You enter your apartment, you sit down and turn on your computer. After connecting an external hard drive, you start Retina, a report tool of the NSA, and type Love . A video of a man talking to the camera appears on the screen and he says ... I did not fall in love only once . It's like that started by lies. A wonderful narrative experience around four private lives intertwined by a big lie (and at least two more). As an unknown computer user, you see the monitor's reflection, you must pierce a cloth of mysteries and deception. by searching in secret video conversations secretly.
I have always believed that all human beings are at the bottom of the detectives. We always want to find the answer to the events that leave us perplexed, whether it is a break, death, dismissal or a simple argument. Telling Lies, the spiritual successor of his history of Sam Barlow, awakens the inside detective in each of us. Prepare to solve a narrative puzzle in this very meta experience where you use your computer to find the truth behind more than one hundred video files in full motion by controlling a character sitting in front of his computer watching said videos.
For the game to be as easy as possible, I will not enter details about the identity of the four main characters in history. It is sufficient to know that it is a nurse (Kerry Bishe d'Argo), an ecologist activist (Alexandra Shipp of X-Men Apocalypse), a model of Webcam (Angela Sarafyan de Westworld) and of a mysterious man (Logan Marshall-Green of Spider-Man: reunion). All characters are somehow linked and there is no good way to conduct this investigation. When you look and analyze the videos, you will notice that you can pause them, rewind them and transfer them. Capture is that each video represents only one side of a diverse conversation. It's like having access only to the person side of a video call. This means that you need to determine which character is for indices such as context, keywords and file details (length and / or date).
This is why attention paid to dialogues is crucial. The subtitles display each line and you can click any word to search for the database the videos that contain them. Whatever the number of files that can contain the search word, only the first five results are displayed. Once you click on it, you are brought at the exact moment in the video where this word is pronounced. This requires you to browse the video looking for more words. For example, it is not by chance that the first is Love because it presents different paths to explore.
Saying lies is not particularly long, which is great, but throughout my six-hour journey, I lived very immersive and very boring moments. Allow me to explain to you.
On the one hand, it is a very intelligent game that elegantly uses its interface to attract you seamlessly in its world. Thanks to a film approach and videos with actual actors, you have the impression that you explore the lives of real people. I applaud it! During the moments when I was intensely hired, the hours passed, I felt like a real detective, I took notes and mapped the relationships of the characters. I focused on every word looking for anything that could give assuming another thread to undo, while listening to a soundtrack that gives the perfect tone by giving the tone without ever breaking your immersion. In addition, the song Under Your Spell of Desire is very nice (you will recognize it from the movie Drive.)
The play of the actors is usually pretty good and reinforced by a very well written scenario that is full of complex dialogues. Designing this type of connection experience is very difficult (I share my sympathy as a narrative designer), because it changes radically depending on the keywords that players decide to search. It is a bright example of how a single incorporated narrative structure (such as the script of the game) can lead to completely different stories emerging narrative . The flowchart of this game is certainly huge and involves not only hundreds of dialogues, but also a website connecting each of them. I would like to see a linear deconstruction of the events of history - which, in fact, could have been an interesting timeline tool for the game. Speaking of time, there are some small keys that improve the immersive experience, One being the game clock. Take note as you progress and pay attention to its role in history.
Despite all this, telling lees is not perfect. It is curious to see that what makes the game unique can also frustrate the players. The interface of the game is perhaps new, but it's also bureaucratic and clumsy. Even though the search tool is the result of conscientious decision-making decisions, I asked myself the following question: Why do I have to rewind a video if it is digital? Why only five results per query? Why can not I filter all videos by date? Why can not I take notes by looking at a video? In fact, there is a notebook on the game desk, but I found it was easier to Alt + Tab in my text editor, indicating that the game's tools have failed.
In addition, observe characters silently as they listen the other part of the conversation is tolerable only a few times. Rather than spending more time watching new sequences, you have to go from countless minutes to go through the mute sections or hold the mouse to view the videos. Unfortunately, it is at that moment that playing the game has proved to be a chore.
In summary, TELLING LIES represents a kind of niche that explores the interactive narrative in a very unique way. The game director, Sam Barlow, has developed the formula of his story, but at a cost. After all, which makes the game so good also reveals its faults. The end, for example, may seem very anticlimatic depending on how you discover specific videos. Yet, as the proverb says: Life is a trip, not a destination. And to say lies is a whole trip - hopefully, who will inspire many other games of history. Now, will wake up the detective that sleeps in you.
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