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[Shahadan]

I really like how the writer thought about the coffees or water she drinks, and that can help you notice which girl it is just by that (and sometimes maybe not).

One drinks only one coffee per day because she's pregnant, the other has more. Her reaction when she spills the coffee and how they take their coffee are important too.

And every time it can be read both ways, theory wise.

 

[Rhaknar]

I really like how the writer thought about the coffees or water she drinks, and that can help you notice which girl it is just by that (and sometimes maybe not).

One drinks only one coffee per day because she's pregnant, the other has more. Her reaction when she spills the coffee and how they take their coffee are important too.

And every time it can be read both ways, theory wise.

and tea

 

[pantsmith]

Also let#s not forget one little hind in the bin. The mirror game is a two player game, which is strange, since you properly will only the play alone. So you have to play against yourself, pretending to beat yourself. But only one of your sides can win.

Whoah.

 

[Karkador]

Coffee grounds...

C.G.

#teamcg

 

[AkuMifune]

The reason Eve doesn't have a bruise and then Hannah does and then Eve doesn't again is because she's so convinced she's two people her body is wounding itself with the effort of preventing the psychosomatic dimensional rift that will unleash creatures of the nether realms upon our universe.

At this point that almost doesn't read like sarcasm.

I wanted to make a list of things for/against multiple personality. But where would the knock game go? So many things could go definitely either way.

I know only one thing for certain, the lead detective is black.

 

[Shahadan]

As someone said above, I think both versions are believable - but I prefer the one in which 5 year olds are not making long term, incredibly elaborate life plans and successfully confounding their parents through incredibly trivial means for years. Something like that belongs more to a cartoon than something that presents itself as a real life story. But then again, unreliable narrator and all - maybe the twins aspect is true, but she exaggerates their interaction during early childhood.

I took that more as a fairy tale since they're obsessed by that. It wouldn't be the first story we read/hear about twins swapping and one hiding in the house. It's a common trope.
It's something that is not really realistic while still being probable, like a tale.

 

[Lord Error]

The reason Eve doesn't have a bruise and then Hannah does and then Eve doesn't again is because she's so convinced she's two people her body is wounding itself with the effort of preventing the psychosomatic dimensional rift that will unleash creatures of the nether realms upon our universe.

Or, she could be using makeup to cover it... Or a makeup to make a bruise.

Also let#s not forget one little hind in the bin. The mirror game is a two player game, which is strange, since you properly will only the play alone. So you have to play against yourself, pretending to beat yourself. But only one of your sides can win

Yeah, I too thought it was neat that it's
a) called a "Mirror Game" and
b) you play as both sides, instead of how it would typically be - you vs. computer.

 

[Metal B]

Why does everybody has to quote the line with all the spelling errors =P

 

[Makonero]

Or, she could be using makeup to cover it... Or a makeup to make a bruise.


Yeah, I too thought it was neat that it's
a) called a "Mirror Game" and
b) you play as both sides, instead of how it would typically be - you vs. computer.

You could always have a friend (or twin) over to play it with you.

 

[Inkwell]

Playing against yourself in the mirror game is a neat touch. It helps support the MPD side. Then again you find the game in the trash, which could be saying the exact opposite.

 

[Lord Error]

You could always have a friend (or twin) over to play it with you.

Heh, true

 

[Shahadan]

The mirror game can be read both ways really.

 

[Shake Appeal]

Or, she could be using makeup to cover it... Or a makeup to make a bruise.

For what devious end, pray tell?

 

[Joey Ravn]

At this moment, I'm not favoring any of the two main interpretations of the story, though I actually agree that the MPD theory (with all its flaws) seems more plausible than the theory of them being twins.

That being said... we need to remember that we are working with whatever information Hannah and/or Eve has given us. They MAY be twins, but that doesn't necessarily imply that everything pertaining their "twinhood" must be true as well! For example, maybe Florence did take Eve with her and told her mother that she had died during birth*.

