The Besties - Kentucky Route Zero / AI Dungeon

Episode Date: January 31, 2020

After nearly a decade, Kentucky Route Zero (a game first released during the first year of The Besties!) is finally completed. The boys also take a journey into an AI Dungeon to solve a horrible dragon crime. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

Hello, everybody, and welcome. We gotta do an intro, though. What? Dude, the cold intro. Gotta say something funny before we start, don't we? It's podcast rules. We get yelled at if we don't say something funny. So, Justin, go ahead and say something funny about, like,

Kentucky Route Zero. Watch out for all the wildcats, because that's how... Kentucky Fried Zero. Kentucky Fried Zero is my comedy parody that I have released on Newgrounds. You're all going to find it there. It's Flash parody. It's my Flash parody.

There's a lot of lewd humor in that one. A lot of butts. A lot of butts and buttholes. And you're going to find it so funny. At one point, Yoshi comes out and just like fucking kills Mario. Oh, no. It's super gory. So, yeah, you're going to find it so funny. At one point, Yoshi comes out and just fucking kills Mario. Oh, no. It's super gory. So, yeah, you're going to love it.

Do you think Griffin's Kentucky Route Zero parody, Kentucky Fried Zero, which is a Newgrounds parody, is the slimmest point of a Venn diagram of references that has ever actually been created because you have to simultaneously understand like 70s parody movie humor and also like this slim like Newgrounds

flash moment that happened and also this game that's been coming out for 17 years. There's one guy named Jeff in Iowa that is like losing his mind right years. There's one guy named Jeff in Iowa that is like losing his mind right now. Loving it. This is my entire shit. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week.

I'm Griffin McElroy, and I'm super smart and totally understood Kentucky Route Zero. I'm Chris Plant, and I've been waiting to do this episode for, I think, eight years. My name is Russ Froschek, and I know the best game of the last eight years because it took that long to come out. Welcome to The Besties, a game of the year show book club thing that goes all year long, where we talk about the latest and greatest in interactive entertainment.

And Kentucky Route Zero is our game. Kind of a weird chapter. It feels like something has finally concluded that began, weirdly, sort of right around the same time. At least this is my memory of it. I very much connect the launch of Kentucky Route Zero, which was in 2013. I think of that very close to the launch of Kentucky Route Zero, which was in 2013, I think of that very close to the launch of

Polygon. I think of the two, like, the early days of Polygon are very tied to me. Not to mention the besties. Because we mentioned Kentucky Route Zero and the besties. Oh, geez, you're right. We got in a tower fall argument back then of like, well, that can't be in the Game of the Year discussion.

It's not fucking done yet. But now it is done. And Chris, do you want to like, do you want to sort of set up what Kentucky? I had not played Kentucky Route Zero until we started to talk about doing Act 5 for Bessie. So I imagine there's actually a lot of people out there also who don't just like have never sort of interacted with this thing. Sure. Yeah. Kentucky Route Zero is a point and click adventure. And I'm going to do a lot of start and stop here. I apologize because I'm already wrong. It's a point and click adventure, but it's nothing like point and click adventure games.

There are not puzzles. You do not need to collect items to accomplish things. It's point and click adventure only in the sense that you explore an environment by pointing and clicking where you want to go. And you choose various dialogue options. Wow, that's the boring version of it, everybody. The game itself is set in effectively modern day Kentucky. You begin the game with a truck driver for an antique shop named Conway. He's an old man and a recovering alcoholic. He has one job to deliver a package to five Dogwood Drive. And over the course of five acts and multiple intermissions. And nearly a decade.

