When playing Barlow’s Her Story, I felt that I was in interacting driectly with Hannah to come to a conclusion as to whether or not she was the murderer. What separated my experience with this game versus others that I played throughout the quarter was that most, if not all, of the gameplay occurs in the mind of the player, rather than on the computer. While the evidence and various recordings are on the computer, the gamer has to be the one searching for clues, keywords, connecting the evidence together, and ultimately solving the murder. This starkly contrasts may other detective games, where you are given a set of binary options, which will eventually lead you to the final outcome, regardless of whether you are right or wrong.
This inclusion of a mental component into the framework of the game was quite refreshing for me, as the gamer had to perform his/her own analysis of Hannah’s interviews. When playing the game from start to end, I came up with two different conclusions as to what happened, with no indication of whether they were right or not, which adds to the immersive and ambiguous nature of the game. I hypothesized that either Hannah is suffering from a multiple personality disorder or that Eve and Hannah are identical twins. By allowing for each gamer to come up with their own respective conclusions without the game agreeing or disagreeing with him/her, Barlow has created a gaming environment where gamers are not directed towards a certain end outcome, but are forced to think for themselves and form their own opinions based on Hannah’s recordings. By the end of the game, you are still left thinking about whether or not your conclusion is correct, as Barlow does not give you the “correct answer”. Thus, this ambiguity, which is in large part driven by no indication of whether a gamers’ theory is correct or not, creates an immersive experience, where gamers are forced to analyze situations and rationalize their conclusions.
I have to agree with vbigdelle here. I feel like if you're going to tell a story, especially a mystery, having the answer at least confirmed is part of the experience. If we can compare this to Return of the Obra Dinn, Obra Dinn never flat out told you the answers. It would, however, tell you after you got several correct. While the open ending can have you think about it out of game more, like a real private detective, I feel that in telling a medium specific story making everything conclusive feels more complete, while these open ended endings with no confirmed story feels kinda lazy to a point. If you get so ambiguous that a true ending c…
While I can see how it can be refreshing for a game to leave the conclusion open ended, I feel like sometimes you just want to know what happened and not have to guess. I think a game can still make you think and have an ending, but really I think I personally just was super intrigued with the game and wanted to know what the game maker intended for the end to be. Sometimes, not in this case specifically, games, movies, art are left so open ended that it almost becomes meaningless, so I wonder if having some kind of definitive end helps solidify the purpose of the game.