Telling Lies
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Über das Spiel
„Telling Lies“ ist das neue Videospiel von Sam Barlow, dem Schöpfer von „Her Story“ und „Silent Hill: Shattered Memories“. „Telling Lies“ ist ein investigativer Thriller mit einer nicht linearen Story, die sich um heimlich aufgezeichnete Videounterhaltungen entspinnt. In den Hauptrollen: Logan Marshall-Green, Alexandra Shipp, Kerry Bishé und Angela Sarafyan.
Und was passiert?
„Telling Lies“ platziert dich vor einen anonymen Laptop, der eine gestohlene NSA-Datenbank mit Filmmaterial enthält. Die Aufzeichnungen decken zwei Jahre im Privatleben von vier Menschen ab, die durch einen schockierenden Vorfall miteinander verbunden sind. Durchsuche die Datenbank, indem du Suchbegriffe eingibst und dir die Clips ansiehst, auf die sich diese Begriffe beziehen, und finde heraus, was vorgefallen ist.
„Telling Lies“ bietet dir eine bisher noch nie dagewesene intime und intensive Spielerfahrung. Ein Spiel, in dem du entscheidest, was wahr ist.
Systemanforderungen
Steam Nutzer-Reviews
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309 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 25.12.20 18:41
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781 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 24.05.20 14:01
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2814 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 16.04.20 16:16
Manche Videos ziehen sich allerdings in die Länge . Aber alles in allem , ein schönes Spiel
zum selber herausfinden , welches Ende es denn gibt .
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1178 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 27.11.19 08:46
Das ist positiv: Eine gute Story, die man sich über Suchbegriffe in einer Datenbank nach und nach erschließt. Das Spiel ist insgesamt eher für entspannte Spielabende gedacht. Das Konzept ist unverbraucht und ich habe bislang noch kein vergleichbares Spiel gespielt.
Das ist negativ: Man ergründet die Story durch schauen von Videos von gehackten Kameras. Insgesamt eine gute Idee. Aber absolut negativ ist das dämliche manuelle Rückspulen einer digitalen Video-Datei. Wenn der Suchbegriff in einem Video bspw. bei Minute 6 gefunden wird, muss man die 6 Minuten zurück spulen, was sicher eine Minute Zeit kostet. Ich dachte, dass ich diese Zeiten nach VHS nicht mehr erleben müsste...
In Summe aber eine klare Empfehlung.
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689 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 16.02.22 09:09
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309 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 05.02.22 17:17
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774 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 30.01.22 18:01
The problem with the game is that the format is a bit rough and many players will be confused or bored very rapidly. I don't understand why they didn't make a chronological report with all the discoveries and fuse videos when you get both sides.
Also, the rewind is so slow, why didn't you put us at the start of the video instead? It feels like you're wasting your time because of some poor gameplay choices, rewinding endlessly and browsing history.
Also, I didn't get why the author chose to not show all endings if you get everything, you can only watch 1 of them...
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225 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 23.01.22 18:23
On top of that the annoying organizing and manual rewinding of videos makes the whole investigative process of the game feel so tedious and mind numbing, sitting through the dead silence on the other end of a video call as they listen to someone talk and wait for their turn to react. And it could have been great, it could have been a very interesting story. But at the end, its just a waste of time.
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828 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 21.01.22 16:03
Either stick to single character games, Sam, or work with your actors together: I promise it's worth the inconvenience of making schedules work, and they'll be grateful for it.
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337 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 18.01.22 17:29
No way to start the videos from the beginning.
Needed more meat to the story, why match videos? with tags? no reason to do this at all, just waste of time.
5 hours in / game finished, we are just... eh, moving on.
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90 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 08.01.22 16:11
its such bad experience when you dont know where you are and game doesnt show what stage are you at.
and you need to watch again some stupid boring webcam videos and also video player so bad, you cant really start from beginning you can only rewind it in very weirdly way. how about add timestamps next time? or add filter features to video database? or create better show listings for video that you searched? this game rely on user experience and they literally messed it up bruh
i really loved the concept, casts is great, story is fine. they just dont give enough navigation and didnt execute it very well. trust me dont buy this game, its not for everyone.
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395 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 20.12.21 12:17
Logan Marshall-Green did a great job as David - special mention for a man who can express almost entirely through his eyebrows ;) All of the acting was well done, though, and I enjoyed seeing the characters become more fleshed out as I watched the snippets.
Unfortunately, the criticisms are valid - the controls suck and the scrolling interface is tedious.
Overall, though I can see why some people didn't like it, I really enjoyed it and would love to see more like this.
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1114 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 07.12.21 07:59
The story was fun and it is quite well acted, that is when they actually act and don't just stare into camera. It's a definite yes for people who liked Her Story or like detective and story-based games. But frankly, the game has MANY shortcomings...
Also, despite what people claim, the game does NOT HAVE MULTIPLE ENDINGS. There are three epilogues and you will only see one, depending on which videos you watched more, but the other two still take place off-screen.
PROS
- The story is great, at least for most part (the final videos are a bit hard to follow, frankly)
- Very well acted, you will probably recognize some of the faces (although if I see Logan Marshall-Green raise his eyebrows one more time in my life, I will throw something through the screen).
