Her Story was perhaps the pinnacle of FMV games for me. Sam Barlow was unable to create the same tension and capture the same essential spirit this time. Telling Lies can be completed having half the clips watched. If you want to push yourself to reveal all the story, it feels more like boredom rather than an excitement to solve what went around. Is it a problem with cast? Not at all. The story, if not any lesser, is as circuitous as Her Story's. However, the interface is designed poorly enough to have you scrambled around. When it lets you down it is followed by the fact that you open up the videos where your prompted keyword is located so it's an hassle in itself to start from the beginning which is not exactly a thing despite the game has a rewind button as usual. Then you go, rewind and rewind. You do it til you go insane. The question is still there to click. Is it a necessary challenge to accomplish a game while you can just watch its story in complete chronological order if not solving things are satisfying enough?

Telling Lies is a one of a kind game. It wasn't for me, and I only put a couple hours into it, but I can confidently say that there is no other game like it.
The idea behind the gameplay is fantastic. You have to piece together the puzzle by yourself, and you're somewhat given all the pieces.
My favorite part about the game was watching a video, getting curious about one subject, searching it, then getting lost in another one. It was like a never-ending rabbit hole of mysteries.
I recommend this to anyone who likes more laid back puzzle games, as there isn't really all that much gameplay to go alongside the actual game. It is much more like an interactive movie.

Após ter jogado Her Story é claro que eu viria com grandes expectativas para Telling Lies. Felizmente as minhas expectativas não passaram longe de serem atendidas e me vi aqui experienciando uma obra tão bem trabalhada quanto o jogo anterior de seu autor, com apenas alguns pequenos tropeços, mas que acredito não arruinarem a obra como um todo.

Seguindo a mesma lógica que Her Story, temos aqui um sistema que resgata vídeos de um banco de dados através de palavras chaves pesquisadas pelo próprio jogador. É através dele que vamos mergulhando mais e mais nos diversos vídeos que parecem ter sido tirados em sua maioria das webcams dos personagens, geralmente durante suas “calls”. Não consumimos esses clipes em ordem cronológica mas como já era de se esperar, além dessa maneira render boas teorias, também nos confere uma série de descobertas e indagações imprevisíveis e que clamam por mais contexto, principalmente se levarmos em consideração que, por serem clipes tirados de ligações, existem mais de um verso daquela conversa. Isso adiciona ao jogo uma dinâmica de caçar o outro lado daquele diálogo.

Telling Lies conta uma história maior em escopo e que aborda assuntos grandes em escala, e ao começar a entender a trama é impossível não enxergar as semelhanças com a nossa realidade, com o caso de Edward Snowden, o ex-contratado da NSA responsável de por volta de 2013 ter vazado informações sobre os vários programas de vigilância global usados pela Agência de Segurança Nacional dos Estados Unidos, só com essas informações, já dá para entender (sem muitos spoilers) os artifícios usados pelo enredo para o desenvolver de sua narrativa.

No fim, o único ponto que acho não ter casado tão bem assim foram as atuações de dois dos quatro personagens principais. De um lado temos Logan Marshall-Green que exagera em suas reações, com expressões faciais um tanto forçadas, e do outro temos a Angela Sarafyan que parece não entregar tanta vida e verdade em sua atuação, honestamente não sei até isso culpa dela ou da escrita. Em contrapartida vale mencionar o quão sensacional é a atuação das atrizes Alexandra Shipp e Kerry Bishé que brilham e cativam com as outras duas personagens de destaque.

Foi muito agradável acompanhar toda a trama e, ao seu fim, me vi ainda interessado ao ponto de voltar e procurar por mais algumas informações que pudessem saciar o meu eu investigador (ou fofoqueiro).

Her Story had better pacing.

That might seem like a strange thing to say about two games which can be played in any order, but Her Story is very clear upfront about the shape of the story (a disappearance turned murder) and your goal (solving said murder). It took me two hours of Telling Lies to even guess what I was supposed to be investigating. Her Story made it easy for you with the implausible contrivance that only the interviewee's dialogue was saved. This allowed for short clips with the occasional out-of-context whammy. Here, you are scrubbing through video calls that are often seven, eight, nine minutes long. It's more realistic, but also more of a slog. Especially when matching two sides of a video chat to each other: there are many recordings that are just: 🤨😐🤨🤨😮😬😔😐😐😐😠

As far as the plot, it's dealing with some heavy and topical issues, with mixed success. An intelligent point, with an unsatisfying delivery. And less emotional rapport with the protagonist. Specific spoilery thoughts in ROT 13 (CW sexual violence, police brutality):

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Ohg vs lbh nyernql nterr jvgu guvf cerzvfr--yrg nybar vs lbh'ir rkcrevraprq nalguvat yvxr gur riragf qrcvpgrq--gur bhgpbzr jvyy cebonoyl yrnir lbh pbyq. Oybjvat hc n oevqtr naq xvyyvat uvzfrys vfa'g gnxvat nppbhagnovyvgl, naq qbrfa'g uryc gur jbzra ur'f jebatrq, be gur crbcyr ur'f zheqrerq naq nffnhygrq. Juvpu, fher, Qnivq vf n cerggl greevoyr crefba, fb V pna ohl uvz znxvat n qrpvfvba yvxr gung. Ohg vg'f abg rknpgyl fngvfslvat. Gurer'f ab whfgvpr urer.

