Scattered thoughts on Kentucky Route Zero

The following is a scrapped script for my YouTube channel. I played through Kentucky Route Zero and wrote and recorded this lengthy collection of notes and thoughts on the game. Something wasn't sitting right however. The more I thought about it, and the more I procrastinated on making the video, I came to the conclusion that I wasn't happy with the overall result. Not wanting to waste all that effort, I have decided to post the script here. Enjoy.

- Introduction -

I've been waiting years to play Kentucky Route Zero. I made an impressions video back in 2016, waiting for the games' final act to be released. 4 years later I sat down to play Kentucky Route Zero in its entirety and had the most unique and enjoyable gaming experience in years. The reason being I have a favourable disposition to the adventure game genre. Kentucky Route Zero is built with the bones of the adventure genre, as the computer Xanadu in the Hall of the Mountain King is a homage to Colossal Cave Adventure, the first adventure game, inspired by Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, but Kentucky Route Zero uses the adventure genre staples of dialogue and moving through spaces more for mood than narrative. All that's missing are the puzzles. The following video is a collection of thoughts I had after playing the game, separated by topic. if you haven't played the game and are worried about spoilers, I will be discussing the plot turns, but the plot itself is not as important as one might think. I loved this game, and I hope you enjoy what I have to say about it.

- How dialogue reveals character -

There are no dialogue trees in Kentucky Route Zero. In adventure games we as the player are used to picking a topic of conversation, and then when it is exhausted, looping back to the original conversation choices. In Kentucky Route Zero there is no looping back. Similar to the way Telltale implemented the dialogue in their games, once we choose what we want the characters to say, we're locked in. We continue these choices until the conversation is over, and then we move on. Time moves forward. At first I had a fear of missing out in regards to not being able to explore the dialogue trees, but I discovered this method of conversation is freeing. It means there is no wrong answer. Sure we might ask ourselves "what if", but we do that in life as well, and at least with Kentucky Route Zero we can always play the game again if we want to make different choices. It means instead of dialogue acting as an information gathering tool for the player, or just as entertainment, it allows us to dictate who the characters are. We shade their backstories and how they respond to these situations. Instead of controlling Conway, we are influencing who Conway is, and what he means to us, as well as his relationship to all the other characters. It's why who Conway turned out to be was distressing. Influence is not control, and these characters are who they are despite our decisions as players. Our choices can’t save Conway from what is destined to happen to him.

- Unanswered questions -

There are intermissions between each act of Kentucky Route Zero. They are experimental. The intermission before Act 3 was made for Virtual Reality and the intermission before Act 4 features a real phone number you can call and explore like the one in the game. The first intermission, the one before Act 2 is an interactive art installation. Bob, Ben, and Emily, three characters the player finds in different places through the game are looking at the art of Lula Chamberlain. The art is surreal, and in the case of the tapes, interactive. The audience is a participant. Commentary on Kentucky Route Zero itself, and the role of the player. The assets are here, and they cannot be changed, but the way we navigate through them, the parts we see, the parts we miss, and the parts we ignore, they create an individualised experience.

Kentucky Route Zero features unanswered questions. Earlier this year I watched an analysis of David Lynch's Twin Peaks which posited that by not answering the questions of an audience, it keeps them thinking and engaged with the work. The instant an audience has their answers, they move on. Here are a few elements of Kentucky Route Zero I still question even after all of my research. Perhaps the answers to these questions are in the game, but I did not find them.

Who or what is Weaver? She's Shannon's cousin, yes, but she also instigates both Conway and Shannon’s journey to find the Zero, the magical road leading to the final destination of the game. We see her hand in taking over the TV station in the intermission before Act 5. She's like a ghost who shows up and causes havoc. Other characters refer to her as such. She worked on Xanadu, she was at the Bureau of Unclaimed Spaces, her fingerprints are all over the journey, but I never got a sense of who she was and what her goals were. 

Junebug and Johnny are robots, or cyborgs, or they have implants. They create mechanical noise when they move. Johnny talks about not needing food. They worked for the Consolidated Power Company in a mine and then left to become musicians. I read they were built by the company, but I never came across such an answer in my gametime. They're wanderers, and it feels right in my game that they chose not to stick around the community in Act 5. I wonder if they took Ezra with them.

