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Her Story | Spoiler Thread

LProtag

Member
I'm missing a ton of videos, and I got the ending in about an hour and a half.

I was taking notes for the first 15 minutes but then just scrapped them and went full intuition. I only made notes as to whether it was Eve or Hannah present that day.

Early on I hit that video where she is kinda going crazy with no one present and mumbling and tapping in morse code, and I instantly thought there was a split personality thing going on. Then as I noticed the tattoo and that she had it or didn't have it on certain days I thought they were twins. As I progressed the story I'm not so sure though.

Temporary tattoo? Best assumption I can make, haha.
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
Love, the game, and I still have quite a few videos to find.

I have a question though. When I got the chat window, I didn't yet see the video in which it's explained that Simon gave the mirror to both of them (both personalities) and where the murder is explained in detail and the motive for it became clearer. So I went to the chat window and typed that I don't really understand what motivated her to kill Simon. The game then asked me to log off, and I saw the credits. It said that I can come back to watch more, which I did, but I can't get in contact with the person on the messenger again. I have suspicion that had I typed 'yes' to that last question, ending would have been different, but I seemingly can't do that anymore. Do I have to restart the game to try and get the 'yes' ending?

Early on I hit that video where she is kinda going crazy with no one present and mumbling and tapping in morse code, and I instantly thought there was a split personality thing going on. Then as I noticed the tattoo and that she had it or didn't have it on certain days I thought they were twins. As I progressed the story I'm not so sure though.
It is tap code / knock code, as she explains in another video. It's quite easy to decode, but in one of the videos she mis-spells the phrase she's tapping.
 

LProtag

Member
It is tap code / knock code, as she explains in another video. It's quite easy to decode, but in one of the videos she mis-spells the phrase she's tapping.

I hadn't hit that video yet, but I came across it after I just posted.

I decided to search her name after she mentioned it, and that hit upon the video of her freaking out going "Hannah, Hannah, Hannah, why did you have to tell them about Eve?" and then searching for Eve just led me straight down the rabbit hole, haha.

The other big thing was learning about the fact that Simon worked at a glass place. Searching for glass and mirror told me what had happened with the murder.

Then I just had to start digging into videos and making sense of things.

Honestly it was interesting that I got the ending screen after less than 2 hours, as I heard other people saying they figured everything out around 4 hours in or so. Maybe I just hit on the right keywords. Also I'm still missing a huge chunk of videos but I feel like I must have gotten most of the big relevant ones.
 

Permanently A

Junior Member
Playing this in the middle of the night was a bad idea. I screamed when I saw the face appear in the reflection of the monitor when I was watching one of the later interviews.

The reflection is the only downside of the game imo. It's a scary effect, potentially off-putting for the "non-gamers" in an otherwise perfect game for this population. And it has little to no interest (you can't recognize the face, nore tell if it's a man or a woman, and the final dialog is plenty enough to understand that you're not an average detective)

In other words, I can't tell my gf to play this game without warning her that "yeah, beware of one or two scary thing". And I know she will not want to try after that.

(Yeah, I know I can disable the reflection but I wanted to complain, and the global "screen shader" is great, it's a shame to bypass it because of this)

I turned off the shader, the glare was annoying. What was the jumpscare and when does it happen? Is there a pic of it?
 

eot

Banned
I turned off the shader, the glare was annoying. What was the jumpscare and when does it happen? Is there a pic of it?

Not really a jump scare, but after certain clips you see the reflection of your characters face on the screen. Happens quite a few times. It's there all the time actually, but it's a bit too faint to make out.
 

UltraJay

Member
In the database it mentions (1) file hidden or something like that at the bottom.

But maybe I'm stretching looking for something that isn't there.

The "missing volume" could simply be the detective's videos that were lost in the flood. The database's organization structure would still take note of them, but the files would be inaccessible.
 

Kamion

Member
I'll refrain from using spoiler tags. Obviously.

