To the Moon: A Small Film in Big Pixels

To the Moon is a pixel-art adventure game available on Steam about memory, desire, trauma, and loss.  It's a fascinating science fiction story about two doctors who travel through a dying man's memories to grant him the only wish he can't understand but desperately wants.  I can recommend this game based on characterization and plot alone.  It's the gameplay where it falls down entirely.

I've heard that there are quite a few people in the game industry who really wish they were in the film industry.  It's the kind of thing that makes me think about David Cage and his games like Heavy Rain or Beyond: Two Souls.  Cage did a special showing of the latter at the Tribeca Film Festival, which is the kind of thing that really pisses me off to hear about.  I get that he thinks interactive storytelling is important, but this strikes me as saying "Look, we can be as good as movies!" which is something games don't need to aspire to at all.

Cage's film-like approach to game design was probably best summed up in a Podcast called Watch Out For Fireballs (Episode on Indigo Prophecy).  The hosts talk about how the game tries to be film, but falls down due to not fully being either.  You can't use transitional cuts and montage-style understanding the same way in a game, especially when you're actively controlling the flow of the narrative.  For instance, a film version of Heavy Rain might open with Ethan waking up, a shot of him showering, a shot of him working at his desk, and a shot of his kids coming home.  That's effective montage.  You see small parts of his daily routine, and get context for what he does and who he is quickly.  In the game, you are playing through every part of his day.  You're making every brushstroke on his teeth, you're tracing every line on his architectural plans, you're getting the kid's birthday ready one step at a time.

To the Moon doesn't concern itself with immersing you in the minutia.  It's a game that understands its story and characters well enough to blend them together.  But it's also a game that doesn't concern itself with being a game.  The main verbs available to you are "Move" and "Interact" and aside from a few puzzles here and there, that's all you do.  It does sometimes feel like arbitrary sessions of nothing while searching for the magic button that advances the plot, but it bothers me less than in a game like Heavy Rain.

To the Moon doesn't bother me because it never gets in my face enough, and seems to reveal that minimized gameplay is probably much more conducive to a film-like style than Heavy Rain's minutia.

I can't help but think what this film would have been like, and I think the answer is "expensive."  It's the kind of story that wouldn't translate well as student film, but maybe that's all it has the budget for.  If the story was most efficiently told as a game, then that's a great sign to me.  Even if it's not pushing the limits and understanding of interaction, it shows that games are a place where all kinds of storytellers can achieve what they need.  And if it came down to making To the Moon as a fairly un-interactive game or not at all, I'm glad it was made.

Next on 100 Games: The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings.

Edit:  Whether or not anyone ever comes back here to read these, I want to  clarify this article a little.  I'm not a fan of when games and game creators seem to be trying to "live up" to film, and develop games using the language of film over that of games.  Heavy Rain seems to prefer the idea of being a movie.  To the Moon is the kind of story that I would expect this approach to be taken with.  I could see the creators trying desperately to figure out how to film it and reluctantly settling for games.  But that's clearly not what's happened.  There's a lot of love in those pixels.  I'm glad the story was told, and I'm glad it was told in a game.