sisslethecat
Sigh. Silent Hills looked so good. Some of us still haven’t quite gotten over the loss. With Hideo Kojima leaving Konami, and weird things like the new Silent Hill Pachi-Slot machine leaving not just the latest title, but the very future of our favorite haunted town shrouded in mist, well … shrouded in mist – it feels like a bittersweet goodbye finding these first of what’s sure to be many P.T. related Easter eggs hidden in Kojima’s latest and ostensibly final Konami game, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.
First of all, Phantom Pain has some damn scary stuff in it to begin with, but we’ll be covering those later. But suffice it to say that this entry in the world-renowned series already has plenty of disturbing and unsettling stuff in it. But the YouTube channel Arekkz Gaming discovered a more indirect horror theme, in the form of a P.T. radio broadcast found in the wastelands of Phantom Pain‘s Afghanistan. You can check out their video below, although if you’re intimately familiar with P.T., it’s just the same radio broadcast that was found inside of the original teaser.
The warm feelings of hearing P.T.‘s chilling broadcast may not be the only Easter egg hidden inside of Phantom Pain, however. Unfortunately, I was unable to capture footage to back this up, but hopefully it won’t be difficult to recreate, and this is my own personal experience playing The Phantom Pain.
I was playing at about 4am and was already on edge, so the haunting sound of P.T.‘s swinging chandelier sent shivers down my spine. Those who’ve played or at the very least watched Let’s Plays of the game should recognize the creaking squeal of the teaser’s most iconic sound, next to Lisa’s rasping cries. No matter what I did, I couldn’t find a source for the sound, wearing headphones and trying to follow the direction of the audio in each ear didn’t help either. Every time I would turn to face where the sound was “coming” from, the sound would shift, sometimes in the complete opposite direction. On top of which, staying still and trying to concentrate on the sound was even more mysterious as it went away completely every time I stopped moving. No matter what, I just couldn’t find the source of this P.T. reference. It freaked me out, that’s for sure.
There’s always the possibility that I missed something, or that it was just a recycled sound seeing as it’s the same development team, but considering how mysterious and specific the sound was I think it’s a safe bet that this is a direct nod to Kojima Production’s now cancelled game. I have been able to recreate the sound since, but its origins remain a mystery to me.
Sadly, as I’m sure most of you know, Silent Hills was cancelled earlier this year due to the departure of Hideo Kojima from Konami, and the P.T. teaser demo for the game has since been removed from the PlayStation network. Videos of its creepy glory can still be found of course and those that haven’t deleted it from their hard drives still have access to it; these few nods to what could have been hidden inside The Phantom Pain are likely the last we’ll ever hear of the Silent Hill that almost was.
