The last time I wrote about The Blue Box Conspiracy, I talked about Hideo Kojima being close to signing a deal with Microsoft for his upcoming game. According to rumors, Kojima had pitched an episodic horror title to Sony for the PlayStation 5 which they turned down not due to issues with the structure. From there he went to Stadia, where the game was actually outlined as an episodic horror, but they ultimately canceled it.
While it is not officially known IF Kojima is bringing the game to Microsoft, Jez Corden seemed pretty sure that both the deal was near done, and it was the stadia game. Earlier this year we also saw the Kojima mascot Ludens next to an Xbox symbol in the background of a video featuring Xbox Boss Phil Spencer in his office. Looking at this objectively that seems like a done deal, and yet one post from developer Blue Box about their upcoming game Abandoned was all it took to open the can of worms again.
After several delays the Abandoned real-time experience, as it is now known, will be launching on PlayStation 5. It is intended to showcase trailers and information on the upcoming game in real-time using the system’s hardware. Then they released the teaser image for the game…
Do you see the issue here? The reason why do people now suspect the Xbox rumors are just a smokescreen for Silent Hills coming to PlayStation 5? It might be a little hard to make out but as you can see the figure in the back has a little black splotch over his eye. I believe the technical term for this is an eyepatch.
Metal Gear Solid had multiple entries where players took the role of Big Boss, originally the villain of the franchise but later a fallen hero trying to do good from behind the scenes. A major part of his character was having lost an eye in Metal Gear Solid 3 which was a prequel to the series, with him having an eyepatch in all subsequent appearances. Once again the company chooses to go with something that seems to directly link back to Hideo Kojima.
The worst part about this is that there really is no defense here. People seem to forget that the last time when they tweeted that the first letter of the actual name for the game was S and that the last letter was L was really the kickoff to all this.
While there was speculation prior, with people questioning how an unknown company appeared on PlayStation Blog to announce their game, not really realizing that this is actually not that unusual. It was in the tweet above that people really started to make connections and start their conspiracy boards. At the time I felt bad for them and still do. There was an uncalled-for level of aggression lodged toward the company because of this, regardless of intent or truth.
This all culminated with Hassan taking to tweeting with a video in which he says that he is not connected with Kojima, nor was the game (though people still suggested he was a hologram). After all, you would think they would try not to go with anything that draws that connection. I mean, who knows, maybe a lot of this game was inspired by or shares similarities with Kojima projects in the past. Maybe they are just trolling us now. Or, as many might yell at me, this is actually Hideo Kojima! I have no idea, we will all need to wait until August 10, to get answers.
As it stands now Silent Hill fans have some reason to be happy as rumors suggest Bloober Team and an unknown team are each working on a Silent Hill set game. Bloober team has confirmed a partnership with Konami, though what this will lead to is not yet confirmed. That coupled with the suggestion that Kojima will be developing his next game on Xbox makes it seem unlikely that Abandoned actually is a Kojima game.
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A Nintendo Switch trailer was also released.
According to SteamDB.
An announcement trailer was also released.