Maybe they grew in different places, though not necessarily so close to each other. I find it hard to believe that Florence would have risked someone noticing Eve and asking questions. And maybe, some years later, the two women found each other.

They may have even come up with the plan to get rid of Simon, since Hannah showed some signs of being tired of the marriage (which was, in the first place, a "shotgun wedding"). A sort of criss-cross plan: I kill your husband, you cover for me.

Maybe Hannah wanted to have a baby with Simon and used Eve as the surrogate mother. Simon found out about it, flipped out and the women killed him. Who knows? There are too many maybes and possible explanations, but none of them can be verified, since we have limited access to the information surrounding the case (and what we have is highly unreliable!).


*Regarding this... remember Hannah's story about trying to drown "a friend"? And the song about the two sisters in the sea? All three stories have the same elements: two girls, one drowning the other in water (or, in the case of the babies, Hannah almost strangling Eve with her umbilical cord inside the placenta... which is filled with amniotic fluid! Could it be that the song inspired Hannah and/or Eve to come up with their story, if it did not actually happen?

 

[Lord Error]

For what devious end, pray tell?

All part of the internal discord where the persona A is convinced that persona B is physically real and different, and when physical world tries to point out that it's not really true, some sort of action must be taken to correct the discord. Same reason Hannah is always wearing long sleeves, as she wouldn't want to be physically reminded that the tattoo that Eve has, also exists on her.

 

[Shake Appeal]

All part of the internal discord where the persona A is convinced that persona B is physically real, and when physical world tries to point out that it's not really true, some sort of action must be taken to correct the discord. Same reason Hannah is always wearing long sleeves, as she wouldn't want to be physically reminded that the tattoo that Eve has, also exists on her.

This doesn't make much sense in context to me (no one in the interrogation is trying to convince Eve/Hannah that her other self isn't real, and she's generally comfortable with looking like her double — and in fact gets upset when their appearance starts to deviate), but okay. Hannah doesn't always wear long sleeves; in fact, the first time we meet her, she's wearing short sleeves.

 

[Lord Error]

This doesn't make much sense in context to me (no one in the interrogation is trying to convince Eve/Hannah that her other self isn't real, and she's generally comfortable with looking like her double — and in fact gets upset when their appearance starts to deviate), but okay. Hannah doesn't always wear long sleeves; in fact, the first time we meet her, she's wearing short sleeves.

Once the tattoo appears on Eve, Hannah does wear long sleeves from then on. There's probably a point to how comfortable each is by looking like the other. When too much individuality is displayed that upsets the other one as it becomes more clear that it's not something the other one would do, which creates a personal believability discord.

I also want to point this out, from what you previously posted:

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.

She says she was in Glasgow, but it's quickly revealed after that it's another unprovable story. She conveniently had no ID while in hospital, and from her bewildering repeated questions to a detective, it really seems like they weren't able to verify her story. The car accident was minor and unreported, so her car could be scratched from anything.

 

[InaudibleWhispa]

Even Eve was wearing long sleeves on the day her tattoo is revealed. We only see it because she spills coffee on herself and changes tops.

 

[kiyomi]

Just "finished" this, really loved it. I ended up with about 80% of the videos before hitting the chat window. It was really cool to have those moments where she repeated her story about coming home to not find Simon there and then she repeated that story almost line for line in a separate interview. Was one of the first things to make me go, "huh".

The thing with the cat was interesting too, she mentions Domino and then in a different interview says there's no cat - or that it was her grandparent's or something, I can't quite recall. I stopped taking notes about 2/3 through.

I'm inclined to believe the split personality thing, and I'm glad to see I wasn't alone in making that assumption. It's just too hard to believe someone could hide in the attic and have that kind of lifestyle.

I still don't know what to make of the whole pregnancy thing and it's the most frustrating part because I feel like I failed to keep up to scratch with what was happening. There was a thread of infertility and an STD and stuff and I just really whiffed on it. Anyone care to offer an explanation?