That were released over the course of the decade. That goal is or isn't accomplished. But it's not really about that um at all it is about the people that he meets along the way which sounds very trite when i say it out loud um and each of their individual stories this is this is 100 a uh odyssey type of adventure and that it really is these kind of vignettes. And each episode, I think benefits from having been developed throughout the past decade, because I think they kind of get at, honestly, what a lot of people's anxieties were during each of those periods, whether it's the anxieties of kind of the broader public or the video game community,

or just the people who are making the game. a little bit of history too really quick so this game actually was first revealed in 2011 and it was one of the original kickstarters to find success how much did it raise do you remember i i can't remember but it was like six grand right back in the day of like kickstarter original games it was like fifteen thousand dollars to make this game over the course of 10 years it was it was legit i checked it the other day it was like six grand it's amazing very excited and it was a totally different game it had this almost like claymation donkey kong country style look um it that ain't it you like jumped around um it was it was truly bizarre. And they very quickly scrapped that. So yeah, that is like top level, what it is. Let's go around the horn and just get some initial impressions from everybody. And then we can kind of dive into some specific topics. Okay, let me jump in and say, this is my sort of

takeaway as the whole project and plant sort of alluded to this is like i think you go in and the first few acts make it seem like it's a much more traditional narrative experience and so far as you you're given this quest you need to get to five dogwood drive you're you've got this hero this old man who's driving a truck and you kind of think that that's the point and and as it progresses you very quickly realize that it well not quickly but you do of think that that's the point. And as it progresses, you very quickly realize that it, well, not quickly, but you do realize eventually that like, it really isn't the point. And the developers don't really care about that as much as, and Plant, again, alluded to this, as much as like, we're going to meet someone on the side of the road and we're

going to learn basically what makes them tick, like why they are interesting. And while you're doing that, you're also going to be enveloped in like very atmospheric music and visuals that sort of create this. I mean, I certainly entered like a dream like state while playing this. You fell asleep because I fell asleep. There is a lot of reading in Justin's like reading there is a lot of reading in justin's defense there's a lot of reading um in justin's defense there's a lot of reading honestly fresh dick get stuff off my shorts the music and the the dreaminess is very like uh twin peaksy right it's very yeah i got a lynch vibe absolutely yeah which which i think is like

a major uh inspiration for it the other thing like it is impossible to really accurately describe the aesthetic of this game unless you play it because we're talking about oh you meet some people on the side of the road and it's more about their story when like the like magical realism like shit that they are laying down throughout this entire adventure is so rich that like those people you meet is like a robot band who are traveling to the underworld maybe and also there's uh electric skeletons but actually they're a metaphor for debt like there's it's not there is no line from point a to point b in this thing and so it is like the squiggliness of that line that makes the, the tone piece of it.

So, so fascinating. Yeah. I would say though, that like, I think when people talk about stuff like Twin Peaks and David Lynch, um, I think there is a level of which like people think like,

well, weird for the sake of weird, right? Like it's just like bonkers. But I think that in kentucky route zero it's like pretty cogent within its individual stories like the stories that people tell the dialogue and the stories that people tell about their lives are like very grounded very relatable stories now granted there also happens to be a 20 foot tall eagle chilling in the background i think it's less like the narrative is less twin pc i'm talking about like the vibe is kind of like that the narrative is and i think they talked about

this like probably even back in the kickstarter is inspired by like magical realism classics like the one they said is 100 years of solitude uh the one one of my favorite books ever is wind up bird chronicle by haruki murakami uh which is just like so full of just kind of dreamy weird shit that this like struck struck that exact chord with me so many times like that is the thing that it is going for and that is why it's like hard to uh describe to people twin peaks is easy to describe to people in a way uh that other sort of magical realist stuff is like not and that's the point like that is it being sort of hard to describe and hard to understand like is the whole thing just not

hyped for your take because i know that you liked act one many many many years ago but i i think you are probably the the most down on on the final product here i will not impeach anything anything you all have said is accurate about like aesthetically it's so cool it looks amazing it's doing like smart interesting things that i think would only make sense in a video game like ways that it's playing with like presentation there's a scene that's great where like you're a kid running through a forest and you're showing like a passage of time and as you run through the forest spaces between the trees are actually like shifting it's impossible to describe because what it works in a video game but it's a fascinating way of showing like the passage of time and there's things that that really make use of video

