Quick Look: Inside

Ha, the part that made Jason say "I'm good" also sold me. I will give this a shot.

@brad: I'm with others on letting the audience decide when to stop watching. "Stop watching now if you don't want to be spoiled" and a few seconds to let people click stop is more than enough warning.

I'd love to know what this games about before I decide to buy or not, that's why I watched the quick look, but instead I just got a video showing some basic environmental puzzles in a nice looking world, whilst you were alluding to a part where it gets great.

Don't get me wrong, I'm interested in this game, but you showed me nothing I didn't see in limbo, except the puzzle where you had direct control of some background elements. It seemed like a quick look equivalent of a tweet saying "this games great, you should play it!" Show me it's great and why you love it, so I can decide if I'll love it, please.

I hope i don't sound like a dick, I just wanted to contribute my feedback.

Man the atmosphere and art style of this game is just oppressive and paranoid. Don't have an XBone, but I'd love to play this.

After following this website for 5 years, I have come to understand what kind of games Brad likes. If he says this game is really good, then I trust him.

Definitely not sold on the game from the little I watched here (as it just looked like Limbo 2.0), but I guess there are other places I can go to see more of it. I understand Brad's hesitancy, and that same reluctance/restrained enthusiasm might've sold an already-hyped up Dan, but perhaps it didn't do as much for speculative members of the audience that were looking for a hook.

@jsnyder82: multiple folks in this thread have said they found Limbo frustrating or disappointing. Brad himself says Inside is dramatically better than Limbo. Why would I bother?

Yeah, this looks like a fairly good looking game from an art direction, but man the part in the quick look seems to be pretty boring from a gameplay perspective - walk right, solve simple puzzle, repeat.

Of course, this was pretty much how I ended up looking at Limbo too, so it isn't exactly a surprise, just a bit of a disappointment considering the wildly positive response I've seen from critics so far... but then again, critics really loved Limbo as well.

That's not a bad thing, necessarily.

@highpriest: It seems a trend that critics tend to really like games that they can finish in a few brief sittings so they can move on to the next game on their pile. If you want a good critic score make a short game that drips style or novelty. And you would do well to weigh the reviews with this in mind.

@memu: I see what you are saying, but this is also a site that gave Stardew Valley and MGS5 five stars. There's something to say for a game that knows not to overstay its welcome. Not every game has mechanics robust enough for a massively long experience. I'd even say that a lot of games that actually attempt that don't have mechanics that carry it, but that's up to opinion.

The point is that it's surfaced pretty clearly in the quick look that it's a short game, and thus it should be judged on those merits. Saying stuff like what you said about reviewers just wanting to play through all their work so they can get on with the next thing seems needlessly inflammatory honestly.

Lot of people expecting way too much from the puzzles in this game. Not what it's about, man.

Sure. Don't bother having your own opinion on anything. Just complain, I guess. Whatever works for you.

You're right. Obviously I should play every game ever made, regardless of my interest level, or the game's apparent quality. Otherwise I am clearly just parroting the opinions of people who get paid for a living to give their professional opinions on games for a possibly uninformed audience.

Thank you for showing me the error of my ways.

You don't have to play every game ever made. But I'm just not sure why you're complaining about them mentioning Limbo in the Quick Look. If you want to know where they're coming from, then play the game (or, here's a thought, watch a Youtube video of somebody playing Limbo). This game is stylistically much like the developer's previous game, so of course they're going to talk about that. If you want a frame of reference, sometimes it's on you to figure out what it is. Brad is under no obligation to explain every little thing to you.

But the point I've been trying to make since the get-go is that there are hundreds of people who are going to watch this video who haven't played Limbo. At a minimum! I'm not saying they're wrong to spend time talking about Inside's predecessor, I'm saying in a setting where you know not every viewer who watches the video will have played the game you keep talking about, maybe don't spend the whole video talking about that game! You can't expect every person on a site that reaches thousands to pay a 3.5 hour entry fee to watch a 15 minute video.

One last thing; Quick Looks are often a useful tool to discover whether a game interests you. If someone goes into it blind to see if a game interests them, only to be told "it's like this other game you've never played", that's not a useful comparison.

@brad: That sounds like a great feature, it's actually something I'd like to see more of on the site, like when you and Jeff sat down with Jonathan Blow to play and discuss The Witness.

Giant Bomb Insider? Deep Inside? We Go Inside Inside?

If I don't know what something is, I educate myself on it. If I didn't know what Limbo was, I'd at the very least watch a Youtube video of it for, like, five minutes.

I don't know, man. I guess I just don't get what the problem is.

But it wasn't just them talking about Limbo. They also actually played the game. How is that not useful? How somebody wouldn't be able to tell if Inside interested them based on this Quick Look is beyond me.

Okay? It's pretty. It has some basic puzzles. And? Is it fun? Limbo only started to get fun for me in late game when the puzzles were decently challenging. If all there is is visuals and atmosphere I'm not interested.

"It's so good!" without showing why is not useful information to me.

The continued education of Dan Ryckert is amazing

This looks real good but I don't know if I'm willing to commit to $20 for a 4-5 hour game that I'll play through maybe at most twice.

This Quick Look is way too quick to be informative. It mostly consists of Brad holding right on the stick while yelling at us to stop watching and play the game. He couldn't fathom anyone who thought of Limbo as less than a masterpiece, such as myself.

