P.T. Part 3 – An Exorcise in Futility

By Shamus Posted Friday Aug 22, 2014

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 109 comments


Link (YouTube)

You think this is frustrating to watch? It was worse to be a part of. I heard the crying and I knew we should be looking at the mirror, but with everyone talking over the sounds and giving conflicting advice, I knew that shouting yet another set of directions at Josh would only add to the chaos. This resulted in about ten minutes of us staring at the Wrong Things.

In our defense: Josh could only hear the game in one ear. Chris was reading from directions that were out of date and incomplete. And everyone but Josh was seeing everything on a six second delay.

Hopefully this is still amusing on some level. I’m not a huge fan of these kind of mystery teaser shenanigans, so I wasn’t really motivated to unravel this puzzle. All I wanted was for us to have interesting things to see and comment on, which this “stare at a haunted object” gameplay kind of defeated. For the record, if you unravel all the mysteries you end up seeing the teaser trailer for the actual game they’re working on, which looks so unlike what we’ve seen so far that we’ve learned nothing.

If you’re curious about how the mystery worked, it looks like players have managed to solve the whole thing:


Link (YouTube)

While the P.T. demo wasn’t as entertaining as we’d hoped, it did make for a good proof-of-concept that we can cover console games. So now is a good time to announce the next season:

splash_tlou.jpg

We’re probably going to finish up Marlow Briggs first. Josh is still waiting on a monitor so he doesn’t have to lug his TV into the office every time we record. The Last of Us should start in early September.

 


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109 thoughts on “P.T. Part 3 – An Exorcise in Futility

  1. Josh says:

    JARENTH WAS THE ANSWER THE ENTIRE TIME. THAT DEVIOUS BASTARD.

  2. Klay F. says:

    Aww, the first Spoiler Warning of a game I have no ability to play (aside from P.T. obviously). :(

    1. Henson says:

      Me neither. Guess I’ll be skipping this season. *sigh*

      Somebody get a PC release, please.

      1. aldowyn says:

        Unlikely. Naughty Dog’s games haven’t ever gone to PC, as far as I’m aware

        1. MadTinkerer says:

          I’ve been learning Common LISP via Allegro CL. If someone can get me the source code for the Jak & Daxter games (which used LISP)…

          Well actually I can’t promise anything. I assume the PS2 has microchips inside, but I don’t know how they work, and I certainly don’t have a PS2 dev kit, so I couldn’t port it to PC myself. But I sure could read the source code!

        2. Eruanno says:

          Naughty Dog is a first party Sony studio owned lock, stock and barrel by Sony so that would be suuuuper unlikely :P

          1. Naota says:

            By far the worst part of this is how those of us who don’t have the ability to play this game can’t even buy PS4’s to play it on. No, in order to get access to Sony’s game library from the past few years you need, in working order and hooked up to your television, a PS2, PS3, and PS4.

            Exclusives are bad enough, but it’s a whole other level of suck that Sony won’t even give me this giant, easy incentive to buy their latest console. With reverse compatibility it wouldn’t just be a matter of the Xbone vs. PS4 for someone who picked up a 360 like I did – it would be the Xbone against three generations of Playstation games I’ve always kind of wanted but never enough to justify another console. Games which I would also be giving Sony money for if I bought them.

            1. Mandrilltiger says:

              Well it was re-released on PS4. But yeah Console exclusives are annoying but I mean there really is now no reason for consoles to exist except exclusives. I can’t really see what else consoles could do better than PC except starting price.

      2. TMTVL says:

        Skipping TLoU? You’ve gotta be kitten me.

        The puns will be magnificent.

    2. evileeyore says:

      YAY! The first Spoiler Warning I want to see but didn’t really ever want to play!

      1. ET says:

        Ditto. A lot of the Spoiler Warning seasons, I might go and get those games for fun. Last of Us, from reviews I’ve seen, is good enough for me to play if it was on PC, but doesn’t look interesting enough for me to buy a $400 lump of plastic for my living room. PC master race FTW! :P

    3. Joey245 says:

      See, I’m excited exactly for the opposite reason: they’re doing a Let’s Play of a game I don’t own, so I can concentrate on the series and on the shenanigans that will ensue instead of fighting the urge to close the browser and fire up the game myself.

      I don’t know if it’s just me, but I really struggle watching Let’s Plays of games I already own. In my mind, why watch someone else play the game when I could be playing it myself? I realize that Spoiler Warning has a lot more going on than a regular YouTube LPer (deconstruction of the game’s plot, smart intelligent humor, Mumbles and Rutskarn, insightful commentary, Reginald Cuftbert, etc.), but I still have trouble watching the New Vegas season without firing up New Vegas myself the second the video ends.

