Review by P.H. Higgins
“Modernism,” “modernity,” “modernist,” these words are not usually associated with video games. Digital mediums are given a pass to skip move directly to the “post-” of any movement: postmodern, post-human, etc. A quick search on the digital distribution site Steam reveals no games tagged with “modernism” or “modernist.” The only results that would come up would be happenstance due to title or description—Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, for instance, or a historical game about “building your empire from the stone age to the modern era.” “Postmodern,” however, one game that explicitly labels itself a “postmodern RPG,” as well as games that advertise “postmodern humor” in their writing or a “postmodern nightclub” for a setting. A quick search online comes up with plenty of lists featuring postmodern videogames: Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, to The Stanley Parable, to Off and Undertale. The term “modern” in reviews or lists usually means “contemporary,” rather than indicating genre, structure, or style. A few exceptional essays investigate the modern through digital mediums—see Mike Sell’s “Modernist Afterlives In Performance” and Nathan Wainstein’s “Can a Video Game Express Modernist Values?”1—though these retain a focus on art movements (Sell’s article is mainly asking whether a videogame avant-garde exists) or the structure of the gameplay (Wainstein’s review of You Died, a book about the game Dark Souls, focuses on the game’s difficulty), with little focus on the historical questions of modernism, or the expression of modernity as an era. All discussions concerning what, exactly, “postmodern” means aside, it appears that modernism is not—nor has ever been—in vogue among video game developers and critics.
To my knowledge, Kentucky Route Zero has never branded itself as modernist, but it is a term that always floats in the back of my mind when playing. It is something of an obnoxious cliche at this point to suggest that “artistic” games do not feature “play.” They are “experienced” or “engaged with.” Some experimental games get labeled, derogatorily, as “walking simulators” for focusing on exploring an environment without any combat, puzzles, or other mechanical obstacles. Kentucky Route Zero is not a walking simulator but it feels almost inappropriate to say that one “plays” it. That said, the game consciously references the genre of a play—the kind you see on a stage—with its five-act structure, dialogue that appears like a script, a reoccurring character who is supposed to be a playwright. To suggest that Kentucky Route Zero is not “played” is to say that it does not fit into the common descriptions of play encountered in contemporary games. It is indeed more akin to being an actor onstage or a director guiding a production. For anyone who has participated in collaborative theatre, Kentucky Route Zero is reminiscent of the brainstorming, the “how does the character react?” and “how do we represent this for the audience?” that comes with preparing a show. While there are certainly many games now that emphasize compelling narratives or artful writing, this framework—this kind of play—is what sets Kentucky Route Zero apart from many of its contemporaries.
The mechanics of the game mainly consist of, one, moving around via point-and-click; and two, talking to people by selecting dialogue options. However, there is almost nothing about these dialogue options that impact the events as-such in the game. While it is possible to miss an encounter with a character by choosing to, say, go down one path and not another, there is never a dialogue option that in-itself prevents you from discovering a route or making a choice. You cannot save a character’s life if you uncover their secrets, nor can you unlock a hidden location by gaining enough points. The dialogue resists being judged as a mechanism for acquiring rewards—it demands to be considered on its own merits. The game does not ask the player to “roleplay” in the fashion of popular choice-driven games like Mass Effect. Do I tell a stranger that an old dog’s name is Blue, or are they just called Dog? Does this character ask for coffee at the diner, or not? Many narrative-driven games like to add in flavorful choices with little or no narrative impact, intended to allow the player to give personality to the avatar they control, but Kentucky Route Zero moves beyond mere characterization. Every line extends beyond the individual character speaking into the very texture of the scene itself. Like a stage play, it is all about building the details into a coherent whole, even when the scene is supposed to appear fragmentary or incomplete. The question is not, “does this fit what the character should say?” but, “does this contribute to everything that is happening and has happened in this production?”
Unlike a scripted stage play, however, one is not aware of the scenes that wait ahead while playing—a point emphasized by the gradual release of the game over seven years, with the first act released in 2013 and the fifth at the start of 2020. This longevity points towards another defining feature of Kentucky Route Zero: its unparalleled patience. The game plays with genre and style, introducing strange and surreal elements: characters fly on massive birds; a pair of characters, who appear quite human, are supposed to be robots; the third floor of an office building is full of bears (conveniently labeled on the elevator as “Bears”); workers at a power company transform into glowing skeletons over time. But the game never throws these elements around haphazardly, merely rushing you through uncanny scene after uncanny scene. Everything is introduced at its own pace, with movement, dialogue, the environment itself extending each moment until it fades out slowly, like taillights down a dark tunnel. There is something uneasy about the game, but not in the way a David Lynch film is uneasy—there is no horror here, surreal or otherwise. The components of every scene are always ready to shift, for something to come and rearrange what has just reached equilibrium; even then, the transformations are slow. This game is not a brick through a window, but a burning wick melting candlewax into strange shapes. In addition to the visuals and writing, this patience is enhanced with sound. Every episode features a full song with lyrics, sometimes appearing in the middle of a scene, often encouraging the player to take their time, and let everything play out until the final note has been played.
