Immortality is the latest investigative thriller from the creators of Her Story and Telling Lies. The game is a thoroughly immersive endeavor that started as a puzzle game of sorts but morphed into the movie equivalent of a Magic Eye poster. Each piece falls into place until Immortality's true motive comes into focus, revealing its shocking whole.
Unreleased Movies in Immortality
Linking the three unreleased films is Marissa Marcel, played by Manon Gage, a model-turned-actress who starred in each of the doomed productions and never worked again. She is introduced in the opening clip of Immortality through a guest appearance from 1969 on a Johnny Carson-style talk show. She is charismatic and full of optimism for her upcoming big screen debut. From then on, her ill-fated career is witnessed as a jumble of out-of-sequence on-set recordings, table readings, rehearsals and 8mm home videos spanning a 30-year period. Gage gives a convincing performance in the lead role. You have almost 200 clips of her to review before Immortality's roughly nine-hour story ends.
The footage
The footage itself is totally believable, not only because of the era-specific footage and aspect ratios used, but also because of a number of smaller details. From the archaic between-shot chicanery of a misogynist director during the 1968 production of Ambrosio to the perfectly cheesy turn-of-the-century pop performance in 1999's Two of Everything, there's a rawness throughout that reinforces that sense of authenticity even further , with actors struggling not to giggle at a naked corpse before a clapperboard announces a dramatic scene in a morgue, and stagehands stepping in to manipulate primitive special effects. Immortality almost completely convinces you that you're poring over a collection of lost clips from productions that actually existed. The game is a feast of found footage that was just as easy to buy as the original Blair Witch Project.
sliver celluloid
Navigating Immortality's growing catalog of clips involves a process that blends the whirring mechanical rendering of an old-fashioned Moviola editing engine with the advanced AI-based image matching of modern search engines. You can fast forward and rewind at variable speeds, instantly jump to either end of a reel, or even go frame by frame. Such fine control over playback is paramount, as finding new clips requires you to pause and click on a face or prop to instantly jump to a matching instance in another piece of footage. You'll stumble down rabbit holes and teleport between time periods as you gradually reconstruct the plots of all three films, gaining a deeper insight into the relationships between the leads through candid moments that unfolded after the director yelled, "Cut."
The setup
This setup might sound pretty straightforward for a non-linear story, but there's actually a lot more going on in Immortality than meets the eye. Very early on there are subtle hints of more malevolent forces at play. These first come in the form of flashes of terror that trigger double takes as you zip through a clip at high speed, which on closer inspection triggers alternate sequences featuring an enigmatic provocateur known only as The One, played by Charlotta Mohlin. Mohlin is absolutely captivating in her role, and her increasingly menacing influence on your ongoing quest paves the way for a series of chilling revelations and alarmingly eerie images that give the term "behind the scenes" an unsettling new meaning.
The editing room
Being able to jump back and forth between footage simply by clicking on objects or faces might be a leaner setup than the Her Story and Telling Lies search terms entered, and it's far more controller-friendly for console gamers, though it can also be somewhat arbitrary. Occasionally you'll click on an object in the foreground, such as a hand holding a key card, only for Immortality to interpret it as selecting the window behind it, matching it to a random window in another clip. It's similarly disappointing when the cursor would change to indicate that a particular person's face was searchable, only to simply snap me back into the sequence you were already in.
The search function
The image-based search capability also means Immortality feels oversimplified in terms of the actual investigative side of things. You get the overall impression that the majority of your discoveries were the result of dumb luck and not the direct result of real deduction. There are a handful of memorable occasions when you'll feel rewarded for having eagle eyes, such as freezing an image in the split second where a character off-screen became visible in a reflection. Most of the time, you'll just keep clicking the same faces and items until you've exhausted the number of new matches they've uncovered before moving on to the next.
revelations
Though you feel like you've achieved it of your own accord, the big revelations of Immortality's story never cease to terrify you. The complex narrative is masterfully crafted; revolving around itself and layered on top of each other. The initially cryptic monologues delivered by The One are gradually unraveled and the real reasons behind Marcel's apparent exile from the film industry surface. In fact, that moment when it all fell into place and you fully realized the truth was shocking.
Conclusion
Immortality is a thoroughly intriguing mystery and one of the most surprising video game stories to play through. Its image-based search tool may dull its actual investigative sense noticeably compared to Her Story and Telling Lies, but the credibility of its fake film productions, the strong performances of its cast, and its regular confrontations with David Lynchian discoveries remain and captivate for its nine-hour duration. Immortality may not live in your head forever, but the game will stay there for quite a while.
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