While the films themselves are interesting, the real mystery of the game comes from everything on the periphery. A 1968 religious drama, a 1970 art scene detective mystery and a 1999 identity thriller don’t seem to have much in common, but they all fill in the tapestry that is Immortality, creating a haunting tale about the importance of art and the toll it can take on artists and those around them. It would be very easy for these films to run together, but they each strike out their own identity while still building on the overall themes of the game. Since this is raw footage instead of fully edited clips, most shots begin or end with a slate displaying the scene number to further categorize them quickly. Different aspect ratios and film quality help ground you in what could very easily be a confusing and overwhelming whirlwind through multiple stories.
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Each movie meticulously recreates the look of the period they are supposedly from, making it immediately apparent which film you’re looking at from just a quick glace. None of this would be worth it if the footage was mediocre, and I’m happy to say that each of the three films are good enough that I would watch them independently of this game. The game requires a lot of investment from the player, so it’s not for everyone, but the content of the footage remains entrancing even when your search feels aimless. When you have a lead that you’re tracking down, it can be exhilarating to tug at threads until you find a revelation, but there were times in the game that I found myself aimlessly bouncing around without a specific goal in mind, rapidly zoom and clicking over and over again to try to find an unseen clip. There’s no explicit checklist of things to discover, aside from the hidden achievements, leaving you to both discover what exactly it is you’re solving as well as the answers. Immortality doesn’t hold the player’s hand with this system, for better or worse. You’ll need to scrub back and forth through this footage to find the perfect shot, selling that sensation of being the editor of your own experience through this nonlinear journey. These connections can be made across all three films, so sometimes it can bring you to places that may have been hard to previously find. For example, if a character is hiding an important looking key from someone else, click on that key to be taken to another scene featuring it. This may not seem as easy to comprehend as simple search terms, but it leads the player by calling on their knowledge of the conventions of film, while still giving it room to bring you to unexpected places. Surprisingly, the game feels best played with a controller, giving you immersive and important haptic feedback while simulating the tactile nature of scrubbing through a very physical medium. If you see something important in the scene you want to know more about, pause and click on it, and you’ll be taken to another clip with that object, or something similar. Instead of using a text based search engine like the other two games, a surprisingly intuitive match cut system is utilized. In this case, the footage in question is from the three unreleased films of Marissa Marcel, a promising young actress who vanished without a trace. Much like Sam Barlow’s previous games Her Story and Telling Lies, you’re tasked with searching through a massive database of footage. Performance, framing, editing and all other elements of film are integral to making sense of the overall experience.
Rather than emulate the experience of movies with long cinematics, it ties the language of cinema into its mechanics, story and themes in significant ways. Immortality, the latest game from Sam Barlow’s Half Mermaid, shows its love of cinema in a different way. Quantic Dream and Supermassive create interactive movies, featuring scenes punctuated by quick time events or story choices, while Kojima Productions inserts long, lavishly directed sequences, generally requiring no interaction from the player. Many developers try to make ‘cinematic’ games.
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