![]() ![]() Ranging from despondent, bitter to hopeful, each choice holds a mirror to the player, asking them a basic question that games rarely if ever bother asking: “How do you feel?”īy doing so, Kentucky Route Zero is able to achieve something important: It includes the player in its narrative process even though the narrative is linear. Kentucky Route Zero’s musical centerpiece is similarly linear albeit with a key difference-the three choices you are offered at specific points in the song are of subtly different tones and moods. In Final Fantasy, players embody these characters who are essentially chained to the script themselves, the game too absorbed with its own narration to bother inviting the player into that process. The choices are reduced to simple right or wrong-where much like the rest of the series, the games aren’t interested in the motivation or intention of the player who made them. In the opera scene, the player has to rehearse lines from a script before performing them on-stage as Celes. The larger truth here, at least from the game’s context, is how differently each treats player choice within the context of their linear narratives. Both narrow their focus onto the aesthetic elements and reduce player interaction to purely text-based choices, capturing a microcosm of a larger truth through a magical musical performance. In more than a few ways, taking a left-of-center detour from the main plot that concludes with a musical set-piece puts this scene in direct comparison with Final Fantasy VI’s famous opera scene. It is here that the magical realist adventure finally lays bare the opaque heart filled with vague, amorphous intentions, giving the clearest hints of how its internal machinations work. The ambient piece with its minimal beat, swirling orchestral flourishes and emotive vocals encapsulates the ethereal beauty that lies at the heart of this game. Junebug and Johnny’s performance of “Too Late to Love You” to an almost empty tavern forms the musical centerpiece of Kentucky Route Zero’s latest act. But if there’s any recurring theme throughout the three acts of Cardboard Computer’s seminal and increasingly significant game it’s that sometimes the most important moments-the revelations you search desperately for-come where you least expect them, trapped in a haunted mine or a desolate dive bar under the quiet of the open night sky. In the third act of Kentucky Route Zero, when Conway and his ragtag group of companions enter the Lower Depths tavern, it’s supposed to be a simple detour-one borne more out of necessity than by choice. Now Ansh Patel explores how the game’s musical centerpiece exploits the relationship between player choice and a game’s narrative. ![]() Earlier today we named Kentucky Route Zero Act III our favorite game of 2014 so far. ![]()
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