I agree with you on this, unfortunately; The story itself felt lackluster to me. Not to talk down anyone who got something from it- honestly this game was pretty big deal for it's time. The awkward open-endedness of a mystery just... wasn't satisfying for me. But it has neat concepts, and the video format itself was a fun way to watch something unfold.

It's too bad what it was unfolding just... didn't mean much by the end.

I think the first hour or so was somewhat interesting, but as time went on, the experience boiled down to typing in keywords (and much later on, random words) and hoping that an unwatched video will pop up in the search results. Given that many of the videos are about 15 seconds long with nothing really significant being shown or said, it became very boring in the end.

It was also disappointing that there wasn't a way to view all of the videos in order, so the story felt pretty disjointed. One would be better off just going through the game files and watching everything from there. I suppose one could also find a compilation video of everything in order as well. Does a film with a running time of about 1 hour 40 minutes being chopped up into tiny bits and viewed in random order sound good?

Originally posted by cloudwilk:

I agree with you on this, unfortunately; The story itself felt lackluster to me. Not to talk down anyone who got something from it- honestly this game was pretty big deal for it's time. The awkward open-endedness of a mystery just... wasn't satisfying for me. But it has neat concepts, and the video format itself was a fun way to watch something unfold.

It's too bad what it was unfolding just... didn't mean much by the end.

For its time? Man its just been six years... I also hate these kind of endings like live it to your mind.. Think about the possibilities and the various endings you could think of.. Eff that i bought your game i want a proper ending.. If i wanted to figure about the possibilities of an ending then i would have just on my bed in the morning and think about the proper ending of my dream that i suddenly woke out of

You can actually view all the videos in order by searching BLANK. All the videos start with this as their user tag, and they'll come up in chronological order. You can only see five results at a time so watch the first five, delete BLANK from their tags, then search again and watch the next five.

I watched the 'confession' this way after I'd finished the game and it made things feel more complete.

I think it could have worked better if the interviews hadn't been sliced into such tiny segments. For one thing, it shatters the illusion that you're working with an actual police database, which would never be chopped up into tiny segments. But mostly it means you have to spend a lot of time taking notes to figure out how to watch the interviews in order, which is not a puzzle, but drudgework.

I felt it was too easy too, then I opened Wikipedia and found out that a lot of people believe that [SPOOOOOOILER] there actually are two twins. The italian page doesn't even consider the case of split personality[/spoiler].

So, uhm, yeah, maybe it's not so easy after all.

Originally posted by il mietitore:

I felt it was too easy too, then I opened Wikipedia and found out that a lot of people believe that [SPOOOOOOILER] there actually are two twins. The italian page doesn't even consider the case of split personality[/spoiler].

So, uhm, yeah, maybe it's not so easy after all.

The point of the story, my fellow Italian, is that you can't conclusively establish what is the objective truth. It's the philosophy the game wants to convey. The truth does not exist. All three possible explanations of what happened with Hannah are equally supported by evidence, and some of the secondary plots (how did Florence die? How did Hannah's parents die?) are unsolvable.

Originally posted by Kumagoro:

Originally posted by il mietitore:

I felt it was too easy too, then I opened Wikipedia and found out that a lot of people believe that [SPOOOOOOILER] there actually are two twins. The italian page doesn't even consider the case of split personality[/spoiler].

So, uhm, yeah, maybe it's not so easy after all.

The point of the story, my fellow Italian, is that you can't conclusively establish what is the objective truth. It's the philosophy the game wants to convey. The truth does not exist. All three possible explanations of what happened with Hannah are equally supported by evidence, and some of the secondary plots (how did Florence die? How did Hannah's parents die?) are unsolvable.

There's a vast difference between saying you can't conclusively establish what is the objective truth, and that the truth does not exist.

Originally posted by shagbark:

Originally posted by Kumagoro:

The point of the story, my fellow Italian, is that you can't conclusively establish what is the objective truth. It's the philosophy the game wants to convey. The truth does not exist. All three possible explanations of what happened with Hannah are equally supported by evidence, and some of the secondary plots (how did Florence die? How did Hannah's parents die?) are unsolvable.

There's a vast difference between saying you can't conclusively establish what is the objective truth, and that the truth does not exist.

You're right. "The whole truth cannot be known" is the correct way to put it.

I'm glad something has happened to get Her Story some more attention, it is well deserved IMHO.

If you find the plot too obvious you may be missing some of the more subtle details and what they imply. I can't comment on translations and whether or not they do justice to those details, but one would hope the writers ensured as much.

Some of the early threads on Steam re: theories and character motivations may be of interest. I recall being in some of them, plaiting multiple loose threads together... however since that was *checks watch* at least eight minutes ago, no reasonable human can expect me to recall exact details.

I found it quite interesting, maybe you didn't get enough of the videos and in which case that would be frustrating - 50 % is enough to trigger the chat box but if you mostly watched the lie detector stuff, that's several videos of just 'yes' and 'no'.

Some people just don't appreciate subtlety. No wonder there are so many pitiful cop shows on the air that literally describe everything to you even though you are five steps ahead of all the cops the entire time, telling the same storylines with the same verbatim dialog for 20 fuggin years.

Originally posted by BloodMist:

Some people just don't appreciate subtlety. No wonder there are so many pitiful cop shows on the air that literally describe everything to you even though you are five steps ahead of all the cops the entire time, telling the same storylines with the same verbatim dialog for 20 fuggin years. :squirtmeh:

I don't enjoy those shows for the very same reason I didn't enjoy the game. Subtlety has everything to do with it but the game doesn't provide any more than the rest of the whodunnits.
Not only was the "plot" (aka the "twist") ridiculously tropey and predictable, but it was also entirely unbelievable and there was nothing else.
Telling a story out of order while omitting details doesn't make it more subtle or interesting.