[P:B Flashback] Dialogue: Kentucky Route Zero

This co-authored piece reappears with the permission of Joe McCulloch.

I had to go get a routine (for me) blood test recently. My insurance situation had changed, so I had to go to a new location, at a hospital that I’d exited once but never entered. So on my way there, on a hot and too-humid morning, I kept getting turned around on side streets, even though I had directions right in front of me. The street zig-zagged at one point, you see, so I didn’t trust my bearings. I live in Chicago, but suburban areas can feel downright rural just from the contrast with the heavier sprawl even a few blocks away. Even a familiar place, with the sun in your eyes, can be another world for a half a block.

When I finally arrived, I ascended the west tower of the hospital’s office building and went up to a tiny window, where they claimed I didn’t have the right paperwork. I wound up trying to broker an arrangement between my doctor’s office and this laboratory using myself on the phone as a go-between, only to learn that the person who had looked for my file had made a typo or something, and the paperwork had existed all along. And then the way back, a minute’s walk at best, because I knew the path.

This can be what Kentucky Route Zero feels like. It can also feel like something wondrous, the flight of a giant eagle over a Baudrillard map, a pedal-wheel spinning through a fourth-dimensional wormhole, or the flats of a stage production falling away to reveal the shadow world beyond its walls. The joy and terror of being lost, but also the banality, I suppose. It’s a story about debt; living with it, and in a world changed by it. It’s very funny, and also very scary. Or vice versa.

Kentucky Road Zero is a five-act episodic game for the PC, which also includes free “demos” which are in fact interstitial chapters. You can find it here at the site of developers Cardboard Computer, and it comes highly recommended.

Another fan of the game is critic Joe McCulloch, a friend, infrequent P:B contributor, and sometime bassist for the band Foreigner. You can find him writing every week over at The Comics Journal and having fun with manga over at his tumblr. Joe and I decided to dig in deep and hash out this extraordinary game series, which at the time of this writing has reached Act III. We talk about everything; KR0 being a game of discovery, that may be worth considering before you progress. That said, it is as always and honor and a pleasure to host - and to write with - Joe; and this was a subject with plenty of meat for both of us.

A poem is the password...

[P:B Flashback] Adapt or Die: The Deadwood Finale

I love the series finale - by which I mean the third season finale - of Deadwood, one of my all-time favorite shows. This doesn't set me overly apart - it's an incredibly strong episode of an incredibly strong show - but what sets me apart just a little is that I think "Tell Him Something Pretty" is nearly perfect as a series finale.

Don't get me wrong - we all deserved the fourth season that we didn't get. The theatre troupe's subplot should have had the time for stronger resolution and integration, and the show should by all rights have ended with the Gem Saloon burning to the ground (for the first time). Knowing as much as we do, not only about what actually happened historically, but about David Milch's plans - the premiere would have featured Al, likely a town pariah at that point, coaxing Bullock out of his hole to give up the sheriff star) - makes the wound sting even now.

However, I think that Milch was actually able to bring things to a perfect close given what he had to work with, was able to tie up the thematic thrust of the show with no loose ends. He did it with three characters, two of whom were his own creations for the show, and one of whom has been unfairly maligned, I think, in looks back at the show and how it all played out.

[P:B Flashback] The Distance Between Sides of an Uncracked Egg - SMT: Nocturne and Space in Design

"P:B Flashback" denotes posts that originally appeared on the Project: Ballad site. These posts appear with minimal editing. This entry appears due to the current "Rebuilding" series focusing on MegaTen design.

I wasn't planning on writing another MegaTen-related post for a while, but I had this idea, oddly, while ruminating on Die Hard - which wasn't a connection that I'd planned to make. So here we are.

Game design is about manipulating spaces. This is as true for Tetris and Super Mario Bros. as much as it is narrative-heavy, expansive games of recent generations. It's actually something of a movement in gaming now (we've discussed this before [In a post on "Gaming Tourism" - Ed.]) that one of gaming's primary purposes should be conveying a space in which the player can exist, rather than (say) delivering a narrative. Regardless of how a developer views the spaces that they are manipulating, however, there are a number of significances that one can attach to an inhabited space.