      So I’m looking forward to this.

  3. Patrick says:

    Watching the Silent Hill trailer I love how it says that Hideo Kojima, and Guillermo del Toro are in Silent Hill like it’s a movie. I now hope that this means they aren’t actually making the game but are characters you will encounter in it. “all the horrors of your psych have manifested as me Hideo Kojima. Run, run in terror!”

    1. Geebs says:

      If you play as Kojima’s editor, it could be the most effective existential horror game ever made…

    2. Irridium says:

      You joke, but I was playing Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeroes and had to rescue someone for a mission and GUESS WHO IT WAS

      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BvC2oZ3CIAID7cs.jpg:large

  4. Daemian Lucifer says:

    So you tried to see if you can record play station in order to do last of us?What an unexpected twist!

    1. Tizzy says:

      AT LAST!!!!

        1. MadTinkerer says:

          AMERICAN DREAMS!!!!

  5. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Watched a couple of Joes go through this game as well.(part 2)

    After that,I wonder has anyone managed to do this without a guide of sorts?

    1. The Rocketeer says:

      Well, someone had to do so, or there wouldn’t be any guides…

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Not necessarily.What if the first guide was composed by someone who worked on the game?

        1. The Rocketeer says:

          That’s possible, but the guides apparently kind of suck, so if they worked on it, well…

    2. Loonshia says:

      Well, there’s a saying about an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters. It was going to get brute forced eventually.

  6. Aaron says:

    well that was an interesting display of the teams ability to comment on as little as possible.

    and really looking forward to the next season, when i played the last of us i had to buy it for a friend’s console because he had no plans to buy it and i had no plans to buy a playstation, played it several times a week after work

  7. The plot of this teaser kind of reminds me of Devour starring Jensen Ackles.

    1. DIN aDN says:

      *reads synopsis*

      What in the convoluted bizarre – so Supernatural isn’t his first ride on the crazy plot train, then?

  8. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

    Not being a fan of horror or scares, I’ve not watched beyond the first video. However, the solution proposed in the in that video is so convoluted I don’t know whether to think it brilliant, or absolutely ridiculous.

    1. Klay F. says:

      For its intended purpose, which was to stump players for a decent length of time, I’d say its brilliant. Obviously it would not make a good full game, but hearing Kojima talk about it, he already knew that. As a marketing tactic, I’d say P.T. is again absolutely brilliant simply because its a piece of playable, entertaining content, instead of the soulless CG teasers we are always getting fed.

      1. silver Harloe says:

        “As a marketing tactic, I'd say P.T. is again absolutely brilliant”

        except for one thing: it came out waaaaaayyyyyy too soon to keep us remembering it all the way to the release date of Silent Hill[5s]

        1. Klay F. says:

          You may very well be right, but that remains to be seen. TGS hasn’t happened yet, after all.

      2. Thomas says:

        In a perfect world it wouldn’t have been easy to get the teaser by accident. That would have increased the excitement and not led to things like the Spoiler Warning crew believing they could complete it themselves. Everyone would be talking about ‘how do we unlock the next loop’ style of thing. As it was the question was ‘how do we unlock the loop consistently’

        I like it as a marketing strategy though. Particularly in the way it generated interest _and_ showed that they can pull off atmosphere

  9. TMTVL says:

    Eh, why is this posted in Random? Shouldn’t it be posted in Spoiler Warning?

    1. The Rocketeer says:

      After seeing the video, I’m not sure which one it belongs in more.

  10. Thearpox says:

    So does it mean that every time the crew does console games, Josh will only be able to hear the game in one ear? Or was it just this week?

    1. Thomas says:

      I think Josh’s current PC set-up has him with one ear for game sound and one for the chatter right?

      1. Wolf says:

        He could get a pair of bone conduction headphones to have his ears free for vent!
        “We will solve every problem with overly high-tech gadgetry.” should have been a stretch goal for the Spoiler Warning Patreon

        … and given that it would facilitate discussion about these gadgets I am only partly kidding here.

    2. McNutcase says:

      Josh can only ever hear the game in one ear, because the other ear is devoted to Vent. I remember suggesting he use the audio to figure out where enemies were and grenade them from cover during the Metro 2033 season, and he explained that the setup for recording made that impossible.

      The fact that he’s able to play at a scarily competent level despite losing half the sound, talking intelligently, and having anything up to four people saying “no, your other right, where you were just a second ago”, “this was better in the original Fallout”, “Well then I guess the good parts fell out”, and “Cannibalism. Beeeeeeeees!” in his other ear is nothing short of miraculous.

