Kentucky Route Zero

Ah, darn. I didn't know about that. Well, I haven't made it far enough in to know if I'll really dig the soundtrack. At least I can have the MP3s.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Ah, darn. I didn't know about that. Well, I haven't made it far enough in to know if I'll really dig the soundtrack. At least I can have the MP3s.

If you decide you do need to have the soundtrack in FLAC, you can buy it from the composer's bandcamp site.

Dixie_Flatline wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Ah, darn. I didn't know about that. Well, I haven't made it far enough in to know if I'll really dig the soundtrack. At least I can have the MP3s.

If you decide you do need to have the soundtrack in FLAC, you can buy it from the composer's bandcamp site.

Sweet. Now I can stream it at work. I always like buying stuff off of bandcamp. If it ends up really grabbing me, maybe I'll throw some money at the composer in appreciation. Otherwise, MP3s will be fine.

I noticed that the bubble boxes with text at 2560x1440 seem to be bugged. The text goes outside of the bubble. I hope they end up fixing that.

I finally got around to playing Limits and Demonstrations. I think I held off because I was afraid of spoilers.

Spoiler:

Ha! It's even more confusing with context!

Love the tone of all of the pieces in the gallery, and it managed to be a meta-commentary on the whole project. Especially the audio-tape-based choose-your-own-adventure bit.

On top of that it's also the benchmark test to see if your computer has issues with the game. Which I think is commented on obliquely by the gallery pieces...I liked that.

Very atmospheric, like the main game, though I don't know how much of that was because I'd already played Act I.

Limits and Demonstrations is... interesting. It definitely feels like what it is, a tech demo in the style of the actual game. There are callbacks to the actual game, and the tape segment is probably the most interesting for me, but it's definitely not a "demo" in the sense we're used to thinking of one.

It seems to me like they should release the entirety of Chapter I as a free demo as soon as Chapter II is out. Now that there's no option to buy a single chapter, there's nothing to lose from that.

I'm not really sure what to make of Act I. I'm just very intrigued at this point. I look forward to the rest of it.

Wow. I'm playing through episode 1 a second time, which I didn't feel like I should do with The Walking Dead -- there, I didn't want to change the choices I'd made, but with KRZ I just want to savor the atmosphere again. I've run into a number of things I completely missed the first time, like the Diner.

Has anyone discovered the

Spoiler:

archive room

in the Museum?

Spoiler:

After the first time you visit the museum, go back to Equus Oils and talk to Joseph about it, as Conrad if you have Shannon with you. Ask him about the Museum up north. Then go back there and explore the room through the glass doors again.

After you've poked around there, go back and talk to Joseph again. There's some interesting hints about the underlying backstory. Also one peculiar discrepancy between what you find in the Museum, and what's hinted at in demo, Limits & Demonstrations.

Hey gang. Wanted to drop my feature in here for you all. Enjoy. See you all shortly for Act 2.

http://www.polygon.com/features/2013...

TheWanderer wrote:

Hey gang. Wanted to drop my feature in here for you all. Enjoy. See you all shortly for Act 2.

http://www.polygon.com/features/2013...

I haven't played this yet, but I really enjoyed the article. Thanks for linking to your work

Act II is out!

Saw that Steam had updated it, looked to see what had happened and it turned out to be Act II. Probably the least fanfare I've seen on a episode release.

Now, let's see what is up....

tanstaafl wrote:

Act II is out!

Saw that Steam had updated it, looked to see what had happened and it turned out to be Act II. Probably the least fanfare I've seen on a episode release.

Now, let's see what is up....

I'd bought the game directly from the developer prior to the availability of the Steam version, and they at least sent me an email

I'm really excited to check it out.

I think I'll avoid the third floor...

IMAGE(http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/920138415834824427/BAF9EC4C48811DFE316DE1AB0E354029A9DED757/)

tanstaafl wrote:

I think I'll avoid the third floor...

Spoiler:

They're friendly bears!

So, I finished Act II Chapter I tonight. Afterwards you get back on the Zero and can drive around. The map on the Zero itself is really neat - I like how they handle this aspect.

My feelings about this game are really complex, and I'm having trouble deciding whether I like it more than I'm annoyed by it.

There's an element to the game that feels just too... I don't know... intentional? Like they're simply trying too hard. The mysticism is laid on just a bit too thick, and at times it nearly comes off as a self parody. It teeters right on the edge of working versus not working for me, and my assessment varies from scene to scene.

I also feel kind of strongly now that the player does not have enough agency in this game. The "puzzles" are really minimal, and I have no sense yet that any of my choices matter beyond which quirky dialogue they trigger. I think I would be OK with that, except I'm not finding the quirky dialogue to be quite engaging enough all on its own.