- The searches are mercifully more lenient than in other similar games, e.g. it does not distinguish grammatical number, which made it a bit less annoying. The videos are also often fairly everyday conversations so you can get lucky with just guessing regular expressions.
- I liked the use of the framing story, although the ever-present reflection in the screen was a bit creepy. I guess it can be switched off?
- Despite what I write in Cons, there are some new features in the interface compared to Her Story that make it easier - you can make bookmarks and tag the videos, although I did not find these feature as useful as I hoped.
CONS
- The idea of watching only one side of the conversation is interesting but you end up watching people just stare at you doing weird faces. There 100% needed to be a tool to play two videos at once so that you can see the whole thing when you unlock both sides.
- The fact you cannot automatically jump to the start of a video was a terrible choice, no idea why they didn't patch it later because this is an extremely common complaint as I noticed. You can rewind and fast forward but cannot just jump to a point in the video, which is another awful mechanic.
- Considering this game is about searching a database and watching videos, it is incredibly user unfriendly when it comes to... catalogizing and watching videos, really. Like, why don't you create a library of unlocked videos where you can put them into a timeline? It would also make it much easier to unlock all videos because you would know which pairs you have to complete.
- The way the three epilogues work is weird and while they give closure to the characters, they are really not interesting enough to make the game replayable.
So yes, I did enjoy the game and the story but the interface is just ridiculously bad. Even many other negative reviews focus on this issue, this game would get a much better reception with a few very minor tweaks, it's breathtaking that none of them have been patched in.
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561 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 01.12.21 17:07
Having two sides of a conversation is an amazing idea. The problem is that every conversation has two sides. You might spend 5 more boring minutes watching Discount Tom Hardy do and say nothing with the slim hope he'll drop a single keyword, only to be left yawning.
I would love it if it were tighter, thinner, and denser. More clues in a single scene, not just verbally but in the environment. Or more excuses as to why we can't see the other person, minimizing time in the same convo. Or just more journal vlogs that tell stuff with no downtime and no other person to have to hunt.
My spouse and I sat down for almost 10 hours mapping out words on paper, setting up a timeline, and having a really good time with the idea of it—the craft, the concept. But in the end it wasn't engaging enough to finish. I'll never know what happened between Discount Tom Hardy and Season 9 Scrubs. But I enjoyed it while it lasted and am happy to support it.
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267 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 26.11.21 17:10
Two specific gameplay mechanics were extremely frustrating:
1. You have to bookmark a clip before you can tag it, and you have to open the clip and pause it in order to bookmark it.
2. No quick button to start at the beginning of a clip. If I search a keyword that appears at, say, the 3 minute mark of a 6 minute clip, it starts me at the 3 minute mark when I click on it and I have to manually rewind to get to the very beginning.
You're going to spend more time scrubbing through clips- whether to rewind, skip long stretches of silence or try to find an interesting subtitle to stop at (you'll never find it in most clips, sorry)- than you will actually piecing together the story. At some point the game triggered the endgame scene. It certainly didn't feel like it was time for the endgame as nothing interesting had happened and I learned nothing substantial, so I have to assume that even the game got bored of itself and decided to call it quits.
I'm on a tight gaming budget and it sucks that this is what some of my money went to, even at a discount.
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140 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 17.11.21 15:25
What is Telling lies?
Telling lies is an investigative thriller game with non-linear storytelling, what does it mean? That you are thrown in front of a computer and given a search engine that can find videos based on key-words. On paper this idea is really cool and makes it so you have to pay attention to the videos as well as taking notes, writing down names,places and such.
But when expectations meet reality and you are left with a game of guessing and forced to watch videos from different people, with different perspectives and that goes from a couple of seconds to several minutes, the game just lose its charm.
The acting is not that bad but I found it really boring to watch a 4 minutes long video just to find no real clues about what I was looking for. The search engine only show you 5 videos out of all the ones sharing the same tag, forcing you to find another tag that can show you new videos, leaving you to wonder what the hell it could ever be that bring up a new video, in a boring research for a tag that most of the time just distract you and push you further away from the video you were looking for.
The game miss a rewind mechanic, I'm not sure how you can make a game about watching videos and forget an option to rewind the video you are watching, it's such a frustrating thing...
I'd say the game is worth it only when on sale, otherwise wait.
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156 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 05.11.21 13:40
I get it, but goddamnit, I'm done.
Look, I get it, it's fun unravelling mysteries, but holy shit, this is so goddamn boring. They expect me to sit through 8-minute videos of people talking about nothing with awkward pauses in between, only for me to realize that, OH NO, this is only ONE side of the conversation so I have to sit through ANOTHER 8-minute video where they talk about nothing with awkward pauses in between.
I got the gist of the basic story around 45 minutes in, the rest of it was just...sitting around, watching boring long videos, being paranoid about missing keywords that would just lead me towards watching even more boring videos that would leave me paranoid about missing keywords.
Boring, boring, BORING. I am done with this boring game. The acting was FINE, the premise is FINE, but goddamn if this isn't the most boring execution of such a neat idea I've ever seen.
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45 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 31.10.21 00:04
You can do research based on what you hear and freely place personalised tags anywhere in these videos.
You guess you have to search for the names you hear in the videos and then see more video calls. Then search for certain terms and so on.
Boring.
The game lacked the hook to keep me watching 4-5 hours of video calls between strangers talking to each other.
