EDIT: Spoilers are now open! Spoil away.

Prior message:

Welcome to the Unsanctioned Unofficial Game Pass Game Club. Our 15th game is Telling Lies. The target completion date is August 22, 2022.

We ask that until that date you use the forum software to mark any spoilers, either story based or mechanical, in the discussion below. Ideally the bulk of the discussion will occur after August 22, but if you want to comment before then you are welcome to so long as the spoilers are marked. We ask that if you leave a comment before that date you also come back to the thread after it to read other people’s comments and respond to them, though of course we cannot force you to do so.

All are welcome to participate regardless of whether you have stated a preference to or not and there is absolutely no commitment. You do not have to finish the game to participate but please let us know if you have not.

You can find out more about the Unsanctioned Unofficial Game Pass Game Club or suggest future games for it here.

What is Telling Lies?

Telling Lies is an FMV investigation game by Sam Barlow.

How long is Telling Lies?

How long to beat lists it as 4.5 hours long

Spoilers are now open here.

I may come back with more thoughts once others have shared. I really enjoyed Her Story but for me Telling Lies is not quite as strong. I feel like having four "main" characters and a bunch of side characters makes it lose focus and there are just too many clips that don't go anywhere or aren't that entertaining, including a lot of "reaction" clips where characters just sit there listening. I think you're supposed to scrub through these for whatever they say, but often that isn't interesting or important either so you have a bunch of 7-9 minute clips that are super boring and unimportant. It may make the game more realistic as you try to sift through a bunch of junk for the nuggets of interest but it's still super boring and while it adds to the "a ha" moment when you learn something juicy it just isn't that interesting.

I also thought some of the performances were pretty weak. I get that working with child actors is hard but I also didn't enjoy those parts. I was relieved that Max's accent was supposed to be fake, because it was so bad, but I also didn't enjoy her clips because it was distracting.

This is going to be controversial, but having a camgirl who never shows significant skin was a baaaaad choice. It just feels very 90s FMV half edgy but not willing to go the way and it might have had something to do with avoiding an AO but why even bother? That plus the fake accent just made the Max stuff feel low rent, and I didn't think her parts of the story were interesting anyway.

At times all the women try to come off as sexy and they all fail, but at least with Ava and Emma this is not their actual gig so you can accept they are shy and just bad at it. Still this is a game of the 2020s and it's hard to imagine a young woman like Ava getting herself off on camera without showing anything. It's not that I wanted the game to have nudity, it's just that I thought that those scenes were both gratuitous and hokey and I wish they had been cut because they really lampshaded that this is all just a bunch of people dressing up and pretending into the camera, which took me out of the story.

I did like that the character you play as had a bit of a role in the game and thought that was an improvement over Her Story.

This is just a list of complaints and overall I did think it was a solid and fun experience and I like the format and am looking forward to more games like it. I think this is a really good way to do FMV games in a way that is engaging and works. I just hope in the future the games are a bit leaner and more focused like Her Story without having to sift through so much boring stuff to find the interesting bits and construct the story.