At the beginning of the day, no one lives there. It's the same day as The Neighbors' funeral, and the same day a crew of outsiders arrive, laden with a truck of antiques destined for 5 Dogwood Drive. This is how the entire final act plays out - as a cat running wild through a small town the day after a biblical flood. The black feline still craves human connection, finding interest in the people puttering around the town, listening to their stories and even having simple conversations with them, meowing in response to their attention. Playing as a cat - well, a firefly leading a cat - doesn't feel all that different to playing as a human.
And by the end, the game is filled with tragic sunlight. 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. 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. Soulless corporations abandon the places and people they've helped build and destroy, respectively. 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. Fading memories, deserted boomtowns, dead friends, lost family members, unfinished projects, unkillable habits, unknowable truths. Kentucky Route Zero is a game about ghosts. Fittingly, Kentucky Route Zero is about the journey - not only to the end, but past it. 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. Kentucky Route Zero has never been a game about succinct storylines leading to a surprise ending. The game ends.ĭon't worry about spoilers here. The cat eventually stops at someone's feet. 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. The cat slinks through the sunny, swampy town above the Zero, romping along haphazard neighborhoods built on the ruins of long-lost civilizations. The Zero doesn't appear in the fifth act at all. 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. 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.
The ceremony ends, and folks wander away. Someone says everything is built over a graveyard. The old-timers tell them if they do, it'll be on top of a graveyard. Others, newcomers, are considering staying. Some have already fled, though their shadows still roam the streets. Around the gathering, green fields are soaked with muddy water, remnants of the incredible storm that rocked the community the night before, flooding buildings and knocking out power. The ceremony is genuine and solemn, filled with memories of The Neighbors and the town in equal measure. The setting sun bathes the town in gold as residents gather around a mound of dirt and an open hole, sharing haunting poetry and a song about the two bodies inside. The ceremony is in front of a towering dilapidated barn that serves as the anchor for a pastoral artists' community buried deep in the Kentucky woods.
KENTUCKY ROUTE ZERO ACT 1 FULL
You can always decompile the Unity assets files to see the full dialogue and check if you've read/seen everything & been everywhere… but, in my opinion, that's against the whole spirit of the game.It's a beautiful sight. But that's alright in this case, I think. I'm sure a few of those small text vignettes on the Zero, the psychedelic van, and other places are missed by many players… I even recently heard of a few people not knowing who Carrington was all together. The game's all about those cozy, hidden little places that you have to find for yourself, and it's much more about exploring and wandering than going through some sort of checklist. Different people explore different amounts, want to go out of their way to different extents, etc. (save files are locally-stored-would be a little creepy if they did have access to that though), the game isn't meant to be played any one way. you can drive up the scene count by leaving and going back to Equus Oils over and over.Īside from the fact they don't have statistics on what players have seen, etc. Unlimited, no? Scenes just dependent on when you enter certain locations at certain points, e.g.
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