Telling Lies is the kind of game you can only truly experience once. You could
argue that’s the case for most games with your first playthrough but here this statement is accurate in the fullest sense. If you
are interested in immersive narrative experiences, visual novel style games and have some degree of
patience in watching copious amounts of video footage then I absolutely recommend
you give this a go blind as the authentic experience of it depends on knowing absolutely nothing going in.
So I’ll attempt to keep spoilers to minimum. It’s a game directed by
Sam Barlow – a follow up to Her Story
which similarly used video clips to deploy its narrative. However Telling Lies is far
more ambitious in its scope as it deals with more than one character.
The game starts with an
unnamed protagonist going into an apartment and using an external drive on a
computer. The main interface of the game is then revealed: a mock up of a
computer desktop with a spy program you run called Retina. This consists of a
searchable database of recorded footage, where new clips are gradually revealed
by searching for key words or phrases that are uttered by characters in their
dialogue somewhere within the clip. Once the clip is located and viewed you can fast
forward or rewind the clip at your own leisure.
For example the initial prompt of
‘love’ and you’ll view a clip of a man saying goodnight to his daughter over a
video call. You might hear someone mention a name or a place elsewhere in the
conversation and you use this as the basis of your next search and so on. Often
you are only privvy to one side of the conversation so certain ideas will only
link in your head or the context make sense later when discovering the other
side. And so the narrative gradually unfolds through your exploration
of these clips.
The objective of the game is not made
immediately clear at the outset – you just have to keep watching different
clips and try to figure out who these people are, what their relationships are
to each other, the chronology of events and ultimately what the overall story
and timeline is and why it is that you are viewing these clips. Beyond that
there is no real goal or objective. You cannot change any events and there are
no differing outcomes – the ending is made available after a certain amount of
time spent in-game and additional epilogues are only viewable depended on which
character you focussed most of your viewing time on.
For this reason Telling Lies is not really a ‘game’ in
the traditional sense but instead more a unique way of experiencing the
unfolding of a narrative. Whilst ‘visual novels’ or narrative heavy games are
nothing new, this games is unique in not only allowing you to discover the
story at your own pace but doing so in letting you connect the dots yourself,
right from the start. I’ve not experienced anything like this before and it’s a
fascinating process of discovery.
However the purity of this process unfortunately can only be truly experienced the one
time – once you know some things you can never really unknow them again - and the gradual reveal of information is the fascinating aspect of this game, something to be truly coveted as it is a such a unique experience you won't find elsewhere. You may argue that the same mercurial feeling
can be said of other games that feature outstanding reveals in their narrative or even applied to the first time
experience of a film or novel, however those can be enjoyed again later for the
quality of the story and construction of the narrative rather than simply just
the reveal of it. And it is the way the narrative is gradually delivered to you via your own investigations that
is the whole purpose of Telling Lies
rather than the actual story itself, which although interesting isn't exactly groundbreaking.
It doesn’t hurt that the acting is
superb throughout, especially since most scenes are long single takes and the often intimate
conversations give you an odd voyeuristic thrill as you often
feel you are witnessing these characters’ private and sometimes vulnerable
moments.
If like me you are fascinated by unusual
narrative devices and unique methods of story delivery then experiencing Telling Lies is a must. I should really go and play
Her Story at some point now. I was
intrigued by its premise when it was first released years ago and had bought it
on Steam but never actually got around to playing it. But then again don’t we
all have a Steam backlog… sigh.
3rd June 2020
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