As with Her Story, I had already watched a let's play of the game (both by Materwelonz, one of the best on YouTube), but my own playthrough did not lose any of the game's allure by this fact. Sam Barlow and co-writer Amelia Gray expand upon Barlow's prior game to flesh out the emergent narrative, which relies less on particular twists than the scope of its character development. Helpful are the performances, especially Logan Marshall-Green (and his myriad facial expressions), in expressing the mundanity of much of the online interactions, and in a post-COVID era, the game only feels more natural than it did in 2019. Without spoiling anything, the conceit of Telling Lies develops into a fascinating descent of one's psyche to provide a rationale to their being. The sheer craftsmanship involved here is a sight to behold. Although the requirement of a mod to allow easier playback of the videos is a bummer, Telling Lies really should not be played to as completionist a playthrough as Her Story as a result of its voyeuristic footage filled to the brim with silence, listening, and banal conversations (in terms of their in-world expression). Nevertheless, this is Barlow and co.'s masterpiece (until Immortality, perhaps).