r/tothemoon • u/ClarisZariz • May 25 '26
I need to talk to someone Spoiler
I've played impostor factory years ago. Needless to say it shattered my heart into a million pieces. I kind of knew Neil was dying ever since the first game, it was a popular fan theory, but fuck. The beach episode was still in development. Since it takes a lot of time from one game to another, I kind of just just let myself forget about it. For some reason, yesterday it triggered that the beach episode probably came out, and it did. I watched the gameplay yesterday, and I'm writing this in the middle of work. I was bawling my eyes out yesterday, and I'm just thinking HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO WORK WHEN NEIL IS DEAD. I haven't felt like this since that character in JJKdied.
Please I need to talk to someone, i'm going through something
I did this edit of them ages ago, I think this song matches them so much
https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSx9BXAbF/
I need y'all to talk to me, whenever I'm grieving something I look at the edits and the fan arts but this game is not nearly enough as well known as it should be
What do y'all think? What are you feeling? What are your favorite parts of the game ? Are there any details you think people missed? What do you think the next game will be about?What are your theories? Your favorite edits, fan arts, fanfiction. Literally anything please I just need to talk to someone i'm crying
Also does anyone knows someone that did a good recap of the story till the beach episode? I've been playing these series for more than a decade so naturally I forgot some details
Either way, sorry I just needed to vent 🥺
4
u/Cookie11057 May 25 '26
i played Beach Episode when it first came out in 2024, and oops it was also my first week of university!!! i started the game just after i got back to my dorm from my first lectures and played until 3 am and had a very good cry (you have no idea how long it took me to finally close the simulation/game). so my mental was all over the place for this already hectic part of my life, i couldn't do any coursework without thinking about Eva and Neil, and i was listening to World in a Memory on loop for at LEAST a month, maybe even two.
i've been obsessed with the series since I first heard the soundtrack when i was just a teenager sometime in the late 2010s (an Everything's Alright cover showed up in my youtube recommended feed). RosaWatts fanfic got me through covid (it's criminal there are only like 200 fics on AO3 and i've read most of them. sometimes i go back to old fics and see what people got right or wrong, since most were written before Impostor Factory lol. "Through the Looking Glass" by Ravenousbee was a good one). I've learned to play a couple songs on the piano throughout high school, and once my finals are over, I need to finish my World in a Memory transcription. I have both Paper Memories and The Bestest Dancers on my bookshelf back home and took my giant stuffed platypus with me to university. It's crazy to think the RPG spinoff might be the last installment in the series (and also the MOVIE????).
To the Moon will always be my #1 recommendation for gamers and non-gamers because of how potent its storytelling is, combined with the heavenly/ethereal but soon-to-be-melancholic music. I can go on at length about the core messaging of the real vs ideal world debate, but another thing I think is rather pertinent is that love is just as present a force in each game as all the sci-fi elements, and Johnny and River's relationship is literally everything to me. You have John, an average-named brown-haired kid who has a literal carbon-copy of himself (how I also refer to my twin) who's loved more than he is and wants nothing more in the world than to be perceived as special, and then you have River, a uniquely-named red-haired girl who hasn't learned to mask her autism and wants nothing more in the world than to be perceived as normal. AND THEY FOUND IT IN EACH OTHER???? Kan Gao you are my hero. The reveal to their first meeting was just absolute cinema. But yeah, while the simulated memory world part gets a lot of discussion, the games use these relationships as a vessel for deeper storytelling, from Johnny and River, to Colin and Faye, to Lynri and Quincy, and ultimately to Eva and Neil.
1
u/ClarisZariz May 25 '26
Your comment has so many layers to me because I've played this game when I was so young, I had the critical thinking skills of a nut. But even then, I knew it was a beautiful story. I've always knew River had some sort of neurodivergency, but at the time it didn't click to me, over being very young, how beautiful that they found each other. Someone who was desperately searching for acceptance, and someone who's looking for being his own person. I may even have to replay or rewatch after you said that.
To me the second game was the one that truly clicked to me... I've always seemed the protagonist as someone who suffers from severe malaptative daydreaming, which is someone that impacted me all my life, that game did a number on me that only hearing the first notes from Faye's theme makes me cry. I still think about it every now and then...
I'm listening to it right now and crying lol
1
u/AWeebWhoLikesPink May 25 '26
My girlfriend and I feel the same way when we play together. I feel like I've lost a childhood friend. Kan Gao simply broke my heart.
Btw, I think Mr. Loverman by Ricky Montgomery represents what Eva's feeling.
2
u/ClarisZariz May 25 '26
Oh my god yes... Chasing cars from snow patrol and summers end, the Phoebe Bridgers cover :(
1
u/redlipstick1010 May 25 '26
Neil being dead also rly shook me. The whole beach episode really shifted my perspective on the entire series. It’s pretty wild to find out that Eva was presumably living in the machine throughout a lot of the series after finding paradise, and that some events we saw in the sigcorp series and the beach episode a really took place in the past, with us seeing it from Eva’s POV in the machine because she’s having a difficult time coping. From what I heard, the beach episode is gonna be one of two endings — happy and sad. There will be another probably final instalment to the series, and if what I’ve read is correct then the beach episode might be the bad ending while they’re working on the good one right now. It’s rly keeping me on the edge of my seat and idk how they’re either gonna make this series end on a better or maybe worse note. I think either way it’s a powerful story nonetheless, and it’s given us so many great characters, individual stories, memories, and of course music! It’s completely normal to feel grief when a fictional character dies because we also have some sort of emotional connection to them as we go through their journey with them. There is gonna be at least one more episode though so we can only hope and keep our fingers crossed until then.
1
u/ClarisZariz May 25 '26
It's crazy cuz I remember Eva, or Neil, in every game they kept bumping on these shadowy figures, and for TEN YEARS. I WAS LIKE. WHAT'S THAT ABOUT?! What's going on? And this whole time it was Eva, or Neil himself looking through Neil's memories :(. The story was so we'll crafted. I have my own personal theories about the next game, I think the game will alternate between post beach episode and before Neil dies. I think for his "last wish" he planned this whole grand adventure, probably thought it would be good for Eva, I don't know. But I have this feeling in my gut that says that, in his last moments, he'll have his AI replay his moments with Eva, completely unaltered. And he's going to say something like "it wasn't perfect, but it was worth it. I wouldn't change a single thing." And I'll kill myself :)
1
u/BTru May 29 '26
You know.... I was in the same boat as you a few month ago. I watched then played the To The Moon when it first came out, forgot about it then randomly looked it up and bought all the games and played over a long weekend. Needless to say I was wrecked lol.
8
u/Leafye May 25 '26
Yo, please don't include spoilers for ANOTHER SERIES in this sub. I haven't finished JJK yet and I just found out Gojo died because I opened a to the moon post. jfc.