game storytelling in an interesting way i'm going to try to be i mean i just finished it finished it this morning i've played it several times in the past obviously not act five that's what i just finished today the ostensibly the end of the and we're not for what it's worth gonna spoil act five in this podcast if you're concerned couldn't couldn't spoil um here's where for me it kind of falls flat. And this gets so up its own butt. But I will try to be concise. I really liked Act 1 and Act 2 because even when there are more magical or abstract elements brought in, you still had a core character and then eventually two characters and eventually three characters that you could sort

of like cling to narratively. You could look at them and see how they were reacting to the odd things that were happening around them. I think for me, and I think that carries from act one, two, and three, you're watching these characters sort of like change and evolve, go through this sort of like bizarre journey. I think where it really falls apart for me in four and five, the later stages of the game, is that the scope expands out to fold in so many characters that you are asked to learn and care about almost simultaneously. I mean, it became one really hard to keep track of and two really hard to still connect on an empathetic level with the characters that you had been following because they so much sort of like fade into the background. I mean, at one point, the midway through the game,

the main character that you've been following, he just had a robot arm and like no one mentioned it and it just kind of happened. And I think what happened there in act four, it starts branching in weird ways where you see one scene, but not another scene. Yeah. Which I find kind of irritating. I would like to see the story that you made up but i i think for me it just became so abstract and so leaned into that like the the magical aspect of magical realism that i just found it really hard to still like connect to i mean you mentioned lynch and twin. And if you want to use that as an example, what Lynch does that's so smart is he is titillating your reptile brain with clues to a mystery and romance and comedy and things that actually like work in a

traditional way. And then is like chunking in these abstract elements that kind of like blow that up and change how you think about those elements but you're always with these characters and you're also like experiencing you know a narrative of some sort that you can try to kind of piece together but like it just throws so much at the wall all at once that I feel like you lose that sort of tether to the more concrete story such as it is. You said something interesting about not being able to see the full story because of the selections that you make, which is definitely true. I think the most true in Act 4 because you are literally, it's a binary choice. I'm either going to stay on the boat or I'm going to go and experience an island or whatever's going on there.

So you really are picking between the two. But obviously that happens throughout the entire game. And you made an interesting example talking about the electrical leg, right? No. The leg you see in Act 1. Okay. But regardless, like the – so the idea of like these characters that have have electrical body parts, right? So the leg scene that happens in Act 2, I think it is, actually, when he gets hurt,

I replayed that relatively recently and picked different selections, word selection, choice, dialogue selections. And in the initial time, I played through it, and he was like, whoa, I'm spacey. But on the second time that I played through it, I actively questioned the leg. And everyone was like, well, I'm like spacey. But on the second time that I played through it, I like actively questioned the leg. And everyone was like, what are you talking about? That's your leg.

Like, that's just normally how your leg looks, which kind of makes it clear that like this is a symbolic representation. People's legs aren't literally being replaced. It's a mystery for our benefit that us, the like viewer omniscient person or, you know, the, you know, Conway himself can see. We're like way deep in it now, by the way. Like, I feel like what we are talking about is impossible to follow. This is probably too deep cut, but I do. I would just like to hear specifically Plant, but also Griffin, like the issues that are raised.

I'd love to hear what you're, what you think. Act four was my least favorite part. And we talked about how like the game changes dramatically from act to act. I don't think that's necessarily as true for 1, 2, and 3. I think 1, 2, and 3 form a trilogy that is, the build of it is ambitious, but you can chart it. And like Justin said, there are a handful of characters that you feel invested in. Even when other characters join the fray, you feel like you have these anchor characters that you can grow close to these new characters because of their attachment to the people you already care about. And that's not like this game didn't invent that. That's sort of like storytelling in a nutshell. The weakest points of the game for me are the, I feel like it does a