 

[DigtialT]

I fucked up so bad in this game. I thought the delete session data would just delete the videos stored in my session. NOPE. Deletes all your progress. More then 75% of videos seen, now back to 0.
T-T

 

[Cuban Legend]

How can a game this good be the first FMV detective mystery of its kind made into a game, and be only 5 bucks with a stealth release on Steam?

This is like the perfect example of a great indie game that just happens to come out and gets discovered to be a masterpiece, hope it doesn't cause the creator/dev to milk it into sequels like FNAF.

 

[Raytow]

The game reminds me of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, too bad the game disappeared from the iTunes store.

 

[Cryxo93]

How can a game this good be the first FMV detective mystery of its kind made into a game, and be only 5 bucks with a stealth release on Steam?

This is like the perfect example of a great indie game that just happens to come out and gets discovered to be a masterpiece, hope it doesn't cause the creator/dev to milk it into sequels like FNAF.

I highly doubt Sam Barlow would do that. He sounds like he has too much integrity to do that (having listened to the Giantbomb Interview podcast). Plus where could the story go?

 

[kiyomi]

I fucked up so bad in this game. I thought the delete session data would just delete the videos stored in my session. NOPE. Deletes all your progress. More then 75% of videos seen, now back to 0.
T-T

I made that mistake too. It should be more clear. I was so glad I took notes so I could quickly recover. In the end it actually helped because it meant I had to go over everything again.

 

[Karkador]

The game reminds me of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, too bad the game disappeared from the iTunes store.

That game had an ios port? I have the tabletop version - it's one of the most popular and sought after games in the genre.

I posted in the other thead that this game is more of an open-ended story about a character, more so than a mystery with an objective solution.

 

[IcyStorm]

The thing with the cat was interesting too, she mentions Domino and then in a different interview says there's no cat - or that it was her grandparent's or something, I can't quite recall. I stopped taking notes about 2/3 through.

No, Hannah and Eve did have a cat when they were younger. In the July 3rd interview, Eve explains that their Knock Code, and that it made their parents think that they had mice in the home, so they got a cat (to kill the nonexistent mice). This is presumably the same cat that Hannah or Eve talks about on June 27, when she explains why there is a cat flap in her (parents') home when they don't have a pet.

 

[Karkador]

Also, something that's been bugging me about the knock code - why do they use two hands to tap it out? The clips make some point to refer to Hannah doing things with the left arm that Eve does with her right, and the general mirror theme and such.

Could there be another coded message if you only notate what one of their arms taps out, and add them?

 

[cilonen]

I think Eve has pretending to be Hannah for a while and either:

There was never a real Hannah and Hannah is just the fairytale Rapunzel princess Eve always wanted to be but could never stick as as her psychopathic tendencies always surfaced at some point.

Or

There was a Hannah and Eve has murdered her at some point prior to this all starting; note the many drowning tales of sisters killing each other. Miscarriage at 8 months? Is that the point at which Eve snapped, killed her pregnant sister and assumed her role, or is that all a fantasy too?

I think the interviews are all Eve pretending from the line in one of the very first videos "...these are all stories" or similar, and the reaction to the first lie detector question about her name smacking of 'you got me, I don't have to pretend to be her anymore' and the snarky comment later about that being the only question she got wrong.

I love that so many of us are getting different things from this, these are just thoughts I'm taking away from it, and I do think much of the backstory is the Keyser Soze style fantasy of a psychopath.

 

[cilonen]

The game reminds me of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, too bad the game disappeared from the iTunes store.

My family and I used to play that loads. I think we still have the original tabletop game somewhere. I remember it being awesome.

 

[InaudibleWhispa]

Also, something that's been bugging me about the knock code - why do they use two hands to tap it out? The clips make some point to refer to Hannah doing things with the left arm that Eve does with her right, and the general mirror theme and such.

Could there be another coded message if you only notate what one of their arms taps out, and add them?

