Image courtesy of Cardboard Computer
It’s been a long road for fans waiting to see the end of Kentucky Route Zero, a five-part story that kicked off in 2013, but the finale is in sight. Today, developer Cardboard Computer announced the final act would arrive on January 28 on PC. Alongside that is Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition, which brings the entire saga to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Switch.People started getting suspicious that a release was imminent when someone called the "Kentucky Route Zero development status hotline," a humorous way for the game's developers to have fun with their its anxious (and patient) fans, and the latest update was "preparing for publication," alongside a countdown. Sleuthing deduced news would be coming today, seven years after the original release of Kentucky Route Zero's first act. They were right.If you haven’t been playing Kentucky Route Zero in parts over the years, a season pass will also launch on PC, with everything bundled into TV Edition. That includes the individual acts and the smaller “interludes” that have been released between the excruciatingly long waits.Not familiar with Kentucky Route Zero? It’s an adventure game! You click on things, and you talk to people. What it does with that is what’s special. Lemme quote Austin Walker, from a piece he wrote in 2014 about the game’s third act, while he was writing for Giant Bomb:
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It’s a game best played to be completely understood. It’s…well, it’s an experience. And fortunately, it’s an experience that’ll finally have a conclusion in only a few short weeks.Follow Patrick on Twitter. His email is patrick.klepek@vice.com, and available privately on Signal (224-707-1561).Kentucky Route Zero’s third episode could’ve stopped just 45 minutes in and, it still would’ve been one of my favorite games this year.
There is a moment about that far in that is so sharp and so fresh that it gave me a deep hope for the future of games. I won’t spoil it for you, but when it was over I sat up in my chair, took a breath, and said “Oh. Right. This is a thing that games can do.”