Immortality Film-all

Sam Barlow's latest game Immortality launches today. I believe it is on game pass Anyone else jumping in?

Reviews are looking pretty great!

Yes, I was going to say the reviews have been very strong. I have not played one of his games before, but this is definitely going on the top of the list.

Any indication of how long this is? Wondering whether to recruit the missus for a group playthrough, and that won't fly if it's a 10+ hour commitment.

Still meaning to get to Telling Lies.

Jonman wrote:

Any indication of how long this is? Wondering whether to recruit the missus for a group playthrough, and that won't fly if it's a 10+ hour commitment.

I thought I heard someone on Waypoint mention seeing credits after six hours or so.

I've probably put about an hour or so in this so far. I kind of mostly don't know what I'm doing or what I'm looking for, but I think that might be intentional? Very intrigued though and I'm really keen to see what I discover next.

Not major spoilers here, but maybe something you might like to discover yourself. Not that I've really discovered much.

Spoiler:

I came across something interesting in one clip where, without giving too much away, the footage was different when rewinding. Like there was something underneath the actual footage, if that makes sense. I'm wondering how much more of the story will be revealed like that.

Also wondering how much supernatural/Lynch style stuff might be here, given that Marissa doesn't age a day between the 60's and the 90's.

I also played for an hour or so tonight on the Xbox, and like halfwaywrong, I'm just bumbling around. I have some goals, and I have some questions.

I've tried to avoid spoilers and reviews, but I know it's gotten a lot of positive buzz. I'm interested to see where it goes.

halfwaywrong wrote:
Spoiler:

I came across something interesting in one clip where, without giving too much away, the footage was different when rewinding. Like there was something underneath the actual footage, if that makes sense. I'm wondering how much more of the story will be revealed like that.

Spoiler:

Ok, yeah, this is definitely a thing. I found a whole other scene in reverse during a clip. It sure didn't make any sense though.

This is definitely less mystery solving and more of a David Lynch inspired game than Sam's last two, at least so far. The more I play, the more I'm enjoying it though.

I played about two hours last night and subsequently had trouble falling asleep because my brain just kept thinking about it. Particularly from a purely technical acting/performance POV, this game is incredible.

What ... the ... f*ck.

I've also played about a couple of hours so far. Definitely had some WTF moments in the good sense. I'm at a point where I feel like I've opened up a lot of the storyline but I'm also feeling a bit disoriented about what I'm supposed to be putting together.

I'm really loving the evolution form Barlow's prior games purely from a gameplay design perspective. The most frustrating part of Her Story and Telling Lies was that the search and play mechanic was intentionally cumbersome to prevent you from just watching all the clips from left to right in ways that broke the immersion and bloated the game (e.g., showing only 5 results from keyword searches or not being able to skip to the beginning of a clip). In this game, the moviola mechanic is not only more believable/immersive but also serves as a device to advance the gameplay (and I'm being kind of obtuse her on purpose to avoid spoilers). Plus, now that the game requires you to use the moviola controls, you can get a button to skip to the beginning of the clip because you can't just trivialize the game by using it all the time. And then the "eye" tool is a lot more playful than keyword searches. As a game, this is a lot more fun than the previous ones.

On the themes in the story that I've seen so far, my main impression that I'm still trying to process is that a certain "something" that halfwaywrong covered with spoiler tags above happens specifically when Marissa feels shame. And as anyone with a catholic upbringing knows, christianity runs on shame. I may be completely off but I'd be curious to hear what people with different backgrounds think (and perhaps this should be a spoiler tag-heavy discussion).

I also do agree that there's a Lynchian vibe to the story. It is especially reminiscent of Blue Velvet for me.

I definitely get more Mulholland Drive-y vibes than Blue Velvet ones, but definitely feeling some Lynch influence on the project as a whole (though my Mulholland Drive feels might be largely coming from Two of Everything, given its late-90's era and stylistic similarities to Mulholland Drive.)

Ok, in case anyone is willing to have a spoilery discussion, what's below is very spoilery:

Spoiler:

All three films have someone passing for somebody else. Matilda is disguised as Rosario, the Detective is cross dressing, and Maria´s body double passes as Maria. I'm assuming it has to do with the theme of art and acting but is there something else to it?

Out of the "backwards" clips, there are at least a couple that repeat themselves, meaning that you can get to them from multiple "regular" clips. What's the deal with that?

