T w e n t y S i d e d

Ok, I guess I answered the big question I posed previously. I want to talk about the story and compare it to the story of Lifeless Planet, but I should let you know what I found out after I finished the game. While Lifeless Moon was released a decade after Lifeless Planet, and by a different studio, it was written by the same creator. A short FAQ on the game’s website (that I could have looked at before I played the game, to be fair) made it clear that the story of Lifeless Moon is essentially the original idea for Lifeless Planet. It was that first game that was modified in the creation process. Unfortunately, *in my opinion*; Lifeless Planet is much better for those changes, and is a better game overall. I’m not going to claim Lifeless Planet is unique; everything is derivative in some way. The point at which a product differs enough from its collective inputs to make it sufficiently “new” is obviously a point of contention more often than not. So, Lifeless Moon is *not* a sequel *or* a prequel…it just takes some of the same elements of Lifeless Planet and uses them for something different. If you *want* the two games to be related, space is left for that, even if the nature of “portals” is different.

Lifeless Moon is not only shorter and easier, showing much closer adhesion to the “walking simulator” idea than Lifeless Planet; but the story is quite frankly something we see a lot in especially action movies that are trying to have a story underneath the action. Lifeless Planet is pretty good sci-fi; Lifeless Moon is a bare-bones melodrama used to flesh out a very simple game mechanic. It’s also poorly constructed (the story, that is, not the game) leaving one entire subplot effectively abandoned (not technically, but effectively) and basic questions with unclear answers.

TO BE CLEAR: this is a perfectly adequate walking simulator that only takes a few hours to experience. Price is subjective, but I would describe Lifeless Planet as giving you more than you pay for at its normal price of $9.99; while Lifeless Moon is worth half that at most. There just isn’t the same quality *or abundance* of content. But just to complete the circle…yes, Lifeless Moon has fantastic visuals. Very dramatic environments.

I wrote last week about the entire first chapter of Lifeless Moon. X-15 pilot died on a pre-spaceflight mission; he blames you (or more likely, you still carry guilt over the accident for reasons that haven’t been explained other than you assigned the pilot to the mission); now you’re an Apollo-era astronaut exploring the (Earth’s) moon and your partner-astronaut and you encounter some kind of anomaly that sends you both through time to a moon that has a partial town on it. You and your partner don’t completely occupy the same time-space; they appear visually or just in sound in your helmet every now and then. You discover an organization connected to the space program was researching *teleportation* using a device very reminiscent of the “portals” from the first game, except instead of being giant stone circles these are more like electromagnets. An alteration to the experiment based on “Soviet research” causes the lab and part of the town above to be instantly teleported to (presumably Earth’s) moon, assuming you moved through time or to a mostly identical timeline. The date’s given in the lab are 1971 and 1972, which would be in-line with Apollo missions. The astronaut mentions a town in a desert that “exploded” leaving only a crater not long ago; the astronaut presumes this is the outcome of that event. All the people in the town died; all the scientists in the lab lived because the teleportation experiment occurred in a vacuum chamber and they were wearing environmental suits. Allegedly, that second part is never stated. While the scientists are cleaning up the town and trying to find a way to power everything (because they’re not on the power grid anymore, being on the moon) they discover an alien device in a chamber underground that is just like the portals, devices, and “green energy” from the first game. The scientists are able to tap into that energy to power up the lab and the town. Sometime after contacting the green energy the members of the scientific team start realizing they can “create” things with the green energy (as opposed to it being an energy-source/lifeform as in the first game.) It’s just things like visions, mostly; but this triggers one member of the team, later called “The Technician” to increasingly become angry and unhinged. They start acting aggressively toward the other scientists to the point of physically assaulting people and breaking equipment. The lead scientist, “The Physicist,” either learns or postulates that the energy field below can be entered bodily and will transfer you to another location. This is proposed as the escape plan for the other scientists to get away from The Technician.

Got all that? Good, although honestly only the second part is important. To the story. (yes, there’s one caveat. I’ll get there.) You are teleported to the inside of another cave that looks just like the cave you were in, although you *are* on one of the round “pads” from the first game. You may still be on the Earth’s moon, you may not. You don’t really know. The remainder of the cave exists to teach us the primary mechanic of the green energy and the portals: no, it’s not teleportation! Sure, you just used it for that, but it’s not what they’re for! You use them to *create* things! See, this cave dead-ends, but high above you, you can see an exit to a blue sky. The (Earth’s) moon doesn’t (shouldn’t) have a blue sky, so now you know you’re (probably) “somewhere else,” wherever that might be. But if you turn around, you see there’s a small greenish-rock-portal and one of the greenish-rock energy sources from the first game. And a photo of a cabin along with a note from a scientist about her memories of her lakeside cabin back on Earth. She has accidentally manifested temporarily things from those memories. If you pick up the energy source rock, there isn’t a place to put it to provide energy to some portal or other device, like there was in the first game. Instead, if you walk near the portal, the energy rock will get held in the middle of the portal activating an energy field of some kind. There *is* a pedestal nearby with four buttons, but they don’t seem to do anything. (Initially I thought that’s where the rock was supposed to go, but that failed.) It turns out the proper action is to place the photo of the Lakeside Cabin *ON THE PEDESTAL*, which then pops up and faces the portal. You use the buttons to “focus” the energy (that is now being projected) from the pedestal on the energy rock in the middle of the portal.

