This game is pretty special! Going into this game completely cold, I found the rabbit hole-esque gameplay loop, combing through hours of footage, to be enrapturing. There is a genuine mystery and sense of awe to the first hour of the game as you discover more and more details within each frame and what potential secrets may be lying underneath them.
The ways in which you engage with all of this this lost footage, scrubbing back and forth through scenes, looking for details frame by frame, encouraged me to analyze each film thoroughly and look for connections between each prop, character, actor, or even the themes of each film.
The nonlinear path through which you untangle each films narrative and their production leads to moments of genuinely satisfying discoveries. I found that it was hard not to want to keep notes on scenes for future reference or to mull over the vast amount of information that the game presents, even when I wasn't playing it.
However, I found myself losing interest in the overarching narrative as the game progresses as it never quite fully coheres. A narrative does not have to be conclusive to be satisfying necessarily, but it just loses some of its initial momentum.
Beyond the mystery of Marissa Marcel's disappearance, what I truly found the most engaging and rich part of this game, narratively speaking, is in exploring the production of the films themselves, their dissolutions as the film sets and personnel gradually untangle. A key part of this game is even in examining how film styles have changed so drastically over the past 30 years.
It helps that the look of each film is genuinely impressive, from the gorgeous matte paintings in Ambrosio to the frequent use of split diopter shots in Minsky, the films feel stylistically authentic. Perhaps the films look a bit too clean and digital at the times, especially the footage from Two of Everything, but it doesn't ultimately get in the way.
I loved amassing this collection of fragmented films, behind-the-scenes footage, and interactions between everyone both in front of and behind the camera, just don't expect it all to cohere (and I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way!).
The ways in which you engage with all of this this lost footage, scrubbing back and forth through scenes, looking for details frame by frame, encouraged me to analyze each film thoroughly and look for connections between each prop, character, actor, or even the themes of each film.
The nonlinear path through which you untangle each films narrative and their production leads to moments of genuinely satisfying discoveries. I found that it was hard not to want to keep notes on scenes for future reference or to mull over the vast amount of information that the game presents, even when I wasn't playing it.
However, I found myself losing interest in the overarching narrative as the game progresses as it never quite fully coheres. A narrative does not have to be conclusive to be satisfying necessarily, but it just loses some of its initial momentum.
Beyond the mystery of Marissa Marcel's disappearance, what I truly found the most engaging and rich part of this game, narratively speaking, is in exploring the production of the films themselves, their dissolutions as the film sets and personnel gradually untangle. A key part of this game is even in examining how film styles have changed so drastically over the past 30 years.
It helps that the look of each film is genuinely impressive, from the gorgeous matte paintings in Ambrosio to the frequent use of split diopter shots in Minsky, the films feel stylistically authentic. Perhaps the films look a bit too clean and digital at the times, especially the footage from Two of Everything, but it doesn't ultimately get in the way.
I loved amassing this collection of fragmented films, behind-the-scenes footage, and interactions between everyone both in front of and behind the camera, just don't expect it all to cohere (and I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way!).