During her acting career spanning the late 60s’ to the late 90s’, Marissa Marcel made only three movies. However, none of these were ever released, even if her debut title was helmed by famed director Alan Fischer. What’s more, Marcel herself disappeared after her third movie, never to be seen again, not unlike her own movies. 

Now, a collection of video tapes from Marcel’s career, including interviews, behind-the-scenes, rehearsals and actual footage from her three movies, Ambrosio, Minsky and Two of Everything, have been found. Can they reveal what happened to Marissa Marcel?

Since his debut as an indie games developer with Her Story, director Sam Barlow has always toyed with the idea of merging gaming elements in movies. He doesn’t use CGI like Quantic Dream’s titles but uses live action footage and sprinkles them with gameplay mechanics. He followed Her Story with the brilliant Telling Lies in 2020 and brought a similar concept with the newly released Immortality. 

And as is common with Barlow’s games, you’ll go into Immortality without knowing much of the trajectory to reach the goal. Granted, there’s an introductory tutorial and the obvious need to find out what happened to Marissa Marcel. But the means to get there aren’t made very explicit; and, like the developer’s previous games, this adds intrigue to the game and is best experienced first-hand.

Without spoiling much, in Immortality, you’ll start with a video footage featuring Marissa Marcel. You can pause, rewind and fast-forward the video across its whole length. When paused, you can enter “Photo Mode” to further scrutinise the scene and select items, props and people’s faces and match cut them. This will send you to another video featuring that person/item/prop, which you can then watch and scrutinise further. For example, pointing to a script, a lamp or a wall picture will move to the next video that has the same or similar item. 

You will indeed need to finely comb each video as when doing so and performing one of the possible gameplay actions, you will realise that some footage hides something else; something more sinister that helps you uncover Marcel’s story. Watching the videos also reveals more about the people that the actress interacted with as well as helps you piece together why the videos never got released. This delivers an original, non-linear way to witness how the movies evolve from scripts to actual shooting sessions.

 

The gameplay follows this loop of watching videos, pausing and identifying scene elements in a point-and-click fashion in order to find the next video from which you can scan for further  clues. This aspect of playing as a detective from reconstructed footage is intriguing, and encourages the player to pay attention to each scene in order to identify elements that could provide a clue. 

While experimental (and divisive) in nature, this “gameplay” approach delivers an interesting mechanic that can get you hooked, especially when you come across the hidden aspects of the videos which will get you rushing to re-watch other videos that have already been unlocked to find potential hidden clues.

However, this same loop can feel repetitive and testing. This is fuelled by the fact that footage is unlocked seemingly at random. While investigating some elements in a scene, you can get bumped back to a previous video that you’ve already analysed. Clicking on the same item/person might move you to another video altogether at a later time. Coupled with the unspecified aims of the game, this often feels disorienting. 

For instance, I often came across situations where I wasn’t sure which video to (re)watch and which item to click on in order to proceed. One resort is to click on the same item/person several times until you unlock a new video. It’s not elegant but it works, and this is somewhat telling about the overall execution of the mechanics.

Another aspect of the gameplay that I wish could be improved upon is the method to rewind/fast forward in a video. While you can adjust the speed at which this is done, rewinding/fast forwarding happens linearly. It would have been more convenient to be able to do so across a visible timeline of the video. Nevertheless, the current approach plays well into the retro film aesthetics of Immortality; and maybe I’ve just been spoiled by online video streaming and forgotten all about good ‘ol analogue methods.

My last remark is about some of the props employed in those fictional movies. In particular, the wigs, even in near final cuts, are just plainly bad and break any illusion of make-believe that those productions strive to achieve. While the acting is pretty well done for the most part, more effort could have been invested in making the props look the part.

As with Sam Barlow’s other games, Immortality will likely be divisive. It does not bear traditional gameplay but isn’t far from a point-and-click detective FMV. And while it doesn’t feel as well rounded as the developer’s previous title, Telling Lies, it does deliver an original experience.

IMMORTALITY Release Trailer