Done with the game. Got all the videos too. Only need to finish the reversi puzzle for the last achievement and that's that - I almost got it but messed up at the final few turns.
Aaaanyway. I enjoyed it for what it was. Thought I'd jot down my theories just to make sense of them myself and get this off my chest - also I'm super bored at work. (This will be long lol)

I just wish there would have been more information to go around. Police reports, Simon's autopsy, whether the taxi/hospital thing actually checked out or not.
I mean her whole alibi rests on the idea that she actually was in Glasgow when Simon died. For this we would need to know three things:

1. Did the watch actually stop when he was killed or was it tampered with to change the "time of death" (probably tempered, a watch doesn't stop from someone getting his throat slashed)
2. Did she actually hit a taxi
3. Did she actually go to a hospital in Glasgow?

Now if she was in Glasgow and the time of death can be put into this timeframe without question (forensics idek), that make me accept the "twin" theory - or some supernatural explanation.
But since we don't get this confirmation and know for a fact that the police still saw fit to interview her again and again after the whole Glasgow thing - even having her take a lie detector test! - it's probably fabricated anyway.

How I think stuff went down:

- Hannah is born and has a stillborn sister / maybe even twin sister which would have been called Eve
- On her fifth birthday Hannah starts imagining her reflection as an imaginary friend, maybe she heard about her almost having a sister at this point
- Mixes Rapunzel (Mother Gothel = the midwife!) with her imaginary friend, making up an elaborate backstory, having her "alter-ego" live in the attic (the tower)
- Hannah switches to Eve whenever she needs more confidence like when talking to boys or handling an exam she feels badly prepared for
- At this point Eve probably starts becoming a full-fledged separate personality. I even have the feeling she might be conscious even when Hannah is "herself" while Hannah doesn't know everything Eve does - she doesn't talk about her much after all.
- Hannah meets Simon, doesn't feel she needs Eve to get close to him - falls in love - gets pregnant
- She feels her "Eve" personality needs to be "pregnant too", starts sleeping around with men, gets an STD, probably causing the miscarriage or the following "infertility"
- While Hannah/Eve suffers with this identity crisis her parents die from poison (from mushrooms). Father is a mushroom expert, so she might have killed them
- Hannah miscarries
- "Eve" starts to become her "own person". Puts on a blonde wig, gets a (fake) tattoo, starts singing in bars weekly
- Obviously Simon notices something is wrong with his wife since the miscarriage, follows her to the bar weekly and starts an "affair" with "Eve", probably playing along, trying to help her overcome her grief from losing their child (as he sees it)
- She gets pregnant again, only this time as Eve
- On her birthday Simon takes her home (as Eve), tells her that "she's really different as Eve", gives her the mirror.
- Hannah turns back into herself but "disguises herself as Eve", gets the mirror again, flips out, kills him. (it's probably even the same mirror, haha, he's just giving it to her again)
- Hannah "calls Eve" (the stronger one) to handle this for her, "they" pack him up and stash him in the cellar and hatch "their" little plan.

This leads to the investigation!

On June 18 she was there as Eve who went to the police to report Simon as missing.
On June 25 she's there as Hannah with a bruise on her face.
On June 27 she's there as Eve, the bruise is gone (probably makeup or it was close to healing anyway), touches her other cheek because she literally thinks she's her reflection.
On June 30 she's Hannah again.

Starting July it's all Eve I think. She applied the fake tattoo and "kills" Hannah (she says that Hannah doesn't exist anymore "you can't arrest someone that doesn't exist". And for her this is actually true. For herself she stopped being Hannah.).

Now she was probably convicted for this, since SB asks Sarah whether she now knows why her mother did it. Which means it's already a given that she did it. Even if the twin theory was true, that would make Eve Sarah's mother. And we've established that even if the twin theory was true, it would have been Hannah who killed Simon, not Eve, because Eve would have been in Glasgow.
The fact that she was convicted before means that her alibi probably did not check out, or else they wouldn't have been able to hold her.

So this was never actually about finding out who killed Simon Smith. This was about finding out why Simon Smith was killed I guess.

To which the answer is: Because his wife was crazy and jealous of herself.