Pink Stripes wrote:

Ok, in case anyone is willing to have a spoilery discussion, what's below is very spoilery:

Spoiler:

All three films have someone passing for somebody else. Matilda is disguised as Rosario, the Detective is cross dressing, and Maria´s body double passes as Maria. I'm assuming it has to do with the theme of art and acting but is there something else to it?

Spoiler:

I'm thinking there is something more to it. I found a clip tonight that makes me pretty confident that there is. What that actually means, I have no clue, but there's something there I'm sure. It'd be pretty on-brand for Barlow too.

Another thing I noticed tonight

Spoiler:

is that there's at least one scene per film where John goes missing at some interesting moments. Curious to see where that leads. I've got theories, but I kind of feel like this is me right now.

Ok, I just rolled credits and all I can say is exactly what Aristophan last said...

Played a bit more after rolling credits. Found more cool things. Not sure where to stop.

I feel like a big dummy. Or maybe I should just blame the iterface. No huge spoilers behind the tag, but can't be too careful I guess. Also, if you're a mouse and keyboard player, you might want to read the spoiler anyway.

Spoiler:

So the hidden backwards scenes? I didn't realise until today, that some are activated with lower rewind speed. I've just been using the arrow keys, so only ever saw a small handful of those backwards scenes. Turns out I need to use the arrow keys and the shift key to rewind slower to see more scenes.

So now I'm re-watching half the scenes and it's all making a lot more sense now.

I'm struggling to find a game here. Or perhaps I"m struggling to find a game that's mechancially interesting. It's like a ' find the objects' puzzle at the back of a magazine.

It's not unpleasant to explore, but it doesn't feel enough like a game I want to play, rather a sort of diversion.

I put a bunch of hours in over the last few days and really really enjoyed it. I found some things great (the overarching story that's revealed; they way it had me paying attention to props, close-ups, slight and deliberate movements that emphasize something small) and some things not so great (a lot of the 'match cuts' connect random non-thematic objects to each other and it does the opposite of connecting scenes to each other in my head).

I definitely went looking for discussion afterwards and it's tough because getting to the credits doesn't mean you've seen enough of the story to connect the dots on what seems like the greater narrative. There's quite a bit going on and while themes definitely carry over between plots there's also different stuff going on, too.

Overall very cool and kept me up late at night trying to piece things together.

I hit the credits, but there are definitely more film clips to find. For example, the achievement list says I only have about half of the Ambrosio clips.

We have a spoiler section on today's episode of GWJCC, at the end of the episode (during the episode we have a non-spoiler chat about it in the games section.) I bowed out of the spoiler section early because I'm still not done, but what I was around for was super illuminating! Shawn and Amanda have seen credits, so there's bound to be some good discussion there.

Nice, I'll give it a listen tomorrow! I was hoping there'd be a bit of a deep-dive/discussion on this one in the Conference Call.

Personally, I'm still collating my thoughts to actually write something up here. I've been meaning to for a few days, but still finding new things.

On another note, I agree with the other people here that there's more to see after credits roll. There was a lot I hadn't seen - both in terms of the plot of the individual films and also the over-arching narrative. It makes me wonder whether 'end' credits even make sense for this game. But I'm not sure how else they'd have handled it? Either way, I'd love to know the criteria for credits rolling - from what I've seen almost everyone say, the end is not the end, if you consider the end to be understanding and closure.

halfwaywrong wrote:

It makes me wonder whether 'end' credits even make sense for this game.

The credits do make sense, but the final link in the narrative is hidden in one particular clip that's one of the harder ones to get. I got 90% of the way there (narratively) through normal exploration but trying to figure out one of the achievements eventually led me to it.

The achievement:

Spoiler:

What happened to Amy Archer?

That's funny because I just got the achievement Jolly Bill put under the spoiler tag (and I agree it's a big piece of information to learn) but I have not seen the credits yet. I am just over 50% of the clips for each film. So maybe it's also about how we are all going through the game/clips in a completely different order.

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

We have a spoiler section on today's episode of GWJCC, at the end of the episode (during the episode we have a non-spoiler chat about it in the games section.) I bowed out of the spoiler section early because I'm still not done, but what I was around for was super illuminating! Shawn and Amanda have seen credits, so there's bound to be some good discussion there.

I just listened to their take in the spoiler section and I've got some different thoughts. I'd love to actually talk about this in discord or something. I was trying to just type one thought and I couldn't do it without doing my full take on it.

For the love of God, don't read unless you've already seen the end and rolled credits.

