This is a super spoilery post, so if you haven’t ‘completed’ HER STORY I suggest you click away immediately. The below is a deep look at the deepest mystery of the game.

After finishing the game and reading up on other people’s experiences online, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about the ending of the game. While I believe that things are left intentionally ambiguous, to the point that there is not a ‘correct’ interpretation, I do think that trying to find the truth of the matter is pretty compelling. In that spirit, allow me to go overboard.

Team Twins vs. Team Split

Let’s start from the top.

Throughout the interviews, we get information about Simon, Hannah, and their life together. But as the pressure mounts, Hannah reveals her friend Eve, who then seems to reveal herself as Hannah’s twin. But is she a real person, or just a figment of Hannah’s imagination?

There are basically three possibilities:

1) There is no Eve at all – Hannah is just lying to try and escape suspicion.

2) Hannah and Eve are two personalities sharing the same body.

3) Hannah and Eve are secret twins!

The first option here doesn’t seem worth considering. If everything she is saying is an elaborate lie to trick the police (and the player) then the whole game is pointless. There is no evidence I have found to support the idea that she is making Eve up. While I don’t think we can take Hannah/Eve’s words as gospel, they are all we have, so within them must exist some bit of truth.

That leaves us with the great debate: Are they twins or split personalities?

First a quick timeline:

June 18 – A woman identifying as Hannah reports her husband missing.

June 25 – Hannah is brought back in for questioning now that her husband has been missing for a week.

June 27 – Hannah comes in again, now that she has discovered the body in the cellar.

June 30 - Another interview, now that the police have investigated the crime scene

July 1 – The police begin to suspect Hannah

July 2 – The police directly accuse Hannah of having a twin

July 3 – The police arrest Eve

From the videos, it seems clear that Hannah and Eve believe they are separate people. If we look closely, we can start to pick out differences between interviews that suggest one woman or the other. Some of these are physical, while others are emotional queues or subtext in their comments.

The two biggest pieces of evidence for the twin theory are The Bruise and The Tattoo. If you didn’t catch these, they are physical differences that seem to appear and disappear between interviews, which only really makes sense if the twins traded off visits to the police station. The counter-arguments to those from Team Split are that they are just make-up, and easily removed. Let’s take a closer look.

June 18 – First Interview

She identifies as Hannah (which at this point, of course she would.) She is wearing long sleeves, so the existence of the tattoo is unknown. She asks for black coffee. Her hair is down. She seems relatively upbeat and confident.

While we have no reason at first to believe this is anyone but Hannah, future interviews suggest that Eve likes black coffee. It also makes sense that, if Hannah was the killer, it would be easier for Eve to go in and feign innocence so close to the time of the murder. She sets up the idea of Simon’s really nice watch, which Eve later says was her contribution to the alibi plan.

Also worth noting is that, in this interview, she says “He likes Helen. He likes blondes.” But more importantly, she is almost smirking when she says this. It is later revealed that Eve started wearing a blonde wig when she became independent, and when Simon started seeing her romantically as Eve.

June 25 – Second Interview

She is wearing short sleeves and there is clearly no tattoo. She asks for tea. Her hair is up. She seems shy.

The police ask her about a bruise on her face (specifically on her left), which she dismisses as the result of clumsiness.

The police question her at length about the day Simon disappeared, and their marriage. Hannah gives us the ‘official’ version, much of which will be twisted later on with the reveal of Eve. She does, however, mention a “friend” that helped her ask out Simon for the first time since she is so shy.

She also mentions that they stayed in a hotel for their wedding night “away from home. Alone together,” and always try to get away on holiday when they can. They moved in with Simon’s parents, where she had “time to myself” and describes the period as full of hope. In retrospect, it seems clear that what she really means is that she enjoyed the time away from her childhood home, because it meant she did not have to share Simon with Eve.

While it is possible that Eve is only ‘triggered’ at home, it makes more sense if we assume that Eve is a real person. After all, if they are merely personalities, there would be nothing to stop Eve from surfacing, but a real Eve definitely couldn’t move in to the Smith household covertly.

June 27 – Third Interview

Long sleeves again, coffee, black and strong. Her hair starts down, but is put up after she gets sick. She is pregnant.

The police notice the missing bruise. She shrugs it off as already healed (barely two days later.) The damning thing is that she reaches up and touches the RIGHT side of her face (our left) which only makes sense if she saw the bruise on Hannah, who Eve considers to be her reflection. We must conclude this is the Eve twin/persona speaking.

During this interview they ask her to look at some pictures, and her answers foreshadow the stories Eve will later reveal about their secret life.

She is shown the watch and asserts the time on the watch should clear her of suspicion. She talks about her alibi which, if Eve is a real person, is at least partially true. It makes sense for Eve to take this interview since it requires less lying.

They ask her where the mirror is (Simon’s birthday present to her) and she deflects. This is because Hannah received the mirror (technically, both mirrors…more on that later), so Eve wouldn’t know exactly where she put it.

She mentions Simon’s parents offered to let her stay while the police go over the house. She says she refuses because it would be too sad. But didn’t the Hannah of the last interview love the time she spent living with Simon’s parents? In fact, future interviews make it clear that Hannah remains in close contact with Simon’s parents even after the murder. It seems more likely Hannah did not stay with them because Eve would be physically left behind. Instead, she says that she is staying with “a friend” which can only be Eve.

June 30 – Fourth Interview

Short sleeves, no tattoo. Tea with sugar, and more tea with sugar. Hair up. This seems like Hannah. Are they just taking turns?

