Kentucky Road Zero Freewrite

At first sight, Kentucky Road Zero seems to be a realistic video game about a man making a simple delivery. But from the very beginning of the game, you begin to experience happenings that indicate otherwise. Kentucky Road Zero is not your average game about going on quests to a place you cannot locate. It’s about reality, the allusion of reality, choice, and the illusion of choice. The game makes us make decisions we would never have to make in real life, or situations one would never encounter in real life. Although disguised like any average 2-dimensional video game, the game transcends into an infinite number of dimensions, and they all depend on what the player perceives them to be. If the player perceives it as magic – then magic it is. But, if perceived as reality, then the game might well be an alternate form of reality where the incidences occurring in the game are true to that reality, and the player recognizes it.

Kentucky Road Zero Freewrite

At first sight, Kentucky Road Zero seems to be a realistic video game about a man making a simple delivery. But from the very beginning of the game, you begin to experience happenings that indicate otherwise. Kentucky Road Zero is not your average game about going on quests to a place you cannot locate. It’s about reality, the allusion of reality, choice, and the illusion of choice. The game makes us make decisions we would never have to make in real life, or situations one would never encounter in real life. Although disguised like any average 2-dimensional video game, the game transcends into an infinite number of dimensions, and they all depend on what the player perceives them to be. If the player perceives it as magic – then magic it is. But, if perceived as reality, then the game might well be an alternate form of reality where the incidences occurring in the game are true to that reality, and the player recognizes it.

Kentucky Route Zero Free Write – Fantastical Elements

Whether the story of Kentucky Route Zero is happening in a real world or a dream remains a question. The game has made a lot of effort to form the surreal ambience about which players wonder: Is this really happening? One that leaves me deep impression is the conversation between the woman and Conway. All the woman says might be plausible, but is surely very odd as well. As I chose words to respond, I feel like Conway is trying to communicate with a drunk woman, or someone sleepwalking, or maybe a mysterious prophet. The same feeling came a little bit every time I communicated with the other characters. There is some sort of barrier the game has set to prevent us from thoroughly understanding others. And the scene also conveys this type of barrier when fixing a TV leads us to a warm-toned hazy world you can only see in your dream. With the overall cool color tone, and mere silhouettes of characters, the mystery of Kentucky Route Zero is exaggerated and that all leads to one question: Where exactly is Kentucky Route Zero?

KRZ Freewrite

Hybridity seems to be an element of magical realism within Kentucky Route Zero that stands out the most to me. I would say one of the most aesthetically appealing aspects of this game is the concept of the Zero and how it transcends reality as well as provides a mysterious yet majestic means of transportation. The combination between what is real and what seems to be “fake” keeps the player in a state of curiousness and confusion. Flying around on a giant bird is not a realistic concept but in this game, it feels normal in a way. Also, the fact that Conway is gradually being crippled by his leg injury shows in the actual gameplay. Things become slowed down to a point where I felt as if I was making a trip back to the Island in “Dear Esther.”

KRZ Freewrite

Kentucky Route Zero: Real-World Setting of Magical Realism

The setting of environment plays an incredibly significant role in which it can resonate harmoniously or discongruently with the theme. In “Kentucky Route Zero”, the latter suffices in which the strangely realistic realm of world that is introduced to us seems to contradict with the strange absurdity of the universe. Though it juxtaposes with the quirky and seemingly crazy feel of game, the setting actually serves to enhance the supernatural mood. I believe that this is so because the stark contrast between setting and theme allows us to analyze the extent of the absurdity in a mind of perspective.

 

Dear Esther Free Write

Gone Home and Dear Esther are both video games used as a way to study history. In Gone Home you enter a house as Kaitlin, the eldest sister in her family, and begin to discover different things about her family. Through finding diary entries and various other remainings in the now vacant home, you begin to unpack a lot of information about the family and their past.

Similarly, in Dear Esther, the player is placed on a desolate island instead of a home. The player wonders the island discovering past inhabitants of the island, and also a bit of a personal history of the narrator. Through the game you develope a mini history lesson of the island.

Both of these games teach you something about history quite effectively by placing the player in someone else’s shoes. I’ve learned that video games do a better job than most modes of art or literature at teaching empathy.

Dear Esther Quick Review

I partially agree with the idea that Gone Home is more of a game about history while Dear Esther is more relevant to literature given its obscure language with a fairly religious tone. Yet the two are the quite alike when it comes  to their skillfulness in drawing players into the context. When thinking about the two games, I barely scrutinize the information they give us, rather focus on how I feel about the game. Gone Home arouses my curiosity towards a certain culture and life while Dear Esther offers a sense of despair. Therefore, we can say that Gone Home and Dear Esther are different in the type of context they have designed but they’re quite similar to each other as games.

Dear Esther Free Write

One of the main differences between “Gone Home” and “Dear Esther” is the writing style of the queries that both narrators present at key moments in the games. “Dear Esther has a very poetic and abstract writing style. It is still unclear to me exactly what the writer of the game was trying to get across. The one thing that I am almost sure of is that the narrator (also the protagonist) got in a drunk driving accident that caused the death of his wife, Esther. The island that the narrator is on is one of isolation and guilt. He is severely depressed because of what he has done and feels like life is almost not worth living anymore. This island could be a metaphor of the metaphysical and social isolation that he experiences, from friends, and loved ones, for what he has done. In the end, the narrator decides that life is just not worth it anymore so he decides to take his own life and get off the island, away from all of his guilt forever. Not a single part of this writing piece was literally in the actual transcript of “Dear Esther” which is one of the main reasons why it is so different from “Gone Home” which has a much more literal approach.

“Dear Esther” and “Gone Home” in Richard Bell’s article

“Where Dear Esther invites the kind of textual analysis at which students of literature excel, Gone Home demands something more akin to source comparison.” What distinction is Bell drawing between these two games — between literature and history — and do you agree with his distinction? What similarities do you see between the two games?

Exploration is a core concept in both of these games: “Dear Esther” and “Gone home”, however they target different goals. In Bell’s article, the author draws a main distinction between the two in the sense that while “Gone Home” requires the gamer to have a skill of a historian when piecing the clues together, “Dear Esther” is based on “a single ambiguous narrative voice”. As a result, “Dear Esther” is mostly based on a literature analysis whereas “Gone Home” projects the reader in uncovering the story on his own. I agree with this distinction as I had the same feeling when interacting with both games.

Similarly, the player feels involved on a personal level in both games. In “Gone Home”, the fact of incarnating Katie and investigating her house and uncovering personal objects from each member of the family makes the reader feel also a part of the story. In “Dear Esther”, the player had the access to what is comparable to journal entries or letters from a man to his wife. As a result, the player has access to emotions which allows him to sympathize with the narrator.

-Richard Bell, “Family History: Source Analysis in Gone Home”. Play the Past, accessed 13 Sept. 2016.

The Chinese Room, “Dear Esther“, 14 February 2012

Dear Esther

Dear Esther and Gone Home are similar games in that both of them are relatable to our current lives. Gone Home depicts the troubles a modern family could have, and Dear Esther colorfully describes a car crash where a mans wife is killed. They use similar literary techniques that slowly reveal hints at what the main plot or message is. Both games use the dialogue of a narrator to narrate the story, but they also use imagery. Gone Home has clues about the family that you can find throughout the house, and Dear Esther uses the landscape of the island to depict small events or hints of the car crash.

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