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).

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.

Telling Lies felt like a good spiritual successor to Her Story, although I would argue it does not entirely live up to its spirit.

The narrative is interesting and I had quite a bit of fun trying to understand the various plotlines intertwined. The acting is good, although you do need to fast forward through many entries, especially since a lot of them are conversations between two people and you can only watch one interlocutor at a time, which sometimes results in very, very long silences.

The intrigue was compelling, although I think the ending is a bit strange and feels rushed... Or lacks context, maybe? I would have liked a bit more direction, a bit more of a sense of purpose. I didn't understand why I was doing what I was doing until the very end of the game. Which did not preclude me from enjoying the unfolding mystery, but slightly more context would have been interesting.

Overall, if you liked Her Story, this might be an enjoyable game to try! Wait until it's on sale!

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)

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.

I didn't know that this existed until very recently. But I got it anyway cause I saw it was made by the same folks that made Her Story and I remembered loving that when I played it as a teen. This game, probably unnecessarily so, had me going into full detective mode. Probably didn't help that I didn't know what I was getting into when it came to the story, but I enjoyed the experience overall. I do think that it was a little bloated and in the grand scheme of things there could've been a couple things that were left out and be better for it.
TLDR: Enjoyed playing through it, but not as good as Her Story.

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.

The entire gameplay is watching videos. You have a search bar to type words/names and can fast forward. Super basic but it works.

The acting is fairly good. Some did better than others, but I don't recall thinking anyone did a poor job.

The biggest downside is the fact you only get to watch one side of the conservation. Most of the time you see a character reacting, usually with facial expressions, but they're silent. It's almost like dead air. You aren't getting anything out of that. Sure it's realistic. But it was also monotonous. I assume that's why there's a FF button; but you're still sitting there holding a button.

It's not going to take you 8 hours to get the whole story. My time is bloated to see every video for an trophy. It was too much though. The game could have benefited from cutting out certain videos because there are some where absolutely nothing is said. Just someone crying or being angry on a cam.

I have been mixed on this game for many years since I initially played it. And reasonably so, because it has a very unintuitive and odd way of telling the story, even more than last time. Only being able to see one side of a conversation at any given time means there's a lot of dead air, silence. It can get very awkward. This wouldn't be an issue if we just had an option in game to see the convo side by side once we have both perspectives. Also, having to to rewind all the way to the start is so slow and tedious.

Ok so it is not nearly as good as Her Story. Yet on a rewatch and revisit, I was just floored by the performances from the 4 leads. This is honestly some of the best work any of them have ever done. The direction and their acting and chemistry is just electric. And there is actually so much going on with every character. Logan Marshall Green's character in particular will make you feel many many many emotions, most... negative, but the character is extremely complex. Everyone feels very lively and authentic. They get absorbed into the roles. This really helps since the story this time is not great. It has a lot of moving parts but the pace of it is iffy. It maintains the mystery no matter which part of the story you experience first, but it is not as cohesive or enganging.

Anyways that all said, the actors really do the heavy lifting here. The game would be pretty bad without them, but they help to make it a solid experience in the end.