Could Kojima's OD be the P.T. game we always wanted?

During The Game Awards last week, Hideo Kojima was given a sizable chunk of stage-time - alongside horror director Jordan Peele - to show off a very brief, unnerving teaser for Kojima Productions’ upcoming game, OD.

This bizarre teaser showed two characters, portrayed by Sophia Lillis and Udo Kier, as they recited poetry. After a minute or so, Lillis’ face contorts and she begins to scream as we hear a door open, and see its reflection in her eyes. Kier’s character, on the other hand, has something a little more elusive going on; there are letters appearing - albeit very blurred - in his mouth.

First spotted by Central Xbox, these letters ultimately spell out Atami. Atami is a city in Japan based in Shizuoka prefecture, and when Shizuoka is written in kanji, it reads as 静岡. Split apart, 静 can mean ‘quiet’ or ‘silent’, while 岡 can mean ‘hill’. That’s right; Kojima has seemingly had a Silent Hill tease quietly and discreetly inserted into OD’s teaser trailer.

Now, the likelihood of OD being a Silent Hill game is slim. Beyond slim, even. We’ve seen Konami’s plans for its Silent Hill reboot, and Hideo Kojima - after a troubled past with the publisher while being slated to develop Silent Hills - is not a part of those plans. But Kojima’s foray into creating a horror game alongside big names such as Jordan Peele and Hunter Schafer, laced with a Silent Hill-related tease, leads me to believe that OD and P.T. may have more in common than I first thought.

This raises the question; could Kojima’s OD be the P.T. game we always wanted? Is it finally happening, albeit a decade later? Anyone who keeps up to date with Hideo Kojima or Guillermo Del Toro on social media will know that every year, without fail, the pair will commiserate the cancellation of what P.T. was destined to be: Silent Hills. And ultimately, OD will not be a Silent Hill game, but needless to say, Kojima - like many fans of the P.T demo - has not let go of what could’ve been.

The entrance onto The Game Awards stage via a mysterious door, Sophia Lillis’ screams, the letters in Udo Kier’s mouth, even the game name being OD itself; all evidence points to Kojima hopefully continuing P.T.’s legacy, without the shackles of Konami to confine his studio’s efforts.

During the Xbox Showcase in 2022, Kojima announced Kojima Productions' partnership with Xbox Game Studios, stating: “Yes, there is a game I have always wanted to make. It’s a completely new game, one that no one has ever experienced or seen before. I’ve waited very long for the day when I could finally start to create it.”

At the time, nobody knew what game Kojima was talking about. Leaks happened, rumors of a horror game called ‘Overdose’ emerged, and the majority of us also bore witness to a topless man filming alleged OD gameplay on his phone. Last week, we saw the game officially revealed as ‘OD’, and described as “like a movie, but also a new form of media,” with Kojima also confirming that there are other creative collaborators on the project aside from Jordan Peele. Fingers crossed that Guillermo Del Toro is involved again.

With all of that in mind, it’s safe to assume that the “game I have always wanted to make” is a horror game. Whether that horror game is Silent Hills, we’re not sure, but we have an inkling - especially following this teaser trailer - that it is, and that Kojima Productions is finally making it with the help of Xbox Game Studios.

While riding the hype of P.T.’s legacy, the only issue that Kojima will be facing is, surprisingly, P.T.’s legacy. The cancellation of Silent Hills resulted in a lot of studios and modders creating their own P.T. like experiences; there’s Layers of Fear, Visage, and even Resident Evil 7, in a way. Let’s not forget the never-ending plight to get P.T. up and working on modern consoles, which some succeeded with on the PS5 last year.

That said, you can’t discount the Social Scream systems employed in OD that we can look forward to hearing more about, either. Perhaps Kojima is expanding on his self-proclaimed ‘Strand’ genre, building a horror game with social systems for players to help or warn one another, much like in Death Stranding. We’ll have to wait to hear more, but that would certainly be refreshing - and fun - to experience.

It's also important to note that while it's easy to be excited about all of this, Silent Hill fans are also increasingly tired. Konami's reboot of the series was a surprise, but after recent events, a lot of hope in the publisher and its plans have been lost. This fatigue definitely carries over to Kojima Productions' OD. Fans can only wait and hope that OD is everything we want it to be; a spiritual successor to P.T. and more. Something to truly reignite the psychological horror-shaped hole in our weary hearts. I also hold out hope that the Silent Hill 2 Remake - which is being developed by Bloober Team - can put the fire in our loins again, but it's very easy to not trust or have faith in Konami's direction.

If Kojima really does intend to create the Silent Hills game that he never got to make with the creation of OD, then he - and the rest of the team working at or alongside Kojima Productions - have got their work cut out for them. There are P.T. clones galore and a rather impressive horror revival to contend with (looking at you, Alan Wake 2), but if anyone’s capable of capturing the feeling of P.T. in 2023 and beyond, I think it’s safe to say that my bet would be placed on Kojima and his cohort of collaborators being the one to do it.