Kerry Bishé ( Halt and Catch Fire) is captivating in a role that goes to unexpectedly emotional places, and even the cast’s youngest member gives an authentic and persuasive performance. Even when they aren’t talking, I can watch their faces for clues, or read their lips. The acting in Telling Lies is top-notch, which has historically not been the case with most full-motion video games, but it’s critical considering how much time I spend with each character. That tension helps the game crackle with life and urgency. On the other hand, Telling Lies provides subtle reminders of the dangerous reality of rifling through stolen, encrypted files, and the level of secrecy required by that act. The game’s title cleverly hides its main mysteries It’s crucial to slow down, take a breath, and watch everything, even when I want to rush through to find another clue. Move too fast, and I might miss a poster on a wall, a plaque on a desk, or the contents of a meal. These clips shouldn’t just be skipped through to find their “meat” so much care has been put into staging each moment to add subtext to the story. This feels punishing if I arrive seven minutes into an eight-and-a-half-minute clip, but after finishing the entire game, I appreciate the design intent. I can rewind and fast-forward at three different speeds - none of which feel entirely fast enough in the heat of the moment - but cannot skip directly to a desired point. There is no timeline at the bottom, just a timecode in the top left that shows my current position and the video’s total length. The other mechanical constraint happens inside the videos. Sometimes the biggest challenge would be finding the opposite side of a conversation I knew there would be something juicy on the other end, so I’d frantically type out any phrase that was reflected in the dialogue of the clip I’d already discovered. Seeing a message like “5 results shown of 18 matches” can be frustrating, but it helps deepen the strategy needed to get to the bottom of each mystery. The search engine comes with constraints, however: I only get the first five clips (in chronological order) when I search a term, meaning that common terms like the characters’ names will only populate early results in the timeline. And, with the large number of misdirections in its story, it’s easy to chase a hunch and still find a reward. ![]() But the ability to jump to a more interesting topic - a name I’ve never seen before, a place, a concept - allows me to play with a sort of borderless freedom that’s rare in gaming. Instead, I maintain a notepad full of nouns and search ideas on my real-world desk, which I return to again and again when the well is dry. ![]() Sam Barlow, Furious Bee Limited/Annapurna Interactive Telling Lies is centered around this simple interface. I rarely do that, though, as I’m a completionist monster that needs to see every bit of action inside a clip before I can move on to my next search. If someone mentions a car, I can stop the recording to begin searching for other instances of that car being discussed. Each clip is fully subtitled, and I can pause at any point to highlight any of the spoken words and start a new search from there. Telling Lies is all about collecting nouns. ![]() This review will remain spoiler-free to preserve that experience for others. I’m grateful at how often I couldn’t predict the game’s twists, and relish the times I successfully put the pieces together. I dove right in and made plenty of assumptions - many completely incorrect. The game’s title cleverly hides its main mysteries I treasure the fact that I didn’t even know what questions to ask when I started playing. While Her Story centered on one mystery, Telling Lies is an ocean of deception. The video clips are longer - between 45 seconds and nine minutes, though most average around two to four minutes - and a new scrub mechanic means I can enter each video at any point and move backward and forward at will.Īnd that feature seems like an almost mandatory update to the original formula. There are four main characters instead of one, along with an impressive supporting cast. Where Her Story could be beaten in about two and a half hours, Telling Lies is much grander in scope. If you want curated lists of our favorite media, check out What to Play and What to Watch. When we award the Polygon Recommends badge, it’s because we believe the recipient is uniquely thought-provoking, entertaining, inventive, or fun - and worth fitting into your schedule. Polygon Recommends is our way of endorsing our favorite games, movies, TV shows, comics, tabletop books, and entertainment experiences.
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