Really, I want something to do. The driving sections give the player a bit of freedom, and they're cool and all, but I'm starting to get a bit bored with simply walking around and clicking things.

... and Conway walks really goddamn slowly.

I'm starting to think that the seeming lack of player agency may be part of the point.

If you look at a lot of the people KR0 is focusing on, they are people who don't have a lot of agency in their own lives. Most of them seem to be both controlled and ignored by larger entities; bureaucracies, corporations, banks, etc. They aren't in control of their own lives. So your experience as the player seems to be the same.

And Conway's injured leg seems to be becoming a bigger plot point. There's even a flashback to when he hurts it.

tanstaafl wrote:

I'm starting to think that the seeming lack of player agency may be part of the point.

If you look at a lot of the people KR0 is focusing on, they are people who don't have a lot of agency in their own lives. Most of them seem to be both controlled and ignored by larger entities; bureaucracies, corporations, banks, etc. They aren't in control of their own lives. So your experience as the player seems to be the same.

And Conway's injured leg seems to be becoming a bigger plot point. There's even a flashback to when he hurts it.

I certainly agree with that, and I want to reiterate that I'm not opposed to this kind of experience in a general, philosophical way. It just doesn't entirely work for me right now, since the actual moment to moment dialogue is becoming less satisfying to me over time.

If you're going to base the entirety (or at least the vast majority) of your "gameplay" on conversation trees, it's incumbent upon you to make the dialogue engaging and rewarding enough to stand on its own. I'm beginning to feel like (for me at least) that's not quite holding true, which is why I find myself yearning for a bit more interactivity to supplement it.

I think it could win me back, though.

bombsfall wrote:

Just got through Act 2 today and thus far nothing this year is coming close to touching this game as far as I'm concerned.

I just finished it. Coming off of The Last of Us, the story doesn't really get me emotionally in any way. Still, the art and music are great. I LOVE the Long Journey Home song. It's superb.

I love seeing this guy in the foreground when that song is playing.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/V0R1QA0l.jpg)

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

the story doesn't really get me emotionally in any way. Still, the art and music are great. I LOVE the Long Journey Home song. It's superb.

I sat down and finished A2 today, and I feel much the same way. I think the "story" just misses the mark for me, and I get an overwhelming sense that the writing is simply striving to be quirky for quirky's sake which robs it of any emotional impact.

KR0 is such a weird game. Visual and sound design is superb, flawless. The actual mechanics of how the story is told are excellent as well; I felt the final scene was especially clever. And yet despite all this, I find myself quickly becoming bored with the dialogue, just wanting to click through to get to the next environment to see what the game has to show me next.

I think there's a kernel of a really good game here, but it never quite fires on all cylinders for me. That's a shame, because this is a game I want to love, but at the end of the day I can only like.

bombsfall wrote:

NO F*CK YOU LIKE IT AS MUCH AS I DO

I will try harder next act!

Also, "umbrella" is the worst gun, ever. I didn't manage to kill anybody with that thing. It's like they don't even know what a video game is.

bombsfall wrote:

I have the exact opposite reaction to the story/writing- I think it's utterly brilliant and a million miles away from affected quirk (aside from things like the bears on floor three, but that's more of a gag). I went off on twitter about this so sorry if it's a repeat, but no other game that I've played so thoroughly captures and comments on inland, post-industrial America. Especially in a year that saw Bioshock:Infinite's "commentary" on the US (and by commentary I mean reason to blow sh*t up, that game has eff all to say about history or America), the subtlety and feeling in the environments and situations in KR0 are truly astounding to me.

I think it's generally successful in its iconography and set pieces, much less successful in conveying that any of its denizens are actually having meaningful interactions in these environments (or really, have many meaningful qualities at all). KR0's characters are enigmas by necessity, as they essentially inhabit a dreamscape and their motives are absurd.

KR0 is a strongly evocative game. It executes well, and it is wildly successful at creating powerful imagery, and I think this strength is either enough for you or it's not. For me, it doesn't quite carry the day; I find the actual characters and their interactions in these environments too... synthetic... for it to fully "work" for me as a game.

I'd still consider KR0 a triumph of some sort, and it's infinitely more engaging and thought provoking than generic sci-fi like Bioshock: Infinite. There are just elements here that don't entirely gel for me.

For me what really makes KR0 is the overall tone of the game. I could sit down and just meander through it for hours and really not care if I were experiencing a cohesive story.

Somebody else post something about A2! I want to talk about it more

I finally got around to playing Act II. The debt-and-hard-times themes are hitting pretty close to home; there's also a strong sense of loss: pretty much every character has lost something or someone.