)I also find it absurd that there are no media player controls for these videos. Not a pause button. A slider. A keyboard shortcut.)
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607 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 14.10.21 08:53
I just feel like it was lacking more in choices for the ending? dunno, just felt like it.
Still, it is an amazing game and I really recommend it :)
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912 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 12.10.21 04:50
1. This one is more straight forward.
2. One sided conversations take some time to get use to. And trying to find the matching video. To the games credit when you catch on to the time and date stamps this is a little easier. And if you book mark every video and sort them by date.
3. And this is my biggest issue. Why the hell do I have to rewind a video to watch it? First off the game is all done on a PC so wtf? This is really annoying when my word finds a 7 minute video and my word is at the end of this video.
Over all tho I did enjoy this game and its multiple story's.
My take away is this. If you liked Her Story's game play style and would like a game where its not trying to figure out the truth of something, but rather how someone went from A to Z then try this game. There is ALOT going on in this game.
One word of advice tho. There are 170 different videos with the final clip of the game.. And you need to watch about 145 of them to see everything that happened. It was worth dealing with it. If you want the story but none of the fun. Youtube has a 6 hour video for you guys
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943 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 05.07.21 20:07
There isn't really a mystery to solve or puzzle to unravel. The sole point of watching one video is to find another video, which leads to another, etc. The story is interesting and kept my attention, but the end result did not require as much attention to detail as I had expected.
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698 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 03.07.21 11:27
Basic gameplay is close to Her Story, but here it's somehow infinitely more tedious for no good reason. You end up wasting time rewinding videos sloooowly without a possibility to skip to the beginning.
The story was quite confusing in the beginning, but by the end it gripped me to the point where I plan to speed-replay this with key word list to get every video.
So, quite a mixed bag... On one hand, there is a compelling story with good acting. On the other hand, there's the downright hostile UI that tries it's best to make you not like the game. I swear, 30 minutes before the end I was still firm on giving this a negative review. Ultimately decided to recommend this with a large asterisk.
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568 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 08.06.21 20:37
- could have better writing, but the acting overall isn't too bad.
- controls aren't great. Download the mod/hack that people have been talking about
- taking notes in notepad, google docs, or regular pen and paper will go far :)
- this is a great game to stream with others as everyone can contribute ideas and thoughts. +1 for google docs to share the notes then
- really neat idea for a game
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60 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 06.05.21 00:09
This is not Her Story. Even worse, it purposely ignores the pluses of Her Story (quick videos, rapid interaction), the story is less of a mystery than HS and less interesting (arguably not interesting at all). I was one of the few who thought Her Story was a bad story (it’s a tired story told in other media) but the interactivity in game format made up for it because it felt like you were participating at least. Here, you don’t feel that at all, you feel very, very passive and at the mercy of a crappy Hollywood wannabe production.
On the painful videos: Aside from some really questionable T+A focus shots, some videos are 7 MINUTES long, but there’s no standard UI functionality like in most video viewers (jump to start, click-and-hold to jump to a specific timeframe), and the rewind (even at x3) is sooooo slow you feel trapped in some of these sequences. Do not recommend.
Quick note: I also got black screen issue, had to restart (did no one test this game?).
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868 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 05.05.21 23:48
This game has, however, one fatal flaw. The inability to watch the clips from the beginning is cumbersome. The game instead forces you to scrub slowly through the videos to reach the beginning.
While I understand the purpose behind this creative choice, I found myself forced to download a mod that allowed me to skip to the beginning of the searched videos. I would highly recommend it. It takes nothing away from the experience and instead streamlines an earnest investigation into the mystery.
I can't wait to see what this developer has in store for us.
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204 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 23.04.21 06:23
Telling Lies by the same creator tells a lengthier tale of lesser substance. The ending is tonally jarring and hard to swallow, ending on a cartoonishly saccharine note after a fairly dark interpersonal drama.
The limitations in gameplay, such an inability to easily rewind videos, works against your ability to consume the clips on your own terms, dissonant from what is otherwise a self navigated journey.
It's a decent yarn minus the epilogue, but it's arguable it was worth the effort to get there.
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1406 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 17.03.21 01:01
PROS:
+ Captivating narrative.
+ High-profile and talented actors!
+ It's a forensic puzzle where you need to connect the dots.
+ Advanced search and bookmark features with subtitles extraction and tag functions.
+ No redundant achievements.
+ Meta-game reflections.
+ Well-fitted OST.
+ Decent longevity for completionists: 10-20 hours, also considering the genre.
NEUTRAL:
~ If you came here from 'Her Story' (previous Barlow's game) do not expect the same degree of open interpretation and overall mysteriousness. 'Telling Lies' plot does lead to closure eventually.
CONS:
- Probably too many filler sequences with low significance.
- Tedious rewind feature. A time bar function would have been more practical.
- The main 'mystery' can be solved in less than 5 hours of gameplay.
FINAL SCORE: 9.0 / 10
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472 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 29.12.20 23:40
Recommendations: keep notes (like pen and paper!) and become comfortable with the fast-forward button. Stream it to your friends to make it a group activity. We had a really good time uncovering the story together.
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365 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 29.12.20 23:09
I played this hoping I would get a similar experience to 'Her Story'. Unfortunately what I got is something that felt like a waste of my time.