(inb4: actually twins, which would just be awfullll because no way in hell can you hide your twin for 20-30 years without someone noticing. People eat. People defecate. It sounds especially fishy since it's so similar to Rapunzel, which Hannah self-admittedly loves)
 
I personally think that Hannah/Eve are split personalities. At the beginning of the game I toyed with the idea of them being twins, but after getting further in and completing the game I feel like everything fits and clicks way more when you view them as split personalities. There's no way they could actually hide someone in the attic for that long and keep up that charade. It was all in her head. I'm assuming that the tattoo was fake.

Overall, this is definitely a great game. Short but sweet and to the point. Eve is a psycho, and I believe that she killed pretty much everyone but Sarah (who she probably would've killed if given the chance).
 
Eve talks about Florence so one assumes everything Eve says regarding her existence to be made up :)

Also the more I think about it, they never even say they are sisters, just friends right? Hannah tells the story about almost drowning her friend, and Eve says her mommy fell down the stairs. So in Hannah's mind this is just her friend, not sister. Which explains why she thinks she's blonde when eve isn't blonde at all. Damn game, you good

THEY'RE THE SAME PERSON HERP DERP
 

Hupsel

Member
Love the theories, guys! I also like to think its split personality, but the tattoo thing is kinda hard to ignore, I think its lame if its just a temporary tattoo. But the biggest favor in the split personality thing really is that one person cant live in the attic for ten years without people noticing, its just crazy (even if some things can go against like, like when Hannah says that she was late for school and still in her underwear then her mother got mad and Eve appeared dressed in 5 seconds ready to go).
 
I think you can explain everything away and get to a "multiple personalities" theory, but it requires increasingly elaborate contortions away from what is otherwise an elegant solution. And it also takes the motive for the murder the "twins" theory gives you, which is thematically fitting and powerful, and turns it into "she's just plumb crazy!"
 
Love the theories, guys! I also like to think its split personality, but the tattoo thing is kinda hard to ignore, I think its lame if its just a temporary tattoo. But the biggest favor in the split personality thing really is that one person cant live in the attic for ten years without people noticing, its just crazy (even if some things can go against like, like when Hannah says that she was late for school and still in her underwear then her mother got mad and Eve appeared dressed in 5 seconds ready to go).

THEY'RE THE SAME PERSON HERP DERP
 
I think you can explain everything away and get to a "multiple personalities" theory, but it requires increasingly elaborate contortions away from what is otherwise an elegant solution. And it also takes the motive for the murder the "twins" theory gives you, which is thematically fitting and powerful, and turns it into "she's just plumb crazy!"

THEY'RE THE SAME PERSON HERP DERP
 

Zia

Member
Except, not really. Because the game obviously leaves it ambiguous for the purpose of speculation.

I think the game pretty plainly explains Hannah as suffering from severe multiple personality disorder. It shows Hannah suffering from multiple personality disorder. Any videos that put forward the idea of two distinct people are red herrings that can easily be explained away, and Eve's story is beyond ridiculous to the point a player should assume it's a life of her own imagining. I don't think there's too much room for misinterpretation and the twin "theory" cheapens the narrative.

to believe in "split personality" you have to completely ignore HUGE swaths of what the game tells you AND invent huge piles of additional information that doesn't actually exist, to boot

you can do that, but I mean: why

why would you ignore the story the game is trying to tell in favor of one you invent in your own head

is this anime's fault

I think you've let your imagination carry you far outside the narrative the game supplies you with.
 

Metal B

Member
it's true that in real-life a family would probably notice a girl living in the attic ;)

but this is a work of fiction written by an author who had a story he wanted to tell and focused authorial intent for the dialogue, scenario, and characters
There is an important part of any fictional story, which is called "establishing the rules". If you're world has very strange, new rules, which diverse from reality, or even no rules at all, you have to make it somehow clear to the audience to not confuse them or give them a chance to understand your story.

Her Story not only establish no rules, which indifference from our reality, it also uses a live-action actress. This makes it very clear, that the story happens in our universe. Apples fall down from trees, pigs can't fly and a family would notice an young girl living in the attic of their house.
 

justjim89

Member
See, in my mind the split personality theory cheapens the narrative for me. I find the twins theory to make for a better story to me. I will say it's probably split personality, but for me the better story is in the twin narrative.
 

eot

Banned
- Timeline: It's worth noting the year of Hannah's parents' death and her miscarriage was 1984 ("nineteen eighty-four"). she was 17 at the time, making her 27 in 1994, at the time of the police interviews. We can't tell exactly when the "present" of the game is - we know it's past 2000 thanks to the Y2K reference in the readme. I'm willing to take it as read as "2015"; that would make Sarah 21, the age of adulthood and ready to investigate her own parents' disappearance.

