![]() While the overall narrative won’t shift, choices can quietly change future details, giving Kentucky Route Zero a subtle dynamism. They put some text in there that’s just hints and most of it is just happening in the minds of players and on forum threads. “I think Dark Souls also is really good at being very economical with the way it uses lore. That stuff really speaks to me as an artist.” In Kentucky Route Zero, letting the player take a part in how a character reacts emotionally doesn’t require animation or voice work, just text. “It has this really engaging story about a metaphysical journey but it’s so economical. Elliott was inspired by films like Peter Greenaway’s A Walk Through H, in which a narrator tells the story of a journey as the camera slowly pans over a series of hand-drawn maps. This particular form of influence over the characters’ inner lives also lends Kentucky Route Zero much of its economy, where lives are suggested in just a few lines. You know they won’t really shift the narrative but they have a knack of letting the characters breathe, and you get a greater idea of who they are, and who they could be. But he could be more insightful or more assertive if I chose other options. He’s a gentle and uncomplicated man he speaks as he sees, and doesn’t see very much. Perhaps we’re also directors of this story, because I have my own Conway. “Our surface level treatment of dialogue was to show it as though you are maybe watching a play from a distance, maybe too far to hear the actors speaking, so you’re reading along with the script or something like that,” its writer and programmer, Jake Elliott, tells me.īut the choices you’re given are still meaningful. Its players aren’t fully under our control, and our perspective constantly shifts between them as the game requires. We’re more observers than participants in Kentucky Route Zero. So when Conway talks to his dog about Equus Oils you know his take on the place, simply through the list of choices, regardless of which you ultimately choose. That’s because the power of the design lies in the fact that the choices themselves give you insight into the interior and exterior lives on the screen. Instead, what’s said is said and you have to leave it behind you.įor all their simplicity, these conversations play out far more naturalistically than anything by LucasArts, or indeed BioWare, and through the subtlety of both the design and writing. Unlike those of LucasArts, most conversations don’t branch and come back on themselves, so you can’t wring every last bit of drama from them by exploring every option. They look just like those of any LucasArts classic.īut you soon realise there’s more going on, and yet with less. When Kentucky Route Zero presents you with a set of options for how its characters will respond to a prompt, it seems simple. But Kentucky Route Zero employs a twist of design that makes a world of difference: ![]() And the technology that lies behind them is ancient, wielded by games pretty much since their advent. Telling a story which balances the bizarre with the everyday, it communicates so much with so few words. Weighted by exposition and lumpen characterisation, it tends to lumber, but I love the dialogue in Kentucky Route Zero. ![]() I haven’t a lot of patience for dialogue in games. This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the inner workings of their games.
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