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Her Story

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This is probably a dumb question, but does this game have full subtitles? I am hard of hearing and very interested but afraid I won't be able to get it fully.

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This is probably a dumb question, but does this game have full subtitles? I am hard of hearing and very interested but afraid I won't be able to get it fully.

Yes.  All the interviews are subtitled.  As far as I know you can't even turn them off.

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I enjoyed the mechanics a lot. The story, not that much, although it started out really promising. 

 

Question about the ending of the game:


What do you think happened after the last interview?

 

Presumably, Eve will be put on trial for being an accessory to murder and what else. I'm not sure how good her arguments about the ridiculousness of arresting someone who "does not exist", her long videotaped testimony being "just stories", or the police not having found the murder weapon (they did find a piece of mirror, but I guess it could have been another piece) are, but it seems to me that Eve could be facing some jail time.

 

In this case (and in any case), what happens to the baby and Hannah? Eve's sister is presumably "gone and she is never coming back" which makes sense because she would be facing a murder trial. The baby - which the women agreed "was what mattered" - on the other hand, could be born in prison (pending the success of the "my client does not exist" defence), which I guess would be less than ideal for the baby, although, I'm not far enough into Orange is the New Black to know what would actually happen.

 

One far-fetched theory is that Hannah and Eve took into account the possibility of them not being the same person being discovered, and made it so that pregnant Eve would skip town instead of Hannah, and Hannah would pretend to be Eve if she ever actually got caught. This way Hannah would get Eve's (shorter) jail sentence, and Eve would go somewhere far away with the baby. In a universe where a midwife can steal a newborn child, it might just be possible for Hannah to pretend to miscarry. 

 

There is probably some very simple reason why this can't be the case (I got tired of following which one liked sugar, who had the tattoo, etc.) It would also make the "find out why your mother did what she did" premise even weirder than it already is, so I assume that this is not what the writer was aiming for.

 

Still, what a weird story.

 

And by the way, why did Eve and Hannah both take part in the police interviews?


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After I finished (or at least looked at a satisfactory amount of content and a little more past that), I found myself comparing it to two other pieces of mystery fiction I've thought about recently, Inherent Vice (the novel which I'm slowly working through, and the film to a lesser extent), and Twin Peaks. 

 

I was just considering the way these three pieces of media treated the specifics of their plot, and how in a more general sense a mystery can be treated. In the case of both TP and IV, in a broad sense the stories are only partially about solving a mystery, much of what matters in these works are the things you get to see on the way. In TP, it's the various pieces of drama, scenery, use of surrealism and horror, etc. and for IV it is exploring the death of hippiedom in LA. Inherent Vice is especially about a perspective of the world that is deeply conspiratorial, but you aren't ever fully sure if these conspiracies are real or not. 

 

Her Story on the other hand is very much about the mystery first. It starts very conclusively with presenting a mystery and asking you to solve it. I only began pulling at the other strands of this human drama as it pertained to the specifics of what happened. The method of telling this story contributes to this feeling; your only interface in this world is observing relics where there is only one voice and perspective. 

 

I'm not sure what my point actually is, except that I enjoyed engaging with a fictional mystery that was actually going to let me solve it, and not just be told or not told it. 

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First, I want to say this game was a lot of fun playing with a second person. I was the notetaker, which meant I had the fun job of keeping track of the proper nouns and trying to piece together what happened during each interview. It was a lot of fun to puzzle out this mystery with two people, so if you can play in pairs, I really recommend it.

 

Now for spoilers of the entire game:

This game feels like the classic example of the mystery being more satisfying than its conclusion. I felt mildly deflated after finally learning what happened to Simon, because that knowledge is no where near as interesting as the haphazard search for information the game has you fall into for the first few hours. The mystery of Eve and Hannah both being two people or the same person didn't hold up for me at the end, so I don't even get to enjoy that post-game thrill of trying to tease out what is really going on with this woman (these women). Even though the game seems to really push you in this direction (most notably with the fingerprints), I find the "she was a twin all along" conclusion to be a bit of a letdown, because it's so contrived. This fantastical story of an eight-year-old hidden in an attic for years unnoticed is too much for me to accept. The fantasy of this game is more interesting if it's not taken so literally, so I choose to believe the women are one person. Maybe Hannah intentionally created this second identity to try and escape a murder conviction or maybe it's a personality disorder born out of a childhood guilt over her twin sister dying in utero. Either answer leaves room for much more exciting interpretations than what the game leaves you with.

