Writer/designer Sam Barlow and Annapurna Interactive are teaming up to bring us a spiritual successor to the revolutionary indie game, Her Story.
Called Telling Lies, this title is described as a “spiritual successor to Her Story.” It deals with the process of how governments can collect feeds from various personal cameras across the world. Specifically, it focuses on a stolen NSA hard drive that features footage players must sort through in order to connect the stories of several characters featured in the footage. It will be a much larger game than Her Story, and it seems that it might lack the simple “hook” of the original’s murder story. Instead, the draw will be discovering why all these people matter.
However, it seems that the game will utilize a set-up similar to the one featured in Her Story. That is to say that it will require players to interpret the information given to them via live-action sequences in order to reach the end of a narrative (or at least draw conclusions regarding its meaning). Whereas Her Story forced you to make sense of various interviews with a murder suspect in order to determine what happened, though, it seems that Telling Lies will be a little grander in scope. The plot details aren’t fully known at this time, but Barlow previously mentioned that the game would draw influences from the Steve McQueen sexual thriller Shame as well as the Francis Ford Coppola film, The Conversation. He also describes it as being “in the vein of a political thriller.”
Selling the increased scope of the game is a rather impressive cast of recently revealed actors who will portray the game’s four main characters. David will be played by Logan Marshall-Green (Upgrade, The Invitation), Ava will be played by Alexandra Shipp (X-Men: Apocalypse, Straight Outta Compton), Emma will be played by Kerry Bishé (Halt and Catch Fire, Scrubs), and Angela Sarafyan (Westworld) rounds out the main cast as Max. Vivien Lyra Blair of Bird Box also has an unidentified speaking role in the game.
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We’re quite excited for this title as Her Story is not only a unique narrative experience that must be experienced by anyone who wants to see what video game storytelling is capable of, but because Barlow also worked on one of the most underrated horror games of all time, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. We even got to speak to Barlow about his work on that game and his philosophy behind making scary games.
Here’s everything we know about Telling Lies:
Telling Lies Release Date
Telling Lies is coming to PC, Mac, and iOS devices on August 23. There’s no word regarding possible console releases at this time.
Telling Lies Trailer
Check out this new launch trailer for Telling Lies:
And here’s the debut trailer for Telling Lies:
Matthew Byrd is a staff writer for Den of Geek. He spends most of his days trying to pitch deep-dive analytical pieces about Killer Klowns From Outer Space to an increasingly perturbed series of editors. You can read more of his work here or find him on Twitter at @SilverTuna014.