A miracle story born of simplicity.
And the possibilities of video games seen beyond the fog.
Sam Barlow’s Her Story is a 2015 game that received high praise for its innovative mechanics. Its unique gameplay involves the player watching a series of short video clips.
The game lasts about three hours, but you will get a great gaming experience.
I urge you to try it.
A three-hour journey tracing her life.
When you start the game, you see a computer desktop reminiscent of the 1990s. There is a video database; if you type keywords in the search window, you will find the corresponding video clips.
The video shows a woman. As the video plays, she begins to speak.
It seems that her husband has disappeared.
Play the first clip, and you will see it immediately.
This is a police video database, and the footage is a recording of interviews with her, Hannah Smith.
Hannah starts by talking about the day her husband Simon disappeared and how she met Simon and their marriage.
The player watches the footage, finds a word of interest in Hannah’s statement (e.g., murder, love, or Glasgow), searches the footage for that word, and watches the footage that appears in the results.
They then find a word of interest in that footage and search again.
You repeat this.
The player watches the videos, each two or three minutes long, and gradually understands the truth of the case, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.
Most players will get to the bottom of this in about three hours.
The blanks are part of the work. So you have to look at it with the eyes of the heart.
The only footage the player will see is Hannah Smith talking to the camera. There is no other footage of any kind.
Therefore, you will not be able to see the scene where Simon was last seen or the house where they lived.
All the events in the game will be made up solely by the words she tells us.
What I found brilliant was that the story was structured until the end solely by the words spoken by Hannah Smith, played by Viva Seifert. Because of this, ‘Her Story‘ achieved a production that appealed to the imagination.
The technique of stimulating the viewer’s imagination by daring to draw nothing is recognized as a compelling method of expression in painting, design, and film.
In cinema, Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder developed the technique of daring to place essential events off-screen to make a strong impression on the audience.
This would be known as the ‘art of the blanks’ in painting.
The Edo period painter Tosa Mitsuoki left the following words.
白紙も模様のうちなれば 心にてふさぐべし
(hakushi mo moyo no uchinareba kokoro nite fusagubeshi)
This means that blank paper (margins) is part of the work that captures the viewer’s imagination.
Since interaction is at the core of games, there is a strong tendency for expression to be direct. However, environmental storytelling, a technique in which Fallout excels, and flavor text (descriptions of items, etc.), as seen in the Soul series, stimulate the player’s imagination.
I don’t know if that was Sam Barlow’s intention. However, it is fair to say that ‘Her Story‘ has added a new solution.
Her Story does not offer the interaction usually found in mystery games. There is no searching for evidence at the crime scene or interrogating suspects; we can only imagine the situation through Hannah’s words.
Risky Business at the Orion Theatre, me waving across the window, birthday party hats, taxis on their way to Bob Dylan, doll’s houses, Diana in the attic…
Strangely enough, these are etched in the players’ minds.
Even though they never appeared on the game screen.
The source of magic is not just on the screen, the canvas, or the monitor. It may also be in the hearts and minds of the audience watching it.
Her Story shows that increasing interaction is not the only goal for game development.
My dear Sergei Eisenstein.
In Her Story, players search for any word and play the footage that appears in the results. Therefore, the order in which the footage is played differs for each player.
However, at first, disjointed and disorganized, the footage is linked with Hannah’s testimony as a clue and eventually weaves a single story.
As a former film enthusiast, I was astonished by this storytelling created by the mechanics of Her Story.
We have always been told like a lullaby.
Cinema is all about editing.
The order in which shots are connected can drastically change the Story and the impressions perceived by the audience.
Beginning with Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance, the theories and techniques of film editing have been handed down to the present day as the foundation of visual content production.
As Takeshi Kitano has likened film editing to factorization, editing is the creator’s intention.
But ‘Her Story‘ seems to have abandoned that.
The footage is rearranged in the mind of the player, the viewer, away from the author’s intentions.
And yet, it still manages to produce a great story without any problems.
I confess. What I say is exaggerated and inaccurate.
Video editing gives meaning to the whole video by combining different shots, such as A, B, C, and D.
So, does Her Story randomly present A, B, C, and D, and do the players rearrange them as they wish?
No, it does not.
Her Story presents the player with a group of shots that can be grouped together with roughly the same meaning, such as Aa, Ab, Ac, and Ad. There is no mix of shots with very different meanings, such as A and B. So, even if they are back and forth in order, the player can edit them in their head using Hannah’s testimony as a clue.
This is largely because Hannah Smith was the only character in the film, and the setting was limited to the interrogation room.
