5/22/13
Kentucky Route Zero’s developer, Cardboard Computer, describes their creation as a, "magical realist adventure game about a secret highway in the caves beneath Kentucky, and the mysterious folk who travel it." Also of note, the Steam store page states it has, "a focus on characterization, atmosphere and storytelling rather than clever puzzles or challenges of skill,” and that it featured a soundtrack of old hymns and bluegrass standards.
Based on that information and several stunning screenshots, I started playing Kentucky Route Zero expecting it to be less of a game and more a piece of interactive fiction. Pretty, yet boring and requiring little meaningful interaction. Something that may be more interesting than it is fun.
And I found that preconception to hold true as I played the first of five episodes the developer has planned.
Kentucky Route Zero’s high points come from its artistic direction. Crisp vector art and use of contrast create depth. Empty space, light and shadow are used effectively to create a lonesome and ghostly atmosphere. The screen zooms and pans as the player moves about the environment in a way that arouses the mystery of what lies beyond the beam of your headlights as you drive down the highway. At its best, it evokes the everyday sense of adventure of late-night travel in unfamiliar territory with unfamiliar people, which is definitely a good thing.
In a couple segments, the player is presented a top-down view of a road map and asked to navigate to a specific location with directions that reference landmarks. Venturing off the main highway is rewarded with a vignette or moody descriptions. They help capture the feeling of a solitary delivery driver traversing unfamiliar territory at night, particularly because locations aren't displayed on the map until you're close enough for your digital headlights to shine on them. It really brought me back to my days as a pizza delivery driver, and worked very well with the established characterization.
So Cardboard Computer did a good job of creating atmosphere, but how does it fare on its other promises of characterization and storytelling? There, Kentucky Route Zero’s chords rang discordant to me. After you are done admiring the style, most of your interaction with Kentucky Route Zero is spent reading and selecting seemingly arbitrary dialogue options. Your enjoyment depends on how well you resonate with the story and your patience.
To summarize the plot, Conway needs to make an antique delivery in the dead of night to a place that isn’t on any map. To find it, a gas station attendant tells him he has to visit an implied ghost, who tells him to go to an old mine. So he goes to the mine, where he meets Shannon and they look for a highway onramp in a cave, which is ridiculous. When they don’t find anything, they return to the ghost’s house and fix her television which makes a phantom highway appear in the barn out back, the titular Kentucky Route Zero. Nothing about the way any of the characters react or interact makes sense except as a way to move the plot forward.
The player fills in the backstory of the characters through dialogue options. But without context or meaningful outcomes, most of the dialogue choices presented to the player lack impact.
In one part Shannon is having a conversation over the telephone with an unnamed individual and player has to choose her responses without hearing what is being said on the other side of the line. Without that context and with no or little variation of results, how are the player’s choices meaningful in this situation?
An especially disjointed section at the beginning of the third scene has the player choosing dialogue for both characters in the same conversation, which is confusing and potentially immersion-breaking.
Kentucky Route Zero gets high marks for demonstrating how art and music combine to create atmosphere, but with little for the player to do, I can't help but wonder if the creative minds behind it shouldn't have made an animated film as opposed to an interactive story. I certainly might have gotten the point better.
Kentucky Route Zero (Act One at least) is an experience that can be subtly personalized. But it’s not a game anymore than a Netflix can be considered a game when my internet drops and it prods me to interact with my Xbox controller to sign back in so I can continue my movie. Because if the mysteries presented don’t intrigue you, that’s about the extent of the player’s interaction with Kentucky Route Zero. Brainless mouse clicks to continue a story.
-Jim
"To summarize the plot, Conway needs to make an antique delivery in the dead of night to a place that isn’t on any map. To find it, a gas station attendant tells him he has to visit an implied ghost, who tells him to go to an old mine. So he goes to the mine, where he meets Shannon and they look for a highway onramp in a cave, which is ridiculous. When they don’t find anything, they return to the ghost’s house and fix her television which makes a phantom highway appear in the barn out back, the titular Kentucky Route Zero."
ReplyDeleteYour summary of Act I's primary story thread is hilarious and, from what I can remember, spot on. I agree that when the curtain is drawn on Act I, much of the story it presents seems nonsensical. Honestly though, I'm not at all bothered by my current lack of understanding about whatever message, if any, the game is trying to convey. While nonsensical, what was shown and implied to me during my playthrough intrigued me more than any other piece of media I've consumed in recent memory. This intrigue alone is enough for me to want to continue with the story.
