Immortality is Barlow’s most ambitious, experimental project yet. Having now armed players with the knowledge and experience necessary to navigate labyrinthian, video-driven mysteries, he’s ready to push the concept further. Throughout Immortality, you’ll strive to better understand actor Marissa Marcel, uncover the circumstances behind her disappearance, and piece together the contents of three movies which she filmed but were never released for public consumption.

The mysterious life of Marissa Marcel

Key Info

Game Immortality
Developer Sam Barlow
Publisher Half Mermaid
Platforms PC
Release 2022

Much of Barlow’s work has been driven “by this idea that you could take a lot of the elements of a traditional video game (challenge, expression, exploration) and apply them to video.” Those elements would manifest in weird and wonderful ways through Her Story and Telling Lies. 

Simple interactions with a database of recorded clips – fast-forward, rewind, pause, play – seemed to tap into a subconscious, voyeuristic curiosity. Who are these people, encaged behind a camera lens, and what can our incessant clicking reveal about their lives – who they are, what they have done, and what might they do next? Barlow wants us to ask similar questions in Immortality, but the answers won’t be bound to a database in quite the same way.

“We’re using this as an opportunity to radically change how someone might experience a movie. In the way that Her Story deconstructed a detective story, we’re deconstructing cinema. Part of that is trying to craft an experience, interface, and mechanics that give you the same proximity to physical film that, say, an editor might have. I think all my games in this fashion have been about unpacking a neatly packaged story and pulling players back into the creative process side-by-side with me.”

Barlow is drawn to making another mystery game because “there’s not a lot of pyrotechnics or epic battles in a mystery, just lots of characters and questions… the mystery story is always special to me because it’s upfront about the player’s interest. All stories are interested in who did what, how, and why they did it. But the mystery story is interesting because it makes room for the player explicitly to be part of that question.” 

“This is perhaps why the vast majority of story-driven video games are mysteries. Silent Hill? Bioshock? Gone Home? Super Metroid? You show up after the fact and have to figure out what the hell went down. They’re all pretty much detective stories. I’m most interested in getting inside character’s heads and a good mystery is all about that.”

We’ll peer into Marcel’s head via uncovered on-set footage of her filming three movies thought to be lost or otherwise destroyed. Little is known about the actor, but we do know the films we’ll be exploring. 1968’s Ambrosio, a gothic thriller, which should have marked the on-screen debut for Marissa; 1970’s Minsky, written specifically with Marcel in mind, a thriller reflecting the artistry in love and loss; and 1999’s Two of Everything, a subversive thriller exploring the duality of a pop star and her body double. Three films, two directors, and one actor whose history is shrouded in mystery. 

“We thought it’d be amazing if we could figure out an interactive format that would let players themselves explore the footage and formulate their own ideas as to what had happened,” says Barlow. We’ll be interested in the wayward celebrity’s story because of “the fact that there was so little documented, that there were hardly any photos or footage of her; how her movies were lost, how she had also disappeared,” he says, adding, “we’re so used to everything being exhaustively documented online that this had a real air of mystery to it.”

Rather than focusing the lens of the camera on one character or a small ensemble, the driving force will be the live-action footage shot to mimic three distinct eras of cinema, as we’re handed an “amazing treasure trove of footage from Marcel’s movies” to pour through. Given the scope, it makes sense that Barlow would want to bring outside writers in to help craft this interwoven story: Allan Scott (Don’t Look Now and Queen’s Gambit), Amelia Gray (Mr. Robot and Maniac), and Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart and Lost Highway). 

As for how something as singular as Immortality will be received, Barlow is confident that players will vibe with it. “We were slightly nervous about whether gamers would be as interested in digging into this stuff from an earlier era, but seeing how people reacted to Wandavision this year was reassuring. Jumping through those different decades of television really reminded me of how it feels to look at these different movies. It’s a fascinating lens for thinking about movie making over the second half of the twentieth century. But at its heart, there’s this mystery that pulled me in in the first place – what happened to Marissa Marcel?”

All throughout January, GamesRadar+ is exploring the biggest games of the new year with exclusive interviews, hands-on impressions, and in-depth editorials. For more, be sure to follow along with Big in 2022. 

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Like with Her Story before it, developer Sam Barlow has found a way to keep you tumbling down the rabbit hole. All you’ll know – and trust me, you’ll want to know – is that a woman called Karen has obtained a cache of secretly recorded video conversation that she’s able to view on her computer at home. The entire UI is designed like a desktop PC (or modified to look slightly more mobile UI-like for iOS devices), which lets you click around a few apps and notepads, even play Solitaire if you want, although the clock is ticking on your time to access the files. Telling Lies’ presentation is similar to the one seen in Her Story, but this time it’s less formal and far more intimate. 

