moon

I want to finish the game before Christmas, so while I was still a little shaken up by the game's events from the last time I played (and dealing with a fever/mild sickness induced a flu shot and a COVID shot my doctor uncle brought the family yesterday), I read for about an hour and a half to finish Marina's chapter (aka Chapter 2) and... It sure was a rollercoaster, huh.

There were a lot of interesting scenes this time around, most notably the ones with Asya, Marina and Vadim all going together around town trying to fulfil Marina's plans to find Ira. On hindsight, they were all very bittersweet, but what Asya said about that moment being one of a kind and something that'd gradually dull overtime really resonated with me, and I almost cried a few times when they're trying to comfort her during the movie.

Now, as to what happened to Ira... I had a lot of theories in my head that I alternated between I was playing. At first, I thought Asya had some sort of dissociative disorder, which would kind of explain some of the exchanges she had with herself or other characters (like when she realized that Vadim and the others were just picking on her and not trying to be her friend, the car repair shop scene or how the dialogue tag would only sometimes say "me"). Then, after I saw what was going on with Marina and Ira, I thought it could be some sort of metaphor for dissociation in general, or even depression. Finally, I thought it could be a meta-esque situation, with characters being aware of the game being all a bunch of code (I started thinking this when Marina mentioned "being aware of the code")...

... And then it turned out to be none of it, as Ira quite literally disappeared. I guess the entirety of the city isn't supposed to exist, huh... I'm not sure if I like that development, because I thought it'd be part of something more metaphorical rather than a literal "this town is a blip in the timeline", but that would explain a lot of what the game has been building on, like the whole "a wobbly line will end up looking straight the more you zoom out" thing, and all the monologues about anomalies and returning to the same as always.

Either way, I think I'm about 4 hours in, right before Chapter 3, so I still have a long way to go and many mysteries to uncover. We still don't know anything about Tosya, so I'm suppose this chapter will touch on it, as it'll be focused on Asya, according to the title, at least. It still amazes me how this whole game is free and was made in a short amount of time.