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Idle News Podblast: Her Story Spoilercast

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Idle News Podblast:

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Her Story Spoilercast

Our long-awaited Her Story spoilercast is here! We sat down to discuss our thoughts on Sam Barlow's excellent FMV murder mystery, from its mechanics to the nuances of its plot. If you haven't completed the game, you will be spoiled!

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This is not the first time I've heard someone say they thought the face reflection was tied to important story moments, but it felt to me that it was happening at random, like the lights flickering or the sirens outside. Does anyone know if it's been confirmed either way?

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The name Eve is one of the biggest indications that it's meant to be multiple personalities - "The Three Faces of Eve" was one of the breakthrough movies about multiple personalities that put the concept into public consciousness. I think it's a deliberate red-herring though. Which annoys me - everything comes across as a red-herring. I think every theory is deliberately undermined by at least one piece of information and I think that's cheap.

 

I don't wanna sound too critical because I loved this game and I hope it seeds a genre. The 5 clips thing is like this game's equivalent of an invisible wall to stop you wandering off the map. It would be possible to get the 5 clips limit without the in-world fiction if you wrote a story that only mentions each significant word less than 10 times. Tricky, but tricky like putting rocks around to stop a player wandering off the map instead of just using invisible walls.

 

If you've played and enjoyed this I really really recommend playing Barlow's other game Aisle: http://www.ifiction.org/games/playz.php?cat=&game=232&mode=html

I think it embraces the "conflicting storylines" in a much better way, which is that it's upfront that these aren't part of the same story or intended to be ambiguous - they're separate narrative possibilities for the same starting character. It interests me more to think about the different ways lives can turn out than the frustration of not knowing how a particular character's life went. 

 

p.s. Here was my letter to thumbs in case anyone was wondering:

I saw you were gonna talk about Her Story this week so I thought I'd send you some thoughts because I felt pretty strongly about it. 
 
Like many people I thought this mechanic was amazing, and the sense of discovery was fantastic. However I was less impressed with the story you discover. The gothic plot of baby-stealing midwives and hidden twins seems propelled by high cliche and conveniences, not character, circumstance, place and culture. It seemed like there were three possible explanations for the story: That there is one woman who has multiple personality disorder; That there is one woman who is faking multiple personality disorder to escape the murder charge; or that there are twins pretending to be one person. I didn't find any of them very satisfying.
 
I don't like the "she genuinely has multiple personality disorder" explanation b/c while it explains away the weirdness of her story, there's no nuanced portrayal of mental illness here. I have a friend who sometimes has psychosis, so sometimes believes very strange things and sometimes doesn't. I think trying to uncover the truth of an event from someone like that would be a a fascinating story, but in this game it seems more like it's used to cover for the writer's flights of fancy. Also I don't like to see it reinforcing the idea that mental illness makes people dangerous. 
 
The idea of a clever woman faking multiple personality disorder is a little more interesting, but it erases the story and motive, and means we don't know anything about this character in the end. Without more characterisation, it's kinda a simple and boring "oh she's an evil eve type". There are lots of devious, inexplicably criminal women in fiction already, I want more than that. 


The twins explanation is the one I find most interesting because it's even more pulpy and therefore harder to write well. This is where most of the plot seems to point, and if you’re going to have a twist, to me this one says the most interesting things about sibling relationships, about identity and obsession. The portrait painted of how two girls can relate through play and secrets and codes, who grow up in tune and then find their relationship becoming fractured is human and promising but it’s barely sketched. Who are these people? Where are they from, specifically? What is that house like beyond having the spatial necessities of lounge, kitchen, cellar and attic? I don’t get any sense of what kind of parents they have, who make 17 y/os marry. Without characterisation, this detail’s only purpose seems to be an easy plot fix. All the details feel overly broad. Simon is... nice? Shy? The only time I get a real sense of that is the dorky pick-up-line he uses on Eve, and the innocence of chips on the beach. 1994 doesn’t seem to exist beyond a CRT shader and some blazers. No reference suggests why this particular time and place might have informed ‘Her’ behaviour. Nothing elevates it beyond tropes into a specific portrayal of a particular sisterhood, a teenage pregnancy, a marriage etc. I kinda wish Julian Barnes had written this game.

 
While I think the snippeting mechanic probably favours a super plotty story, there was still a lot more room for characterisation. So I loved this mechanic even though I found the story shallow, like enjoying a jigsaw puzzle but not the image that’s on it. I hope influences many other games including ones that focus on drawing a full persona as well as being a good thriller. 

