Kentucky Route Zero: The End of A Seven Year Journey Approaches

Kentucky Route Zero:

Kentucky Route Zero: The Ending of A Seven Year Journey Approaches

Kentucky Route Zero: Is it the Journey or the Ending that Matters, if they are Both Enigmatic?

Time to Beat: 8 Hours

I acquired episodic adventure game Kentucky Route Zero in May of 2017, but didn't play it immediately. Though it was released in 2013, the developers, Cardboard Computer, had only produced four of the five episodes by 2017. Its first two acts, both released in 2013, received universal acclaim, and many, including Rock, Paper, Shotgun called it the best game of the year. The third act released in 2014. Then the wait began. Act four was eventually released in 2016, but it wasn't until January of 2020 that the company finally completed the series.

I am glad I delayed, because waiting three years to play the final act would have been agonizing.

Kentucky Route Zero's opening screen displays three save slots; a videotape, notebook, and cassette tape. The system saves automatically, but the player can save and quit anytime. It wasn't clear if the game only saves between scenes, which are frequent, or saves immediately when the player quits. After choosing a save file, the Act selection appears. Roman numerals denoting the Acts are arranged in a circle, separated from each other by four Interludes. In the center rests a hairpin, pointing to the current Act or Interlude. Why a hairpin? Like so much else about this game, the answer is elusive.

Spoilers to Follow

The player begins in Act I, Scene I: Equus Oils. The protagonist is Conway, a middle aged delivery man. He is on a quest, to deliver the final package from Lysette Antiques to 5 Dogwood Drive. Having been unable to locate it, he stops at the gas station and asks the sole attendant for directions. Immediately the game strikes the player as eerie, but not frightening. A massive horse head, painted a dark turquoise, rears up behind the well lit station, with Equus Oils lettered in pale neon lighting above, while Conway's truck rumbles just outside the station. After a brief conversation the man offers to help Conway if he retrieves an object from the station's basement. Inside the eeriness becomes overwhelming.

The opening scene introduces the basics of point and click, and conversation. When the player clicks on the screen, it displays a pure white stake, and Conway tosses a horseshoe to the location, where it spins around the pin. He walks towards it with an odd gait. Conway looks like a rag doll puppet, held by strings a bit too high, with his feet just scuffing the floor. If a person, place, or thing is activatable it shows a symbol. Unlike point and click games like The Fall, or even The Walking Dead, KRZ has no objects to pick up, no things to rub against other things. Any activatable object provides a description or opens a conversation. Conway doesn't have an inventory, though he does carry a small collection of notes. Along with the visuals and music, conversation is the main element of the game. Kentucky Route Zero is comparable to a long book. It's filled with pages and pages of description and dialogue, almost none of it spoken. The reading is broken up with dialogue options for the player. Choices add flavor, and sometime effect small outcomes. For example, Conway names his dog in the first scene, and all characters refer to the animal with the given name for the remainder of the game. But many dialogue choices are made and never referred to again. Or perhaps they are so seamlessly woven into the story I didn't notice. If you are not interested in reading an eight hour novel don't purchase Kentucky Route Zero.

For those still considering the journey, dialogue options allow the player to switch between the voices of different protagonists. Conway speaks in a light, deferential tone, while Shannon is direct and confrontational. Conway meets her shortly after the gas station. The owner tells Conway of a mysterious road to 5 Dogwood Drive, the Zero. But the owner doesn't know how to get there, so he directs Conway to the house of someone who does.

Leaving the first scene introduces the first traveling mini-game. The screen displays a map with black background and white lines to represent roads and landmarks. The first two Acts are situated in Kentucky along Route 65, the boldest white line. With a few directions, Conway follows the road, turning right at the Burning Bush, followed by an immediate left. Conway visits a few locations before meeting Shannon. She joins him on his odyssey to deliver the antique. Shannon also brings a recurring motif into Kentucky Route Zero, antiquated and modern electronics, like old TVs, radios, strange computers, and tapes. I can't explain the symbolism, but scene VI (the finale of Act I), features a surrealist use of TV repair to discover the entrance to the Zero. Each Interlude is a shorter piece, which only tangentially connects to the main story. The first occurs at an esoteric art exhibit, where three participants view the materials.

