Half Mermaid has essentially created three fictional films, all of which are period pieces. I can’t overstate how mind-bogglingly ambitious the project is. Within 30 minutes, I’d discovered nearly two-dozen video clips all packed with nuances worth studying.
While it’s a little overwhelming at times, the game fortunately makes an effort to organize clips for players by laying out discovered footage in a handy timeline. I found myself hopping between clips at a quick pace without fully watching each, likely missing important details. It’s much easier to get lost in Immortality than, say, Telling Lies, another Barlow game. That goes for people too, as players can click on an actor’s face and seamlessly swap to another clip via a “match cut.” Tap a script sitting on a table and you’ll jump over to another clip where that script appears on-screen.
Rather than typing in keywords to discover new footage, players click on footage itself. Was he present at any table reads? Did he say anything suspicious while on the set? Is there a double meaning behind some of his scripted lines or am I just reading too deep into it? There’s a lot more brainwork involved than simply listening for important lines.īecause of that, Immortality features a much different gameplay setup than Barlow’s previous titles. Soon, I’m in a rabbit hole trying to figure out who the mystery man is and where else he shows up in Marcel’s life.
In one clip, I catch two actors smooching on the set after the director has called cut. One-off lines and simple body language become major clues. Players need to separate moments of filmed fiction from on-set reality. All the dialogue directly pertained to the investigation, so it was easy to piece together. In that game, players looked through police interviews with a murder suspect to solve a criminal case.
It’s much more subtle than something like Her Story. 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. Marcel had three starring roles to her name between 19, but none of those films saw the light of day. Immortality centers around Marissa Marcel, an actress who has mysteriously vanished. It’s a staggering interactive experience that I can’t stop thinking about days after playing it. 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.
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