Prolific modder Lance McDonald has uncovered another secret in P.T. that allowed him to explore the abandoned but incredibly detailed streets of Silent Hill.
In P.T., the playable teaser for the canceled Silent Hills from Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro, players are trapped in an endless hallway, where they are subjected to various scares by a ghost named Lisa. After solving the puzzle and escaping, players get a small glimpse of the town of Silent Hill, but are unable to explore the area.
McDonald, however, figured out a way to link the starting room in P.T. to the map file used in the ending cinematic. By modifying the game’s code, he was able to take a video of what awaits players in Silent Hill.
There is no collision in the environment, so after stepping out, players will immediately fall through the ground. Lisa will then appear and kill the player to reset the game, which is apparently a fail-safe that developers installed to prevent the exploration of Silent Hill.
She does the jumpscare any time you mess with the player location without applying a special fix to make the game think you’re still on the ground, it’s hard to predict and I screamed multiple times while getting a few of the overhead camera shots for the video
— Lance McDonald (@manfightdragon) December 20, 2019
To bypass falling through the ground and Lisa’s jump scares, McDonald tweaked the game’s code to make the player float a few inches.
There is not much going on in Silent Hill, which is much larger than expected considering it was never meant to be explored in P.T. The abandoned town includes apartment blocks, vehicles, trees, and lots of clutter, with the area ending after walking under a bridge down the main road.
McDonald’s discovery adds to the realization that Kojima and the Silent Hill development team have put more work into P.T. than initially thought. McDonald also recently discovered that gamers were already playing as Norman Reedus, who appears in the ending, the whole time, which meant that the actor’s likeness was already captured to create an in-game model.
McDonald is the same modder who found a hidden scene in P.T. that may explain what happened to Lisa, as well as the terrifying fact that Lisa is following players the whole time, floating right behind them as they move through the hallways.
Kojima hinted that for his next project after Death Stranding, he may be making a horror game. If that happens, fans of P.T. will surely be looking forward to it.