Limbo had some cool setpieces at the front, and a lot of corny gravity-flipping crate-stacking filler at the back. Nice art design, but I'm not insta-sold on more of the Limbo template. I need to be shown where Inside significantly exceeds that in gameplay and not just production value, "spoilers" be damned.

Limbo fans can decide when to turn off the QL, but some of us need to be shown more; ideally mid-game. A large part of Giant Bomb's appeal to me is their cut-the-marketing, show-the-game approach to coverage. This QL, long on hype and short on clarity, plays more like the timid "preview" coverage of yore.

A Quick Look only sixteen minutes long? What is this, 2009?

But that means, if a baby chicken is a chick, then a baby duck would be a du.

Done.

I wasn't as enamored with Limbo as everyone else seemed to be, but I have to admit this looks way better and more interesting.

Also, Jesus Christ, Dan! Throw the baby ducks in the wood chipper?

Kind of is for me, unfortunately. Tried several times, but no dice. Never clicked.

This looks like it would make a great short film, but I've got no desire to play this. I tried Limbo's demo a few years back expecting to like it only to wind up unimpressed.

Don't know what to make of this. I've been tricked by Brad's hyping up before. Guess I'll give it a shot.

Breaking Brad Inside

I've played Limbo fairly recently (I think it's a great game with excellent atmosphere), and this game just looks to be more of the same. For me, that's enough, but I do wish the quick look had shown off a little more of what makes this different than Limbo. Show, don't tell, and all that.

I'm just gonna go ahead and say it: While Limbo was good, it's also highly overrated.

This also looks good, but honestly, Mr. Brad "Superlatives" Shoemaker tends to fall in love with weird indie games a little too easily, so I don't know if I'll get it right away.

Also I think it's a great move, if they actually do a follow-up video to this and do more in the future for similar cases. That way the can do short spoiler-free QLs for people that are already pretty much sure they'll buy something and longer, more in-depth videos for people who are still undecided. (Like me.)

This game is 100% about the journey through it. I'm around halfway through it now, took a break to do some other stuff and watch this video, and now right back to it.

I really want to have Brad play through the rest of it on video, to hear them talk about it. And hopefully turn some people onto it, it isn't that expensive people!

EDIT: Also it isn't all running to the right with some light puzzles so far, there has been a pretty different controlling "thing" for a decent amount of time.

Brad is famous for his sometimes untrustworthy hyperbole, so I'm a bit skeptical. I'm curious to see what happens in the story, though; I'll probably just watch a YT playthrough of it.

Why do you feel the need to delay this type of feature, though? I think it's a great idea too, but there's no need to assume your users don't know what they want and that they "need" a delay in spoiler-ish content because they can't decide for themselves (there was actually a study recently that showed people tend to actually enjoy things more that are spoiled for them ahead of time in many cases, oddly enough). Frankly, in this case, people will have beaten it the day it comes out anyway, or even before in some cases.

You might as well mark it as a spoilercast and release it ASAP. Otherwise, people WILL go to YouTube for that type of content when they can't get it here.

Didn't care for Limbo so i watched the ending to this on Youtube and was just like yeah ok. I'll be more interested in seeing Dan and Jeff's impressions of the game since they seemed to feel more like i did about Limbo on the bombcast.

I think this is the kid in Limbo before he died.

I really don't get these "we shouldn't play this" videos.

If you want to show a game, show it. If not, dont.

if people dont want spoilers they wont watch it, or they will make a decision and stop in the middle.

I really don't get it.

In this specific instance, Brad was the only one in GB that had access to play the game before the recording of the video. I think that's doable for games where more than 1 person gets pre-release, but for this that's not feasible. I don't really want a Spoilery QL solo, either.

"What is industrial farming?"

Now, excuse me if I sound like some kind of militant vegan here, but it's still alarming how little understanding most people have about how their food is produced. People might as well be eating out of a Star Trek replicator for how disconnected they are from the process.

Anyway, game looks awesome and I am super excited. Excited about the music as well. Martin Stig Andersen is a master.

In keeping with the 'bomb' theme, how about "Blowout" or "Blown Up"?

Man, I want to play this so much, wish it was coming to PS4 :(

@nmckee503: It will end up on console sooner or later.

Looks certainly like Limbo - interesting art style/atmosphere and gameplay that I can only describe as tedious. I guess it's more than the sum of its parts?

As many others have already commented, i think too this is a great idea.

Defined spoiler-free and full-on-spoilers different features for games is great so people can decide if they care or not in a case by case fashion and at the same time the temptation to "pollute" with spoilers other things on the site is quelled

So firstly having just finished it, I am now totally glad I played through this game; and that I didn't give in and turn to potential spoilers the one time I got briefly stuck.

@brad said:

In relation to this - for my part I totally turned off the moment in the QL when the guys said "Stop here if you've seen enough", and it seems like a reasonable thing to suggest someone make their own mind up whether to continue watching something of their own volition. I've seen @brad get flak for both saying too much and too little (both here and on the Bombcast), and I just wanted to say I think it was handled perfectly fine.

Loving the idea of a seperate spoilercast though - I too am now 100% ready for some discussion between people who have finished the game.

Mulled on Inside 'Inside', but ultimately given everyone seems desperate to discuss it on completion, I think it should probably be Getting 'Inside' Out.

I love whenever Brad oscillates between "I've got a secret that you don't know, but hoooo boy ONCE YOU FIND OUT!", and "I know I'm being told to stop spoiling sh** but I am unable to control myself from spilling the secret."