Kentucky Route Zero is in one way a collection of stories intertwined between ghostly caricatures of the past, complicated stressed and living individuals, and government and environmental factors that work in such mysterious and incomprehensible ways to the denizens living underneath and on it that they might as well be supernatural, and which they are shown as within the entire work.
Every Act has interesting messages to tell, and lives to reflect on and shed a tear with. By the time everyone comes together to mourn the end of the journey, each person is fleshed out further than the featureless faces that adorn them would suggest. The game touches on several aspects of a decaying shifting void that is midwest America, whether that be the brainwashing ghastly denizens of corporations that push people into the neverending spiral debt hole they craft, or the old denizens on the high mountain scattered long after their nature project failed with an attachment to a dingy computer program that sounds constant static. There isn't really a single piece in here that feels without purpose or really in the wrong space at all. It is dense, certainly a less explicit piece than most, and a large amount of factors that make up the whole are something that it intentionally encourages you to research on your own. Each dialogue in their own points to several meta and thematic factors that don't just have to do with the characters at the receiving end of each line.
The visuals and music are just as thematically placed, each a perfect painting and screenshot in of itself. A lot of work was put into matching the perspective of the characters and where the camera is placed. A few specific examples that stand out to me is the revolving passage of time in Act 5, as a cat hearing everyone mourn and discuss where they're going, or the overbearing perspective when you move about the Hard Times. Or my favorite part, The Entertainment, as you bounce between each painfully depressing line.
I won't claim to understand all of what I saw as I played through the game, and honestly there are a lot of things that are too subtle for me to catch on, or maybe I'm just not in tuned enough to just get it. But that's fine. It's still a masterpiece of the medium, something I wish to see considered in high regard for the recognizable future. I hope it inspires people as much as it teaches me on aspects of life I've never been a part of or could directly relate to. It's a perfect encapsulation of what it sets out, and I was very emotionally invested. I highly recommend getting Kentucky Route Zero.
Every Act has interesting messages to tell, and lives to reflect on and shed a tear with. By the time everyone comes together to mourn the end of the journey, each person is fleshed out further than the featureless faces that adorn them would suggest. The game touches on several aspects of a decaying shifting void that is midwest America, whether that be the brainwashing ghastly denizens of corporations that push people into the neverending spiral debt hole they craft, or the old denizens on the high mountain scattered long after their nature project failed with an attachment to a dingy computer program that sounds constant static. There isn't really a single piece in here that feels without purpose or really in the wrong space at all. It is dense, certainly a less explicit piece than most, and a large amount of factors that make up the whole are something that it intentionally encourages you to research on your own. Each dialogue in their own points to several meta and thematic factors that don't just have to do with the characters at the receiving end of each line.
The visuals and music are just as thematically placed, each a perfect painting and screenshot in of itself. A lot of work was put into matching the perspective of the characters and where the camera is placed. A few specific examples that stand out to me is the revolving passage of time in Act 5, as a cat hearing everyone mourn and discuss where they're going, or the overbearing perspective when you move about the Hard Times. Or my favorite part, The Entertainment, as you bounce between each painfully depressing line.
I won't claim to understand all of what I saw as I played through the game, and honestly there are a lot of things that are too subtle for me to catch on, or maybe I'm just not in tuned enough to just get it. But that's fine. It's still a masterpiece of the medium, something I wish to see considered in high regard for the recognizable future. I hope it inspires people as much as it teaches me on aspects of life I've never been a part of or could directly relate to. It's a perfect encapsulation of what it sets out, and I was very emotionally invested. I highly recommend getting Kentucky Route Zero.