The Polygon review of KRZ

[mendel]

In another thread, ilyaforpresident mentioned the polygon.com review of Kentucky Route Zero[www.polygon.com]. (Also be sure to go to the comments section and read the long comment by davidkma.)

The article made me realize that for most games, the aim is to make something happen on the screen. You can consult a walkthrough to make the things happen that need to happen, and they'll happen the same way for every player - the experience is mostly the same.
Games that diverge from this are usually open-world games - open-ended toolboxes like Minecraft or Sim City that allow/require players to pursue their own goals in their own ways to have fun.

Kentucky Route Zero is different in that the experience of thee game varies from player to player, yet the gameplay is essentially linear and you'll end up in th same place as everyone else. Sure, there are "sidequests" on the map, but you'll have to talk to Joseph, Weaver and Shannon to finish act 2. In an ordinary game, these talks would all go the same way: you'd have some dialog choices to make, and choosing the correct choices eventually gets you out of the dialog and moving on. There's little expectation that other players will experience the dialogue differently from you.

But that's not how the real world works. Everyone has had conversations where the person you're talking to just doesn't seem to get it - they experience the conversation differently from you, they discern and remember different aspects of it, and may disagree with you about "what just happened". The experience of that conversation, and our experience of other people, is shaped in our mind.
Good literature does this as well - it creates something in our minds, and that's what the book is really about. Still, it's largely the same for each reviewer, at least if they have the same cultural frame of reference from which to understand the book (but think of the poeple who love or hate Twilight!).

Kentucky Route Zero transcends this bound, much like performance art transcends the bounds of traditional art by being more accepting of the audience's part in shaping the art: art is a process that is only ever (half-)finished in the mind of the person who appreciates it.
KRZ uses writing coupled with game mechanics to do that. For one, there are "hidden" events that players may stumble upon on the roads, making for somewhat nonlinear gameplay; that's still fairly "mechanical". But there are also different dialogue options that don't really do much else than change the way you perceive that dialogue. For example, early on you get to choose how to address your dog. Through the game, it will still remain the same old dog in a straw hat, but you'll think of it as "Homer", "Blue", or some nameless old dog, and that subtly changes how you relate to it - or rather, it allows the story/game to express how you related to it all along.

Playing Kentucky Route Zero is a different experience for every player - not because the game is different for every player (it is that in part because of the nonlinear elements), but because it lets each player create a different experience of it in their own minds. (As a corollary, if your mind isn't open to resonate well with the game, the experience will suck.) Of course that's more or less true for every game (and in fact everything you do in your life), but Kentucky Route Zero is a game where this matters more than it does in other games. This is by design.
I believe even the abstractness of the artwork supports this.

Kentucky Route Zero is less of an interactive novel and more of interactive theatre: theatre has long since moved from the realistic to the abstract, to audience interaction. Jake Elliot and Tamas Kemenczy have taken far more than the act and scene numbering from theatre, getting us to make our own narrative experience from the script they have provided us with.

What fun!

[mendel]

Other reviews you may be interested in:
* Superlevel: Kentucky Fried Zero[superlevel.de] (in German)
* Rock, Paper, Shotgun: Interview: Kentucky Route Zero’s Mountain Of Meanings - (more KRZ at rps - Mountain of Meaning[www.janneteller.dk])

[ilyaforpresident]

After learning of KRZ, I played through the back catalog of Cardboard Computer (all online for free). The idea of participatory narrative has been a centerpiece in much of their work - Baloon Diaspora and Ruins being an evolution of sorts leading to the interactions of KRZ.

So in suport of everything mendel wrote above (which I happen to agree with), I'd like to make a few observations about the game, and about its save file... The save file is located in Documents/KentuckyRouteZero/save.krz and it's a human-readable XML file. Within, you can see the flags for various variables that the game keeps track of, and there are a few rather surprising moments.

Warning: potential spoilers for future acts below. You have been warned.

KRZ save file keeps track of both Act 1 and Limits & Demonstrations. It is already future-proof towards a "dummy" variable set for Act 2. The save file serves two functions - one is a record of player's progress, the second is a record of decisions that game developers find important to remember for posterity. The way the latter is stored sheds a light into the aesthetic treatment of both narrative and characterization materials in KRZ, and exposes a far greater complexity of the inner workings of things.

For instance, Shannon has an impression of Conway. In a "vanilla" save file, the default is "leather." By the end of my game, Shannon's impression of Conway is "shaky." I'd love to read the enum Jake and Tamas have going for this variable in particular, because these words in themselves are far from concrete - like most things in KRZ.

Many of the OVERWORLD locations have "completed" variables attached to them, specifically:

• diner
  
• country church
  
• barren river recc
  
• buffalo creek recc
  
• museum

The Museum is particularly interesting, as it houses a video game made by Joseph - make sure to speak to him to gain access to the archives.

