Stories Untold

Stories Untold is a game that brings together several different styles from the adventure genre to create a short, cinematic experience. It consists of four short "episodes" that ultimately contribute to a greater story. Large portions of the game consist of text adventure sections played first-person via an in-game monitor (very meta), though there are point-and-click and walking sections as well. There are some good puzzles in the game and some that simply boil down to following directions. The text adventure sections aren't written particularly well, but I noticed a small amount of attention to detail which could be interesting sometimes. In some situations the text parser would do a good job and know exactly what I wanted, but in others it was frustratingly rigid. Taken on their own merits, each of the first three episodes are either just okay or mediocre, with the first one probably being the most effective in the writing department, and the second excelling in gameplay and puzzles. That second chapter features some cool interactive analog equipment that feels especially polished and unique. The third episode features among other things a lengthy walking section which is extremely boring and feels like padding on top of what is potentially a less than two hour long game. As the story wore on, I started to become somewhat tired of the cliched dialogue and situations, and the flat voice acting took me out of the experience.

The big reveal at the end of the game is that the whole story is a dream in the mind of the main character who fell into a coma after driving drunk and crashing his car. He inadvertently kills his sister, and we are treated to a very dramatic retelling of this incident that offers no choice and hammers home the message that drunk driving is very bad and that drunk drivers can be evil, thoughtless people. While it's hard to disagree, I have a feeling this story was motivated by an experience in the lives of one of the writers. It's all played very seriously and feels a bit one-sided, like it was written by either a victim or a drunk driver plagued with guilt. The message is that our main character is completely to blame for what happened, despite being persistently asked by both the sister and their dad to drive, even though he would have been clearly intoxicated to all involved. It's just a muddled message with a framing device that feels like a "postmodern" twist concocted for the sake of having one. If anything, this twist undercuts the mystery of the previous sections, and all of the cool, supernatural horror ideas are replaced with what feels like an after-school special financed by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. At no point did any of the writing in this game feel particularly clever or inventive. Almost all of this is just the same old horror cliches played out for the nth time. However there was a tiny bit to appreciate with regards to the old-school tech, especially in episode two. That was probably my favorite parts of the game - the attention to detail on the analog devices was a bit impressive. It's just a shame that the writing felt so forced.