PROS:
-Amazing acting
-Improved searching interface and functions
CONS: literally everything else for me
About half of my playtime is real playtime, the other half is me keeping the game open while I scrolled through a chronological playthrough on youtube. So I did not experience the game how it was supposed to be experienced, and that's that. You might want to take my review with a grain of salt. I did everything I could to try playing the game as it was intended, but just felt bored by all the pauses (because of the conversation format), the awful scrolling feature and the sheer number of videos. I personally don't think I can handle this format with a story as long as this - the action spans over more than a year and there is a lot of detail. Putting 10+ hours into fully completing this would have been nothing but a chore.
The story could have definitely been shorter, I felt like there was too much characterization and set up. If there were metaphors (like the stories David told Alba), they were hard to catch for me (unlike in Her Story). The acting was incredible and there was a wide rage of character types, unfortunately that wasn't a pro for me because I barely liked any of them. To me it felt like a bunch of people making mistakes they shouldn't (esp Ava and David). I did really love the cam girl and her twist at the end was pretty damn good.
My recommendation is just play Her Story and maybe watch this on youtube or buy it if you want to support the developer.
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638 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 08.12.20 13:09
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325 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 01.12.20 22:03
If you wonder if you should play this game, I would say you should but don't expect something exactly like Her story. Telling lies is much more like a movie than a puzzle game.
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349 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 01.12.20 01:22
Though it was doing a good job of making the player feel like they are intruding on intimate moments.
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826 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 26.10.20 17:49
There is however a problem with this game. The controls for the video are lacking, you can't jump to any point or even to start/end of the video. Instead you have to manually rewind the video at 3x speed. It wouldn't have been a big problem if all of the videos started from the beginning. However the video starts from the moment the word you searched for is spoken. What makes matters worse is that because you can only hear one end of the conversation, sometimes you might get to a video in which one character hardly does anything, but you have to watch the entire thing to figure it out.
Pros:
+ Unique narrative
+ Charismatic characters portrayed by famous actors
+ Unique feel of peeking into someone's private life
Cons:
- Lack of video controls
For me the game's main problem was outweighed by its unique narrative and presentation. So I suggest everyone to try it, but if you have no patience then this game is definitely not for you.
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521 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 26.10.20 16:16
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192 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 21.09.20 07:45
It's an 'almost there' game, but it desperately needs quality of life updates to make it a more enjoyable experience for the player.
Much of the game involves combing through one-sided recordings of video calls, which means there are 2 videos for each major conversation that you uncover. You discover these videos by searching for 'keywords' in a database.
In Her Story, a similar mechanic is used to convey the story, but the story there felt tighter and more condensed, and the novelty of the game's structure was so interesting that it was easy to look past some of the clunkier elements of the gameplay. There are some basic updates to the gameplay that would be welcome here - the ability to easily scroll through video calls instead of 'fast forward and rewinding' them, for instance, would help alleviate some of the annoying downtime of the game. Playing both sides of a video call would also be nice, especially because most of the time the characters aren't using headphones on these video calls, meaning that you *would* be able to hear the other person speaking in real life.
Telling Lies doesn't have the same tight storytelling that Her Story had, and there is a lot of dead space between big moments. Often, you will discover large plot points before you understand what you're looking at as you piece together the narrative, which takes away from the tension and atmosphere of the story as well.
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789 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 02.09.20 08:43
Telling Lies focuses on David Smith, as he has moved across the country for work… ok that’s not exactly it, the problem with Telling Lies is similar to Her Story’s issue. The entire game is driven by the narrative and ultimately the discovery of that narrative is crucial to the game. There’s not a huge gameplay system or a separate puzzle, it’s about how the player discovers and learns about the story and the slow reveal of it, and thus much of the story is a spoiler.
A very loose outline of the story of Telling Lies is that David is an FBI agent investigating a group, and forced to move across the country to be away from his wife and daughter as part of the investigation. There’s a massive story here, and many different facets to it. The purpose of Telling Lies is for players to discover the full story by watching recorded video clips from David’s investigation and video calls, mostly the video calls.
Each of the video calls are split up into separate videos, so David’s and the other person’s files can be found by searching the database for words that were in the dialogue. The videos are also set up so players can only see and hear one side of the conversations, so while watching David’s videos you only hear David’s voice. All conversations are closed captions and players can simply click on the words in the subtitles to make searching easier.
Part of the game is about finding the other side of a call, for example, a character may drop the word “beach”. Players might see this as significant and search the database finding a second video call of the same length from about the same time (or three hours difference because of time zones) and suddenly players now have access to the other side of that video. Of course, many words are used in multiple conversations so players will also have the ability to find other clips. A useful bookmark tool helps you remember important statements in the videos that work efficiently.
The exploration of the database and finding different clips using search terms is a majority of the gameplay in Telling Lies, but it works for what it is supposed to do.
The videos in the game are extremely well done. They were apparently all acting out as actual video calls so they line up and many video calls show much more than just two people standing there looking into a phone lifeless. Characters move and show off the locations where they are.
The acting as well is great, Logan Marshall-Green plays David and brings a lot of life to the characters. Kerry Bishe of Halt and Catch Fire fame plays Emma, David’s wife, and is skilled in connecting with the viewer and the character. There’s a seven-minute mostly monologue by her that’s incredible and feels like one of the best scenes in the game.