Know what that does? Makes stairs appear.

The game explains in a bit that the “energy/lifeform” seems to read your mind and create what you intend, whether you know what you meant or not. Sure. It’s not as tight as I like my writing, but the bottom line is this covers for the fact that this single procedure can actually cause different results. And I don’t mean “you never know what you’re gonna get from the box of chocolates.” I mean sometimes this creates a portal to teleport you, sometimes this creates what’s in the photo, sometimes you create a laser beam, and sometimes you create something that only gets you “near” or “around” the thing in the photo. Now…from the point-of-view of a walking simulator where you’re just experiencing the story as-told, this is actually fine. You can argue it’s sloppier than it needs to be, but you’re just going through the story….you are the passive element, really. Anything can happen and you’re just hear to see it. My consternation is because the first game was much more interactive and the story was tighter, yet Lifeless Moon is written as if the astronaut is meant to be an important part of the story. This just doesn’t jive to me.

Regardless, this is the fundamental mechanic of the game: creating things with the portals. This is rewarding a couple of times, but confusing more often. Not in the “I don’t get it” sense; more in the “you mean that’s it?” sense.

This chapter is called “The Biologist” because after exiting the cave, you encounter a small world that The Biologist has created with her mind.

This chapter sets the pattern for the next several. The scientists escaped Earth’s moon through the energy field device they found, but so did The Technician. They all discovered how to create whatever they wanted *with their minds*, and this is the world The Biologist was creating. However, The Technician started fighting back, creating walls that they consistently shrunk until The Biologist was trapped in this small area. You, the astronaut, solve some puzzles and figure out how to break through the wall. This allows you to discover the next stage of The Biologist’s experiment, which was to focus the green energy across a huge valley into a portal and attempt to create something new across the whole area. You take the necessary steps to start this, but a literal rock giant suddenly stands up and destroys the portal on the other side of the valley. The giant then turns and looks at you. Just as with the dead pilot from the first chapter, this is indeed quite creepy. The music starts up and you get a note (somehow) to return to the cabin to exit the area through a portal that wasn’t there before. You and The Biologist (in incorporeal form) escape the area. Oh, and while that giant portal on the mountain you can see is mentioned, and may even been part of The Biologist’s experiment, it’s never brought up again and plays no part in the rest of the story.

The next area is The Physicist’s memory area. You free The Physicist from an absurdly simple maze where they have been trapped in energy form, learn what they have to tell through visiting their version of the Lakeside Cabin (it is implied The Biologist was hiding in energy form but not stuck, but for some reason *were* trapped in their area, for reasons that are not explored), then exit through a portal before The Technician can find anyone. We do the same thing in The Engineer’s area, where we are told The Engineer has figured out how to “cure” The Technician by splitting the portal ring into two halves. As simplistically-derivitive as this idea is, it actually provides a step that explains something. We see The Engineer’s small-scale experiment which using a mini-version of the portal we saw at the beginning of the game (except it’s split in two). We later see the “greenish-rock” version of the portal split-in-two, and know these people have learned to create these things with their mind when given full access to the green energy. Which actually (conceivably) closes the loop between the original created portal of metal and wires and the greenish-rock portals: they were all created with mental imagery. Although there’s another monkey wrench later; we’ll get there. The Engineer says that he, along with the others, can activate the device to cure The Technician, but The Technician shows up and thwarts the plan soon after. We escape through another portal. The final scientist is The Safety Officer, who we eventually discover was killed trying to stop The Technician from destroying his created forest sanctuary. And this is the point where we suddenly discover WE’RE ACTUALLY ON ANOTHER PLANET’S MOON!

