Spoilers ahead
Video games have a terrifically terrible time deciding what they are. Are they interactive movies? Interactive narratives? Are they just time-wasters? If they are any of these things, how do they do what they need to do to get their point across? Do they have a point? What is it?
Limbo circumvents a lot of the problems of modern games by removing a few key elements: dialogue, plot and music. What we get is an experience — but still a narrative. Let me explain.
First and foremost, here is what we know about Limbo: a boy is in a world, the world is kind of fuzzy and black and white, it’s very dark, everything and everyone is out to get him. You control the boy through a series of perilous encounters with giant spiders, people throwing spears and giant machines. Eventually the game ends with you coming across a girl picking flowers. You do not speak to the girl or even approach the girl — in fact there is no guarantee it’s even a girl.
Narrative once meant “to narrate.” This isn’t really the case any more — nowadays it means to exist and tell a story. This story doesn’t need to be explained, it just needs to exist. For all intents and purposes, Limbo does not have a plot — it has a narrative, but no plot. What does this mean exactly? It means the user is allowed to generate the experience based on the day-to-day activity of this little boy. For all we know this is a normal circumstance for our avatar — this is a normal day — he travels around a darkened landscape, avoiding death on every corner and trying merely to survive.
Or maybe it’s not. Maybe this is a special circumstance — maybe by “limbo” they mean purgatory — or hell — or dreams — we can’t know for certain — which is what makes this an interesting form of storytelling. It’s the concrete “being there” we get and nothing else. It’s an experience more concerned with narrative as an art — as what we view and interpret rather than a plot.
Is this still a narrative though? Yes it is. It’s not traditional — but I would find it hard to believe the developers didn’t have a plot in mind when they painted this picture. It’s closer to Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual than it is to a game in its narrative. The difference between this and say, Uncharted 2 is that we are assumed to be intelligent, creative humans that are capable of filling in the gaps. That isn’t to say there is anything wrong with Uncharted 2 — for every Fellini there needs to be a Michael Bay — the two forms, as well as all others can coexist without there ever being a “right” solution. What Limbo does is give us a narrative without a plot — and for that, I’m thankful, grateful and incredibly impressed.