There's a clock on the computer, I think it also says the date and that it was 2015. Not at home so I can't check though.
 

Metal B

Member
Her Story does not happen in our universe. It's set in a universe where Infocom's failed CornerStone database software became the industry standard, Portsmouth Constabulary runs a UK-variant of a Windows 95 clone ("Rubbish Bin", not "Recycle Bin"), and the Y2K crash actually happened. (README file on desktop)

Y2K crash / README is also the in-universe explanation for why this data is "trapped" on an archaic computer system that requires awkward keyword searching to unearth

good try though
This is pretty much, what i explained. Their is a diversity from our reality and the game explains it to us, so it can get away with the terrible software and limitations in the game.

If their is any explanation, why a family would not notice the strange girl in the house, there has to be a clue or a explanation in the story. Otherwise we have to use real-life logic and then it really becomes a strange and crazy fact.
 
to believe in "split personality" you have to completely ignore HUGE swaths of what the game tells you AND invent huge piles of additional information that doesn't actually exist, to boot

you can do that, but I mean: why

why would you ignore the story the game is trying to tell in favor of one you invent in your own head

is this anime's fault
It's also LOST's fault. And True Detective's fault. And Serial's fault. People have been training themselves to overthink stories in mechanical terms at the expense of emotional and thematic coherency.
 
This is pretty much, what i explained. Their is a diversity from our reality and the game explains it to us, so it can get away with the terrible software and limitations in the game.

If their is any explanation, why a family would not notice the strange girl in the house, there has to be a clue or a explanation in the story. Otherwise we have to use real-life logic and then it really becomes a strange and crazy fact.

THEY'RE THE SAME PERSON HERP DERP
 

pantsmith

Member
to believe in "split personality" you have to completely ignore HUGE swaths of what the game tells you AND invent huge piles of additional information that doesn't actually exist, to boot

you can do that, but I mean: why

why would you ignore the story the game is trying to tell in favor of one you invent in your own head

is this anime's fault

"HUGE" swaths is a bit of an exaggeration, when the likelihood of keeping a secret evil twin locked in the attic away from everyone is fairly outside the bounds of reality. This other twin would need all kinds of services (an education, regular doctor visits, regular developmental social interaction) that maybe an adult could pull off, but demands far too much coordination for two young girls growing up.

Of course you could argue that it doesn't take place in our reality, but even in a fake reality where an evil twin can even hope to pass as the "good" one for an entire lifetime, let alone a functioning human being fooling just about everyone, Occam's razor would still point to split personality.

I think it's intentionally vague, sure. I think they are twins, sure. I just think the other twin is in her head, and the language is convincing because she's had a lifetime to get her story straight and convince herself.

She mentions at some point her birth, how mom didn't want anyone to know that there was also tragedy when she was born and her twin died. Did she mention finding out from reading a diary? I think this is a powerful root for mental illness to take hold and her split personality to feed on a young imagination to create the two characters we see interviewed. For all intents and purposes there are two characters, but they share the same body.

Also how do literal twins feel less thematically relevant than mental ones? A mirror feels like a better metaphor for the duality of a single persons reflection than it does two different people.

Also also, the person IM'ing you asks about "your mother", not aunt or family or the crazy circumstances surrounding her fathers murder. It feels more intimate when "her" is physically one person, and simply a tortured soul in need of understanding. The crime is already solved.
 

eot

Banned
It's also LOST's fault. And True Detective's fault. And Serial's fault. People have been training themselves to overthink stories in mechanical terms at the expense of emotional and thematic coherency.

Split personality doesn't require more leaps of logic than the twin theory, it's not overthinking. It's one of the first things you think of.
 

