Telling Lies review: "Sam Barlow has another masterpiece in his hands"

It all starts with love. A woman named Karen connects to her computer, connects a hard drive containing illegally obtained videos, recorded on webcams and smartphones cameras, as well as documentation on how best to access them. The love is in the search bar. He has created a selection of five videos and I warn you that the search has been limited to this figure. The miniatures show different faces and places, teasing a multitude of theories and questions, and it is too easy to dive directly. You instantly try to understand who these people are, how they are connected and what is happening here.

Like his story before him, developer Sam Barlow has found a way to stop you from hitting the rabbit hole. All you'll know – and believe me, you'll want to know it – is that a woman named Karen got a cache of a video conversation secretly recorded that she can watch on his computer at home. The entire user interface is designed as a desktop (or modified to look slightly more like a mobile interface to iOS devices), which allows you to click on a few applications and notebooks, or even play Solitaire if you wish, although time is running out. the time to access the files. Telling Lies' presentation is similar to that of Her Story, but this time it is less formal and much more intimate.

Each clip is just one side of the conversation, meaning you're watching video after video in Telling Lies trying to determine a) who each character is talking to and b) what he's talking about . As you can imagine, each of the five video clips that are initially presented to you raises only more questions than answers, which pushes you to go from video to video by searching for keywords that you think will present more facts. and result, more pieces of history. The words or phrases you are looking for correspond specifically to the language used in the video. Therefore, the closer your search is, the better. Searching for a particularly interesting keyword can send you a long trail of video clues, thus bringing you closer to all the pieces of the puzzle.

You are projected into each video just when the word or phrase is spoken, usually put on hold by pieces of useless chatter from one side or the other. You can then move back and forth to move through the video sequence, with the subtitles flashing to remind you that there are potentially more clues to find. I found it slightly frustrating not to be able to ignore the beginning of a video to watch the whole movie and find the keywords in their context, rather than having to slowly go back for several minutes of recordings. However, when you meddle with the lives of these people, you feel that taking the time to actually study them is part of the process.

Part of their world

(Image credit: Annapurna Interactive)

Because you never look at one side of the conversation, silences persist as broken promises. The brilliance of the actors – among whom Logan Marshall-Green (Prometheus, Spider-Man: Homecoming), Alexandra Shipp (X-Men Apocalypse), Kerry Bishé (Argo) and Angela Sarafyan (Westworld) – means that you can always say the kind They only talk about silences, which helps to reconstruct fragments of the linear story that beats below fragmented video clips. Since the majority of these videos come from 1-2-1 video calls, or recorded conversations without the permission of the subjects, the content is almost always personal or intimate in nature. At that point, you feel like you're part of those conversations, and the character on the screen is talking to you directly, waiting for you to answer – or at least you know how those characters and these stories combine. .

This forces you to play a role in this unfolding narrative. You go from a voyeur to a detective and sometimes to a third awkward embarrasser, hastily sweeping away sequences that were absolutely not meant for my eyes – to all eyes. Whether it was camgirl conversations or people enjoying "personal" pleasure, I regularly felt incredibly uncomfortable when I was watching, as if I were not doing anything. was an intruder in private exchanges. Not bad enough for me to stop playing, of course; I am deeply into theories and notes at this point and I can not stop looking even if I wanted to.

(Image credit: Annapurna Interactive)

But that feeling of calm and helplessness that you feel when playing Telling Lies is part of the experience. After all, these are videos obtained illegally from the NSA, and you're not supposed to watch them. You play as Karen and you are often reminded that you work not only against the clock, but also against the system itself. The presence of Karen's reflection on the screen of the computer only helps to make people believe in the voyeurism surrounding. From time to time, music starts playing in his apartment, a half-naked man walks around on the set and later he reminds you that it's late. But you have little time, someone obviously knows that you are looking at this and you understand, and there is a sense of urgency for each of your research.

As its history, the more you dive into the files at your disposal, the more difficult it becomes to find new information. I begin to feel frustrated when, regardless of the keywords or phrases I enter in the search bar, I am presented with a selection of videos that I have already seen. But then, later, when I feel like I am gathering all the elements of the story, I discover something new and I'm afraid of falling into another rabbit hole. It is at the same time totally organic and beautifully rhythmic. Sam Barlow has another chef-d'oeuvre on his hands.

A clock

(Image credit: Annapurna Interactive)

What I like also in Telling Lies – with the exception of its wonderfully told story that I could not go into any detail – is that it's a finished story.

I feel that I come back to its history for years and that there are still some pieces of the puzzle that I have not yet put in place. With Telling Lies, as your access time to these sequences is limited in time, your time will eventually come to an end. To tell lies is part of the pleasure of playing.

But what I'm going to tell you is that as the credits progress, it's obvious that I have not found all the videos yet. Knowing that when you receive a report after credits, you get a little thorny seed that gets stuck in your brain. As a person who dreamed of Telling Lies characters, while I was trying to collect all the pieces, you can imagine what it's like to know that you may have missed some essential information. But luckily, you can go right back in time, having looked at the credits of the minutes before the end to make sure that you have unearthed everything you can.

So leave me now to collect the last fragments of the life of these characters; fall in love with them, chastise them and befriend them as I have been doing for about six hours. I'll always have that uncomfortable sensation that will gnaw on my wrist when I drag the mouse to the search bar again and again to discover the latest videos, but Telling Lies is nothing if not rewarding. It's a game that stays with you and that, thanks to its narrative, manages to integrate you as much as possible into the problem of voyeurism and invasion of privacy that the entire game is trying to dismantle. I'm still thinking of Telling Lies, and it will be for years to come. Or at least every time I pass a security camera or make a voice call.