This is the end of 'Kentucky Route Zero'
It doesn't matter that they're horses. The ceremony is genuine and solemn, filled with memories of The Neighbors and the town in equal measure. Around the gathering, green fields are soaked with muddy coque samsung galaxy a5 2017 strass water, remnants of the incredible storm that rocked the community the night before, flooding buildings and knocking out power. coque huawei People coque samsung 50 are talking about leaving. Some have already fled, though their shadows still roam the streets.
Others, coque samsung s7 noir et blanc newcomers, are considering staying. coque huawei p8 lite 2017 kawai They talk about rebuilding. iphone 11 case The coque samsung galaxy s6 avis old timers tell them if they do, it'll be on top of a graveyard. coque iphone Someone says everything is built over a graveyard. The ceremony ends, and folks wander away.
Players resume control of a lightning bug chased by a playful black cat, making its sleek form dart across flooded fields and past the giant well that leads to the Zero, a mysterious, monochromatic highway that operates outside the laws of physics and cardinal directions. As enigmatic as it is, the Zero is a constant factor of the first four acts, with players either looking for it or navigating its snaking pathways with a crew of misfits, alcoholics and orphans.
The Zero doesn't appear in the fifth act at all.
The cat slinks through the sunny, swampy town above the Zero, romping along haphazard neighborhoods built on the ruins of long lost civilizations. iphone 11 case Residents talk to the cat the way Conway, Shannon, Ezra, Junebug and Johnny used to speak to Blue and Val, the dogs they picked up on their way through the Zero. It's strangely familiar.
The cat eventually stops at someone's feet. The game ends.
Don't coque huawei p8 lite 2017 iron man worry about spoilers here. Kentucky Route Zero has never been a game coque huawei p8 lite rigide transparente raleuse ecriture about succinct storylines leading to a surprise ending. It's never been about the final scene; it's not even about the fifth and final act, delivered to players seven years after the first. Fittingly, Kentucky Route Zero is about the journey not only to coque samsung s6 attrape reve the end, but past it. Years after and before. Decades. Lifetimes.
Kentucky Route Zero is a game about ghosts. bijoux personnalise Fading memories, deserted boomtowns, dead friends, lost family members, unfinished projects, unkillable habits, unknowable truths. The first few acts are products of the sour stomach instability of the Great Recession in the early 2010s, and they encapsulate the hopeless melancholy of the time.
Soulless corporations abandon the places and people they've helped build and destroy, respectively. Dark roads are littered with surreal imagery giant birds pick up people's houses as needed; factory workers transform into invisible radioactive skeletons; impossible roadways are carved through quantum entangled tunnels. Characters fade in and out of the gameplay, each with their own path to follow, each with at least a small impact on the player's constructed reality. And by the end, the game is filled with tragic sunlight.
Playing as a cat well, a firefly leading a cat doesn't feel all that different to playing as a human. collier argent The black feline still craves creation coque samsung human connection, finding interest in the people puttering coque samsung j3 stylé around the town, listening to their stories and even having simple conversations coque samsung galaxy s7 dbz with them, meowing in response to their attention. This is how the entire final act plays out as a cat running wild through a small town the day after a biblical flood. It's the same day as The Neighbors' funeral, and the same day a crew of outsiders arrive, laden with a truck of antiques coque samsung galaxy j5 panda destined for 5 Dogwood Drive. At the beginning of the day, no one lives there. coque iphone goed hoesje By the end, it's packed with people and music. And a cat.
There's no wrong way to play Kentucky Route Zero, though there is one bit of advice for anyone diving into the final act on Steam or picking up the TV Edition for Switch, PlayStation 4 or Xbox One on January 28th: Don't neglect the interludes. Especially not the VR version of The Entertainment, the interlude between acts two and three. They may appear as subplots, but they're just as relevant to the story as any of the numbered chapters. Besides, there's no reason to rush to the end of this game. It's better to just slow down and absorb the ride.
KRZ creators react to their quotes from seven years agoSpeaking of memories, ghosts and memories of ghosts the artist collective known as Cardboard Computer announced Kentucky Route Zero in 2012, and the first act landed on Steam in 2013. The game stood out for its striking visuals, handled by Tamas Kemenczy; its slow burning narrative, courtesy of Jake Elliott and its haunting soundtrack, composed by Ben Babbitt.
