Justifications: To the Moon
Justifications: Taking things people haven’t heard of or have a bad reputation, and showing that they are actually great!
To The Moon
Summary: A nontraditional RPG made in 2011 by Kan “Reives” Gao, and his small studio Freebird Games. The music was also helped to be written and sung by Laura Shigihara. You play as two scientists interchangeably throughout the game, the quirky Dr. Neil Watts, and the more serious Dr. Eva Rosalene. Their job, which is what you try to complete throughout the game, is to make elderly people’s wishes come true in their dying breaths by rewriting their memories through a computer simulation. The game’s patient is named Johnny Wyles. His wish was to go to the moon, hence the name, but the one problem is that he isn’t sure why he wants to. You must go through the simulation of his memories, in large part involving his wife, River Wyles, to get back into his earliest memories, and insert the motivation to complete his wish there, so he will have gone to the moon in his mind.
My Justification: The first thing that people will write off games such as To the Moon for is their graphics. Yes, it is a pixelated game, but the graphics and sprites are done beautifully; it has a purpose for being pixelated, and its own unique style of pixelation. Also, the soundtrack is astounding to this game. It is mostly piano pieces, with some strings thrown in, and other instruments at different points. Each song is beautifully written, and the songs even connect to each other with similar melodies to highlight the similar themes and objectives of each area. The music being great is perfect to compliment the beautiful story. Through the main objective of going through time to grant Johnny his wish, you, as the player, see all of his memories, some good, some bad, but nearly all surrounding himself and River. It shows how they stuck together through everything, the troubles of being in a relationship in which one partner has trouble expressing themself in the same way, and the great times they had sticking it through. To top it all off, the dramatic, emotional moments are broken up with witty dialogue from the doctors watching it all happen, giving them a whole lot of personality as people who do this for a living.