Immortality is the 10th game of UUGPGC year 2. Finish by May 22. Spoilers open!

SPOILERS NOW OPEN!

Prior message

Welcome to the Unsanctioned Unofficial Game Pass Game Club. Our 10th game of 2023 is Immortality. The target completion date is May 22, 2023.

We ask that until that date you use the forum software to mark any spoilers, either story based or mechanical, in the discussion below. Ideally the bulk of the discussion will occur after May 22, but if you want to comment before then you are welcome to so long as the spoilers are marked. We ask that if you leave a comment before that date you also come back to the thread after it to read other people’s comments and respond to them, though of course we cannot force you to do so.

All are welcome to participate regardless of whether you have stated a preference to or not and there is absolutely no commitment. You do not have to finish the game to participate but please let us know if you have not.

You are also free to come back any time after the completion date and share your thoughts! This club is meant to be open to all whenever you want to join in the fun!

You can find out more about the Unsanctioned Unofficial Game Pass Game Club or suggest future games for it here.

What is Immortality?

A supernatural take on the Sam Barlow FMV game formula previously seen in Her Story and Telling Lies.

How long is Immortality?

How long to beat lists it as 6 hours long.

Cool. Very interested to read about other people's experience with this one with how divisive the game is.

I played this last year within the first couple of weeks of release. For the first two hours, I thought the game was a shoo-in for my 2022 top 10. Pretty much as soon as you run out of exploration, it gets pretty frustrating and tedious. There are also many thematic problems (some of which Jess has covered), while other themes (that I found more interesting) were left underexplored. Being as vague as possible here to avoid spoiling anything, but it ended up being one of my least favorites last year.

If you ever feel like playing certain games in front of a partner or roommate makes you look like a pervert, I advise playing this one alone. That wasn’t my experience but I know it’s been discussed on this site before.

Spoilers now open! Spoil away! I'll be wading in a little later with my thoughts but it seems like there were some beavers who were eager to start the conversation!

I didn't actually finish the game, but I did watch Jacob Geller's video about it (which I thought was great) even though I personally didn't enjoy the game. I bounced off hard from it, which I found odd as it's a really impressive piece of production and I really enjoyed "Her Story".

However, I think the biggest issue I encountered with it was brought up on the Waypoint podcast as well, where the non-linear nature of the game design can radically change people's perspective of the overall story. I was enjoying exploring the old films, but some of my first "ghost" encounters were images of the Others as clear biblical figures, coupled with the title, it really felt like amateurish storytelling. Lots of presentation and pomp of the desire to immortalize yourself through the art you create regardless of the costs, finding humanity through artist pursuits, yada yada yada. Very Narrative 101 storytelling which didn't have the depth I was hoping for because it never really felt like it had a strong overall point to make about it. It just felt like a reflection on the creation of art as opposed to having a clear point.

As for the T&A bits, I'm a bit torn. Hollywood certainly has a major problem with the exploitation of women and their bodies, but again, I never felt like there was a strong point being made about. It's possible I missed certain scenes that addressed it more in-depth, but it felt like it was really just doubling down on the main problem instead of addressing it in a meaningful way.

I think you hit the nail on the head here. The game really feels like a conversation starter but has little to say on its own. That's why I loved my early experience so much, both from a gameplay and narrative perspective. But hours 2-6 really didn't introduce anything new for me, other than figuring out the mystery of the two deaths that happened during the second and third movies. I noted it in my review of the game, but there are other things within "Hollywood treats women like shit" theme that begged to be explored, which the game only teased.

I appreciate the open-ended exploration angle to the clips (and absolutely love that you can "solve" a great portion of the mystery in the tutorial clip they give you before you know what you're doing). There's just a lack of polish on the clip-hopping, which becomes incredibly frustrating later on when you're trying to close loops rather than get as many clips as possible. Also, I don't know how anyone would play without a controller, which meant some players would just have a worse experience regardless of their life situation and/or preference.

I hate being a "pops up anytime this game is mentioned" downer, but I felt more disappointed by this game than anything I can remember in the last several years. It had so much promise, and I think if someone with a better directorial vision had guided it, it could have been really special.

I spent 9 hours with the game. I spent about 8 of those trying to get a surface level understanding of any of the layers of plot, then it ended itself suddenly soon after that with no resolution at all. Maybe if it was a more guided experience, I could have understood it more, but I just got lost in it.

I agree with most of what's been said here. I liked Her Story a lot, appreciated Telling Lies, and I think I flat out don't like this game. I think the switch to a click interface hurts it a lot because you don't feel like you're putting clues together to come up with important phrases or ideas, you're just chasing threads and they never, ever, lead anywhere. Even when you get to some big revelation there's no great way to pursue it other than to click on a random character or object and just hope the randomizer is friendly.

It's also just not a lot of fun to watch movie clips of bad movies out of order, and even the "true" revelation clips tend to be abstract and not lead anywhere specific. So while there are clever mechanics and at the beginning the game feels like it has a lot of potential, it ends up just being one giant search for...it's not even clear what and it grows monotonous. You're watching all these clips, many of which are boring, and the performances are good but everything is static and dialog heavy. It's like watching all the boring talky parts of genre films.

I guess I kind of appreciate what they were going for but I wish they would pare way back and go back to the Her Story style, or something more like it. These games are getting too fancy and losing the plot. If you want to make movies make movies.

In terms of the actual thematic material around exploitation etc...yawn. It's important stuff but it's been done better in many places and this game has nothing that I can tell to say about it. It feels as shallow as the shallow movies it is making fun of in its own way.