 

I'm sorry if I sound really harsh about the ending, but everything that leads up to the conclusion of this game is so masterful that I am disappointed the game couldn't stick its landing. Criticism aside, I hope this game gets a lot of press attention. It really deserves recognition for trying such a unique method of deploying a narrative. I don't think the game is entirely successful, but I don't regret the several hours of my Sunday evening that I spent playing this game.

 

Now, can someone please explain the significance of it Sarah who is viewing the clips? I read in a review that originally it was meant to be Hannah who is reflected in the computer screen and that it was later changed to Sarah. What conclusion are we meant to draw from this revelation?

>. The fantasy of this game is more interesting if it's not taken so literally, so I choose to believe the women are one person.

I couldn't decide either, but I chose to believe they were twins because I thought it made for a more thematically interesting story.  It starts like a fairy tale where they have this magical life where they share an identity, but then the story doesn't just have a neat ending, it keeps going and when the pregnancy hits the creepier ramification of the logical extensions of such a fairy tale life break in.  As one of them says in one of the interviews life isn't wrapped up neatly like in those tales.

 

I also found the idea of a split personality that worked like this even more far fetched than a secret twin living in an attic.

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Just finished it :tup:

At some point I figured out the way to simply watch everything I hadn't seen in order. It sucks big time, don't do that. It's much more fun trying to find the keywords to puzzle together the story. (I did use the trick to 100% it, because some videos were just useless context wise, and I couldn't find the keywords).

I'm pretty convinced that there's only 1 woman. Never were the two women seen together by others. Besides the whole story, there are also queues in the interviews themselves. Just try to match up the coffee and tea consumption, it's not consistent between Eve and Hannah.

Quite early in the game I had they hunch she had a split personality, but then came the story of the birth and the two kids which set me on the path of twins for a while.

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I'm not sure how that would even work if they were one person, I'm pretty sure one of them drives away to give herself an alibi, while the other disposed of the body. The body was hacked to pieces and in bags, while Eve/Hannah was in another part of town, claiming she just drove in a huff after the fight, giving herself an alibi. Or possibly, one drives away while the other commits the murder. 

 

I don't see how inconsistency in their tea and coffee consumption is any proof of them being one person or two.

 

Then again, I'm pretty sure the point of Her Story is not only form your own story and maybe the clue match up differently in your brain in you see them in a different order? I'm pretty sure they want you to suspect the character's true identity and sanity and leave it open to interpretation.

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At certain occasions she says something along the lines of "tea with one sugar as usual", and then later her usual is coffee. Stuff like that.

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While I'm generally of the twins view on things, there are a couple of things that don't quite line up. For instance, Eve continued to live in her parent's house after Hannah had moved out (at least until they died.) I would think that would be pretty suspicious since the parents don't know that there are two of them. They mention a watch trick in one scene, so maybe they stopped the watch at a different time than the murder to try and create an alibi? The tap code scene was especially strange, unless that was one multiple personality talking to the other. *shrug* All of that doesn't add up to enough to overthrow the tattoo, bruise, fingerprints, and alibi though.

 

Edit: Much like many others on this thread, I enjoyed the journey, but hated the destination. I,m especially frustrated that there are video clips that you had to use the admin_ codes to see and I'm glad I decided to start using them once I hit the 50% mark or so. The writting was weird at spots and, for what was actually a fairly short story when written down on paper, were maddeningly inconsistent, making it tough to figure out if the inconsistencies were just Hannah and Eve making mistakes, or bad writing. Also lots of weird subplots that I guess were made to obscure you from searching down the answer too soon, but the mushroom stuff was weird and nothing really came of it.

