Games of the Abstract: Her Story (2015)

 

Developer: Sam Barlow

Publisher: Sam Barlow

One Player

Windows / Mobile

 

Huge Spoilers (But Indicated When)

Set in the mid-2010s, you play a figure working through an old computer in the police archive, going through old interview footage from 1994. Computer-within-computer, you have a read me document explaining that flooding damaged the archives as well as the issues that arose during the Y2K Millennial bug scare of technology causing further problems for preservation. What you can access, using a word based search engine, is interview footage from multiple sessions of the case of Hannah, whose story you try to piece together, finding the snippets of what begins as the disappearance of her husband Simon, but is obviously a murder from the get-go and elaborates tragically as it continues.

Two roads converged with Her Story. One is the career of its creator Sam Barlow, whose first ever game Aisle (2009) pretty much attest to his unconventional view of games, a game where the first choice leads to an ending, one of countless to go from, stemming from the protagonist looking at gnocchi in a shopping aisle. He is more famous, until Her Story, for his work in the later Western developed Silent Hill sequels. Silent Hill's legacy, and its creator Konami's handling of it, became a bitter one of diminishing success, even lost master code and a notorious remaster of the glory years (Silent Hill HD Collection (2012)). Right before it looked like it was going to rise like a phoenix and terrorise everyone, with the demo P.T. (2014) alone having an impact to be viewed as one of the best games of the 2010s, Konami scrapping the project was scrapped and P.T. unable to be accessed. Sam Barlow, whilst working on Silent Hills: Origins (2007) originally, did leave his mark on one other sequel which has grown in weight for many, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (2009). Alongside being designed to psychologically profile the player, the game used its multiple choice route for retelling the original 1999 Silent Hill game in a distinct way emphasising more drama, psychological horror and that the choice system not only altered the endings and monsters, but even how characters looked and acted.

Then Her Story became the game he is most recognised for, but with Barlow coming to a sub-genre of video games which had lain dormant. Her Story is structured around a fascinating narrative, told in fragments, around Hannah, played by Viva Seifert, who eventually becomes more complex and contradictory as you acquire and see more footage. Presenting this, Barlow reused the notorious old sub genre of the FMV game. "Full Motion Video" is also what cut scenes in games are, but from the eighties onwards, games entirely based on full motion video scenes where the game was interacted with became more common, growing into more live action material in the nineties when growing technological advancements and the CD medium became more common. Too young to play any the games, the FMV games of the nineties became notorious, in-between the point n click games also titles like Night Trap (1992) which were seen as pure cheese. Her Story marks a period on when independent developers started making new FMV games, with real actors and interactive content again, reflecting a general interest in the format as much as fondness being fond for even the cheesiness of Night Trap and such games. Her Story is very simple in its structure, not trying to replicate the cinematic nature of films, like the others of before, but follows one actress, where you need to type words into the search engine to acquire and watch new footage that builds her story. The search engine only allows five clips per search, so each clip is to be skimmed for potential clues of what to type next. Whilst I came to this game with the end narrative revealed and yet found the experience rewarding connecting the material together, spoilers are an issue as to explain any more for some readers may lose some of the experience.

[Major Spoilers]

A huge turn is that Hannah has an identical figure named Eve who is interviewed. It is established she is a twin sister, but it can be as much interpreted as multiple personality disorder. The story never ultimately reveals the truth and leaves on an elusive note, but a potential amount of over the top points or deliberate obfuscation complicates things, between an elaborate back-story of separated twins, Eve being raised by a midwife named Florence near Hannah, and living secretly in the attic. The references to fairy tales by both women emphasises this back story's fairytale-like exaggeration, whilst the possibility it is a mental health issue too, a schism of personalities, tragic as Simon learning of Eve is what leads to his death. Even the murder weapon, a piece of glass from a mirror he made for the women, is fitting this motif and a real tragedy, evoked when in the interviews, at one point, one of the women talks of fairy tales not being real life. The narrative is fascinating even if you know the plot twists, and the ending, whilst a same detail, becomes more salient when you realise you have been playing the daughter of Hannah, which became a gut punch for me, which would still mean something even known just from building the context from the videos.

[Spoilers End]

With video footage between six seconds to a minute plus, the search engine's restrictions is the biggest puzzle, forcing you as I to take in mind names, motifs or objects of note to type into the search engine. The FMV sub genre, whilst it went into light gun games and some other genres, found a niche especially for point n click or game structures, and the structure here, for all the notoriety of the nineties games, can work for a story driven narrative. I have found myself in particular, wanting to get into video games more, facing my hesitancies with genres like point n click in how you could waste hours trying to figure a clue out that few would get. Here, the puzzle mechanic that is simple and great, leaving me clear in the knowledge of what to do at the get-go, with Post-It notes scribbled on in what clues I thought to check in the search engine, such as "dollhouse" and "Eric", crossing through them when they proved of little help. The game play reaches a conclusion, indicated onscreen, when enough is learnt to led you to the ending, but with an icon on the computer you can click to show how far you get, you have at least over a hundred film clips to search for. There is even a bonus game in the recycle bin, even if Columbo himself would have called it out for obvious symbolism.

In considering my thoughts on Her Story, I hesitated on whether this was a great game or not originally, but that was more wanting to see this expanded into a larger scale without compromising the content. FMV games likely hit two walls, one the budget just to put together the filmed footage, in mind you would have to be professional to be taken seriously, and that there is a latent restriction in what you can do with the footage and interact with it unless you are creative. With Her Story, Sam Barlow practically worked around what was a lower budgeted independent project, and managed as a result to create a game which gained considerable acclaim even from the mainstream press. It becomes a game of note, when there was a resurgence of FMV games from indie companies from this time onwards, in how it leaves a mark. Taking around two hours for myself, it managed to pull me in entirely. It does rest a lot of pressure on Viva Seifert as the lead, which is a potential issue for some viewers, but her performance for me worked entirely, especially as the story's ambivalent nature and how the videos are structure make her acting choices deliberately complicated. The only questionable decision is inexplicably when Hannah in one interview has a guitar in the room and has a musical number. It is one of the most distinct moments of the game, split over two videos at least, and is charming in spite of the song being grim in lyrics, but it is strange in context and feels like the one indulgent moment in a game which feels very sincere and serious.

The minimalist style of Her Story, the score by Chris Zabriskie, the fuzzy PC screen with an occasional flash of who is using it as the player, works for what feels like a short story in a different medium, lent a cool and quiet emotional side without distracting from the very basic gaming mechanics. The modern FMV games of now have more readily available technology to make these games, but even with a short game like Her Story taking  a lot of space on a hard drive to download, it emphasises how bringing full motion video into video games brings their own new issues. Still a "game" or interactive work, the wave to cinema and moving images means having to worry about how to present the footage (or not), shooting and planning the footage to get enough, editing it and then structuring said footage into an interactive format which works. What we get in Her Story is admirable in mind to this. Even aware of the plot twists, they meant more as I pieced the content together, emotionally fulfilling as the fact Sam Barlow managed to create a rewarding puzzle simply from a word search engine. Replayability is a potential issue but there is also a sense, once the details faded away, that the puzzle structure even if you remember clues is also part of the weight of the story as much as an obstacle, similar to how re-reading a story the format of reading it is as much of its experience rather than an arbitrary format. That in itself is an admirable achievement to a good game.