Environmental Storytelling: PT

PT, the legendary Playable Teaser for the cancelled Guillermo Del Toro/Hideo Kojima directed Silent Hill reboot, is a masterclass in Environmental storytelling of the more abstract, Lynchian variety. By this I mean PT tells its story almost entirely through interaction with the environment and implied through suggestive imagery. The overarching narrative has to be pieced together by the player and at no point is spelled out for you. The design of the corridor is reflective of the main player character's subconscious during their metaphorical descent into hell.

PT takes place entirely in a single L shaped corridor which loops when the player steps through the door to the basement, slowly descending in a spiral reflective of the character descending into the depths of their guilty subconscious with each subsequent loop. Each loop takes the player through slight variations of the same corridor, with clues hinting at the events that unfolded in the house. In the early loops we are greeted by a news report blaring from a radio detailing a series of grisly murders perpetrated by fathers on their families attributed to social deprivation and poor economic conditions. The subsequent corridors are littered with empty beer cans, bottles and packets of prescription meds, hinting at an abusive father's alcoholism and mental instability.

Things soon take a turn for the worse, as the player character is locked in the bloodstained bathroom by an unseen force. The dirtied bathtub and discarded foetus in the sink hint at some extremely grisly and disturbing implications, which when taken with the previous implications of an abusive, ultimately murderous father strongly points towards the theme of Infanticide and the murder of a pregnant woman.

Once finally escaping the bathroom the player is then pursued by the ghost of a tall bloodied woman in a night gown called Lisa, who is strongly implied to be the murdered wife, whose murder is hinted at by the radio. The design of Lisa tells us a lot, for starters, her injuries are consistent with those attributed to the murder of a pregnant woman and her unborn baby, with her bloodied nightgown and stains around her genital area. At one part in the game, the player is also required to gouge out the eye of a picture of a woman in order to progress, and when the player is inevitably caught by Lisa, you can see she also has her left eye gouged out, which also backs up the theory that the player is playing as the murderous father character.