Route Zero is a loop. It appears to be made from static, and reacts to radio waves. It may be a fluctuation in energy, a tear in reality. The Bureau of Unclaimed Spaces resides there. It's where Xanadu lives, and it's where our group finds the Echo River which leads them to the fabled 5 Dogwood Drive. There's lots to see on Route Zero, just like there are many side attractions in Act 1 before Conway and Shannon find the fabled road, but I was more interested in the destination over the journey. I did not want to stay on the Zero for long. It unsettled me. How it's just a loop changing based on when and where the player turns clockwise and counter-clockwise. It's the idea that such small shifts can lead to such divergent destinations and how such information relates to my own life, that creates tension when thinking about the Zero.

On the Zero, but also in all aspects of this world, nothing lasts forever and people need to find peace and joy where they can. The town which houses 5 Dogwood Drive is flooded when our characters reach it. Destroyed because the Consolidated Power Company never finished the irrigation before moving out. It wasn't cost effective. We see this all through the game. Everyone is drowning. People are living the best they can, but all it takes is one sudden change and all is swept away. We are all at the mercy of forces greater than us, and because of this it can be easy to feel small, it can be easy to despair. Nevertheless, in the face of this harsh reality, we find beauty. Community, remembrance, art, music, a sense of purpose. People ply their trade where they can. They help others, and form connections, bonds. The world may be cold. It may not care about us, but we can care about each other, and huddle together to make the present moment just a little bit warmer.

- The play's the thing -

It's not difficult to see the influence of Theatre on Kentucky Route Zero. The game is in five acts, each section of the game is a scene, and the locations are designed like theatre sets. Walls move as the camera zooms in, and while the game takes advantage of being a computer game to pull off visual feats that could not be replicated on stage, it still feels staged. Because the locations are detailed, and the characters are without facial expressions, being mere ideas of people, abstractions of humanity, the places seem more real than those inhabiting them.

In Shakespeare's plays, Act 3 is where the greatest change to the story takes place, like the death of an important character. In film, this is referred to as the midpoint. In Kentucky Route Zero, Act 3 is where Conway signs himself into slavery. He was already in debt due to the doctor patching up his leg in Act 2, but their tour of the local brewery and the drink he takes to commemorate his taking of the job seals the deal. This is after the most discussed part of the game, Junebug's song at the bar. It's a sombre tale of lost love, remembrance, and regret, well depending on which verses the player picks. Like the dialogue options discussed before, the details may change, but the song remains the same.

The lack of agency the player has on the story of Kentucky Route Zero is most evident in how I chose to play Conway. When Conway is poured the drink at the brewery, there is nothing else the player can do. The mouse is pulled towards the drink, and Conway has to drink, because it is who he is. Before this moment, the game alluded to a possible drinking problem and a troubled past, but as a player I always took other options. My Conway was someone who was working to overcome the past haunting him. If this last delivery is an act of penance, I was going to make it count. Act 3 removed any allusion of control over these characters I felt I had. In Act 4, Conway is drinking away his sorrows, and I leaned into it. A director doesn't have control over the script, an actor doesn't have control over the script. Both can portray the characters how they think is best, how they interpret the material, but the beats of the story have to remain the same, and as the way I chose to play the game up to this point was not in line with Conway taking the drink, it left a sour impression on me that lingered. It was like I was forced into a future I didn't want for Conway or myself as the player. Maybe that's the intention.

Conway is taken near the end of Act 4. The debt skeletons come for him and Shannon returns to the rest of the party alone. I panicked and pressed the skull button over Homer's head, resigning the poor pooch to stay underground with the rest of the telephone operators. Shannon, Junebug, Johnny, Clara, and Ezra decide to finish Conway's delivery to 5 Dogwood Drive leading us into Act 5.

Act 5 is different from the rest of the game. It's in one location. The player controls a cat and as the cat runs in a circle around the town, the day passes. The day after a hellish flood. A flood that killed the commune's horses, named The Neighbours. The whole day is not only our characters deciding if they want to stay in this town or move on now that the delivery is finished, but the people who live there are making a similar choice. It feels like whatever this place was, it's now ended, and there's either the choice to move on, or make something new where it stood, and everybody has to decide for themselves. Before they can move on however, the community holds a funeral for The Neighbours. A song is sung. It's of a similar haunting quality to Junebug's song in Act 3, but the haunting is literal this time. The ghosts of this place appear and join in. This funeral is for them too, for the living as well. The commune is putting to rest the sorrow of everyone left behind by the Consolidated Power Company, and the cruelty of modern life. Little did I know it at the time (as the game ends not long after the song does), but this is a eulogy for Kentucky Route Zero too. A game almost a decade in the making, and now complete. Can the developers now move on? Can the player?

