Hideo Kojima and Jordan Peele’s newly-announced game, OD, seems to have a lot in common with his canceled Silent Hill project. Announced at The Game Awards 2023, OD, like almost all Kojima’s games before it, immediately attracted a lot of speculation. His reputation precedes him, but it’s well deserved. Kojima is credited with the invention of the modern stealth game in 1987’s Metal Gear, and all his other games since have attempted to break boundaries in a variety of different ways.
But for all the hype, there’s still one Kojima title that no one will ever get to play. It’s been a few years since Silent Hills was canceled, but it still stings to think about what players might have missed out on. Mounting evidence, however, suggests that OD might help make up for that. Here’s how.
Every Actor Confirmed For Hideo Kojima’s OD So Far
OD is the newest game to be revealed from acclaimed director Hideo Kojima, and he’s already lined up some major Hollywood talent to star in it.
Fans Noticed A Potential Silent Hill Reference In OD’s Trailer
Redditor GlazicBlr discovered what appears to be a Silent Hill reference in the trailer for OD, which features a series of people laboriously repeating phonetic pangrams in a dark room. Phonetic pangrams are phrases that contain every phoneme, or vocalized sound, in a language. One of those people is played by German actor Udo Kier. As he speaks, letters appear faintly in his mouth, each remaining on screen for no more than a frame or two.
Together, the letters spell out “ATAMI“ over a period of roughly 13 seconds. They’re partially transparent, last only briefly, and appear in different areas of his mouth each time, so they may be hard to see. They can be found in the image gallery above, or in the raw footage of the trailer below.
So, that’s interesting enough, but what does it have to do with Silent Hill? Atami is the name of a small city in Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture. In Japanese, “Shizuoka Prefecture” is written 静岡県, pronounced “Shizuoka-ken.” However, Japanese kanji may be interpreted in various ways depending on the context they’re written in. Taken out of context, two of the kanji in the name of Shizuoka Prefecture can be read as “silent” (静) and “hill” (岡).
PT, Silent Hills, Death Stranding, And OD Explained
Many have already pointed out the similarities between OD and Kojima’s PT. On August 12, 2014, a game called PT appeared without warning, available via free download from the PlayStation Store. It was unassumingly simple, yet unbelievably creepy. Players were required to walk repeatedly through an infinitely looping version of a suburban house’s hallway, hearing bumps and seeing odd shadows from behind. There would be minor differences to the hallway each time: a radio might crackle to life and begin reporting on a horrific murder, a fridge might appear with blood dripping from its doors, or a talking fetus might climb out of a sink and explain its backstory.
PT ended in a false crash – once a player completed a certain number of loops, the game would abruptly close. Those who then reopened it would be treated to a final loop through the hallway, and then a cutscene that provided a series of major revelations. First, PT stood for “playable teaser.” It was a trailer for an upcoming game called Silent Hills, directed by Hideo Kojima. Film director Guillermo del Toro was also involved, and actor Norman Reedus was set to star. Del Toro later revealed that horror mangaka Junji Ito was also involved in some of the creature design.
Social media proceeded to explode with speculation. Many latched onto the tiniest details from PT, datamined it for answers, hacked it to explore more of the hallway, all in an effort to find out whatever they could about the game. Imaginations ran wild, and hype for Silent Hills grew, until reports arose that Kojima intended to leave Konami immediately after the release of Metal Gear Solid V. A few days later, del Toro and Reedus announced via social media that Silent Hills was indeed canceled, and in turn, Konami resolved to take PT down from the PlayStation Store. On April 29, 2015, PT became unavailable for download.
And so it was for the next few years. The series remained mostly defunct, until 2022 saw a spate of Silent Hill announcements attempt to save the franchise. Kojima moved on, establishing his own development studio, Kojima Productions. He even involved Guillermo del Toro and Norman Reedus in his next major game, Death Stranding. But with the similarities between OD and PT, and the potential Silent Hill reference in OD‘s teaser, speculation has begun anew.
Everything OD Has In Common With PT
The most obvious connection between OD and PT is their two-letter, presumably acronymal, titles. It’s been made abundantly clear that PT stands for “playable teaser,” but what about OD? There are several things it could stand for, but many of them have connections to the medical field. OD could stand for “once daily,” a common shorthand used by doctors and pharmacists to indicate the frequency with which a drug should be taken. Maybe it’s “oculus dexter,” Latin for “right eye,” which appears on prescriptions for glasses. That might also have something to do with the odd shapes that appear in the trailer characters’ eyes. In slang, “OD” stands for “overdose.”
Both PT and OD have Hollywood actors and renowned horror directors involved, in one capacity or another. For PT and Silent Hills, Kojima worked with Guillermo del Toro and Norman Reedus. In the years since, Jordan Peele has established himself as a horror auteur with the three-film run of Get Out, Us, and Nope. In addition to Udo Kier, actors Sophia Lillis and Hunter Schafer have also signed onto OD. Rumor has it Timothée Chalamet, who was recently seen visiting Kojima Productions and appeared at TGA the night of OD‘s announcement, may also be involved.
Silent Hills and OD have both promised to be genre-breaking, even if they’re firmly within the horror video game wheelhouse. Of course, it’s nearly impossible to say what Silent Hills would’ve been like, but if PT‘s oppressive atmosphere and mind-bending concepts are any indication, it would’ve been earthshaking. At the same time, very little is known about OD, but Kojima and Peele promised it’d be a horror experience somewhere between a game and a movie. It sounds like it’ll defy categorization in its own right, which is certainly something Kojima and Peele are used to doing.
And finally, OD is far from the first time Kojima has announced a new project so cryptically. There was little to go off in the OD trailer at first glance, but people are already finding secrets within. PT functioned similarly: it had the facade of a curious horror game, but there was so much more lurking behind. When MGSV was first announced, it was introduced as an unrelated indie game called The Phantom Pain. But secrets were hidden in its early marketing: screenshots from the Fox Engine suggested Konami had a hand, and the logo for The Phantom Pain was designed to interlock with the words “Metal Gear Solid.”
But at the end of the day, it’s still too early to tell. The details in OD‘s first trailer are intriguing, and certainly seem to point towards Kojima’s prior work. But at this point, they’re only breadcrumbs, and until Kojima and Peele announce something else or fans discover something more, breadcrumbs they shall remain. It’d be nice for OD to make good on the broken promise of Silent Hills, but even if it doesn’t, it seems fascinating in its own right.
Sources: GlazicBlr/Reddit, thegameawards/YouTube