Well here's the sequence if you want to try and find a pattern:

Taps, translation, r = right hand, l = left hand.
1,2 (B) r r
5,4 (Y) r r
1,4 (D) r r
2,3 (H) r l
1,1 (A) l r
3,3 (N) l l
3,3 (N) l l
1,1 (A) l l
3,3 (H) l r

3,1 (L) r l
3,4 (O) l r
5,1 (V) r l
1,5 (E) l r
4,5 (U) l r

Nothing stand out immediately. Probably just easier for the actress to remember the rhythm/sequence. Assume she fucked up the 'D' and meant to do 5 taps.

 

[pantsmith]

Well here's the sequence if you want to try and find a pattern:

Taps, translation, r = right hand, l = left hand.
1,2 (B) r r
5,4 (Y) r r
1,4 (D) r r
2,3 (H) r l
1,1 (A) l r
3,3 (N) l l
3,3 (N) l l
1,1 (A) l l
3,3 (H) l r

3,1 (L) r l
3,4 (O) l r
5,1 (V) r l
1,5 (E) l r
4,5 (U) l r

Nothing stand out immediately. Probably just easier for the actress to remember the rhythm/sequence. Assume she fucked up the 'D' and meant to do 5 taps.

In the notes I took I have one page that just says "morse code?!" and has a huge list of tallies I made while rewinding and transcribing her knocks. In a way I think that's really cool, because I can't think of the last time a game got me to take any notes at all.

It would be neat to see a collection of the notes people took somewhere. I love the idea of creative residue from an interactive experience.

 

[justjim89]

I'm not sure if I'm saddened or relieved that we'll likely never get a word of God verdict on #TeamMultiplePersonality or #TeamTwins from Sam. On one hand, it would be great to know for sure. On the other hand, the ambiguity is what helps make this game so compelling, and getting a definitive answer, especially one you disagree with, would be disheartening.

I think we can all agree this is a terrifically powerful piece of storytelling in a game, and the fact that it fosters this much debate and vitriol is a testament to that. So can we please stop talking to other people like they're stupid because they disagree? This is a vague story with a vague outcome for a reason.

That being said, #TeamTwins

Also: Austin Walker of Giant Bomb interviewed Sam for an hour about the game, it's inspirations, and the process of creating it.

 

[The Foul]

Just finished this, thrillin yarn yo. I got goosebumps when she talked about waving at her reflection on her birthday, like the story was going into x-files territory, when really it just stays murder she wrote. Still good.

 

[MicroCuts7]

My take:

Split personality.

Logic: Hannah & Eve. The whole "reading a lot"/"especially fairy tales" (the messed up ones) stuff. Rapunzel "in the tower" = Eve "in the attic" (obvious reference to Hannah's mind). Starts when she is born, the witch (Hannah) keeps Rapunzel (Eve) in the tower until she gets pregnant and escapes to the prince (Simon). Unfortunately, Simon knew she was messed up and was attempting to help Hannah/Eve understand her own dilemma and ultimately paid for it with his life. Poor Simon probably thought it was all an awesome relationship game they played to keep things spicy until she came unhinged.

---
Coming into this, what can we assume that Sarah already knows?

Just that her father was dead and that her mother did it?

If so:
Why couldn't she just go visit her crazy mother in lockup and ask her why she did it? GB hasn't had a death penalty since 1965, and UK since 1973 (per the Google machine).

Other notes:

Sad:

I'm sure she (Sarah) was adopted, so this probably started as a search for her birth parents - kinda sucks that this is what you find out when you start digging.

Weird:

Were the lights/sirens just added randomly because you were in a police station? Or were they there when you triggered certain videos for the first time so you could see your characters face. They felt weird. I thought I was in a dank/dark basement until that popped up the first time.

I laughed:

That song was messed up, dude...

 

[Lord Error]

OK, so if you answer "No" to the last question in the Chat window, you get the message that you can always come back, and you get to see the credits when you log off. If you come back, the chat window is still there but you can't communicate with SB anymore.

If you answer "Yes," you get a slightly different reply, but again SB says he'll wait for you on the other side of the street. If you log out, you just get empty computer screen. And if you click on it, you go back to the main menu, but the credits is now available from there. If you continue the game, the chat window is not there.

