Immortality, the new cinematic mystery from Her Story creator Sam Barlow, is delayed

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Immortality, the upcoming "interactive movie trilogy" from Her Story and Telling Lies creator Sam Barlow, has been delayed. It had been slated to arrive later this month—July 26, to be precise—but Barlow said on Twitter today that the launch has been delayed until the end of August.

"Today we're pushing back the release date for Immortality to August 30 2022," Barlow tweeted. "It has taken decades for Marissa Marcel's work to find the light of day, so we're happy to spend a month more to ensure the experience is as polished as possible.

"We hope everyone anticipating the game will understand this necessary evil and continue to prepare to dig into the most complex mystery we have tried to answer yet: What happened to Marissa Marcel?"

Immortality is mechanically similar to Barlow's previous games, in that players will dig through archival footage in order to discover the truth behind a dark mystery. But it's a much bigger undertaking than those games: Barlow said in 2020 that Immortality, which was then known only by the code name Project A███████—was going to be "ten times more ambitious" than Telling Lies, and it also makes use of newer and more advanced technologies: Barlow discussed Immortality's use of "match cutting" earlier this year at the PC Gaming Show—you can learn more about that in the trailer above.

"The idea is to make you feel like you're in the edit suite, sorting through these lost movies, making discoveries," Barlow said at the time. "Like you're in the guts of the movie. In general we're trying to get you closer to the feel of a film before it's finished. And the match cut mechanic is about trying to capture the magic of the cut—the core magic of a movie—and put that in your hands."

To help followers make it through this difficult time, Barlow shared a handful of new screens from Immortality. You can see them all in a gallery below—click the icon in the bottom-right corner of the images to get a look at them full-size, and maybe pick out some pre-release clues while you're at it.

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.