Note: This article contains a small number of non-key plot spoilers.
This article is the review content of Sam Barlow's new work "IMMORTALITY" creator of "Her Story" and "Telling Lies". If you want to briefly understand the work and its creators, you can also read our forward-looking article: Interview with Sam Barlow: From "Her Story" to "Immortal" .
Suspense
Known information about Marissa Marcel's incident:
Name: Marissa Marcel
Gender: Female
Nationality: France
Year of birth: 1951
Occupation: Model, actor
Main events:
0In the late 60s, Marissa moved to London to work as an advertising model.
1968, she filmed a soap commercial. Two months later, he stood out in the casting meeting held by famous director Arthur Fischer for his new film Ambrosio and got the chance to play the leading actress. In the same year, the movie "Ambrosho" was completed, but the film was not released publicly.
1970 Marisa starred in the movie "Minsky", directed by John Durick, who served as photography director in the movie "Ambroshew". However, due to an accident, Minsky interrupted filming, and Marissa then chose to retire.
In 1999, Marisa made a comeback and starred in the movie "Two of Everything" directed by John Doolik, which was also not completed. From then on, Marisa completely disappeared from the public eye.
2020, some clips of the three movies, as well as some behind-the-scenes footage, are back in the light of day. Sam Barlow and his studio Half Mermaid collected and organized the video materials for future generations to study.
An actress who had a long-lasting future but suddenly disappeared, three movies that have never been released, the combination of the two is enough to arouse infinite reverie. Every player who first enters "Immortal" will be quickly brought into this immersive atmosphere. Sam Barlow left three suspense at the beginning of the game: What stories do the three movies tell? What happened to Marisa Marcel? Where did she end up going?
With these questions, I started this ten-hour exploration journey. Thanks to Half Mermaid Studio for providing media review opportunities, and hope this article can provide reference for interested players.
"Ambroshew" (1968)
FMV's new and old
and Barlow's previous works. "Immortal" is also a full-motion video (FMV) game. In an interview with Barlow by indienova, he explained why he chose to develop FMV games since becoming an independent producer. He watched a lot of real interrogation videos to develop a detective game, and he suddenly realized that it was a good idea to use the video clips themselves to make games. “In fact, it wasn’t until the game (Her Story) was finished that I realized it was an FMV game,” Barlow said.
"Her Story", which was released in 2015, has had a significant impact on the gaming industry. Since then, Barlow hopes to continue the development ideas of this game. The second game in 2019, "Lying", inherits the gameplay of the previous work, but its reputation did not meet expectations. The core gameplay of the two games
is to use players to input keywords to unlock video clips. Compared with the first two works, "Immortal" has introduced a new mechanism, which Barlow calls "exploration by match cut". This does not mean that players want to process video clips in the game like movie editors, but rather, by identifying specific objects in the picture, jumping to another image based on the type or shape of the object, to unlock all clips and uncover the mystery of the game.
If the player chooses to recognize the mirror here, he will jump to another image containing the mirror or similar object
is not only a specific object, but also the face of the character will be the player's focus of identification.What’s more interesting is that in the same image, as the characters change their expressions and angles, the system will jump to different images after being recognized, which greatly stimulated my desire to explore. After the game of
begins, players will start exploring with an interview with Marisa Marcel. Marisa told the host that "Ambrosho" has been successfully completed and the next movie "Minsky" is in preparation. I believe that every player who first comes into contact with "Immortal" will be a little confused - because during the game, players have to shuttle through three movies, these clips spanning more than 30 years, and they include both movie shots, rehearsal images and other behind-the-scenes images. The production team provides two image sorting modes for this, one in the order of the movie scenes and the other in the actual shooting time order, so that players can sort out the plot and hidden details of the movie.
If you are a face-blind player, you don’t have to worry about the game experience being greatly reduced. Because the system automatically records identified characters and objects, players can review these characters by switching to image display mode—be sure to pay attention to the relationship between certain characters, which may become the key to solving puzzles.
image display mode also implies that the so-called "match editing exploration" in "Immortal" is essentially an image-based keyword search, but the innovation of this search mode is not small. During my time playing Immortal, I always subconsciously compared it to Barlow's previous work. Taking "Her Story" as an example, all the lines of the heroine are processed in text. Whenever the player enters a keyword, the system will display video clips containing the word (up to five are displayed at a time). The disadvantage of this setting is that some players can quickly find the core video clip after several attempts, which greatly weakens the suspense of the game. Among the four icons on the left side of
, the first one can switch the image/image display mode, and the second one can switch the order of movie scenes/shooting time.
But "Immortal" avoids this embarrassment. Not only is the one-to-one jump method that has kept the game suspense to a large extent, but the number and average length of the game's video clips have also been greatly improved, which makes it easier for players to discover the truth. In "Immortal", there are nearly 200 unlockable clips for players, and coupled with the largest team of actors in the studio's history, it has become Barlow's most ambitious work at present.
The overall atmosphere created by "Immortality" is also commendable. Players seem to be facing an ancient movie editing machine and watch these clips from the editor's perspective. Players can press the left and right arrow keys to scroll the film back and forth and switch the playback speed, and can also check each shot frame by frame. However, don't understand this function as a simple fast forward and fast regression. When scrolling the film at some special moments, you may have some unexpected discoveries...
