Goodbye, Kentucky Route Zero

I’ve spent much of my adult life alongside Kentucky Route Zero. First released in 2013 and planned as a five-installment episodic game, it’s been lurking in my Game of the Year lists for five of the past seven years now. With Kentucky Route Zero Act V finally out at the beginning of 2020, it’s time to say goodbye to a work that’s seriously changed how I view games as a medium. 

It’s appropriate, then, that Act V is a game about the hidden complexity in goodbyes, about friends parting and that strange in-between period where you’re trying to figure out what’s next, who you’re carrying on with, and who you’re leaving behind. But most importantly, it’s about using that goodbye to figure out your next destination, what you need in that moment, and who’s going to carry on alongside you.

In a lot of ways, Act V is about Conway, the initial character you get to know way back at the beginning of Act I. Maybe it’s a strange thing to say given that the game largely revolves around his point of view, but in Act V, he’s completely absent and barely even mentioned. The delivery that started it all finally makes its way to its esoteric destination, 5 Dogwood Drive, but without its delivery man. With no one but his dog, Conway began the journey of his last delivery, heavy of heart and burdened by past mistakes. Along the way he assembled a motley crew, including TV repairwoman Shannon, an orphan boy Ezra, and robotic performers Junebug and Johnny. But as he got closer with them, something was pulling him away at the same time, manifesting as a glowing leg bone where his leg used to be. By the end of Kentucky Route Zero Act IV, Conway fully transformed into a glowing skeleton and went away with two other glowing skeletons, abandoning his companions for a new group of unnamed, faceless ones. After that, Conway’s arc is seemingly over.

But his presence lingers still in Act V. Controlling a cat listening in on conversations across an isolated village after a flood, you hear Conway’s former troupe contemplating what’s next for them after they finish the delivery he started. Shannon’s search for her sister Weaver, Ezra’s desire to not be alone, and Johnny and Junebug’s general outsider status were all loads that they were passively helping each other carry. Each member of the cavalcade starts thinking about their next destination, and who they’re going to make that journey with. But not before attending a funeral for two horses who died in the storm the previous night as a woman sings a haunting rendition of “I’m Going That Way”. An entire community is saying goodbye to one of its own, though through the lens of a group on the outside of a community looking in.

And yet the funeral serves as a thematic goodbye to Conway, whose fate past Act IV is totally unexplained. But that’s how life is sometimes. We accompany each other on journeys, sometimes from the beginning, sometimes joining in the middle, and then break off again at different moments. This happened with Conway as he joined the other glowing skeletons. And even then, it’s because he was already isolated from Shannon and the rest thanks to his lingering issues with addiction and debt. Earlier in the story, they encountered the Hard Times Distillery, a place staffed entirely by the same glowing skeletons that Conway turns into. While there, his alcoholism got the best of him and he drank an expensive bottle of whiskey, indebting him to the distillery. 

This incident echoes the issues that started before we met Conway. These are never fully explained, but one thing is clear: Something painful in his past is isolating him, and even being around Shannon and the rest of the gang isn’t enough to break him out of that. From the moment he drank that expensive alcohol, Conway became more distant even as the rest of the party grew closer. Act V is also about reassessing what, if anything, keeps them together now that the pretext is done, examining themselves, and deciding what’s next from there.

It’s true that we need each other in isolating times. And sometimes just the mere presence of people we care about is enough. But the people  we need to help us with our difficult journeys aren’t always who we find ourselves surrounded by. Conway disappeared with the other skeletons not just to settle up his debt to the distillery, but also because that’s where he needed to be in that moment, surrounded by people who understand what he’s going through and are in a position to help him heal. In that moment, he split from the previous group to join those who can relate to him better and help him break out of his isolation.

If Act IV is about finding where you need to be, then Act V is about the goodbyes that come with it, and what the very concept of goodbye means. Shortly after the delivery to 5 Dogwood Drive is completed, the gang has no more reason to be together, which gets them to wonder what’s next. It’s not entirely clear what that is – indeed, a lot of the possibilities are open-ended as you choose dialogue options – but the game closes on a scene where the remaining party members pick up instruments and start playing inside of the empty frame of a house that stands at the delivery site. It’s unclear at this point what comes after this, but then, I like to think neither do they, which is the point.

The fact that the house frame looks a lot like a two-dimensional portal is fitting, because Act V envisions goodbye as not an ending per se, but that which exists between moments, a door to what’s next. It’s a chance to reflect on what came before and who left your orbit, but it’s also about reinforcing the bonds that you need going forward and forging a path with them. Goodbyes determine who we hitch our trailers to as we keep traveling down the road of life. Conway left his group after a lengthy journey, but the gang also briefly communed with a small town and shared in a sort of collective grief. Who we need in any given moment is often kismet, and when we need them temporary. But in the in-between that is goodbye, it’s okay that you’re still figuring things out.

How appropriate that the game that shaped much of how I understand and appreciate games in my adult years ends on a meditation of goodbyes. Kentucky Route Zero weaves a complex narrative about alienation and the things that isolate us, but yet ends on a hopeful note that sneaks up on you. For a scene that’s all about goodbyes, Act V leaves hope for the future, asks acceptance at who and what you’ll leave behind, and assures you that you won’t be alone on your long journey home.