In Immortality, The Story Is Not The Story And The Game Is Not The Game

thegamer.com:

It took me a long time to understand Immortality. In theory, it should be the perfect game for me. A slow burn narrative whose core audience is people who like movies and are perhaps a little too proud of that fact? This game was made for me. Add in the fact a few of the earliest critical analyses suggested protagonist Marissa Marcel might be so named in honour of another enigmatic MM movie star, and I was all in. Initially though, it didn't quite work for me. Manon Gage, who plays Marcel, is a fantastic lead, but she doesn't have much of Monroe in her, while the game's core concept of piecing together what happened to Marcel's movies felt a little dull, like we were supposed to be impressed by how technically interesting the whole thing was. After a while, I realised the point of the game was not the point of the game at all.

In a world where gaming often mimics cinema, Immortality pulls off a devilish trick by being actually cinema, and becoming far more of a game as a result. The main story features Marcel's three movies - Ambrosio, Minsky, and Two of Everything. Made across three decades, the movies were never released, and Marcel curiously never seems to age. By watching random clips and clicking around (selecting a mirror takes you to another random scene with a mirror, clicking Marcel to a scene with Marcel, and so on), you uncover what the movies are about. That is how the game was sold to me. That, even for someone who loves film, is dreadfully boring.

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The movies are not difficult to suss out. Ambrosio is the tale of a corrupt priest who falls for one of his nuns (Marcel). That's kind of everything the movie is