The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
Please vote in the Forum Structure Poll. Polling will close at 2PM EST on January 21, 2025.
[Immortality]: An Archival FMV Game (Please read top of OP for spoiler etiquette)
PaperLuigi44
My amazement is at maximum capacity.Registered User regular
My amazement is at maximum capacity.Registered User regular
Please use spoiler tags to the best of your ability as a courtesy to other forumers, but due to the non-linear nature of this game and it's deeper layers, even with tags in place you may be spoiled on story beats and mechanics if you haven't hit credits (or heck, even if you have, it's that kinda game).
What is Immortality?
Immortality is an FMV game from Half Mermaid Productions, that is directed by Sam Barlow (Her Story, Telling Lies) with writing from Allan Scott (Don’t Look Now, Queen’s Gambit), Amelia Gray (Mr. Robot, Maniac) and Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart, Lost Highway). It launched on Windows and the Xbox family (including Game Pass) with Mac, Android and iOS versions in the works (mobile stuff will be through the Netflix app though). The basic premise is that model-turned-actress Marissa Marcel (Manon Gage) starred in three ill-fated movies in 1968, 1970 and 1999 that never saw the light of day, and little is known about why or what happened to Marissa herself. That is, until a veritable treasure trove of unreleased behind the scenes film (interviews, rehearsals, unedited footage and more) is discovered, with you being tasked with scrubbing the footage for answers. However, no sooner do you start when all but one clip is lost, but you can pause the clips at any time and move your cursor around to pseudo-match cut and recover footage from elsewhere in the archive.
Content Warning
Immortality incorporates some heavy topics, which Half Mermaid have helpfully outlined on their website and the games' main menu
I'll finish off this post by saying that it was a hell of a game, and one I'm going to be thinking about for a long time.
What is Immortality?
Immortality is an FMV game from Half Mermaid Productions, that is directed by Sam Barlow (Her Story, Telling Lies) with writing from Allan Scott (Don’t Look Now, Queen’s Gambit), Amelia Gray (Mr. Robot, Maniac) and Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart, Lost Highway). It launched on Windows and the Xbox family (including Game Pass) with Mac, Android and iOS versions in the works (mobile stuff will be through the Netflix app though). The basic premise is that model-turned-actress Marissa Marcel (Manon Gage) starred in three ill-fated movies in 1968, 1970 and 1999 that never saw the light of day, and little is known about why or what happened to Marissa herself. That is, until a veritable treasure trove of unreleased behind the scenes film (interviews, rehearsals, unedited footage and more) is discovered, with you being tasked with scrubbing the footage for answers. However, no sooner do you start when all but one clip is lost, but you can pause the clips at any time and move your cursor around to pseudo-match cut and recover footage from elsewhere in the archive.
Content Warning
Immortality incorporates some heavy topics, which Half Mermaid have helpfully outlined on their website and the games' main menu
Advisory
The movies of Marissa Marcel are presented untouched or edited and reflect the values of their times. Viewers are warned that the film footage collected within IMMORTALITY contains subject matter that may be upsetting. The stories are taken from the gothic, thriller and supernatural genres and tackle themes and elements such as:
– Strong curse words
– Blasphemy regarding the Catholic faith
– Sudden and surprising visual cuts and sound events
– Alcohol, cigarette and drug use
– Abusive relationships
– Nudity, sex
– Blood and wounding
– Suicide
– Sexual assault
– Murder (asphyxia, knife and firearm)
The movies of Marissa Marcel are presented untouched or edited and reflect the values of their times. Viewers are warned that the film footage collected within IMMORTALITY contains subject matter that may be upsetting. The stories are taken from the gothic, thriller and supernatural genres and tackle themes and elements such as:
– Strong curse words
– Blasphemy regarding the Catholic faith
– Sudden and surprising visual cuts and sound events
– Alcohol, cigarette and drug use
– Abusive relationships
– Nudity, sex
– Blood and wounding
– Suicide
– Sexual assault
– Murder (asphyxia, knife and firearm)
I'll finish off this post by saying that it was a hell of a game, and one I'm going to be thinking about for a long time.
