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megane posted:The 'meta' reading is reasonable, of course, but there's also an in-universe explanation for the secret ending: This is a pretty good theory, and it has good synergy with a few bits from the puzzles/gameplay, namely several puzzles establishing that drones can control drones, so the boy can plausibly use the helmet even if he's a drone, and the Huddle can readily be the ur-controller and drones, particularly the weird half-formed water drones that seem to be made of the same material as the Huddle, being drawn to the boy even when he's not wearing a helmet -- maybe because they recognize him as one of their own, or maybe because the Huddle is controlling them to aid him.
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May 6, 2017 03:05
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| # ? May 3, 2024 00:25 |
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What I'm most concerned about with the ending is that it doesn't actually provide any closure to what is going to happen with The Huddle. I was expecting A) for it to get up, or B) for it to eventually stop moving, either of which would have seemed like a conclusion of some variety. I'm not too fond of ambiguity in endings, since it feels a bit like we didn't accomplish anything.
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May 6, 2017 04:30
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So, I was kinda of hyped up for the ending as well, and it feels awesome to watch a force of nature tear poo poo up after having to be all sneaky and crafty before. But I'm on the camp that the ending (and the game itself) raises a lot of questions, but I feel like it really doesn't give us enough material to work on answering those questions, aside from just speculation, which is a futile exercise IMO. Excellent LP as usual, though!
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May 6, 2017 05:34
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I kind of liked the frenetic nature of the Huddle. Huddle don't need to slow down.
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May 6, 2017 05:46
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the ending kind of reminds me of little nightmares in a way, where you kind of semi-randomly hulk out and end up taking some kind of revenge on the game's antagonists somehow. they also share the trait of not really explaining a single thing and mostly coasting by on style, which i'm not sure what to think of. it's nice when a game can have a cool aesthetic throughout but it typically ends up feeling sort of...hollow at the end of it all if there's nothing else to back it up.
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May 6, 2017 05:51
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Kangra posted:I think what bothers me most about the vagueness of the game's world is that the game is clearly cheating at times for the sake of gameplay. At several times there are gateways that make no possible sense except as things in a platform game to get you to proceed. The 'insert flaming object to open door' puzzle was a pretty obvious example. The bizarro physics section and a few of the water portions are like that as well. There's also things that are just a bit too convenient, like the fact that the sea creatures kill you... except for this one that doesn't for some reason. To be fair, there's a number of places where progress does feel organic, but it did seem to me as though on balance, the arbitrary parts were starting to build up to a significant portion of the world. I think this sums up a lot of my thoughts pretty well. Great looking game, was more fun to watch your LP than to play it myself which I have done as well. I wish the game's universe was a little more cohesive. I gave up trying to assign too deep a story after I concluded that if the devs didn't try too hard in certain instances, I wouldn't either. As for the underwater creatures killing you, and then one time not killing you - what I like to imagine is that in each of the instances the creature gets you in the sub, we don't know what it really ends up doing with you after the screen fades. Maybe when the screen fades to black after it cracks the glass of the sub, it drags you off to another hookup so you can breathe underwater - but we don't see that happen for our protagonist because that's not the story this game is telling, if that makes sense. In our story, the boy gets snatched when he falls off the catwalk with the chain. And so on. So that detail actually doesn't bother me as much. What does bother me is that it seems impossible to really fit everything the game feeds you into a cohesive narrative. I wish we knew why there are dead animals and gigantic busted-rear end Black Mesa style labs everywhere, but we just won't get to find out.
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May 6, 2017 07:53
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And just what was causing those massive soundwaves?
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May 6, 2017 09:48
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INSIDE is an extremely gritty reimagining of songs by the Vengaboys
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May 6, 2017 11:43
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The ending of Inside is a lot like the ending of The Prisoner (the original, not the remake) - there's chaos, there's escape, there's... not many questions answered, and with the idea that it all may well be another layer of control, a question of whether or not it was an escape or an 'escape'. To me though, it winds up feeling cheap. With games like this, it's more of a surprise when we actually do get some kind of explanation. "Visually impressive indie game with a vaguely esoteric ending" is becoming a cliche these days. It'll be interesting to see what happens when game devs start bucking the trend.
