Quien mucho abarca poco aprieta, y aquí la mecánica de Her Story no funciona tan bien al querer hacerlo todo más grande (más personajes, más localizaciones, más tramas...).
No está mal, sobre todo gracias a un buen reparto, pero resulta más agotador que su predecesor y para los completistas como yo resulta algo frustrante lo inabarcable que es todo (yo tenía intención de completarlo al 100% pero me acabé rindiendo).
No está mal, sobre todo gracias a un buen reparto, pero resulta más agotador que su predecesor y para los completistas como yo resulta algo frustrante lo inabarcable que es todo (yo tenía intención de completarlo al 100% pero me acabé rindiendo).
Genuinely have no clue why the ratings are all over the place for this game, I get the feeling many people jumped in, didn't "get it" immediately and then shelved it.
Telling Lies is Sam Barlow's second big venture into his crusade to keep FMV alive in the 21st century, the first being mystery game Her Story. Telling Lies is a much, much bigger game than Her Story that retains the same basic structure: A search engine that brings up segmented video clips of a singular subject speaking directly to camera, limited to the top five results.
Her Story centered on one woman, one mystery, and one throughline, while Telling Lies claims to juggle four characters, though it's a bit more complex than that. It centers on one man, and his descent into this dark pit of lie after lie after lie as he tries to maintain several different relationships between a startlingly strong ensemble of actors.
While a bit unfocused and bloated at times, Telling Lies still supplies suspense, thrills, heartbreak, and great performances in heavy, heavy supply.
I only hope that Sam Barlow's next project can continue this momentum he's built up to this point.
8/10, would waste another hour on a rigged game of Solitaire
Telling Lies is Sam Barlow's second big venture into his crusade to keep FMV alive in the 21st century, the first being mystery game Her Story. Telling Lies is a much, much bigger game than Her Story that retains the same basic structure: A search engine that brings up segmented video clips of a singular subject speaking directly to camera, limited to the top five results.
Her Story centered on one woman, one mystery, and one throughline, while Telling Lies claims to juggle four characters, though it's a bit more complex than that. It centers on one man, and his descent into this dark pit of lie after lie after lie as he tries to maintain several different relationships between a startlingly strong ensemble of actors.
While a bit unfocused and bloated at times, Telling Lies still supplies suspense, thrills, heartbreak, and great performances in heavy, heavy supply.
I only hope that Sam Barlow's next project can continue this momentum he's built up to this point.
8/10, would waste another hour on a rigged game of Solitaire
The plot was too easy to figure out which made the game too easy
Amazing game, however
holy shit
the rewind is so slow with no additional speed options... just one... really... really... slow speed...
but it is definitely a really neat followup to "Her Story" which I truly loved a lot as well.
holy shit
the rewind is so slow with no additional speed options... just one... really... really... slow speed...
but it is definitely a really neat followup to "Her Story" which I truly loved a lot as well.
Interessante modo di raccontare una (in realtà molteplici) storie, in cui la scelta del percorso da seguire è totalmente in mano allo spirito investigativo del giocatore. Il gameplay loop è semplicissimo: cerca un termine nel motore di ricerca, ottieni i video che hanno quel termine nel dialogo dei protagonisti, vedi il video e ripeti da capo.
Peccato per la mancanza di un sacco di feature che avrebbero reso più godibile l'esperienza:
Un pulsante per far partire il video dall'inizio invece che dal punto in cui dicono la parola cercata. Un modo per visionare entrambi i lati di una conversazione in contemporanea una volta che vengono scoperti entrambi).
Al netto di ciò la trama funziona, proprio in virtù del fatto che venga scoperta dal giocatore in maniera autonoma. Allo stesso tempo ho il sospetto che chi non riesca a scoprire il "finale" entro il tempo limite rimarrà deluso da una storia che sembra non andare da nessuna parte.
Peccato per la mancanza di un sacco di feature che avrebbero reso più godibile l'esperienza:
Un pulsante per far partire il video dall'inizio invece che dal punto in cui dicono la parola cercata. Un modo per visionare entrambi i lati di una conversazione in contemporanea una volta che vengono scoperti entrambi).
