Playdead took six years to follow up their instant classic and influential Limbo. Inside quickly found itself among heavy hitters populating "most anticipated" lists for the intervening years between announcement and release, not horribly uncommon for an indie title, but notable nonetheless. Six years isn't totally out of the question for a followup from an indie studio looking to followup their breakout success (look at the eight years it took for Jonathan Blow to release his contentious followup to Braid, The Witness), but the indie landscape had a severe shift since that original release. For one, the cinematic platformer and the ICO-like had risen to become one of the dominant genres of the scene, largely due to the success of Limbo. Secondly, the sickening miasma that is expectation and a highly diluted market made Inside's release something of an unenviable position. And as a matter of fact, the impact of Inside was far shallower, essentially just a brief showering of praise followed by a modest presence on the digital store of your choice (sticking out as one of those indie games you always glance at in sales, but hesitate to buy). Which is a shame, because I'd argue Inside is a lot better than Limbo.
Inside is, at its core, much the same as Limbo, just with the privileged of better experience, better graphics, and a named developer tagged onto it's marketing. In Inside you play as a small boy wondering through a dark and surreal world (this time far more dystopian than dark Tom Sawyer) where you are tasked with simple platforming tests and physics based puzzles. From a gameplay standpoint, Inside rarely innovates, only occasionally showing sharp puzzle design outside of the norm (and even then, comes with one or two more unintuitive puzzles more than its predecessor). Inside partially gets away with this by billing itself as a spiritual successor to Limbo, but what really sells it is its presentation and story.
Inside is gorgeous. Graphically, the game uses lighting to highlight and accentuate its minimalist design, allowing for emotion to be conveyed between rectangular borders the way a skilled cinematographer would a film. It can be downright breathtaking sometimes, and when the game and its puzzles flow elegantly, the sensation can be that of a seamless blending of two mediums. Limbo had far better elegance in this category, with its slightly more intuitive design, but Inside holds its own nearly as well. The minimalist aesthetic uses muted colors for most of it, allowing the peeks here and there - such as the boy's red shirt, which threatens to tip the game, along with the piles of dead bodies you find, into a Schindler's List wannabe, but saves itself in the latter two-thirds with a change of locale. The minimalism heightens the lighting, which will shaft through water, or peek between rows of corn. The atmosphere is evocative, and it's easy to get drunk on it alone. Luckily, there is a story here.
Not much of one, to be honest, preferring the impressionist style of Limbo, but with a bit more focus. The interpretations I was able to garner throughout my playthrough were certainly never original, but they were told in an emotionally resonant way. The boy is pursued multiple times, often by things that cannot be explained. The machinations of how the horrors ravaging this world are explained without you realizing they've been explained, usually through the solving of a puzzle, where the solution itself is the explanation. The story threatens to get heavy handed on occasion, but there is a darkly funny tinge occasionally, often through the contrast of such a small and determined boy outsmarting a group of professionals who have, apparently, subjugated (a word almost too light for what is actually going on) an entire people. And the game's grotesque, possibly disturbing, finale can equally wring humor out of its absurd premise. What it comes down to mostly is craftsmanship. A good story told by a poor artist is admirable, but hardly great. A poor story told by someone at the peak of their craft, likewise, can be good, but never great. For Inside, its careful not to push its chips too far into its strict plot, which is cliche, but rather on the emotional cloud that clings to it. Playdead toy with deep themes, but usually don't spend enough time with them for you to feel the full brunt of how cliche they actually are at their core, and that's because Playdead isn't interested in a morality tale. Its story is that of struggle, of fear, and, most of all, of resourcefulness. Despite the dark set dressing, and the gross, disturbing finale, the story is uplifting. It came at an awful, absurd cost, but it was a success.
Inside surpasses its predecessor not by switching gears into something with more viability, but by honing what made the first game so good and improving on it. The game is definitely one where you need to appreciate a game's execution as much as its gameplay, but if you can buy into that then you cannot be disappointed by the wonderful, fulfilling experience Playdead was able to cram into three hours. I'd really like to see what else Playdead can do other than this genre, because I think they may have taken it as far as it could go.
9.5
No comments:
Post a Comment