Kentucky Route Zero TV Edition, Part Two
Feb. 20th, 2020 07:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingThere are things I really like about this game, and there are things I really don't like about this game.
I'm afraid that the things I dislike about it are the things a lot of other people seem to enjoy, so I'm conflicted.
To give an example, I dislike the fan-favorite character Junebug immensely. This surprised me, because "an industrial robot who became sapient, escaped her servitude, and is now a traveling musician who is habitually late to everything" should be right up my alley. It's not so much the character that bothers me, however, but rather the ways the character is shaped by how the game works (and doesn't work).
I guess it's fair to say that Kentucky Route Zero takes some big swings. When it hits, it hits hard, but there are a lot of misses.
I think maybe it's worth finishing the game first and waiting to write about it only once I start over from the beginning.
When the semester settles down a bit, I'd like to do the same thing with Gris. There were a lot of things about the game that annoyed me when I first played it, but I appreciated it more afterI stopped sucking at it everything started to fit together toward the end.
I'm afraid that the things I dislike about it are the things a lot of other people seem to enjoy, so I'm conflicted.
To give an example, I dislike the fan-favorite character Junebug immensely. This surprised me, because "an industrial robot who became sapient, escaped her servitude, and is now a traveling musician who is habitually late to everything" should be right up my alley. It's not so much the character that bothers me, however, but rather the ways the character is shaped by how the game works (and doesn't work).
I guess it's fair to say that Kentucky Route Zero takes some big swings. When it hits, it hits hard, but there are a lot of misses.
I think maybe it's worth finishing the game first and waiting to write about it only once I start over from the beginning.
When the semester settles down a bit, I'd like to do the same thing with Gris. There were a lot of things about the game that annoyed me when I first played it, but I appreciated it more after
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Date: 2020-02-20 02:53 pm (UTC)There are definitely parts of the game that just don't work for me, either. There's a handful of pacing issues, mostly in Acts III and IV (especially IV I have thoughts on this Act), that drive me up a wall. And not all the interludes are on equal footing; I've yet to find someone who genuinely 100% loved The Entertainment Interlude. And while Junebug is my favorite character, I can get not digging her (and would love to hear more from you about your dislike in regards to her!)
I waited a couple weeks for the experience to settle in before I wrote up anything to see what still resonated with me. Granted, my boyfriend and I talked about it for hours after finishing it and his ultimate takeaway was, "It was a really good story, not a good game, and Act V was better than all the other acts combined." And I mostly agree with that, too.
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Date: 2020-02-23 10:20 pm (UTC)I love The Entertainment interlude with all of my heart.
Meanwhile, I could not stand the "Too Late to Love You Now" performance, which felt so cringeworthy that it became a borderline ragequit moment for me. Like, I appreciate the Twin Peaks reference, but I don't understand where that scene was coming from or what it was trying to do.
As far as I can tell, I am in a very distinct minority in my opinions regarding this game, and I feel like I need more time to read other people's thoughts, preferably in light of understanding the endgame.
What I really feel, though, is that I'd rather be reading a novel of this game. I think there's a lot of stuff I'm missing because I've picked the "wrong" dialogue choices (or just gotten impatient), and resent having to spend half the game on the wiki trying to figure out who certain characters are and what's supposed to be going on.
It's like, I got a lot more out of Night in the Woods during my second playthrough, but I didn't feel like I was missing anything crucially important to my experience of the game while I played it for the first time without a walkthrough, you know?
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Date: 2020-02-24 04:45 pm (UTC)The "Too Late to Love You Now" performance was one of my favorites. It reminded me a lot of the opera scene in VI, expect you made the song your own. I also felt the song itself tied to a majority of the themes revolving around the story. Not so much on a surface level, but on a deeper level. Or it could just be Not That Deep, which is fine, too - it's a pretty song.
And in general, that's what I love about the game - you make it your own. It's less about right and wrong dialogue choices and more about what you want to reveal in the world and the people who live in it. But I also had a sense of "oh crap, I'm picking wrong options and missing stuff" the first hour and a half of it. And I also had moments that left me thinking, "What the hell was the point of even talking to that person?" I don't know if the story would resonate with me as much if it was just a novel, though I've definitely felt that in regards to a lot of games.
Whereas with Night in the Woods, when I realized halfway through that you experience different things depending on who you hangout with, I was so sad, because I did feel like I was missing stuff, even if it wasn't anything crucial to the story. Which is just another reason to replay it (I still haven't, but I plan to at some point), but it also meant I viewed certain characters I certain way because I never hung out with them. And I'm sure my views will (hopefully) change in a second playthrough.