 

I wrote an extended version for unwinnable:

http://www.unwinnable.com/2015/07/07/a-tale-of-two-women

 

 

Anyway! I'm so excited this finally got done :)

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Played this with my mom because I knew she would enjoy it.

 

We kind of sequence broke as well. We went way down the multiple personalities/two people rabbit hole VERY early. We ended up exploring most of that stuff before we even figured out what happened to Simon. For most of the time, we weren't even sure what crime had been committed. I had a theory that we were actually investigating the parents' poisoning and that the Simon thing was just a narrative smoke screen. With all the fairy tale stuff, it didn't seem like a stretch to imagine that she'd invented a prince for herself.

The details of Simon's murder were some of the last things we even came across.

 

I almost wish that I didn't know ahead of time that Sam Barlowe was involved in this given that

Her Story and

Silent HIll Shattered memories

do a very similar thing regarding player perspective

but I might not have played the game if I'd not known.

 

There was also the bit where police sirens would reflect the player character's image in the "monitor." We were playing on my laptop and for some reason, at random intervals, my steam games will essentially alt+tab to my desktop--the background of which is just a very large picture of my cat's face. Every so often, it would link up with the police sirens, so we'd get a quick glimpse of the player character reflected in the monitor, and then we'd see my cat's face on the monitor proper.

 

 

All in all, I really enjoyed the experience and this is one of the two games this year that just seemed like an absolute blast to write. The other being Life is Strange. 

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Gosh darnit. I was so ready to just listen to this and have the whole thing spoilered for me but after about 4 minutes in I just kinda realised a few things a) with my partner and I switching net providers we might actually get sensible upload speeds that aren't like 0.1 mb, b ) while I'm not totally sure that my partner would go for something like this I think I could totally maybe convince him, c) couples lets plays are probably kinda rare and if nothing else this could just be a really fun thing to do.

 

So I'm just going to stick my head in the sand for this one (because I totally have just sat back and enjoyed having whole things spoiled for me before). I also realised that to double the trouble I might be able to sell this idea to our mutual friends who are also a couple who might not ordinarily go for this kind of game but would like the detective style. So I think it could be super fun to -recorded or not- do a joint couple's playthrough of Her Story in tandem if not in actuality. 

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Hoo boy, they finally made the episode! I was honestly wondering if it was going to get made or if it would just be a running joke for future episodes :D

 

Now, I just have to give it a listen.

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Danielle's point about FMV production brought to mind this recent blog post from Kevin Drum about how incomprehensible the plots are for Hollywood movies these days: 

 

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/08/its-not-just-you-blockbuster-movies-really-have-gotten-incomprehensible-lately

 

Basically it is about the way these blockbusters are produced is to film all these expensive spectacles, and then they expect the writers to sort of quickly find ways to tie all these disparate events together into a narrative. The result is movies that don't always make a ton of sense because the film has been created in a piecemeal fashion. That was a similar problem with FMV games in the 90s where the game and the FMV movies weren't really working well together, and the quality of both would often suffer since resources were then expended sub-optimally.

 

If the template for Her Story is to become a genre, I hope it is for VR. It would be cool to play a version of this game where you use a PC just to access a database, but then you have to go to a filing cabinet to dig up files and piece together information, and you have legal notepads you can write stuff down on. Maybe there are videos and audio tapes you can consult, etc. All within the confines of an office space. I think that would be cool, and would be the sort of thing would allow me (at least) to get stoked on VR.

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Giant Bomb's Austin Walker did a podcast interview with Sam Barlow that might interest some of you: http://www.giantbomb.com/podcasts/true-crimes-and-family-histories-the-story-behind-/1600-1266/

 

The one thing from it that I wanted to highlight was that the IM conversation was not part of Barlow's original vision but the feedback he got from playtesters was that a lot of them did not feel like they'd "completed" the game without authorial permission to consider it done. And that's what the IM was. (SB, of course, is Sam Barlow.) 