      1. Couldn’t a cheap audio mixer be used to pipe both audio feeds into a single feed? Some games kind of rely on being able to hear at least two channels.

        1. Ranneko says:

          There are also software solutions too like http://vb-audio.pagesperso-orange.fr/Cable/index.htm.

          I have set that up so that when I stream or record a game I am playing, I don’t also broadcast Mumble, but the set up is a tad fiddly.

          Basically I have the virtual audio input as the default audio device, then listen to the virtual audio output (which shows up as a microphone) on my headset, and then have Mumble set up to use the headset.

          Then as the streaming software only streams the default device output, no mumble on the stream.

          1. But we WANT Mumbles on the stream!

      2. aldowyn says:

        driving these things is hard, yes.

  11. Akuma says:

    Omg, the Last of Us.

    It’s been a while since I played it, so I might need to give it another run now. It’s defiantly got some talking points.

    1. The Rocketeer says:

      I always laugh at this use of “defiantly.”

      The Last of Us: I’ll show them all! I’ll have so many talking points they won’t know what to do with them! You’ll see!

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        I geese it was just a milkshake,no knead to loose youre coal about it.

  12. aunshi says:

    I feel like all the problems of PT could have been solved with a scythe.

    1. James says:

      Triple bladed doubled ended Sckythe
      or
      Twin short one handed double bladed half Sckythes
      or
      Whip Sckythe

      these i know but what is a Scythe

      1. Tizzy says:

        I’m still waiting for a 4th version of the skythe…

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Its gonna be a skythenado.

          1. IFS says:

            I hope its just a regular scythe and the final enemy introduced that you need it to fight consists of fields of wheat.

            1. syal says:

              You’ve gotten my hopes up that the final boss is some kind of Samson Colossus and you have to run around cutting off his hair.

              …Presumably he’ll be shooting helicopters out of his mouth.

          2. Groboclown says:

            Aw. I was hoping for skythe-chucks.

    2. Jakale says:

      Or imagine the idea of Campster giving directions, but instead of him it’s a talking latino mask that is slightly disappointed in your lack of success to get the puzzles right.

  13. Daemian Lucifer says:

    So,that picture.It really shows how stuffing collectibles in your game just because can really kill any mood.It was a problem in valiant hearts,its even a bigger problem here because of all the stupid places theyve been put in(the pause menu?Seriously?).

    1. Zukhramm says:

      How did it kill the mood? Before they started looking for them everyone were just scared. But once this their quest started everyone began laughing and having fun. The collectible created the mood!

      1. IFS says:

        Pretty much this, by the time they got to the collectibles the game had done most of its scary stuff. I’d say that they basically just gave anyone who wanted to dig deeper into the game something to do, while everyone else would be satisfied with the scary stuff they’d already gotten.

    1. Decius says:

      L did you know
      Gods of death
      Love apples.

      1. syal says:

        R

        You kidding

        1. Decius says:

          U:

          -madbro

          1. syal says:

            O

            no you di’n’t

  14. The Rocketeer says:

    So I guess it falls on me to be That Guy.

    “Radio? What’s going on with that radio?”

    *studio audience applauds*

    1. Loonshia says:

      I’ll continue.

      “What?! What is this?!”

      Wait. Shit, that’s the wrong game, isn’t it?

    2. “Cass has returned to the Mojave Outpost.”

  15. krellen says:

    I just realised what is probably behind this being Silent Hills, and it’s stupidly simple.

    Discounting the crappy spin-offs, this would be Silent Hill 5. And what is 5 in leet-speak?

    So there you have it. Silent Hill5.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      You may be right.And the sad thing is,no one noticed for 3 episodes.Despite someone writing a whole comment in leet speak.

      1. Paul Spooner says:

        Good eye krellen.
        I wish I could take credit for the leet speak comment being a subtle hint. But it wasn’t. It was just playing off of Chris’ comment that he was 1337.

        Fhris fater faid “Fosh fas fust fnformed fme fhat FI fam fot, fin fact, feet: FI fam fnstead feet.” fso fere’s fa “feet” franslator.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          P.T. pt.3 – An Exorcise in Feetility

    2. The Rocketeer says:

      But Homecoming was Silent Hill 5… Or Silent Hill V, as it was originally stylized.

      But you think maybe they’re doing a “Grand Theft Auto III, VC, SA, then GTA IV” kind of thing?

      That’s unspeakably lame, if it’s true, especially if they started from there and worked out a reason to call it that after the fact. I mean, yeah, Homecoming and Downpour weren’t very good, but I’d rather they face up to them rather than tacitly de-canonize them.