Love Letter to the Movie
The first movie in the game, "Ambroshew", is adapted from the work of the 18th-century British Gothic novelist Matthew Gregory Lewis (The Monk, 1796). Introduction to the preface of the Chinese translation of in 2002: "Gothic novels were popular in Britain at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. They mostly use medieval ancient castles or monasteries as the background, describing unusual stories such as murder and persecution caused by satisfying personal lust or fighting for property, and have strange and tense plots."
The background of "The Monk" is set in a monastery in Madrid in the 16th century. It tells the story of the young, handsome and knowledgeable monastery Ambroschurch step by step towards depravity. The novel is full of elements such as violence, incest, murder, etc. Lewis made an unprecedented bold description of lust and beastly behavior in British popular novels. "Ambroshe" is a nominal adaptation, but it is just a complete copy of the plot of "The Monk", and the scale of the movie can be imagined. Not only are violence and pornography everywhere in the movie, but what is more shocking is that the movie also boldly depicts the blasphemy of the Catholic faith.
1968, when "Ambroshew" was born, on the eve of the United States' transformation from "Production Code" to film rating system, this wonderful year may hint at its fate. There are many accusations of censorship and other hindering the artistic behavior of movies in the game, and players will accidentally discover it during the game.
1970's "Minsky" and 1999's "Pairs" are slightly smaller in scale, the former is based on the death of an artist, and the latter tells the story between a female star and her stand-in. In addition to the heroine, some characters from the crew of "Ambroshew" also appeared in the latter two works. The
game also points directly to the problems in the movie circle without any hesitation. The production team portrayed the director Arthur Fisher, who looked a bit similar to Hitchcock , into a greasy middle-aged man with a dirty joke. Fisher hopes that the actress will be "bold" on the set, the better, but he is not the initiator of all dirty things. When playing, please pay attention to every line of the characters in and out of the play, as it may make you extremely scared.
"Immortality" is a tribute to the art of film. Half Mermaid Studio draws development inspiration from a large number of movies. They not only reviewed the transformation of the film industry from the traditional studio model to the new Hollywood model in the 1970s, but also wanted players to recall the generation influenced by the golden years of films at the end of the century. Barlow said: "From Ambroshew to Minsky, we really see the tension between the new and the old." When I jumped between the three movies, I could clearly feel the changes of the times: Ambroshe uses a 1.37:1 academic format, while later films have become the more mainstream formats today. In addition, countless movie easter eggs can be captured from posters, plot settings to actors’ names and appearances. If you are a movie and game enthusiast, Immortal is undoubtedly worth trying.
More importantly, I not only saw the game's tribute to the film culture, but also was moved by the hidden content buried deep by the production team. I think there will definitely be people who are confused about the title of the game. I believe that players who have played the game will have a deeper understanding of "Immortality".
"Minsky" (1970) Why is
immortal?
In 1895, in front of the cameras of the Lumier brothers , people walked out of the factory gate one after another, and this moment became the beginning of the century-old history of light and shadow in mankind. A website that collects and organizes the film information of Lumiere said that the original version of " Factory Gate " filmed in March 1895 has been lost, and the three versions that can be seen are subsequent reshoots and are released on DVD/Blu-ray. No one knows who the people in the movie have surnames, but they stayed in the world in this way and were commemorated by all mankind.
2021 During the Beijing Film Festival, I went to see the "Introduction to Anthropology" by Japanese master Imamura Masahei . The film was originally planned to be filmed, but due to the poor quality of the film, the screening was interrupted several times, and the museum was forced to use digital screenings in the middle. The above two examples show that the film as the "body" of the movie is decayable, and the only way to save it seems to be to let it enter the digital kingdom of heaven to gain eternal life.
2021 Beijing Film Festival screening accident
But the problem is, are the numbers necessarily immortal? If everything digital requires a basic material carrier, then we have reason to doubt this seemingly indisputable conclusion. Scholar Jiang Yuhui quoted Nadia Bozak's view, saying that behind the appearance of digital lightness and transparency is an extremely large and complex "body" form. People often tend to ignore the industrial background behind movies. "Movies and TV, as industries, rely on natural resources, and therefore will have an impact on the world of life-physical." Although
is suspected to be necessary, at least for a long time, it seems a bit unfair to worry about whether the numbers themselves are immortal. On the contrary, the things carried by numbers themselves are more worthy of attention.When the fictional actress Marisa Marcel appears in front of the world with fragmented images, she is somewhat similar to the digital "living dead" depicted by Liu Yukun in "The Remnants of Singularity", but her thoughts and consciousness have been frozen in these images forever and cannot give us additional feedback. If they are all the information Marisa Marcel left to the world, can we think without doubt that she is immortal?
Overall, playing Immortal was a magical experience, and I saw how Barlow and his team explored the fusion of movies and games using FMV as a carrier. Regarding the name of the game, Barlow explained, “We take creating art and storytelling as ways to achieve immortality. Even if we leave, what we create will continue to exist.” Although I cannot predict the future, I am sure that Immortal is a somewhat special existence in today’s gaming world. From this perspective, they have turned their expectations into reality.
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