Telling Lies

I have't finished the game yet, though I've watched many-many videos and have a clue of what it's all about. "Her story" was ok for me, but this one is just fantastic. I'm not going to read the other reviews for now, but I hope I would never ever have to communicate to people who gave this game less than 5 stars. It's 10 out of 5, guys. It's fascinating, intricate, addictive, well-thought. The team! You are great, job well done. The thought that the game is going to end is devastating. Thank you very much for this pleasure and unbeliavable experience. Thank you to scripters and actors for outstanding job. Please, do more of these! It's one of a kind, be proud and don't listen to those who don't dig it.

‘Telling Lies’ is touted as the spiritual sequel to ‘Her Story’. With a larger cast, a more elaborate story, and higher quality video clips, it’s a more ambitious project. It had the ingredients for a fine FMV game: great performances from its main cast, a multifaceted story, and carefully staged scenes. Sadly, the mismatched game mechanic made it merely good. In ‘TL’, the player -- again not knowing what brought them in front of the in-game computer -- has to search through a database of video clips using keywords. This might have worked well in ‘HS’, in which there was only one actor speaking in the same setting. Yet, it falls apart when there are many actors in different locations. With the story of ‘TL’ being more complex structurally, it’s easy to feel lost though the videos are timestamped. By using the game mechanic of ‘HS’ in ‘TL’, Barlow self-sabotaged his well-written character arcs. It’s hard to fully appreciate the characters’ descent or self-actualization when you had to decipher the story from disarranged video clips. Making heads or tails of the clips may be part of the fun, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of enjoying the narrative. Yet, it’s the in-game UI that made ‘TL’ less enjoyable than it could have been. Set in 2019, the in-game video player shockingly doesn’t have a scrub bar! Instead you rewind or fast-forward each clip like a VCR. It’s not so bad for short clips, but it’s tedious when reviewing ones that are close to 8 minutes long -- especially when the actors are just silently reacting to the people they’re video chatting with for several minutes! The mouse control for scrubbing isn’t that precise, too, making the task more frustrating. ‘TL’ is fun, but certainly not as captivating as the leaner ‘HS’. The game mechanic that worked so well in ‘HS’ simply doesn’t pair nicely with a game is more complex narratively and theatrically. Still, I think ‘TL’ is worth checking out when it goes on sale, especially if you're a fan of ‘HS’.

This is not a game. I do not say this for the normal reasons. Most people will claim that this is more of an interactive movie than a game. But this is actually not the case, either. You see, when you watch the videos in this game, you're fast-forwarding and rewinding a lot. These videos are mostly halves of conversations. They are recordings of video chats. So, each recording only has one half of the video chat at a time. So, you are speeding through a lot of the downtime. And you are trying to fit halves of videos together in your head (though you can never merge them). And the main gameplay involves searching for videos and bookmarking them. You watch snippets of videos to get keywords that you then plug into the search function to find more videos. After bookmarking them, you click the date button to put them in the right order. And then you watch them all. So, this is definitely more game than movie. But I would not call this a game... not in the traditional sense. You see, games are curated to have the gameplay be engaging, exciting, and entertaining. Of course, a game doesn't have to be fun. But just like how literature covering a depressing subject is still well-written, a game must play well... aka be fun. You see, though... Telling Lies does not make an effort to "play well." The interactivity, though engaging, is work-filled. It is a sloth. And that is why this game gets controversial reviews. Let me give you a hint: Don't treat this game like a game. Don't treat this like a movie, either. Just let go of all notions about things needing to be fun and feel right. And let go of all notions of movie narrative structure and plot. When you do, you will realize that this is reality. You're witnessing the videos of real freaking people. Of course... they aren't actually real. But that's what it feels like. By forcing you to do work in this experience, everything feels like actual freaking reality. And that is why these characters will be with you forever.

The acting talent in this game is _incredible_, but somewhat limited by a story that has major gaps in the ending segments. The game also tries to waste a huge amount of your time by starting at the keyword that you search for instead of the beginning of a clip, having a really slow rewind speed, and limiting controls for navigating the videos. There is an easy-to-install mod that allows for skipping to the start of a clip and moving forward and backward 2 or 10 seconds. I'm splitting the difference in my rating: Without that mod, this game would be 2 stars due to lack of respect for player time. With it, I'd give it four stars. Overall, an interesting narrative experience. This game is much "sexier" (at least for players attracted to women) and has much higher production values than Her Story, but considerably less narrative coherence. Overall, I prefer Her Story, but would love to see more games made to fill this niche genre.

First thing that needs to be called out: the game desperately needs a "start video at beginning" button, and it doesn't have one despite being the number one critique after several years being released. When you search videos, it starts at wherever the keyword you searched is located, even if that means it's at the end of a 7 minute video. The vast majority of your time is spent slowly rewinding clips to the beginning so you can actually understand what you're watching and not miss anything valuable. Half the time, you'll find there WAS nothing valuable and the character is just sitting there doing nothing, listening to the other side of the conversation you're not seeing. I really liked Her Story, and was hoping this would give more of the same. Unfortunately, it doesn't really capture what made Her Story great, it just follows a very similar format in terms of gameplay. Unlike Her Story, I didn't really feel I understood why our character is going through the videos as the end. There also isn't really any surprise twists that recontextualizes the clips you first saw. Such twist was part of what made Her Story interesting, and it's sorely lacking here. There also seems to be a lack of purpose to watching the clips like we had with Her Story. You're literally just uncovering a narrative story out of order, not piecing together a mystery. Perhaps this would be better if the characters were interesting, but I found all of them either unlikable or boring. As another review said, you're literally just listening in on people complaining about their daily. They play up the titillation with some of the sexual scenes, but they really just get in the way of getting to the useful dialogue. I found myself very unsatisfied, and googled around to see if I'd missed something by the end of the game. I'd missed some details of the story along the way, but nothing important. I would suggest playing Her Story instead. Don't buy this game.