 

For my part, I thought multiple personalities early on, but I definitely feel like the twins scenario is better supported by the available narrative and to me it's more interesting anyway. It's implausible as hell, don't get me wrong, but it's also this crazy lurid thing that isn't completely impossible (I've heard of things that are 100% real that are at least as strange) and certainly isn't (at least in the form it's presented in Her Story) as cliched as the pop-cultural version of multiple personality disorder. And it definitely has this weird, fucked up fairy tale aspect to it in the way she talks about it. I also enjoyed all the subtle little hints you're given, like the tattoo and the bruise and the different choices of drink and such, though they're hardly conclusive proof of either scenario. I don't like the idea that she's lying about it all, though, and that's actually part of why I prefer the twins scenario - because ultimately, her words are all we have in the game and if we can't take at least some of it as truth, then what's the point? Obviously we can't take every single thing she says at face value - she is, after all, talking to the police and pretending, first, not to know where her husband is and then not to know who killed him - but I think we need to accept her stories about life, her husband, their families, and so on as being basically true (albeit minus the MPD/twins stuff until that last interview), and that whole last interview as the truth, or there's nothing to hold on to.

 

And that, by the way, is the one bit of authorial control over how the narrative is dispensed - the clips are all timestamped and made available in chronological order, and the interviews are progressively more revealing as time goes on, so between that and the 5 clip limitation, you have to drill down pretty specifically to get at the meatiest stuff (particularly interview 7, where all the big reveals are).

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Thanks for the podblast, Thumbs! Really enjoyed it!

 

Also, malkav11, thanks for linking that interivew - didn't realize there was one! I can understand now why that IM convo was in if it felt necessary during play-testing. Works for some people, not for others I guess. I kind of wish it was left out, myself, but I understand it a little better now.

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I'm really surprised by how bothered people were by the IM thing, myself. It felt totally normal to me. I don't think the reveal that you're a character in the world is that out of left field - the readme files at the beginning imply as much.

 

On that note, did anybody else get super freaked out the first few times the reflection appeared? I think the first time it appeared for me was right after hearing the song and the face, the music, the creepiness of the song and the fact that it was late at night made me jump out of my seat.

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There was also the bit where police sirens would reflect the player character's image in the "monitor." We were playing on my laptop and for some reason, at random intervals, my steam games will essentially alt+tab to my desktop--the background of which is just a very large picture of my cat's face. Every so often, it would link up with the police sirens, so we'd get a quick glimpse of the player character reflected in the monitor, and then we'd see my cat's face on the monitor proper.

 

Off topic: My steam games do that too. Nice to know it's not just me.

 

On Topic: When the Thumbs were talking about the little smile the main character makes when she's playing the song about drowning her sister, a few unresolved plot threads came together in my mind. Did the murderous twin try to poison the attic twin with bad mushrooms, but it killed their parents instead? I can't think of any other reason why the death of their parents would be relevant.

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I like that they tried to add another layer to the story with the IM thing, I don't think they pulled it off particularly well, but I didn't mind it. 

 

The parents are important b/c killing the parents means hannah & simon can move back into the house where Eve is living. but it doesn't work out and eve has to go get an apartment anyway.

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I'm curious if anyone else played with the cheat code that increased the returned clips from 5 to 15. Running through your early searches and seeing what resided in the next 10 search results gives you a real feeling of how meticulous the writing process must have been.

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No, once I got to the point I was satisfied, I just used the random command (which doesn't appear to be actually random) to find the last 15% or so of videos I hadn't seen.

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I used the code to increase the search results. By that time, I had 2 or 3 pages of notebook paper filled with notes/search terms so I just ran through all of them again and ended up getting almost all of the videos that way.

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I used that a bit, but mostly used the random function to fill out the database, just because I felt like it.

 

Something that came up a bit in the other thread: did anybody else play for quite a while after understanding everything? Even after I knew the story of the murder, I was convinced that Eve had killed Hannah (an explanation other than "twins" barely ever crossed my mind) and I still had a bunch of videos missing. So I didn't take the prompt to end the game and instead kept searching, sure that I could find out what had happened. That's when I got super into the tattoo, the coffee and tea, and the tap code. Obviously, nothing came of it, but it took me a while to give up. Did anybody else have that experience?

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I used that a bit, but mostly used the random function to fill out the database, just because I felt like it.

 

Something that came up a bit in the other thread: did anybody else play for quite a while after understanding everything? Even after I knew the story of the murder, I was convinced that Eve had killed Hannah (an explanation other than "twins" barely ever crossed my mind) and I still had a bunch of videos missing. So I didn't take the prompt to end the game and instead kept searching, sure that I could find out what had happened. That's when I got super into the tattoo, the coffee and tea, and the tap code. Obviously, nothing came of it, but it took me a while to give up. Did anybody else have that experience?