      1. krellen says:

        They didn’t actually call it Silent Hill 5, so the number is still open. Especially if you consider it was never released in Japan; as far as Japan is concerned, the only version of things that are real are the Japanese versions, so 5 is super still open in Japan.

        1. The Rocketeer says:

          Homecoming was never even released in Japan?! That’s a new one by me!

          Man, I knew for a long time that Konami had more or less given up on the franchise, but did they really have that little faith in it?

          I’m not sure if handing it to Kojima is a sign they’re finally reinvested in it, or if they’ve just given up entirely…

        2. Really? They think the Transformers: Headmasters is superior to the U.S. Transformers cartoon?

          That’s a nightmarish reality I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

  16. Sounds like the Patreon is going well then. Excellent.

  17. Ofermod says:

    So where’s Psycho Mantis? Or did he just read the Spoiler Warning game played history and go home because “The hell with this”?

    1. Gruhunchously says:

      He looked into Josh’s save game history, saw the specter of Reginald Cuftbert and decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

      1. The Rocketeer says:

        Good God, man, if all of those savegames form some sort of collective psyche for an encompassing Cuftbert meta-entity, it may already be too late to stop it.

    2. syal says:

      The player is Psycho Mantis.

      It’s the big reveal when you finally clean the mirror.

      1. Otters34 says:

        And then he lifts his gas mask like Big Boss does his goggles in the Ground Zeroes trailer, and does the broadest wink of all time.

        And then he makes out with Lisa, to the player’s indescribable horror.

  18. Cinebeast says:

    I had a hunch you’d show off The Last of Us next. Cool, looking forward to it. I’m curious, how many of you have played the game? (Although I’m sure that will become clear by the time the season starts.)

    I only played through LOU once, and once was enough, really. It’s gorgeous, well-acted, plays nicely, but I felt the story was ultimately too stilted and humorless to count for much. Maybe I went in over-hyped, but I was underwhelmed. The Walking Dead handled the “middle-aged guy protects a young girl during a zombie apocalypse” story better, in my opinion.

  19. Carlos Castillo says:

    I’m worried that the Last of Us will be a problematic season for two main reasons:
    1. The game has a lot of in-game storytelling, especially through one-time context sensitive dialogue, which is important to build the connection between player & characters, develop the world, and show the developing bond between Joel + Ellie.
    2. Aside from Campster (who’s on a delay), and maybe mumbles (ditto, if present) the rest of the crew (including Josh) have likely not played the game, so these moments, which are an important part of the game could easily be talked-over, missed, etc…

    At least with the other games where this could happen (Walking Dead, Tomb Raider, Mass Effect), most of the hosts knew the game and so could retroactively comment on it. I worry that relying on Chris (or post comments) for this information will either lead to a slow season, or much of the value of the game, as well as the commentary being lost.

    Also, hopefully Josh remembers (or is reminded) to use the “hearing” mode to locate enemies. One YouTuber I follow is playing the game for a second time, still forgets about it, and gets ambushed / killed in the dark areas far too often.

    1. Thomas says:

      I think the others might have played it too. I feel like Rustkarn might have made a comment about it?

  20. Eudyptes says:

    Ha, so there’s the Kojima influence. The first two parts weren’t quite weird enough.

    Also, I still remember a bit of my German. The text on the left is the end of a sentence, that says “must be.” The right part means roughly to fade into the fog.

  21. aldowyn says:

    ooh, the last of us? Nice serious one after the ridiculousness of Skyrim, eh? (Not to mention Marlow Briggs…)

    Haven’t played it myself, and not likely to any time soon given I don’t have a PS3, so should be interesting!

    1. Adam says:

      Don’t go into a season of Spoiler Warning expecting seriousness. Just don’t. Josh is an unstoppable madman and will make crazy nonsense out of any game the SW crew puts in front of him.

  22. Artur CalDazar says:

    Huh, so finishing the game part is easy, but the ARG-ish part is like most any ARG, obtuse and only solved through the million monkey approach.

    It speaks highly of the game (trailer, demo?) that even after going through that you could still get spooked and still came out overall positive.

    But does that in turn speak highly of Silent Hills? “Has no direct connection” to the game? As impressive as all this was, will anything we saw here be at play in the actual game? It is bizarre that the first thing we get about the game is something you can play, yet somehow we know just as much as if it had just been announced via the trailer.

  23. SlothfulCobra says:

    I love this, this is great. Kojima’s great.

