After Immortality, Sam Barlow Is Thinking About 3D Game Development Again

ign.com:

Despite key credits on franchises like Silent Hill, Serious Sam, and Legacy of Kain, for the last decade Sam Barlow has been mostly known as that guy that makes the “FMV games.”

Barlow went indie in 2014 and published Her Story the following year before forming studio Half Mermaid and releasing Telling Lies and 2022’s Immortality. With all three, Barlow took a very different approach to video game storytelling — filming scenes with real actors and playing with variations on central mechanics that have the audience searching for information through hours upon hours of footage.

For this, Barlow and Half Mermaid have received numerous awards and accolades, with Immortality nominated three times at The Game Awards for best performance, best narrative, and best game direction respectively.

I spoke with Barlow the day after The Game Awards, who said he went “all out” with Immortality — which leaves him “slightly scared” to consider what he and Half Mermaid might follow it up with.

“Does that mean I have to raise the stakes more?” he says. “Is there an expectation that you keep- Which is the thing where everything always falls apart, right? Like you'll see season one of a show. I remember really loving 24; the first season of 24 was great. And then every season after that they were like, ‘Oh, we need more. Bigger, crazier sh*t.’ And it just lost everything.”

I ask Barlow what, independent of audience expectations, would make him happy to create. But he replies: “It's never about being happy.”

“The initial stage [of development] is always really fun,” he continues. “The research stage, and just getting an excuse to sit and read lots of books during the day when I'm awake…That's really fun. But sometimes, I mean, it was Warren Spector