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At certain occasions she says something along the lines of "tea with one sugar as usual", and then later her usual is coffee. Stuff like that.

 

This to me suggests the opposite of your conclusion.

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Oh, i could have done without the screen reflection effects. Every time it happened it reminded me I was playing a game.

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Just finished it :tup:

At some point I figured out the way to simply watch everything I hadn't seen in order. It sucks big time, don't do that. It's much more fun trying to find the keywords to puzzle together the story. (I did use the trick to 100% it, because some videos were just useless context wise, and I couldn't find the keywords).

I'm pretty convinced that there's only 1 woman. Never were the two women seen together by others. Besides the whole story, there are also queues in the interviews themselves. Just try to match up the coffee and tea consumption, it's not consistent between Eve and Hannah.

Quite early in the game I had they hunch she had a split personality, but then came the story of the birth and the two kids which set me on the path of twins for a while.

I can't double check this right not but isn't it the case that

Eve takes her coffee black ("I'm sweet enough as it is") and Hannahtakes it with milk+sugar? I think tea/coffee is a red herring, but what they ask in their tea/coffee is the giveaway.

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Oh, i could have done without the screen reflection effects. Every time it happened it reminded me I was playing a game.

 

I actually liked them, but the first few times it happened, I jumped out of my skin because it was late at night and that effect was totally unexpected.

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You can turn them off!

 

Yeah, I guess I liked the florescent light and CRT look, but not the other stuff (being vague on purpose.) The options menu was pretty much all or nothing.

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I can't double check this right not but isn't it the case that

Eve takes her coffee black ("I'm sweet enough as it is") and Hannahtakes it with milk+sugar? I think tea/coffee is a red herring, but what they ask in their tea/coffee is the giveaway.

Something like that yes. But I'm sure that at some point either Eve or Hannah voiced a different preference. But then again, I might have had the character screwed up at that point.

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I can't double check this right not but isn't it the case that

Eve takes her coffee black ("I'm sweet enough as it is") and Hannahtakes it with milk+sugar? I think tea/coffee is a red herring, but what they ask in their tea/coffee is the giveaway.

 

It's not completely a red herring because the coffee relates to

Eve's pregnancy when she remarks she can only drink one cup.

 

And I thought it was consistent, but I'd defer to someone who watches all the videos in order like I'd like to at some point.

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Wow I'm really interested now; never heard of it before. Maybe once it goes on sale I'll check it out.

Sounds like a pretty original concept.

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I love this game! It felt really cool to figure out the mystery. I didn't find the ending to be much of a let down. It's pretty cheap. I reccomend it.

 

I didn't find the twins idea to be too far fetched I guess. Or at least more far fetched than the multiple personality disorder theory. I mean, it seems pretty impossible for two people to live as one person, but so does someone with multiple personalities having different fingerprints, and a bruise that changes cheeks.

The parts that I am most left wondering about are:

Where did Hannah go? Eve, in the last interview says, "My sister is gone, and she's never coming back." Did Eve kill her?

Did one of the sisters kill their parents?

Did Eve kill Florence?

Did Eve kill everyone above and then kill Hannah and blame the murders on her so she can finally live on her own?

Who got Sarah that archive? How do they know that's her mom?

And most importantly, why is there a guitar in the interview room?

Also, I saw someone say it was impossible to get the lie detector clips without one of the admin codes. I think that if you utilize quotes in the search, you can find them.

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I've had an interesting journey with this game!

 

After the initial search for 'murder', I searched for both 'Simon' and 'Stories'. The results for the former were much less interesting to me than those of the latter, as they included references to Florence and Eve so I set off down that path, and almost immediately drew the conclusion that Eve was Hannah's split personality. I played the entire game with that presumption in mind, and only really questioned it once, regarding the bruise and the tattoo (but eventually decided that the bruise was make-up, and the tattoo was a fake (Because it does look like a freshly-applied transfer). Aside from that, it all made sense, though. It explained all the stuff about Eve living in the attic better than if she were a real person, and the instances where the two of them pretended to be the same person made more sense to me that way. When Eve says that Hannah is gone for good at the end, I just assumed that Eve had become the dominant personality.