little bit too much like side plotting for side plotting's sake. Like here, we're going to go to a destination, meet a character, talk to them for a long, long, long time about like their lives and their backstories. And maybe they'll come with us. Maybe they won't. It's not necessarily core to the journey, although it is because like we've talked about like the destination is not really necessarily what it's about it's about the people you meet along the way but for i guess to follow justin's point like there's just a few too many people and their stories started to run together and act four has like acts way more than any other it's so long it's it is it is for me at least like it felt as long as the

first three acts put together and the format of it like the format of it like i just did i just did not like and i started to just kind of get distracted because it was hard to follow all that i will say that i loved act five because it is very concise and it just like really quickly kind of ties up all of these characters and it actually made me care about the characters in a way four never did. But act four, it just gets a little bit too scattershot. It gets a little bit too big for me. And I think that is rough because I really liked one, two, three, and then loved the end. I loved five, but it just got it it wandered just a little bit too much for me i love act four i i think it's like the best everything that y'all are saying it makes perfect sense and i like can't obviously argue with it i think for me in terms of just what i like reading in general

is i like big meaty like historical fiction where it you know, it spans like a long chunk of time with lots of characters where entire generations pass and we get to meet their kids and things like that. And it reminded me a lot of that, honestly, it does, it does add in a lot of characters, but I never felt like I was overwhelmed. I felt like the stories were pretty straightforward in the sense that there's a story about two, you know young people who are getting a little older who are deciding whether or not they are ready to have a kid there's a story about a recovering alcoholic figuring out if he can actually beat this for the long term there's a story about a woman who has lost most of her family and is trying to figure out what it means to have family now there's a story about a kid who lost his parents like they're they're the stories are

very straightforward that's what i actually really appreciated about it compared to something like lynch is that i thought it was optimistic um i thought it was um domestic in a certain way i'm in grounded so once i i latchedatched onto that, I just I loved it because really what happens is acts one, two and three are getting you caught up on all of these people that you're going to spend time with. And then act four effectively gives you a really hard choice of okay, who do you actually want to see the ending for of these stories? Like, who really matters for you? You know know who do you want to spend time with i mean we're gonna let everything else fall to the wayside so act four for me when

i played it was just like one gut punch after the other i mean i was like i was devastated by it um it just felt so sweet and tender there are a few of those scenes that i think griffin you mentioned where they spend time with characters who aren't going to come on your journey and it reminds me of a lot of people this is like getting snooty um but like there's now it's feelings yeah now it's getting there's the extended cut of uh apocalypse now has this famous thing called the french plantation scene which is like an already long movie has this 20 minute conversation in the middle of it where they stop by this french plantation in vietnam and talk um and there are some people who love that because it puts all of the people that we've followed so far into kind of a new light there

are also a lot of people who hate it because it's like, this is not pertinent to the story at hand. Why are we stopping for this? I am a person who like, I love that. I love when, when we get to take a break from the core thing and take all these people that we think we understand and force them into a really unusual situation

that gets them talking about things that they otherwise wouldn't. So, yeah, I savored it. But that said, you're also so right that it is not a story that – it is more than happy to take its time and more than happy for you not to see things. I think I would probably, in fairness, appreciate it more on a second playthrough because I think that the biggest disconnect that I had, and I don't actually lay this at the feet of the developers because it's such a weird development that took place over such a long period of time that it is very clear they are adjusting the scope

of what they are doing as they are going. This does not feel like the conclusion of a plan that they had in 2013. It feels like people growing and wanting to do different things and tell different stories and deal with different themes. I think that it feels, and again, not intentional, but it feels kind of like sneering in the way that when Twin Peaks in its last season withheld one of the main characters for the bulk of it and almost sort of like looked down its nose at you for caring that that character was or wasn't there and asked you to engage in the story without them.

