Fascinating, dark, and lovely, Her Story offers you the experience of gradually piecing together a complex, layered narrative as you scrabble through a fragmented database of video statements one search term at a time. The woman who is their solitary subject is the only source of testimony available, and the challenge of assembling something which satisfactorily resembles truth while questioning her veracity and motives is deeply compelling. Multiple thematic symbols and threads gently hint towards one conclusion or another depending upon your subjective predispositions, but your interpretation is one that will remain open—as well as uniquely yours, since no other player shared the same process in reaching it.
Actress Viva Seifert carries the entire game on her shoulders. Her performance never feels cinematic but rather believably human, full of false starts and fidgets that vitally color her words. She is presented through a wonderfully interlaced and dusty recreation of VHS tapes' look—and sound, as well, with the dull tocking of a wall clock audible behind the poor acoustics of the recording, which render subtitles invaluable, even to someone like me who generally abhors them. All of this aesthetic design takes place within a classic '90s desktop that perfectly establishes the context needed to let you feel like a modern-day true-crime historian.
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