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Author Topic: Her Story  (Read 813 times)

thegoatgod_pan

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Her Story
« on: June 25, 2015, 11:01:21 pm »

Anyone else play Her story? http://store.steampowered.com/app/368370/?  I was lead to it by all the RPS press (e.g. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/06/22/review-her-story/#more-297011) and really, really liked what it did with the formal approach to the story. 5$ for three hours of play was well worth it (ymmv)

Basically the game is: you are investigating a murder with a record of several video interviews with a woman who may or may not have killed her husband. Or something. It is complicated. Except for the purposefully retro simulation of a 90s desk top, it is live action video of interviews (the live action is actually good here: actress hits just the right note of seeming convincingly insincere and unreliable as a narrator)

The interviews are broken up into clips, which are located by key word

You can search the data base by keywords: for instance, if she mentions the husband's wallet, you can type "wallet" and get a few more video clips.  That's pretty much the whole game: if you break into the heart of the mystery you get a prompt (via in-game text message) asking if you are done, you can say yes or no, and go back regardless, the ending also reveals a secret and unlocks some other stuff.

Obviously, spoilers are the heart of the game so all relevant plot details should go into a spoiler tag

My big question: SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: June 25, 2015, 11:11:53 pm by thegoatgod_pan »
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umiman

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Re: Her Story
« Reply #1 on: June 25, 2015, 11:55:18 pm »

I just "finished" it.

I thought the story was a lot simpler than what I was expecting. I was hoping for an intense and difficult murder mystery and my character was a PI hired to find this out. Maybe some occult or horror sprinkled in. Well... that's what happens when you have completely unwarranted expectations.

Anyway, to answer your question:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think the nature of these kind of things is that at the end of the day you are only presented a certain amount of information after which everything else is speculation. In this case we literally only have 7 tapes worth of interviews to go by. Even then we don't have any facts, just a testimony of dubious nature. In the words of Sherlock Holmes, 'It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.'.

If this were reality, there are things we could do though to blow this open:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But since we can't... "it's just stories."  ;)

------------------

As for the game itself. I thought it was interesting. Again, I was very intrigued by the way it was presented and was hoping for far more. Maybe some other people will see this and build upon it in the future. If there were more than just the interviews; being able to search through the databases for reports and stuff for example, then I think it would be brilliant. Maybe with a far more compelling case, but not completely fantastical. Grounded in reality but very difficult to piece together.

And let's be honest here. The twist of this story? It's not exactly original or unexpected is it? I think you'd have to be quite inexperienced in crime stories for this to be of any surprise.

thegoatgod_pan

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Re: Her Story
« Reply #2 on: June 26, 2015, 09:43:55 am »

And let's be honest here. The twist of this story? It's not exactly original or unexpected is it? I think you'd have to be quite inexperienced in crime stories for this to be of any surprise.

I think it was counting on that a bit to mislead
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That said:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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ndkid

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Re: Her Story
« Reply #3 on: June 26, 2015, 03:57:13 pm »

I thought it was certainly worth the money I paid for it. The mood of it felt reasonable. It's an interesting conversion of IF into a more multimedia experience.
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a1s

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Re: Her Story
« Reply #4 on: June 26, 2015, 07:41:33 pm »

Sounds like Analog ("a hate story" or some similar subtitle.) The one about space Koreans. Is it similar (but with video?) I enjoyed that one.
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