Aja on 18/7/2023 at 16:39
After hearing NoClip talking about it, I played Immortality, the latest game from Sam Barlow and co. It's about a fictional actor, Marissa Marcel, who starred in three films that, for mysterious reasons, were never released. You have access to various footage from the films, both behind the scenes and the scenes themselves, to freely scrub through. The gimmick is that pausing and zooming in on something in the frame can trigger what the game calls a match cut, which will transport you to a different clip (for example, if you zoom in on a potted plant in one scene, it may take you a plant in a completely different scene or even a different film). In this manner you explore the archive, unlocking new clips and trying to solve the mystery of what happened to Marissa. It's not much of a spoiler to say that there are some startling moments hidden in the footage that compel you to scour for more clues.
The sex
EvaUnit02 will be pleased to know that Immortality features many conventionally attractive people, and they're often naked. I've avoided Barlow's games in the past because I'm uncomfortable with their voyeuristic aspects, and while I thought that Immortality being about films instead of found footage would mitigate that discomfort, the sheer amount of sex and nudity made it difficult to just play it as a game. When you're not only constantly having sex scenes shoved in your face but have to painstakingly scrub through them to progress, it perpetuates a weird cycle of titillation that turns to guilt that turns to numbness — i.e., the sex scenes are hot but I shouldn't be enjoying them because that makes me complicit in Hollywood's treatment of women and of the sexual and emotional abuse that's pervasive the film industry (and which this game is a commentary on), yet I have to watch them to finish the game, so I'll just soldier on, and eventually it becomes so rote that all I care about is finding the next clue. So yeah, I finally played a Sam Barlow game, it made me feel like a pervert, and my lingering sense is that it was compelling and addictive for a time but ultimately not very enjoyable.
The story
At one point I was thinking of giving up but then clicked on a few more links and somehow unlocked the final scene that rolled the credits. So I apparently finished the game, but I didn't understand what happened to Marissa or anyone else. Reading some fan theories and synopses online, it seems that there is a plot you can follow, but it's veiled by so much art-movie monologuing and the ease with which you can miss important clips that I think only the most dedicated fans would ever put it all together. I like ambiguity in storytelling, but here it's taken to an extreme; I shouldn't have to theorize to understand the most basic plot elements. It's got a strong emotional core, but for me it was too obscurantist to allow me to really connect with any of the characters. It didn't help that while the writing was strong, the fictional films themselves were terrible. I wouldn't want to watch them if they existed, which made it a chore to scrub through them for gameplay purposes.
The style
That said, the production is brilliant. The acting, lighting, colour grading, and sound design all feel period accurate, and I do love the glimpse it gives into the filmmaking process. It's a story about making films as much as it is the films themselves, and the clips often include the small, intimate moments before and after a take, where some of the most interesting things happen. Technically it's also inspired. Without spoiling too much, the reveal of hidden elements integrated into the footage was thrilling and intriguing although the thrill did diminish after a few hours of scanning clips.
The verdict
It's mixed. Immortality is in some ways a great achievement and in others a missed opportunity. The randomness of its structure worked against its intent to tell a compelling story, and once the trick was revealed, it lost a lot of its allure. And maybe it's prudish and hypocritical of me to complain about the sex, but I'm not sure it struck the right tonal balance given its overarching themes. Still, there's a lot for film lovers in particular to enjoy here, particularly from a production standpoint, and the performances are strong. So it gets a cautious recommendation from me despite the fact that I have no desire to return to it.
henke on 20/7/2023 at 08:10
I liked Her Story, but got bored pretty fast of Telling Lies. So I dunno. Hear good things about this one, but I'm not tempted.
Harvester on 20/7/2023 at 08:12
I liked Her Story, and found Telling Lies intriguing, but I was bothered by the time limit. I wanted to watch all the videos at my own leisure and take as much time as I needed, but the time limit put pressure on me and I didn't enjoy that.
demagogue on 20/7/2023 at 13:42
Interesting. Sounds a little like the movie Millennium Actress.
Well I can appreciate a game designer trying to develop a creative concept at least.
