The Story Behind Inside
In one of my previous posts I wrote about the story behind the game Limbo by Playdead. Inside is Playdead's follow up to Limbo and this game has a similar interesting background story.
Beware Spoilers ahead
The beginning
As was the case with Limbo this game at first looks like a simplistic puzzle game with platformer elements. Playdead uses a minimalistic style but still manages to make this game look quite beautiful. There is no dialogue or cutscenes in the game and to find out what is going on you have to play it and keep your eye open for subtle clues.
Just like Limbo the character you control is a young boy. Inside is a bit more colorful than Limbo, but just a bit. The overall feel of the game is still very moody with a lot of greyish tones and dark but beautiful backgrounds.
The controls are also similar to Limbo, one button to jump and one action button (what more do we need really?)
What's going on?
When you start the game, you will have literally no clue what is going with your character or the world he inhabits. Soon it becomes clear that you have to evade men who are trying to capture you for reasons unknown. These same men are loading people into trucks and driving them off to unknown locations. Anyone familiar with Limbo knows that the way to go forward is to keep traveling to the right while solving puzzles along the way.
It soon becomes obvious that something nefarious is going on and that you are on a mission to stop whatever is happening.
The clues
The clues in Inside are a bit more obvious than in Limbo. You are travelling towards a factory and along the way you will see people being loaded into trucks who are being brought to the same place as the direction you're headed.
During your journey to the factory you will encounter a pig that tries to attack you, when you pull something from its behind (at first I thought it was its tail) resembling a worm, the pig collapses. This worm-like thing is similar to the mind control worm we saw in Limbo. Which leads to the conclusion that there is some mind control evilness going on.
When we finally enter the factory we see that people are being turned into mindless puppets. In one of the scenes we have to mimic the mindless puppets actions to make the observers think that our character is one of the mindless people and avoid detection.
The story thus far
The world the boy lives in is a class divided society. The poor people are turned into mindless slaves to work for the rich people. When we are in the factory we can see a man and child in the factory looking at the people at the cages and neither the man or the child seem to be disturbed by the people in the cages. The same goes when we go through the mimicking part of the game. The mindless puppets are parading in front of onlookers displaying different kinds of movement. My theory is that these onlookers are buyers sampling the merchandise just like the man and child are "shopping" for their new human slave.
The factory we are infiltrating is the HQ of the company that is producing these mindless slaves. Our objective seems to be to put an end to these evil practices
Confusion
Now here is where things start to get confusing. That's why I have split my explanation of the story into two parts.
In our exploration of the factory we meet zombie like creatures that we can control with a mind controlling device. The zombie like creatures seem to be the result of experiments just like the pig we encountered earlier. The company behind the mind control is seemingly trying to perfect its mind control technology, just like a tech company would do with its products.
Another being we encounter is a mermaid girl with long black hair that is quite hostile towards us and tries to kill us. It is not clear why the girl is trying to kill us but is a safe assumption that she is also the result of a failed experiment.
The strange thing is that when the girl tries to kill us that we gain extra powers like being able to breath underwater and control the zombie creatures without a mind controlling device.
The Final Part
Things get extremely weird when we find a blob made out of the human zombies in a tank. When our character jumps in the tank and sheds his clothes, he is consumed by the blob and becomes part of the creature. Suddenly we (the player) are able to control the blob. In an absolutely brilliant end sequence that lasts about 20 minutes, we guide the blob in its escape from the facility.
Our game ends when the Blob almost reaches the water and a light shines on the seemingly lifeless creature.
Final explanation
There are many theories about this final part of the story and the role of the mermaid girl. One thing is sure and that is that our character is also being mind controlled. With the earlier puzzles we saw that different layers of mind control were possible. We were able to mind control a zombie who also controlled another zombie. The real proof however is that our character, a young boy, shows no hesitation going forward and his face is blank with no emotion in the face of danger.
The question is who controls the boy, the blob or the player? And what is the role of the mermaid and what happened when she killed us?
My theory is as follows:
To control the mindless puppets there has to be a central network, like with a botnet. We can see one of those central control networks when we are underwater.
To perfect this technology the scientists at the company have created a kind of hive mind, the blob we see at the end. However, as we know we can not always control what we create especially if it involves something with intelligence. The blob is not happy with its current situation and takes control of the boy who is a mindless puppet like the other mindless people, difference being that this puppet is directly under the blob's control. The boy has one objective, free the blob from captivity.
The mermaid is part of the blob's plan, in other to get free the boy must be enhanced to carry out his mission. That's why the mermaid "kills" the boy and gives him the ability to breath underwater and enhanced mind control. This ensures that the boy can take over the hive mind of the blob and control the blob so it can escape captivity.
When the blob reaches the outside it has reached its goal and the story is at an end.
The Title
The only thing left to explain is the title. In Limbo, the title was an important part in explaining the story but in inside the title raises more questions than answers. My take on the title is that it refers to the captivity of the blob. The blob is in prison, on the "inside" (slang). That's why when the blob breaks out of prison the story ends.
What do you think the story behind "Inside" is? Let me know in the comment section.
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I watched a let's play on youtube of this game, and a lot of people were thinking it was a world where the Nazi's were successful, and had achieved mindcontrol through experimentation with pigs. I think the creepiest part WAS the pigs. The developers did an amazing job setting the tone, and keeping it very dark. The meatball at the end was a little much for me and I kind of felt empty....Great posting ...