Right away she seems nervous and sad, which fits with our understanding of Hannah. (Search “considering”)

The police press her on the idea that they found fingerprints and hair from a blonde wig at her home, in the bedroom. She asserts that no one else has been around. This seems like strong evidence for the existence of a real Eve. A split personality would not leave unknown fingerprints.

The police show Hannah the mirror. She is clearly enchanted by the mirror, and there is emotion in her voice when she talks about Simon giving it to her. She asserts it was a one-off made just for her. It is deliberately made to look old and dull, “perfect for someone that doesn’t like to look at their own reflection.” Once again, Hannah is telling us that she is sick of sharing her life with Eve.

The reason they show it to her is because they have found trace elements of the mirror on the body. Later Eve will tell us that a duplicate (twin) of this mirror was used as the murder weapon.

The police seems sure Simon was cheating on Hannah and ask about her sex life. She is offended and gets angry. She asks the detective if they are married, and how many kids they have …this will be trouble later. The police also seem to imply Hannah slept around. She denies having sex with “all those guys,” which we later find out Eve slept with. Having denied sleeping around, Hannah has accidentally suggested the existence of Eve to the police.

The police ask Hannah if she ever wanted to commit violence and she reveals that she did - against her “friend” named Eve. She admits to their extreme love/hate relationship. The shy Hannah was jealous that the outgoing Eve would get all the boys. She regrets admitting to Eve before the interview is even over.

June 1 – Fifth Interview

Long sleeves (at first). Coffee black, no sugar. Hair down. They have alternated again, this is Eve.

During this interview, Eve spills her coffee which forces her to remove her shirt, revealing the tattoo she has on her arm. The snake and apple are a clear reference to her name, though at the time she simply says she got it years back to celebrate individuality. Hannah clearly did not have this tattoo in earlier visits. If Hannah and Eve share a body, then the tattoo would be less than a day old. Eve tells us later she got the tattoo when she went independent from Hannah, living her own life. It’s not clear how that would make sense if they are one person.

In fact, this interview is where it begins to become clear that Eve exists, at least mentally. The police start by making her repeat the answer to a previously asked question, which she does almost word-for-word, as if rehearsed. Then she asks the detective if they have children and what ages they are. On top of the tattoo, this would be very suspicious, since Hannah asked about children the day before.

Eve says “it was a nice wedding…people said” when Hannah previously raved about it. Simon looked handsome “in the photos.” They ask her if Simon was her first, and she is bold and easygoing when talking about her previous sexual exploits, when Hannah was scandalized the day before. She makes a few mistakes here with we/us instead of I/me. She emphasizes the importance of family. Remember, Eve has only really had one family member, Hannah. She doesn’t want to be left behind by her sister.

The police confront her with a speeding camera picture of her somewhere she should not have been. She was at work at the time of the photo. She gets very defensive about the picture, which isn’t really evidence of anything – except of a twin. Since it is the police springing this evidence on her, I believe we can rule out the idea that Hannah or Hannah/Eve-hybrid are trying to invent the idea of a twin to shift blame.

The police also ask Eve to play the guitar they found in the house, which is supposed to belong to “Hannah.” She plays a disturbing song about two sisters and a ship captain’s son, that outlines the Hannah vs Eve tension. One sister is jealous of the other, over the love of a boy, and so drowns her. Earlier, Hannah mentioned wanting to drown Eve. Hannah is in love with Simon, but Simon has fallen for Eve. This will become clear later.

June 2 – Sixth Interview

Hair down. Long sleeves. “Coffee I guess….milk and sugar.” Emotional.

If they are still alternating turns, then this is Hannah. The coffee could point either way. Does she get coffee “I guess” because there is no tea? If it’s Eve, why the milk and sugar? The sleeves also make it ambiguous. The attitude and hair point to Eve, but the hair is a weak indicator in the first place, and the attitude could be justified by Hannah being the anxious one.

When the police suggest the twin theory, she laughs at them. She tells them to take fingerprints from her cup and storms out. I am not sure it matters which one of them attended here. The important thing is that they know they are about to be arrested, and the guilty one must flee. If they share a body then the fingerprints will match. If it is Hannah (on schedule) then they will match. If it is Eve (off schedule) then they won’t match (or they will match the mystery prints), and maybe that is why is gets pulled in the next day.

June 3 – Final Interview

Long sleeves (but she mentions her tattoo). Hair down. Calm and confident. No drinks.

She is asked if her name is Hannah in a lie detector and fails the question. “My mother called me Eve,” she admits.

All is revealed in this interview. Eve pulls back the curtain and sheds new light on everything we have learned. He tale of the secret twins is something like a fairy tale, which Eve delights in. Is what she is saying true, or is this the rationalization of one personality that won’t admit it shares a body with another?

Eve implies that the name question is the only lie that was caught by the test, meaning she answered the other questions honestly. She seems to think she has a chance at freedom, so it makes sense to assume she answered questions like “Did you kill Simon” with a no. We don’t know if they asked her if she had a twin during the test, but we know they already suspected it. If she admitted to a twin in the test, then it makes sense that she spills her guts afterward, but she would need to do that anyway, since they know she is not Hannah.

Eve grew up in isolation, but met Hannah at age 5 and had to watch out the window as Hannah had a life. At age 8 Eve’s kidnapper died, allowing her to escape. From then on she lived in Hannah’s private playroom in the attic, and they would take turns playing Hannah to the rest of the world. It becomes clear that growing up in isolation to the age of 8, with only stories as playmates, has driven her a bit crazy, and so her connection to Hannah is her only real connection to the outside world. Even after she is free, she had casual flings with boys. Nothing is “real” to her. Not until Simon sees her for herself. Loves her for it.

