Kentucky Route Zero
PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
It’s the first example of an approach to storytelling that casts you as a kind of co-author
Developer Cardboard Computer
Publisher Annapurna Interactive
Format PC (tested), PS4, Switch, Xbox One
Release Out now
The buzz and crackle of a vintage TV set greets us as we boot up the finished version of Cardboard Computer’s magical-realist adventure. This, for those who haven’t yet had the pleasure of Acts One through Four, is new: a direct result of Annapurna Interactive’s involvement in helping bring the episodic point-and-click to fruition. It’s also apropos. That we should witness a fresh start right at the end – and on a piece of technology that appears to be on its way out – is fully in keeping with a world that seems to occupy a liminal space between life and death. It’s a place where some journeys seem to be close to their terminus, while others are about to head in a new direction.
It starts with a delivery and concludes with a kind of deliverance, though any traditional notion of beginnings and endings seems fluid. The people we meet are not at the start of their journey, but somewhere in the middle. Take deliveryman Conway, who pulls up to a strange petrol station in his truck, looking for an address for which he doesn’t have a map. He’s guided by the attendant towards the Zero, a mysterious highway that apparently runs beneath Kentucky, in a sequence that feels like the entire game in microcosm. There’s an eerie encounter with a group of D&D players who don’t acknowledge Conway’s existence as he attempts to locate a tripped breaker in the station basement. We’re treated to a glimpse of the warmth, wit and economy of the writing as we examine Conway’s dog (“An old hound in a straw hat. Both have seen better days”). And we’re asked to name them: Homer is one option, but we opt for Blue. She does, after all, seem a little dejected.
At first, that doesn’t seem like much – it’s the kind of choice we’re given in many narrative-led games. But it’s the first example of an approach to storytelling that casts you as a kind of co-author. Not long after, Conway suffers an injury when rocks fall on his leg in a mine. Asked how it looks, he can respond honestly (“It’s all messed up”) or offer a stoic dismissal (“It’s fine”). Again, this is nothing especially new, but in a genre ordinarily focused on choices having a direct impact upon a branching plot, here we’re given more control over characterisation. You get to shape stories, both past – as one character relays a memory, whether fond or regrettable, to another – and present. When you meet someone new, you get a measure of who they are and where they’re from, but you’re invited to colour in some of the details. These might seem trivial, but over the course of five episodes, you get a clear idea of who everyone really is – or, at least, who they are in your own mind. By being prodded to imagine their lives as they were and the person they’ve become, you in turn feel like a more active participant in their story.
Conway’s extended search for the possibly mythical 5 Dogwood Drive sees him gather more companions for the journey, like a log steadily picking up flotsam as it glides downstream. Yet our ostensible lead is soon just one part of a growing ensemble, as Cardboard Computer generously provides the time and space to get to know each new arrival. These are different people, united by circumstance. Some are not long for this world, it seems, while for others it’s their old way of life that’s over. There’s Shannon, who has parlayed a love of electronics into a career in TV repairs, prompting her to spot a spectral image of her estranged cousin in a cathode ray set. Then there’s Ezra, a lonely but curious kid seemingly abandoned by his parents. And there’s Johnny and Junebug, a pair of travelling musicians playing to a handful of disinterested punters at bars whose own struggling owners can’t afford to pay them.
Economic instability is a running theme, and a uniting factor for many of these weary travellers. Some are refusing to face their imminent obsolescence, as they encounter others who have reluctantly left ambitions behind to achieve a degree of financial security. Its settings, meanwhile, are steeped in the specifics of real-world history – there are allusions to mining disasters and tragic floods – and yet the tales we hear, and help pass on, are also universal. Everyone will surely be able to recognise something of themselves in these characters. We can all identify with the struggle to deal with the fallout from shattered dreams and thwarted ambitions. We can understand the desire to find direction when the way forward is anything but obvious. We can relate to someone helping another as a distraction from their own problems – even if it results in being bound up in exasperating bureaucracy, as seen in Act II. For all the rambling tangents of this meandering odyssey, Cardboard Computer always seems in total command. It is meticulous in its depictions of the messiness of life.
That care extends to the delicate staging of its vignettes – and staging feels like the right word for a game that takes more presentational cues from theatre than cinema, from its clearly delineated acts and scenes to its elaborate transitions. These often feel like an extension of a traditional set change, offering the kind of smooth changeover only a videogame can handle. Foreground scenery melts away as the camera glides from exterior to interior views, while in one magical metamorphosis, a musical performance physically lifts the roof off a venue to reveal a sky of glittering stars.
It’s one of several sequences that demonstrate the power of music to transcend its surroundings. Another recurring theatrical device sees a singer silhouetted in the foreground, singing mournful bluegrass versions of gospel standards such as I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore. Elsewhere, there’s a solo theremin concert that should be haunting, but feels strangely comforting as part of a gathered throng.
Music here is treated as a universal, binding force, one that brings everyone together.
And by everyone, we mean both the people moving on and the ghosts that remain. “The whole world is built on top of graves,” says one character, and Kentucky Route Zero makes sure you feel it. From the delicate patter of rain to the steady chip of a shovel in the mud, its sound effects evoke a world whose characters have their feet on the ground. But as it captures the dirt beneath their boot soles it reaches below the surface, too, bringing forth the spirits that haunt these places with discordant echoes, distant scratches and squalls of ambient electronic noise. It’s a reminder that this is, ultimately, a ghost story, though the prevailing emotion is sadness, not anger: a sigh, rather than a raised fist.
If all this sounds a little heavy-going, the storytelling itself is often playful and surprising. Sometimes it’s a presentational flourish: one character’s sudden blackout is represented by the reverberating sound of industrial lights being switched off. At other times, it’s a playable flashback, or a shift in perspective. At one point we view the central group through the lens of a security monitor, as two guards discuss their movements. Later, a narrator retells current events as if they’ve already happened, alluding to an incident “before the evening hit a low point” as a startlingly effective piece of foreshadowing. The stakes might seem low for the most part, but with one character having unwittingly incurred a debt to a shadowy organisation, the spectre of death suddenly looms larger, and an anxious knot in our stomach tightens. Yet it’s not afraid to puncture any tension with an offhand gag or even a well-timed fart. Often, the sheer visual imagination cuts through the melancholic mood: by the penultimate chapter, a large animatronic mammoth on the prow of a tugboat seems no less normal than the garish beach shorts of the man steering it.
Given a game where radio signals and a cat’s miaow both become effective methods of communication, there are some who will struggle to tune into its strange frequencies. Yet if this fabulist fable can tilt too far towards opaqueness in places, it always drags itself back with some piercing insight, a warm-hearted exchange or a truth grounded in a more recognisable reality. Or sometimes just by its capacity to surprise. Its final stop is both entirely fitting and impossible to anticipate. Act V begins with another delightful subversion of our expectations, a daring twist that speaks to Cardboard Computer’s confidence in its players’ ability to adapt to the unexpected. And yet we also detect brief flickers of self-doubt, hints that perhaps Cardboard Computer might just be a little worried about sticking the landing – such as when one character, preparing to deliver a eulogy, admits to another, “I’d like it to be hopeful somehow, but it just keeps coming out sad.”
Much as Kentucky Route Zero may gently break your heart in places, it does offer a hopeful kind of resolution – though that, we concede, is one of many possible interpretations of a story that leaves plenty of mysteries unanswered. For our part, we feel invited to reflect and remember, but also to keep our eyes on the road ahead. By the final cut to black, we’re looking forward to making more connections like the ones we find here, before we take our final turn off Interstate 65 and fall into the Zero’s dark, enveloping embrace.