"Her Story" review: Weaving truth through the fragmented

introduction

In recent years, interactive movie games have almost formed a fixed model: linear narration from the perspective of one or several characters, exploring and interacting with the scene, and some interactive choices affect the plot direction. Some of the more popular titles, from 2010's Heavy Rain, 2012's The Walking Dead and its sequels, 2013's The Extraordinary Twins, 2015's Life Is Strange, 2017's Life Is Strange: Before the Storm, and The Night Shift, all built on this model.

In 2015, however, the interactive movie game "Her story" completely upended this familiar and welcome model, replacing it with a slightly unfamiliar gameplay, one that could not be simpler: enter keywords, search, and browse the video in the search results. I believe that when a player plays "Her Story", if a passerby looks at the screen, he will think that he is watching a drama or operating a video software, and will not find that he is actually playing a game.

What is the point of making "Her Story" so special? Can such gameplay bring enough fun to the player? The answers to these questions are all too well known to anyone who has ever sat in front of a screen parsing a video or lost in thought.

(2015 interactive movie game "Her Story")

Fragmented information meets the human mind: extreme freedom, endless possibilities

The freedom of video games has been greatly valued by players and developers in the last decade. On the one hand, players are no longer satisfied with the limited gameplay and rigid clearance methods, and look forward to more freedom and choice in video games; On the other hand, advances in development technology and hardware performance have made more game content and more complex mechanic designs possible.

In order to create games with high degrees of freedom, the open world has become the first choice for most developers. B's Elder Scrolls and Fallout series and R Star's GTA series can be said to be examples. In addition to improving the "breadth", the freedom of the game is also inseparable from the "depth" of the gameplay. The simulation strategy game series of P Society and the Civilization series of Sidelmeier enhance the depth of the game through complex mechanisms and massive simulation elements, becoming a typical representative of this kind of works.

Look at this work "Her story", it can be said that it is completely standing in the opposite of "depth" and "breadth". The game scene is just this police database system on this old CRT monitor; The interaction that can be achieved by clicking is far less than in a typical web game; The entire video segment was even performed by a single actor. All the player can do is use these extremely limited interactive resources on this inch-sized screen to complete a game that at first glance makes no sense.

(The main thing players are allowed to do in "Her Story" is search the police station's database terminal for a video of a suspect's interview by typing in keywords, and that's it.)

However, you may not believe that it is such a seemingly "humble" game that has an unfathomable degree of freedom and possibility that ordinary people cannot understand.

All of the footage in the database is taken from seven police interviews of the woman at different times (dates and times are shown on the footage), and has been broken down into 271 video clips. It contains only the woman's answers, and the questioning process of the police is cut off. Apparently, the old database was not powerful enough to allow players to watch the clips in full chronological order. Players had to enter keywords in the search field, and if the keywords matched any of the words in a video testimony, they would be listed in the search results. At this point, the player can watch the video clips with their own keywords. Players must gather clues and key information from existing videos and use these words to retrieve new video content.

In this process, the non-linear story is seemingly random but not random, because the video clips are determined by the keywords entered by the player, even though the player can't be sure that the video will give them the information they want before watching it. What determines what keywords a player will type is nothing other than the player's own cognitive process.

When watching the same video clip, each player's attention and interest will be different. Some players will be more concerned about the characters in the testimony, some players are more concerned about the time and place, some players pay attention to finding suspicious contradictions between video clips, and some players will use non-verbal information such as the lady's actions, expressions, emotions as a breakthrough, and so on. Not to mention that the same paragraph is often interpreted in different ways by different players. After understanding and thinking based on this information, the keywords that players associate with naturally vary from person to person, so the new video clips obtained in the next round of retrieval will be completely different.

In theory, each player's quest to uncover "her story" is unique. Players can browse their input keywords, "review" their own thinking process from the beginning to the present)

Most of the story is in puzzle games and interactive movie games, and these stories and interactions become shackles to our minds. In the court-themed puzzle game "Reverse Judgment", the author once found some minor loopholes in the testimony and chose to "testify", but the result was the chief judge and prosecutor's eyes and ridicule, and I had no chance to make any explanation for my doubts, but had to go on with the game according to the way specified in the plot. In "Sherlock Holmes: Crime and Punishment", the author also has to pay attention to those who have interactive options, for those who feel suspicious but can not interact with people or things, have to give up these "unrealistic" doubts, and limit the solving of the case to a few collected evidence.

That's why Her Story actually has an unfathomable degree of freedom behind its simplicity. Players can pay attention to any doubt that they are interested in during the game, freely and boldly imagine and "imagine" the case situation or character relationship in their brain according to their own experience and the information provided by the game, reason and judge the truth of the event with any thought and logic, and even give up reason and logic and guess a possibility by intuition. Then verify it by gathering more information.

(Contains infinite possible human brains)

Even today's most sophisticated video games are nowhere near as sophisticated as the human brain. "Her Story" liberates the human brain, which is bound by traditional game modes and rules, so that the player's game ideas and choices truly reach the point of endless.

Everything is a mystery: a complete puzzle from scratch

When players play similar types of games, it is easy to learn the gameplay, background, and purpose of the game because of experience and analogy, to achieve the effect of quick learning. There are many examples. A player who has mastered Counter-Strike can play most FPS games almost stress-free; After completing an escape room game once, you'll be much more comfortable taking on other rooms, at least from the start knowing what you're supposed to do.

