Telling Lies Reminds Us That Everyone Has Secrets – Review (PC)

As a form of entertainment, the video game industry is still in its infancy. The argument of video games as art and blurred lines between cinematic experiences and games constantly remind us of this fact. Sam Barlow’s follow up to the acclaimed Her Story, Telling Lies, is finally here to muddle the waters and further make us question these things. Telling Lies is unlike anything that you’ve played (or watched) this year and an argument can be made that it has just as much in common with Black Mirror: Bandersnatch as it does video games.

As the game begins you see your character, a female agent, setting up her laptop and opening up some videos to comb through. There is little to no direction and anyone that missed out on Her Story will probably feel completely lost. After watching the five videos that are queued up as the game begins, players are tasked with what to do next. Clicking on the various icons will allow you to navigate through a few different apps – including a fully playable game of solitaire that helps to immerse you in the game. You will feel as though you are sitting at your computer completely in control of what you do next. What you need to do is view as many connecting videos as possible in order to figure out by morning what in the world is actually going on.

After completing the videos available at the start of the game you’ll need to listen to the conversations and, in most cases, take notes of important key words that will help you further unravel this mystery. At first it can be very confusing. You’re only viewing one side of each conversation so until you find the other half, large chunks of information will be missing. You have to really dive into the world and accept the fact that you’re only able to hear one half at a time or it can frustrate you and pull you out of the fantasy. At times, there are minutes of silence as the person on camera is listening to the other person go on and on about one thing or another. However, these pauses can help you identify which conversations actually go together in order to help you piece the events together.

Nothing about this game is linear. You’ll see a conversation from the very beginning, followed by something that happened near the end of the timeline and then see the other half of a conversation you may have watched hours ago.

Though confusing at times, what really pulls this all together is the strength of the actors chosen to bring this game to life. Logan Marshall-Green (Spider-Man Homecoming), Alexandra Shipp (Love, Simon), Kerry Bishe (Argo) and Angela Sarafyan (Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile) carry the story masterfully. Even when you’re watching the events unfold chaotically, their performances are so compelling that you don’t even care. You just want to see more and more.

The game unfolds how you direct it. Find keywords dealing with relationships, love, and sex – and you’ll uncover the web of lies surrounding each of these categories. For those willing to dive in there is a much larger story to uncover that a single playthrough just won’t explain. When morning comes, events cause you to load the videos that you’ve viewed onto an external hard drive, destroy the computer and be on your way.

The game ends with a report detailing your findings and giving brief updates about certain characters depending on what you uncovered after your playthrough. You’ll find there is hours of footage still viewable after the credits roll, so you’ll want to dive back in and try to find that footage, using different keywords than before. We highly recommend taking notes on a piece of paper in order to keep it all straight and help you untangle all the webs that are weaved together. There is a note taking device in the game, but it can be clunky and hard to use. Taking notes on paper works much better.

Telling Lies won’t be for everyone and you get out of the game what you are willing to put into it. Having said that, it may just be the most original game you’ll play this year and the performances alone are worth sticking around for.

*Telling Lies was provided to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion*

Check out our Review Guide to see what we criteria we use to score games.