The Threat From Afar

So I want to talk about a game I recently played called Inside, and specifically how Playdead has shown, for their last two games, how visual depth can be utilized narratively and as a means of evoking emotion from the player.

So for Inside, and Playdead’s previous game, Limbo, the gameplay has been fairly straightforward. The player controls a boy who traverses along a set horizontal axis although the game is rendered to suggest a three dimensional space. Hence, there is a clear distinction of foreground, middleground, and background in nearly every scene of the game.

With this aesthetic setup, the developer is able to tell stories in their own distinctive fields of depth, allowing for storytelling that is incredibly subtle. For instance, while the player is traversing across the rooftops in the foreground, in the background, there is a steady stream of zombie-like people marching to and from some unknown location. What is going on with those people? Who knows?

There is a distinct separation of stories, however, they are by no means unrelated, and instead they run parallel to one another and inevitably converge. For instance, in the beginning of the game, virtually every enemy is introduced in the background: a pair of headlights, a patrol car, or dogs chasing after you. However, it is when these enemies enter, or rather, run into, the player’s depth of field, that they actually become threats. These threats may emerge from the background, but they invade the main character’s space so quickly that it creates a primal sense of fear. However, as you play the game, the player recognizes that these “events” are timed perfectly, so that if you know what to do, you will escape just in time every time. But that doesn’t mean the player isn’t jamming the analog stick or saying, “Come on come on, open the door!” as they frantically try to escape danger.

Another moment of narrative convergence happens when, after seeing the people marching in the background, the boy falls through a patch of old floorboards. Where does he fall to? Of course he falls directly in the middle of a line of marching people. Suddenly, a robot comes over and flashes a light at you, but it isn’t taking you away or anything yet. Then the line moves, and the player realizes, that in order to survive, they have to copy the line. One false move out of rhythm and the robot shoots a Taser at the boy and drags him way. It is amazing how the game is able to compress depth not through horizontal movement, but laterally instead, and in an instant.

There isn’t a steady stream of angry mushrooms or turtles walking towards you from screen right. Instead, threats emerge from the fog, from the dark, from the depths. Inside (and Limbo) builds a steady stream of dread. Perhaps it has something to do with the lateral camera movement, making the player feel eerily distant yet inevitably involved due to the nature of the video game medium. But what is evident is that the world is out to get you in Inside and it most certainly doesn’t care about your space in the foreground.

My words won’t ever really be able to describe the feeling of the game completely, so check out the trailer below.