The problem is, during her monologue, David is listening and there are about 6 minutes of that call of him just staring at the screen. Logan Marshall-Green is skilled and you can see him thinking as he listens but his side of that call is empty.
This is a problem for Telling Lies. There are over ten hours of footage here, and with most of them being video calls that's about five hours of calls. But people don’t talk over each other so while there are about 5 hours of dialogue on those calls, there’s also five hours of silence and those silent minutes add up.
The core issue is there’s no way to watch two videos at the same time, nor is there a good way to seek on a call. Instead, players are expected to sit through calls and watch it, then watch the other side, and it’s a bit much for the long calls. You also have to rewind many calls to the beginning to see the entire call and that is also a rough process.
There could be a solution. If you find two calls that are associated, they should play simultaneously, and that would produce a better experience. Sadly that’s not what is available here. A shame because it’s a much-needed function.
It’s clear that finding the second part of a call is part of the game but the singular playback, no seeking and inability to match two clips make watching a call more work than it should be.
The other issue I have for Telling Lies is I feel that my path through the story ran out of steam after about a third of the videos. I feel that I fully understood the story at that point and while there was a single reveal in the next third of the story, I don’t know if I need to watch much more.
More isn’t always better. There’s a bigger story here, but there’s also much more footage than might be needed. Her Story had a nice self-contained two to three hours of footage, but Telling Lies wants to tell a bigger story, which it succeeds at. It also tries to tell that story of too long of a period of time, which doesn’t feel as necessary.
I also think the story here is slightly less interesting than Her Story was, and that’s a bit of an issue for me.
That’s not to say I dislike Telling Lies, however, it is a sequel to one of the best stories of all time. I like a lot of what Telling Lies does, and the experience is once again one-of-a-kind. But there are some mistakes here that could have been improved upon.
Ultimately I give Telling Lies a
8/10
If you haven’t played Her Story, I would play that instead of Telling Lies, however, I would recommend Telling Lies to any fan of Her Story, because it’s a similar game and a similarly solid story.
If you want more of my opinions on Telling Lies, you can find that on a video I recently did comparing Telling Lies to Her Story that is available here:
https://youtu.be/Sp2gYEoV5oA
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393 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 28.08.20 03:57
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402 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 23.08.20 19:58
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333 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 09.08.20 18:30
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196 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 06.08.20 04:03
I got more of the same, but not better. There's something here, but the UX gets in the way in the worst possible way.
PROS:
- The acting is improved
- More characters
- You feel like you are watching someone else's private recording at time.
CONS:
- You only have one side of the conversation at a time... why? That big brother government database doesn't have the ability to record a dialogue or at least duplex them once you have both ends?
- Because of the above you end up watching all the dialogue's pauses, it could be good, but it isn't. There's barely any reads that you can find from those sequences... and.
- If you want to skip through them, you can't jump in time it's fast fwd at 3x max.
- If you want to re-watch a video and the bit you need is at the end? No jump to time, you have to watch/fast fwd to it.
- Since everything video is so cumbersome, at least allow me to do it without making it full screen. I could write notes during those pauses, but no every video is forced to full screen only with minimal control. Media Player Classic has more features... you copied Solitaire (which is harder than the original?), but not a decent video player on a computer.
- The tagging system was not improved.
- The notepad is glitchy, it jumps to the end when you watch a video... which is not great for taking chronologically ordered notes.
Result: Everything you have to do is done at half the speed it would take you with a computer (which you are sitting at!). Instead the computer feels like a VCR, don't forget to rewind.
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638 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 04.07.20 01:22
Interactive Movies have always been a pretty shlocky genre and with good reason. Most are poorly acted, poorly written, and poorly paced. However, exceptions exist. Case in point, Sam Barlow's previous entry: 'Her Story'. I love me my indie-games but Her Story was something special. The script was excellent, the actress did an amazing job in her own right and the story was done in an ambiguous, non-linear style. Only by digging into the clues would you uncover the deeper mystery of who she was and what she did. Considering that genuine mystery games are also pretty scarce these days, I was pretty enthralled to uncover every piece of footage that game could throw at me.
Here comes Telling Lies. Add in a bigger budget, a larger cast and a much deeper narrative.
The worst part is, it is very hard to describe what makes the game so good without giving key details away. What I can say is this: The underlying theme of the game is pretty dark and depressing. What makes it resonate so powerfully is the performances by the actors especially when it comes to emoting. Unlike a TV show or Film, they try to emulate a believable person, not just a character. If you buy into their narrative and really pay attention to key scenes, you may find yourself growing a genuine attachment (or resentment) to each character.
Much like the first game, there is a wider mystery to unfold and there are defining arcs for each character. These may not be obvious right away, nor how you can find them. The hook to the game is that you only see one side of the conversation. You're starting with an incomplete picture and you have to stitch together clips and watch them 'in pairs' to fully extract what's going on in a scene. Sometimes this can mean watching the same clips more than once, but the game is designed in a way where important scenes are usually heavily acted out through one character.
Yes, this does mean that you will find yourself scrubbing and 'guessing' what key word in a video will lead you to its companion scene and that may turn some people off. Even if you don't find the clues right away, the game does an excellent job at using symbolism and foreshadowing to get you in the right direction.
