Immortality Review (PS5)

I am a big fan of unconventional video games, so every time I have the opportunity to try something off the beat path, I pounce on it. This adventurous approach brought me memorable moments while playing as the wind in Flower, exploring survival in Tokyo Jungle or playing around with the illustrations in Pentiment. I knew Immortality was right up my alley when I saw the first trailer.

Before anything else we have to admit that calling Immortality a video game will be a stretch for many players. The new video game signed by Sam Barlow is very different from the actual genres we are used to. The gameplay mechanics revolving around going through scenes and discovering clues just to open the way to new scenes are not for everyone and those looking for interactive action, strategy or tactics will be disappointed.

If you like mysteries & puzzles, interactive dramas heavily relying on footage with real life actors, then you know what to expect from Immortality. Especially if you are familiar with the developer’s previous works: Het Story and Telling Lies. Immortality, the most recent interactive story experience, revolves around three fictional movies, each having one thing in common, Marissa Marcel starring in them.

But who is she? Why did the public never know about these pictures? Where did the actress disappear? These are the questions you will have to answer and the only way to reach a conclusion is to comb through the available footage frame by frame, hunting for the clues hidden in plain sight.

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Immortality tasks you with a hybrid role of a detective and a video editor using a device that strongly reminds of a Moviola, the first machine for motion picture editing that allowed a film editor to view the footage they were working on. The process is simple, yet it can be painstakingly long: you get a collection of footage that you replay, rewind, fast forward, pause, zoom in and zoom out, your sole task being spotting the items that don’t really belong there.

The footage itself you need to review varies both in length and content. There are clips that last only a few seconds and there are several minute long sequences. We have late night interviews, behind the scenes reels where the actors are interacting freely, and actual shots from the three fictional movies. Once you find the frame that seems suspicious you can switch to Image Mode and use the cursor to pinpoint the odd detail.

The clues can be anything: something in Marissa’s hand, something in the way she looks at the camera, props around the scene. Each lick starts a new footage that somehow is related to the one you have just watched and has as a starting point the thing you just clicked. So, for instance you clicked on a microphone the next scene will start with a microphone. If you clicked on a character, the next piece of footage will start with that actor.

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Using all the footage thrown at you, you have to cut and paste together a kind of documentary showing not just the story of Marissa herself, but the bug picture of the entire story. Of course, this will require a sharp sense of deduction by puzzling together the story behind the scenes that often seem unrelated. Also, you will have to get used to fast forwarding and rewinding a scene multiple times since often a clue can be visible for only a second. 

The main twist of Immortality is the fact that it plays with what audiences consider to be a movie or a scene, and rather than offering a polished-up picture it focuses on how the movies are made and what goes in front of the camera that most viewers are unaware of. It is up to the player to differentiate the acting from the everyday behavior and find the cracks in each so they can put together the real chain of events. 

The live acting direction dictates the overall style, since the three movies featured in the game are artistically and technically very different. This is explained by the fact that there is an almost 30 years gap between the second and the last film. The props and shooting style is specific to the era that each movie was supposedly shot in. also we have to advise viewer’s discretion since the game does not shy away at all from nudity.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion