Kentucky Route Zero Episode One Review

The first episode of the point-and-click adventure game Kentucky Route Zero constantly surprised me. One second my character would be yanked from reality as the walls melted away and exposed a beautiful vista; the next, the camera would zoom out slowly to reveal a haunting environment with music expertly timed to punctuate the mood. The story deftly walked the line between being too vague and providing just enough details to keep me hooked, curious to see what waited around every twist and turn. Kentucky Route Zero’s a damn fine example of what makes the medium of video games so special, a game that’s not just about violence, shock value or being silly, but an attempt to tell a story that taps into feelings we otherwise try and avoid.

The story is primarily told through Conway. With no tutorial whatsoever Kentucky Route Zero begins by showing him pull up to a truck stop and then giving you control. What’s remarkable about this introduction is that you know nothing about who you are, what you do or what you should be doing. You simply investigate out of curiosity and you’re rewarded for doing so with charming dialogue. Every character is written in a way that makes them feel genial and human, but also eerie enough that I always felt on edge, as if underlying their kindness was a sort of darkness not yet understood.

The way the writing integrates your choices also makes Kentucky Route Zero feel personal. When someone asks Conway a question, or it comes time for him to speak, you choose his response. This isn’t revolutionary in an adventure game, but the way you use it to tell your own backstory and what sort of person you are feels especially well done. For instance the dog you travel around with becomes a boy, a girl or “just some dog” depending on how you answer a question about the pup. That then characterizes your relationship with the dog for the rest of the tale. Even better are the points where you can banter with people about the day or their lives, or just keep everyone at arm’s distance. My Conway was super personable. He always took the time to enrich his life with the stories of others and always made sure he didn’t leave anything half finished. Why? Because from the moment I decided to yammer with an old man instead of trying to get on with my job I had already begun to invent my Conway in my imagination.

Almost every piece of dialogue, character and locale places your developing Conway in a world where oppressive reality clashes against the surreal. A house you visit (whose resident is an obviously off-kilter squatter who reveals personal details a bit too quickly) becomes a place where Conway’s inexplicably ripped from reality and shown imagery you’re not meant to fully understand. Other times you might encounter a diner on the road and go through a text-adventure-like mini-story where you’ll experience something that feels like a mystery novel, a ghost story and a harrowing tale of love all in one. Kentucky Route Zero’s narrative repeatedly hits from unexpected angles, commanding your attention because it’s so atypical. Unlike so many other game’s stories, I don’t feel like I can predict what will come next, making me extra attentive so I don’t miss any subtle messages.

Few games use audio so artfully to drive their stories as Kentucky Route Zero. From the sparse music that cues at the exact right moment to the ambient noise in every locale, Kentucky Route Zero’s developers know how to use sound to help tell a story. I felt the loneliness of driving on the road, the beauty of animals in the darkness, and the unnerving buzz of lights and small motors operating electronics in an empty roadside store. The text-adventure portions where Conway’s driving on the highways benefit the most from the sound, since they rely on your imagination for the visual component.

When you’re not imagining the way things look, Kentucky Route Zero comes to life through its unique visual style. Beautiful vector art graphics filled with detail help each environment become more than a place you’re visiting to progress in a video game. These feel like places people lived, where history was created, lives were torn asunder and happy memories made; where a host of from inanimate objects help establish a tone and interactive objects help you learn a little bit more about the type of man Conway was, is and may become.

The experience becomes all the richer visually due to the directed shots of Kentucky Route Zero. Rather than the static camera many other point-and-click adventure games employ, Route Zero pans, zooms and rotates to play with perspective and add depths to environments that feel largely two-dimensional. It draws your eyes towards what’s important in the scene. You see pieces of the environments come into detail just as Conway would as he approached them, and you feel sucked into the world as the camera literally pulls in for a closer look.

The camera zooms past the walls to show you the interior.

Unlike the typical adventure game you’ll find hardly any puzzles in Kentucky Route Zero – and that works. Most environments exist for you to talk with people and interact with objects, and the experience of doing that is reward enough. I would come into each setting, feel sad, happy, lonely or a number of other emotions and move onto the next vignette of the character’s life. The entire first episode lasts just over an hour and a half or so, which is perfect considering the relatively limited amount of stuff to do in the world.