Al netto di ciò la trama funziona, proprio in virtù del fatto che venga scoperta dal giocatore in maniera autonoma. Allo stesso tempo ho il sospetto che chi non riesca a scoprire il "finale" entro il tempo limite rimarrà deluso da una storia che sembra non andare da nessuna parte.
Un nuevo episodio vouyeur de Sam Barlow que, si bien no es tan rompedor como su anterior juego, Her Story, sí que parece una evolución con más recursos que este.
Telling Lies is a "detective game at heart." Telling Lies is a game where the story isn't told in a linear fashion. The story is told via the player watching pre recorded video clips of conversations between various characters. The player has to uncover the video clips by typing keywords into a search engine on a simulated computer. It's up to the player to piece the story together and the game definitely doesn't hold the players hand in that process.
Personally I felt like the game was carried by the casts strong acting performances. The acting wasn't over the top, and I was captivated by the mystery of uncovering exactly what happened to each character and their ultimate fate.
I played Telling Lies via Xbox Gamepass on my Series X and I think my only gripe with the game was that l probably would have enjoyed it more if I used a keyboard instead of my controller to type in the keywords I was searching. If you enjoy games that require you to think and put your detective skills to use this is probably a game I would recommend to you. It's on Gamepass so you really don't have anything to lose. I enjoyed my time with it. If you're familiar with the game "Her Story" this game is its successor.
Personally I felt like the game was carried by the casts strong acting performances. The acting wasn't over the top, and I was captivated by the mystery of uncovering exactly what happened to each character and their ultimate fate.
I played Telling Lies via Xbox Gamepass on my Series X and I think my only gripe with the game was that l probably would have enjoyed it more if I used a keyboard instead of my controller to type in the keywords I was searching. If you enjoy games that require you to think and put your detective skills to use this is probably a game I would recommend to you. It's on Gamepass so you really don't have anything to lose. I enjoyed my time with it. If you're familiar with the game "Her Story" this game is its successor.
Cool concept, but too hard to follow for me. Felt like I had ADD for 3 hours... although, maybe I do?
Too slow and awkward.
I'm always interested by fmv games so I decided to download this when I got game pass. I think it's an interesting game with how it's structured but it didn't overly feel satisfying to play. I would at sometimes get intrigued during my 2 hour playtime but it would be hard to find out more from a specific plot point so I'd just click around randomly. I am happy though I never felt like there was nothing to do except from the start were I was completely lost. I'd recommend if you have game pass as it is around 2 hours but it didn't stand out as anything special to me.
Completed with 100% of achievements unlocked. Picking up on this as we approach the release of Immortality, as a follow-up to Her Story, Telling Lies once again has a strong concept at its core, casting the player in a detective role, presented with a database of short video clips from which to figure out the circumstances leading up to a crucial – but initially unknown – event. Each clip shows us one side of a video conversation primarily involving four core individuals, with the other side of the conversation also recorded. The challenge comes from the limited manner in which the database can be interrogated, with searches referring to the words spoken in each clip, but only ever returning a maximum of five results.
The underlying ‘mystery’ is an interesting one to figure out and the detective approach ensures a strong level of engagement (it’ll be hard to make progress if you’re not following the events/discussions) and the acting is of a good calibre. However, in practice overall it’s not as strong as might be hoped, as the one-sided view that we get of each discussion can become somewhat frustrating to try to follow (though I know that this is, at least to an extent, by design) and there are often long periods of silence as the other participant is speaking. There’s also a fair amount of ultimately fairly trivial videos, as well as unnecessary interface frustrations such as the inability to quickly start a clip from the beginning (by default, the clip starts playing from the queried words). The presentation here is more polished than Her Story and sees some quality-of-life improvements, but they’re not able to offset some of the negatives inherent in the concept – the ability, for example, to pair up conversations – only once you’ve located both within the database, to maintain the challenge – would be a great help, for example!
The underlying ‘mystery’ is an interesting one to figure out and the detective approach ensures a strong level of engagement (it’ll be hard to make progress if you’re not following the events/discussions) and the acting is of a good calibre. However, in practice overall it’s not as strong as might be hoped, as the one-sided view that we get of each discussion can become somewhat frustrating to try to follow (though I know that this is, at least to an extent, by design) and there are often long periods of silence as the other participant is speaking. There’s also a fair amount of ultimately fairly trivial videos, as well as unnecessary interface frustrations such as the inability to quickly start a clip from the beginning (by default, the clip starts playing from the queried words). The presentation here is more polished than Her Story and sees some quality-of-life improvements, but they’re not able to offset some of the negatives inherent in the concept – the ability, for example, to pair up conversations – only once you’ve located both within the database, to maintain the challenge – would be a great help, for example!