Still, coque samsung glaxy j5 when Kentucky Route Zero was announced and its first act received a release date, plenty of people said they'd wait until all five chapters came out, so they could play it in one go. coque samsung The first season of Telltale's The Walking Dead had just wrapped up, taking one year for coque samsung twenty one pilots all five episodes to land. So, it seemed reasonable that Kentucky Route Zero would be out, in full, in about a year. The coque samsung galaxy grand prime cendrillon artists of Cardboard Computer even said as much.
Turns out, it took seven years for the full game to launch.
I interviewed Jake Elliott coque samsung a3 2016 samsung at GDC 2013, in between the debut of acts one and two, and I asked him about the game's release schedule, its themes and its ending. Seven years later and on the eve of the final episode's launch, I read bits of this interview back to the Cardboard Computer team.
Here, Elliott and Kemenczy react to their 2013 goals for Kentucky Route Zero, starting with the pledge to release all five episodes within one year:
This puts the final coque huawei p8 lite messi episode of Kentucky Route Zero out in January 2014, one year after the launch of episode one. coque iphone "It's pretty aggressive, but I think we've got our workflow down so well now that we feel good about it still," coque samsung galaxy s5 mickey Elliott says.
First, Elliott laughed. Then he said, "I think a lot of that was coming from a couple different things, one of which is obviously inexperience. I don't know if it would have been coque samsung s7 la belle et la bete possible to have any experience that would have prepared us for the way the project took shape. coque iphone Very early on, we had this idea about this platformer, and we had all these mechanical constraints, like about a fixed number of levels and stuff. Even when that started to fall away and the game changed shape, I think we hung on to the idea of the scope somehow magically remaining the same, even though it was a different game underneath it."
To hit this initial goal, the Cardboard Computer crew would've had to develop one episode every three to five months. coque samsung Looking back, Elliott calls that plan absurd.
"We just physically couldn't do it," Elliott said. bijoux pas cher coque samsung "We really put ourselves through a lot of pain there. Like, Tamas developed repetitive strain injuries in his wrists and stuff from making all the art for act two in such a short period of time."
The only way the original schedule might have maybe worked would've been with a sudden infusion of cash driven focus.
"Maybe if we had found a way to do it like that I don't know, maybe we would have taken on some investors and hired some more people or something," Elliott said. coque huawei p8 lite 2017 neymar "Or I don't know, huawei p8 lite 2017 coque rabat coque cuir we could have maybe found some solutions to hit that timeframe. But it would've been a really different game, and I'm glad we were able to slow down a little bit."
Next, I asked Elliott about the message behind the game. Back in 2013, he said it was all about our real world capitalist dystopia:
At its heart, Kentucky Route Zero is a game about credit default swaps, payday loans, sub prime mortgages and health insurance loopholes. Really. "It's in there," Elliott says. "Those are the esoteric devices that express themselves in some of the situations that you do, these people who are dealing with all these credit problems, dealing with debt. Those are these things that, by design, are too mysterious and we can't understand them. In finance, they do that on purpose."
"I probably played it up and was too specific about that stuff, but I don't know," Elliott said, pausing to consider the words of his ghost. "I still feel that way, through these coque samsung galaxy s3 diamant weird esoteric instruments that just immiserate us from the darkness. It is a sort of supernatural experience to be getting these weird bills in the mail with all this magical writing on them that's just going to fuck up your life for a little while. It's sort of the way that this weird structures and physical power and how they feel, you know"
Game developers have a similar power, with the ability to shape a player's reality and then impose hidden restrictions on coque samsung s6 marseille it. Elliott coque samsung galaxy core 4g smg386f continued, "I like tabletop games, too, but in video games, I like that you can have secret rules that the player doesn't know about. You can't really do that in a tabletop game because the players are the ones responsible for adjudicating the rules. coque samsung coque huawei But in a video game, you can do this weird, mysterious, mechanical stuff that the player maybe never understands."
And finally, we talked about the end. coque iphone In 2013, I asked Elliott if he knew how Kentucky Route Zero was going to conclude, and he said yes:
"It's a tragedy," Elliott says. coque huawei "The story's a tragedy, it's a tragic ending.