Is that how it's supposed to be? I read somewhere in the thread that Sarah gets informed that her mother committed a suicide while imprisoned... or did I imagine that? Do you need to see all the videos to reach that ending?

 

[Sera O]

My take:
Weird:

Were the lights/sirens just added randomly because you were in a police station? Or were they there when you triggered certain videos for the first time so you could see your characters face. They felt weird. I thought I was in a dank/dark basement until that popped up the first time.

I didn't know what to make of that whole reflection and the lights/sirens either. I thought the reflection stuff took away rather than added to the experience. The glare off the screen made me think I was in a dingy office or archive room with fluorescent lighting. When the lights/sirens appear, it seems like a lame attempt to introduce tension. From what I remember from the really-read-me file, Sarah had permission to be there through FOI and was not constrained by time or anything. Even if not, it doesn't seem like an issue that would warrant emergency response.

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text incoming. I can't stop thinking about this game and the inconsistencies just make my mind fixate on it in a weird way.

So, if Hannah/Eve are one person, during her first pregnancy she was having alleyway sex with drunkards, contracted an STD, was (if you believe Eve's account) very sick from it, miscarried/became infertile because of it, and yet her husband noticed nothing? The relationship part of the story seems really inscrutable because of Hannah's insistence at seeing Simon as a prince.

Any thoughts also about Eve's story about Florence's secret box, and the tangent about Florence's diary, and how she was a war widow? I wasn't sure what to make of it. Maybe it was just meant to highlight the impossibility of truly understanding another person's motives or something.

I also noticed the mirror game hack.txt file attributes it hacking it to "Grace Hack" group, with ascii art of (I assume) Grace Kelly. There is a bit in the last interview where Eve talks about how they believed Grace Kelly's death led to them meeting Simon, and that they used a ouija board to communicate with her. The twins/personalities believed that when someone special dies, they leave magic behind... so if one twin died at birth, and magic was left behind, hmm... I'm just pulling stuff out of my ass now! But a two-player game paired with the visage of the woman they contacted through a ouija board is interesting. Eve = ghost possession theory incoming.

I think the dev wanted players to come away with incomplete accounts, and expected that people wouldn't see all the videos. In that sense, whatever you concluded with the info you had - twins, mpd, supernatural doppelganger, whatever... that would be true for the text as you saw it. I think putting clips together into a coherent whole is a huge pain by design. Also, it's why you never hear anything conclusive about the evidence, because that would give you some solid ground from which to address the weird issues in the interviews. Was there a hospital record? Is there evidence of Eve renting a bedsit? What does Hannah's medical file say about the reasons for the miscarriage?

The only focus is the testimony, and neither Hannah or Eve is a reliable source of truth. The game is mostly about the richness of the two characters' shared symbolic vocabulary - the internal context that they created for their actions.

This is a really cool game and fascinating from a narrative perspective. I think my writer and documentary producer friends would find it really interesting. The cool thing is they totally can play this - no traditional 'gamer' reflexes required.

 

[BTA]

Things I'm still wondering about:

• The song. It's clearly tied to Hannah and Eve. Hannah says she tried to drown Eve just like in the song. But it feels like the parallels end there, unless I'm not thinking it through enough, which feels a little weird to me.
• In the story about trying to run away with Bob Dylan, Hannah mentions blaming it on Eve, her friend. I didn't seriously consider that it might just be 2 personalities until I started reading the OT and this thread, and I still mostly believe in there being twins, but I really don't know how Hannah could expect to get away with this if her parents have never met Eve, and how Eve could apparently just get away from police supervision without being picked up by someone.

There's a few other things, but that's what comes to mind immediately.

I guess I should also say that, personally, part of me supporting it being twins is that "it was all just mental illness because they're crazy" is a twist I'd really like to see less of. But at the same time I do feel like this did a really good job of countering that by humanizing Hannah (which is, of course, the point of the game) so if that's the case, I wouldn't be unsatisfied with it.

