This review contains spoilers
It's been a long, long time since a game has disappointed me as much as this.
This game starts out phenomenally. The effort put into making the footage feel old and from its era is incredible, the mystery is intruiging, the acting is stunning, I had a strong desire to make sense of the clips and the greater narrative, the game clearly sets up some sinister undertones about the sexualisation of women in film and the abuse that goes on behind the scenes in that industry and I was prepared for a very subtle treatment of that where the difficulty of uncovering what had happened to Marissa was a ludological parallel to how stories of abuse are swept under the rug. The one big issue from the very beginning is that the player has no control over what clips they will get. Initially, I thought this disconnectedness was the point, and was expecting to be required to pay close attention to the clips.
Sadly those mechanics never build towards anything. Eventually you realise that the object-matching mechanic has very inconsistent interpretations of what it will take you to, and that you actually don't have to figure anything out in this game except for how to find the rewind clips.
The first time you rewind and discover a secret clip is an excellent moment. It's unexpected, disturbing, and raises a lot of questions. My first hypothesis was that Marissa had somehow hidden footage documenting her time between 1970 and 1999 in the newly discovered tapes so that people could discover the truth about her trauma-induced mental breakdown or something.
Unfortunately the true answer is not nearly as grounded as that. It's all supernatural bullshit! Turns out Marissa is not a human with motivations who can be empathised with but a creepypasta with the ability to possess people and make them die or something, also she's Eve from the bible or something and Jesus is here and there were no grounded human reasons behind Carl's murder it's just "The One" killing "The Other One" and...
Honestly I very rapidly stopped caring at this point because once this game reveals this, you suddenly realise that this is no longer a game about discovering what happened to Marissa Marcel, this is now a game where you repetitively fast-forward through clips until you hear "the noise" and then watch an actress with way too much gel in her hair look into the camera while spouting metaphors that just explain the message and themes of the game to you.
Even worse, these messages and themes are incredibly asinine. There are two currents to the concept of "artistic immortality" here, the first being the interesting relationship between abuse and forms of media that allow that abuse to be infinitely replayed for the rest of time, the second being the incredibly trite observation that art allows people to 'live' beyond their death. Unfortunately the game seems far more interested in the latter of these to have any developed exploration of the former. The game ends with "The One" stating that she is "part of you" now, which interpreted literally within the game is basically a creepypasta ending where the game is possessing you now!!! but interpreted non-literally I'm not pretentious enough to interpret as anything more than the basic truism that art affects people... wow, so deep!
I have nothing inherently against surrealism or ambiguity. I do not think that art needs to be realistic to be meaningful. This game evidently attempts to trade in it's coherence for some deeper meaning and all I can say is that it was not worth it. I hate the heavy-handed metaphors of this game, I hate it's incredibly shallow reflections on the nature of art. I hate people looking into the camera, I hate "meta". No, I don't care how "Lynchian" it is, it's not deep and it's not interesting. I don't want to sound too hateful but some of the word-salad I've seen written on this game is downright embarrassing. When you strip it all away this game has shockingly little of substance.
I guess I feel so strongly negative about this because I was so in love with the opening hour or two before the big twist, they had the potential to do something really subtle here but instead it's a game that almost wants you to feel like an idiot for taking it's premise seriously. At the start of the game I was interested in learning about what happened to Marissa Marcel, by the end I realised my true answer to that question is "I don't care".
This game starts out phenomenally. The effort put into making the footage feel old and from its era is incredible, the mystery is intruiging, the acting is stunning, I had a strong desire to make sense of the clips and the greater narrative, the game clearly sets up some sinister undertones about the sexualisation of women in film and the abuse that goes on behind the scenes in that industry and I was prepared for a very subtle treatment of that where the difficulty of uncovering what had happened to Marissa was a ludological parallel to how stories of abuse are swept under the rug. The one big issue from the very beginning is that the player has no control over what clips they will get. Initially, I thought this disconnectedness was the point, and was expecting to be required to pay close attention to the clips.
Sadly those mechanics never build towards anything. Eventually you realise that the object-matching mechanic has very inconsistent interpretations of what it will take you to, and that you actually don't have to figure anything out in this game except for how to find the rewind clips.
The first time you rewind and discover a secret clip is an excellent moment. It's unexpected, disturbing, and raises a lot of questions. My first hypothesis was that Marissa had somehow hidden footage documenting her time between 1970 and 1999 in the newly discovered tapes so that people could discover the truth about her trauma-induced mental breakdown or something.
Unfortunately the true answer is not nearly as grounded as that. It's all supernatural bullshit! Turns out Marissa is not a human with motivations who can be empathised with but a creepypasta with the ability to possess people and make them die or something, also she's Eve from the bible or something and Jesus is here and there were no grounded human reasons behind Carl's murder it's just "The One" killing "The Other One" and...
Honestly I very rapidly stopped caring at this point because once this game reveals this, you suddenly realise that this is no longer a game about discovering what happened to Marissa Marcel, this is now a game where you repetitively fast-forward through clips until you hear "the noise" and then watch an actress with way too much gel in her hair look into the camera while spouting metaphors that just explain the message and themes of the game to you.
Even worse, these messages and themes are incredibly asinine. There are two currents to the concept of "artistic immortality" here, the first being the interesting relationship between abuse and forms of media that allow that abuse to be infinitely replayed for the rest of time, the second being the incredibly trite observation that art allows people to 'live' beyond their death. Unfortunately the game seems far more interested in the latter of these to have any developed exploration of the former. The game ends with "The One" stating that she is "part of you" now, which interpreted literally within the game is basically a creepypasta ending where the game is possessing you now!!! but interpreted non-literally I'm not pretentious enough to interpret as anything more than the basic truism that art affects people... wow, so deep!
I have nothing inherently against surrealism or ambiguity. I do not think that art needs to be realistic to be meaningful. This game evidently attempts to trade in it's coherence for some deeper meaning and all I can say is that it was not worth it. I hate the heavy-handed metaphors of this game, I hate it's incredibly shallow reflections on the nature of art. I hate people looking into the camera, I hate "meta". No, I don't care how "Lynchian" it is, it's not deep and it's not interesting. I don't want to sound too hateful but some of the word-salad I've seen written on this game is downright embarrassing. When you strip it all away this game has shockingly little of substance.
I guess I feel so strongly negative about this because I was so in love with the opening hour or two before the big twist, they had the potential to do something really subtle here but instead it's a game that almost wants you to feel like an idiot for taking it's premise seriously. At the start of the game I was interested in learning about what happened to Marissa Marcel, by the end I realised my true answer to that question is "I don't care".