I can’t stop thinking about Immortality, 2022’s most ambitious game

digitaltrends.com:

There are plenty of games coming out this summer that are worth getting excited about. RPG fans will have their hands full with Soul Hackers 2 and Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Saints Row will look to hold Grand Theft Auto fans over as they continue to wait for its far-off sixth installment. And of course, Stray is looking to melt hearts with its cat-centric gameplay.

The most exciting game of the summer, though, is one you may not have heard of yet. Immortality is the latest project by Half Mermaid Productions and Her Story director Sam Barlow. Like Barlow’s previous works, it’s a narrative game where players scour a database of full-motion video (FMV) clips to solve a mystery. The difference is that players aren’t looking through police interviews and surveillance footage; they’re diving into lost movie footage that spans decades.

Based on a demo I played at Tribeca Fest, Immortality is not only shaping up to be Barlow’s most ambitious work to date, but perhaps the most impressive FMV projects ever. It’s a staggering interactive experience that I can’t stop thinking about days after playing it.

Immortality centers around Marissa Marcel, an actress who has mysteriously vanished. Marcel had three starring roles to her name between 1968 and 1999, but none of those films saw the light of day. The game gives players access to a wealth of footage, from dailies to rehearsal clips to filmed table script reads, which they can scrub through to try and find clues about her disappearance.

It’s much more subtle than something like Her Story. In that game, players looked through police interviews with a murder suspect to solve a criminal case. All the dialogue directly pertained to the investigation, so it was easy to piece together.