TRAPPED IN HERE WITH A MASTERPIECE
Also for: iPad, iPhone, Macintosh, Nintendo Switch, Windows, Xbox One
Things are as bleak as ever in the psychological landscape of
developer Playdead. This second release of theirs, Inside, could easily take place in the same universe
as their debut, Limbo. With no backstory, you're thrown into
the shoes of a nameless little boy trying to escape a dystopia. Guard dogs and
people with guns chase you through forests, farmlands, towns, factories,
sewers and laboratories. Why they're after you is unclear, but the journey
ahead will reveal what's in store for those that get caught.
As you keep running to the right, the game delivers a wordless story at the
pace of an immaculate thriller, resulting in one of the most intense
playthroughs of my life. On your way you bear witness to enslavement and cruel
experiments on animals and humans. Working people have lost all self-control.
They stand motionless until someone literally steps in to take over their minds.
And through it all you're mercilessly hunted, afraid you'll end up with the
same fate.
I can only compare the gameplay experience to such a silently intense
award-winning movie as No Country for Old Men (2007), or a
genuine horror game like Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010),
but without the disappointing final segment. Both stories convey the dreaded
sense of being trapped inside a waking nightmare. You can do little to defend
yourself and an escape seems improbable. The immersion is mind-numbing.
To experience such a sensation in a title like Inside is even more impressive,
because immersion is traditionally not a factor in 2D sidescrollers, since the camera is too distant from the action. But
Inside cleverly uses the third dimension as a storytelling tool in the
background, to reveal foreshadowing and expository events - things that make your skin crawl and never lets you off the hook.
For instance, sightings of dogs in the distant background should alert you
that a chase sequence could be right around the corner. Sometimes the
boundaries between background and playing field dissolve as some person
detects you and starts shooting, or a huge surveillance robot might come alive
and scan the area ahead of you. It provides the game with great visual depth
and a sense of constant paranoia.
I suppose this is why it's so unsettling. The horror doesn't exactly fly in
your face, instead it's more of a passive-agressive promise of a threat. The
game plays with a sequence of phobias, most obviously in the shape of
agoraphobia, caused by wide open spaces, because who knows what's lurking in
the surrounding darkness. And cramped underwater spaces induce claustrophobia,
because who knows if you'll ever see the surface again. It's almost too
intense, but not enough so to temper your piqued curiosity. The three hours to
reach the shocking and perplexing ending are over in a jiffy.
And it constantly reinvents itself, never repeating a puzzle mechanic for very
long until a brand new obstacle crosses your path, forcing you to re-evaluate
what you've learned. The intuitive controls are limited to only one stick and
two buttons for jumping and interaction, and in so doing creates one of those
rare games that don't require any tutorials.
Tonally, the game is very dark and highly oppressive, with an eerie,
minimalistic soundscape to heighten the tension. When music plays it's to
convey the boy's emotional response to what he's witnessing. It can be really
helpful, like when you've been detected and a thumping, stressful tune goes
off, like an alarm bell urging you to think quickly and act efficiently.
Also helpful is the fact that the boy is animated to automatically respond to
the desperation of the situation, giving you a hint of how you should react.
When guards stand idle the background, he crouches to avoid detection, and
when he's surrounded by people, he imitates their stance to blend in with the
crowd. The boy's animations give you a fighting chance to avoid deaths, even
when you're entering an area for the first time. When he stops crouching and
the soundtrack comes alive, it's time to run for your life.
Inside might be the most painstakingly playtested and optimized game I've yet
reviewed on this blog. As I sometimes like to say: It never sets one foot
wrong - although this time I actually mean it. Even as they're told completely
through gameplay, the chase sequences are directed to always end up with you
escaping by a hair. And when you screw up, you'll realize it a second or two
ahead of your death. That short moment of anguish is dreadful, as all you can
do is brace for impact, and the following gruesome death animation and sound
always makes me feel bad for the little guy.
Even the puzzle difficulty is balanced to perfection. Not too hard, but still
hard enough, they make you feel accomplished when you crack the solution,
which you often deduce by adding one and one together. The puzzles themselves
often hinges on perfectly understandable physics. No-one can argue with their
logics. You can reason with yourself to reach the right conclusion: "I need
this box to weigh down that pressure plate, which means I must
use that platform far back as leverage instead." And when it works, the
satisfaction can compare to the joy of winning a PS Trophy.
You might not pay much attention to it while playing, but the puzzles also
hint at some storytelling, nudging you to ponder the fate of the world and the
boy. What are those parasitical worms? Are they connected to the mind-control
helmets you occasionally come across? And how do they relate to all those
zombified people lining up to step into the trucks in the background? Why are
they herded like cattle? And where do the transports take them? And to
summarize it all: What is wrong with this world?
Inside hints of some extraterrestrial or supernatural truths, but I guess many
will reach the ending with too many questions unanswered to feel satisfied. I
personally love it like that. It turns the game into a mystery, which itself
becomes like an unofficial sidequest that I made up for my own pleasure. The game might only last a short
while, but the thoughts will linger for quite a while. Your first playthrough
is obviously gonna be dedicated primarily to solving puzzles, but subsequent
ones could go into soaking up more of the story; the setting, atmosphere,
creatures and events in the background.
Inside seems to stimulate some pretty primal fight-or-flight instincts inside
the human psyche. It reminds me of a forgotten, recurring dream I used to
have in as a youngster: It was a stressful one where I was chased by the
police, for reasons the dream always kept secret. I always sensed I couldn't
escape the law forever, but for the moment I was always on the cusp of
succeeding. Strikingly often the dream would end with me quietly wading into
a stream of water and floating away. Sometimes I got away, but other times the
police would spot me and start shooting at the water around me. No matter the
outcome, I always awoke at this moment with a sigh of relief, glad to realize
I was no fugitive after all.
There's no waking up from Inside, you gotta see it through to the end, and the
puzzling ending gave me something to think about. I know it's kinda boring or
corny to hear about other people's dreams, but you know it says something
about a piece of fiction when it evokes the shared, buried landscapes of
our youth's psyche. In one of the most amazing years for games overall, this old indie masterpiece is one of the best new discoveries for me.
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