I Thought There Would Be More To Immortality's Match Cut System
Immortality is a wonderful game. The latest FMV title from Half Mermaid and Sam Barlow, creator of Her Story and Telling Lies, is innovative, unsettling, and captivating. It's a huge step forward from Barlow, who wildly expands the scope from his previous games, to include a sprawling cast acting in three radically different movies. It's great, and you can read as much in my review. But, the one thing I was most excited about as I followed Immortality pre-launch, is a bit of a disappointment.
The trailer shown at this year’s PC Gaming Show contained a screen which read, "Match cut your way into mystery," before showing off a few examples of the mechanic in action. The player clicks on a cross necklace, held right side up, and the camera zooms in on it, then zooms out to reveal a different cross, facing the same direction, assembled from Polaroids. The trailer does a similar thing with its characters, zooming in on Marissa Marcel, turned to the right, and transitioning to another shot of her where she is also turned to the right.
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Basically, I’m finding the use of the term "match cut" and the examples selected for the trailer to be a bit misleading. A match cut, in film, is a transition from one shot to another shot with a similar composition. For a famous example, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, an ape throws a bone into the air, it rotates through the sky, and as it begins to come down, director Stanley Kubrick cuts to a satellite in space. The satellite, like the bone, is positioned in the center frame. It has a long, straight shape, like the bone. And, Kubrick cuts to it at the moment that the trajectory of the bone's rotation would reach the same angle the
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