An Interpretation to LIMBO
Ah, yes. This game. I've been meaning to play this for a long time ever since I saw a wallpaper of it.
Past Me: This seems fun. What a cute small boy in a black and white world.
After completing it in 2 days, WRONG. This was not cute at all. This game revolves around a boy stuck in Limbo trying to find his sister. Along the way, I get to watch this kid die a million times in a million ways. It's like the world he is in was design with the sole purpose of killing him.
After going through hell, the ending shows the kid breaking through a glass and seemingly returns to the beginning of the game, in the forest. He gets up and walks away. He stumbles on a tree fort with light emanating from above. Under the fort, there is a girl, the boy's sister probably, on the ground appearing to be burying something. When the boy approaches, she is startled and the game ends.
Seeing this for the first time, I was like, "The fudge just happened? That's it?" I've read some theories about the ending, the car accident, they are dead, coma, something...something... That's cool. I respect the people who came up with that. Now it's my turn to come up with something! ZING!
Ok, first thing I want to discuss is the boy's goal in the game. He awakes in a dark forest and off he goes to find his sister. Well, that's pretty straight forward. So first question is, why was he looking for his sister in the first place? I get the feeling the kid's confused as I am in the beginning of the game. Where was he anyway? As the title states, the kid is on Limbo, a place between heaven and hell. Taking that into account, we can all assume the kid is already dead. It's no freaking secret to anyone so no spoilers here. So the first part of my theory is that the kid is not aware he died and that he is on Limbo. Supposedly, the last thing he remembered was being with his sister. This can explain why he is looking for her. If you were with somebody and suddenly find yourself in some unknown forest alone, naturally the first thing that pops in anyone's mind is to find the person you were last with.
The next thing I want to discuss to the world of Limbo. Firstly, the physical world. It's really bleak, depressing, seemingly devoid of life. Not to mention full of traps... The world transverse from a forest/jungle environment, a territorial area with other humans, and lastly a factory chuck full of machinery like magnets, elevators, and gravitational modifiers. The interesting thing about this is how the world gradually changes without much notice. Like if your friend sees you playing in the beginning and leave and sees you playing in the factory part, he's gonna be really confused. But the player probably wasn't.
I compare Limbo to the real world. If you haven't notice, the world just summed up our history. The world started as forest and gardens, animals were dominant, thus, spiders were giants. Then humans came along. Gradually we see structures and houses in their presence. The brain slugs start to appear and we see people killing each other. Slugs may represent evil as they try to control you and it fizzles and turns away from the light. Not to mention ruin the chance of meeting the sister for the first time. This evil probably caused people to kill each other and soon themselves. After that, humans ceased to appear because machines have taken over. No more spiders, no more corpses, only killing blades waiting for you to land on them. That's history for you. So I interpret the world of Limbo as not only a place unknown of heaven and hell, but also a timeless dimension. Limbo takes place in the past, present, and future.
About the gameplay, it's really ominous to see the kid die and get revived again and again. The game really centers the theme of death and the will to press on no matter the cause, be it innocence or decency. It's really unsettling but that's how the game is. That's how Limbo is. It really gets into a person's sanity that for sure.
Now, let's take a replay on the ending. The kid break into a glass, tossing himself in a grassy terrain all while sending himself unconscious. And take note on that super slow motion scene and music of triumph. Freedom? Hell, yeah it was freedom. He was finally able to break out of Limbo and returns to the real world. At that scene, maybe just maybe, that's how he really died: by falling onto a glass. This is just my theory though. When the kid crashed and everything went slow motion, it almost looks as if the kid's entire life is flashing before his eyes. In other words, it's a reenactment of how he died and he was reminded he was already dead.
So he then awakens back at the forest in the real world, walks around, and sees sister burying something. A lot of people say she's burying his body and I agree to that. The thing I don't agree in is that the girl herself is also dead. I don't think the girl is dead. The boy returned to the real world for an instance but as a spirit. The way the girl was startled when the boy approached wasn't welcoming. She felt his presence but she didn't turn around, much like how anyone would react when sensing a ghost behind you. The boy died and the girl was alive.
If all the things I said are true, this is the way the boy died. He and her sister were up in the tree fort playing. He somehow fell out of the fort from the window, breaking it, and falls to his death. He is sent to the world of Limbo because he was only a kid. He didn't know sin yet he didn't known salvation either. The boy was in the real world for an instance in the beginning of the game as we can assume the forest exists in the real world because that's where the fort was. This is also the reason why the place is identical to the ending. Because of this, he wasn't aware he already died. Travelling more and more, the world starts to distort as he was slowly delving into the world of Limbo. He loses his innocence and thus understands life. In the end, he remembers how he died and realizes he's dead. His sister in the real world buries him on the spot he landed, under the fort.
I see two possibilities of the fate of the boy after the game abruptly turns to black. One, he ascends to heaven after his sister had properly buried him as some religions say this is a way to ascend from purgatory. I guess that's a happy ending for you.
As for my second thought, I can say the ending isn't very happy. What the boy sees after falling out of the glass is only an illusion of his sole desire: for his body to be given proper rest. He repeats the same cycle of the world of Limbo for eternity. Breaking into the glass and back to the forest, that's a cycle he can never escape from. His fate is cryptically seen in the main menu screen. His remains are not buried but rather being decomposed by flies and such on the surface. The ladder to the fort is rotten, the grass has wilted, leaving the land naked. And no signs of the sister too. We really don't know what happens to the girl in both possibilities. Some point out in the main menu that 2 bodies are being decayed by flies. I inspected it many times, I don't see a second body, just some flies buzzing around. So it could mean, the sister probably fled after the boy died and left his body not buried, which explains why the main menu looks a bit abandoned, left to rot.
I'm all shaken up now that I gave my interpretation. That's my just my theory anyway. With a game very limited of text and story introduction, anything is possible with Limbo.
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