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!