 

Coming into this thread, however, that theory seems less convincing now. Maybe I'm just suggestible! The main sticking points for the split personality theory are Eve's trip to Glasgow (Although I initially just figured she'd invented this; I don't think the detectives ever confirmed with the hospital), and the issues with the fingerprints mentioned earlier in the thread. Although, running a search for 'fingerprints' again, I'm not really sure what the implication is; did the detectives find fingerprints in Hannah's house that didn't match Hannah's? And that these matched Eve's? That would be pretty solid proof if it were the case, but I couldn't find any clips that made it explicit. Also, the death of Hannah's parents becomes a bit weird if we assume Eve is an actual person. She claims that she was living in the attic when they died, yet Hannah says that they were dead for three days before anyone found them. So what was Eve doing for those three days, and why didn't she let anyone know they were dead? If she had been in their attic at the time of their death, wouldn't Hannah have had some serious questions for her? It does sort of imply that she killed them, but then this could still have been the case if she were a split personality. I feel like I'm going around in circles!

 

Overall I really enjoyed the game, both the experience of playing it, and of reading theories about it afterwards. It has its flaws, obviously (Not amazingly well-written in places, and there are some odd contrivances), but in all it really worked for me.

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First, I want to say this game was a lot of fun playing with a second person. I was the notetaker, which meant I had the fun job of keeping track of the proper nouns and trying to piece together what happened during each interview. It was a lot of fun to puzzle out this mystery with two people, so if you can play in pairs, I really recommend it.

 

Now for spoilers of the entire game:

This game feels like the classic example of the mystery being more satisfying than its conclusion. I felt mildly deflated after finally learning what happened to Simon, because that knowledge is no where near as interesting as the haphazard search for information the game has you fall into for the first few hours. The mystery of Eve and Hannah both being two people or the same person didn't hold up for me at the end, so I don't even get to enjoy that post-game thrill of trying to tease out what is really going on with this woman (these women). Even though the game seems to really push you in this direction (most notably with the fingerprints), I find the "she was a twin all along" conclusion to be a bit of a letdown, because it's so contrived. This fantastical story of an eight-year-old hidden in an attic for years unnoticed is too much for me to accept. The fantasy of this game is more interesting if it's not taken so literally, so I choose to believe the women are one person. Maybe Hannah intentionally created this second identity to try and escape a murder conviction or maybe it's a personality disorder born out of a childhood guilt over her twin sister dying in utero. Either answer leaves room for much more exciting interpretations than what the game leaves you with.

 

I'm sorry if I sound really harsh about the ending, but everything that leads up to the conclusion of this game is so masterful that I am disappointed the game couldn't stick its landing. Criticism aside, I hope this game gets a lot of press attention. It really deserves recognition for trying such a unique method of deploying a narrative. I don't think the game is entirely successful, but I don't regret the several hours of my Sunday evening that I spent playing this game.

 

Now, can someone please explain the significance of it Sarah who is viewing the clips? I read in a review that originally it was meant to be Hannah who is reflected in the computer screen and that it was later changed to Sarah. What conclusion are we meant to draw from this revelation?

 

Ha that's funny because I played the game with my wife, and we found one clip where it was kind of ambiguous whether there were twins or it was a personality disorder, and I immediately thought twins, and my wife thought personality disorder. Personally I find the personality disorder theory pretty uninteresting just because that is such a murder mystery cliche (although to be fair I was primed to jump to twins because of an excellent noir film I had seen whose name I unfortunately don't recall that had a similar plot twist), and anyway it doesn't really hold up based on the totality of facts the game presents. I agree that it isn't a very realistic narrative, but I guess that didn't really bother me. Obviously it very self-consciously recalls classic fairy tales, and so I was able to accept the more unrealistic parts as a stylistic literary conceit. I liked the ending, which I was able to anticipate because I looked at the in-game computer clock so it made me feel clever. Haha.

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