EDIT: I agree that the wording around "sessions" could be way better, especially because as is it even sounds like logging out could clear your progress at first.

 

[Joeku]

At this moment, I'm not favoring any of the two main interpretations of the story, though I actually agree that the MPD theory (with all its flaws) seems more plausible than the theory of them being twins.

That being said... we need to remember that we are working with whatever information Hannah and/or Eve has given us. They MAY be twins, but that doesn't necessarily imply that everything pertaining their "twinhood" must be true as well! For example, maybe Florence did take Eve with her and told her mother that she had died during birth*.

Maybe they grew in different places, though not necessarily so close to each other. I find it hard to believe that Florence would have risked someone noticing Eve and asking questions. And maybe, some years later, the two women found each other.

They may have even come up with the plan to get rid of Simon, since Hannah showed some signs of being tired of the marriage (which was, in the first place, a "shotgun wedding"). A sort of criss-cross plan: I kill your husband, you cover for me.

Maybe Hannah wanted to have a baby with Simon and used Eve as the surrogate mother. Simon found out about it, flipped out and the women killed him. Who knows? There are too many maybes and possible explanations, but none of them can be verified, since we have limited access to the information surrounding the case (and what we have is highly unreliable!).


*Regarding this... remember Hannah's story about trying to drown "a friend"? And the song about the two sisters in the sea? All three stories have the same elements: two girls, one drowning the other in water (or, in the case of the babies, Hannah almost strangling Eve with her umbilical cord inside the placenta... which is filled with amniotic fluid! Could it be that the song inspired Hannah and/or Eve to come up with their story, if it did not actually happen?

The reason it seems more "plausible" is because it's closest to being right. I'm thinking it's not multiple personality disorder, but rather she is playing the detectives into looking for a twin and playing for the camera, trying to look like she's poorly-acting not guilty. It's too deliberate on multiple levels.

The two popular conclusions right now are: 1) MPD, and 2) Twins kept apart from birth for several years followed by many schemes to be together. Both of these are so dramatic; so obvious. Based on what (relatively, admittedly) little I know of MPD is it doesn't surface like that: with MPD, Hannah would not go "oh no why did I mention Eve" and act like she gave away a secret. The tapping messages saying "LOVEU" and "BYHANNAH" (or just about) years later...with MPD it's tragic, with now-estranged twins it's reconciliation. The left-handed/right-handed stuff, the song, the bruise side...it's all so severely and intentionally misleading.

She's playing us all, and she got away with murder.

EDIT: It is 1:30 in the morning now and I came up with this half an hour ago and tried to go back and watch a bunch of it with my friend, and to our knowledge there is nothing there that could disprove that this is all an elaborate lie, and before someone say it -- based on what I know of them, people can beat lie detectors. As I see it, she intentionally fucked up the first question about her name, pretending to have forgotten about having given up the ruse, to try to show her fallibility and appear more to actually be Eve in that moment thus making her "Hanna's gone" statement more plausible. Please correct me if I'm looking at this the incorrectly and am seriously wrong so I can throw this theory out.

DOUBLE EDIT: It's now almost 2:30 am, I have no idea why I am up, and I'm listening to the Giant Bomb interview with Sam Barlow, the lead writer: http://www.giantbomb.com/podcasts/giant-bomb-presents/ Starting at about 53 minutes, he talks about writing being like an iceberg. The way he talks about not writing with a writer's knowledge made aware...I may be tired from loopiness, but I think this goes along with what I've said.

In short:

Spoiler

 

[Lord Error]

EDIT: It is 1:30 in the morning now and I came up with this half an hour ago and tried to go back and watch a bunch of it with my friend, and to our knowledge there is nothing there that could disprove that this is all an elaborate lie, and before someone say it -- based on what I know of them, people can beat lie detectors. As I see it, she intentionally fucked up the first question about her name, pretending to have forgotten about having given up the ruse, to try to show her fallibility and appear more to actually be Eve in that moment thus making her "Hanna's gone" statement more plausible. Please correct me if I'm looking at this the incorrectly and am seriously wrong so I can throw this theory out.