 

I had a similar experience! I had a few videos missing when I took the prompt but I ended up coming back the next day to get the rest of them because I was so compelled to know everything. It's pretty uncommon for me to want to be a "completionist" so it was cool to have a game that made me want to come back for that. Even when I felt like I had everything figured out, I couldn't shake the feeling that there *might* be some video clip left that would uncover an important detail.

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Yeah I totally favoured the explanation that Eve & Hannah fought after the police revealed to Hannah that they'd found someone's hairs and fingerprints in the bedroom that didn't match hers or simon's, and that this fight resulted in Eve killing Hannah. But Hannah might just have decided to run away and leave Eve to face the charges, that seems plausible too.

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Off topic: My steam games do that too. Nice to know it's not just me.

 

On Topic: When the Thumbs were talking about the little smile the main character makes when she's playing the song about drowning her sister, a few unresolved plot threads came together in my mind. Did the murderous twin try to poison the attic twin with bad mushrooms, but it killed their parents instead? I can't think of any other reason why the death of their parents would be relevant.

Well, everyone does seem to die when Eve is around! The midwife, the baby, her parents, Simon. People dying all the damn time seems like a pretty relevant thread to pluck at if you're a police person. All the stuff about Diane and Eric isn't particularly relevant to the plot either besides where Simon worked.

 

I absolutely dove back into the game after the chat window popped up. Because I'd listened to the Barlow interview and read a few things (Thank GOODNESS I didn't listen to this before playing the game) I knew there was a head's up that you had seen plot critical stuff. Went back through search terms we'd rolled up after unlocking the search feature to 15 as well.

 

I am fairly certain Eve does say she and Hannah fought, with the implication that it had happened after the daily interview sessions had started.

 

e: actually listening to the cast now. Completely surprised at the dissatisfaction with the IM chat and that resolution, and the "desire" for lack of better word for the story to be something besides twins. Also the whole "the face shows up at important times"- we saw the face literally before we even played any clips. Put the kibosh really quickly on reading any meaning into the face showing up what I have to assume is randomly. We (speaking for my gf but I believe we felt the same way) were both excited to have found essentially the whole story, and took it at basically the craziness face value with which it was presented. My sleuthing was to find all the missing gaps in the story, rather than trying to poke at the poles holding the story up.

 

Maybe it gets brought up later in the show - did people actually call back the chat? I didn't know if there would be more chat if I tried, but it was very satisfying. I loved the chat, because I knew something was going to happen but I didn't know what.

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Finally finished the game, but haven't listened to the spoilerblast yet.

 

I really liked the pacing of my playthrough, even if the ending was a matter of me running out of ideas for search terms, and dealing with diminishing returns. I also never felt that I was discovering information "too early". Most of the "twists" came from realising only later on how things discovered earlier actually connected to each other, and from second guessing my own theories.

 

I kind of admire how ambiguous and unsatisfying/unresolved the story feels in the end. Instead of a story where everything is so vague that no explanation seems plausible, it's vague in a finely crafted way that makes different explanations feel equally possible. This might be a glass half empty-half full situation where there is no actual difference beyond perception, but in this instance I'm inclined to see it as the latter.

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I'm really surprised by how bothered people were by the IM thing, myself. It felt totally normal to me. I don't think the reveal that you're a character in the world is that out of left field - the readme files at the beginning imply as much.

I don't object to a revelation that you are a character in the world; as you indicate, that is obvious. In fact, it was SO obvious to me that the heavy-handed revelation of it is what felt unnecessary and intrusive.

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Finally got around to playing this. I'm definitely on team twins, though the Keyser Soze theory certainly has its appeal.

As has been pointed out, they're not necessarily mutually exclusive anyway. If we accept that both sisters exist, that still doesn't necessarily mean that the rest of Eve's story is true, especially since apparently Hannah is gone, in one way or another, and cannot corroborate it. It's entirely possible she killed both Simon and Hannah, the latter either before or during the course of the interviews, and then staged the evidence in such a way that it looked like Hannah had run away. As Badfinger says, there does seem to be an awfully high mortality rate around her, and she has way more motive to resent/envy Hannah than Hannah's supposed envy of her way with boys.

 

Also, it seems like admin_random is actually completely necessary to fill the database, since there's a whole string of lie detector clips which are just yes or no, and if you search on either of those you get way more than 15 results.

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I think it's a bug and you have to search "yes" and "no" to get those clips. the quotations were supposed to allow you to search whole sentences, they don't seem to work like that, it seems you can use them to search for a word on its own. 

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