Is patience, though, a defining characteristic of modernism? Modernity is an age of things speeding up, of industrialization, global interconnection. Modernist works are rife with abrupt absurdity and suddenness; the Futurists—Italian and Russian—created plays and poems that suggested acceleration, bombastic destruction, while Joyce’s longer works shift thoughts and style mid-sentence. At the same time, early modernism includes the intimate realism of the Kammerspielfilm and the seven-volume semi-biography of Proust; late modernism could include the (intentionally) meaningless silences of Samuel Becket among its ranks, as well as the mundane neorealism of The Bicycle Thieves. Of course, patience is not merely waiting for a long time—repeated interruptions and infractions can test patience too. In a way, “patience” is much like the “difficulty” that Wainstein uses to connect Dark Souls to modernist values. So, why prioritize “patience” over “difficulty”? To look at Wainstein’s example, I would argue that, while Dark Souls is certainly very difficult, this difficulty works to emphasize patience on the part of the player. Only by patiently engaging with the game on its terms is one able to take in the environment, the elusive and unclear narrative threads, as well as advance and discover more through mastering the combat. Kentucky Route Zero encourages patience without much mechanical difficulty at all; there is no way to fail the game, and it would probably require real effort by the player to get stuck. One could argue that the difficulty of Kentucky Route Zero lies in its slow burn, like a Tarkovsky film, or the long and dry opening chapters of Ulysses. Perhaps Kentucky Route Zero cherishes the prospect of having a different kind of audience—one that is not interested in shooting down Nazis or casting fireballs at orcs—but it certainly doesn’t seem to talk down to players or waste their time. The game merely wears its heart on its sleeve and leaves you to decide whether it is the right flavor for you. There is no “culling the herd” to separate the audience into the strong and the weak before the game reveals its colors: it is what it is from the first moment to the last.
But what about era? Is Kentucky Route Zero not stuck with the rest of us after modernity has already passed? This game is not a contemporary of William Faulkner or Flannery O’Conner, despite explicit references to and influence from these writers.2 The game’s setting engages with de-industrializing rural landscapes with old 50s gas stations and broken down mines, remnants of the promises of high modern development. Everything has been fragmented, first by the appearance of The Consolidated Power Company, then by the subsequent withdrawal of the self-same Company; local jobs replaced and then abandoned again, the power—tellingly— consolidated and taken away to offices and . But for all the folk songs and the old trucks, all the literary references and meta commentaries, Kentucky Route Zero is more about remembrance than nostalgia or pastiche. The game would rather bury a dead horse than beat it, but expect a mournful hymn after the dirt is in the ground. It pushes against the limits of its form, certainly, though it walks a fine line between the unique and the universal, seeking to give words to that which cannot be communicated in general terms because it is beyond any one voice to express. The unique, the interruptions of fantasy and surrealism, the form that breaks down on itself, are the only means available to express an inexpressible totality. It is the patient, prolonged engagement with the game’s strange environments and characters in the present that gives light to memories. Both the memories of the characters that we uncover and define through dialogue and exploration, as well as the memories and reflections of the player that find synchronicity and associations within the dreamlike imagery and dry conversation on the screen.
Kentucky Route Zero invites the player to reminisce about the comedy and tragedy of everyday life in the fashion of an intimate, slightly tipsy, conversation with a friend. Humor and melancholy blend together, along with alienation and comradery. Things get a bit strange at moments, memory might be a little foggy, but life feels a little more certain afterwards, if only because everything that seems impossible to communicate has found some strange means—however temporary—of being shared. Here, precisely in this half-formed reminiscence, the everyday becomes the unusual and norms become questionable. Alien, malleable, but not merely arbitrary.
Perhaps the reflection and patience that Kentucky Route Zero displays are values that belong to some kind of neo-modernism, rather than post-modernism or “first wave” modernism. It is not afraid to play with genre and form in order to “make it new” (to quote the ever-controversial Ezra Pound), but it does not eagerly rush ahead to break down all barriers and deface all monuments. The writing engages with the literary canon without falling into referential cul-de-sacs or begging for an ever-elusive authenticity; nor does it lapse into overwrought romanticism, even as it ruminates on the past, on losses, on memories, on hinterlands simultaneously abandoned and cherished. Kentucky Route Zero may turn assumptions on their head, but it would do so to bring about a pause, let thoughts wander, and uncover potential routes less traveled. Everything is thrown up into the air, yet the game is not willing to suggest that things can—or should—stay that way; transformation must seek direction, not merely float in perpetual uncertainty. Change is not condemned; its orientation is simply questioned. Everything about the world is simultaneously melting away and rebuilding, though the dreams of high modern cosmopolitanism and urbanity appeared to have failed: growth and transformation have led to new standardizations and bureaucracies all their own, personal connections and contributions forced to comply with the standards of higher powers. At the same time, uprooted traditions and wanderers meet in the very spaces that have been abandoned by the forces of industrial modernity to produce communities and activities of their own. Whether this is resistance to modernity, or is merely one aspect of it, is unclear; nevertheless, one wonders—are the forces and values that drive total social change open to new transformations themselves?
To claim that Kentucky Route Zero is single-handedly ushering in neo-modern gaming would be too much, but the game reveals new horizons for digital mediums. It carries the same weight as any high modernist poem, novel, or film. Even those who do not normally play videogames should take the time to consider what Kentucky Route Zero has to offer.
1 Mike Sell, “Modernist Afterlives in Performance—Playing the Avant-Garde: The Aesthetics, Narratives, and Communities of Video Game Vanguards,” Modernism/modernity, October 10, 2019, https://modernismmodernity.org/articles/playing-avant-garde; Nathan Wainstein, “Can a Videogame Express Modernist Values?” LA Review of Books, October 21, 2020, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/can-a-video-game-express-modernist-values/.
2 Jason Johnson, “Kentucky Route Zero Puts the Southern Gothic World of Faulkner and O’Connor On Centerstage,” January 29, 2013, https://killscreen.com/previously/articles/kentucky-route-zero-past-never-dead-its-not-even-past/.
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