Her Story: A Protracted, Tedious Movie

Her Story is a game with a unique mechanic I've never experienced before, and hope to never meet again.

It's a game based around a story: Hannah, a young married woman, visits the policed because her husband, Simon is missing.

But the player is represented by a young girl named Sarah. She has gained access to a policed database through the aid of an unnamed assistant. It contains video files from a case sixteen years ago.

The video is of Hannah reporting the disappearance of Simon, and includes six more interviews spread out over the following month.

Unfortunately, perhaps because of the length of time since the recording, the files are corrupted and split into 271 individual videos. Each averages about thirty seconds, but can vary from three seconds to a full minute or two. In total they add up to about an hour and a half of video, this being the entire length of the game.

The video clips feature Hannah answering questions and volunteering information, to the police. The clips never show anything but Hannah sitting at a table, and the questions of the officers remain unheard.
The game-play involves navigating through the clips. Sarah (the player) accesses a computer terminal which contains a database with the snippets of video. But the videos must be located by a search tool. The search tool accepts single words or phrases and then displays corresponding videos. The database limits Sarah's search by only allowing access to five video clips per word or phrase. It shows the first five chronologically according to when the interview took place: day and time. If there are more than five videos, the others remain unwatchable. The trick is to attempt a variety of words and phrases in order to watch all the clips.

In addition to the video database is a helpful visual catalog which shows the clips that have been watched. It has 271 little boxes, all colored red. When a clip is watched, the corresponding box turns green. The boxes are in chronological order and this allows the player to see when where clips are missing. Players can tailor their questions to fill in missing clips.
When Sarah has accessed a certain percentage of the videos, or perhaps particular ones, the game reaches an end state. The person who gave Sarah access texts her and asks if she is done. A no answer allows the player to continue, but is ill advised. A yes answer leads to the credits, but no further information. The only contribution the credits adds is two tools.

One tool, when entered into the database highlights random clips. The other allows Sarah to see all the results for a search, not just the first five. Both of these are useful for a complete finish, but most players will already have a reasonable idea of the plot before the end.

Ultimately, the game is a mystery story. Who is Hannah, where is Simon, and what happened...

The mystery itself is at points inventive, creative, and obvious.

Throughout the seven interviews covering an hour and a half, a number of obvious odd behaviors by the woman interweave with her story. Sometimes she asks for tea and others for coffee. One day she has a bruise on her face, but the next day it is gone. She re-discusses topics, but her opinion changes if asked on different days. Two days in a row, when asked the same question, she repeats the same answer, word for word. Eventually the police begin to suspect her, when Simon's body is discovered in the basement of their home. But not everything is as it seems...

On a single play-through, much of the effect, of the planning of the writing is certainly lost. Hints and references are missed as the player is forced to discover the truth in this mishmash fashion. For instance, on the fifth day there is a segment where she is provided a guitar and asked to sing. The logic leading to this clip, where the police would ask the woman whose husband has been murder to play them a tune (and who is also their foremost suspect), is obtuse, but the song she sings is full of hints for the plot as a whole.
The writing is sometimes well constructed, other times cliched. Hannah's dialogue is often uninspired, but the many hints and allegorical references to the truth sprinkled throughout surpass the other components of the game.

Finally the truth is revealed after Hannah is forced to take a lie detector test. Since the game never includes the questions asked by the detective(s), the player is forced to conceded they have no clue what is happening, as Hannah answers yes and no to a number of undescribed questions.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of the game is that many of the clips are boring. Imagine watching an hour and a half long movie where three quarters is irrelevant and dull.

It's tedious because the game only has one actress, always in the same place, and speaking in the same measured tones. It would be difficult to call what she is doing acting, because there is nothing to act around. She's reading a script that has no emotion, no excitement, no conflict. Is she a good actress is an impossible question to answer, because of the set-up, but probably not. She is never convincingly disturbed, overjoyed, or angry. All her lines are delivered with a relatively deadpan style, which fails to engage the viewer.

The worst bit: the last day of the interview, where the story is finally explained is about one third of the entire game. So much of the game is the answer, but finding it, piecing it all together is a chore, since the whole project of viewing similar, repetitive video segments with many of them unimportant and dull, ends up being as the video itself: tiresome.

In conclusion, I couldn't recommend this game, but if one is interested, here is the link to a video that shows all the clips in order.

Watching this is no worse or better than the game, and that I feel no different about it, illustrates the game doesn't need an interactive component, and therefore isn't much of a game, at all.

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