Heh, your theory is probably materially the most believable. It would easily explain away both the inconsistencies that go against the MPD (bruise, tattoo) and unbelievable contrivances that go against the twins theory (hiding for years in the attic, changing dresses, etc). However, for it to be true, it would require one of those all-knowing infallible criminal masterminds, that's in itself quite unbelievable (and if true, after all that effort to construct an incredibly elaborate lie, she still ended up convicted and in prison - keep in mind police knows she did it, and she must have been arrested or dead if her daughter has to use the police database to search for this stuff). In any case, I love your theory.

 

[poutmeter]

In one of the videos where she's presented with pictures, she described one as the following:

Well... She has a knife. She's been cooking? I guess she's been cooking him his favorite meal? She's his wife. He's asleep and she doesn't want to wake him up. Because he's ill. That's why she's sad. Because he's ill and he might die?

Before beginning, she said she was not good at making up stories and then proceeded to describe the pictures using stories she already knew (Eve trapped by her mother, Rapunzel, mistaken identity). I wonder if she was using the death of her parents to describe the third picture. Her parents died of food poisoning due to ingesting death cap mushrooms, which the father knew were deadly. Could she have used the real reason behind her parents' death to describe the picture? The father was terminally ill and it was the sad mother who decided to end his suffering, which is why she didn't want him to wake up and find out she had been cooking poisonous mushrooms.

I've really enjoyed the game and I keep going back to the videos trying to pick up new clues. Still undecided whether it's a story about twins or multiple personalities disorder, but I keep thinking about the third set of fingerprints in the bedroom and how agitated Hannah became when they were talking about it and the wig hairs.

 

[Remembrance]

The way she described that picture, I thought it was blatantly showing a woman plotting to murder her husband, and she was trying way too hard to deflect suspicion by making up an innocent interpretation for it.

 

[Noaloha]

I'm pretty firmly on Team Split Personality, but for Team Twins is there any weight to the possibility that Hannah's miscarriage was a lie? I can't recall off the top of my head what the exact statement describes for it, so I don't know if Simon was present, or exactly how it occurred, etc.

If Hannah wanted things to stay the same with her sister, might she have given the newborn (which she says she would have named Sarah) away in order to maintain her dual life / the perfect reflection? Lie to her husband about it, etc. That would at least explain the question at the end, "Do you now know why your mother [ie. Hannah in this scenario] did what she did?" I think that question is perhaps the biggest tick in favour of the Split Personality box, as the standard Twins scenario would treat that as a question about Eve.

 

[Kamion]

I also considered the "she's just trying to play the police" in trying to have them think exactly what we are thinking" theory.

That either she's crazy or has - against all odds - succeeded in keeping her twin secret for 20+ years. When in actuality she just murdered her husband (maybe he had an affair with that blonde woman from the Rock, who might be the third set of fingerprints) and is trying to get away with it.

The whole twin thing just being an elaborate setup.

To me, the multiple personality theory as well as this "lie" scenario are the most believable. The only thing that messes this one up slightly is the lie detector. But it's been established that you can cheat those. Especially considering that she botches the first question on purpose which skews the data.

So yeah thanks for your post Joeku, it made me re-evaluate this theory. And now I don't know what to think again, haha.

 

[cilonen]

Ok, I've watched them all now.

I'm now convinced Eve is the lie Hannah concocts, based on her fairy tales, throughout the interviews as she realises it's going badly for her and it looks like she'll be found out.

The last interview I think explains what happened but she's trying to convince them she's Eve and fails the lie detector question.

The interesting question is how far back does she realise it's gone badly and start to invent Eve? It must be around the time of the bruise - the touching of the wrong cheek is a misdirection that sells the twin theory and drawing attention to the tattoo in that way is very deliberate, I think it's a temporary tattoo to misdirected and further sell the Eve lie.