This game deserved a lot more attention and praise than what it received. If you're a fan of adult narratives that require 'reading between the lines' to fully appreciate, Telling Lies may be the game for you. What I do recommend is that you pace yourself as it is quite a bit longer than Her Story (which I binged in one session). I had to split the one up into 3 and still felt like I over extended myself.
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650 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 30.06.20 08:40
I really wanted to love this game, and at first I did, but you have to really suspend disbelief to play this game and it's just filled with bad design. The acting and writing achievements are the stand out elements here and at first the game is very interesting to interact with but ultimately I was left wanting much much more from each of the story lines.
7/10
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163 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 10.06.20 18:04
The good:
- The story is actually quite well put together. Kudos there. (well except for the cam girl. Still dont care about her part(?) in the story at all.
- Pretty good acting, although watching the actors during their pauses strains things.
The not-so-good:
-Controlls are just a bit awful. For example, when you find a video via a keyword it will start the video from the moment that word was said, which might be at 3:50 out of 5:10 minutes. Now you can rewind to the start and watch it call, but you have to do that via 4x(?) rewind, so basically you end up clicking that rewind button for a full minute before watching the video. Dull and unessary.
The bad:
- The basic concept is that you find only one side to each conversation. That however means by design 50% of the time you will be listening to: Nothing. Instead you will only watch one person listening to another and by god, that is just way too dull.
- It's some what made worse by a fact that even when you have found the two matching sides to a conversation, you can only listen to them in sequence, not in parallel. Why on earth can I not watch side-by-side in this game? Seems so obvious.
In the end this game literally takes twice as long as it needs to. This does make it quite a bite more tedious, which coupled with a few pretty bad UX choices makes me not recommend it.
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216 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 08.06.20 18:29
Unlike Her Story in which you are introduced to the murder immediately.
About the gameplay, there's not much improvement from Her Story (actually there are a few downgrades). You can now pause the videos, but you can't play from the beginning or the end or jump ahead or back... unless you download a mod, which sucks super hard.
The acting is good but it's recorded in such a way that you sometimes watch 1 minute of someone just staring at the screen and not saying anything.
Poorly thought out game.
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717 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 29.05.20 09:50
In short, brilliant acting, interesting narrative device, terrible story. Do not recommend.
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390 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 10.05.20 07:59
DISCLAIMER: This is a full review, and NOT a first impressions review
Zitat:
PLEASE NOTE: I recommended this game with some exceptions, overall if the game did not live up to just a tiny expectation, I would not have recommended it at all, so please read the review carefully if you are thinking of buying/playing this game
Telling Lies is a private lives investigation adventure game developed by Sam Barlow, the same guy behind Her Story and Furious Bee Limited and published by Annapurna Interactive
This game has gotten a lot of mixed reception with gamers, however the game has gained critical acclaim with reviewers and critics across the board and I can understand both sides of the picture and I will be comparing Telling Lies heavily with Her Story since they are, more or less, the same in terms of gameplay
Telling Lies is a linear story adventure. Although nothing of the story is going to be mentioned in this review, the location of the whole game is on a computer. You basically search tags that will load the next videos that progress the story, more or less what happened in Her Story but with a bigger production budget behind it
It can get boring and yes the length of the game doesn't account for the price their asking for which is significantly more expensive than Her Story was, also, Telling Lies' story and atmosphere are not as nailed perfectly in the game as Her Story was. The story is well written and travels through individuality and the stories people hide behind each other but lacks the uniqueness Sam Barlow's previous game had
I can understand the mixed responses from gamers about Telling Lies and I can also understand why critics and reviewers gave this game a near perfect score and to me personally I kind of enjoyed playing through Telling Lies, it's certainly not as great as Her Story was and that's a damn shame
Telling Lies will and has mixed reception but if you are reading this review, then you are dying to know my recommendation. Her Story is a game everyone should try and play and finish in one whole sitting, and, for the retail price it is offering, I would recommend it at its full price, as opposed to Telling Lies...
I feel if people enjoyed Her Story, they should definitely give this one a try. If you didn't on the other hand or wanted something a bit more different and wanted it to be like Her Story, in terms of retaining the great and gripping story and characterisation, then steer clear away from this one... which is an utter shame
RECOMMENDED :)
If you enjoyed Her Story for what it was and want the same thing but with a higher production budget and value
NOT RECOMMENDED :(
If you didn't enjoy Her Story or want something a bit more different but still retaining the gripping story and characterisation that Her Story offered
REVIEW SOURCES:
[list]
[*] None
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466 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 29.04.20 05:26
------------------
The verdict: An incredibly acted, at-times tedious, and over-all engaging narrative-game.
(+) Extremely impressive performances brings the story alive
(-) Rewinding videos & fast forwarding through characters silently listening may consume an hour of your life
Telling Lies follows in the shadow of Her Story--an award-winning game that provides players unparalleled agency in how the story unfolds. When I finally played it years after it was released, it felt revolutionary. The immediate mystery, the red herrings, the dead ends, the twists, and the ultimate ambiguity compelled me to purchase Telling Lies. When it went on sale, I was able to get past my hesitancy from the mixed reviews.
After seven hours of play, I agree with the negative and positive reviews. On the positive side, Telling Lies uses Her Story's gameplay and improves upon its low-resolution monologues with gorgeous high definition video with notably skilled performances. The screen glare, reflections, and disruptions of your play adds literally an extra layer to immersion into the game's world. The shifts in music establish atmosphere that seem to match the emotional-tone of the videos. All-together, Telling Lies had me hooked.