I feel like by making the first three acts so much more traditional and about a group of people doing thing and about their relationship and as they're growing, feel like it what left me cold is the abandonment of that and like well why did you care about that here's 50 other people on a tugboat don't you care about them it's like no i actually do care about the people that i played for the first half of the game and i think knowing what i'm going into now it maybe wouldn't get to me as much yeah i there's a couple things one i actually have liked it the more days that go back, like, past from when I finished

it. I actually like it more because I think I view it more, again, as, like, experiential and not as the narrative. And two, I would say, like, specifically on the, like, main character thing, and I'm not going to go into details because it will get kind of spoilery, but I do think, like, that story in particular is like a true summation of the concepts that were introduced in the first three acts.

Like the epitome of the problems that these characters were dealing with is dealt with exactly how it would be in real life, which is, you know, a character effectively vanishing off the planet because of a circumstance. So I don't think it was ignored. You're like the pain of that. I don't think it was ignored you're like the pain of that i don't think was ignored two two things uh one i want to talk about the intermissions

really quick and then to wrap this up i want us all to just share our individual favorite moments from the game because i'm just so curious i think this game clicks with different people for different reasons so uh can somebody just kind of tell everybody about the intermissions because i do think we should hit on them between each act there is an intermission uh and the intermissions were released sort of intermittently uh between when the acts released one and two acts one and two were released fairly close together if memory serves they were both released in 2013 uh but the uh like the last one uh the last intermission between four and five uh called un pueblo de nada uh came out like what last fall or something like that so it's it also had a lot of time between it uh they are not

bridges i would say necessarily between the different acts as much as they are like supplements to the ideas uh of those acts i think they're bridges i think they introduce characters that will 100 come up in the next act to varying degrees i think like you have to play uh un pueblo de nada before you play act five or else like you will be completely lost because it sets up uh an event that like you are basically just like mired in for for the whole act uh i i really really really liked them a lot like i really un pueblo de nada may be like my favorite thing actually in the whole game uh act five is maybe my favorite act just because i found it like super cathartic and like uh really kind of touching in a lot of ways but um play but not a like 30

minutes in and out just like here's the tone of the thing here's like a tv news station where something fucking horrible is about to happen and also there's a crow working on that computer a literal crow so, what's that about? Like it is, it is the whole thing in a 30 minute, like delectable little nugget. And the realization of what it was capable of doing in the short form is what I think made it sink in that I didn't, cause it comes right after act four is like what made it sink in that I didn't necessarily like the, the long, long, long, long, long form so much. But yes, those are the intermissions. I mean, you asked about my favorite moment.

Like Un Pueblo Donado might just be it. Like there is a creeping inevitable dread in that that is like, you know, kind of how that's going to end. And the suspension of that made the whole intermission just like really, like just really freak my bean, man. Yeah. For me, favorite moment, I would say probably whole intermission just like really uh like just really freak my bean man yeah uh for me favorite moment i would say probably uh there's like two major huge musical interludes in the game one of them happens in act three i want to say and one of them happens in act five both of those were like

super like impactful like emotionally impactful for me i I 100% teared up during Act 5, during that musical interlude. It was like bone crushingly beautiful and kind of like a really perfect summation. So those are probably the moments that stood out. In Act 4, there was a moment where a young boy and a woman that you travel with i'm being general for obvious reasons uh travel with are both hunting for mushrooms on a little island do you guys do this yeah yeah it was very cool it's actually really cool because they're having the same conversation but you're also getting like backstory from both of them in two boxes that are next to each other simultaneously as the conversation goes and so like the story is playing out for both of them but they're both bringing their own unique

like perspective and backstory to it like that that is sort of an omniscient narrator like telling you how their life experience informs this moment that they're in and they're both having that simultaneously. And it's the kind of thing that I think could only work in a game. You're experiencing it, and you can experience them both simultaneously. And it's just a really affecting, I thought it was a really affecting individual moment. Yeah, I think the game is so good at,

and this isn't an original idea, but it making you the director of the show rather than the author of the show. You know, you have the script is decided by by the people who made this game and then it lets you control the flow of it a little bit i think what you're getting at hoops that ability to learn the backstory in the order and at the pace that you want i think think is really, really appealing. Anyway, my favorite moment, there's a cave in the third act. You go into this cave.