So many layers. I'll be thinking about this for a good while. It's a great piece of storytelling.

Edit: This all leaves the tantalising possibility that we still don't know the motive for the murder, as the explanations for it have become warped in the lie.

 

[megalowho]

Really enjoyed this. Love when a game leaves me with pages of scribbly notes in its wake.

Def going with multiple personality after seeing most of the clips. Clues aside, it gives strong context and motive to the murder itself. Simon presents Hannah with the mirror on her birthday as part of a gesture to try and reconcile her with Eve and fix their broken marriage. Wants to bring both her sides into the relationship considering how much he's grown to like Eve over their trysts at the bar (and at home), he knows or strongly suspects they're one in the same. Wants to end the charade.

Hannah then realizes that her sister has not only been sleeping with her husband on her nighttime escapades, but also that he's the one that got Eve pregnant when they were supposedly barren. Eve may or may not have been impersonating Hannah behind her back as well, breaking their rules. The betrayal from both sends her over the edge, that and her lack of ability to cope with the reality of what Simon is trying to unveil. Eve can only watch from the "attic," and then takes over the heavy lifting for covering it up after deciding she loves her sister more than Simon. Eventually as the pressures of the investigation weigh on and the evidence of guilt mounts, Hannah can no longer cope. Eve is all that's left, perhaps as a defense mechanism to make the one that actually committed the crime disappear.

It could be that Eve/Hannah is just telling stories, the fairy tale theme is strong throughout, but it just all feels too sad and detailed for something as hand wavey as that. More likely the fascination with Rapunzel and other magical tales grew out of the need to mentally cope with recognizing a different person in the mirror and their growing relationship as children. That birthday mirror memory clip was especially chilling.

Edit: Just rewatched a few key videos and changing my story a bit to match, ah, her story. Hannah tells Simon on her birthday that she wanted her 'pregnant sister' to move in with her, probably as a test after being suspicious. Simon's reaction lets her know they'd already met, and Hannah instantly gets that he was the one who'd gotten Eve pregnant. Simon goes out to the pub in anger after they argue, and Hannah wears Eve's blonde wig and pretends to be Eve to Simon. She likes pretending to be Eve. Simon gives her the mirror present, same one he gave Hannah. That's when they argue, he hits her and the throat slashing occurs.

 

[cilonen]

Oh, and personally I still do think she made it all up Keyser Soze style from the pictures she is given, so we'll never know what really happened, but I love that all the theories are plausible and everyone is getting something slightly different from it!

 

[InaudibleWhispa]

Both Hannah and Eve claim to be currently pregnant during the interviews, right? Hannah says "Simon's dead, but the baby... that's how he will live on. Our baby", and she was the one previously considering Sarah as a name ("it would have been a girl, we were going to call her Sarah"). If they're both pregnant, and both separate people, then there would be two children right? Also just another "coincidence" that Simon got them both pregnant around the same time, which continues pushing me towards the split personality theory. The Eve personality couldn't pretend to be pregnant the first time around because she hadn't slept with Simon "She broke the rules. Slept with him. That's when she got pregnant", but the second time around they'd both slept with Simon so they could both integrate the pregnancy into their own story.

 

[poutmeter]

The way she described that picture, I thought it was blatantly showing a woman plotting to murder her husband, and she was trying way too hard to deflect suspicion by making up an innocent interpretation for it.

That's what I first thought when I watched the video the first time, but then I got the video about her parents' death afterwards and it sounded like she was describing it using the picture provided. If not, why would she come up with the husband being sick enough to make the wife sad and want to check up on him while not done cooking?

I guess it makes more sense to think she doesn't want to blurt out a wife wants to murder her husband considering the circumstances, but it's fun thinking of other reasons behind this odd story she came up with.

 

[Waxwing]

I can see how some folks might not find the Twins explanation plausible, but we're talking about created fiction here, not real life.

Is there any evidence at all that contradicts Twins?

 

[JMZ555]

Probably been mentioned but in the credits the tattoo is on her right arm then later its on her left....