    Don’t get me wrong, it looks like going through the effort to “win” the game isn’t really fun, but that’s pretty clearly not the point. It’s mostly just a little taste of a creepy atmosphere. The actual trailer is just bait for crazy people looking for patterns where there isn’t anything (seriously, “Jarith?”). I love that it’s the most obtuse pattern of events possible, if you’re going to do this sort of thing, you might as well make it as crazy to solve s possible. Good on you, Kojima.

    The only people who were really going to figure out how to unlock the trailer are people with enough disposable cash to have purchased a mike to go with their PS4, and those are the same people you’re going to want to convince to buy the game anyways.

  24. C0Mmander says:

    Well now whenever I see something scary shaking I’ll be thinking about DaRude’s “Sandstorm”… Thank you so much Rutskarn!

    1. I really don’t get the popularity of that track. Was it used for a movie or something?

      Also, the people in the song’s video are not graceful runners.

      1. syal says:

        Apparently it was performed on a toy trumpet and then was later used as background music for a League of Legends video.

        I’m now disappointed that I can’t find a video of it being played over Hercules Against the Moon Men.

        1. Galad says:

          Also, mentioning that song in comments in places such as 9gag, youtube, or twitch leads to a quick and sharp devalvation of the average IQ of the commentators. Or at least of their opinion of the IQ of the one who mentions it.

        2. Groboclown says:

          I applaud your reference to Deep Hurting!

  25. Phantos says:

    I’m surprised I didn’t call it with The Last Of Us sooner. The more I think about it, the more it does feel like the kind of game that would make sense with a Spoiler Warning playthrough.

    I don’t own a Sony Console, so this’ll be a fresh experience for me too(with the exception of Chris’ video analysis on it).

  26. Here Goes Nothing says:

    Ever since you guys mentioned Hideo Kojima made this, I hoped that the twist at the end would be that this whole thing was another simulation the Patriots made to screw with Raiden.

    But I guess you’re still in a dream, Spoiler Warning.

  27. Eruanno says:

    Ooooh, so now we get to see the Spoiler Warning crew react to when Horrible Things Happen in TLOU. Awesome.

  28. Isaac says:

    Yesssssssssss the Last of Us

  29. tzeneth says:

    Dear Shamus,

    Is there any chance you’ll do the title cards like in Tomb Raider: starring Tom Braider as Larry Croft?

    1. Shamus says:

      They are done already. :)

      1. tzeneth says:

        Thanks Shamus for doing the titles. I don’t know if enough people say this but they are always something fun I look forward to during the various seasons of Spoiler Warning when you do them. So thanks again for putting aside the time to make them and add that extra touch, like the credits Josh does, every week.

        1. Otters34 says:

          I too eagerly look forward to the titles. So many other shows just splash up their usual header, and it’s great( and sometimes very, very funny) to see all the ways “Spoiler Warning” can be folded into background details.

  30. Hal says:

    I can’t decide if it should be

    “The Spoiler Warning of Us”

    or

    “The Last of Spoiler Warning.”

    The latter being a bit more sensible than the former, but implying that the series is coming to an untimely end.

    1. Thomas says:

      They Final Fantasy it and from then on each season is ‘The Last Of Spoiler Warning VII’

    2. Decius says:

      The Spoiler of Warning.

      Also a magic item that goes on your racecar and provides a +1 insight bonus to AC.

      1. tzeneth says:

        Huh, and I thought that it would be a magic item that detected things near the vehicle like a detect life spell for life.

        Or it could be an alarm attached that yells “WARNING WARNING SOMETHING IS APPROACHING THIS UNIT!” like really bad alarm systems for cars that go off if you so much as look at the car wrong.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          You mean something like spoiler alert?

  31. Blake says:

    Hmm I’m curious to see how your The Last of Us series goes, I only managed about 5 hours of that game before I got bored of it myself.

  32. RTBones says:

    Happy to see The Last of Us being covered. My only concern about the upcoming season (which I am looking forward to) is how this will play out, given that only Chris and now Josh have played it or have the ability to play it. Or has some mysterious benefactor given Mumbles, Shamus, and Ruts a copy of the game and a Playstation?

  33. Cognimancer says:

    You guys were *so* close *so* many times! I know the one-ear-headset one-ear-mic thing is necessary for this whole Rube Goldberg machine to work, but it definitely robs the game of its spookiness when the player is effectively half deaf.

    Case in point: the ghost is weeping, and Josh isn’t sure if it’s crying or laughing. At 22:40, he walks into the bathroom, looks in the mirror, and the ghost is right there doing her spooky dance! And Josh, not really paying attention because he thinks he’s supposed to be somewhere else, walks STRAIGHT THROUGH the space where her reflection is and leaves. Have to imagine the ghost is just standing in the bathroom, yelling “Come on, jerk! Not even a hello?”

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