Hannah on the other hand, gains a strong version of herself that she can use to her advantage. Go to school for her, take tests for her, get boys for her. But that advantage comes with a cost. Even as the quality of her life goes up, the quantity of it is halved. She grows to resent Eve.

Simon is a wedge between them. Hannah loves him dearly and doesn’t want to share. Eve doesn’t want to lose Hannah to Simon. For a while, things work out for Hannah, as the sisters split lives. Eve gets her tattoo and rents her own place (that Hannah stays at while the police search the house) but when Simon discovers Eve as a blonde musician, he falls in love all over again, not with Hannah, but with Eve. On their birthday, Hannah realizes that Simon has fallen for Eve, and ends up killing him in a rage. This is what drives Hannah over the edge, into the argument that results in his death.

Would it make sense for Simon to want to 'leave' Hannah for Eve, if they are the same physical person? Did he think she had lost her mind, and he was just 'rolling with it' in the extreme? Wouldn't it make more sense for him to confront his troubled wife about her double life in an effort to, at the very least, live with them 'both'?

If they really are twins, the alibi plan makes sense. If Eve was seen at the hospital then they have a real alibi. If they share a body then the whole thing was doomed. It seems more likely to me that they are twins, but we would need to see hospital records to know for sure. This seems to be a deliberate choice by the author to leave us guessing.

The really crazy thing is that there is way more to think about, and other mysteries hinted at, than what I've already outlined.

EDIT: Ohgodthisislongandhardtoproof

Nice report! ;)
Yeah the whole alibi, bruise, morning sickness, the mis-carriage (which can really mess up someone's brain chemistry for a while) and tattoo thing scream twin.

Awesome job. I've never wavered from believing they were twins, but it was very interesting seeing things laid out in order. I wish there were a way to do that in the game itself, but hey! Your notes must be insane.

Fantastic work.

Great job duder; as for your question, "Would it make sense for Simon to want to 'leave' Hannah for Eve, if they are the same physical person?"

That's not quite how twins work. Personality wise, they would/could be extremely different and that would make one more attractive than the other. Eve was physically similar to her twin (physical attraction), but her personality may have suited Simon better (emotional/psychological attraction) as she was more outgoing than Hanna her shy sister.

I hate to say this, but think of the Bella twins from the WWE. Brie and Nikki are very different personality wise, and as a result, people find themselves more attracted to one than the other (I can't stand Nikki but I think Brie is pretty awesome). Anecdotally, I have friends who are identical twins, but I am much closer to one than the other.

There's also another HUGE piece of evidence in favor of them being the same person. Hannah mentions that when they were young, they wanted to follow Bob Dylan on a tour, and drove around in a cab; but the cab driver questioned their age so he took them to the police.

And here's the thing: Hannah says that her mom took them from the police station, where she blamed everything on her friend Eve. But if Eve were real then the mom would have seen them together at that very moment! They were literally caught by the police, there is no 'Eve went to hiding' on this one, if they were two people then the mom would have arrived into a police station and see her daughter ALONG WITH AN IDENTICAL TWIN and absolutely lose her shit. But, seeing how Eve is made up, the mom saw the 'it's my friend Eve's fault' excuse as either as a made up excuse of a child who has an imaginary friend (or is talking about a real friend who is not there at the moment).

@l4wd0g:What I meant there is, if they are NOT twins, but one person, it wouldn't make sense for Simon to want to "leave" one for the other. I agree that it DOES make sense for him to want to leave Hannah, for her twin Eve.

@imsh_pl: Well, she was not under arrest at that time, since they didn't actually commit a crime. She just says that she got picked up at the station, not that she was "bailed out" or similar. She was only in trouble with her parents, not the law, so I think there is room for Eve to just walk away, or go to the bathroom for five minutes while Hannah sits in the lobby (or on the curb) waiting to get picked up.

There are definitely things that point to the Split Personality theory but I don't think they are as strong as the evidence for twins. As I say in the post, I think it is just vague enough that there is no definitive answer. Maybe I should make another post arguing against twins just to see where it goes.

This is a great breakdown. I've always leaned to the side of the twin theory, but was always at odd with my thoughts on whether it could be split personality.

I keep trying to come up with a thoughtful post about how I don't think the split theory works, but I'm too tired. Plus, I'm not a doctor so I don't think anything I write would make sense.

However, if multiple personalities are actually aware of each other are they also aware that they share a body? I'm guess no due to the whole coffee/pregnancy thing.

I feel like they touch upon this with the diary...which essentially a crib sheet for how the two twins should be acting in their dual role as Simon's partner. Not saying I'm 100% convinced that this is a viable answer but it could explain that.

This blog post was fantastic and far more coherent than my own thoughts, it's given me a lot of food for thought.

I think the twin theory is correct. That the storyline as Eve outlines it in the last interview is essentially true. Awesome layout of the whole situation here.

One question, though, that I wanted to ask other people who've finished the game. What's the deal with the one missing archive clip? Does that lead ever go anywhere?

While there are problems for each side, the problems facing the Twins explanation seem far greater than the ones for Split. The idea that the maid could snatch away a newborn baby and then somehow keep them out of sight for years, and then when that twin does go out in public she's not once seen with her sister at the same time (at least not in a way that creates a scene), is a bit much. So they met during their 5th birthday party, how could that happen without people noticing? And didn't they say that their father took 'them' on walks in the forest? In all their 27 years or so, they've never been outed? I agree that the story is set up to make it hard to come down on one side, but the evidence piles aren't stacked evenly.

