Her Story proves that narrative needn't be linear
Spoilers. Because of course. Buy the game if you haven't. It is worth experiencing.
The game's best feature is the feeling of piecing together a story by focusing on key words and ideas in an interview. Combined with watching for a real person's tells (manufactured to be clear, but not poorly acted and obvious), this game is like an LA Noire interview that works.
It's interesting to think about the progression here in terms of the usual game mechanics of success and fail states. Obviously, you can't die or get kicked off the computer, but you can come up on a dead end. If one avoids cheesing the system with simple search terms (those the five video limit mostly works against this), one can have that real feeling of EUREKA! when a search time pulls up something revelatory, and a feeling of frustration when a lead doesn't go anywhere.
The value for me was a feeling of freedom within a limited context. I could hear the character mention a name and search that name, say "Diane." Up pop four videos, from different days and different questions, about this Diane person. The skill here is paying attention. I felt like I was really sleuthing because there is no indication of something being important--I needed to pay attention, think about the words in context, and make hypotheses all the time.
This sort of scientific method to storytelling is something I hadn't experienced, but it only works because the characterization and acting are engaging. At times the job of Veve was to put character into literally a 6 second or a 2 minute clip, with the former being all implication of context and topic, and the latter being a small one-woman scene with emotional and plot movement. As a writing and acting task this is phenomenally difficult and the game pulls it off very well.
One can enter into this cynically, knowing or guessing major plot points, finding the revealing videos, and calling it a day. But that misses the point. The point is delving and prying and learning.
As a focus, that's a wonderful one. The feeling that Witcher 3 gives me when I happen to walk down into a cave and find a little story is the same feeling that Her Story gave me when I heard the suspect say a phrase, looked into it, and found a whole new little part of the narrative. It's exciting and enveloping and needs to be experienced.