Sam Barlow failed at storytelling in his next film, Telling Lies. This is because he mixed up shots that didn’t relate to each other, such as Aa and Ba.
A carefully prepared and constant environment is needed for this magical storytelling.
So, it is not as if the storytelling in Her Story makes the video editing theory obsolete, nor is it just a matter of arranging shots in a completely random sequence.
However, Her Story achieved – and showed the power of – a kind of storytelling that would never have been possible in a film, where the player can piece bits and pieces of the Story at will.
Her Story showed that games can stand independently without relying solely on cinematic techniques.
Films are likely to see little innovation in terms of direction in the future. But games have great potential. Games can bring the audience (the player) into the production. That is very attractive.
And you can only do that with games.
Dear Our Father, Sergei Eisenstein.
We are now walking on our own feet.
Eureka! Is that reasoning really yours?
The mechanics and presentation have not alone made ‘Her Story‘ famous with many players. The high perfection of the mystery game is also a reason.
Her Story‘s brilliance lies in cleverly organizing the game’s elements so the players can arrive at the truth independently, using only Hannah’s testimony and the images.
The problems with mystery games have been mentioned for some time.
Many mystery games present players with choices as they play. The player selects the answer that appears to be the correct one from the choices.
The player eventually gets to the truth by repeatedly answering these mini-quizzes correctly.
But was the case really solved by the players themselves?
Game Maker’s TollKit highlights the problems with mystery games in a 2017 video. I urge you to watch it.
Those who have actually played the game will know what I mean. Suppose you carefully observe Hannah’s testimony and the footage. In that case, you don’t need any options to get to the truth.
I can’t tell you precisely because it would be a spoiler, but when I discovered it, it was the moment when I wanted to shout, “Eureka! And a sense of accomplishment that you have discovered the truth on your own will run through your entire body.
How did Her Story achieve this?
The only information the game provides to the player is Hana’s words and the unadorned images of the interrogation room. It is limited to straightforward means.
This made it easier for both the game and the player to control the information and to select and discard the information needed to understand the situation.
As a result, players can get to the truth without getting lost, even if there are no clues.
No, that is not enough to make sense to you.
For example, suppose a crime novel contains the following sentence.
The victim was found in a motel room.
A wristwatch, believed to be his, was found on a side table.
The information gleaned from this one sentence is the text as it is, no more, no less.
In other words, the information conveyed to the reader is entirely controlled.
However, when this is expressed in visual media such as films and games, the information immediately becomes uncontrollable.
If the scene is shown on video, the audience (players) will likely have questions.
For this victim, is this place too cheap?
Isn’t this watch totally incongruous with this outfit?
In other words, by showing the crime scene on film, information was added that had nothing to do with the author’s intentions.
Visual impressions depend on the subjectivity and sensitivity of the viewer.
Therefore, it is easy for information that the audience (player) thinks must be important to be completely meaningless, or vice versa.
The audience (player) will then feel that this is unfair.
It is almost impossible to have perfect control.
In Her Story, on the other hand, the only means of presenting information are Hana’s words and the interrogation footage.
The interrogation room is plain, so it is easy to notice Hannah’s gestures and small changes in her behavior.
If Her Story had shown images of the house where Hannah and Simon lived or the glass workshop where they met, it would have instantly created a flood of information and confused the player.
They would then need some kind of lead-in. Players would not have felt that if they had reached the bottom of the story, they would have achieved it on their own.
Her Story” gave players an authentic deductive experience because the information was easy to control. This was because the game had a straightforward structure.
Finally, Her Story‘s shortcomings should be mentioned.
You may find it difficult to enjoy the early stages of Her Story, as the Story is revealed by piecing together bits of footage.
The case lies in the past. The aim of the game is only for the protagonist (the player) to get to the bottom of the case, not to solve it.
Furthermore, all the player can do is search and watch footage.
So, some people will see no point in continuing to play the game and throw it away.
The first ‘Eureka!’ and the trigger that draws you into the game is understanding who the players are and what they look at the images for.
This will trigger your interest in Hannah Smith on screen and draw you into the Story. You’ll be hooked and continue your search. When you eventually discover the truth, you’ll be left pondering one woman’s life.
Not all the fog will lift.
But you will feel refreshed. Even the mist that sticks to your skin is relaxed and pleasant.
Her Story is a little gem of simplicity.
It is sure to add a memorable passage to your Story.
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Her Story
steam : https://store.steampowered.com/app/368370/Her_Story/
iOS : https://apps.apple.com/us/app/her-story/id952658953
Android : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.MrSamBarlow.HerStoryGame