Onze years Hey! Eleven long years separate us from the exit of Limbo. It was in July 2010, in the hollowest of the summer, while holidaymakers sledge nonchalantly on the beaches, preferring the heat of the sun to the moisturizer of a good old pad 360. It was the golden age of Xbox live arcade. Microsoft's program was then intended to promote the new independent guard. The XLA no longer had to prove itself since its brilliant launch, which had propelled many of the people under the spotlight. Back to a masterpiece in plain darkness!
First production of the Danish studio Playdead, Limbo already had been released in a summer period not conducive to the foreign media exhibition, departures on holiday forced. Six years later, Playdead repeated the maneuver maliciously with his brand new Inside production. Very little communication, if this is a handful of short videos during the last world shows, avarous in gameplay sequence and so fond of CGI cinematics.
Literally distress lights!
In Limbo Veritas
After the critical success of Limbo, how to renew the experience without risking the 1.5 syndrome, the easy sequel or even worse the blow in the water ? As a result, Playdead performed a good introspection exercise to try to separate the good grain from the tares, already very rare in the first part. Spiritual Suite of Limbo, Inside also starts so well during a charming country walk in the vein of her older brother. Abandon all family picnic projects from the outset. No mushrooms picking with Grandma Jeanne either, far from it! Time's running. Already the forest seems hostile, as the breath of this faceless young boy beats the tempo of a race that promises to be unbridled.
The rhythm simmers, the anonymous hero blows out, while a sudden pack of dogs chases him. They were so far away and yet now they are to his Basques, determined to chop the menu. Two fingers away from the pâtée, a prodigious leap of cabrio frees us from torpor. You dive into a lake without ever stopping. Molosses are on our side, without respite. I can still hear them roaring fiercely, their screams stifled and distorted by the density of the river, while the militias roam around. On the horizon, there is a bridge where two beams of light invite caution. As gunshots suddenly sound, the first bullets penetrate the surface of the water and encourage us to apnea in troubled waters. When can I take my breath? Certainly not soon.
The wheat field: classic of any good slasher.
50 shades of grey
Inside is above all a beautiful lesson in rhythm. One keeps infiltrating deep into this kind of deadly alienation camp, sometimes through a hole freed by the fall of a safe, sometimes after sliding through a fragile railing or elevator, which seemed so protective, surrounded by its iron cages. The progression is labyrinthic while paradoxically always precipitated forward. The horizon as a flight point. Literally. Clausetrophobes abstain, if Limbo remained feet on earth, Inside does not hesitate to immerse us in the depths. At the option of a submarine or swimming for the boldest, we explore these sinister places until we end up caught inside the nightmare. Inside enjoys a rare wealth when the hero progresses.
More than just an attempt to escape, it is an authentic flight forward that enlivens us, without really knowing why to enter stubbornly ever further, rather than turning back wisely, as if one were participating, blind, in a quest that only this little, untalented boy would know the outcome. Some sequences limit the player to malaise. The suffocating atmosphere is naturally not festive. Whether it's grey and other degraded shades and dark wash, only a few rare rays of sunlight invite us to join the light. It is also often she who guides us or saves us, it is according to. The fans of Limbo know, the light always has a shadow, what it reveals, it immediately resumes it. And vice versa.
The Ring only got to be good!
Claustrophobia
In addition, each idea of gameplay – Yet basic taken in isolation – renews itself as the game unfolds. A steam mechanism will later make the case, soon broken or released from its rushes. Same for certain puzzle sequences that are not without recalling the Lemmings or more recently the excellent and tortured The Swapper. It is in this capacity that Inside is brilliant, since it never gives us time to get bored. Rather than exhausting concepts, the game prefers to offer us a constant flow of situations, where observation will be the master word. Don't worry, no riddles are insoluble and the studio's regulars are likely to be on their way. However, it is necessary to see the ingenuity of the devices put in place, their immediate clarity despite the heavy atmosphere. The modernity of Inside results from its ability to produce a gameplay without any tutorials or lines of dialogue. The narrative emanates even as if it did not require any context. She's and that's it. Through the movement is a minimalist but no less essential adventure. We observe, we learn, we move forward: a simple but natural approach.
The counterfields at the heart of Inside narrative...
Faces, figures
Inside is not just a good one game design. Without its successful plastic and subtle staging, supported by an effect of travelling well felt, we must admit that the body of the gameplay would be even rather banal, outside a few phases « atmospheric » defying the laws of elementary gravity. And yet the striking OST and the depth of graphics generate an atmosphere without equivalent. Here silence is master and the rare musical interventions are all catalysts of tension. At all points it is a controlled partition from end to end. Even animations have become more flexible since Limbo and their variety contributes to the organic character of the whole. Some have also been concocted for single use, not without providing a real feeling of life to this menu character with a blank figure. The progression all azimuts always brings us a little closer to the heart of the machine, so that Inside finally bears its name very well. Unless it is within ourselves that we will dive.
Initiation to synchronized swimming
Death in the Kits
Some sequences also clearly pay homage to Japanese cinema, from fantastic to horror. The last third of the game is moreover a real surprise, beating in breach everything that preceded until then. Cronenberg seems so close, like a certain 1958 cult film, whose name we will religiously mention... The topics addressed never fall into the caricature. It's morbid, macabre, but not just. The strangely familiar aspect of some situations gives rise to immediate anxiety. When a disembodied human troupe follows us like a pack of living dead, that what looks like servile workers joins in reinforcement to the melee until forming a clumsy body, one cannot stop thinking about alienation. In the mirror of our own misfortune, Inside skilfully reverses the maneuver until she mixes victims and executioners, under the far air of Milgram. Not a dialogue, not a word, these atone bodies will only serve you to progress to the final generic after three four hours of adventure and dreadful organic parades. This is probably the most appropriate word to define Inside. And the strange is never far from the real as everyone knows.
VERDICT
If you liked Limbo, Inside should delight you. Know, however, that if the latter probably preferred the platform to the puzzle, here it is a bit the opposite. A few simili phases of infiltration, fewer traps probably hidden but equally disturbing violence. Death is true never far away. A step in the wrong direction and the chopper falls without warning. Progress through failure is still an inherent part of the Playdead experience, although the player's attention can allow him to respond properly to situations from the first attempt. Moreover, it is such a beautiful moment of grace when one barely escapes from an enemy, defying in extremes the unparalleled sadism of Danish developers. Perhaps also a little more contemplative, Inside offers monumental plans where the hero's smallness radically contrasts with the horror of a world ruled by machines. Allusions to a technique of which one would no longer be master, visceral omnipresence of the cities as well as these few fantastic flights give us an inner fresco of the most beautiful effect and from which everyone will refrain from drawing a single reading. Welcome to the hangman's ball, a journey inside that won't leave anyone unharmed.For
- Photography for gameplay
- Artistic direction inspired
- Narration without text or interface
- Run forward without any time dead
- Cold and chilly musical atmosphere
Against
- Waiting for the next Playdead nugget
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