Rory Galvin breaks down a game with more conspiracy theories than the moon landing.
If you've heard of Abandoned and its multitude of insane conspiracies, believe me when I say: you should take a break from the internet. If not, congratulations, but now it's time for you to put on your tinfoil hat. This is how one game caused the internet to go on a crazed hunt for the truth.
It all began with an innocuous post on the official PlayStation Blog from Hasan Kahraman, head of Blue Box Studios. What came with this was a short description of Abandoned: "... a cinematic, first-person survival horror shooter..." with a vague mention of the story alongside it - a kidnapping with some darker meaning. There wasn't much to see, even from the teaser trailer, which only had pretty bland narration and a nicely-rendered forest. So you have an unclear, seemingly random announcement of a PlayStation exclusive that could have more than meets the eye? I smell a conspiracy!
As soon as Abandoned was revealed, it quickly became a hive for theorists and insiders to give their take on what the game could actually be. Immediately parallels were drawn to Hideo Kojima's P.T. which ended up being the ill-fated Silent Hills. That game too revealed itself in an obtuse way, and took a lot from the internet to figure out the true announcement. When that game was eventually cancelled following Kojima’s messy divorce from Konami, people have been clamouring for anything like what they got a glimpse of.
Hasan Kahraman and Hideo Kojima share the same initials, and both of their names translated in Turkish and Japanese respectively mean hero
Here's some of the highlights of the hunt (with credit to r/gamingleaksandrumours and their degeneracy.) Hasan Kahraman and Hideo Kojima share the same initials, and both of their names translated in Turkish and Japanese respectively mean hero. What’s more is Kojima used fake studios to announce Metal Gear Solid V and Silent Hills, who’s to say Blue Box isn’t another shell name for the Japanese developer? One thing that helps this theory is how secretive the company seems to be, they don’t have much of a history, have mostly outsourced their previous projects and their “employees” used stock photos for their LinkedIn profiles. There’s a lot more, and you can get quite lost in this swirling conspiracy, and start to believe it yourself. I know I did for a time, and so did big insiders in the games industry such as Jason Schrier and Jeff Grubb. And besides, if there’s any hope for a new exciting Kojima game (especially a new Silent Hill) there will be people clutching at straws and making connections to find answers.
Is Abandoned secretly a Kojima game? I don't think so, and Mr Kahraman has tried to distance himself from this so-called secret for a while. If anything, Blue Box Studios announced their project way too early, and rode the wave of conspiracies all over the internet to garner attention. In my opinion, they've bitten off more than they can chew, and the same people crafting Pepe Silvia-esque theories are going to be so annoyed when it's not the exact thing they were hoping for.