Metal B

Member
the themes and symbolism work better, the characters make more sense, the timeline is more easily explained, and most importantly the multiple meanings layered into countless lines of dialogue receive an extra level of nuance and cleverness

again: my belief is that Barlow is a good storyteller who knows what he's doing. that means I'm going to interpret the game in a way that allows for maximum thematic resonance, not for maximum plot contortionism

We now reach "Squall is dead" and "Bush did 9/11"-territory. Were we ignore the facts and just believe, that the story is something it isn't, just because it makes it better or more exciting in our minds. The possibility of someone just is bad in story-telling (FFVIII) or the obvious answer is just too obvious (Her Story), will just be ignored. There has to be more!

"Sometimes a Cigar Is Just a Cigar"
ceci%252Bn%252527est%252Bpas%252Bun%252Bcigare1.JPG


But hey, let's be REALLY crazy:
The twin and the multiple personalty stories are both true!
Hannah ones had a twin sister, who died as a baby. She reads about it in the diary of her mother. Then she starts imagining having a twin sister and how magical and different this fact makes her. Then she loses her grip on reality and like a fairy tail, the twin sister actually "shows up".
 
Split personality doesn't require more leaps of logic than the twin theory, it's not overthinking. It's one of the first things you think of.
It was one of the first things I thought of, but there's more than enough evidence to make it vanishingly unlikely by the time you've seen everything.
 

AkuMifune

Banned
Split personality doesn't require more leaps of logic than the twin theory, it's not overthinking. It's one of the first things you think of.

It's less leaps of logic, it just makes more sense.

Unless you think it's more reasonable that Eve was dumped in the trash as a baby, raised across the street in an attic until her "mother" fell down a flight of stairs, secretly moved back across street in with Hannah and her unwitting parents, went on all of Hannah's dates with her and they kept changing clothes in the bathroom, taking turns being the one on the date, moved back into an attic when Hannah got married, and then finally decided to start wearing a wig and playing guitar in a club down the street for fun, eventually starting an affair with Hannah's husband. C'mon.
 

Zia

Member
It's less leaps of logic, it just makes more sense.

Unless you think it's more reasonable that Eve was dumped in the trash as a baby, raised across the street in an attic until her "mother" fell down a flight of stairs, secretly moved back across street in with Hannah and her unwitting parents, went on all of Hannah's dates with her and they kept changing clothes in the bathroom, taking turns being the one on the date, moved back into an attic when Hannah got married, and then finally decided to start wearing a wig and playing guitar in a club down the street for fun, eventually starting an affair with Hannah's husband. C'mon.

But Video Games.
 

justjim89

Member
It's less leaps of logic, it just makes more sense.

Unless you think it's more reasonable that Eve was dumped in the trash as a baby, raised across the street in an attic until her "mother" fell down a flight of stairs, secretly moved back across street in with Hannah and her unwitting parents, went on all of Hannah's dates with her and they kept changing clothes in the bathroom, taking turns being the one on the date, moved back into an attic when Hannah got married, and then finally decided to start wearing a wig and playing guitar in a club down the street for fun, eventually starting an affair with Hannah's husband. C'mon.

That still sounds better to me than "JK! She's just crazy!" Maybe I'm just better able to suspend my disbelief in regards to her upbringing. We don't know how big the house is/was, we don't know how observant the parents were or weren't. It's not the most practical thing, I'll concede. But I'm willing to believe it because the explanation that she has a split personality just feels cheap to me and sours the whole story in my eyes.
 

AkuMifune

Banned
That still sounds better to me than "JK! She's just crazy!" Maybe I'm just better able to suspend my disbelief in regards to her upbringing. We don't know how big the house is/was, we don't know how observant the parents were or weren't. It's not the most practical thing, I'll concede. But I'm willing to believe it because the explanation that she has a split personality just feels cheap to me and sours the whole story in my eyes.

I'll admit that it's feasible, even possible, but I don't think the alternative of being a split personality is cheap. I think it was presented in such a striking and haunting way that it makes it a way more intriguing conclusion than Single White Female: The Game. We can each disparage the other's interpretation. ;)

But hey, the fact we've all completed it and still have different conclusions is really rad, and speaks to the depth at which the narrative is conveyed.