Just played Solitaire the whole time ngl
Played on PS5 via PS Plus
Also Available on PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S and PC
Playtime: 6 Hours
Completion Date: August 5, 2022
No Spoilers
Telling Lies is a narrative focused adventure game developed by Sam Barlow and Furious Bee and it's published by Annapurna Interactive. It's a very interesting, new concept. It was first used on Her Story, the previous game of Sam Barlow and this game is the continuation of it in terms of gameplay. Stories are not connected.
I normally talk about the story and characters of a game first, but in order to talk about them, i have to tell you about the gameplay so we are doing gameplay first. In Telling Lies, you are playing a mysterious character. You have a PC and on it, there is a system called Retina.
This system has 170 videos about a case. But you can't see these videos at first. In order to see them, you need to search a word. When you search that word, the system will find all of the videos that includes that word. It will then put them in a chronological order and will show you the first 5 videos.
And let's say the word you searched for is in the last sentence spoken in the video. You will start there and watch until the video ends. In order to see the earlier parts of the video, you need to search for a word that is used in those earlier parts.
The purpose of the game is to find as many videos as possible and solve the case. In your head. The game automatically ends after watching 30-40 videos but you can and you should get back to it to get at least most of the videos if not all of them.
You will watch videos, take key words from them and you will search them to find more videos or find earlier parts of the same videos. This is the only gameplay style of the game. In the first 2 hours, i was in love with it. But after that, it became repetitive.
This gameplay idea is great and it works good as well. But this shouldn't be the only gameplay style. They should add a little bit more to it. Maybe some dialogue options? QTE's? Not sure. Her Story was much shorter than Telling Lies. This being the only gameplay maybe made sense for that game. But it doesn't make sense for a 6 hours game. 6 hours to 100%. Understanding the main plot points will take 3-4 hours average.
I liked the gameplay, but it's repetitive. What about the story. I really really liked it. Except the ending. I did not liked the ending. I can't tell much about the story. Because the game is about finding key words and i would give you those key words if i talk about the story but as the title suggests, there is a lie in the game.
There are actually multiple lies. And we watch different lives getting destroyed because of the lies and love of a man. Let's get to characters. Again, i can't tell you the names of the characters because every name you hear in the game is worth the search. But I can say this.
There is a man and 3 women. These 4 are the main characters of the game. They are also the 3 main stories of the game. They are all connected in some ways but for the majority of those stories, they are 3 disconnected stories. I loved one of these. I liked the other one. And i hated the third one. The third story is so weird. It's like unfinished. If there is a cut content in this game, i am sure it's about that storyline.
Everything happened too fast and that story came to an end very quickly. We were talking about the characters right? Let's not forget that. Our main character, the man is played by Logan Marshall-Green. He carries the game. Developers asks a lot from him and he does all of it beautifully. Very deep character, very three dimensional, it was fantastic to learn about him.
Alexandra Shipp plays in the story i loved. Her chemistry with Marshall-Green was fantastic. And she did a great job playing her character. She was also very three dimensional. Not as much as Marshall-Green's character but that's understandable. He has 3 times the screen time of Shipp's character.
Kerry Bishé plays in the story i liked. Her role was hard to play. Maybe the hardest after Marshall-Green and i thought she did a good job. Some scenes could have been better, yes. But this is also very good.
Angela Sarafyan plays in the story i hated. I don't think it's her fault that i hated the story. It's because the emptiness of the character. I really think this storyline might have been added just to distract and confuse people about the other two storylines. It's so different, so disconnected. Even when it connects to the others, it doesn't work. I don't know, i really hated this storyline.
In the end, Telling Lies is a good beta for this new gameplay formula. If Her Story was alpha, this is beta. It's bigger and bolder. Now i hope that the next game that uses this gameplay, will be the full thing. Gameplay is repetitive and the ending is not good. But the story, characters and the performances are solid. Especially Logan Marshall-Green. Wow. Just wow.
