Narrative Analysis – Immortality

Spoiler warning: minor plot details for Immortality, no major spoilers.

Overview

Immortality is an complex narrative mystery presented as a film trilogy for players to explore. The game is an investigative puzzle, with an innovative approach to interactive storytelling that encourages players to look beneath the surface of what’s immediately visible on screen. Immortality centres on the mysterious disappearance of film starlet Marissa Marcel, a celebrated up-and-coming actress who made three movies before vanishing. These movies were never released, but players can investigate each film to try and piece together what happened to Marissa.

What transpires is a deeply compelling and often unnerving process that urges you to dig deeper, even if at times you feel uncomfortable doing so. Immortality is a dark but incredibly arresting set of narratives that demand to be examined in tandem to reveal a unique blend of cinematic storytelling and investigative gameplay. It poses thought-provoking questions to players about the very nature of interactivity in games and the exploitation of female celebrity in cinema, almost so that your gameplay feels as though it’s occasionally bordering upon voyeurism.

That sounds weird, but I think that’s kind of the point.

Personal Context

I played Immortality on my Xbox console when it became available on Xbox Game Pass earlier this summer. I had no prior knowledge or expectations of the game and thought it’d be a predominantly detective-style experience. I’d previously played Telling Lies, another Sam Barlow and Half Mermaid game, but that was quite a while ago, so I was looking forward to unravelling a new mystery. During the game, I was increasingly compelled to explore further, despite finding elements of the narrative strands unsettling. Overcoming this unease was difficult yet interesting. It made me consider how complex and challenging themes can be presented within gameplay and interactive experiences.

Key Characters

• Marissa Marcel – An actress and breakout star of three major movies that never made it to release. Her career trajectory and personal life is open for investigation as players try to work out what happened to her work and why she seemingly disappears without a trace.
• John Durick – A director and filmmaker who enjoys a close professional and personal relationship with Marissa. His work is featured throughout much of her life, both in front of the camera and behind it.
• Additional Actors and Filmmakers – Several key characters feature during the production and behind-the-scenes footage from each of Marissa’s three movies and private life. They can also be explored to enrich player understanding of narrative events and character relationships.
• The Others – Mysterious beings that inhabit the space between the seen and the unseen.

Gameplay

Immortality is played primarily through an interface of old film clips that players collect, investigate and piece together in their interactive video library. Clips provide further clues, as players can highlight items in scenes and match-cut them to unlock new, perhaps unseen footage. Each new clip is presented non-chronologically and without prior context. This leaves it to players to work out the events of the wider plot, as well as the stories of each movie. Ultimately, the main mystery of Marissa’s disappearance can only be unpicked by investigating all three of her never-released movies and additional behind-the-scenes footage. A lot is going on under the surface, but players can watch, pause, fast-forward and rewind clips as they uncover them, to discover additional clues and secrets.

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THE GAME’S NARRATIVE

• This game has an incredibly innovative approach to non-linear storytelling. The sheer volume of stories to explore is impressive and compels curiosity. I love the idea that your experience varies depending on how and what you choose to investigate, yet the core narrative will come through eventually.
• It delivers a gripping and at times shocking set of different narrative experiences through a trilogy of films set in different cinematic eras.
• Weaving a story within a story is expertly done and with thought-provoking narrative aftershocks.
• The narrative is presented and structured as a puzzle, with detective-style clues and reveals that give you a feeling of progression, despite a lingering sense of disbelief or confusion.
• Learning about the characters and how events affect each of them during the production of the different movies adds several layers of complexity on top of what you think you know from watching earlier clips.
• The vibe of mystery meets social commentary is fascinating and the narrative often makes you question yourself. This leads to replaying certain parts of stories or events to uncover truths as you see them fully.
• Impactful premise and themes that incorporate ideas of seeing the unseen and looking at what lurks beneath. They also make you question your own player agency (am I playing the game or is this game playing me?) and your relationship with gameplay and the general ethics of media consumption, female exploitation in cinema and celebrity culture.

What I’d perhaps do differently

• Although I picked things up fairly quickly, it’s initially a bit unclear what you need to do in this game. Some clearer or more detailed instructions at the start might be helpful as this could be offputting to some players.
• The complexity of the non-chronologically presented narratives borders on creepy and confusing at times. I’m not sure how well I’d balance this in a game of my own, but I’d definitely try to be aware of it.
• I was unprepared for some of the more horror-oriented aspects of this game such as jumpy moments, extreme closeups and sudden moments of eye contact from characters. That’s not to say they weren’t effective!