In another discussion on this issue, I saw someone point out the 'mirror game', and how there is an achievement for playing the game in such a way that it ends in a draw. Two sides, one player?

Thank you for the deconstruction!

The song was based on a real song, that first appeared in 1656 which is cool!

I don't know, can't you cheat and look at the movie files in the game folder? If my math is correct there are 271 clips in the db checker ingame (11*24+7 = 271). In the game folder there are 273 clips, one of which is credits sequence, so that would mean one other can't be seen ingame or is hidden away?

Yeah... It's pretty much why I'd rather find plausible explanations for the errors in the Split theory even though the Twins theory is pretty strong if you disregard how unlikely it is that they were not outed for 27 years. (Hannah must've had the appetite of a horse for her parents, eating twice as much as a normal person would!)

@l4wd0g: Also when you consider that Hannah used Eve to attract Simon in the first place it is very believable that he falls for again in the bar, since she is literally the girl he fell in love with in the beginning, identical to his wife Hannah yet more seductive and exciting.

I think the implication here is that the girls both went on walks with their father separately and he was oblivious to the fact that they were swapping.

So is it pretty clear that Eve killed her parents in order to bring Simon and Hannah back to their childhood home? Apparently they die at the same time due to some food related illness, the police seem to have decided that they ate death cap mushrooms as the father is known to pick his own. However both sisters seem to be skeptical of this, saying their father would be able to spot a death cap and they describe it's features (a pattern on the rim or something). Anyway, it seems to me that since Eve is also aware of how to spot a death cap implies that she used this knowledge to poison her parents. Her line about the police not searching the attic is just another one of those facets of the story that stretches plausibility though.

A great report!

The stuff about them having their periods at the same time and especially Eve not having any periods when Hannah gets pregnant is very hard to explain if you go for the twin theory :)

Theres some dude that reverse engineered the game and extracted the script where the interviewed one is named and you seem to have guessed (concluded) right at all interviews.

Well its not ingame but here you have the whole thing.

The "missing" video might just be a intended programming bug. A nice little detail. Supposedly the missing video is the yellow bar in the database, in other word the video you have loaded up and are watching at the moment.

The missing video might also be related to the flooding of the archives that's mentioned in the readme file. I did some snooping for the "missing video" in the game folder and came out pretty disappointed! I said that there was one unaccounted video in the game folder but it ended up being a duplicate. The 62th video or when you search for "clearly murder" ingame is duplicated. It's called D305.avi in the game folder but there is also a D305.mov file. I'm not getting any audio from it but that might be codec related. New mystery or programmer leftovers?! You decide!

It's no so hard to explain, a woman can miss multiple periods under different circumstances including emotional stress and malnutrition (these fall under the etiology of what is called "Hypotalamic amenorrhea"). At this point of the story Eve is probably suffering from both.

But this would just be physiological reason for that. It's a nice touch to strengthen the notion that the twins' connection was so strong that once Hannah's period stopped, Eve's stopped as well. And makes it more of a fairy tale to add another touch: Only the same charming prince could make them pregnant. "His f***ing magic sperm".

This is a great post!

There are a lot of things I wasn't able to cover in my post. It does seem likely to me that Eve killed Florence (midwife) and her bio-parents. Eve is pretty clearly the "evil twin" even though it appears Hannah was the one to commit the murder.

If we assume instead that they are a split personality, the game becomes a LOT weirder and less coherent, because that means:

• Most of Eve's backstory is a total fabrication, so her motivations for wanting to be with Hannah / wanting a real family disappear. It makes her fake / less of a character.
• Hannah and Eve became aware of each other somehow as a child, without the aid of other people, even though personalities don't share memories.
• Their stories about doing things "together" are delusions since they can't both be awake at the same time.
• They don't seem to realize they are in the same body, but Eve is able to fake the tattoo and lie about how long she has had it, which only hurts her credibility with the police.
• Hannah's parents never noticed her condition, or didn't care.
• The police don't seem to ever ask about past or current mental health in any way. (They do ask about twins.)
• The two personalities were not only aware of each other, but they masquerade as each other. (Talk about a snake eating its own tail.)
• Eve technically was pregnant at the same time as Hannah, but for some reason she saw herself as skinny when Hannah was showing.
• If Eve really did sleep around trying to "also" get pregnant to match, and got an STD, it may have caused Hannah's miscarriage. (This one is actually interesting.)
• For some reason, Eve couldn't live with Hannah and Simon at the Smith residence with his parents. Yet she was still able to surface long enough to poison her own parents so the house would be free for Hannah and Simon to move to, so that she could gain control again? (Doesn't make any sense to me. If she could poison her parents, then she didn't need them to move.)
• The story Eve tells about getting caught going to the bathroom by her mom, and Hannah coming out dressed seconds later, is just a lie.
• Simon apparently realized his wife had two personalities, but roleplayed as if they were different people, and told the "new" one he wanted to leave the old one for her.
• The alibi Eve came up with is a total delusion and her evil plan was actually super terrible and lead directly to getting caught.

Honestly, both the twin theory and the split personality theory are far fetched. They are a "cheap" twist for a murder mystery in general, but I am OK with how this game uses the ideas to keep us digging in to the characters.