Act II is stranger than Act I, with Conway and Shannon traveling on the Zero. First they visit the Bureau of Reclaimed Spaces to find 5 Dogwood Drive. The building is surrounded by TVs. The lack of efficiency and assistance by the personnel Kafkaesque. Everyone in the Bureau gives the couple the runaround. Eventually they leave to visit Saint Thomas Church, a cathedral repurposed as a records office for the BRS, reiterating the bureaucratic and Christian themes pervasive throughout the series. Before they can deliver the antique, Conway needs to see a doctor about a leg injury he suffered on the way. To avoid the pain he had developed a limp.

Traveling the Zero isn't as easy as a straightforward drive. Sometimes it requires going back to travel forwards. Eventually the pair visit the Museum of Dwellings, where locals, forced off their land, are allowed to live in their unique buildings on private property as exhibits. Conway and Shannon meet Ezra, a boy with a giant eagle, who leads them to a doctor in the depths of an expansive wood. Along the way, there's a mesmerizing scene where the player, as Ezra, runs rightward along the screen, repeatedly passing through still scenes of Conway and Shannon, as the song Long Journey Home flows hauntingly. Aside from this song, and the other four vocalized songs (one per Act), Kentucky Route Zero features almost no voices. The dialogue is written, not spoken. The only exception is Interlude III, Here and There Along the Echo, where the player hears a disembodied voice. At last they find the doctor.

The second Interlude, The Entertainment, raises existential questions concerning the entire plot of Kentucky Route Zero. The player is an unseen observer in the middle of a theater, watching a fictional play titled The Reckoning. The proprietor of a bar, Harry, serves Evelyn, Pearl, and Pearl's parents Rosa and Lawrence. They discuss debt, how much everyone owes on their tab to Harry, but also how much he owes the Hard Times Distillery, his whiskey supplier. They're waiting anxiously for a woman named Junebug to perform a song, but she's late. With this scene Kentucky Route Zero ventures further into its surreal setting, because in Act III, Conway, Shannon, and Ezra are joined by Junebug and Johnny on their way to perform at the Lower Depths.

The Act returns to the doctor's house. He has healed Conway's leg, but it looks different. Nobody sees the change except the player. Instead of clothing or skin, the player sees the glowing bones of Conway's, from the phalanges, fibula, tibia, through the femur to the hip joint. After the company resumes their search for 5 Dogwood Drive they meet Johnny and Junebug, and arrive at the Lower Depths bar from the Interlude. Junebug is late for the performance but sings anyways. This is the only occasion where Kentucky Route Zero produces the sound of a character's voice. Junebug sings her haunting song, and it is interactive! The player chooses lines for some sections of the song, but the chorus, “It's too late to love you now. It's too late, I've made my vow,” remains the same. What does this say about the story that a play in an Interlude is the reality of Conway and Shannon? With such an intelligent and choreographed story it can't be a mistake. It's intentional, and contributes to the indecipherable nature of Kentucky Route Zero. Back on the Zero the companions, now including Junebug and Johnny, visit the Hall of the Mountain King. It's another psychedelic experience. The residents of this cave seem determined to create a strange supercomputer, XANADU. When the companions try to fix it, they are forced to play a creepy choose your own adventure game (like the old Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Game) in which three people venture into underground world, and encounter the Strangers. This game eerily reflects reality, because Conway has met the three people, one of whom built the computer. The computer also includes a management simulation to fix the computer itself, but that doesn't work. Seeking to fix XANADU, Conway must venture to Where the Strangers Came From.

They come from the nearby. And they scrape the mold off of XANADU to make something. Like Conway, they look like Skeletons to the player, but to the characters they appear normal.

This sound phenomenal, and yet there are long stretches of dullness, of a sense that the plot isn't progressing, but the characters are wandering haphazardly.  They are On the Road, but they have less purpose than Dean and Sal.

Next week, we'll follow it to its end.

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