PaperLuigi44 on
0
Posts
It isn't super spooky, just very creepy. There are a couple startling parts that you can stumble across.
To kind of paraphrase what I said in the other thread, it’s exactly as spooky (or I think “unsettling” is a better word) as you put into it. If you keep it at arm’s length, stay detached and clinical, it can all feel that way. But if you dive in, let it surround you, and breathe it in deep, there are definitely bits that are going to unnerve you. Specific aesthetic (but not necessarily narrative) things in spoilers:
Also, major mechanics spoiler/question, do not read if you haven't played yet:
Major mechanics answer
Also spoiler
Yeah, the
I write a whole effort post about how thinking and talking about the game is to continue to "play" it and Barlow just... Tweets it out
The one thing that's brilliant about the game is that the way everything is framed means that Barlow can pack so many layers into everything, which makes it incredibly easy to get some degree of symbolism or subtext for a scene no matter what stage of the game you're at. One specific example (everything spoilers, natch):
That's a lot of meaning packed into a single sentence!
Then they resurface 30 years later, without having aged, but then Marissa seems to die at the end? The furthest thing I have shot is her character spouting blood from under her wig while they call for medics.
Edit:
I've also noticed something that isn't, I believe, a spoiler. But I will spoiler it anyway
Spoiler with a specific thing you have wrong:
Edit: to be clear, totally misinterpreting things and getting the jolt of realization later when things start to click is the mirror polished gameplay loop this whole thing revolves around, so in that sense, you’re killing it. Make those connections and work out theories. They’ll almost all be wrong, but that’s exactly how you’ll get the most out of it as you learn more.
I mean, yeah, but I think they're very adjacent to the concept.
They're something weird, they might be fallen angels, but they're basically vampires.
Anyway, thinking about them and typing that out just now, something occurred to me -
But over the course of the game we learn that she and the Other One take the memories and forms of people they devour, and we see her start to have trouble distinguishing between herself/herself as Marissa/herself as John, and in the Carson interview we also learn that her memories aren't reliable and she can't access most of them, and she frequently remembers things that didn't happen to her.
That sounds less like she's a creator and more like she's the audience. Or, put another way, a consumer.
Yeah, I was attempting to keep that nudge brief and without much context, but you’re right,
Deeper spoiler talk:
But then, I also don't generally love fourth wall breaks where the character is like, "I see you!" and I got one of those in this that was genuinely spooky. And the first time I realized when I was rewinding that there was a flicker, that something else was going on, I was genuinely taken aback. It's got a lot of great stuff, and I feel like it's all purposeful, and part of a whole story. I just wish I found the whole of the story to be as compelling to me as it is to all of you
I respect the hell out of this, and it's got a lot of stuff I really do admire, but I do think that I've...gotten what I'm going to get out of it.
The really wonderful thing about the game is that there are tons of scenes which are perfectly functional when viewed initially with a very literal read, but which later become bombshells of information and meaning and subtext when rewatched with the power of the knowledge you’ve gleaned over a few hours of watching.
It’s almost like… a Metroidvania where context and understanding are your power ups that allow for backtracking and further exploration, and I find that just so cool.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
yeah,
About that...
I still need to sit down and try to type up all my thoughts, but it feels a very daunting task. That said:
I think it is telling that the last line before credits is a triumphant, "I'm inside you, now." Because if you've tracked down enough of their clips to get their side of the story, as it were, it's ceding the point that there was something at play in these stories other than the human elements and the human relationships. You had all this evidence of your eyes and ears and lived experiences, all of the context of history and art, and if you are willing to accept the authority of an outside Other, a force only visible in retrospect, a force that can only subvert existing material and never create, to tell you that there's a deeper, Correct Answer in art? Game over, baby. The devil wins and you lose. You let the devil into your head, and you're choosing to believe it.
It's a really cool, really upsetting ending!