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May 6, 2017 12:24
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Great job with the LP - would love to see you take on Little nightmares next! Only problem was youtube stuff which you already explained. Commentary was perfect and well done. Agree with many the ending is the poorest part of the game. I could see a hand wriggling at the end and was waiting for the boy to break free and swim off to safety. At least the idea of the model in the lab with the spotlight showing the final resting place was a nice touch. Wish we could have picked up scientist reports that filled in the backstory but fair play with the direction they went in.
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May 6, 2017 13:04
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i was hoping the kid would turn out to be the one from limbo before he actually went to limbo and he was looking for his sister the game is awesome but endings are just as important as the journey. i sort of get the idea of the drones/huddle wanting to reach the sunlight but more could have been done there
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May 6, 2017 14:26
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Edmond Dantes posted:repiv mentioned something about Playdead using a special rendering tech for the game, so I'm not really surprised yt destroys it. Here's that presentation for the graphics nerds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdN06E6Xn9E This year they did another presentation about how The Huddles animation works, but sadly it's paywalled  The trailer for the talk is rad though.
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May 6, 2017 17:37
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To be honest, the first time I played through the game I disliked the ending so much that it ended up souring my overall experience. I got the idea to LP it more as an experiment to see what everyone made of it than anything else, but then on replaying it to prepare for recording I fell in love all over again with the art and sound design and the overall vibe of the game, even if the ending ultimately does fall flat. Even with the amount of hype the ending has gotten, my favourite moment in the game hands down is the shockwave section, followed closely by the first time you get into the sub and break into that huge underwater space and the drowning sequence fakeout. Running from cover to cover barely making it in time before the next shockwave hits still felt as terrifying as the first time, and the whole are still feels wrong. Kangra hit the nail in the head with his take on the game, though I find myself being a bit more forgiving of the 'this are is obviously a puzzle' design of some of the sections, even if some stick out a bit more than others like the buttons placed 5 metres overhead. I wanted to link these two videos from Errant Signal's take on the game; he talks about a lot of the same issues that are being discussed and brings up some of the stuff I mentioned about Limbo's 'gotcha' approach to traps and Inside's 'flow' during the chase sequences. He also goes into the game's themes and potential symbolism which I think it's quite interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln6WUbIXTIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIqxguPvI5Q ally_1986 posted:Great job with the LP - would love to see you take on Little nightmares next!  repiv posted:Here's that presentation for the graphics nerds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdN06E6Xn9E
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May 6, 2017 17:44
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The huddle is a homing pigeon. In finding its beach, it found its purpose; Cessation of strife, The End. Sweep up the viscera if you please we done here gnight fhtagn.
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May 6, 2017 23:45
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I wonder if perhaps the underwater creatures are just failed/previous versions of the boy, and the boy is just either the only one or the latest one who is compatible with the huddle. (I call it "blobtato")
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May 6, 2017 23:51
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David Cronenberg Presents: The Koosh Ball
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May 6, 2017 23:55
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Since they're danish I'm guessing the original name to be "Klumpen," which can be translated as both the huddle and the blob.
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May 6, 2017 23:58
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Great LP of an interesting game--well done! Where is that last secret ending room, below the cornfield where the bonus orb light lit up? I imagine you can only access it on a new game, right?
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May 7, 2017 00:13
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Fedule posted:Inside is an achievement in videogames in all of the technical senses of the word. It's not that every single part of it is revolutionary and awe-inspiring in and of itself (well maybe one bit is) but that the totality of the thing is just so flawlessly executed; it seamlessly flows from beginning to end through setpieces and atmospheres and presentations and mechanics in a single, unbroken line, fluid but unwavering, and every scrap of it is beautiful. It even runs at 60fps for chrissakes! I'm overdue some gushing. The entire Blob Section is one big whoa moment, not only for the sudden escalation of the actually-still-very-simple game mechanics from careful navigation into ramming through walls but also for the constant slow realization of the monumental amount of work that went into the game's animations. We've been seeing it since minute one, of course - the kid has a shitton of little contextual movements, animation changes, mechanical changes (see: speeding up when running from dogs), sounds and flourishes, and even the NPCs have various contextual reactions to player "deaths" - but the blob just kinda rams it all into your face; look at the arms and legs springing from this thing, look at how they handle crates and ledges, look at how everything deforms. The attention to detail is god drat perfect. Every tiny thing is so totally nailed that it looks effortless, and the last thing you're thinking about while playing is what "animation system" underlies it all. It's just... natural. The rest of the game; well, as I said before, it's seamless, in both aesthetics and mechanics. Aesthetically, the game flows from forest to farm to urban sprawl to flooded ruin to ground zero to science-site without skipping a beat and with no jarring styles; the whole thing is a completely natural evolution of LIMBO's silhouette style, only exactly as detailed as it needs to be. Mechanically it holds fast to the core set of run, jump, pick up, interact; whether on foot, in the sub, or in the blob, it all just works. It's all, again, completely natural. Every signature area gimmick and setpiece makes a completely seamless entry, effects a seamless mechanical presence, and makes an equally seamless exit. Even at the height of the shockwave area where the sound starts getting more showy and music-y than Playdead have ever been willing to get, it all fits together perfectly. The puzzle design is, blessedly, much less malicious than LIMBO. I mean, I kinda liked LIMBO as an exercise in second-guessing the player, and if you just kinda roll with that it's much less aggravating than you'd otherwise find it, but I did wonder about it. Inside has none of that, and even the moment to moment stuff in the chase sequences that can throw you the first time through never really feels unfair or like some designer was trying to get one over on you, it's just... stuff that you might miss in a panic. I don't even really care what any of it means, although it's all fascinating, and the ambiguity is kind of an achievement in itself. It's quite hard to design something to be deliberately ambiguous, with multiple equally plausible interpretations, and no canon, but they've done it, and I love them for it. In conclusion, Inside is one of a small collection of recent games that I am willing to classify as Basically Perfect, inasmuch as entities as complex as videogames can be meaningfully considered perfect (other examples of such games: The Witness, Invisible Inc, NieR: Automata). It is a quite remarkable production, it is an affirmation that videogames are good and can feel good and can make you feel something even when they make no pretences toward stories or character development or emotional arcs or plot twists. This was a good LP. Fedule fucked around with this message at 01:37 on May 7, 2017 |
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May 7, 2017 01:35
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Hm. I actually wasn't that much put off by the ending, and I couldn't really tell you why- perhaps it's because I wasn't let down with unanswered questions because it seemed to me that the game didn't really pose any questions, any more than Limbo or Little Nightmares did. In all of these you have a spooky area and a figure to guide through it, but if there is any greater purpose or theme involved beyond evoking a certain feeling, I didn't really get that. See, that's what usually causes a game to annoy me- if there is hinted to be something at the end, like a juicy character arc or thematic exploration, and that something isn't there, then I feel betrayed. But the purpose behind games like this, seems to be to evoke a mood- they're emotional stories, not traditional stories or character studies, akin to a music video or an art piece, and not posing any questions or explanations just allows me to bask in the emotion presented... and maybe chew over some theories as to what might have happened. if they're interesting. And they are quite interesting here- as Edmond mentioned, the THRUMMing area is fantastic both for atmosphere and questions as to what the heck they all were doing there, and the question of the end of what happened and why is juicy to consider.
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May 7, 2017 01:47
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I love this game, and this was a great LP of it. I think my favorite sequence is the big drowning scene. Having died so many times to that creature in the lead-up to it, I remember giving a sigh when the catwalk fell and waiting for the screen to go black but it never did. The explosions area is much more interesting, but that scene has stuck with me. One thing I wanted to mention: there's a unique death scene you didn't show in the second video, in the part with the fence and the dogs. If you go back to the door after barricading it, well... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeEhYMy32i8&t=515s
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May 7, 2017 08:40
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I saw this at the Wellcome Institute in London the other day: http://i.imgur.com/IPRgUD5.jpg I wonder if any of the creators ever had...
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May 7, 2017 21:36
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Great LP!
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May 9, 2017 19:43
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