Limbo Analysis, or: Narrative Elements in Gameplay

(This entry was written for SNHU's GAM-205 class in the Fall 2017 semester.)

    Today, we're going to be talking about LIMBO.

No, Percy. LIMBO. Not 'Limbo of the Lost.' Benny Briggs isn't in that game. As far as I know.

    LIMBO is a game developed and published by the studio 'Playdead.' It's a monochrome puzzle-platformer where you run, jump, and explore eerie environments. If you don't read any external information about the game, that could be all you know, as the game gives no details on who you are, what you're doing, or anything else. But a quick peek at the Steam description reveals everything about the story (at least the concrete details) in one sentence: Uncertain of his sister's fate, a boy enters LIMBO. This is all the story given as we control this boy as he tries survive a harsh world with giant spiders, other kids (or are they older?) who set traps for him, and brain worms that make you walk to your doom. Or it just gives you a serious craving for some fast food.

"I'm thinkin' 'bout Burger King, 'cause he's a Burger King parasi- whoaahoah. No, McDonald's is the best."

    That main thing we're talking about is the ending. You see a girl kneeling near a tree with a ladder attached to it and the boy walks towards her. She notices him as he stops near her, and the screen cuts to black. As the credits roll, you see the same area, but slightly zoomed out. From this view, we can see some sort of structure (a tree house?) in the tree branch, the ladder is mostly broken, and the boy and sister are missing, with two swarms of flies swarming where they were in the ending. There's a lot of debate on the ending, but it would seem that the boy was also dead, presumably in the same way his sister died. This also gives a subtle explanation on how the boy can die in brutal ways during the game and respawn perfectly fine each time: because he's already dead, death is just a painful inconvenience

It also explains how the spider can live so long with one leg without succumbing to blood loss.

    An article assigned for this homework states that the "story" of LIMBO is made up of inferences/interpretations and how we frame them after we finish the game. It also refers to Philosophy of Logic by W.V. Quine, and the distinction between Use and Mention. The article applies that to video game narratives. On the Mention side, we have games where the story and narrative lore can be evocative, but is otherwise trivial to the play itself, such as Nethack or Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. A bit further towards Use, and we have games where minor narrative elements set the mood, give a feeling of purpose, and ultimately work with the gameplay to build a narrative. A narrative seen in LIMBO.

Also possibly in Isaac. Also known as: Surprise! It's About a Child's Suicide!

    In the middle would be something like Portal, where the full story requires inferring and reflection, but the story actually has a hand in how the game is played. The Use side of the scale is (generally) home to adventure games and RPGs. The lighter part of this side would involve something like the Bethesda open-world RPGs, such as Elder Scrolls or Fallout. The story and world's lore are important to playing the game, but the game tracks information about the story and guides the player so forgetting what you're supposed to do isn't the end of the world. The last part of the scale would involve something like the Ultima games, especially the fourth one onward. In these games, knowing the story, lore, and your goals is basically necessary. In Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, you could spend dozens of hours fighting enemies and looking for your goal, but you'd never make any progress because the goal is to be an exemplar of the world's Virtues by behaving in such a fashion. So no ripping off the evidently blind reagent sellers or grabbing every chest in someone's house.

Killing Lord British, while awesome, is also highly ill-advised.

    The use of a narrative in video games is very interesting in how it can be used. It can stay on the sidelines and act as decoration to the gameplay. On the other hand, it can become a key part of the gameplay. Knowing how to manage both sides of the narrative coin can be a very important technique in writing video games.