Exploring the game’s building blocks

I find it helpful to examine the fundamental components of the game as a whole to see how they work together in communicating the overall narrative experience.

• Story – The game’s narratives are jumbled up and therefore presented or discovered out of context. This is thanks to the game’s central mechanic of match-cutting clips together. It takes some time for this to fully make sense, but once it does, it’s a highly effective and novel storytelling mechanic that drives you to want to know more. Arguably, the entire game is a masterclass in environmental storytelling, as you can only really unpick what’s going on by exploring the surroundings and characters in each clip you collect. By paying close attention to symbols, faces, decor and furtive glances, for example, you can access deeper realms of storytelling through the match-cutting technique. The intricate facets of the true story can only be fully grasped by gathering and investigating the three narratives presented in the film clips, which encourages you to discover the central mechanic through special but subtle signals.
• Mechanics – Immortality has a unique and intelligent approach to delivering such an intricate narrative through the match-cutting mechanic of exploration. The core gameplay mechanics encourage you to look more closely and investigate by scrubbing backwards and forwards through clips at opportune moments. Players are given cues about when to do this, which are subtle but incredibly effective once you figure them out. Gameplay via exploration of environmental storytelling cues and character acting is highly compelling to me, but some players may find it repetitive or offputting. The key discovery mechanic is communicated at such a subtle, almost-missable level, that when players do discover it, the impact can be quite shocking and fascinating.
• Aesthetics – The visual look and game feel in Immortality are authentic and beautifully designed. The aesthetics in terms of cinematic presentation, costume, sets and dialogues perfectly capture the three eras of Marissa Marcel’s movies in 1968, 1970 and 1999. There’s also quite heavy religious symbolism in places which adds a weird but convincing layer to things, particularly when considering the origins of the story’s most obscure and fascinating characters. There’s a real commitment to the craft of cinema and filmmaking in this game. As a result, it’s easy to forget you’re actually playing a game at times, as you feel so immersed in the archives of footage.
• Technology – Highly innovative use of Unity’s technology to conceal secret footage within clips of other events. This is masterfully done and once uncovered, becomes a real driving force for further gameplay and deeper investigation. It’s also responsive to how players explore the footage, meaning everyone will experience the game differently. The subtle audio and kinetic clues delivered throughout certain moments of gameplay are an additional layer of technological intelligence in this game. These, once realised, give the player an exciting yet disturbing ‘a-ha’ moment, and a new understanding of the game’s mechanics.

ASPECTS OF THIS GAME I’D WANT TO IMPLEMENT IN MY OWN WORK

• Looking at presenting narratives out of sequence and exploring how storytelling can be deconstructed and deployed as a narrative jigsaw puzzle.
• Tightly layered mysteries that interlink to tell a deeper, more delicate and thought-provoking story.
• Richly developed characters that make you examine your relationship with art and its consumption.
• Reframing an interactive experience such as a game and considering how it can be used as a vehicle for investigation in its own right.
• Cinematic elements that feel immersive and draw you in so completely that you feel you’re playing a part in the story.
• Intelligent use of audio and kinetic clues to underpin key moments and messages within the game story.
• Rooting a gameplay experience in a believable reality, whilst incorporating supernatural or fantastical elements.

Summary

I found Immortality incredibly impressive, both from a player perspective and a development one. The level of planning and production that must have gone into the process of making this game is mind-boggling. Turning three entire motion picture scripts into performances and then using those to create a game experience is an unbelievable amount of work and development. The result speaks for itself, in my opinion. Immortality appears to be many different things on the surface, but it’s only by diving deeper through exploration that you discover a much twistier truth. The way this game deploys curiosity as its driving force and central player motivation is amazing. It taps into that deeply-rooted human desire to know more and replicates the irresistible urge to look inside Pandora’s Box, even when we know we really shouldn’t.

This is a truly compelling and at times emotionally challenging gameplay experience, that stops you in your tracks and makes you question yourself. The question I found myself asking was how much I really wanted to know. Did I dare to keep playing, to uncover what truly happened to Marissa Marcel? The more I played, the more I wondered if I was violating her privacy, despite her fictionality. The truth that emerged from within the film footage fascinated and unsettled me, delivering a creepiness that once I got over, I realised was there to make me ask questions and dive deeper into the mystery of Marissa Marcel’s life, even though I grew increasingly wary of doing so.

Immortality is a work of art in multiple ways. Narratively, there’s a lot to learn about the power of non-linearity and how it can be used intelligently to create games that feel like you can’t put them down.