Great post. I've never thought anything other than twins, but I can see how people get into the split personality idea. For me the Dylan story is the only real hole where the twins doesn't make sense and you have to make a lot more leaps in logic to explain them being the same person.

And much more interesting, in my view.

Even more interesting if they're actually sentient potatoes!!

I don't think it's true that her motivations become unreal just because she's some kind of psychological manifestation. She wants what she wants just as much as Hannah wants what Hannah wants and is just as able to make those things happen. She got pregnant where Hannah couldn't.

What's interesting is the song. Maybe one of the sisters killed the other, and took her place? Maybe she went into denial and went all Hitchcock's Psycho?

@catlicker:Well, I'm no doctor but I assume it is possible she could have gotten the STD earlier in the pregnancy, and it didn't trigger the miscarriage until later.Actually, since Eve is still "sick in the attic" when her parents die, and that happened after the miscarriage, I wonder how the timing is supposed to work out there? Maybe Eve was lying about still being sick to give her an alibi for her parents murder?

@eccentrix: If she is a twin and her backstory is basically true, then she was raised until 8 basically in isolation, while watching her happy twin out the window and reading fairy tales. That gives her a real motivation to be a bit crazy, want to cling to family and particularly to Hannah.

If she is a split personality, then she is an evil personality that is obsessed with Hannah and staying with her (but she can't be separated from her?) 'just because.'

@twolines: yeh its possible that there where twins or even just best friends and one killed the other. Theres many references to stuff like that. Holding each other under water wanting to kill, the song, saying "its a perfect mirror for one who hates her own reflection", eve saying that Hannah is gone now etc.

I also read an interesting post in the steamforums about there being a multipersonal being in the Rapunzel story/poem. Everything eve says at the end kind of is different takes on old stories which makes you wonder.

I haven't read through all the posts, just the first one, mostly posting so I can remember to come back tomorrow.

The twin angle became so quickly apparent to me that I started looking for other possible surprises. I can't pinpoint where or why but at some point I became convinced there was a third woman involved. Something stood out to me and I wish my scribbled notes had been better that I could figure out how I formulated that thought.

I was 99% sure about it being twins rather than split personality but near the end in the "story" involving them killing Simon and bringing him into the basement, she says "We knew, I, we had an alibi". I guess this could just be a slip of the tongue, but with a game like this its kind of hard not to latch onto every little detail that happens.

I'm not. I can't. The crux of this game is "did we use the laziest, dumbest twist for a murder mystery or the SECOND laziest, dumbest twist? You figure it out!"

It's not like the game is dealing with any particularly deep themes through the twist, like Gone Home or, say, Fight Club were. The story isn't even about the relationship between Hannah and Simon or Hannah and Eve in any meaningful way, because both of those are weird and unlikely in ways that make them mean next to nothing approaching the real world.

Other than bending over backwards to create a whodunit with a single character in it, this twist brings very little to the game and takes away from the characters. So... I guess I'm in the minority on this one?

Look, I get that it's fun and popular this century to crowdsource "what really happened" in stories because Lost happened at one point, but it is pretty cheap unless you're using the device to say something, you know? Done for its own sake it just feels a bit empty.

@noelveiga: like gaming in general?

@rethla: I don't think that's true. Plenty of games don't feel shallow, both narrative and purely mechanical ones.

@noelveiga: Well even if you call twins pretending to be each other the laziest twist in gaminghistory (which is absurd) the game is not about the story but finding and piecing together the story. Its unique and well done i would say.

@bezerker85: The "I...we...have an alibi" makes sense to me, if you understand it as:

We knew that I, Eve the twin, had an alibi, and since people only know me as Hannah, we both have it.

@rethla: I agree with you, the game isn't about a meaningful story, it's about the parlor trick of piecing together a story from out-of sequence video clips.

That's the part that kind of sucks.

If the puzzling of the story was in service of saying something, even if it's just empathising with some characters, then I'd be all for it. It's why I liked the same mechanics in Gone Home or Papers, Please or hell, even to some extent the Souls series.

But why waste hours of acting if all you want to do is give me a particularly elaborate "put these pictures in order" puzzle? I don't think at that point the mechanical simplicity is justified by the storytelling. I need a better story there, otherwise it's on the level of a logic puzzle in a newspaper puzzle page.

Your mileage may vary, but that's what I very quickly got out of it. Plus yes, the holy trinity of dumb murder mystery twists are:

1. Her evil twin did it!
2. Her evil alternate personality did it!
3. She pretended her evil alternate personality/twin did it to avoid being convicted.

In being ambiguous, Her Story manages to hit a bingo of dumb plot twists. It's all of them at once. Schrodinger's dumb plot twist.

I'm genuinely surprised at how many people think that they are twins. The way her stories are laid out have screamed multiple personalities from the get-go.

@hypnotoadbrwowrowrow: Even if you try to handwave the bruise and the tattoo, how do you explain the fact that she had an alibi at the time of the murder?

@starvinggamer: She implied it herself that the alibi was faked with the watch that she somehow manipulated.

"We cleaned up, we bagged up the broken mirror, her clothes. They're gone. We took him down to the cellar. We knew I- we, had an alibi and we wanted the body to be found later; we wanted to have suspicion on us so we could then disprove it... rather than have it linger. Better to keep the body in the house than risk being seen with it. The watch, that was my touch, to make sure the alibi stuck.

