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Telling Lies Review: What A Tangled Web We Weave
Originally released last year on PC and mobile, Telling Lies is now out on PlayStation 4 and other home consoles. Unlike most video games, Telling Lies lacks traditional graphics of any kind. The whole experience takes place on a computer screen while the mysterious player character scrubs through NSA surveillance footage of several different people while seeking the common thread that links their seemingly disparate stories together.
Telling Lies is a spiritual successor to Her Story, with director Sam Barlow taking the same basic gameplay of sifting through a huge pile of live-action sequences and expanding it to include more characters, more settings, and more threads for viewers to follow. The entire interface is almost entirely diegetic, with the only elements betraying its status as a video game being the keyboard interface that pops up when typing, something that obviously doesn't happen in the original PC version.
Players are dropped into Telling Lies with no context, but all the tools are laid out in the form of literal icons on the in-game desktop. Even the faint reflection of the player's character does its part to tell parts of the story. The main gameplay of Telling Lies comes through the NSA surveillance app. By typing a word or phrase into the search engine, the in-game algorithm pulls up the top five results, which can then be viewed from the point at which the word or phrase appears. The clips vary in length from under a minute to as long as seven or eight minutes. Videos can be scrubbed through using the right analog stick or the shoulder buttons, but if you hold L2 or push the stick left while bringing up the video, it will play from the beginning, which is so convenient, especially if the tag doesn't appear until the very end of the video.
Some videos are captured via hidden cameras and showcase a complete scene, but many of the clips consist of only one half of a video chat, so it will take some keen sleuthing to find the correct search term to uncover the other half of each conversation. All of these clips consist of high-quality live-action video, and load times are nearly non-existent, which makes Telling Lies a surprisingly fast-paced affair, considering the lack of traditional gameplay.
Telling Lies boasts an all-star cast of actors, and they all do an excellent job at selling their roles. The four main leads are Logan Marshall-Green, Alexandra Shipp, Kerry Bishé, and Angela Sarafyan, but the cast also includes other familiar faces like Reed Diamond and Joseph D. Reitman. The video chat conversations are particularly compelling, since the player can fast-forward through parts where the subject isn't speaking, but the silent acting during these moments is surprisingly engaging, especially since it's something that traditional television or film frequently doesn't show, instead opting to cut away. Here, it's up to the player to act as the editor, if they so choose.
It would be a disservice to spoil any of the sweeping story of Telling Lies, but the true magic lies in how the story is delivered. From the outset, players will only have immediate access to a few videos; from there, they have the freedom to choose how to proceed. Which videos players will see is entirely dependent on which ones they discover by searching, from people's names and locations to common phrases and exclamations. It's an engaging system, and every player's experience will be different, since the myriad revelations are all available from the outset; you just need to find them.
With its high production values, impressive on-screen talent, and an engaging story told in a truly spectacular way, Telling Lies is a truly unique and compelling experience. Whether one prefers to absorb their stories through video games or film, Telling Lies is a must-play for fans of storytelling in any form.
Telling Lies is out now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, and mobile.
