Reflection - Media discourse - Limbo
In our media discourse course, we are discussing narrative in games, how much of it exists and how much it affects the player’s interaction.
Limbo is a puzzle platform 2D side-scroller game, it was developed by Playdead studio. The player guides a boy through difficult and dangerous environments as he searches for his sister. the game is based on trial and error.
Limbo’s storyline had undergone a lot of analysis, why is he looking for his sister in such a dark and difficult setting? why is there two children in such a state? most people have said that they both are dead and the game begins the moment right after their death occurs. To start off with the name of the game which in some cases means “the edge of hell”. It is associated with people who are not damned nor suitable for heaven, so they evidently exist in Limbo. why name the game a state of someone after their death? that was basically the first clue. The second clue is the ending! the last scene where the brother and sister reunites is the same scene where the start menu of the game is.
The top screenshot is the last scene of the game when the boy finally finds his sister. the bottom one is when the game is launched and the start menu pops up.
After a lot of observation, one can notice in the menu screenshot that the environment is in a worse condition than the one where the characters reunite. the ladder has fallen off, the grass is longer and there are flies in the exact places of the characters when they meet. it shows how time has passed and that the flies are gathered above their corpses. so basically they both died in a certain accident whether fell from the tree house of a car accident and its when the adventure of the game starts.
The narrative behind this game is quite dark it’s not straightforward and it’s confusing. It’s a good kind of confusing in my opinion because it pushes the player to solve all the mysteries that this game beholds. but I would have to say that as intriguing and twisted the narrative can be I totally agree with Juul’s point of you on how the human brain turns events round a certain narrative to make sense out of what we encounter. In Limbo’s case, the narrative sure exists but has nothing to do with the interactivity of the player in the game.
References:
Games Studies 0101: Games telling Stories? by Jesper Juul [WWW Document], n.d. URL http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/ (accessed 11.11.18).
Wong, K., n.d. The Most Depressing Theories On What Limbo Means [WWW Document]. Kotaku. URL https://kotaku.com/the-most-depressing-theories-on-what-limbo-means-1724276367 (accessed 11.11.18).
How Limbo Came To Life [WWW Document], n.d. . IGN. URL https://www.ign.com/articles/2010/09/14/how-limbo-came-to-life (accessed 11.11.18).