Simultaneously, Telling Lies could be heavy-handed and aggravating. The dialogue and plot restrict the characterization to cliches -- at times painfully so because the story is otherwise so well produced. And because you can only watch one-side of a dialogue at a time, you'll spend twice the amount of time watching the same event. Further, you'll spend an extra 1-2 minutes per 100+ videos rewinding to the beginning, which disrupts the flow of the story. You can bookmark and archive the videos you've watched on the interface, yet the program window is so small, it may discourage you from taking advantage of these features.
Telling Lies will likely satisfy you if you loved Her Story. The acting and production are fantastic and make up for its tedious, if minor, flaws. Yet, Telling Lies fell short of the high hopes I had for a Her Story successor. The non-linear storytelling feels less fresh, and the story has less evocative revelations. I was left thinking that maybe I had missed a big twist, and disappointed when I discovered that was not the case. If you haven't played Her Story, I'd recommend that first; but if you are looking for more, Telling Lies would could be a wise purchase when on sale.
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381 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 27.04.20 23:43
It's a narrative game, so if you don't like long stories you should stop right here.
But if you are a true fan of investigative stories and willing to search and find the true this is your game.
There are a few bugs, but the overall experience is very good.
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1160 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 23.04.20 19:37
I have a problem and I’m not alone. The whole game industry has the same problem: how to tell stories with games? A good story has its own laws. Ask any writer other than your 8-year-old little sister. The story has a build, thought out ups and downs, twists and turns, beginnings and endings. The game follows different rules. The player has to be an active doer, not just a listener, reader or a watcher. The players’ choices and actions will have to have an impact on the game, otherwise the experience is flat. Unfortunately these two collide. Where a good story demands a pre-defined route to work, a good game wants freedom and choices. It’s like marrying a feminist to a chauvinist. It simply does not work or at least has not worked so far and it’s not from the lack of trying. Sam Barlow’s Telling lies is another effort to marry the unwanting partners.
The main beef of the game is how the story is told. The player gets a laptop with 170 video clips loaded in the hard drive. With a right search word the player gets to see from one to five of the clips at the time. To get more, the player will have to come up with another word. The clips are surveillance videos, private conversations, etc. The videos usually show only one person talking to a computer and it very soon becomes clear that for almost every video, there’s someone at the other end of the call with another clip. The clips are not shown in chronological order, but in order the player happens to use the search words. Sometimes the counterparts are easy to find, sometimes it takes quite some time to come up with pairs.
There’s something intriguing about collecting and combining videos, and trying to come up with the right keyword to find the right clips to continue the plot. It’s an innovative way to reveal the whole tale, but to be honest that is about how far the gaming in this game goes. That’s not saying the game is bad, it’s just saying the game is close to traditional storytelling and far from active gaming. Imagine getting any movie split into scenes and shown in random order.
That being said, it all comes down to how good the story is. Games often have bad stories. The heroes have three clumsy facial expressions and the plots are just mandatory textboxes that give characters a justification to hit or shoot something. In this sense Telling lies is very different.
The plot follows core characters of whom David gets most screen time and can be described as the main character. The events take place in modern day USA. The main story has several sub-plots and the events revolve as much around personal relationships and emotions as they twist and turn the main storyline.
The acting is pretty much the best ever seen in video games. The numerous close ups support A-class acting. The subtle facial expressions on full screen make the characters seem all too real. Even an old cynical bastard should feel the characters’ emotions through the screen. The feeling of voyeurism, being part of something very private is strong. If you’re male and did not fall in love with female characters, you’re probably gay. If you did not sense David’s inner struggle and feel his pain, you’re probably emotionally impotent. This, together with mature realistic script, is where the game shines.
The mechanics of seeing the clips in fairly random order creates a splintered storyline and a rollercoaster of emotions that keeps this player – or the spectator - hooked from the start to the end. But. I don’t really want to say this, because I liked Telling lies, but will say it anyway. The script trips in the finale. Compared to the rest of the story the end seems somewhat juvenile and the final flat explanatory scenes are simply a bad way to end a tale, any tale.
Telling lies succeeds fairly well in an almost impossible mission. It tells a mature story with a game without breaking the tension or sacrificing the story to the game mechanics during the process. Even though Telling lies is more a splintered movie-puzzle than an actual game, it still manages to tear down some fences that separate the two forms of culture.
I give the game 8.5/10.
+ Excellent mature story
+ Brilliant acting
+ Innovative way to combine movies and games
- Immature end
- More a movie-puzzle than a game
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231 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 18.04.20 12:19
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2046444747
The acting is good, actually, it is phenomenal, some of the characters did an amazing job capturing their feelings, however, in order to get into the story you need to watch many videos to get what is actually going on, I know this is the aim of the game but they didn't execute it well with the way they shot the videos. This game has also multiple endings depends on who you've investigated on more as there are four main characters.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2046444584
The game mechanics rely on the searching engine you have in the program. You need to listen to all the videos and keep searching. Unlike the previous game, you don't have to write down anything, you can highlight the word and it will be searched automatically, and there is also a history that keeps track of everything you searched and watched. In case you want to write notes in-game, there is a simple notepad on the desktop. There is also solitaire game on the desktop most people said its achievements do not work due to the missing 'king' but it turned out you need to play it multiple times to not 'win' in order to get it.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2046443148
Pros:
+FMV game with good acting.
