Can we all agree that space is both pretty amazing and terrifying? I’ve largely felt both awe and terror while the crew of the Artemis II, the latest manned space mission, has traveled the farthest any person has ever gone from Earth and broadcast images of our neighboring celestial body and the space beyond. It’s got me thinking about a lot of things, like how small and insignificant we are in the grand scheme of the universe–let alone this solar system–as well as how little it feels like we know about the Moon despite its relative proximity! That last point really sticks out to me, because despite the Moon’s many mysteries, knowing little about it hasn’t stopped the world of games from imagining some pretty awesome, weird, and even terrifying visions of what it may contain.
Games are no stranger to the Moon. BJ Blazkowicz has shot Nazis up there. Chell has opened a portal on its surface–one that sucked the villainous Wheatley into the vacuum of space at Portal 2’s conclusion and nearly took her with him. Later this month, players will be navigating an abandoned Moon base and simultaneously solving puzzles and shooting robots as Hugh and Diana in Pragmata. Plus, who can forget their first brush with gaming’s most-iconic version of the Moon, the world-ending and seriously terrifying visage of one that cuts the sky above Clock Town in The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. These are just the highlights; video games have a long, rich, and weird history with the Moon, be it ours or imagined ones.
When I think of the Moon in games, my mind wanders, as it often does, to Destiny. It is, perhaps, my single favorite instance of the Moon in any video game, and so much of that has to do with my first time stepping foot on it. During Destiny’s beta, players were relegated to the game’s starting zone on Earth as well as the game’s first few missions and Strike. Near the end of the test though, Bungie did a cool thing and opened up the Moon for approximately two hours, making it feel like an exclusive instance and glimpse into the wider world that players might spend the next 10 years exploring. And so I touched down on its glistening surface and gave into the wonder of its vistas and the darkness (and Hive!) contained within its Hellmouth, a seemingly endless underground fortress filled with ritual sites, alien wizards, and at least one portal to another realm inside the soul of a dead god.
Man, Destiny whipped, huh?
In place of anything concrete–after all, no one has walked the Moon’s surface in more than 50 years now–games have long been a place to imagine what it must be like to explore our neighboring satellite. Games have been fed our shared dreams and fantasies and, in turn, we’ve often repurposed these game engines and tools to make them a reality. Sort of.
A curious Hive installation on the moon in Destiny 2.
Destiny imagines the Moon as a haunted and holy site for an alien-species-turned-death-cult. Fortunately, it is not alone in these outlandish fantasies. Call of Duty: Black Ops’ co-op Zombies narrative culminated in a trip to the Moon, a voyage that coincided with an Easter egg puzzle that ended the world, freed powerful demonic forces from another realm, and shattered any semblance of reality in its alternative timeline. In a complete reversal of these horrifying visions, Super Mario Odyssey’s final challenges imagine the Moon, and specifically the very far, very dark side of it, as a delightful gauntlet of platforms and puzzles. Like one alarmingly elaborate and tremendous playhouse on the side of the Moon that we typically don’t get to see. Wouldn’t it be fun if that were what the Moon really hid?
Even when we’re not visiting the Moon, it can loom over a game’s narrative. It obscures and hides things. Bloodborne’s phases of the Moon denote major milestones in the course of the RPG’s winding story. Though they simply mark the passage of time to start, Bloodborne’s story really begins to click into place the further one wades into the night, as if the moonlight is the only possible thing that could illuminate Yharnam’s gnarled past and grisly fate. By the time that you beat Rom the Vacuous Spider and trigger the final phase–a blood-red moon–the true nature of the forces at work step into the light, and you can never unsee them.
Sometimes, the Moon loves to play a trick. Majora’s Mask might have the Zelda series’ signature appearance of the Moon, but it certainly isn’t the only one: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have a blood moon of their own. Its appearance, which is creepily signaled by a jarring shift in these games’ otherwise peaceful ambiance and score, breathes a restorative magic into Hyrule. It is one that, on one hand, replenishes the various resources of the world for Link. On the other hand, it also revives any fallen foes, including overworld bosses, to ensure that the player cannot simply empty the world of the Lynels and Hinoxes meant to challenge them. Some tricks aren’t so nice.
Sometimes, the Moon plays a trick.
All this thinking about the Moon, as well as the mystique around it and outer space, also has me thinking of Outer Wilds, which perhaps contains gaming’s greatest and most-esoteric rendition yet: the quantum moon. Everything about Outer Wilds is a mystery to be solved, including the quantum moon, which not only appears in various locations around the solar system, but cannot even be explored or landed on by any conventional means. To say any more would be to spoil one of my favorite moments in any video game ever, but getting to the very bottom of the quantum moon’s deal largely underscores the fascination that Artemis II’s mission has stoked within me.
There’s so much that I cannot possibly know about this world, its Moon, and any of the other worlds and moons I’ll never get to see. And while that is true, that mystique allows me to entertain the notion of something I’ve found a great deal of comfort and warmth in lately: magic. The Moon, a satellite hypothetically formed from the collision of Theia and Earth billions of years ago, exudes more than just gravity over our tides but a supernatural force that we can’t put words to. That it hides wonders and miracles I may never know. Hopefully, they are benign ones and not, y’know, killer aliens.
Regardless, I’ve delighted in the ways that games have played with and reinterpreted the Moon. It’s just the latest in a longstanding human tradition of mythologizing the Moon through art–be it film, literature, music, orated stories, and more–and can be traced back to some of our oldest cultures and mythologies, like Selene, the Greek goddess of the Moon who’s also a smokeshow in last year’s stellar roguelike Hades 2. And as Artemis II’s mission comes to an end, I hope that we are far from done exploring it and its mysteries, both in games and in reality.
