Immortality Review (PlayStation 5)

The cinephile and internet sleuth communities are about to have their entire worlds shaken to the core, thanks to Sam Barlow’s ever-alluring interactive crime drama Immortality making its red carpet debut on PlayStation 5. That’s right, the wannabe star Marissa Marcel is back on our screens for a new season of cryptic teasers and behind-the-scenes preludes and epilogues, which means, if you’ve yet to brush off your pipe and monocle, then you’re about to embrace the toughest mystery of your career yet. Hollywood is knocking, folks — and it wants you, the fledgling home detective, to solve one of its biggest mysteries to ever touch gloves with the Walk of Fame.

Immortality isn’t the first piece of interactive drama to exit the corridors of Sam Barlow’s colorful imagination, nor will it be the last, either, thanks to both Her Story and Telling Lies having naturally long shelf lives and a highly sustainable and organic fan base. But Immortality, even when dressed in all of the same tropes and perplexing elements, somehow hits a little different to its predecessors. Mechanically, it’s pretty much one and the same as its counterparts, but internally, it’s of a completely different species. And that’s putting it lightly.

In the years since Immortality first graced the system, I’ve pondered over the tragic events that led to Marissa Marcel’s eventual disappearance. For years, I too have wondered what might’ve happened if I had discovered a certain secret within the framework of that old repository much sooner. These questions, and a treasure trove of unattainable answers, oddly led me down a rabbit hole in which I couldn’t ever quite escape from back in 2022. To rectify the loss of such knowledge, I decided to return to the hot seat, bound for more intricate details and long-forgotten propaganda.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Immortality asks a very simple question: what happened to Marissa Marcel? Your goal, in a typical Sam Barlow fashion, is to spool through copious amounts of cinematic footage and behind-the-scenes interview material, and thread a timeline of events together to finalize a report and provide a plausible diagnosis. The footage, which comes packed into a total of three movies, features a vast array of hidden scenes, collectibles, and thematic set pieces. As the movie sleuth, you must work your way through the clips, and, with the power of intuition and wisdom, unlock additional clips to complete the narrative.

It goes like this: you have access to a clip—a bite-sized snippet that hails from one of three movies. With the cursor in hand, you must scrub through the frames and identify certain objects, actors, or locations, few of which have the ability to draw you deeper into a cinematic spiral. The endgame, really, is to harvest enough of these objects of attachment, and then decipher the details surrounding Marissa Marcel’s whereabouts and status.

On paper, it all sounds rather straightforward. But, as it turns out, it isn’t. It really isn’t. In fact, the downward spiral that is Marissa Marcel’s career is anything but ordinary, and the deeper you dive, the more likely you are to realize that fact. Immortality is a rollercoaster, clear as day, and it doesn’t exactly hold back on the twists and turns, either.

Where Art Thou, Marissa?

To put you in the picture (literally), Immortality revolves around one subject: Marissa Marcel, an up-and-coming model-turned-actress who, prior to her disappearance back in 1999 (along with the footage from her third movie, Two of Everything), featured in an erotic thriller, and an unreleased crime drama — 1968’s Ambrosio, and 1970’s Minsky, respectively. In a desperate quest to reignite the flame beneath her star status, Marcel re-entered the frame to star in Two of Everything—a movie that, for unknown reasons, never made it out of the cutting room. As a result of this, Marissa flew off the radar, as did the remaining clips from the cache of footage.

Immortality picks up at some point in the distant future — a period in which technological advancements grant users access to superior editing suites and data mining resources. With a whopping 300 clips to locate and structure, you must start from the beginning, and work to unravel the whole daisy chain, so to speak. Easier said than done, mind you, what with there being next to no tutorials to guide you, or blimps to signal that you’re on the right track, for that matter.

Like Sam Barlow’s earlier games, Immortality doesn’t hold your hand, nor does it give you an idea of where to go next or how to even progress further into the sequences. And so, for this reason alone, it’s hard to recommend it to those who’d soon rather delve into a hearty story with a sense of linearity. For those hunkering for a good old-fashioned mystery, however, it can, and often does, tick a sufficient amount of boxes.

Sleuths Unite

Immortality can take anywhere from thirty minutes, to days, weeks, and perhaps even months, to complete, depending on how quickly you’re able to connect the dots and develop the final portrait. For me, I often found that, when it rained, it poured, and that if I was able to pull myself out of the conundrum of not finding anything to relate to, I was suddenly moving in all the right directions. It didn’t happen often, but once the cogs were in motion, the narrative eventually followed suit, as did my hunger to unravel even more of the puzzle pieces.

Similar to Telling Lies and Her Story, Immortality can be approached in a number of ways, none of which will necessarily correlate with other players’ actions. For example, unlocking one scene in particular can often lead directly to the conclusion—a pathway that, to another player at least, might not be found for several or more hours. In my experience, I was able to locate the final pieces of the puzzle before the lion’s share of one of the three movies, which led me to embark on a journey to build a few bridges and knuckle in on some additional context. Did this spoil the overall experience? Perhaps. Even still, it never stopped me from wanting to return to the cache, if only to obtain more information on the case.

What impresses me most about Immortality, really, is its ability to spin a compelling yarn right from the get-go. Thanks to its sequences containing a surprising amount of quality acting and lifelike set pieces, I never once felt like I was playing a video game, but rather spectating a true crime story that, to my knowledge, was entirely based on a real-life scenario. And honestly, not many games can accomplish that.

Verdict

I’m conflicted, truly. On one hand, I love every aspect of Sam Barlow’s latest interactive crime drama — particularly the portions that allow me to connect the dots and chalk up a conclusion of my own understanding. But there are these moments—tedious sections that make the sense of deja vu become a little disheartening and bothersome — especially when such moments tend to recycle themselves dozens of times over without giving any indication of whether or not you’re actually making any progress. Truth be told, I’d be lying if I said that eighty percent of the experience wasn’t made up of such monotonous cycles.

When all’s said and done, it’s difficult to put Immortality into words, as it’s equally as frustrating as it is captivating. For the most part, it provides a thought-provoking experience that’s both emotionally engaging and entertaining at the same time, but that doesn’t mean it’s without its lulls and convoluted tidbits. It’s a difficult one to call, truly, and I think I speak for everyone when I say, it isn’t going to please everyone in the room — especially those without the patience or mental capacity to withstand its non-chronological structure and lack of context.

If you’re looking to submerge into a seemingly bottomless abyss of a virtual cache of clips and interviews, then you’re probably going to get a kick out of Immortality. If, however, you’re not one for getting lost in an endless cycle of ifs, buts, and whats, then you might want to shuffle the deck and seek solitude in an alternative timeline. For everything else — seek Marissa Marcel.