Project Kentucky Route Zero: Act IV
Tags: Videogames, Reaction, Gaming, Letters, Kentucky Route Zero

Dear Gavin,

I definitely sense a downtempo switch in KRZ’s tone with the transition from III to IV. You spoke previously about how Conway’s journey is not our own, and how that unsettles you as a player. I agree as well that Act IV is when the game finally drives home the inevitability of Conway’s (and by extension his companions’) journey as they near the end. Up until this point, we’re given the impression that “all the world’s a stage”, and we’re the directors choosing what each character says and therefore, what each character does. But the Mucky Mammoth only floats one way down the Echo River and the only choices we get are whether we decide to explore each of the pit-stops.

No clarity is offered by any of the encounters on shore. I’m not sure what the exact takeaway was from the psych research performed at Radvansky Center. If anything, things only get murkier the further you travel the Echo. Funny you should mention the Iron Pariah though; I did encounter it while mushroom-picking with Cate. The double stream-of-consciousness dialogue between Cate and Ezra lulled me into such a mesmeric state that when the dull droning of the ambient soundtrack gave way to the mournful yowling of the cats aboard the Pariah, it gave me goosebumps. Carrington was right about how theatre is mostly acoustics, after all. A contrasting quieter scene of Cate and Conway’s dogs resting together gave me a clue about where the ferry, and our crew may be headed.

Act IV is made up of fragments, and there’s no right or wrong way to put them together. Conway’s on a bender. Shannon’s unsure of what she wants to do about Conway being left behind in servitude to Hard Times. Junebug and Johnny mull about what adopting Ezra might mean for their independence. No one knows where they’ll end up and Act IV’s psychogeography reflects this. I’m sure we’ve all had those moments where we’re torn between anxiety and ennui, and all we can do is continue watching TV, or make an excursion somewhere for no reason other than a change of scenery. For me, there was a constant foreboding in delaying Conway’s complete transformation into one of the worker skeletons at the distillery. The stillness in this act was that of a hospital’s late night hallway, while you’re waiting to hear from the doctor. You have an inkling of the prognosis, but you don’t want to be right about it. I was gutted at how quick and unceremonious Conway’s final transformation was, but I was also stunned into a sort of defensive apathy.

Regarding any critiques on capitalism and who it affects, KRZ often suffuses key moments with a sort of visual gallows humour that extends to wordplay as well. I’m not sure why it took me so long to realize the literalness of the two men with the plane as embodying “no shoes, no shirt, and no service.” Will himself quips about how he also now is without shoes after his stint in academia, and Conway’s lost “an arm and a leg” to Hard Times. Moments like these are sharply contrasted by the barely contained rage of the memorial for the lost Elkhorn miners.

I agree that the Echo functions as a limbo, but there’s a melancholic undercurrent running along its course. Detritus floats in the river. Sam and Ida’s shellacked table gives the impression of someone’s last meal (despite it actually being a souvenir of their restaurant’s most successful night), and the bat sanctuary features that fierce memorial, a tiny spit of land piled high and surrounded by hardhats. Considering that this is the act where we lose Conway, it’s hard not to view the Echo as a reference to the Styx, and Will being its Charon figure (albeit a much more laissez-faire one). Act IV seems very much concerned with returning to the void, of closing the loop. I think of the gas station attendant who revelled in being anonymous in a city crowd, who stated that “There’s dignity in being forgotten, letting the crowd flow around you unspoiled.” I feel this statement captures part of Conway’s state of mind as he transformed into one of the skeletons from Hard Times, the sentiment of settling up so that you can die with a clean conscience (especially considering Conway’s assumed guilt over Charlie’s death).

I take back what I said of the Radvansky Center, in fact, as I realize that those tests Shannon and the others took all revolved around memory loss and how that affects our emotions. Perhaps Act IV wants us to confront how the enormity of certain transitions in our lives unmoor us in the same way that Conway is unmoored and drifting without his debt. He even jokes to Shannon, referencing psychologist Gabriel Radvansky’s research (whom the center is named after) about crossing thresholds and memory, that perhaps he could follow a “brain-crumb trail” back to the room he was born in.

There’s been a paradoxical wealth of art and theory produced over the concept of becoming, as you put it, indentured to emptiness or ruminating about what returning to zero means. In an essay from a collection discussing an art exhibition exploring the concept of nothing, Graham Gussin states that an abyss can be perceived as either “a trap or a desired abstraction.” Perhaps the reason that our crew can’t get back on Route Zero is due to the fact that they’ve all, save Conway, been set adrift. Lula did mention in Act II that one must travel with intention along the Zero, after all. Under the kind of dystopian capitalism these characters experience, social connections become strained and abstracted. We can see this in how characters like the workers at the exchange have become very isolated due to the power company’s automation and redistribution of work. Poppy, for instance, does the work of a previous team of 13 switchboard operators. Human touch is becoming a scarce commodity in KRZ’s world and its inhabitants are almost wholly defined by their professions, whether they be bartenders or neon skeleton drivers. Though Clara’s concert itself was unremarkable, two aspects stuck out for me: firstly, the mention of how an instrument like the theremin requires no touch and secondly, how in Junebug and Johnny’s memories they remember an audience sitting in fear of such an instrument bringing down the roof of a greenhouse upon them.

As you have noticed with many things in Act IV, there’s no tidy resolution or revelation, and I do find this intentional. As the camera ascended the exit via the well at the end of the Echo and gave us a bird’s-eye-view of Shannon and the others leaving Conway’s truck behind as they left, I thought of a theatre in the round. This visual cue was a reminder that KRZ is not telling us a cinematic story, but a theatrical one which is hyper-aware of its audience. There’s a push and pull to making a video game draw on the language of an analog medium like theatre, and I feel this is one key to why we constantly feel disoriented the farther we proceed in the narrative. The typical player craves interaction and control, but we’re merely observers. As Yussef Cole has discussed regarding KRZ’s theatricality, there’s intimacy between the audience and the cast, but ultimately our function is to bear witness.

What we’re ultimately meant to bear witness to, however, remains obscure. Like the gas station attendant, we are the anonymous observer. Our “duty is to the crowd.” But there’s dignity in that.

~ P.