The inherent paradox of a game like Her Story is that there is seemingly so much agency when a user is presented with a database, and yet there is a helplessness about it. What do we search? Where do we even begin with a murder?
One aspect of Her Story that is perhaps more coherent and to me than other interactive pieces we’ve worked with is that the algorithm that connects code to a person’s language and ultimately their narrative. Her Story depends our ability to pick up on the patterns of language, on the intonation of the human voice, and the small idiosyncratic expressions of human beings. Data in Her Story is not the guiding force, but rather it is the user’s impression of a woman, or rather two women, or actually maybe just one woman (we aren’t truly sure by the end)–ultimately it is our intuition that leads us through the app. I think that is the fundamentally most compelling part of the game. The tropish “evil twin,” the cheating, and murder are the least compelling components of the story, ironically.
The manner of telling as well I found to be particularly interesting. We do not hear the voice of a police officer, we can only judge this woman, Hannah/Eve, by what she says. And frankly, I found myself endeared to her almost unquestioningly by the end of the narrative. She has unbridled control of the narrative in its 250 fragmentations. There are constant references to the act of storytelling in the clips such as the running theme of Rapunzel, the ballad, the news of Princess of Diana, etc.
In many ways the user becomes a kind of investigator, but the revelation that we are the woman’s daughter strikes almost inappropriately and feels more like an additional “M. Night Shyamalan twist” that wasn’t abundantly necessary other than giving credence to why we’re searching this archive in the first place.