He was snubbed at The Game Awards 2019. Not even a nomination for best performance. I think he should have win it. And yes i know, Mads Mikkelsen. Mads had like an hour of screen time. And he did nothing just like every movie or show he stars in. Not his fault but people really love to cast him and not use him. This review is going to different places, ok.
Play it, it's good. But not great. Available on PS Plus Extra. Have a great day.
Also Available on PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S and PC
Playtime: 6 Hours
Completion Date: August 5, 2022
No Spoilers
Telling Lies is a narrative focused adventure game developed by Sam Barlow and Furious Bee and it's published by Annapurna Interactive. It's a very interesting, new concept. It was first used on Her Story, the previous game of Sam Barlow and this game is the continuation of it in terms of gameplay. Stories are not connected.
I normally talk about the story and characters of a game first, but in order to talk about them, i have to tell you about the gameplay so we are doing gameplay first. In Telling Lies, you are playing a mysterious character. You have a PC and on it, there is a system called Retina.
This system has 170 videos about a case. But you can't see these videos at first. In order to see them, you need to search a word. When you search that word, the system will find all of the videos that includes that word. It will then put them in a chronological order and will show you the first 5 videos.
And let's say the word you searched for is in the last sentence spoken in the video. You will start there and watch until the video ends. In order to see the earlier parts of the video, you need to search for a word that is used in those earlier parts.
The purpose of the game is to find as many videos as possible and solve the case. In your head. The game automatically ends after watching 30-40 videos but you can and you should get back to it to get at least most of the videos if not all of them.
You will watch videos, take key words from them and you will search them to find more videos or find earlier parts of the same videos. This is the only gameplay style of the game. In the first 2 hours, i was in love with it. But after that, it became repetitive.
This gameplay idea is great and it works good as well. But this shouldn't be the only gameplay style. They should add a little bit more to it. Maybe some dialogue options? QTE's? Not sure. Her Story was much shorter than Telling Lies. This being the only gameplay maybe made sense for that game. But it doesn't make sense for a 6 hours game. 6 hours to 100%. Understanding the main plot points will take 3-4 hours average.
I liked the gameplay, but it's repetitive. What about the story. I really really liked it. Except the ending. I did not liked the ending. I can't tell much about the story. Because the game is about finding key words and i would give you those key words if i talk about the story but as the title suggests, there is a lie in the game.
There are actually multiple lies. And we watch different lives getting destroyed because of the lies and love of a man. Let's get to characters. Again, i can't tell you the names of the characters because every name you hear in the game is worth the search. But I can say this.
There is a man and 3 women. These 4 are the main characters of the game. They are also the 3 main stories of the game. They are all connected in some ways but for the majority of those stories, they are 3 disconnected stories. I loved one of these. I liked the other one. And i hated the third one. The third story is so weird. It's like unfinished. If there is a cut content in this game, i am sure it's about that storyline.
Everything happened too fast and that story came to an end very quickly. We were talking about the characters right? Let's not forget that. Our main character, the man is played by Logan Marshall-Green. He carries the game. Developers asks a lot from him and he does all of it beautifully. Very deep character, very three dimensional, it was fantastic to learn about him.
Alexandra Shipp plays in the story i loved. Her chemistry with Marshall-Green was fantastic. And she did a great job playing her character. She was also very three dimensional. Not as much as Marshall-Green's character but that's understandable. He has 3 times the screen time of Shipp's character.
Kerry Bishé plays in the story i liked. Her role was hard to play. Maybe the hardest after Marshall-Green and i thought she did a good job. Some scenes could have been better, yes. But this is also very good.
Angela Sarafyan plays in the story i hated. I don't think it's her fault that i hated the story. It's because the emptiness of the character. I really think this storyline might have been added just to distract and confuse people about the other two storylines. It's so different, so disconnected. Even when it connects to the others, it doesn't work. I don't know, i really hated this storyline.
In the end, Telling Lies is a good beta for this new gameplay formula. If Her Story was alpha, this is beta. It's bigger and bolder. Now i hope that the next game that uses this gameplay, will be the full thing. Gameplay is repetitive and the ending is not good. But the story, characters and the performances are solid. Especially Logan Marshall-Green. Wow. Just wow.
