Her Story

What traditional narrative techniques or structures are used in your chosen game(s)? How are they changed by interactivity?

Her Story is a game in which the player has to piece a story together watching footage of recorded interviews of a woman. In Her Story, the narrative is not linear. To progress in the game, the player has to watch the available footage, and use the key words in those recordings as tags to find more recordings to watch and so on. Each of the play-through of the game and the sequence in which the story unravels will be specific to the person playing.
The story itself is very open to interpretations, and the ability of the player to find all the recordings and how they decide to piece it together.
At first the player is led to believe they are a detective investigating a case on a police computer. However, once in a while the reflection of a girl can be seen on the monitor and the player is suddenly excluded from being the protagonist. Clues suggest that the computer has been hacked, and that person in the reflection is watching those recordings to find what the story is too.
Although the game does not seem to have a traditional narrative structure, it relies on the assumption that the player have been exposed to narratives that blur identities; thus the game expect the player to ask themselves: "what if that person isn't who they pretend to be?".