaphor for the never-ending and ever worsening Battle of passion creativity heart and soul versus cold hard soulless cash and how the only acceptable option in that battle is to never give up on your passions it's a game that tried so hard to save itself from Death while knowing full well that it was an impossible task it's a game that was designed to set up the story of death stranding by showcasing the dire circumstances that Kojima Productions was struggling to stay determined throughout and that connections and honest-to-god friendship would eventually help them out of thematically it's a bridge between the messy angsty and self-destructive ending to The Metal Gear series and the blossoming of new life that was death stranding and it's the most interesting game of all time [Music] foreign [Music] get to work on another more real life oriented topic I'd just like to thank all of the patrons who are supporting this Channel right now I have a goal set that if I can get to three thousand dollars a month on patreon I will stop running ads on all future uploads and the patrons who are helping most with that are these 10 plus patrons and those patrons are Ada Avery almost dead again Amy Marshall Anatoly volnov oscal atheist bendeline Big Time Gym Bobby Blitz broiled lemming bjorb caliopearanas Cass Charlotte June Gina Colin gagric Darius fazier David Perkins deadly Marceline demise Denis varshakimer Dominic Johann Eduardo Roca Emma plays go Erica Eva Knight fluffy puppy Casey Franz Johannes hulner George Rosenbaum Haunted Mystic Holly Schmidt I cash earn ijk joannis Jake Everton Gerard Drake Joy Jonah she Jonas JP Julian my Julian okay Caleb Kenneth and finger knife laffy legally graphic Lil Bunda Lilith and boss hibiscus Lily Leones Liv Laz M Madison crater Michaela Megan Walker Mia Mako monkey monks monkey Monastery Mr Koko MRA 1999 neris neurofilter Nicole Nomad of Lucian okid Panda Penelope CN poof donut proxa battle raxvan Robert botang Rune Fox Cielo Sean Hamilton shaneo Shay Theus steli swatchbox Vega Nelson verdus to protogen Yas the boss Zoe and zairobley sorry that I have to do so many jump Cuts every time I read the patron names lately there's a lot of names here 83 this week to be exact and I am actually very bad at reading scripts and not messing up um but anyways thanks to all those people for just working towards an ad free lad head um because I think that'll just be great for everybody but anyways I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Leadhead

Views: 201,276

Keywords: analysis, explained, essay, review, silent, hill, hills, trailer, announcement, kojima, konami, hideo, kojipro, lost, game, ps4, horror, lisa, jack, hallway, door, bag, fetus, baby, sink, death, stranding, ending, walkthrough, guide, mic, microphone, puzzle, haunt, reaction, James, Mary, Town, Cult, Pyramid, HEad, War, of, the, worlds, radio, phone, call, dad was such a drag

Id: oykrkIMAJAo

Length: 45min 20sec (2720 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 19 2022