onsdag 31 januari 2024

To the Moon (Switch)

Fly me to the Moon!

Another game picked up on the Switch, To the Moon was a indie title that was released back in 2011 and what I've heard before playing one of those games with strong narrative that makes you feel things. Making you more human as is. And I enjoyed it for what it was, especially that it only took something like 4 hours and finished in an afternoon. Fills out the blog as well as diminish the back log.

So the story is that two doctors, Eva and Neil, from the Sigmund Foundation is going to help Johnny Whys with his final wish as he lies dying in his home. They use some sci-fi technology that allows them to enter his memories and trying to travel back in his memories to the earliest possible moment in order to implant the desire to make the wish a reality, at least in his dreams as he is dying. And that wish is to go to the moon.

Problem is, Johnny don't know why he wants to go to the moon, just that he wants to. His wife died two years prior and he lives like a recluse together with his housekeeper and her two children. So while Johnny lies dying you enters his memories and, like in the Christopher Nolan movie Memento, goes backward bit by bit. You see his final moments with his wife and her obsession with origami bunnies, how she has a terminal disease, but she wants them to put their savings in building their house near this lighthouse and restore it. Their friendships, Johnny reading Animorphs and his mother calling him Joey, how she was diagnosed with some kind of autism, when they got married, how they met and dated, until the earliest memories that seems to be blocked out.

Not being able to do that the doctors go ahead and instil a desire to go to the moon... but nothing changes. Whatever they do, the outcome in his dreams is still the same. They abort for the night and the next morning HQ have delved up medical reports that Johnny been given Beta Blockers that have affected his memory, and knowing this they devise a plan to bypass that and delve deeper into Johnny's memories. And what they find is that Johnny had a twin brother named Joey that his mother run over by accident. Which explains the beta blockers. And before that his first meeting with his future wife at a carnival where he gave her a platypus doll he won and she carried with her all through her life and where they promised each other that if they ever got lost, they will meet each other on the moon. And he doesn't remember it.

Now, the doctors piece this together and you get a clash of ideas. Eva decides that to fulfill their contract with their client they have to send him to the moon, regardless the consequences and Neil realises that it can only mean to erase River, the wife, from Johnny's memories so that he will join Nasa and therefore go to the moon. Here is actually an interesting character development I feel between Eva and Neil. The impression I got was that Neil was the immature goofball that didn't care really whatever happened, but here he felt that it was too far to get rid of River so you ended up with Neil at the end (or it could be that I choose Eva in the beginning and their roles reverse if you go at it the other way, but I got other games to play even if it only is 4 hours). Neil can't stop Eva and she brings back Joey in his memories and moves River out of their school. And it leads to Nasa... and River ending up as another astronaut candidate and from their they travel to the moon and then their life still ends up like in the real world, but better... and then Johnny dies.

I saw it coming, but there was something missing. People described it as emotional feels and I got a feeling when I pieced it together (beside thinking that the bunnies was a reference to the lunar bunnies in japanese folklore I heard was a part of the inspiration for lunar bunnies in Final Fantasy IV), but it didn't push me over the edge. I wanna cry damn it. It could be personal stuff that makes me more angry than sad. There is a sequel rather recently released I gather, will probably pick that up one day. There was one thing that triggered me. During the morning Neil acted weird by first telling the housekeeper he had to take a leak and as he bumped into Eva needed to feed his digital pet... why give to different lies and act all suspicious? Doesn't help that in the ending you see Neil in the "real world" get the same red flashes that indicated Johnny was a bout to die, he takes something and he continues and that's the end.

Worth it for a playthrough, great graphics and music. Maybe wished for a fast run button since it took some time walking around that felt a bit unnecessary, but maybe it builds atmosphere?

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