A strong concept that often struggles to get out of it's own way. The idea here is wonderful; you're initially drawn into the mystery, but the open ended nature of the game means the delivery of the narrative can feel clunky and confusing. At least it felt that way for me. I have ideas of What's Really Going On in Immortality, but to test or prove those ideas would require sitting through a dozen or so hours of stuff that doesn't really matter. Maybe that isn't the biggest hurdle. Immortality is well acted and, I think, well written. At least the dialogue keeps you interested (again I can't really comment on the overarching story). But we live in a world where I can type "Immortality important scenes" into Youtube and get everything I'm searching for directly in front of my stupid face.
Really it's a failing of mechanics more than anything. You're encouraged, I think, to click on everything that'll lead you to a new clip, so you're constantly pausing, searching, then jumping to a new clip. If you want to continue watching the scene you were just watching, you have to navigate through a menu of all the clips you were just watching. This navigation can take upwards of 5 seconds, and when you're jumping upwards of 20 times per clip, it really takes up a long ass time. It's frustrating because there are very simple things that could've been done to prevent this: give the player an option to disable the auto jump, indicate to the player if they're going to jump to a clip they already have, make it easier to go backwards to the clip you were just in. Instead, Immortality feels like a game that doesn't want you to be fully explored. I got to the end credits with an Idea of What's Going On, but to really get the full picture I'll have to force myself through impervious mechanics (or I can just watch a 10 minute youtube video). And mAyBe ThAt'S tHe PoInT and I simply don't understand art, to which I'd counter by saying see me in the streets.
Really it's a failing of mechanics more than anything. You're encouraged, I think, to click on everything that'll lead you to a new clip, so you're constantly pausing, searching, then jumping to a new clip. If you want to continue watching the scene you were just watching, you have to navigate through a menu of all the clips you were just watching. This navigation can take upwards of 5 seconds, and when you're jumping upwards of 20 times per clip, it really takes up a long ass time. It's frustrating because there are very simple things that could've been done to prevent this: give the player an option to disable the auto jump, indicate to the player if they're going to jump to a clip they already have, make it easier to go backwards to the clip you were just in. Instead, Immortality feels like a game that doesn't want you to be fully explored. I got to the end credits with an Idea of What's Going On, but to really get the full picture I'll have to force myself through impervious mechanics (or I can just watch a 10 minute youtube video). And mAyBe ThAt'S tHe PoInT and I simply don't understand art, to which I'd counter by saying see me in the streets.