This review contains spoilers
kills a dozen people through slow, horrifying asphyxiation
"So, um, yeah. That happened. That happened???"
This game has a lot of really cute and relatable moments. I loved some of the characters (Germ is the man, Lori rules) and the small town vibe is genuinely great. I don't mean to be too hard on it because overall I did really enjoy my time with it, but I also had a nagging feeling in the back of my head that this game fumbles a lot of its themes pretty heavily which only got worse as time went on.
For one, Mae is probably the most unlikable character in this game. As someone who - you guessed it! - has been officially diagnosed with depression and has really struggled with my place in my own life, of course her journey is highly relatable in some respects. The portrayal of that aspect of her life I found to be very resonant. But the way the game portrays her coping mechanisms is kind of a mess to me. She does a lot of genuinely heinous, downright mean stuff in this game and the narrative brushes it all off as "oh haha mental illness am I right sometimes you just wanna go apeshit!!!" It feels weirdly disingenuous and while there is a bit of a character arc there where she learns not to be so awful all the time it's undermined by the above spoiler exposing this entire crew as absolute psychopaths.
Let's be clear, obviously all of those cult guys were fucking evil and deserved what they got, but the handwaving of that entire event (not to mention the eldritch stuff) seems insane to me. Which brings me to the cult and larger themes of anticapitalism/american rot. I think it's kind of fucking cowardly that no named characters we meet in the entire rest of the game are in the cult. First off, seems like that'd be how you tie in that council subplot to the main narrative? Second off, it robs the cult of actually feeling like it has any personal connection to this place. Contrast with Twin Peaks where everyone in the idyllic small town does actually have some deep dark shit in their closet, Night in the Woods feels a bit too happy segregating all the cute quirky townsfolk with the "other, evil conservatives" who literally aren't even given a face. There is a way to do this sort of thing right too but the specifics of it here really don't do it for me. It doesn't help that every single character in the game steps a little too far over that line into twee Joss Whedon dialogue like my pithy opening joke, which took me out of quite a few moments.
I think this game absolutely has its heart in the right place and had some moments I really loved (and got me emotional at times, which is huge for a game like this to nail), but for a game that is entirely focused around its narrative, it also annoyed me at parts and didn't fully come together for me. I don't begrudge anyone who absolutely loves it though, I think I might just be a bit too cynical, lol.
...Anyway play Kentucky Route Zero
"So, um, yeah. That happened. That happened???"
This game has a lot of really cute and relatable moments. I loved some of the characters (Germ is the man, Lori rules) and the small town vibe is genuinely great. I don't mean to be too hard on it because overall I did really enjoy my time with it, but I also had a nagging feeling in the back of my head that this game fumbles a lot of its themes pretty heavily which only got worse as time went on.
For one, Mae is probably the most unlikable character in this game. As someone who - you guessed it! - has been officially diagnosed with depression and has really struggled with my place in my own life, of course her journey is highly relatable in some respects. The portrayal of that aspect of her life I found to be very resonant. But the way the game portrays her coping mechanisms is kind of a mess to me. She does a lot of genuinely heinous, downright mean stuff in this game and the narrative brushes it all off as "oh haha mental illness am I right sometimes you just wanna go apeshit!!!" It feels weirdly disingenuous and while there is a bit of a character arc there where she learns not to be so awful all the time it's undermined by the above spoiler exposing this entire crew as absolute psychopaths.
Let's be clear, obviously all of those cult guys were fucking evil and deserved what they got, but the handwaving of that entire event (not to mention the eldritch stuff) seems insane to me. Which brings me to the cult and larger themes of anticapitalism/american rot. I think it's kind of fucking cowardly that no named characters we meet in the entire rest of the game are in the cult. First off, seems like that'd be how you tie in that council subplot to the main narrative? Second off, it robs the cult of actually feeling like it has any personal connection to this place. Contrast with Twin Peaks where everyone in the idyllic small town does actually have some deep dark shit in their closet, Night in the Woods feels a bit too happy segregating all the cute quirky townsfolk with the "other, evil conservatives" who literally aren't even given a face. There is a way to do this sort of thing right too but the specifics of it here really don't do it for me. It doesn't help that every single character in the game steps a little too far over that line into twee Joss Whedon dialogue like my pithy opening joke, which took me out of quite a few moments.
I think this game absolutely has its heart in the right place and had some moments I really loved (and got me emotional at times, which is huge for a game like this to nail), but for a game that is entirely focused around its narrative, it also annoyed me at parts and didn't fully come together for me. I don't begrudge anyone who absolutely loves it though, I think I might just be a bit too cynical, lol.
...Anyway play Kentucky Route Zero