I recently picked up Her Story as part of a Humble Bundle and I was pleasantly surprised. I didn’t even get the bundle for Her Story— I wanted Shadowrun: Hong Kong, but since I paid, I get the whole set of games.

I remember the Her Story hype about a year or two ago? It was always topping the charts on Steam and there were articles on how it made a new genre of video games. I was intrigued, but not enough to get the game. I’m really glad I eventually got this game in a Humble Bundle because it was really good.

The first portion of this post will contain no spoilers. The second part will be spoilery, since I’ll explain what I think happens in the game.

Her Story starts when you turn on an old computer and boot it up. You find a note on the desktop addressed to you, and telling you to take your time to go through these retreived files. You can tell that this is an old piece of equipment, and you learn it contains recorded interviews between police detectives and a woman named Hannah.

Hannah is first recorded when she comes to the police station to report that her husband is missing. How the database of videos work is that you choose a keyword, type it into the search bar, and it’ll retrive the top 5 results that match the keyword. You can then watch the videos and when you’re done, you can search another word that you’re interested in to find out more.

That aspect of the game makes you feel like a true detective. I later learned that the actress in the video was told to emphasize certain words to lead you to a possible keyword, but it was really well done and you can’t quite realize you’re being lead.

The story in the game is about a murder. Who did it? Why did they do it?

The game was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I’m not entirely sure if Her Story can be considered a game. I think it’s more interactive storytelling than anything, but hey— aren’t all games interactive storytelling? Either way, the actress, Viva Seifert, does a spectacular job in the game.

If you’ve got a spare weekend night with 2-3 hours to spare, play Her Story. It’s a game that keeps you thinking well after you’ve finished it! Well worth the few dollars it’ll cost you to buy it (it’s also available on iOS).

Now onto my analysis. The rest of this post will contain spoilers.

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Hopefully someone who has played the game can rebut and argue with me so that we can get to a more definitive truth. I finished the game two days ago, but I’m still trying to work out what happened and I find myself thinking about the story every time I have a spare moment.

As most of us know, there’s two main ways that can possibly explain Hannah/Eve:

• They are twins and are each their own separate persons
• This is a single person with Hannah and Eve as separate personalities (like in the case of those with Multiple Personality Disorders).

I spent the last two days scouring the web for online debates, articles, and heated arguments. And I absorbed about as much as I possibly can. Using my knowledge from the game and things other people have pointed out, I think that Hannah and Eve are twins rather than a person suffering from MPD.

My view of what went on goes something like this:

Hannah and Eve are twins, seperated at birth. Despite having their fights and disputes, they loved each other dearly. On the night of Simon’s death, Eve walked in to the house to find that Hannah had accidentally killed Simon out of rage and so she helps her sister hide the body, and she also is willing to let Hannah use her alibi of being in Glasgow while the murder had happened.

The two of them decide that “Hannah” has to go to the police to report that her husband is missing, or it’ll be worse when someone else calls the police and they have to look into things. Eve goes to the police, masqurading as Hannah, since Hannah is bruised from when Simon swung at her during their fight, and she’s probably a little nervous from having killed someone. However, Hannah does eventually have to go to the police office to talk to the officers since she’s the one who would be best at answering questions related to the intimate details of her and Simon’s relationship, as well as their married past.

Again, the sisters are going through life, playing by each other’s strength just as they did when they were kids.

Mid-way through the interviews, I think Eve realizes she’s willing to let Hannah use her alibi, but she’s not about to go to jail for her. Especially not now, when she’s expecting a baby and she can finally start her own life. So she starts to act as Hannah sloppily (i.e. forgetting which side of the face the bruise is supposed to be on), and eventually comes clean to the police, telling them the truth of her childhood and how Hannah and her are identical twins.

Why do I think they’re twins?

Firstly, there is the tattoo on Eve. If the tattoo was really a temporary water transfer, I feel the detectives would have seen through that. Of course, for the purpose of budget in the game, it obviously is a temporary tattoo— but we’re trusting that the police officers aren’t that daft. To let this woman ramble on about how she got the tattoo quite a few years ago to celebrate the occasion of her moving out when it clearly was a water transfer would’ve been a bit strange.

I also think that in the end, when Eve says that there is no murder weapon, I believe the police asked her about the murder of Hannah. At first I was confused. We already know that Simon was killed with a broken mirror that sliced his throat. So what could Eve have been talking about when she insists they don’t have a weapon for the murder? I think she means she has killed her sister, realizing she’s the “evil” twin.

They can’t arrest her for Simon’s murder, since it’s clear from the polygraph machine (assuming that one of the questions the detectives asked was “Did you kill Simon?”) that she didn’t kill Simon (and from her explanations of what went on. Since we know a Polygraph test can’t be trusted). However, she got rid of Hannah who might eventually do her or her child harm.

Then what about Sarah? Who raised Sarah if Hannah’s dead and Eve is in prison? Her grandparents Doug and Elenor could’ve raised her as Hannah and Simon’s child. It could be that they named her Sarah, knowing her mother (who they assume is Hannah) had wanted to name her first daughter so.

I do have several questions that I don’t have answers to:

• Why was the guitar at Hannah’s house if neither Hannah nor Simon played the guitar? It obviously belongs to Eve, so how would it have ended up at the couple’s hosue? This is a point that might lead me to believe that it might have been one person all along suffering with different identities.
• Similarly, why did Hannah have Eve’s clothes on the night she killed Simon? I know she ripped off Eve’s wig in a fight, but it doesn’t explain how she has her clothes.

I know that there’s probably no definitive “true” end, but I think there is a version that requires less facts to be bent in order to fit it. Here’s a link to all the video clips in chronological order if you want to revise them. Someone point out more flaws in the twin theory, or help me figure out the above two questions!!