And wait til we get to the final kicker...Who Killed Domino?
 

justjim89

Member
I'll admit that it's feasible, even possible, but I don't think the alternative of being a split personality is cheap. I think it was presented in such a striking and haunting way that it makes it a way more intriguing conclusion than Single White Female: The Game. We can each disparage the other's interpretation. ;)

But hey, the fact we've all completed it and still have different conclusions is really rad, and speaks to the depth at which the narrative is conveyed.

And wait til we get to the final kicker...Who Killed Domino?

Exactly, yeah, the fact that the game can be debated so fervently like this is indicative of a quality product with quality writing. This is honestly one of the best written games I've played in quite some time. It's just so damn compelling.

I guess I just like all the little details. Keeping detailed diaries so each can keep tabs of the other's activities and play the part better. One of them hanging out in the bathroom in their underwear cause they only had one dress. The establishment of their ruleset. The growing addiction that came from living life this way for so long. The jealousy that grew in Eve from Hannah not sharing Simon. It all works in a sense with split personality theory, perhaps even darker in some regard, but I kinda love the idea of these two sisters perpetually putting one over on everybody.
 

Joey Ravn

Banned
Wall of text incoming.

I can work with either the split personality theory or the two real twins theory. There is enough "evidence" to, at least, support both. And then some more to expand them:

If they are twins, then their story could be either real, or partially or completely made up. Maybe they were separated at birth, and maybe they found each other some years laters. But maybe they didn't go through all those "twin magic" adventures. Or maybe they did. We can't know for sure.

If they are not twins, then there are other possibilities. It could be that Hannah (or Eve) is suffering from a personality disorder. Hannah only once refers to Eve by name, but Eve talks about Hannah a lot. Maybe Eve is the "dominant" personality, and Hannah isn't aware of anything (or not everything) that happens when Eve surfaces? Or maybe they are fully aware of "each other" and they can communicate via the diary one of them mentions. For example, in a recent Hulk storyline "Doc Green" (aka an intelligent Hulk) is able to "chat" with Bruce Banner using a blackboard.

Moreover, it could be that there's no split personality, but rather a very clever woman who knows how to confuse the hell out of the police and get away with murder. Everything she says could be made up and Eve may be a red herring created to throw suspicion away from her. If so, she must have gone to Glasgow after killing Simon to have an alibi that would only work if there was another person present when he was killed. Basically, she would have set up her alibi by creating a new reality for the scene of the crime (and all her backstory as well!).

As someone pointed out, the alledged life of the twins was basically a modern fairy tale: mistaken identities, people living in the attic (or castle tower, as it may be), a "prince" (Hannah) switching places with a "beggar" (Eve), gruesome deaths (Simon's), etc. Maybe all those stories that Hannah read as a kid made her create this magic reality where she found her nice/evil dopplegangger, Eve. Recall how much they hated each other sometimes, like when one tried to drown the other. Or maybe she purposefully based her made-up cover story on those fairy tales to confuse the police...

Then again, Eve does fail the lie detector test when she claims that she is Hannah. She either isn't who she claims to be, or she is a great liar... OR she does suffer from split personality disorder and actually believes herself to be Eve at that moment. Remember that a lie detector only checks whether the person's reaction to an answer matches what they think is true. If you are completely and absolutely sure that the Sun orbits the Earth, then you'll pass the test, regardless of the truth value of your claim.

What does Eve mean when she says that her sister has gone away? Is Hannah dead? Has she fled? If this is Eve talking, she is pregnant, but she confessed to at least being accessory in Simon's murder. But she was pregnant! That would be completely against the idea of putting the baby (Sarah) first. If it was the other way around--Hannah confessing to the murder or, at least, stalling the police enough for Eve to escape--it would make much more sense.

Either way, both theories have their inherent strong and weak points. we can agree that Eve and/or Hannah is an unreliable narrator. Everything that can't be checked by external sources (for example, whether Hannah or Eve was in a hospital in Glasgow) is up for debate. From their birth to the death of Simon, nothing is set in stone if it comes from the mouth of Eve/Hannah. There are just a few things that we can be absolutely sure about: Simon is dead, and he was killed, and either Hannah or Eve had a child, Sarah, since we are controlling her throughout the game (and "SB" talks about "her mother" and what she did).