- Has it always been this way? -

The majority of the games writing on Kentucky Route Zero has been about the Consolidated Power Company and debt. Most characters in the game have been touched by the movings and shakings of this looming monolith the player never comes into contact with. Conway sells his soul to the brewery which is owned by the power company, but we only see the result. We hear about the power company’s misdeeds from the memorial to the miners, the programmers working on Xanadu, or the townsfolk cursing the company for pulling out before they finished their irrigation system. One might think this is a commentary on progress, on the old vs new. How everyone was doing fine before the company came along. How this one corporation kept growing and swallowed up all in its path, trading in human misery for a larger slice of profit. I do not.

For as desperate and destitute as many of the folks in this fictitious Kentucky seem to be, and for all the hostility levied with good cause at the Consolidated Power Company, I don't get the feeling anyone wants to go back to a time before them. It doesn't seem like many people remember or discuss a time before them. Maybe they have always been here consolidating power, but the focus of Kentucky Route Zero is in people choosing to make something new. Either making the best of whatever situation they find themselves in, or working to create a better tomorrow. It doesn't always work out however. Debt consumes Conway whole by the end of Act 4. He never got to see 5 Dogwood Drive and get a chance at a better tomorrow. We don't know if Shannon or Ezra will either, and who knows how many countless others were swallowed up by being tied down with debt. Similar to the miner’s memorial and what was lost due to the Consolidated Power Company's negligence, we should not forget. Not everyone is going to make it through the storm and the flooding. Not everyone will see the new tomorrow, but it doesn't mean it's not worth striving for, and it doesn't mean it isn't real. Once again, you have to find your happiness where you can. The alternative is to succumb.

- Going with the flow - 

The Mucky Mammoth is pushed along the echo river. It goes where the river dictates, Will & Cate keeping it afloat and helping all who need passage. I enjoyed this act because it reminds me of the book Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. Late in the tale, Sidhdhartha stays with a man named Vasudeva tending the river. Siddhartha learns to listen to the river. The running water can impart wisdom to those who take the time to listen. Our time as players on the Echo felt the same. it's because the Echo is part of the Zero thus granting it a supernatural quality, but talking to Will & Cate, listening to their stories of all the folks they've encountered, not only on the river, but in their lives, and what led them to this place, feels like an answer to the questions Kentucky Route Zero is asking.

Act 5 is an anomaly because the player spends the entire act in one location. Every other act has the characters visiting a new place, finding out what they need to, and then moving on. All these spaces, even the reclaimed ones, are just areas to pass through. This is made explicit in Act 4 because of the Echo river. As the river is flowing, it's taking our characters from place to place. Each stop is temporary by nature. When Conway and Shannon take the small motorboat, they travel into the screen, it looks like they are going upriver, against the current. Could this be why Conway is taken? Instead of letting events play out as they should, instead of going with the flow of the Echo, Shannon and Conway are fighting it, and it causes the brewery to act.

- Conclusion -

Those still reading might have unanswered questions. To emulate my playthrough of Kentucky Route Zero in my writing was not my intention. I had hoped through the act of writing to come to a greater understanding about the game I could then share with you. It’s how it worked with all my other critiques. With this project, I found myself grasping at straws as I typed. Sure I came up with clever prose, sentences sounding good when read aloud, and maybe even ideas sparking discussion, but I don't think this writing has an anchor point. There's nothing to hold onto, no ready made conclusion or final point to make about the game to leave you all satisfied with your time spent. Instead I will say Kentucky Route Zero is now a favourite of mine. I plan to play through it a second time, and can see myself revisiting it in the future. Now that I have an idea of who the characters are and what happens, I can navigate the game with greater confidence and perhaps gain greater insight. The comparison to theatre is apt because I'll make different decisions while playing. Like seeing a play with a different cast, Conway, Shannon, Junebug, Ezra, and the rest will not act the way I remember them. I will be picking different dialogue options and I will have a different experience. I’m under no allusion I can change the story, but perhaps I can create a happier ending for everyone.

And now I'd love to hear your thoughts on Kentucky Route Zero. What about the game impacted you the most? Do you have unanswered questions or were you satisfied when the game ended? How did you choose to play Conway and the others? Please let me know in the comments. Until next time, I hope you're all having a wonderful day.