I love mysteries. I love trying to figure out a puzzle, to look for details in everything, connect the dots, and finally figure out the pattern that connects it all. I also hate mysteries. The truth is illusive. You can dig and dig and dig some more and find nothing but dirt, the gold you're looking for is so far away still. It can be so frustrating to bang your head against a wall to try and find something that you can’t be sure is even there. Part of what makes the truth so illusive is that it's hard to even know what you're looking for. Our only metric for what we know is what we know. The experience of being human, living in our society, and seeing through a very specific lens all obfuscate the truth. Even when we find things that may be true, how do we know they're not just shadows on the wall?
Plato talks about this in the Republic. While I'm sure most people know about the analogy of the cave, Plato's divided line is also fascinating. In Book VI, Plato asks us to imagine a divided line. At one end of the line, there is the “Form of the Good.” This is the thing that gives form to all other things. We could even call this the truth of everything. It is the core of all existence. On the other end, we have reflections, or shadows. These are things that are not real, but illusions. They seem to be the opposite of the truth. Human knowledge starts on the shadow side, and moves towards the side of the good. As we move along the line, we quickly find the things that cast the shadows. We get closer to the truth. We can move even further, though to find the next segment takes longer. We get to abstract thoughts. The mathematical equations of the things around us. A square has equal sides, the equation for the circumference of a circle. Things of that sort. This is where language starts to fail us. As we move further and further down the line, the act of describing the good obfuscates the good. Human language is just a shadow of the good. It is an illusion meant to point to the good, but it cannot fully encapsulate what that good is. Eventually, you will reach the form, if that is even possible.
We can see how similar this is to the analogy of the cave. The shadows on the wall, the fire casting the shadow, the tunnel out, and eventually, we find the outside world and the sun. These act as a road map. If you want to find the truth, follow this path. This seems like a good example on how to find truth in anything. Take mysteries. By piecing together bits of information, the shadows start to disappear. You take abstract bits of information in order to make a signpost that points to the truth.
That's the idea, but something about this feels incomplete to me. True, we may get closer to the truth, but why? Why should we want to leave the cave? Why do we want to walk the divided line? I think we can find the answers in a game about truth.
Immortality (2022) by Half Mermaid is one of the best games ever made. In it, your goal is to figure out what happened to filmmaker and actor Marrisa Marcel (played by the fantastic Manon Gage). To do this, you match-cut across hundreds of clips of film that span the scope of 3 feature length films. These live-action scenes are amazing. Each film represents a different era of filmmaking, showing the true skill of all the actors, cast, and crew. As you dig through the fiction, the story starts to build in your head, and as is the case with most mysteries, things are not as they seem.
This is where I will place a spoiler warning. I will not spoil any story beats, but there is something that happens when you first start looking that is an absolute joy to discover on your own. When you find this thing (one of many) the game really opens up. I would highly recommend giving it a go before continuing, at least until the thing happens. (the game is playable on Netflix for mobile, Xbox Game Pass, and PC). Note: be sure to read the content warnings, there are definitely some upsetting things in the game, and WOW so much nudity.
Spoiler time.
As you sift through the footage, you'll hear some distortions in the sound (or feel a rumble if you are using a controller). When you go back to check on these, the scene changes, either with one or more of the characters replaced, or with an entirely different scene. The main person we see in these scenes is called The One (Charlotta Mohlin). She is most likely the first hidden character that you will see here. The second is called The Other (Timothy Lee DePriest). These two characters and their scenes hold the real truth with them. When you find enough footage with them in it, the real mystery reveals itself. You get closer to the truth, and you find that Marrisa Marcel is nothing but a shadow dancing on the wall.
The thing with Immortality is that you never know how close you actually are to the truth. As you find more and more scenes with The One, things slowly start to make sense, you definitely get closer, but having seen the credits, I can't say for sure that I know what this story is about. I mean, I know what it's about. The problem is that I can't describe to you what that is. I can understand what it is saying to me, but I can't put it into words. I will try my best here though. Immortality is a game about art. Art, at its core, is an attempt to talk about abstract ideas, feelings, and truth by attaching images, words, and sound to them. Ultimately, the game is about what happens to you when you chase that goal, and the cost of succeeding. It is a game about chasing the truth, and how and why we do it.
Think back to the divided line. As we get closer to the form of the good, words start to hold less meaning, or are less able to accurately describe the form. As we get closer, we could start to approximate it with numbers, but even that fails eventually. No matter how hard we try, we will encounter the same issues, we keep trying to use language to describe something so abstract that language cannot encapsulate it.
The One gives us the truth, or it might be more accurate to say that The One points us to the truth. As we get closer to finding out what happened with The One and The Other, we inch closer to the truth. But that truth only drops hints, it calls to us from the top of the cave, urging us to keep looking for it. Eventually, The One can't be trusted to point us to the truth anymore, we have to rely on the camera. We need to rely on what we see, and what those things are in relation to each other. Eventually though, even this starts to fail. We dig, and though we match-cut things we are sure we haven't inquired into, it brings us to a clip we've already seen. It shows us something that we already know. It points us back down the cave. It points us back down the line. All of the information you have seems to be failing, the images and words fail to bring you closer to the truth.
This is frustrating. You know that you are on the edge of a breakthrough. You know that you need just a few more scenes, just a little bit more dialogue and you will understand things better, but the more you know, the harder it is to find something you don't. But that's the point, isn't it? The truth, while incomplete, is still growing inside of you. The point of finding truth, the point of searching so hard for something, digging so deep into something to find the core, is that it changes you along the way. Immortality shines when it gives you a piece of the truth, and you let that piece mean something to you. It does not want you to search for the truth without taking it with you. This is what I find valuable about Immortality. While the Cave and the Divided Line give you a goal, a map with road markers, Immortality shows you how the journey along that map changes you. How, while aiming for a goal is important, the experience of finding it is hold just as much weight.
When you reach the end of the Cave, you are greeted by the sun. It warms you in a way that you never have been warmed before, and knowing what it took to get you to the surface, it all seems worth it. When you reach the end of the divided line, you find the form of the good. You see how everything comes from it, and how everything is in it. When you reach the end of Immortality, you find the truth. You realise that every clip you watched, every secret you found, and every object you match-cut were exactly what you were looking for the whole time. They are the truth, and they are a part of you now. When you find the truth, you find yourself.
By Lucas Hackl