Y'know what... that's actually very vague... They did a great job making this whole game vague enough to believe either story. I'M DONE! I'M DONE WITH THIS! lol

I am truly surprised as well. And the theories are pretty internally consistent. But, in a game titled Her Story, we must remember to frame everything in terms of this being one side of a complex series of interrogations and a larger investigation. If we assume that the Eve and Hannah personalities are to some degree operating independently, then the stories that she tells seem fairly consistent whether there is a twin or not.

But we never receive any concrete confirmations, rebuttals, evidence, or judgements from the police. We only have three real pieces of evidence: A woman had a guitar, was convicted of murdering her husband, and had a daughter. If you're like me, you had a page of keywords that related to easily verifiable evidence that would definitively give you an answer. Knowing that she was convicted in the end eliminates the twin theory for me, because the player character's mother was the one convicted (necessarily having the child in police custody). And since there is no way that Eve walked out of that last interrogation as a free woman, Eve == Hannah.

It has been really interesting reading others' takes on the story, though.

@thatdudeguy: Well, Eve could have been convicted for aiding in the attempted cover-up of a murder.

So I just finished it and fucking'a was that awesome. Here's my personal breakdown of the story and I'm curious what you guys think. But, fair warning, I'm going to write a lot. But long story short I really enjoyed the detective process. Oddly enough my mind went into the same zone it goes into when I do mental health assessments at my job. It was a cool experience.

So the main character has dissociative identity disorder (what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder). The main personality is Hannah and her alter is Eve. Where the split occurred is hard for me to parse out but I have two theories. Either Hannah was supposed to be born with a twin sister but that twin died in child birth. Or, because Hannah became so obsessed with fairy tales and books, particularly a nonfiction story about a woman named Florence (though that may have been the midwife that helped deliver her), she completely fabricated that alternate personality. It sounds like she was secluded and isolated as a child and didn't feel particularly cared for by her parents as a child and that, with what I'm assuming is some sort of trauma that I couldn't find proof of, led to the creation of Eve. Eve is all the things Hannah wishes she could be. She's outgoing, sexual, charismatic, exciting. So Eve became the person that allowed Hannah to live a full life. But Hannah hated her for being that person as well out of jealous and envy.

When Hannah met Simon when she was 17 she felt different because it felt like he loved her more than he loved Eve. But Eve, who is a bit promiscuous, 'broke a rule' by having sex with Simon and in doing so became pregnant. They had a shotgun wedding and it seemed like they got along fairly well. But that same year (1984) their child died after 8 months of pregnancy, in the spring, and Hannah/Eve's parents passed away that Summer. The parents' death was suspicious. There are hints that they became sick with something that was similar to the flu but would end up being much worse then anyone considered. They almost imply that Hannah/Eve was involved but it's not clear.

Anyway, 10 years of marriage pass and things seem relatively normal. But, Hannah is the one married to Simon. Eve feels left out and so decides to 'move out' so to speak and lives in an apartment elsewhere. She pays for the rent by singing at a local bar disguising herself with a blonde wig (akin to her favorite fairy tale Rapunzel). During this time Eve is having tons of sex trying to become pregnant again as Eve/Hannah are obsessed with a fairy tale happy ending. One night Simon walks into the bar where Eve is singing but doesn't recognize her (though he notes later that Eve looks familiar). He doesn't say that he is married and the two begin to have an affair. It ends with the two spending a weekend in Oxford and while there Eve becomes pregnant again (which is unexpected as it was thought that Hannah/Eve as well as Simon had lost the ability to carry/have children following the first child).

Hannah, on her and Eve's birthday in the evening, confronts Simon about the pregnancy and the affair with Eve. She does so wearing the blonde wig Eve used when singing in bars. They discuss the multiple personalities, their marriage and so on. Simon then gives Hannah her present, a mirror he has made, and tells her that he wishes to be with Eve and not Hannah. Hannah becomes furious and aggressive. Simon responds by hitting her and due to this the mirror breaks. Hannah grabs a shard of the broken mirror, swings it about erratically to scare Simon but accidentally hits his neck killing him. From Eve's perspective, she 'walks in to the living room' and sees the aftermath of Simon and Hannah's argument. Eve takes over setting up an alibi and arranging the scene in such a way that she and Hannah could get away with the murder. She manipulates a watch Simon always wears to set it to a time prior to the actual murder so that when Hannah/Eve say that they are in Glasgow, following having not seen Simon after their argument in which they claim Simon leaves the home following. They say that they want to keep the body in the home to avoid being seen carrying the body in public and that it would be better to face suspicion head on rather than let the suspicion and doubt linger. Hannah/Eve drive to Glasgow where they intentionally get into an accident with a taxi and after being taken to a hospital, and after calling friends and family to inquire about the location of Simon, she contacts police (two days and some change after the actual murder).

The person at the computer is the child from the second pregnancy. She's named 'Sarah' which is what Hannah wished to call the first child (Simon had wanted to name her Ava but Hannah didn't due to it being a palindrome just like her and Eve's name). Which suggests that Hannah/Eve got away with the murder as she theoretically gave birth to and named the second child.

@jasonr86: Been a while since I had played, at least for my memory, but for the sake of the two theories (twin vs dissociative) wasn't Hannah with the first child while Eve was with the second? Eve was sleeping around and got an STD, Hannah ended up getting pregnant from Simon, miscarriage, EVE becomes pregnant with Sarah. At least that's how I remember it.

