KENTUCKY ROUTE ZERO
I should be so Kentucky
With the TV edition, Kentucky Route Zero, originally released on PC in instalments over seven years, makes its way to PS4 as a package with some quality-of-life enhancements. Through five chapters and as many interludes, you piece together stories past and present surrounding the mysterious Zero, a motorway leading to a world below the US state of Kentucky.
You begin the story as Conway, a truck driver out on a delivery for an antiques shop. What begins as a routine search for his destination steadily becomes the journey of several people, as Conway loses his way and is inundated with requests and issues leading to ever-increasing detours.
Ostensibly a point-and-click adventure, most of Kentucky Route Zero’s interactivity is in its dialogue choices. Throughout the game you not only take control of Conway, but also his companions, such as Shannon, an electrician he meets in a mine, or Junebug and Johnny, a pair of android musicians, by choosing what they ask or respond with, or even who gets to speak at all. Sometimes characters switch mid-conversation. This flexibility leads to some standout scenes: in one you direct Conway via the interjections of several of his friends as he plays a hypertext adventure game; another sees you choosing the lyrics to a song during a performance. By chapter
IV there are so many different points of view available it’s worth playing the section twice in order to find out what everyone is up to.
HYPERTEXT DRIFTER
KRZ experiments with text, but also with its stark, memorable visuals. The occasional traversal takes place on a map that is rarely more than a few white lines on black background, but each of your destinations is framed from striking camera angles. Visual techniques range from cutting a forest up in vertical slices to a cave that slowly unfolds before you as you walk through it. Contrasts between shadow and light and a sparse soundscape often result in a slightly unsettling atmosphere that draws you in just as much as the enigmas you encounter on the Zero.
At its core, however, the game brings people together through relatable subjects such as loss, economic downturn, and the corporate greed that often goes with it. Instead of dipping into the corporate satire so frequent in games, KRZ focuses on the affected through beautiful, meandering prose, often held together by little more than anecdotes.
The weird and magical, such as people living in a museum exhibit, or an office floor full of bears, feels normal here, not sinister in the way it does in – for example – Remedy’s Control. For long stretches the very loose plot is as dark as the game’s colour palette, but the fifth chapter is more colourful and ambitious in scope than its predecessors. It really feels like coming up after a long time underground.
VERDICT
Crams philosophical discourse, art, architecture, and magical realism into the story of one drifter, resulting in a unique experience that will leave you thoughtful. Malindy Hetfeld