Thank you!
DeleteI don't mean to imply that nonsense is bad in and of itself, surely as gamers we have seen and forgiven countless ridiculous plots. But the games I personally am more likely to forgive are the ones where I enjoy the core mechanics the most.
With no mechanics to master, KR0 didn't give me a lot or reason to push forward, and my resentment of that diminished my patience with the story.
I did feel the same intrigue though, it just wasn't strong enough to make me want to keep playing. Which is why I thought it would work out better as an animated short so it wouldn't have the same baggage a game carries and could be much shorter.
"The player fills in the backstory of the characters through dialogue options. But without context or meaningful outcomes, most of the dialogue choices presented to the player lack impact."
ReplyDeleteAgain, I agree that, in Act I, the choices players are given seem to have no discernible impact on the game. I mentioned this lack of player agency in my own Kentucky Route Zero post. For me though, the dialog choices worked. While often ambiguous and sometimes seemingly random, I enjoyed filling in any details that were necessary for me to make sense of the choices I was making.
No impact. No agency. Ambiguous. Random. All words you just used. I'm having a hard time understanding why they worked for you. I'm willing to chalk that up to a difference in personal preference, though.
DeleteChoosing the dialogue was more tedious than fun for me, and really just led me to believe the story would have to be more generic than otherwise to accomodate the small variations in backstory. I see a squandered opportunity for the storytellers.
"Brainless mouse clicks to continue a story."
ReplyDeleteHave you played Dear Esther, 30 Flights of Loving, or Proteus? These are three games that also require very limited player interaction to experience and finish. I'd be curious to hear whether these games offered something not found in Kentucky Route Zero that grabbed you despite them also lacking sophisticated interactivity.
I haven't played any of those examples, but from what I have heard of Dear Esther and Proteus at least are that they border that, "what games are," territory as well. I'm not familiar with 30 Flights.
DeleteI am interested in Proteus though. It looks pretty funky. I wonder what I would think of it too.
I read "Fuck Videogames" after following the link you posted. Great stuff! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI found the following statement from the Fuck Videogames article/essay/manifesto to be especially relevant to your argument: "Games should be a tool in your creative toolbelt. That’s all. If you want to express a feeling or an idea, try it as a game, but if it doesn’t work... don’t bang your head against it trying to solve the problem. Express it some other way."
While I thought Kentucky Route Zero worked fine as a video game, after reading the previous statement from Fuck Videogames, I briefly thought the game could also work nicely as interactive fiction. Making dialog choices obviously lends itself well to the medium of interactive fiction. However, interactive fiction excels at managing branching story paths, and the lack of any kind of branching narrative in Kentucky Route Zero makes me think the game would not benefit from the new medium. Additionally, I fear much of Kentucky Route Zero's excellent atmosphere would not survive the translation from video game to interactive fiction or from video game to written novel. I believe the atmosphere works so well for me personally in large part to its lovingly crafted audio-visual components.
Finally, if the game were anything but a video game, it would lose the amazing scene transitions made possible thanks to its two-dimensional presentation in a world rendered in three dimensions. I was definitely wowed when Conway stepped into the gas station and walked down the staircase when the world rotated, the new rooms lit up, and the camera swooped in without cutting away. I don't want to lose that.
I got that from following Darius Kazemi on Twitter. I find the whole, "what is a game," controversy that has been swirling around very interesting, if for no other reason than as an opportunity to look at what it is I personally enjoy about video games.
DeleteI feel that definitions are important, and that calling everything that requires a mouse and monitor to experience a "game," does no credit to video games or the new forms electronic entertainment that it stymies as they try to shoehorn themselves into the videogame label for acceptance.
It is kind of similar to the way video games in general have been trying to be more like movies as a similar attempt to gain more mainstream acceptance. But has that move been good for videogames? There are probably two arguments to that, and I'm not sure where I fall.
Sorry to bombard you with comments Jim, but you made a lot of strong points I wanted to address. I thinks it's awesome we have such differing opinions on the same game!
ReplyDeleteOh sweet! I'll respond this afternoon when I have some more time.
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