They tell the story of David Smith, an FBI agent. In 2019, Karen Douglas, a former FBI agent, accesses a USB drive on her computer, watching the videos on it by searching them using keywords.

There are three different endings that the player may reach through the game, depending on which character's videos they explored most frequently. Barlow estimated that the content within Telling Lies is about four to five times longer than Her Story. The player only has a limited amount of time within a single playthrough to scan material from the hard-drive, and would have to restart from scratch (losing all notes and bookmarks) if they want to see more. Players can scroll forwards and backwards within segments, highlight certain words in the video subtitles to use as search, and keep notes within an in-game memo pad. However, these clips only provide the video and audio from one side of the conversation, requiring the player to determine which clips may match the other participants, as well as potential interactions with around 30 other people. The player has the ability to search the hundreds of video segments on keywords as to piece together timelines, events, and interactions, all to try to understand why the four central people have been the subject of electronic surveillance, as well as the nature of the player-character's role in these events this character appears female and can be seen in a virtual reflection of the in-game computer screen to the actual player. Telling Lies provides the player with numerous video segments that in the game's narrative, cover a two-year period and which have been stored on a stolen hard-drive taken from the National Security Agency. The reflection of the player-character can be seen off the virtual monitor.īarlow describes Telling Lies as a 'desktop thriller' like Her Story, where the player becomes involved in a drama that is played out through stored video clips and other information presented on a virtual computer desktop. Telling Lies is played out on a virtual desktop computer screen with its own operating system.

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