When playing "Her Story", due to its unique gameplay and form of expression, I believe that even players with certain game experience are difficult to have similar experience for reference. So, after the player clicks "Start Game" and boots up the old computer, everything becomes a mystery to be solved, including the most basic questions: Who am I? Where am I? What am I supposed to do? What is customs clearance? Many of these questions won't be revealed until the end of the game. This seems to be a paradox: If you have to wait until the end to know the purpose of the game, how can the player progress to the end?

(You don't get answers to other questions through a pop-up chat box until near the end.)

In fact, many experienced puzzle game players, through their own accumulated experience and experience after a lot of similar games, quickly and easily complete some similar puzzle content in other games, the enjoyment will be greatly reduced.

In Her Story, the player knows nothing about the gameplay, the setting, and the purpose of the game, but only from the first second of the game to explore the content in front of them and make some thinking and speculation about the answer to these questions can he know what to do next.

This is exactly what Her Story, as a puzzle game, wants to see the most - a complete puzzle from scratch.

However, this also directly leads to the gameplay of this game is almost impossible to replicate. All of the experience gained with keyword retrieval after completing Her Story is an excuse to deprive the player of another game with the same gameplay design.

(It was written by Sam Barlow, who previously worked on Silent Hill: Origins and Silent Hill: Broken Memories.)

Maybe that's why I wrote the screenplay. Designer Sam Barlow made it clear in an interview that "it's not going to be a straight sequel or a game with the same mechanics."

Invisible level design

Level design is undoubtedly the core of all video games, even in many games have gradually downplayed the concept of level today, for the overall game progress, the challenges faced by the player, the key elements of the hidden issues of handling and control, in essence is the embodiment of level design ideas. "Her Story" is no exception. The classic element of level design, the art of hiding things, is taken to the extreme.

Since the fragments found are cut from a complete interview, the player cannot analyze the woman's testimony with a complete and coherent logic, but needs to use his logical thinking and observation to reassemble the fragmented fragments into a piece of truth as reasonable as possible. Then try new keywords as you get more information.

In addition, in the absence of context, the player will be at a loss as to the target of the personal pronouns He,She, etc., and the only way to judge is to guess the target of the pronoun by judging the overall story arc and logical rationality. Such speculation may lead the player to the truth, but it also has the potential to lead the player astray.

Of course, the possibility that she lied during the questioning cannot be ruled out. The picture shows the use of a lie detector in Her Story, arguably suggesting that players actively doubt some of her testimony.)

Soon after entering the game, players will quickly discover that this database retrieval feature has a special limitation: only the first five results can be displayed at a time. After watching several video clips of different times, the player can find that the police inquiry is bound to be in-depth layer by layer, and the later the fragment of the seven inquiries, the more revealing the key information that helps the player get close to the truth. Since all the search results are arranged in chronological order, these important content tend to be ranked last, and are more likely to be "squeezed" out of these five places by the previous videos. This means that players must, after gathering more information, think through and conclude the keywords that can "go to the point", bypassing some of the disturbing fragments in the first few inquiries, so that those that can really provide fatal contradictions or key clues are within the five allowed to watch.

(The six videos found show only the first five, and the last hidden one is usually the most critical.)

We can see that the designers of the game are trying to "hide" this key information in the back of the design of the lines, and the method is deliberately to make the heroine reveal some irrelevant information, so that when the player searches for these words, the really key information will be hidden behind. Although the inclusion of these words may seem unnatural at times, this design ensures that the player's puzzle experience is layered and in-depth, having to gather and analyze enough information to obtain keywords that lead to new clues, rather than accidentally entering a specific word and then accidentally retrieving the video that reveals the truth.

Unfortunately, due to the complexity of human language and thinking, it is impossible for designers to consider all the easy paths to the truth. In the feedback of some players, it can be known that many players have found some shortcuts that do not require information basis, only the most basic logical reasoning. The author found that according to the general criminal investigation thinking will certainly involve the alibi, if you enter this word as a key word, you will directly get a shocking fact. This result is by no means an affirmation of the player's intelligence and insight, but in a sense a Bug that can ruin the player's normal puzzle-solving experience.

Conclusion

In the end, I have to mention the plot of Her Story that players are interested in talking about. I want to beat "Life is Strange", which is also an excellent interactive movie game, and the game "Witcher 3" adapted from the Polish national treasure novel "The Witch Hunter" in TGA2015, and finally won the best narrative award of the year, which is enough to prove the excellent plot of this game.

However, due to the special nature of this type of game, I decided not to review the plot of this game in detail. The writer of the game is quoted here. "Her Story is not like any other game you've ever played," designer Sam Barlow said in an interview about Her Story. "It's a very moving and true story that you really need to listen to."

"Her Story" is worthy of being recommended to all lovers of puzzle games who love to think, are willing to listen, and actively strive to pursue the truth, but if it is passive, or just eager to seek sensory pleasure and stimulation in the game, it should be difficult to like such a game.

Due to the special language requirements of the retrieval mechanism in this game, for those who do not understand English or poor English level players, they will unfortunately encounter some insurmountable obstacles when playing.

(Players may be lucky enough to watch a short guitar performance by an actor during the game.)