Full-motion video (FMV) has allowed video games to incorporate realistic images into their stories almost from the start. Pre-recorded videos allowed real people to appear in LaserDisc arcade games in the ’80s, but such games were prohibitively expensive to make for home systems — and difficult to fit on a floppy disk. Most games relied on sprites and models to visualize their action, and as the graphics got better there was little need for FMV. However, some games relied on the appearance of real human actors in their fictional environments, sometimes to increase veracity and sometimes to increase shtick.
FMV never really disappeared, and the recently released Immortality, from veteran designer Sam Barlow and Half Mermaid Productions, shows how games can use these pre-recorded videos to increase immersion and bring their stories to life. Here are five games for players who loved Immortality and looking for their next FMV title or just wanting to see what’s possible with the genre.
Solve a murder with her story
2015’s Her Story was Sam Barlow’s first foray into movie editing video games. It provides players with an old-fashioned computer interface, complete with a recycle bin, readme files, and a simple version of Other way around. The mainstay of this computer-in-a-computer, however, is a database of police interrogation footage. Players must search the database for keywords to discover full interviews and solve the crime.
The Similarities Between Her story and Immortality are immediate – short movie clips of real people (the FMV part of the game) presented out of sequence, ghostly images and even dropping the player into the game with little direction. Although the story is not as compelling as Immortality‘s, the play style is still interesting and the focus on the player’s confidence to develop his own story makes Her story worth a play.
At Dead of Night offers horror and immersion
A popular 2020 horror game developed and published by Baggy Cat Ltd., In the dead of night Drop players off at a creepy hotel and put them on the run from its murderous owner. As players run through the hotel and hide from the owner, they talk to ghosts to learn their ghost stories and track them down throughout the building. What makes In the dead of night so immersive (and terrifying) is the first-person POV and the seamless blending of FMV with the interactive environment. It really feels like the evil owner is stalking players, and getting caught feels really dangerous. In the dead of night provides Immortality fans with a different take on what FMV can bring to games — a different kind of horror and immersion.
Enjoy the early FMV of Return to Zork
If the text-adventure game Zork is often considered a standard and origin of interactive fiction, its 1993 sequel Return to Zork helped bring that genre into the graphics world. Return to Zork is an adventure game in the truest sense of the word, which takes players to the fictional world of Zork and asks them to investigate the sinister power that seems to have taken over the land. Players must interact with sometimes ridiculous FMV characters to progress and collect items and information to help them on their journey. Return to Zork is a showcase of early FMV that doesn’t feel fully interactive, but certainly brings to life the colorful characters of the fantastical world.
The 7th guest helped make FMV mainstream
Same year as Return to Zorkplayers also got the chance to wander through an FMV haunted house in The 7th guest, solve puzzles and learn what happened to the ghosts of the mansion. The game offers simple mechanics and puzzles that are not always integrated into the story, but were hugely popular in its time as one of the games (along with Myst) to accelerate the sales of CD-ROMs and the transition to the new format . What The 7th guest offers modern players a fun integration of FMV characters, played in an immersive environment with reduced coverage to increase the spookiness. It is an early example of FMV horror and forms the basis for a title like Immortality.
Simulacra brings FMV horror to your phone
However, modern FMV games are not limited to consoles and computers. Phone Game 2017 Simulacra, from Kaigan Games, recreates a mobile phone interface of a missing woman, Anna. Players chat with Anna’s friends via SMS and Twitter and Tinder stand-ins, and discover some unsavory relationships in her past in the hopes of finding out what happened to her. She also has to hack into her personal accounts and recover passwords by searching other apps for important dates and names.
Simulacra it ends up being a really immersive and fun puzzle/text adventure, but every now and then the phone glitches and hints of something far more horrifying begin to surface beneath the mystery. Simulacra will feel familiar to fans of Immortalityboth to allow players to interact with images of a missing woman and also to reveal the creepier secret that lurks behind the truth.
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