He was snubbed at The Game Awards 2019. Not even a nomination for best performance. I think he should have win it. And yes i know, Mads Mikkelsen. Mads had like an hour of screen time. And he did nothing just like every movie or show he stars in. Not his fault but people really love to cast him and not use him. This review is going to different places, ok.
Play it, it's good. But not great. Available on PS Plus Extra. Have a great day.
Eu sla o que a Annapurna queria com isso, saber que os finais são determinados pelos vídeos que tu viu em geral é meio meh
É interessante ainda sim o jeito que é contado seja lá o que tu quer saber
O jogo tem trama de tudo, é só caçar o vídeo na RETINA, gostei muito do plot da Michelle
Presumo que a ideia não era necessariamente contar uma história, mas mostrar a obsessão do jogador em caçar informações pífias e mínimas a custo da própria liberdade e tempo, uma vez que tu tem acesso a privacidade alheia e pode descobrir os segredos mais obscuros e sujos das pessoas, mesmo que seja algo normal como outra filha ou até mesmo a morte de um espião que foi calar o bico de uma prostituta
A trilha sonora é pika, uma pena que eles meio que fizeram ela dinâmica então quando tu não acessa um novo vídeo fica um baita silêncio no jogo
É interessante como isso consumiu muito do meu tempo quando eu tava jogando de boas, e foi tranquilo quando eu só fui miletar
É interessante ainda sim o jeito que é contado seja lá o que tu quer saber
O jogo tem trama de tudo, é só caçar o vídeo na RETINA, gostei muito do plot da Michelle
Presumo que a ideia não era necessariamente contar uma história, mas mostrar a obsessão do jogador em caçar informações pífias e mínimas a custo da própria liberdade e tempo, uma vez que tu tem acesso a privacidade alheia e pode descobrir os segredos mais obscuros e sujos das pessoas, mesmo que seja algo normal como outra filha ou até mesmo a morte de um espião que foi calar o bico de uma prostituta
A trilha sonora é pika, uma pena que eles meio que fizeram ela dinâmica então quando tu não acessa um novo vídeo fica um baita silêncio no jogo
É interessante como isso consumiu muito do meu tempo quando eu tava jogando de boas, e foi tranquilo quando eu só fui miletar
I love the idea of them finding an archive of all my zoom calls over the last few years. In this, Tesco Value Tom Hardy's records depict his self-destructive obsession with his job, the brutal rage that lives beneath the surface of his "I'm just an old-fashioned nice dude" demeanour and how both destroy the lives of those around him. If you looked at my records, you'd find me and my buddy having a heated argument about our personal fruit squash tier lists and witness me trying to line my interactive background up so it looks like I'm standing next to Alvin and the Chipmunks. Sam Barlow's probably dropping everything to draft up a Telling Lies 2 right now.
Everyone in the Telling Lies universe sleeps with the lights on.
Enjoyed Her Story plenty when I played it on Steam a few years back. Enjoyed this spiritual sequel a little less, and it's easily the weakest game in the Annapurna collection so far. That's a bummer, because the scope and idea here are fairly ambitious! Like in Her Story, gameplay consists of entering search queries into a database and watching video clips that contain certain words or phrases. So in one sense you're just watching little fragments of a six-hour movie out of order. The problem is twofold. One, most of the clips are just one side of a two-way Skype or Facetime conversation, which means every time you find a five-minute clip, about two and a half minutes of it are silent reaction shots. I'd have appreciated the option to merge the two sides of any given conversation together upon finding a pair! Alas. And two, the entire point of the game is just to unravel what exactly is going on and how the various characters interact. Once you get the gist of the story, the entire rest of the game is just fleshing out details and filling in gaps, many of which aren't particularly compelling. It's cool that games like this exist and they make for interesting experiences, but the well already feels somewhat dry for this particular Sam Barlow game type.
Annapurna already convinced me with 'Her Story'. The new story, with the old game principle, is wonderfully well written. The plot can be reconstructed well and the video search system is unique. However, it was rather agonising to fast-forward the video clips because the keyword appears in the middle of the video. This was time consuming - time I could have spent elsewhere. However, I was aware of the risk and only immersed myself in the game to explore the story. And that's what makes this game great! The story writers have done a great job and with small changes like a timeline, the game experience would not suffer from the brilliant storytelling.
