10 years on, Kojima's PT is still jump-scaring people, now including a prolific hacker who dug up the "insane, wild" truth behind Lisa's unnerving behavior
Aug. 5, 2024The secret to Lisa “seems almost purposefully obfuscated”
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Kojima’s PT, the scariest game that never was, still has secrets to reveal.
Lance McDonald is a hacker and YouTuber who’s long been at the forefront of the effort to uncover as much as there is to know about PT. He’s the one that first discoveredthe terrifying stalker Lisa is quite literally always behind you while you’re playing the game. I’ve been covering McDonald’s PT discoveries, includinga disturbing unused bathroom sceneandLisa’s highly distressing offscreen behavior, for almost five years, and now, a full 10 years from the game’s release, he’s still sharing some truly fascinating information.
Speaking with GamesRadar+, McDonald elaborated: “Usually gameplay design is abstracted from the engineering side of the game. Typically the puzzle or campaign designers are given easy-to-use tools so they can work on the art of game design without the worries of working so close to the metal where they might accidentally impact gameplay performance or cause deep issues with the engine. To see gameplay such as ‘where does Lisa spawn,’ ‘what causes her to spawn,’ ‘how does she decide when to attack’ etc all be hard-coded at the lowest level of the game engine is very surprising.”
McDonald says in afollow-up tweetthatKonami’s Fox Engine, which PT was built in, supported high-level programming languages “and has an XML-like system for laying out gimmicks as well, but none of that is used for any of the puzzles or anything related to Lisa at all. They kept it all in pure C++ and compiled it straight into the engine. Wild … Like they don’t even define her spawn points in the map file. They’re just a big list of XYZ coordinates stored in constants in the exe. Feels almost deliberately obfuscated.”
“I had the sound muted because I’m always scared of jump scares when teleporting out of bounds so I didn’t realize she was right there until I turned the camera,“McDonald says. “Made me jump.”
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I always get a little misty-eyed writing about PT, especially now that we’re a decade removed from its release, but as long as we have people like McDonald unraveling the many mysteries behind its development, at least its spirit can be kept alive. “There are many myths around PT that are difficult to dispel from the perspective of a player, so I like to look at the actual game code to find definitive answers,” McDonald says.
In the meantime, here are thebest horror gamesyou can play right now.
After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar’s west coast Staff Writer, I’m responsible for managing the site’s western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I’m too afraid to finish.
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