The Reveal
Konami and Friends (soon to become a Saturday morning cartoon series!) spent a lot of time crafting what turned out to be a thoroughly effective, yet still very subtle reveal of a major game. Where most publishers would’ve enlisted a VFX house like Blur Studio to create a jaw-dropping, yet entirely misleading CG trailer, Konami took the psychological route. Silent Hill has historically been a series about getting inside the player’s head, and with the P.T. demo, they accomplished just that. The result is everyone’s talking about it. Think that would’ve happened with a more traditional reveal?
The demo managed to be more unnerving than the last handful of Silent Hill games. In its relatively short hour-long running time, we’re thrown into a world that gradually slides into madness. It treats us to what looks like a crying aborted undeveloped fetus in a bloody sink — at least I think that’s what I saw, my mind has since tried to block it out — as well as a bunch of other horrifying imagery (bloody cribs hanging from the ceiling, framed pictures of living eyes, etc.). There were some very clever puzzles in there too, and even a bit that breaks the fourth wall.
Not only does the demo try to get inside the mind of the character you control, but in true Kojima fashion it eventually eschews the character so it can go for you. If they spent this much time on teaser, imagine what the full game will be like.