I'm not sure what I can say about this one.
This felt much more than Her Story, there's multiple sets, many more characters and more story threads to chase down.
And as it's set more recently than Her Story (which just uses a fixed camera in an interview room), there are different types of camera being used liked mobile phones, webcams. It makes the game feel more lively and more real. My wife wanted to know if they game had just come out as it seemed weird to her that the characters were video chatting this much (are they all in quarantine?).
The interface is more modern too, though beyond the astethics there's not too much different. You can bookmark and now tag clips. Probably the biggest difference is that you get very long clips, sometimes 8-10 minutes long versus the very quick chunks in the previous game. But weirdly you only get that person's side of the conversation (if it's a web chat) and need to find the other person's side of the conversation to understand the full clip. There's no option to play two clips at the same time, which would have been handy when you find the matching clips. Instead if one of the characters goes on a bit of a monologue you'll need to fast forward through the other character nodding and eyebrowing.
It took me a while to realise this though. I'd often hit keywords at the end of a clip and not understand that I could rewind it. It's a shamne that there's not a "Play from start" option.
I think the mystery and aha moment in Her Story was much more impactful than here. I feel like there's supposed to be a couple of twists in this one but the first one I got to maybe far to early, so it wasn't so much an "Aha" moment as "oh right, so".
But while the story isn't as clever, it feels more relevant to things that are happening now... so...
One part was quite shocking (I suppose two parts are), but the way at least that I moved through the clips I always could follow the story, so that's good right?
I dunno, I'm a sucker for these and so your mileage may vary, but if you liked Her Story, then I can't see why you wouldn't like this one too.
This felt much more than Her Story, there's multiple sets, many more characters and more story threads to chase down.
And as it's set more recently than Her Story (which just uses a fixed camera in an interview room), there are different types of camera being used liked mobile phones, webcams. It makes the game feel more lively and more real. My wife wanted to know if they game had just come out as it seemed weird to her that the characters were video chatting this much (are they all in quarantine?).
The interface is more modern too, though beyond the astethics there's not too much different. You can bookmark and now tag clips. Probably the biggest difference is that you get very long clips, sometimes 8-10 minutes long versus the very quick chunks in the previous game. But weirdly you only get that person's side of the conversation (if it's a web chat) and need to find the other person's side of the conversation to understand the full clip. There's no option to play two clips at the same time, which would have been handy when you find the matching clips. Instead if one of the characters goes on a bit of a monologue you'll need to fast forward through the other character nodding and eyebrowing.
It took me a while to realise this though. I'd often hit keywords at the end of a clip and not understand that I could rewind it. It's a shamne that there's not a "Play from start" option.
I think the mystery and aha moment in Her Story was much more impactful than here. I feel like there's supposed to be a couple of twists in this one but the first one I got to maybe far to early, so it wasn't so much an "Aha" moment as "oh right, so".
But while the story isn't as clever, it feels more relevant to things that are happening now... so...
One part was quite shocking (I suppose two parts are), but the way at least that I moved through the clips I always could follow the story, so that's good right?
I dunno, I'm a sucker for these and so your mileage may vary, but if you liked Her Story, then I can't see why you wouldn't like this one too.
This some ass lmao
Tomando como base Her Story Sam Barlow va más allá con este sucesor espiritual. Sigue siendo una historia a la que se entra sin saber nada y que el jugador tiene que descubrir buscando vídeos con palabras clave, esta vez más accesible para bien y para mal.
The concept for this game is very cool. Being able to figure out a mystery based on pre recorded videos is a great concept and makes you feel like a detective. However, the dialogue can fall very flat leaving the big moments in the story almost FEEL like a video some friends made in a basement one night. The mystery told is honestly a great one, but gets completely ruined by bad dialogue and bad endings. 1.5/5
Famosa ideia melhor que produto final, não foi muito bom, mas não foi um inferno também.
This review contains spoilers
Mixed feelings about this one. It was very well produced and the acting was almost flawless. The concept was fresh and we soon got into the swing of pinning the story threads together. However, the game never really indicated what we were meant to be doing (we went into the game blind). And then the game just ended. I understand it's difficult to finalise the game without breaking the immersion, but it got to 5AM and we uploaded the videos and then got an ending - I wasn't even aware it was an ending, in fact, I thought we'd failed. I'm not sure exactly where the game was or what agency we had as players.
