wfmag.cc \ 61ReviewRated
Given Kentucky Route Zero’s proclivity for leaving
things up for interpretation, either narratively or
structurally, by letting you as the player guide the
direction of scenes via the choices you make, it
should come as no surprise that Act V doesn’t
wrap everything up in a neat bow. There are no
mysteries solved, no definitive resolutions.
This is in no way unsatisfying; it feels wholly
appropriate for this story. More than that,
though, it is essential for generating the sense of
hope that pierces through the game’s tragedy.
The lack of closure leaves it with a distinct sense
of possibility. The town you
are in is battered, broken,
and near-deserted, but
residents remain that may
just be willing and able to
rebuild it. The characters
you’ve been taking this journey with may have
found something too. In each other, or in this
place, you get the sense that they have a future.
Something new, something better, is ready to
emerge. This is, I think, the perfect way for a game
ruminating on the brutality of the age in which we
live to end.
Perhaps partly an artefact of the contingency of
Kentucky Route Zero’s stuttering release schedule,
or perhaps entirely down to the elegance with
which it combines its impressionistic writing
style with delicately constructed theatre-inspired
scenes, this game is able to capture an ineffable
truth about the near-decade over which it’s
steadily been released, one that it doesn’t so
much describe, but rather, emote. This might
sound like a grand, pretentious claim, but play it
for yourself, and it’ll make you feel it too. The enclosure and darkness of
Act I presents a real contrast,
looking back in retrospect.ReviewRated
and communities broken by it: the deceased
miners who perished in Elkhorn Mine; the
fragmented Márquez family; Conway, who, snared
in the net of a healthcare system based on profit,
slowly slips away; the abandoned young boy,
Ezra; and this town that the story ends in, left to
rot by the company that once owned it.
This core is important, because as vague
and conceptual and experimental as it can be,
Kentucky Route Zero threatens at times to alienate
you. But its clear advocacy for working people; its
anger at the injustices they have to face provides
an anchor that balances things out. The game
allows plenty of space for interpretation, but the
sadness it feels for the victims it aims to represent
is never in question. It knows that its openness,
its narrative flexibility, becomes meaningless if
it fails to draw any lines
in the sand. The stakes
are too high for that. It
makes us feel that sadness
profoundly, both through
the connection built with
individual characters and their stories, and a
mourning for the many nameless and faceless
victims whose history the game gestures to,
perhaps never more present in Kentucky Route
Zero as they are here, represented in ghostly black
apparitions that roam around the town. This is
all brought to bear in an incredible finale that yet
again showcases Cardboard Computer’s immense
talent for constructing a scene. It left me in tears.
“All brought to bear in
an incredible finale. It
left me in tears”VERDICT
A remarkable game
that manages to marry
an abstract style with
concrete commitments.HIGHLIGHT
Kentucky Route Zero uses
music incredibly well.
There are a number of set-
pieces that bring a musical
performance to the fore,
which, combined with theatre-
inspired staging that works
beautifully in concert, always
lands with incredible effect.90 %
I still can’t get over the unbearable
sadness of Ezra losing (or being
abandoned) by his parents. Damn
you, Kentucky Route Zero. The film Aristocats insisted
that “everybody wants to be
a cat.” There is indeed
something enjoyable about
flitting around the place as
an agile feline observer.