+Instant searching and there is a log that keeps track of the videos you've watched.
+invistigation detective style.
+Multiple endings depend on who you investigating the most.
+Steam achievements.
Cons:
-Lots of pauses from the characters in most of the videos.
-Weak story.
-When you fast forward or rewind, there is no key to take you to the beginning or end of the video.
I tried to get into it, I just couldn't enjoy it, it felt more like a chore to me.
Other Reviews:
Her Story Review
Zitat:
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27 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 01.04.20 03:50
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229 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 09.03.20 09:33
The story has far more threads than Her Story, and the large cast makes it feel much more tangible. While Her Story can be thought of as having one big twist, Telling Lies has many, and I suspect the pacing was much easier to control as a result.
The game ended not long after I felt like I had a complete-enough picture, and the post-credits bits were a nice way to draw me back for a few more minutes.
I found the criticism that scrubbing time is slow to be fair but overblown; until the very end of the game I always had several other clips and searches to pursue, and it seemed clear that it was a mechanism to stop me from ruining the game for myself.
This is neither a slow game or a boring one. I'd recommend playing with a friend or partner, process of deduction works very well socially.
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241 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 29.01.20 14:28
Zitat:
Visit SaveOrQuit.com for detailed game reviews, posted daily!
Piece together the story by watching through the database of video footage of private conversations. It's an interesting idea, where we witness the events of several people through leaked video footage, mainly of online conversations between them. Every video clip is fully acted out by professional actors and delivers a small piece of the overall puzzle. What we need to do is to navigate through them and try to understand how all the events fit together.
At the centre of the events is our main protagonist, David, trying to balance his work, his family, and his social life, and how little by little troubles start to mount up for him and those he is close to. The story itself is captivating and spans a number of months and its characters are well fleshed out and act like real people.
However, the overall delivery leaves much to be desired. The reason I say this is because the majority of the videos we look through are online conversations between characters, and each video only shows us one side of the conversation. So, we only get to hear half of the conversation, with many very long, tedious gaps where the character in the video is listening to what the other character is saying. This means we have to then search for the other half of the conversation in another video, and even when we do find it, watching through that doesn’t have the same impact. We never get to put the two halves of the conversation side by side, and so any of the heated and emotional moments lose their impact.
A few of the video clips, where one of the characters would put the camera somewhere in the room without anyone else knowing it and recording a conversation unfold between members in that room all in one go, are much better at execution in my opinion. In these we get to see the whole conversation playing out without parts of it missing, and any shocking and emotional moments do have their intended impact. These clips are only about a quarter to a third of all clips though.
We have to search through the clips by inputting keywords, which then brings up the clips where the keyword is mentioned. In turn we get to discover more and more story this way. Sadly though, the clip would often begin playing from where the keyword is mentioned, and you'd have to rewind the whole thing manually and slowly to the beginning. Some of the clips can be up to 7 minutes in length, so this can get tedious.
The game never tells us what the end goal is and feels a bit too directionless most of the time. It does count up how many clips we've watched at the end and makes a short report on our finds (without any input from us though) and that's about it. I think a bit of direction, interactivity, and background on what we’re doing would’ve gone a long way and could’ve made the gameplay experience much more meaningful and enjoyable.
Every clip in the game is live action. The acting is very good by everyone involved, especially the 4 leading characters who the story revolves around. The presentation was very believable and looked like these were home-made videos by actual people. The background music was atmospheric and helped to amplify the emotions when we're watching the scenes.
I think in general the story and characters are well-made, but some of the execution has flaws and dilutes down the overall experience, making some bits feel quite anticlimactic. I do hope we'll see more games like this in the future, but hopefully the execution will be better.
For the full review with a bit more detail, check here: https://saveorquit.com/2020/01/28/review-telling-lies/
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315 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 29.01.20 03:54
The concept is good, the acting is good the story is decent, it's not a total waste of time but the format ruins it.
Most of the games videos are one side of a conversation, meaning there are loooooooong silences that the game let's you fast forward, but the controls for that are limited and they don't get rid of the time waste that it is to navigate through the video.
When you type up a keyword and you play the video, it starts at the moment the word you typed is mentioned, this in theory would make things easier, but in reality it sometimes makes a 7 min video start at min 5 and the only way to watch it from the start is to rewind it, which takes a lot of time.
The story is unnecessary long as well, after a while I lost interest in watching the videos whole. Some videos are too long and others are clearly just fillers and you know that by skipping them you won't miss anything. I guess in that aspect the game is realistic in how conversations go, which could be a plus if you have the patience for it. for me, it got old quick.
It's not a terrible game, I like the idea behind it, I would love to play more games like this, but this one just didn't work for me.
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198 Std. insgesamt
Verfasst: 12.12.19 17:36
The game ended the moment I didn't want it to so I was left with an unfinished story but no motivation to dive into it again.
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Release:23.08.2019
Genre:
Action-Adventure
Entwickler:keine Infos
Vertrieb:
Annapurna Interactive
Engine:keine Infos
Kopierschutz:keine Infos
Franchise:keine Infos
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Mehrspieler
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