Well, actually, now that I think about it, claiming that Sarah, the face we see reflected on the monitor, is Eve's or Hannah's daughter may be put into question as well. She may be just a young girl who has gone through a similar situation and "SB" gave her access to those files to help her understand better why her mother acted like Hannah/Sarah did. But, IMO, this would be stretching it far too thin...

What I just can't work with is the idea of something outside from plausible reality being at work here. I mean, sure: one of the women may come from a parallel dimension, she may be a robot from the future or an alien who took Hannah's image. But there's nothing in the narrative of the game that supports those theories. There's nothing that points at anything supernatural or, at least, anything that couldn't work in the real world as the catalyst for this situation. It's the textbook definition of a deus ex machina, and I honestly don't think it fits here.

Has someone given more thought to this: how can we explain that Eve fails the lie detector test and confesses to helping Hannah getting rid of the body, if she was pregnant and acknowledging her part in the murder would mean that she would be put away for, at least, some time?

Edit: I see some people posted while I was writing this. Guys, remember: whether we find Eve's and Hannah's life feasible or not doesn't matter. The interviewee (whoever she might be) is not reliable. She may be making everything up, but there could still be a pair of twins. Even if it all was true, it's just improbable... but not impossible. Nothing in Hannah's and Eve's narrative outright contradicts the rules of reality. It would be highly, nearly impossibly, odd for someone to pull out those twin tricks, but, hey... is it really impossible to think that they may have?
 

Permanently A

Junior Member
- Was Simon having an affair with Diane, his boss Eric's wife? I think so. Eve mentions that Simon has a thing for blondes (thus her blonde wig while she's singing), and Simon and Eric are having a row about something unspecified. There was also a romantic getaway to Oxford when Simon was pretending to be at a glazier's conference. Implication is he was off with Diane, yes?

I believe the Oxford thing was Simon and Hannah/Eve having a romantic getaway at the company's expense. That's why she lies about it at first.
 

Kamion

Member
The twin theory is nice and dandy but just not realistic, whereas "split personality" could actually happen in our world - well in some form.

I know this is fiction, but really? A twin that just lived in the attic, "sometimes went to school", somehow was fed without anyone noticing, somehow went to the toilet without anyone noticing and all the other things people HAVE to do?!
I just don't see it. Also it's TOO close to Hannah's delusions. She said she loved to read fairy tales and this is WAY too fairy tale-ish to NOT be made up by a five year old.

Heck, I could accept the twin theory if they had found each other when they were, I don't know, 14-15 but I don't see a five-year old living by these kind of rules, exiling herself from the world.

EDIT:

Also let's please not forget that the game flat out tells us that "Sarah's mother did it", which implies that she was incarcerated for it probably. If there was a twin I'm sure the police would have found that out.
Then again Eve could have been put on trial for Hannah's murder instead.
This we'll never know.

Anyway, I think her Alibi is a sham because the other interviews and especially the lie detector test wouldn't have happened if that had checked out.
 
The Glasgow alibi requires two people to fulfil. You can argue around it in increasingly convoluted ways, but the twins theory best fits the evidence the police found (record of Eve in glasgow, the stopped watch, the blonde wig, the different sets of fingerprints).

The evidence against it is "it seems unrealistic," whereas the evidence against the split personality theory is "I have radically complicated theories to explain al these pieces of evidence, oh, and the end motive for everything is 'she was crazy all along and just snapped one day lol'."
 

pantsmith

Member
That still sounds better to me than "JK! She's just crazy!" Maybe I'm just better able to suspend my disbelief in regards to her upbringing. We don't know how big the house is/was, we don't know how observant the parents were or weren't. It's not the most practical thing, I'll concede. But I'm willing to believe it because the explanation that she has a split personality just feels cheap to me and sours the whole story in my eyes.

You can figure out the "twist", that she's two people (either externally or internally), fairly early on. I know I did.

Personally, the real magic of the game was in making her story sympathetic and relatable. The real spoilers are the little details that shape our opinion of her, and how much of what we can say checks out with her own stories. Its much more complex than just "JK! She's crazy!" Or "JK! It's The Prestige all over again,"
 

pantsmith

Member
The Glasgow alibi requires two people to fulfil. You can argue around it in increasingly convoluted ways, but the twins theory best fits the evidence the police found (record of Eve in glasgow, the stopped watch, the blonde wig, the different sets of fingerprints).

