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It’s good to make the words work for you, the lazy little ingrates, and the title of Road 96 is grafted pretty hard. It refers to both the name of the road to the US-like fictional Petria northern border – which you’ll throw successive desperate teens against in a procedurally generated hitchhiking athon – and the year where everything is ready. Yes, it’s 1996, and everyone is sharing tapes, blithely taking elevators with strangers, and very concerned about the oil industry.
We are also approaching the tenth anniversary of a terrorist attack on the same border, which blew up the side of a mountain and killed hundreds of passers-by. In a move that only makes sense when an orderly plot demands that your seven intertwined personal and political stories must come to fruition at the same time, Petria’s totalitarian government has decided it will hold the next election on the same day as the big anniversary event. . A big preventative whoopsie-doodle for them.
Petria is an absolute nightmare for a country for many reasons (not least because teenagers are usually sent to a special juvenile re-education center known as The Pit), but he is currently suffering from a teenage epidemic. ” missing “, most of whom are trying to cross the border. You play as a succession of anonymous, hitchhiking, boosting cars and walking thousands of miles towards the border. Your first-person time in everyone’s place ends when their journey ends, either stranding or crossing it. You could be stopped hundreds of miles away, caught right at the border, shot down on the way by an extremely finicky taxi driver, or simply run out of energy and collapse on the road.
Your trip is dotted with stops along the way, perhaps at a motel, old gas station, or trailer park. Sometimes it can be a party for outgoing President Tyrak’s donors (one button), other times you wake up in the cab of the truck that picked you up from the side of the road. And, usually, you will meet one of the seven characters who each have a role to play in the story. My favorites were Stan and Mitch, a pair of silly, vaguely droogian thieves, dressed in black ski masks and yellow overalls; A Clockwork Orange via guys who really love the Joker. They are obsessed with infotainment fake news host Sonya and attempt to track down the man who plans to kill her. They shout: “Stan and Mitch!” a lot, because they are their own hype men and pronounce “scared” as well as “scouraged” in a charming and shy way. They can’t vote, so they’re anarchic types, every man for himself.
Sonya herself is pro Tyrak yet very aware that her show is spreading lies and that people have very good reasons to dislike government. You also meet a conflicting cop, a truck driver who is secretly a member of the Black Brigades (the leftist protest group labeled as terrorists), and a geek called Alex who is as smart as he is naive. The “main character”, if there is one, is undoubtedly Zoe, which I found a bit of a shame, as she is on a bit of a journey of self-discovery that I won’t spoil, but that I found the least interesting or likeable. Without a doubt, you will have your own favorites; as online dating sites will tell you, there is someone for everyone in this world, especially when the voice and writing is so fun and charismatic.
Suffice it to say, you quickly understand that person X is relationship Y to person Z, and the stories all form a web of which you only see a few strands at a time. The smart thing is that they can appear in any order. If you were told the story from start to finish, all straight and neat, then it probably wouldn’t be as captivating, and you would spot twists and turns a mile away. But because you never know who you’re going to meet next, there’s always a little thrill after every loading screen. “I hope,” you think, “I’m going to have another scene of Stan and Mitch next. I haven’t seen them since we escaped on their motorbike throwing money they had stolen on. the windshield of the cops chasing them. “
Some of the smaller one-acts have stunning settings, especially those that take place at night, which often make good use of light. As you travel you see the scenery change, from vast deserts to cooler forests as you head further north towards the border. But nowhere look prosperous – even wealthy parties have corrugated iron toilets and plastic patio furniture. Cool stuff.
Instead, you’ll be greeted by sprawling guitar music that suggests you’re about to date John the Trucker. Sometimes the gen proc goes a bit awry (one time John dropped me off in a motel scene which then showed him coming back and going), but in general it creates a little suspenseful mystery, and your own game will probably be very different from anyone else. There are some really smart touches, like how many characters have a different song associated with them, and because you’re playing a new teenager every time you meet someone, it’s fun to tap into the knowledge of the players. , slyly, guiltily, to help people.
Because you are not a totally passive traveler in Road 96. Each segment has a chat or a mini-game. You can play find the lady at a party with Sonya or hack a back room with Alex. Most will end up giving you a skill you need to escape across the border, or help you like other teens. Stan and Mitch give you a lockpick, for example, and you can also pick them up in a different order each time. I had the Alex hack very early and the lockpick very late. So many unopened doors!
There are choices for dialogue that are clearly [any response here] it won’t change conversations, but some of your actions have consequences – successfully persuading someone to make a bomb or not, etc. Sometimes your answer will be marked with small icons. These represent moderate resistance to democracy (encouraging people to vote to bring Tyrak’s opponent to power), radical resistance (encouraging the Back Bridgades to take more violent paths) or washing their hands of everything and get pissed off elsewhere.
Because another thing about Road 96 is that it doesn’t pretend it’s not political, or analogous to current or recent events. Tyrack and his party clearly position themselves as the right wing, and you are not asked whether it is fair to resist them or not, but rather How? ‘Or’ What to resist. People even say “fake news”. The third option – trying to separate yourself from the situation – is sometimes portrayed as saying you have no opinion, or even staying silent, which sounds like a burn. And, interestingly, sometimes doing the right thing, like trying to save a cop from a car crash, will immediately put you in jail. I think it tries to be more realistic and pragmatic, where sometimes you can expect a game to reward you with attaboy cookies to be good.
Not that I think it’s a really accurate portrayal of being homeless, as food and money is usually pretty easy to find, or political struggle, or even crossing the border, as that part is. pretty easy too. I have succeeded every time: saving money to rent a coyote, driving through secret tunnels, smuggling myself in the back of a truck. Even spending two days climbing a mountain was not too difficult. Tell yourself what, though. Fabulous view. Great trip to continue.
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