Anyway, that critique wasn't even why I stopped playing. It was actually because manually scrubbing through long videos on a trackpad (there are no buttons) was physically uncomfortable. I got the gist of what was happening and then dipped.

It’s hard not to play and think about this game in relation to Sam Barlow’s other superior directorial efforts in the FMV space, Her Story and Immortality. Telling Lies sits as the awkward middle child, bigger and more convoluted than the first one, but not as groundbreaking nor sophisticated as the latter. Clearly a necessary creative steppingstone for the team, it sadly isn´t nearly as compelling, surprising nor artful as the other two games.

it keeps the same basic method of interaction as Her Story, but fails in truly understanding what makes the clip watching and investigation move forward. I’ve read the same complaint over and over again, the videos are too long, with too many spaces without relevant information because of the nature of them being secretly recorded, one-sided, phone conversations, and the fast forwarding is too slow. And I have the same complaints. I’ve also read that the intention of the developers was to make that ‘scrolling’ intentionally cumbersome in order to force players to search through keywords and locate the beginning, or at least the important part of each conversation clip. There’s an issue here, and it is that that aspect of the investigation is never compelling at all. There’s no real incentive in making the effort of trying to figure out where the relevant part of each conversation begins other than scrolling through the clips being a pain in the ass. There’s not much else in terms of gameplay to talk about, it’s the same as in Her Story, only made duller because of the addition of unnecessary complexity.

The story is solid enough. Fairly basic in terms of narrative, we’ve seen similar stuff before, and the style of narration and succession of events feels closer to a traditional movie or narrative than Her Story and Immortality. In my case I felt like it started fairly slow and dully, and wasn´t truly engaged until I reached around 2 hours of playtime. Maybe it’s because it felt familiar or annoying to play, but it managed to offer enough twists and reveals to keep me engaged the rest of the way. There’s a point where you just get what is going on and the story doesn’t offer much new going forward.

There’s a lot more to chew on from a thematic standpoint. There are some really interesting things being touched upon in terms of toxic masculinity, surveillance, activism, etc. And those are the things that I ended up appreciating more and the ones that kept me coming back to try and finish it. It's a short game, and if you liked Her Story I think you'll at least get some enjoyment out of this, just maybe don't expect the same level of engagement.

As expected by now with these Sam Barlow games, the performances are excellent. Some recognizable faces here just doing great work.

A fantastic arthouse film experience made for a crowd that will not, or ever, appreciate something as bold and slow burning as this.

As a gamer I was upset at all of the empty space. But as a fan of arthouse films I've never seen anything like this.

Even though there was alot of empty space (which can and should be fast forwarded through), subtle face expressions can reveal alot of information. It was interesting connecting the dots between responses and I found it more satisfying than "her story" honestly. It felt more believable and personal. There is a great amount of variety when it comes to the scenes displayed. Intense moments, genuinely heartbreaking bonds, twists, an array of different personalities, and even uncomfortable intimacy. When you find an important scene it definitely feels important and revealing. Then you are left beating your head when one that didn't seem important had crucial information because of your own sheer impatience.

The performances were surprisingly top notch. What's more impressive are the very long takes. Long takes like this require alot of focus/planning. Even the little girl was doing great.

This kind of storytelling is very special, and can only be done through gaming. In my opinion it's better than "Her Story" and i cant wait to check out "Immortality". Chronologically, this is "Memento" on drugs and I applaud the audacity.

Such an intriguing story, well acted and made me so invested.

I just feel like it was lacking more in choices for the ending? dunno, just felt like it.

Still, it is an amazing game and I really recommend it :)

After Elden Ring I clearly needed to detox, so I played the follow up to a game I previously loved. Her Story. It ended up taking the basic loop of that game and got more ambitious. The thing about Her Story was that it was interpretive, which was mostly fascinating within the short space of time that the game afforded you. I'm not sure if having a dedicated ending for the thread you chose to follow was the answer here. It tends to put a strange capstone on even more uncertainty. Either way, it continues to be interesting and we'll talk about a more definitive advancement of that formula that has more definitive answers to go along with it when I review Immortality.

Meu primeiro jogo nesse estilo, então não conheço o "Her Story" como a maioria que jogou Telling Lies. A história é bem instigante, e a investigação é bem legal à primeira vista. No entanto, seria muito mais prático poder clipar trechos específicos dos vídeos, e assim poder salvá-los. Além disso, é um jogo bem curto, e próximo do final você já está um pouco saturado de ficar navegando por aqueles menus. E obviamente, passa longe de ser uma experiência repetível — ao menos para mim.

Como alguém pontuou anteriormente, se a história contada parece ser muito melhor se organizada de forma cronológica em um longa ou curta-metragem, tendo em vista que a experiência interativa proposta aqui se mostrou pouco cativante... então o jogo perde seu propósito.

История была интересной, но я бы лучше посмотрел клипы, будь они склееными в одну видео-встречу, а такое, к сожалению, возможно не в игре, а на Ютубе. В тебя бросают 170 роликов и не просят собрать воедино историю, а просто отсмотреть их и закрыть игру. Тут нет какого-то расследования и сбора всех данных в один клубок сюжета, ты втупую смотришь кучу видосов, ищешь по ключевому слову и снова смотришь кучу видосов. Потенциал с такой историей был, как мне кажется, но его не сумели геймлейно как-либо реализовать, однако игру я всё же запомню, ибо она слишком выделяется на фоне других визуальных новелл по типу "Бесконечное лето" и "Super Seducer" (я не играю в визуальные новеллы, как можно понять)