The evidence against it is "it seems unrealistic," whereas the evidence against the split personality theory is "I have radically complicated theories to explain al these pieces of evidence, oh, and the end motive for everything is 'she was crazy all along and just snapped one day lol'."

We don't see or have access to any actual evidence. Presumably the case has already been solved and closed. Our only means of interacting with the case is through the stories of an unreliable narrator. At best she is hiding key details from us, and at worst she is completely out of touch with reality.

Again, the likelihood of hiding a secret twin in the attic for that many years is simply implausible when compared to the likelihood that she's not giving us the whole truth and has an altered perspective.
 

Kamion

Member
The Glasgow alibi requires two people to fulfil. You can argue around it in increasingly convoluted ways, but the twins theory best fits the evidence the police found (record of Eve in glasgow, the stopped watch, the blonde wig, the different sets of fingerprints).

I will give the fingerprints to you. But the alibi clearly did not check out. She stated her alibi in June and was still asked to return in July at least twice. (And the fact that she was apparently put on trial for it)
If they could put her at a hospital in Glasgow at the time of his murder (which is just "a stopped watch - a watch doesn't stop when a person's throat is slashed) they wouldn't have pursued her as a suspect anymore.

I don't see how the watch matters.
 

cilonen

Member
Thing is, in the reality of the game world Eve doesn't actually have to have lived in the attic. The parents are dead, there's no way of corroborating that.
 

pantsmith

Member
Thing is, in the reality of the game world Eve doesn't actually have to have lived in the attic. The parents are dead, there's no way of corroborating that.

Where would she have lived? How does a second human successfully function with half the schooling, half the attention, half the food, half the socialization - not to mention hours upon hours of wasted time hiding away somewhere?

Nothing in her story can be corroborated. If we are to assume she didn't live in the attic, like she told us, how can we take anything she says seriously?
 
We don't see or have access to any actual evidence. Presumably the case has already been solved and closed. Our only means of interacting with the case is through the stories of an unreliable narrator. At best she is hiding key details from us, and at worst she is completely out of touch with reality.

Again, the likelihood of hiding a secret twin in the attic for that many years is simply implausible when compared to the likelihood that she's not giving us the whole truth and has an altered perspective.
But we can infer what questions are being asked by the detectives, who are presumably honest investigators piecing things together in a logical way.

From doing so, we know:

1. That the woman was in Glasgow, that she got in a car accident and went to the hospital, and that there are records of this.
2. That Simon's watch was broken at a time when the woman was in Glasgow.
3. That the police found a blonde wig.
4. That the police found a set of fingerprints they didn't expect in the bedroom.
5. That the woman didn't have a bruise, and then did have one, and then it disappeared again.
6. That the woman didn't have a tattoo, and then suddenly did have one.
7. That the woman will go so far as to spill her drink deliberately to cover her radically different and self-contradictory drinks preferences on given days.
8. That the woman fails a lie detector test only once: when asked about her name, and only because she initially makes a mistake about what her name is because she's fallen into the habit of lying about it.
9. That the woman passes every other lie detector question.

Now, there are ways to explain all of these things. But they are over-elaborate, inelegant, and don't do justice to the game's themes. I am inclined to believe it's the same as people saying that LOST is set on the moon or that Cthulhu is working behind the scenes in True Detective — you can get there, if you torture the evidence enough in your mind, but it's probably not the answer.
 
If they could put her at a hospital in Glasgow at the time of his murder (which is just "a stopped watch - a watch doesn't stop when a person's throat is slashed) they wouldn't have pursued her as a suspect anymore.

I don't see how the watch matters.
Eve explains that the watch was her idea as part of a deliberate construction of an alibi.

So either she's confessing to this, or she's doing an elaborate double-bluff where she went out of the way to construct an alibi that she now admits is in fact a false alibi, just so that she could throw police off the scent to the fact that she doesn't, in fact, have an alibi, and she instead just lied about having an alibi.

(Which is incoherent.)
 
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