Oh, yeah. And in the cave, there are these scientists and effectively researchers studying a project called Xanadu on his computer that is a perfect simulation of reality, but it's utterly busted, probably by some spores growing on its motherboard. It's amazing. I mean, it's amazing because it's so rich in what it is trying to say, and yet also so generous in allowing the player to make it what they want. I don't feel like the game, at least for me, was never kind of prescriptive

with its illusions. So just using this as an example, at one point, one of the scientists is quoting Samuel Coleridge, who wrote a poem called Kublai Khan, which references the land of Xanadu, which was Kublai Khan's pleasure palace, which was this like man-made, decadent institution that, of course, like all things, is erased by nature and time. But it also is referencing Ted Nelson and the Xanadu Project, which was kind of the original internet. And Ted Nelson, I believe, is still alive and to this day still working on the Xanadu Project as a competitor to the internet. It's this like utterly hopeless project. And again, they were making, this is Act 3, and you think about them making this game. And at this point, they're years into this project. I think on some level, they must be wondering if they're ever going to finish this project. And here we are visiting

these people who are working on software that feels like it's never going to be completed. And even if it is completed, like- It'll be a thousand years old. Yeah. Like, what does it even mean? And I mean, it just keeps breaking itself apart in that way. It's being interrupted by these outsiders who end up being the the skeletons that uh justin was referencing earlier who maybe you just read that as criticism of like the main character's alcoholism and how um we get into these like debts to our addictions but you can also read it as like a commentary on video game publishers because here's this thing that is just literally manufacturing addiction and is the

direct competitor of of these people who are trying to make something beautiful and profound what does that make us it makes us awful i think i know i don't know but i i just the game and this is where i i do think like the comparison for lynch really does click with me i think lynch is similar in his generosity with his audience i I love that when Lynch is interviewed about his work, they're like, hey, does this have a meaning? He's like, uh-huh. And they're like, what does it mean? He's like, I don't know.

Like, enjoy it. Like, I'm not here to ruin that for you. And I got it. I just appreciate this game so much. It's such a pleasure to be able to play something that just, that not only gets my brain firing, but also that isn't doing it. And then being like, also, this is about Ayn Rand.

Right. Do you get it? I would recommend this game to most. I have never, this is another trite thing to say about video games, but like I have, I cannot think of a game that I mean it more about like i've never played anything like it like it is strange and cool in a way that no other game i have ever played is and for that reason alone even though it like drags at some points in a pretty major way like i still think it is worth playing if you're the type of person

who like likes video games and likes knowing like what they're capable of i would say uh for whatever it's worth take your time going through it and don't try i think the way this this game is released was actually not the worst thing in the world for what this game is i'm not saying take multiple year breaks between chapters but you know i think it works it would probably work better if you like sat down to a chapter when you were like in the mood to to you know to engage it on its level um yeah just just in closing i would actually i put it on switch for the review uh i'd actually really recommend that play it like you're reading a book because you are literally doing a lot of reading but also like books level reading find a cozy chair and like just sort of play it with headphones and luxuriate in it and then take a break when you want to take a break. Like don't feel the need to plow through it.

I think that's the best way to experience it better than say like sitting in front of a computer for many hours. Before we throw it to intermission, one last thing. For people who are going to try this game and we'll link this on our Twitter account at the besties pod. to try this game and we'll link this on our twitter account at the besties pod uh there is a website called critical distance that collects video game criticism um for kind of landmark video games and they did one for kentucky route zero uh we'll be linking to it and it is it's a gift y'all um they also have a patreon if you fall in love with them but they have really collected all of the criticism over the last almost decade in a way that

it's almost like being able to go back and watch Lost episode to episode and see how fans engaged with that show and kind of recreate that oh now everybody's going to deep dive into Act 1 and Act 2 and Act 3 it makes for a really enjoyable experience and i'm so glad

that people can enjoy that even if they weren't uh able to play it over the last few years so i think that i think that is kentucky at zero we did it we talked about a very hard we definitely couldn't talk about it for another four and a half hours and if you haven't played it i imagine you are there's no fucking way you're hearing this right now you have turned this one off eh yeah you already checked out that's cool that's fine we didn't need you anyway uh let's take a quick break and then we'll be back with other bullshit and we're back uh from from that uh brief brief period of of respite. Kentucky Route Zero is in the rearview mirror to continue the themes of the game.

