Sam Barlow, game director (Silent Hill, Her Story, Immortality).

My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin

My guest today is a game director who has pioneered new forms of nonlinear storytelling that blend film and games. After twelve-year stint at the British development studio Climax, where he directed Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, he began work on an independent project, Her Story.

In the game, partly inspired by Sharon Stone’s audition tapes for the film Basic Instinct, you sift through a trove of police interview footage to uncover a mystery. Her Story’s style of disconnected, live action sleuthing has become characteristic of his work, which includes the games Telling Lies and, most recently, the Netflix-published Immortality, described by Prospect Magazine as a“culture-spanning, psycho-visual experiment.”

“All my games have been about identity,” he says. “It’s scary that the people we’ve known for decades are unknowable to us.” Welcome, Sam Barlow.

All voiceover performances courtesy of Ed Hawkins: http://edwardhawkinsbass.com

Play the console:

• A Mind Forever Voyaging
• Portal (1986)
• Amnesia (1986)
• Mindwheel
• Aisle

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