I played with some design ideas with that kind of mechanic. I divined it from LSD, where interacting with certain objects in a dream world would transport you to other places, and I thought someone ought to gamify that concept into proper logical puzzles that made sense and fit with a story. The version I came up with was that there was a new tech that allowed police investigators to read the memories of recently killed murder victims played like dreams, and focusing on certain objects would cue new memories, and they could use that as a method (along with physical clues just investigating the person's life and crime scene and then "imagining them" to see if they cue any memories) to try to solve some unsolved linked crimes and ultimately the big conspiracy behind them. The catch was the investigators actually had to wire their own brains in to experience the memories directly, but doing that too much makes them start to lose their own mind. But they're also inching closer to the truth, and there's dangers in the real world too. I still like that concept, but it's ambitious.
Aja on 20/7/2023 at 19:01
Dema I think you might appreciate this game nonetheless although the kind of game you're describing sounds more interesting and ambitious than Immortality, which is more about clicking on random objects and hoping you find something interesting than any deduction or logical problem solving.
I'm still thinking about the game a few days later, and I found this (
https://www.thegamer.com/immortality-most-shocking-moments/#bizarre-illusions) very spoilery list of "shocking moments" that help explain the story, and I'm dismayed to learn that, despite rolling the credits, I unlocked less than half of these scenes. No wonder I had no idea what was going on!
Maybe I'm not particularly receptive to this style of storytelling. Take Mulholland Drive as an example. You can watch that film and just enjoy its atmosphere and acting and mood versus trying to figure out what each item symbolizes or the proper chronological order of events and what's "really going on." I don't care about the latter aspect, and despite the fact that the Mulholland Drive DVD cover has a list of clues, I suspect that David Lynch doesn't actually care much about it either and is more interested in making something compelling to watch that captures a particular feeling. He leaves everything open to interpretation and refuses to pin down his stories in interviews.
Sam Barlow, on the other hand, clearly has every element meticulously planned out, which he then obscures through metaphor and scrambling the order of events. I don't have the desire to solve that puzzle, so to speak, any more than I did of trying to figure out what the blue box in Mulholland Drive meant, but the difference is that Immortality doesn't work as well as an abstract piece as a good Lynch film does. Unless you're willing to put that leg work in to cobble together the supernatural story, what you're left with is something that feels Lynchian but lacks the depth of his films.
That's about as unspoilery as I can put it, I guess.
Aja on 20/7/2023 at 19:23
Oh, and I forgot to mention that you can play this game with a Netflix account, so I subscribed to their lowest tier for one month and played it on my phone, which worked well and was much cheaper than Steam (didn't really feel like the kind of game I'd need to own a copy of).
Sulphur on 21/7/2023 at 08:35
I liked Her Sto, uh, echoing what henke and Harvester said, I felt Her Story was nice. I haven't tried his other stuff yet, but I got it sitting around. HS's conceit was fun to engage with, but it's the same core idea - working out an index to access a mass of data, and drawing conclusions from what you can unearth. It's fun, and the story being told is compact enough that you don't get easily bored/fatigued from putting it all together - also helpful is that the clips are pretty bite-sized. I got the sense that because the scope of Telling Lies and Immortality is that much bigger, it's also a pain in the butt to sift through them and sit through bits that go and on. Anyway, in the light of the new information you have now from the bits you missed, has your opinion changed any about the quality of the overall narrative?
Also, since you have a Netflix sub for the moment, if you have the time you might as well play Before Your Eyes before it runs out. And tell us how you felt about it! (Oh and Oxenfree II as well, why not.)
Aja on 21/7/2023 at 21:58
Well, Sulph, maybe a little bit. I can imagine that if I'd uncovered more of the story before rolling credits I'd probably have been more satisfied overall. It's hard to discuss without giving big spoilers, but it's still very much a story about the supernatural and less about the personal relationships, which, given the quality of acting, would've been more interesting to me. Some people will love it, though, and that's understandable.
Some of the clips are quite long, and because you're looking at raw footage you don't the relief of a camera angle change, which can be both kind of fascinating and boring depending on the subject.
As of Oxenfree, I bounced pretty hard off the original. Before Your Eyes looks interesting. If I can psyche myself into playing something that will surely make me feel very sad, I'll probably play the PSVR version since it actually tracks your eye movement. I'd be glad to hear you talk about either of these games, though!