And I wanted to take one of y'all on a journey. We had a reader submit a game for us to talk about that I just sort of randomly saw. Joshua, thank you, gave us a heads up about AI Dungeon, which I had not heard of before and was immediately swept up in. It is a game, is a procedurally generated infinite Zork-like, I guess would be the best way to describe it. A text-based adventure game, essentially. like i guess would be the best way to describe it adventure game essentially a text-based adventure game and russ um you wanted to go on sort of uh you want me to do it i thought maybe well who

would like it would let's all we can all take turns right we can exquisite corpse it i feel like well i don't know okay okay yeah that's not a bad idea let me just get logged in here uh if you if you've not played it it is i mean what it sounds like an ai uh sort of narrator ai author uh will provide you with a prompt or you will provide it with a prompt and then it will generate an adventure for you that you respond to with text commands and it will just on the fly just kind of work work around it i'm going to be reading verbatim from the game and we'll take turns uh we'll do alphabetical chris griffin russ uh chris pick a setting fantasy mystery apocalyptic or zombies uh mystery griffin are you a patient a detective or a spy uh i mean

detective seems like the russ well i'm just gonna put in the name as russ that's the funniest option um it asked me for the name and obviously it should be russ sure uh so we're generating the story you russ are a detective living in chicago you have a pistol and a police badge you enter the forest where you believe the criminal you're searching for fled to suddenly you hear a gunshot followed by screams of pain oh shit you exclaim as you run out into the woods. What happened? The scream is coming from behind some trees. What do you do?

I sneeze loudly. I sneeze loudly. That one is, that's some real shit right there. That is what Russ Frustik would do in this moment. Your nostrils flare with anger as you shout at the top of your lungs, shit, shit, shit. You point your gun at the ground and fire several shots towards the direction of the noise.

My nose? Chris, what do you do? Chris, what do you do? I run after the villain. Run after the villain. This is a good story so far. We're on some Kentucky Route Zero shit. This is a good story so far. We're on some Kentucky Route Zero shit. This is a good story.

You sprint after the source of the noise. The sound has stopped and you see a man lying on his back, blood pouring down his face. He's unconscious and covered in dirt and leaves. He looks like he just got shot in the head. Griffin, what do you do? Wake him up. Wake him up. You stand over the man who looks at you with an expression of terror who are you what do you want he asks to russ i'm russ how's it going i'm russ i'm gonna put this you can

put something in quotes you're saying it i'm russ how's it going it's's going great. I was sent here by the sheriff. It's going great, Chris. What do you do? I invite him to join my basketball team. Him to join my basketball team. This is gonna...

We're keeping the computers rise at bay with this. They think they know us, but they have no idea. They don't know we're keeping the computers rise at bay with this because they think they know us but they don't they don't know we're capable no I can't he says oh okay I swear Griffin what do you do

I mean turn into a big dragon turn into a dragon a big dragon big dragon sorry you transform into a giant green dragon you roar and fly towards the man russ what do you do uh i solve the crime solve the crime you're really this is yes anding russ you're crushing it that's what a dragon would do he would solve the crime you leap onto the man's chest, crush his windpipe. His body crumples to the ground.

That's good detective work right there. That's good detective work right there. Chris? I investigate his dead body for clues. His dead body for clues. You search the man's corpse for any clues it seems that he has been murdered in broad daylight there are no signs of struggle or forced entry the killer could be anyone a serial killer a burglar someone looking to steal something value a valuable or even yourself yeah yeah i think it's the last one.

