are you sure the only you is you? player interaction, "P.T.", and games that lie to you

P.T. is widely regarded as one of the greatest horror games of all time; it provided ground breaking ideas to other well-known titles in the same genre. P.T. is not even considered a full game (though this is widely debated, due to the game itself being an abbreviation for "Playable Teaser"), and yet it introduced various tropes seen commonly now in horror games today. One of these tropes is the role of the player. There is an inherent level of distance put between an individual and the piece of media consumed, whether that be a book, movie, or video game. P.T. aims to close this distance, so much so that the player can hardly breathe. So much so that the player feels as though this game might be in more control than they are.

https://screenrant.com/pt-silent-hills-better-unfinished-psychological-horror/, Lisa standing in the titular hallway of P.T.

There are a lot of strange things about P.T. For one, it is extremely difficult to complete. There is little to no direction offered in the game, which many critics argue detract from the progression of the game itself. That being said, the game itself plays as a loop--the player is stuck in the same hallway, over and over. It's insanity. Personally, I think arguing that the obscure gameplay hinders progression in a game that is clearly representative of a psychological spiral/descent is a bit pointless, since you could argue that the obscure-ness is what adds to this mental shattering in the first place. But that's more of a game-design, optimization kind of argument.

So the puzzles then--the central piece of gameplay aside from walking. These vary from simply collecting shredded pieces of a photograph, to literally shouting into your controller as you play. This blend of conventional game mechanics and somewhat avant-garde, real-life interaction beyond the game, created a disquieting environment for the player. And the game knows this. The player, due to the aforementioned "directionless" and often confusing puzzles throughout the game, can no longer trust if the solution is within the game or outside of it.

P.T. freely dances along the tension of the real and the fictional, and openly converses with the player about this. There's a certain condescending tone that the radio uses when discussing a certain familicide case--it feels accusatory, even though the player is never certain about who they are controlling. But you can't shake the feeling that, for some reason, it was your fault. This feeling intensifies as the loops around the hallway continue, where the radio caster says things like: "don't touch that dial now, we're just getting started" and "look behind you. I said, look behind you."

Another outstanding, uncomfortable moment is during a pivotal transition between loops. The screen itself seems to break, a robotic voice repeats the number "204863," a baby begins to cry, and a low droning noise slowly gets louder and louder, until the game suddenly crashes. All that noise is suddenly cut out, and the player is left with an error screen. There are four or five possible screens the player can get--however, the one I find the most unsettling says the following:

"This game is purely fictitious. It cannot harm you in any way, shape, or form."

This crash isn't real. When the player reloads the game, the hallway loop has changed. So we know the game is lying. But the horror comes from not knowing exactly how much the game is lying about.

This tension that P.T. expertly builds relies on this constant questioning on the player's behalf (as well as the fantastic sound and level design), and further supports the running theme of psychological descent. P.T., on release, took the internet by storm, flooded hundreds of discussions with theories and speculation--P.T. become more of a piece of cryptic lost media, especially considering that P.T. has been removed from the PlayStation Store and made it impossible to reinstall. And yet, it remains a cornerstone in the history of horror videogames, as well as a pioneer in the use of fourth-wall breaks in videogames as a whole.