Telling Lies creator says The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was one of the game's biggest influences

Telling Lies isn't your traditional video game, as it's an FMV investigative thriller game with non-linear storytelling. That's pretty far from what most people would consider a traditional game, but that doesn't mean there weren't traditional influences. In an interview with NintendoEverything, creator Sam Barlow reveals that Zelda: Breath of the Wild played a big part in development.

I had a lot of influences! But really the biggest were Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Conversation. Zelda, well it’s the only game I can think of where the freedom feels so generous and genuine — the game is so player-centric, but it delivers on that. It’s the opposite of most open world games in allowing players to go wherever they want and that being truly satisfying. A masterpiece! I was aiming for a narrative game that had that sense of freedom and generosity. And with the movie The Conversation — it’s a story about obsession, surveillance and a man who becomes so focused on a specific recording, whose subtext and meaning transforms as he listens to it over and over again. And there’s a sequence involving a tape with a very clunky, analogue set of reels and buttons that really informed how tactile and hands-on we wanted the video watching interface to feel in the game.