Spoiler:

Main hidden clip person I'm calling "Immortal" and her counterpart is the "Other One".

There's a hidden clip I can't remember where to find, where the main Immortal mentions something about being able to be 2 people at once, but to do it you would have to "be crazy or powerful". And there's another one where she mentions talking with someone about the movie and Marissa just came into being without intentionally calling for her.

After Immortal took over Durick she stayed as him and/or went to sleep for ~20 years. Something inspired her to bring Marissa back and start Two of Everything. So for all of Two of Everything the Immortal is both Marissa and John - which is why both are missing in the hidden clips and why she's saying BOTH Marissa's and John's lines in those scenes. And why both John & Marissa collapse at the same time whenever Marissa collapses near the end of production.

The bit I mentioned about "What happened to Amy Archer?" is key to connecting that to the end. There's a hidden clip where the Other One is floating in water and the Immortal says, "You can't be here" and he says "Amy is here, too"... surprising the Immortal as she realizes he's back. And it's the reason she tells him to "let her die like he did"... and that's what's happened to the 'viewer' once you watch the last clip that gets you to the credits.

That's all really vague because the last big reveal (for me) was so good. It's nested in multiple clips inside the scene with Goodman's death.

Jolly Bill wrote:

For the love of God, don't read unless you've already seen the end and rolled credits.

Spoiler:

After Immortal took over Durick she stayed as him and/or went to sleep for ~20 years. Something inspired her to bring Marissa back and start Two of Everything. So for all of Two of Everything the Immortal is both Marissa and John - which is why both are missing in the hidden clips and why she's saying BOTH Marissa's and John's lines in those scenes. And why both John & Marissa collapse at the same time whenever Marissa collapses near the end of production.

Spoiler:

There's a clip where the Immortal says something about making films, but she started to really miss Marissa, so she brought her back. I'm assuming this is what she was doing over that time period.

Jolly Bill wrote:
Spoiler:

The bit I mentioned about "What happened to Amy Archer?" is key to connecting that to the end. There's a hidden clip where the Other One is floating in water and the Immortal says, "You can't be here" and he says "Amy is here, too"... surprising the Immortal as she realizes he's back. And it's the reason she tells him to "let her die like he did"... and that's what's happened to the 'viewer' once you watch the last clip that gets you to the credits.

Spoiler:

I found that clip after you mentioned it. Really helps clear things up. It makes the ending make more sense now, and the Immortals final words have more meaning and impact.

As an aside, she's not getting the recognition because her very existence is a spoiler, but the Immortal actress is brilliant.

I rolled credits yesterday and I made enough sense of the story (I pretty much agree with what Shawn and Amoebic said on the podcast) but I had one big loose end...

Spoiler:

...and that's Marissa's age / lack of aging. In one of the talk show interview clips around the Minsky time (1970), she says she is 20 years old. That would make her about 50 in the time of 2oE (1999) but she's playing a 25 y/o character and clearly does not look 50. I find it hard to believe that no one would know anything about her to the point of not realizing her age. Now, I unlocked a clip where Marissa (dressed as Heather) is looking at herself in the mirror and when you rewind it at the right time she transforms into a middle-aged woman that I have not seen in any other clips in the game. When I used the eye tool on that woman, it took me to another clip of Marissa. That makes me thing this woman is Marissa at 50 years old. The question is still how The One can apparently hide her age from other people somehow.

The other theory I have is that

Spoiler:

Two of Everything is a movie that The One wrote about herself. She is obsessed with artists and wants to be an artist. In that movie, Heather takes someone else's body, in a certain way, by "becoming" Maria (i.e., passing as her being her body double). There's also a scene where some studio people (film characters, not the actual studio) film Maria in a motion capture suit doing her choreography and when they play it back, they talk about how they can delete her body and capture who she really is underneath. There's also at least two rehearsal clips where rewinding causes The One to appear but both Marissa and John to disappear, which tells me The One is someone also John, who is the writer of this movie.

I'm sorry if this is a really basic question, but I'd just like to confirm:

Spoiler:

Am I correct that the game just drops you into some movie clips and you're expected just to start watching and clicking objects to see "related clips"? And from that, something will start to emerge? I felt like I missed some sort of framing device or exposition, but wasn't sure if I should restart.

That’s right, hubbinsd. It’s a bit jarring!

Love reading these theories and filling in some of the gaps I missed. Once you finish the game, there really ought to be a way to unlock clips you missed without having to keep sifting around.