I wish it felt more important than that. It would be nice if it had meaning, but really it’s only like that because that’s what the story wants. It doesn’t even *need* this plot point; you could have had the final chapter here, right now. The Technician, right now, has managed to gather enough energy to cross from this moon to the planet in the distance. Somehow. And this was never brought up before now as a thing that might happen. You are also, for some reason, now synced with your fellow astronaut finally, and the two of you get pulled off the foreign moon toward the new planet. As crashing through the atmosphere at thousands of miles an hour would *probably* be fatal, you presume this is the end until two of the scientists in energy form wrap around you and your partner and protect you until you softly land. In the distance is a massive split portal

and it’s up to you and your buddy to activate it. Because while the scientists in energy form have been shown to be able to create anything in their mind and move **** around at will, they can’t push the button, Gordon. Unfortunately The Technician made the trip, too; and kills your fellow astronaut with red energy tendrils as soon as he touches the energy rock that will power the portal (you have to carry the energy rock to the portal). But he doesn’t kill you, for some reason; while you stand there staring at your dead friend uncomprehendingly. I don’t know, I haven’t seen what my friend has done…maybe he’s playing the hard version of the game so The Technician just thinks I’m some kind of tag-along doofus. I run to the portal and the energy rock is sucked up to the middle. A pedestal just like all the others appears as The Technician tries to destroy/remove/do something unimaginable to the energy rock. You have to pick a photo to have the energy focus on, just as I did when I created the stairs so long (a few hours) ago.

And the only picture that works is that photo of the X-15 that was the first photograph we found in the game.

I could play the The Price is Right “oops, you failed the game” jingle right now, but I do actually understand what the story is trying to do, here. See, as some of the other early notes pointed out, people had a habit of manifesting things they felt guilty about. And guilt was an (mostly unimportant but interesting red herring) aspect in the first game. You feel guilty about the pilot that died years ago in an X-15. At least, we assume that’s what’s going on…you may not feel guilty about it. We haven’t really explored that past the first few minutes of Lifeless Moon. So by putting the photo on the pedestal, you are sympathizing with The Technician’s pain. Or showing how you’re willing to let go of that guilt. Whichever. And we are shown, not well, but well enough, in the story what is wrong with The Technician. One of the scientists got hold of one of The Technician’s photos and instead of manifesting something innocuous or interesting, she got an apparently important memory of The Technician’s:

WARNING: this is dark.
If you don’t want to read
this section, let your eyes
jump down to the next
WARNING in caps.

                         His father assaulting his child for being gay. Missing in his assault. And killing the child’s cat instead.

WARNING OVER.
I recommend scrolling down
while focusing on this text
to avoid seeing the nasty
stuff.

The energy form of ALL FOUR other scientists begin circling around The Technician. With your focus of guilt (for some reason this works) The Technician is freed of his burdensome memories, the portal is “activated” and all five scientists abandon their current existence and travel off into space. They literally tell you this as you cross over the hill that was cleared by the blast of the portal opening.

They do tell us about the remains of the city we discover surrounding the portal, too. The beings who built it, and the portals, evolved to energy form long, long ago. They created the portal teleportation system and spread it around the galaxy (I think someone mentioned that second part, it may have only been implied.) So, there’s how this story could tie in to the story in Lifeless Planet. Just don’t think about it too much as there are way too many questions that would have to be answered. Similarly, you can step through the portal and be returned to Earth (both you and your dead crewmate, who will be brought back to life. Or maybe he never died? Maybe he’s just chilling at the moment? I didn’t go back and check, to be honest) and the final movie will show you and your partner being seen after a short period of silence walking toward a camera on the moon. And then what? Did you tell NASA (it’s not NASA, it’s I.S.S.A., so really this is all alternative history and it’s moot) about the foreign moon and planet, and the government experiments on teleportation? Sounds like something the X-Files could have used as a continuing subplot.

I want to be clear: I have told the story of the game in a way that is more interesting to me. It doesn’t quite play out this way in a game. I didn’t change any facts, I think I just told it a bit better. In my opinion, of course. This version works better for me; others may feel differently and that’s fine. And *it’s not a bad story*…it just isn’t anywhere close to the sci-fi origins of the first game. So, yes; the fact that it’s not really sci-fi, that is the creators’ choice and my expectation, and we’re both free to think whatever we wish. BUT…I do think this version of the story would have benefited from more time to tell and more interaction. As is, it doesn’t come off in the screen grabs just HOW BIG some of these areas are. With almost nothing to do in them. Visually impressive, sure. No doubt about that. But you don’t *do* anything. It’s very pretty to look at, for a few minutes, but there is no reward for exploration, either. Once you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it. There is room for SO MUCH more in this game, but we kind of rush straight through to the end.

Was this the product of a small budget? A lack of imagination? The creator feeling obliged to make a sequel to a popular game but never really having it fully developed? That seems most likely. I mean, as I said, Lifeless Moon is based on the original (rejected or abandoned) story for the game that became Lifeless Planet. Maybe that was because they never figured out how to make *more* of the idea than what we eventually got. That’s where my money is.

So…yeah. If Lifeless Moon had come out first, it probably would have been a moderately successful, if a bit short, walking simulator game with a story that featured some interesting elements. Lifeless Planet could then (assuming nothing else changed, which is impossible) come out as an *expansion* of the idea, rather than a contraction or alternate idea. That probably would have worked better.

Paige Francis He/him