Games are a unique medium for storytelling, being able to mimic what movies, and books and other media can do, but also being capable of taking the player and their decisions and making them part of the story. When people talk about stories that can only be told within videogames, one name that always comes to mind is Her Story.
I'm not sure I can say much about Her Story that hasn't been said before by more eloquent people. If you've never even heard of it, it's a story-driven game that revolves around a British woman being interviewed by the police in regards to the disappearance and presumed murder of her husband.
The twist, or rather, one of the many twists, is that it's a non-linear narrative. You play as someone who's accessing the police database that contains all of the interviews they conducted with the suspect. The answer to each question asked by the investigators is present in the database as its own separate video file, but there's no way to access them sequentially. Instead, you must use the search bar and look for videos using keywords.
You can type in a word, and if it shows up on any of the videos, that video is shown to you. If the keyword is too vague and appear in a ton of videos, you can only watch the first five results, ordered by how early they appear in the interrogation, which more often than not ends up as a dead end. For instance, if you search for the name of the husband, around 60 videos are returned, but 55 will be out of your grasp, making it a bad clue.
I don't think I can express how much I appreciate this style of storytelling. You have all the answers in your reach, but you need to know which question to ask -- you need to find out what you want to know so you can try to learn it. The game endlessly instigates your curiosity, throwing leads and red herrings, namedropping places and people, pulling you towards even more searches and more videos.
What's more, the game beckons you to put together the pieces of the story as you go, but since there are different paths to take, each person will have a different experience playing the game. I formulated wild theories as I was playing, and I've seen other people do the same, only based on completely different ideas.
You can find the videos that discuss the husband's fate relatively quickly, or it may take you until the database is exhausted -- it just depends on your choice of keywords. It's possible you'll stumble upon those videos while trying to answer a whole different set of questions, and you'll want to keep playing for the sake of those still missing pieces.
The credits roll once you tell them to, by stating that you're satisfied with your findings. There's no answer to be given, no specific video to be found that signifies a win state. It's just you, your faint reflection on the screen in front of you, and videos. You just keep going until you think you have all the answers, and that's it.
What's amusing about that is that, even after exhausting the database, it's unlikely you'll have a clear picture of the facts, not only because the game leaves a few threads hanging, but also, the testimony of one person is all you have to go by, and you know she is lying about certain things. How much can you really trust her? It's doubt that lingers even after you close the game and set out to do something else. In several ways, the game plays you as much as you play it.
I love Her Story. More than simply an enticing narrative, it's a narrative that works precisely because it's a videogame, precisely because it embraces the uniqueness of the medium, and for that, I consider it a foundational piece of video game storytelling. If you're into that at all, you absolutely must experience it yourself.
I'm not sure I can say much about Her Story that hasn't been said before by more eloquent people. If you've never even heard of it, it's a story-driven game that revolves around a British woman being interviewed by the police in regards to the disappearance and presumed murder of her husband.
The twist, or rather, one of the many twists, is that it's a non-linear narrative. You play as someone who's accessing the police database that contains all of the interviews they conducted with the suspect. The answer to each question asked by the investigators is present in the database as its own separate video file, but there's no way to access them sequentially. Instead, you must use the search bar and look for videos using keywords.
You can type in a word, and if it shows up on any of the videos, that video is shown to you. If the keyword is too vague and appear in a ton of videos, you can only watch the first five results, ordered by how early they appear in the interrogation, which more often than not ends up as a dead end. For instance, if you search for the name of the husband, around 60 videos are returned, but 55 will be out of your grasp, making it a bad clue.
I don't think I can express how much I appreciate this style of storytelling. You have all the answers in your reach, but you need to know which question to ask -- you need to find out what you want to know so you can try to learn it. The game endlessly instigates your curiosity, throwing leads and red herrings, namedropping places and people, pulling you towards even more searches and more videos.
What's more, the game beckons you to put together the pieces of the story as you go, but since there are different paths to take, each person will have a different experience playing the game. I formulated wild theories as I was playing, and I've seen other people do the same, only based on completely different ideas.
You can find the videos that discuss the husband's fate relatively quickly, or it may take you until the database is exhausted -- it just depends on your choice of keywords. It's possible you'll stumble upon those videos while trying to answer a whole different set of questions, and you'll want to keep playing for the sake of those still missing pieces.
The credits roll once you tell them to, by stating that you're satisfied with your findings. There's no answer to be given, no specific video to be found that signifies a win state. It's just you, your faint reflection on the screen in front of you, and videos. You just keep going until you think you have all the answers, and that's it.
What's amusing about that is that, even after exhausting the database, it's unlikely you'll have a clear picture of the facts, not only because the game leaves a few threads hanging, but also, the testimony of one person is all you have to go by, and you know she is lying about certain things. How much can you really trust her? It's doubt that lingers even after you close the game and set out to do something else. In several ways, the game plays you as much as you play it.
I love Her Story. More than simply an enticing narrative, it's a narrative that works precisely because it's a videogame, precisely because it embraces the uniqueness of the medium, and for that, I consider it a foundational piece of video game storytelling. If you're into that at all, you absolutely must experience it yourself.