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

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?

The best Interlude is Interlude III, Here and There Along the Echo. It's just an old telephone, not a dial one, but one with a cord and ten number buttons on the box. A scrap of paper displays the number 270-301-5797. Pick up the receiver with an invisible hand and position it near your (invisible) ear, then dial the number. You've reached an automated guide to the Echo River. Interlude III is one of the few parts of the game that is voice acted, and there is no text to read. A drawling voice offers a menu of options to explore. One can learn about historic sites, forgotten locations, towns with no roads, types of water, local foods, bats, insects, and sounds like subterranean birds or organ music. The bodiless voice offers random musings, extensions for additional information, and opinions about Hard Times Whiskey, Lake Lethe, and Emily, Ben, and Bob.

The introduction of the Echo is necessary because the companions spend Act IV on its waters. But it the new locations till jolts because there's no mention of it prior. The Echo is an interesting variation on the Zero, but it also seems remarkably familiar. The company of Conway (with a skeletal arm in addition to the leg), Shannon, Ezra, Junebug, and Johnny, join the crew of The Mucky Mammoth, Clara, Will, and Cate. Floating laconically on a boat with a massive mechanical mammoth strapped to its back leads them to a floating gas station, a bar on a beach, a psychological testing center, a floating restaurant, and the Echo Valley Central Exchange. This underground river also includes a bat sanctuary and mushroom farm. I nearly felt like a part of the family myself, witnessing the closeness of Shannon and Conway, and the sweet relationship of Junebug and Johnny as they contemplated adopting Ezra.

On a side mission, Conway, his dog, and Shannon, separate from the Mammoth. Floating on a dingy through the ephemeral underground setting, Conway reencounters the Distillery skeletons, but Shannon can't see them. By the end of Act IV Conway abandons his quest. If Act III had made me uncertain where the game was going, the company's diversion onto the Echo left me utterly perplexed. Act IV nears its end as Shannon rejoins the Echo river, and encounters a dozen poetically written vignettes in just as many minutes. While the previous acts introduced the travelogue aspect, the Echo is able to highlight the stories of the forgotten, the lost, the separated, and the people surviving on the margins.

At the end the remaining companions abandon both the Echo and Conway's truck (which had been loaded onto the Mammoth) to venture out into the sunlight.

The final Interlude, Un Pueblo de Nada (right click the screen and select play), features the recurring characters, Emily, Ben, and Bob as they produce a news show at a small local station. Playing as Emily, the player clicks around the room. It's an incoherent broadcast in the midst of a massive thunderstorm. People on and off screen repeatedly become distracted and discuss personal stuff, as the room starts to flood. It might as well be raining inside. After some electronic trouble midway they resume, only to suffer a cataclysmic ending.Act V, the End, is a single extended scene, as Shannon, Clara, Ezra, Junebug, and Johnny climb into a city recently ruined by a gigantic thunderstorm. For the first time the player controls not a person, but a cat, chasing a dragonfly around the flooded town. The animal observes the conversations of others, offering insight with an immense variety of meowing sounds. The surviving populace wanders about inspecting the remains of their beautifully depicted town, as dark shadowy people stalk the remnants. The company gathers at a pure white building composed only of two walls and a roof, and discusses rebuilding the community. It's the sort of idyllic agricultural small town paradise like a modern Brook Farm.

The Act, and Kentucky Route Zero, concludes with a funeral for two semi-wild horses, The Neighbors. The remaining residents, some who plan to abandon the town, sing, and then the companions retreat to their white structure.

The writer plays with perspective. Though a significant portion of Kentucky Route Zero is seen through the eyes of the companions, in the Museum of Dwellings the player controls Conway, but the dialogue is delivered by the museum security as they review the security tapes, and discuss what Conway did in the past tense. At the Radvansky Center along the echo, a group of unseen scientists discuss tapes of Shannon as she completes physiological tests for money. In both cases the player learns little of the protagonists, because the off-screen speakers discuss their own personal foibles as much as they talk about the main characters. It feels as if everyone in Kentucky Route Zero is a main character, that even the most irrelevant individual is written in loving detail as if they were a real person.

Every Act of Kentucky Route Zero plays differently. Not enormously, not unrecognizably, but distinctly. Each Act includes a different travel section. There's the travel by map of Conway in his truck, flying on the back of a massive eagle, driving on the Zero, floating along the Echo, and just not going anywhere. Movement alters from Act to Act as well. Conway throws horseshoes, injures his leg and shuffles along with a limp, is cured and dances down the street like a twenty year old. The cat in the final Act chases the dragonfly. Each Act contains at least one songs, with all aside from Too Late To Love You Now, expressing a Christian theme. They range in style from a calming synth-rock, to bluegrass, to something one of the characters calls whisper rock. The point and click mechanic also varies across the length of the game. The developers valued introducing variation. The game doesn't fundamentally change, but the variations create a new experience from Act to Act.

In conclusion, I love Kentucky Route Zero with all my heart, but I was repeatedly bored to death at times while playing it. It incorporates aspects of Steinbeck and Faulkner, as it follows a company of bohemian misfits. They travel through a land of people living on the edge of debt, surrounded by uncanny experiences. Conway's company is on a quest, but they become lost in a myriad encounters. Tough bonds are formed between companions, but even these are breakable. This melancholy adventure finds its end in an idyllic, road-less haven where travel is unnecessary. The game is packed with Christian motifs; a cataclysmic flood, sin, redemption, prayer, and a wistful hope of attaining heaven soon. It uses poetic and wise writing to make every conversation beautifully insightful, and it uses a host of symbols, skeletons, electronics, computers, debt, and whiskey, to deliver a mesmerizing experience.

The journey may run out of gas by the end, but that offers time to reflect on the people along the roadside.

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