Episode 95 - Conway West - Kentucky Route Zero

About fifteen percent of patients report a generalized sensation of “podcasts.” Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Kentucky Route Zero, because the whole thing is finally released. Starting with a Kickstarter campaign nearly a decade ago, this game released in “Acts” periodically in the ensuing years and is now available as a complete package along with all the interstitial segments playable as a single experience. Can you tell I’m stalling? This game is hard to talk about. Ostensibly, KR0 is an adventure game, but it’s difficult to draw comparisons to other games in the genre. The central mechanical engagement of the game is in the form of making dialogue choices, but the characters and stories don’t really change based on what your choices are. Largely, these only serve to influence your perspective on the story and the players within it. And that probably sounds highfalutin, but the game resists the kind of analysis we usually use for games and honestly that’s what makes it so unique. We’re going to be talking about natural versus supernatural interpretations of events, character and narrative development across a decade-long timetable, and whether you can identify more with an old-fashioned hipster or one of these newfangled millennial hipsters. Thank you for joining us this week! For a game we held off on playing for so long, it was a real blast finally getting to experience the entire story from beginning to end. If you played the game, how did it strike you? Is this kind of weird choice based story up your alley, or would you prefer to take a more active role in your video games? If so, I bet you’ve already started playing The Last of Us Part 2, which is good, because next time, we’re going to be talking about The Last of Us Part 2, so please join us then!