@hypnotoadbrwowrowrow:

There's a clip where Hannah talks about the rules she and Eve had in regards to Simon and one of them involved when and how they would have sex with him. Hannah derisively explains that Eve had 'broken the rules' by having sex with him and that it was that night that she became pregnant. Later, Eve tells the interviewers that Simon, with his 'magic sperm', had gotten her pregnant after their first night together. The second pregnancy was less clear for me but based on the videos it looks like Simon had had an affair with a blonde, had been seeing Eve after having seen her singing while she was disguised with her blonde wig and either Hannah or Eve (I'm thinking Eve) had spent a weekend in Oxford a few months become Simon was killed.

@jasonr86: But wasn't Hannah the one that was in the shotgun wedding, not Eve?

@jasonr86: The rule she broke, was that she slept with him first. The rules were Eve slept with the men first, because Hannah was shy. At least that is what I remember. I haven't played or watched the videos since the day after the game was released.

@hypnotoadbrwowrowrow:

Well, if they are the same person like I think then they both were in the shotgun wedding.

Yep. Hannah doesn't specify the rules but implies that Eve sleeping with Simon was breaking at least one of the rules.

Like I said, as far as keeping the character's separate stories straight for the sake of the differing theories. Hannah becomes Pregnant by Simon, Eve sleeping around gets STD, Hannah has miscarriage, then Eve gets pregnant with Simon's magic sperm. Hannah pissed at Eve but in Hannah's point of view, she doesn't believe Simon knows that she knows about their affair (blonde Eve and Simon) (in which Simon may even know about Eve being Hannah, wig or not, and doesn't consider it an affair). Hannah disguises herself as blonde Eve and confronts Simon. It's when Simon gives blonde Hannah (posing as blonde Eve, who Simon is having affair with) a mirror identical to the one he gave Hannah (which was suppose to be a special unique gift for her) that she gets pissed and swings at him. (though I guess Simon was physical first? Which I must be forgetting if you're sure about it.)

@sterling: I was wrong. Hannah slept with Simon first and was pregnant. So Hannah had the first pregnancy, Eve had the second.

I really enjoyed this game (and registered just to discuss it, in fact). My only real issue is that I got the chit chat prompt before I'd even watched 50% of the database and hadn't hit on some major plot points at the time.

I don't have a prevailing theory at this point; the game is obviously intentionally vague and open to multiple interpretations and I am satisfied with that as a player.

However, I feel that the girls' plan is a little confusing if their story is taken at face value. They both agree that "the baby is what's important", but the final interview leaves Eve, who is the pregnant twin, possibly in police custody. I understand the suggestion that Eve does not exist in a legal sense and may not be able to be formally charged; that she wasn't the murderer and has an alibi for the time of the murder (the Glasgow trip), and that they may have possibly caused enough confusion to render the case impossible to prosecute. Regardless, Eve admits to being an accessory to the crime and lying to the police. I find it highly unlikely that Eve isn't arrested or charged with something in that scenario.

I imagine that Eve confessing wasn't part of the plan, but hadn't they considered that Eve pretending to be Hannah could lead to a situation where Eve gets charged as Hannah, for instance? Leaving the pregnant twin to face the consequences seems like a stupid idea if the baby is their primary concern.

I'm certainly overthinking it, but I can appreciate when the experience of playing a game lasts long after you close the window.

This was a really good blog. I was going to do something like this myself but you did it better than I ever could, so well done.

I haven't examined every clip yet, but currently I'm fairly certain that Hannah and Eve are two personalities, not two people. One of the big reasons is the Bob Dylan concert story.

The Bob Dylan Story

In Clip 143, Hannah/Eve describes how the girls attended a Bob Dylan concert on the sly. According to Hannah, the girls saved or stole money until they were able to afford the cab fare to the concert. However, the cab driver became suspicious of their young age and called the police, who picked them up and called their parents to take them home. Supposedly, Hannah got off because she blamed the whole incident on Eve.

To explain why this story doesn't work, we first need a timeline to help visualize what's going on:

TIMELINE

1967: Hannah born. We know this because the interviews take place in 1994. At various times, Hannah mentions she's been married for 10 years, and that she and Simon were married when she was seventeen. Doing the math, this equates to 1994-27=1967.

Additionally, we know that Hannah's birthday is on June 17th. We know this because the initial interview is on June 18th, 1994, which is a Saturday. Simon disappeared the night before, and Hannah is coming into the police station on Saturday night to report him missing. Hannah explicitly states that she and Simon fought Friday night, on her birthday, making her birthday June 17th.

June 17th, 1972: The date that Hannah/Eve claims she first saw her twin. We know this because in Clip 225, she says she first saw her twin when she was five, while watching the other's birthday party.

1975: According to Hannah/Eve, this is when Florence, the midwife who supposedly raised Eve, died. We know this because in Clip 230, Hannah/Eve says Florence died when Hannah/Eve was eight. At this point, the girls began living together in the same house while swapping places to keep Eve's existence a secret from Hannah's parents.

1984: Hannah gets pregnant by Simon and they marry.

Missing from this timeline is the Bob Dylan concert itself, since we are not explicitly told when this took place, only that Hannah/Eve were young when it happened. However, we are given enough information to deduce the year and date it took place.

WHEN WAS THE CONCERT?

OK. So, we also know that at some point when Hannah and Eve were children, they ran away to see a Bob Dylan concert, but we are not told the exact date of the concert. However, we know that they must have met at this point, and that it also must be before Hannah's marriage. Therefore, we need to find Bob Dylan concerts taking place in England between the years 1972 and 1984.