Consider the possibilitiy that the Overworld is more than a collection of side-quests. To me, it certainly felt that it was the main part of the game. Its textural formal is there for a very good reason, as much of the descriptions focus on aspects that do not and could not work graphically. Like having the impression of Conway as "leather," the self-conained text adventures allow you to put a dollar into a man's whikey cup, or interact with a diner the interior of which you can not see. It isn't that they team did not have funds or time to make it work - it's that it couldn't work any other way.

Did you play Joesph's game in the Museum archive? Did you hear about other lights in the sky? Did the meteor strike? Did you let Shannon drive? Did you meet Carrington? Did you see two men pushing a plane down a deserted Kentuky road?

Life is not about getting to the end, and KRZ isn't either. You can choose to roleplay the game, looping round and round along country roads in search of dreamlike encounters. You can choose to be a goal-driven "this is just a game" rusher, focused on getting to the Zero as quickly as possible. You can also be a twitchy completionist, revisiting as many places as you can in search of every possible path. Naturally, you can choose to quit and ♥♥♥♥♥ about Steam's lack of refund policy, also.

But, to be clear - whatever you choose, you are being carefully watched, and tabs are being kept on what you have and have not discovered, what you did and did not see, what you did and did not ask. You're not a gallery patron, infusing art objects with meaning of your own. You are, instead, a lab rat led down a maze - a rat that's treated with enough respect to be given a human-readable unencrypted save file. (Better get pumped for Act 2.)

[OldGregg]

andy kaufman would be proud

[Hamburgris]

引用自 OldGregg：

andy kaufman would be proud

you've repeated this mantra in atleast two other posts and i still fail to see what the relevance is but you seem pretty proud of it

[Hairy Goober]

引用自 jacob：

引用自 OldGregg：

andy kaufman would be proud

you've repeated this mantra in atleast two other posts and i still fail to see what the relevance is but you seem pretty proud of it

I think he's going for that this is all a prank by the developers. Pretty stupid to pull one if you ask me. Or it's a hoax, and there's never gonna be an Act 2. I for one am glad I've yet to pick this game up, I think the idea of an episodic release is interesting, but if done like it has been here, all they've probably accomplished is convinced people to never touch any episodic games until they're completely released, if at all.

I still really want KRZ, but at this point I'll be waiting until all the Acts are out. I was going to jump on it when Act 2 showed up, but the heck with that. I've also told my interested friends to do the same. $25 is fine, if you stick to your release dates and don't put time limits that, going by Act 1's development time, you can't meet.

[Hamburgris]

i don't see where the developers gave a specific release date

[Hamburgris]

引用自 Royal Espionage：

引用自 jacob：

you've repeated this mantra in atleast two other posts and i still fail to see what the relevance is but you seem pretty proud of it

I think he's going for that this is all a prank by the developers. Pretty stupid to pull one if you ask me. Or it's a hoax, and there's never gonna be an Act 2.

thats happened never

[mendel]

引用自 jacob：

i don't see where the developers gave a specific release date

The Steam store page says (right now): "Act I is available now. Act II will be released around April 2013, and the remaining three acts over the rest of the year." That's not happening.
I still trust the two developers to deliver the game, but my confidence in their ability to predict when that's going to be is fairly low right now. :-P

[ilyaforpresident]

Act 2 did drop in April 2013.

[Hairy Goober]

引用自 jacob：

引用自 Royal Espionage：

I think he's going for that this is all a prank by the developers. Pretty stupid to pull one if you ask me. Or it's a hoax, and there's never gonna be an Act 2.

thats happened never

Clearly you've not been a gamer long if you think that. Look around at various bogus Kickstarter campaigns, or even an open-world pirate themed seafaring game I backed four years ago which turned out to be a slightly modified version of an unreleased and abandoned project. The "developers" of that one vanished into the ether with the cash, and left us something one could barely consider an alpha. The "in-game footage" we were shown turned out to be some slightly modified CGI scenes from an R-rated pirate kink movie. XD

[Hamburgris]

引用自 Royal Espionage：

引用自 jacob：

thats happened never

Clearly you've not been a gamer long if you think that. Look around at various bogus Kickstarter campaigns, or even an open-world pirate themed seafaring game I backed four years ago which turned out to be a slightly modified version of an unreleased and abandoned project. The "developers" of that one vanished into the ether with the cash, and left us something one could barely consider an alpha. The "in-game footage" we were shown turned out to be some slightly modified CGI scenes from an R-rated pirate kink movie. XD

why dont you give me an example instead of painting me as the ignorant one.XD. you are asserting its happened without giving me a single example besides some unnamed "pirate themed seafaring game". Just because you''re claiming to have been made a fool of by some amatuers one isolated time doesn't mean that happens on a frequent basis or to many people.

[OldGregg]

EXAMPLE DUKE NUKEM FOREVER THE DECADE LONG VAPORWARE TROLL

[OldGregg]

don't tell me it came out, that wasnt duke nukem. that was ♥♥♥♥.

[Hamburgris]

duke nukem isnt an admissible example in this case OldGregg. Review the discussion for some context.

[Hamburgris]

the enthusiasm is appreciated