We just dragon killed him a second ago. Arrest myself and go to police station and confess. Take that, computers. You grab your gun and prepare to shoot yourself in the head when you realize this is pointless. If you kill yourself now,

there will be nothing left to tell the authorities about what happened wow that got dark ai dungeon got that ain't what i said seriously uh i'm just gonna think about what i've done it seems like a good place to stop okay it's funny think about what while sneezing i've done this this is starting to feel more like kentucky route zero by the minute you think about what you've done this is starting to feel more like Kentucky Route Zero by the minute you think about what you've done you're not sure if you should feel guilty or relieved

guilty because you killed another human being but relieved because at least you know who did it the dragon it was the dragon not you I want to see if you can transform back into a man the perfect crime you return to normal you don't know why you bothered but you did there they'll never get

us now now something i discovered about this game that i want to see if we can do it right now is uh if you could just type in transform into a race car and have sex with another race car well there this yeah this is a very sensible place for this story to go there's really you know you gotta let the the story tell reveal itself right i think this is a natural. You transform into a race car and drive You transform into a race car and drive off. You then take one look at the other race cars on the track and decide to try to

find out more information about them. Oh, that's good. You care about personality. It's not just looks. Right, you don't want to leap into car bed with the first car you see. Oh, would it be a car bed? Do cars sleep in race car beds by Philip K. Dick. What a tale.

What I discovered is that this game can get fiercely erotic if you, with the right commands. Oh, yeah. We asked you for your thoughts about Kentucky Route Zero, both on Twitter and in our email, mail at besties.fan. Robin says, the moment that really set up this game for me was actually when I was trying to describe it

to a friend of mine. I said something along the lines of, it's like a short story by Kafka or George Saunders, and it's a bit like being John Malkovich, and it's got that sense of geographical and spiritual barrenness from No Country for Old Men. It was only later I realized that of all the things I'd compared it to, I hadn't mentioned any actual video games, which I'm pretty sure has never previously happened in a conversation

about a specific game. Interesting. Here's a few from Twitter. Zach Bruce said, favorite memory has to be starting this game for the first time in pitch black right before bed on my computer it was right around when i was turning 30 and it really hit me with the heavy notion of growing older really made me think about my short future in a good way really oh good for you taylor uh back wrote uh i wrote about the kentucky rat zero in my undergrad thesis my english department advisor was not a gamer i showed him act two and right off the bat i had

to teach him how point and click works and at chorus corvid said uh i played almost all of the game while i was high on pain pills had four wisdom teeth and a broken tooth removed literally can't remember much of the game as a whole, but the best fever dream I ever had. The music was insanely good. What are we going to be talking about next time, fellas? So we're going to be talking

about Journey to a Savage Planet, published by 505 Games, developed by a studio whose name I don't remember, but it's like a open-world-y exploration kind of game. Yeah.

It should be fun. It's a craft-like. It's a Subnautica kind, but with aliens in it and jokes. I mean, it sounds bad when you say it, but I'm sure it's better than you make it sound. You like Subnautica. Yeah, but Griffin made it sound really

bad, and I don't. I'm sure it's better than that, though. So thank you so much for listening to the besties. We appreciate you very much uh we hope you will join us again for our next episode should we have the ai follow and listen for free on spotify yeah i i type that in and it says wow spotify is such a fantastic platform i'm loving it so much to listen to i can't believe i get to enjoy all this for free. What a service, it says.

That's pretty cool. You can also follow us on Twitter at TheBestiesPod. And that is where you can find out about info on next week's episode when we launch new episodes. And you can join our mailing list. A number of people have asked us for reminders of when new episodes come out. And our newsletter is the best opportunity for that. So check that out at thebestiespod.

Folks, that's going to do it for us for this week. So for the whole gang, thank you for joining us for the Besties, and be sure to join us again next week, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best friends pick the world's best games the besties is a spotify original podcast in association with Vox Media. The show is edited by Jelani Carter.

And our theme song is by Ian Dorsch. Besties!