Fast Facts: Telling Lies

Release date: August 23, 2019
Platform(s): PC, Mac, iOS
Developer: Sam Barlow

Each clip is just one side of a conversation, which means you’ll find yourself clicking through video after video in Telling Lies in an attempt to figure out a) who each character is talking to and b) what they’re talking about. Just as you’d expect, each of the five video clips you are initially presented with only raise more questions than answers, pushing you to move from video to video by searching for keywords that you think are going to present more facts and, as a result, more pieces of the story. The words or phrases you search for are matched specifically to the language used in the video, so the more narrow your search, the better. Finding a particularly interesting keyword can send you on a long trail of video clues, putting you one step closer to having all the pieces to the overall puzzle. 

You’re dropped into each video right at the point that the word or phrase is spoken, usually bookended by chunks of idle chatter on either side. You can then drag back and forth to move through the video footage, subtitles flashing up to remind you that there are potentially more clues to be found. I found it slightly frustrating that you couldn’t just skip to the start of a video to watch the whole thing and find the keywords in context, rather than having to slowly rewind through several minutes worth of recordings. But, when you’re dropping yourself into these people’s lives, it feels like taking time to really study them is part of the process. 

Part of their world

Because you’re only ever watching one side of the conversation, silences linger like unfulfilled promises. The brilliance of the actors – which include Logan Marshall-Green (Prometheus, Spider-Man: Homecoming), Alexandra Shipp (X-Men Apocalypse), Kerry Bishé (Argo) and Angela Sarafyan (Westworld) – mean you can always tell the kind of person they’re talking to just from the silences alone, which helps piece together the fragments of the linear story that beats below the fragmented video clips. Because the majority of these videos are from 1-2-1 video calls, or conversations recorded without the subjects’ permission, the content is nearly always of a personal or intimate nature. In the moment, it feels as if you are a part of these conversations, and it feels like the character on the screen is speaking to you directly, waiting for you to respond – or to at least figure out how these characters and stories piece together. 

It forces you to play a role in this unfolding narrative. You move between voyeur, to detective and sometimes an awkward third-wheeler, hastily scrubbing through footage that absolutely wasn’t meant for my eyes – for any eyes. Whether it’s camgirl conversations or someone enjoying some ‘personal’ pleasure, I regularly felt incredibly uncomfortable while viewing, like I was an intruder in private exchanges. Not uncomfortable enough for me to stop playing, of course; I’m deep into theories and notes by this point and can’t stop watching even if I wanted to. 

But that quiet and unsettling feeling you get from playing Telling Lies is all a part of the experience. After all, these are illegally obtained videos from the NSA, and you’re not meant to be watching them. You’re playing as Karen, and you’re often reminded that you’re not only working against the clock, but also against the system itself. The presence of Karen’s reflection in the computer screen only helps sells the sense of pervading voyeurism. Occasionally music starts playing in her apartment, a half-naked man wanders across the shot, and later he reminds you that it’s late. But you’ve not got long, someone obviously knows you’re watching this and figuring it all out, and there’s a sense of urgency to each of your searches. 

Like Her Story, the deeper you dive into the files made available to you, the harder it gets to find new information. I start to feel frustrated when, no matter what keywords or phrases I input into the search bar, I’m presented with a selection of videos that I have already seen. But then, later when I feel like I have all the pieces of the story together, I stumble across something new and I’m off falling headfirst into yet another rabbit hole. It’s somehow simultaneously totally organic and beautifully paced. Sam Barlow has another masterpiece on his hands. 

A ticking clock

What I also love about Telling Lies – bar its beautifully told story that I couldn’t possibly go into here in any detail whatsoever – is that it is a finite piece of storytelling.

I feel like I have been returning to Her Story for years now and still there are some pieces of the puzzle that I’m yet to slot into place. With Telling Lies, because there’s a time limit on your access to this footage, your time with it will eventually come to end – not that I’m going to tell you how quickly that’ll come around, as the pervading sense of panic underlying Telling Lies is all a part of the fun of playing it. 

But, what I will tell you, is that as the credits roll, it’s obvious that I’ve not yet found all the videos. Knowing that, as you get fed a report post-credits, is like a little thorny seed that plants itself in your brain. As someone who has dreamt about Telling Lies’ characters, as I attempted to put together all the pieces, you can imagine what it feels like to know you may have missed out on some key piece of information. But thankfully, you can dive straight back in again, rewinding time after you’ve watched the credits to the minutes before the ending to make sure you’ve unearthed everything that you can. 

So leave me now, to gather the last fragments of these characters’ lives; to fall in love with them, chastise them, and befriend them as I have done for the past six or so hours. I’ll still have that uncomfortable feeling gnawing at my wrist as I slide the mouse to the search bar over, and over, again to uncover the last few videos, but Telling Lies is nothing if not rewardingly moreish. It’s a game that stays with you, and through the medium of its storytelling manages to make you as much a part of the voyeuristic, privacy-invading problem as the entire game tries to take apart. I’m still thinking about Telling Lies, and will be for years to come. Or at least, every time I walk past a security camera, or make a voice call. 

The Verdict

4.5

4.5 out of 5

Telling Lies

Telling Lies is a paragon for storytelling, for character arcs that surprise you and linger on long after the credits – and videos – have ended.

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