So much of the game deals with themes of control. While the details of what has happened to this world are shady, something is clearly amiss. Many people appear to be literal drones incapable of thought. You run by a city of workers following in step as they make their way to a nearby facility. The people that are not are chasing you, the player, in an effort to detain and subdue you. Some puzzles even require you to use a mind-control device to make the drones do your bidding. Late stages of the game also see what appears to be a bunch of scientists in a research lab as they examine the results of their work. In story, it deals heavily with concepts of control, which are paralleled by virtue of being a video game in which the player controls a character.
At the same time, it's so cryptic that I kind of feel like it has to be about something else entirely. Some have argued it is a commentary about the state of games, and how they are trying too hard to be cinematic, providing all players with identical experiences. This could be seen in the section wherein the boy has to blend in by waking and stopping in perfect stride, and jump when the other people jump, and spin when the other people spin. Some gamers argue that a growing problem in the industry is the popularity of cinematic, linear games. Your experience with Uncharted 4 is not ultimately going to be that different from mine, for example, whereas we could have very different experiences playing Skyrim. It is a fair criticism to some extent (I disagree with it completely, but I understand where that comes from). However, I'm unconvinced that is what the game is trying to do given that Inside and Limbo are ultimately linear games with universal experiences themselves. Seems strange that they might be criticizing themselves.
Then I feel the need to dig deeper, and I can't help but wonder if the whole thing is ultimately just about human conception and birth (and then I think I'm a crazy person!). I know, I know. I'm almost certainly reading way too much into it, and I'm sure I'm the only weirdo on Earth who finished the game thinking this, but hear me out.
It didn't really hit me until late in the game, in particular near the very end when you wind up submerged in a tank with something looking kind of like an embryo and you end up getting pulled inside it. Then, you are this strange, amorphous fetus-looking monster rampaging through the research lab where everyone is watching. This happens, of course, after you break the glass on the tank, flooding the facility (water breaking). You then make your way through the still linear pathways, at some point getting covered in blood, before finally escaping the dark world you were involved with the whole time and resting in the one section of sunlight, just breathing. (I read this as a sort of "escaping the darkness of the womb into the light of the outside world.")
Of course, once that idea popped in there, I couldn't help but think back to the beginning of the game. In the early stages, advancing requires more speed than problem solving. You have to outrun men with flashlights and dogs just to get into the relative safety of the farm area. Was it a visual parallel to the journey of sperm as the fastest can get through to the relative safety of the cervix? Slow sperm die quickly in the vagina There is other imagery as well. For example, to get into the final facility (where the "egg" is), the boy has to get through an entrance that does not stay open for long. Then, to avoid being shot back out from fans, you have to stick to the walls of the narrow vent (like sperm have to stick to the Fallopian tube wall).
I also wondered if everyone rushing to the tank (where the "egg" was) was actually indicative of it being time for birth. All the scientists hurried to watch what was happening, perhaps representing what happens socially when a woman goes into labor. Doctors and nurses attend to the women; families halt what they're doing to go to the hospital; et cetera. And, I can't help but feel as though the title of the game - Inside - is ultimately a subtle hint here. Inside? Inside what? Is it really just meant to mean that you infiltrate these facilities? A fair amount of the game isn't even actually inside them. There is the forest, farm, and city, for example, before eventually you submerge (which, the sudden shift in direction at that moment could be representative of the sperm having to pick a direction). Does the title actually refer to the idea that all this is just representation of what happens inside a woman's body when procreating?
Naturally, this would not be a perfect interpretation. There are plenty of gaps there, and I'm sure everyone is more than capable of tearing this take apart. But for whatever reason, that was what I strangely think the game is actually about in a super meta-narrative sense.
I am also almost certainly crazy, and why this might be on my brain otherwise is beyond me at the moment.
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