For my two cents, it would've been nice to have had perhaps some emails within the game world with a little bit of direction and to show progress - or how close we were to the deadline. Maybe just directing us as to what we were looking for. It was just a bit muddled, but I applaud the team for the fresh thinking and the progress - I think the next iteration will hit it.
For my two cents, it would've been nice to have had perhaps some emails within the game world with a little bit of direction and to show progress - or how close we were to the deadline. Maybe just directing us as to what we were looking for. It was just a bit muddled, but I applaud the team for the fresh thinking and the progress - I think the next iteration will hit it.
+ Active role in uncovering story
+ Compelling story and great actors
+ Little framing device touches (reflections, desktop, etc)
- Inability to watch clips from beginning is frustrating
- Watching half of conversations; too much dead air
- Doesn't push beyond what "Her Story" accomplished
Quirky interesting mechanic but you are prone to hit bumps in the way you can't get out of and may turn tedious and boring. Also the story wasn't that compelling, if there is a story at all.
Telling Lies is Sam Barrow’s forgotten middle child. It lacks the novelty of its predecessor (Her Story) but feels less focused than its follow up (Immortality).
Playing it after Immortality, as I did, is especially rough, because you can see the skeleton of that game here. Instead of clicking on objects in the scene to link to new clips, as in Immortality, we can instead choose a word from the subtitles and see where it takes us. While the difference might seem slight, I feel it has a significant effect on the writing. Spotting a particular object or creature in multiple scenes – like a cat that snuck into the shot – is often amusing; hearing the same word or phrase forcibly inserted into multiple dialogues often comes across as ham-fisted by comparison.
It doesn’t help matters that many of the scenes in Telling Lies are one side of a video call. To hear the full call, you need to watch both sides, turning a 7-minute conversation into 14 minutes of video with long stretches of silence. It’s a clever gimmick in theory but in practice it proves too cumbersome and time-consuming.
Telling Lies also suffers from the lack of a clear goal. It hands you a hard drive full of unorganized video clips and expects you to figure out what to make of them. Even the best of stories – a mark that Telling Lies doesn’t reach – will fall apart without a proper supporting structure. I suspect Barlow also realized this, because in his next game he provided a compelling meta-narrative to sustain the player’s interest even when the sub-narratives falter.
But hey, it’s not all bad. At least now I know what happened to Ryan Atwood’s older brother Trey after he dipped out of Orange County.
Playing it after Immortality, as I did, is especially rough, because you can see the skeleton of that game here. Instead of clicking on objects in the scene to link to new clips, as in Immortality, we can instead choose a word from the subtitles and see where it takes us. While the difference might seem slight, I feel it has a significant effect on the writing. Spotting a particular object or creature in multiple scenes – like a cat that snuck into the shot – is often amusing; hearing the same word or phrase forcibly inserted into multiple dialogues often comes across as ham-fisted by comparison.
It doesn’t help matters that many of the scenes in Telling Lies are one side of a video call. To hear the full call, you need to watch both sides, turning a 7-minute conversation into 14 minutes of video with long stretches of silence. It’s a clever gimmick in theory but in practice it proves too cumbersome and time-consuming.
Telling Lies also suffers from the lack of a clear goal. It hands you a hard drive full of unorganized video clips and expects you to figure out what to make of them. Even the best of stories – a mark that Telling Lies doesn’t reach – will fall apart without a proper supporting structure. I suspect Barlow also realized this, because in his next game he provided a compelling meta-narrative to sustain the player’s interest even when the sub-narratives falter.
But hey, it’s not all bad. At least now I know what happened to Ryan Atwood’s older brother Trey after he dipped out of Orange County.
they made a game about todd howard
Umm what
Searching for videos, putting together pieces of the puzzle is brilliant.
Watching one sided video calls, half of which is a character staring at the screen occasionally raising one eyebrow on the other hand... Poorly thought out.
Watching one sided video calls, half of which is a character staring at the screen occasionally raising one eyebrow on the other hand... Poorly thought out.