I'm glad to inform that Inside's dystopic orwellian nightmare is still an effective demonstration of what strong compelling imagery and setting can do for storytelling, acting as spiritual sequel to what was an otherwise meandering experience that indulged on the worst tendencies and trends of the indie "games are art" landscape, trimming out most of the unnecessary fat that would get in the way of the actual meat of the "fragile boy going through a hostile environment" concept.

Beyond the immediately noticeable vast improvement in texture, color, sound design and animation work Inside has over Limbo's amateurish monochrome and blurred style, the addition of depth to its massive and imposing backgrounds that juxtapose with the main protag's railroaded 2D axis manages to instill a sense of bleakness and insignificance unmatched in videogame settings, and utilizing its industrial and desolate landscapes as the core instrument to tell its story, the limited dimension allowed to the player is enough to raise intrigue and curiosity as Inside deliberately ofuscates and limits what you glimpse off its distant and alluring backgrounds.

Tying it all up, you have a seamless and intuitive gameplay experience that manages to rectify the lanky and awkward controls that bogged down Limbo and that instead focuses more on the strengths of the cinematic platformer genre, conveying narrative through the pure act of constant movement. Replaying it again, Inside proves to be a much more exasperating endeavour, as you are stopped dead on your tracks to solve puzzles more often than you would like. Fortunately, the fluid animations and perceptible interactivity keep a brisk pace going and utilize said puzzles to reinforce the themes and narrative of the game with a level of craftmanship that Limbo rarely ever managed to pull off.

These aspects alone put Inside on a pedestal far and above Limbo's artistic aspirations, but it's the finale that elevates it beyond what people ever expected it to achieve all the way back in 2016. The centerpiece of Inside and what the whole game builds towards to, the abrupt shift it takes in its last act is still one of the most incredible and well crafted turns I have ever seen a videogame pull off, feeling simultaneously alien and second nature to control and barrelling its way into a catharsis that recontextualizes what came before it and fills its final note with poignancy by the mere act of taking control away from you for a few secs, as you flick the analog sticks one last desperate time.

Much has already been said about Inside's meta commentary on the nature of player agency and the illusion of control, interpretations that are made evident with the unlocking of the secret ending and the decoding of the game's plot, and while I understand that could lead to some people eye rolling as we get yet another postmodern game using the nature of the medium to exploit these concepts, I think Inside manages to pull it off solely based on the strength of its thematic cohesiveness that brings it all together at the end. And its impressive how Inside is able to balance its prevasive and easily understood authoritarian imagery with more subtle and easy to miss nuances that turn a motionless chick in the background into a masterclass of foreshadowing and establish a simple hidden in plain sight diorama as the game's version of 1984's "boot on a human face".

Regardless, Inside's ability to keep its subtext hidden in its scenery is its biggest strength, running instead on tone and atmosphere alone, telling all you need to know from the first moment you take control of the boy in red, and allowing the player the decision to be invested or not in its world, one you will desperately want to get inside of.

Reviewed on Apr 18, 2022


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