A quick Wikipedia search gives us two possibilities - Bob Dylan had world tours that stopped in London in both 1978 and 1981. Crucially however, because of Clip 143 we also know that Hannah/Eve ran away for this concert on Hannah's birthday, June 17th. Looking at the tour dates, only the 1978 tour fits this timeline - it was performing in London from June 15th-June 20th.

Therefore, the concert in question took place in 1978, when the girls would have been 11. Note that this answer makes at least some intuitive sense. Running away from home to go to a concert sounds like the type of thing an 11-year old might do, and it is also at an age where a cab driver would be suspicious of seeing children that young going unchaperoned (as opposed to say, the 1981 concert when they would have been 14).

WHY THE STORY DOESN'T WORK WITH TWO PEOPLE

So we now know that Hannah/Eve attempted to attend the 1978 Bob Dylan concert in London, but we are not provided very much information on what happened after they were picked up by the police. One fact we DO know is that, in the words of Hannah "They came and picked us up and took me back to Portsmouth." This is interesting phrasing as the use of "us" followed by "me" implies that only Hannah was taken to Portsmouth, leaving Eve with the police. However, if this is true, it creates serious problems for the possibility of Hannah and Eve being two people.

To see why, we need to evaluate three possibilities of what was happening at the time of Hannah and Eve's arrest:

Possibility 1: Hannah and Eve are identical twins, who look identical at the time they are arrested

If Hannah and Eve are two separate people, this is a potential possibility, but it's also one that quickly breaks down. First, it would be logical to think that the police, presented with identical twins, would naturally assume they share the same parents. Therefore, it would seem unlikely that the police would take only Hannah and not Eve back to Portsmouth.

Even assuming that Hannah's testimony was just a slip of the tongue, and that both Hannah and Eve were in fact taken to Portsmouth, any phone call to Hannah's parents would probably be along the lines of "We've found your daughters". This would obviously confuse Hannah's parents, who are supposedly unaware of Hannah's twin sister, and this confusion in turn would almost certainly have led to some more investigation, likely uncovering what had happened and spoiling Hannah and Eve's deception.

Possibility 2: Hannah and Eve are identical twins, but Eve has changed her appearance somehow to evade detection

For the second possibility, let's assume that when the girls were picked up, that Eve had on some sort of disguise. To give this possibility the best chance of success, let's also assume that police procedures were not thorough enough to see past the disguise. If the girls look unrelated, this could provide a potential reason why only Hannah was taken back to Portsmouth, or, if both Hannah and Eve were taken back, why Hannah's parents were left unaware of Eve's existence.

However, this possibility also has a major problem - namely, what happens to Eve in this scenario? We know that Eve must eventually leave the police station with someone, but who?

• She can't leave with Florence, because Florence is dead at this point.

• It also seems unlikely that she would have left with Hannah's parents. For one, it increases the chance they would discover Hannah and Eve's secret. Additionally, there is the problem of what they do with Eve. Eve would need to come up with a story - on the fly - about where she lives and who her parents are. Assuming this doesn't immediately fall through (i.e. Hannah's parents wanting to have words with Eve's imaginary parents about what happened), this would require an ongoing deception regarding Eve's location and family life.

• A third possibility is that the police, finding no parents for Eve, place her in some form of state supervision or custody. Given what we know, this seems extremely unlikely, since Eve and Hannah maintained close, in person contact afterward.

Although there is no DIRECT contradictory evidence to this theory, there are too many major problems for it to be taken as a serious contender.

Possibility 3: Hannah and Eve are the same person

The third possibility is that Hannah and Eve are two personalities rather than two people. If this is true, a lot of pieces fall into place. For one, it explains why only Hannah and not Eve went back to Portsmouth - Hannah was the only one there. It also explains how Hannah was able to keep Eve hidden from her parents - she doesn't exist. A non-existant friend is also the perfect patsy to use to shift blame for the whole stunt, which Hannah freely admits to doing*.

* My personal theory of this is that Hannah's parents are at least partially aware that Hannah has psychological problems. If we take my family as an anecdotal average family, there is no way that throwing a friend under the bus is going to work as an excuse - I'm still getting punished. Additionally, even if we assume that that excuse would get me off, my parents would want to talk to my friend's parents to pretty much say "what the hell?!" That would be hard to do in this scenario since Eve doesn't exist. However, if Hannah's parents are aware of Eve and that she doesn't exist, this perfectly explains events - their mentally ill daughter did something crazy because the voices in her head told her to do it.

@lawgamer: I know I'm really late to the party for this one, but I signed up just to respond to your in-depth analysis. It was bugging me too (though I didn't go nearly as far as you did in terms of figuring out what birthday it was and so on; it was enough for me to know they were young enough to alarm the taxi driver), but I just went back and watched it a bunch of times, and I realized there's a fourth possibility you didn't consider:

Possibility 4: Only one of the sisters ran off to see Bob Dylan.

Yes, she very clearly says "we" a bunch of times. Yes, she says she (Hannah) "blamed it all on her friend Eve". But that's the only time she mentions Eve by name, so what if "we" is Hannah (or Eve, who would have relayed the experience to Hannah via diary, making it a shared experience) and some other girls? The only (female) friend she ever mentions by name is Eve, but that doesn't mean she didn't have other friends from school who were at least close enough to come over on her birthday (interesting to think how that would have worked--maybe swapping birthdays every other year?). And that solves everything. She explicitly says "my mum picked me up from the station" so that part is in the singular, and works with the theory.

This is an incredibly mundane explanation, and also about a thousand times less problematic than the fake tattoo and fake bruise stuff, among other issues the split personality hypothesis is saddled with.