9 Fan Theories That Totally Change 2016's Best Video Games

4. What INSIDE Is All About

inside game
PlayDead

The whole point of INSIDE's existentialist imagery is to invoke all manner of interpretations and thought, especially after that brutal ending. Some even think it's a visual representation of a body rejecting a cancerous tumour, but there's one that feels a little more contemporary.

Framed around the notion of societal oppression, it's easy to view the boy as the active, youthful mentality - a new perspective on any predicament. We collectively investigate an industrial environment, slowly unravelling what appears to be a system of rulers, controlling forces and watchful eyes all around, until eventually coming across a 'prisoner', of sorts.

This 'blob of people' lives only to serve the higher-ups, those either benefitting financially from its misery (the complex you're in is clearly a business), or merely for the fascination of the middle classes, seen as they ogle through the glass at its current state, rather like how many of us are guilty of just observing homelessness or destitution, rather than doing anything about it.

Once you provide the much-needed spark for a revolution, removing one of the shackles, the resulting chaos is the perfect visualisation of a long-awaited insurrection. It's a brutal, ugly, violent and momentous feeling - one where you help turn the tables on your oppressors in a sequence that perfectly evokes being part of the 'mob mentality', causing wanton destruction, despite only playing as one moving entity.

In the end, you break free and bask in the sun, only to realise that earlier in the game, this sequence was foreshadowed by a museum model also showing sunlight casting down onto a beach. Perhaps your newfound freedom is in itself shackled by location or factors larger than yourself? Perhaps you're forever 'inside' the larger framework that is life, but for that moment, reflecting back on what you've achieved, at least it feels worthwhile... for a time.

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Gaming Editor
Gaming Editor

WhatCulture's Head of Gaming.