I replayed Act I before I did Act II, and found some things that I hadn't seen before, like the airplane. Act I and Limits & Demonstrations were very much on my mind, so the opening of Act II was instantly relevant. All of the characters are getting a bit more development; I'm going to be very interested to see if they choose to tie everything together for them at the end, or leave it open-ended. Things do seem to be relating to each other at a larger level; these aren't just disconnected vignettes.

There is a background iconography that's gradually being developed (drive along the Zero and you'll start to see the motifs): an antenna, a television, a rowboat, animal bones...

I generally prefer clearer agency, but something about this approach works for me. There are meaningful choices here but they're not the kind of meaningful choices that we're used to making. It's really easy to miss out on a lot of dialog; the main path information is repeated, but background information, like where Weaver went after she left home, is easy to miss. The opening vignette has a easy-to-miss bit of paperwork that illuminates just what the Bureau does; for me it characterized the scene

I've recently come up with a distinction between reflective agency--choices that primarily just affect the player--and structural agency--choices that affect the system. Kentucky Route Zero obscures which choices have structural effects: some of them do, but it's impossible to tell in advance which ones will. However, most of the conversations have very heavy reflective choices: there's a lot of dialog that can be missed.

The missed dialogs may or may not have an effect later on, so we can't tell if there is a system behind the scenes that's judging our actions. I think this makes the surface information of the dialogs more important: the player's response to the choice is what's important, not the abstract consequence. How successful this is varies by player, but I think it does fit the mood of the game.

KRZ is closer to what Robin Arnott has termed 'videodreams' than it is to a traditional adventure game. Like Proteus repurposes the first-person controls to let the player explore generative music, KRZ repurposes adventure game tropes in a puzzleless exploration of ergodic vignettes.

I think it's instructive to look at Cardboard Computers' previous game, Balloon Diaspora. That game is closer to a traditional adventure game, but most of the conversational choices are reflective decisions that let the player react without assigning a consequence to that reaction.

I think the characters have motives as determined by the player, which gives us a kind of narrative agency that we are quite unused to. We can't give Conway a way to be good at fixing televisions; we can determine why he has trouble with the set. I think the default expectation in games tends to be that the gestalt is consistent: we expect all of the dialog choices to be true, as in Monkey Island using dialog trees to tell four different jokes at once. In KRZ the choices are mutually exclusive, or ambiguously true, which is much less common.

Spoiler:

I thought that the bureaucracy maze pulled its punches a little bit, with Shannon giving you the always-present shortcut to the exit. An actual maze would probably be really, really annoying, though.

The organ at the Bureau was nice. But then, I'm a sucker for all of the music in here.

I played a second time to follow the secret tourism brochure. Driving around on the Zero intensely with an obscure goal is a bit wearying; it's slightly easier to find the spots after visiting Storage.

I do like how the Zero turns the rolling-wheel interface on it's side. And how Julian completely changes how you view the roadmap.

There's several paths through the Museum of Dwellings, though that's not obvious at first. I loved the way that it presented the description through a future narration: very creepy when it started up without context. It'd be even weirder if it was diegetic: a tape that narrates your future action. (I guess we can leave that territory to The Stanley Parable. And Bastion, which this section also reminded me of.)

In general, the game does a pretty good job of implying that you've seen most of what there is, while still hiding a lot of stuff.

Speaking of which, there's a moment of deja vu on the Zero.

We've got the main characters, but there's an expanding cast of other characters we've been touching on. Lisa, Joseph, Weaver, Evan: connections keep popping up.

There's a museum in Act I? That I missed completely?

Yeah, there's a museum. It's closed but you can go inside and look around a bit.

I need to play through again to see how much I missed. Trying to keep a "complete" save going forward.

-50% on Steam at the moment! Dangnamit! To buy, or not to buy...

After sticking to my budget all through the Steam sale, I of course folded and impulse bought this. But this seems like exactly the sort of game I should play and want to support.

RnRClown wrote:

-50% on Steam at the moment! Dangnamit! To buy, or not to buy...

I know. Oh man! The temptations.

Oh the irony. I had been waiting the entire sale for this, but the budget has been used. Hopefully it will drop again for the Winter Sale or after my wallet has healed.

I bought a copy for a buddy, but I think I'm holding off for myself. I mean, it's not like the game is even half finished, so it's not like there's a huge rush to buy so I can play through it RIGHT NOW anyway.

I agree, waiting is probably prudent. I think, for me at least, it is just missing out on the interesting conversations that are happening around the game that is hard. I feel the same way about Kerbal right now, that game is technically, "yet to be finished as well." And still, there are some amazing stories.

If I purchase from the developer, do I get a key for Steam as well?