Whom The Telling Changed

by Aaron A. Reed profile

Fiction
2005

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Number of Ratings: 64
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- deem7c0, November 5, 2012

- MKrone (Harsleben), October 31, 2012

- AADA7A, September 19, 2012

- Jordan Magnuson (Corvallis, Oregon), August 23, 2012

- Molly (USA), July 5, 2012

0 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Wow, May 31, 2012

Whom The Telling Changed is a beautiful interactive story about stories, set in tribal Sumeria, retelling a part of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Text adventures truly are the best kept secret in gaming.

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- E.K., May 29, 2012

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Powerful, March 30, 2012
by Jim Kaplan (Jim Kaplan has a room called the location. The location of Jim Kaplan is variable.)
Related reviews: aaron a. reed, fantasy

Play it if: you wish for a game that explores puzzles of dialogue and discourse, or if you want to hear a powerful, emotionally resonant variation on the tale of Gilgamesh.

Don't play it if: you have trouble with puzzles that depend on intuition rather than pure logic, for it is as often as not by intuition that you progress through the story.

There are two reasons I love this story.

The first is intuition. The "puzzle" of the game, if it can be truly called a puzzle, is one of persuasion: to win the people of your tribe over to your way of thinking by directing the flow of a story. The player does this primarily by interacting with emphasized terms in the telling. Where intuition comes in is that you have no control over precisely what to do with each term; it is on the basis of each word's context in the story that you must decide how to interact.

This means that, to perhaps the greatest degree possible in IF, this is a game about language, a game which emphasizes reading comprehension over puzzle-solving. Not only is this fairly unusual for the genre, it is excellently done - the player can deduce important lessons even from minor details in the telling.

The second is the story itself. The storyteller narrates the first half of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest written epic in recorded history and a myth which still resonates with and influences modern literature. The choice of story is perfectly suited to this work, for the Epic is primarily about fear - in particular, fear of death, and fear of the unknown - and the search for immortality, whether through glory or through the love and friendship of others. These are powerful themes that the framing narrative explores, taking place on the eve of tribal war.

Whom the Telling Changed is itself an allegory of the Gilgamesh story, and in adding another fundamental theme - the power of legend and narrative - Aaron A. Reed succeeds in crafting a myth of his own. This is fantasy from an older and darker time, from a world where life was brief and difficult. For many people in those times, the only spiritual and moral comfort to be offered came from the telling and understanding of old stories - as Reed understood when he tapped into that primordial image of a troubled tribe gathered in darkness around a warm campfire.

There are but a few other notes I have on this work. There are one or two glitches to be ironed out - I only ran into one of them, though, which given the game's NPC interactions is a pleasant surprise. Also, while in general I'm no fan of sequels, there is another chapter to the Gilgamesh myth...perhaps there is another story be told.

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- trojo (Huntsville, Alabama, USA), November 14, 2011

- Mr. Patient (Saint Paul, Minn.), May 21, 2011

- baywoof, April 25, 2011

- Felix Pleșoianu (Bucharest, Romania), March 18, 2011

- Ben Cressey (Seattle, WA), March 4, 2011

- Simon Christiansen (Denmark), February 26, 2011

- dryman, February 4, 2011

- AlexisPius, January 28, 2011

- Rose (New Zealand), July 13, 2010

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Very good, small flaws in setup, July 7, 2010

Overall, this game is excellent. The storytelling mechanic is effective and original...it's far more subtle than a hackneyed chose-your-own-adventure story; you simply affect which points are emphasized and give commentary to the tale. The choice of a real-world epic and collaboration by the author with a storyteller give a very authentic feel to the telling. It's about 10-15 minutes long (though I read fast!) -- short enough to play as a quick break, but long enough to get a good feel for the setting and establish some rapport with the story and characters.

I did, however, have some quibbles with the setup and mechanics. It isn't clear when you select the tools of your trade and the identity of your lover that this will affect your character; a few words of explanation would have cleared it up entirely. I do like the gender-neutrality of your character and choice of gender in your lover. Sometimes turning the story or audience to your side was effectively challenging, but other times it was just cryptic and frustrating. It isn't always clear when you pick a word what exactly you are going to have to say about it, and there were many moments of "Wait, that wasn't what I wanted my character to say at all!", and only repeated playthroughs will help that. In some playthroughs I was scolded for not participating despite having commented on many words; again, just a little more introduction or assistance would give you a better motivation to participate more rather than just sitting in silent agreement when other characters make comments you like and there isn't anything obvious you want to comment on.

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- Sorrel, June 25, 2010

- Danielle (The Wild West), April 12, 2010

- Victor Gijsbers (The Netherlands), October 2, 2009

- GDL (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), September 25, 2009

- strivenword (Utica, New York), September 2, 2009

- Shigosei, August 6, 2009

- Linnau (Tel-Aviv, Israel), October 31, 2008


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