Like, I didn't realize you could "dial-in" those video subversions (and that's what the game itself calls those phenomena, in its achievements - "subversions," a loaded and intentional word, imo) until WAY late in the game. I'd found some of the full-color ones, which requiring less fiddling to make pop, but I had missed a TON of them. And yet, I was able to put together a coherent, cohesive series of narrative threads. I had blank spaces, but I had educated guesses that could fill them.
When I finally discovered what all I'd been missing, when I went back and kinda mainlined 'em, they told me very little that was NEW new. They offered me very little evidence that my eyes had deceived me ever. I kinda just had to take their word for it.
I mean, catch me after a beer or two and I might hammer together a working theory that The One and The Other One are an art project by Amy Archer.
I think it's a uniquely interpretation-resistant piece of capital-a Art. Or rather - it's possible to justify so many theories that I don't think there's any one, definitive, canonical truth. And I think that's kinda the point.
Yeah, it do be like that.
I like this reading on it a lot, and it also goes a long way towards explaining why I see it confounding so much of the games journalism space. Not to disparage the profession as a whole, but in a scene where concepts like unreliable narrators and a mixture of literalism and symbolism are still pretty uncommon affairs (I mean, look at the lukewarm reception Returnal’s narrative received), this kind of stuff is, as you said, almost violently opposed to definitive interpretation. And I fuckin’ love that, but it’s not an easy thing to write about and assign a value to in the rigid way games journalism is accustomed to.
"Then ignore it. It's a game about building stories, build one you like better. The whole thesis is that you can remove a lot of parts and still build a story. Remove those parts."
"But this is the right one! The real one!"
"Says who?"
"The achievements!"
"Oh, you let a digital participation ribbon tell you what a story is? What it means? Seems like a you problem, buddy."
"It's the intent of the author, why else would it be hardcoded?!"
"Oh, shit, you don't think an author can lie in the text? Fuck, kid, sit down, we're gonna be here a while. You ever heard of this cat Nabokov?"
Looking it up it seems I am missing all of 1 clip in Minksy, but haven't gotten the all subversion vierwing achievement yet either. Could be in that last clip, but might also be one I never clicked into. I also enjoyed Her Story and Telling Lies, but felt no real driving need to find every last clip from those.
Edit: also re: the above talk, the achievements themselves also have all caps commentary from The One suggesting they're also being written from that perspective.
Subversions are apparently also broken in some way or another - all known holders of the "see all subversions" achievement have admitted to hacking to get it
This is an under-the-hood mechanical thing, which I would consider to actually, actively spoil the experience for anyone going in for the first time, like legit "these spoilers will spoil the product," forewarning.
When a bucket empties far enough, you get new clips in that bucket. This is how certain reveals are hidden and paced out. Like I have a hunch that it's kinda hard to find out that Carl died at all, let alone how, until that Minksy bucket has been emptied a fair bit.
It's so, so funny how much time I spent trying to figure out the specific connections between linked clips when the link is "lol it's literally random, look at you you dumb monkey, seeing patterns in everything." I truly and genuinely love it, it's a very good prank (and also a commentary on how post-hoc examinations of media are not done in a vacuum and how the very act of seeing is, itself, both subjective and transformative).
Regarding your interpretation:
There is a degree to which it makes sense that they are unreliable narrators and are not wholly truthful in what they are saying, and there is also a degree to which their subversions don't appear to make much sense or present other issues. For instance, while I'd have to go back and double check, I feel like The One killing Durick doesn't actually seem to make much sense when it's presented; there are scenes with both Durick/The One after that (at least the floor corpse, if not more), but there are none of the Two of Everything style difficulties shown portraying both characters. On the flip side, Marissa being exhausted to the point of suffering multiple aneurysms or Durick disappearing for days during Two of Everything, along with neither of them being visibly aged, are just at the borderline where it could either be read as plausible for a realistic story or supernatural, with the latter making The One a necessity. Yes, The One is subverting a story that's mostly coherent and adding an additional layer on top, but it's only mostly coherent.