Road 96 is a YA novel. Anyone who grew up reading Hunger Games or any of the other
teenagers vs. dystopia books will feel immediately at home. Obviously, being not just a YA novel, but also a videogame, R96 comes with a sort of surplus - soundtrack, gameplay, graphics, but apart from all of that it tries to be one more thing - an examination of contemporary politics.
From a gameplay perspective, frankly, there is just not that much gameplay. The game is an interactive movie, much like the
Telltale Games or
Quantic Dream productions, having more in common with the latter. To sum it up, you play as a runaway teenager in an USA-coded totalitarian state, playing out scene after a scene of chance roadside encounters. There is some similarity with
Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, in how you see stories of fellow travelers develop, and in the general American road trip vibe, but that's where the similarities end.
Firstly, encounters here do not consist of just picking some kind of dialogue options, but are instead intertwined with fun minigames and (slightly less fun) exploration gameplay. While separately, these don't seem like anything to write home about, together they create an engaging experience that does its best to prevent itself becoming tedious.
Secondly, the game features a slight roguelite inspiration in how the story is separated between the runs with different characters, with no guarantee that whoever you chose will see the journey to its destination. When I was just getting started with the game, It really
did work. I felt the weight of the choices I were making, being aware that recklessness might lead to my capture or death. "Selfish" choices in games are usually presented as the
evil ones, and rightfully so - in games like
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim you actually
do have a capacity to help everyone, any risk you're taking is ever only superficial, the reward for whatever crime you might commit is not worth it and your character is probably a kind of demigod already. That leaves only RP or plain greed as reasons for doing
evil things, making ethical choices in games mostly a manner of answering the question of
"how much do I care for the well-being of these virtual beings?". With the answer usually being
not much, artificial morality systems are introduced like the extremely awkward reputation system of
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn. Here, with the introduction of actual fragility of the player character, the game manages to achieve the specific kind of engagement, a feeling of responsibility for whoever you play as, I only recall feeling before in
This War of Mine.
Sadly, this sensation of fragility does not maintain itself for long. The problem is, I believe, that the overall narrative is just
too consistent. The characters you meet are written well, and with every encounter they manifest themselves in some sort of new light, with every scene logically connecting to every other scene to produce a coherent narration. You start to shift your perspective to encompass a sort of grander picture of the entire story, rather then experience a succession of tragic separate stories. What doesn't help is that the game's characters actually do trust the player more and more - and that leads to an actual dissonance with everyone unconvincingly telling you
I don't know why I trust you, but... and then dumping the private details of their romantic life onto you - which doesn't really make sense if you were playing as separate persons. However, it does make sense if there was a sort of continuity between your avatars, which the player starts to automatically assume, and that admittedly is part of
the point game tries to make, (that political struggle is not an individual, but collective one) but sadly, some part of experience gets lost in the process. Personally, I believe it was around my third run that I stopped caring for the survival of whoever I was playing as, recklessly running into danger.
Before I move on to elaborate on what I personally consider to be
the point of the game, I would like to say a few things about the soundtrack and the graphics. Music for the game has actually been made by various artists, each with a distinctive composition style. Despite that, in no way does it feel to be all over the place, everything working together to establish a mood of specific nostalgia - a longing vision of 90's that never really were. Along with thick, atmospheric visual presentation, reminiscent of a forgotten once-popular graphical coming-of-age novel (graphical novel that never actually existed, of course), they work together to establish a vision in line with commercialized nostalgia most of us already have seen elsewhere. Still, fact of the matter is that there is a reason for recent popularity of such an aesthetic - because of how affective it is, (playing with childhood nostalgia that's easy to weaponize for use in the market) and because how quickly it manages to establish a sense of familiarity, which in turn establishes a sense of closeness and engagement with whatever is happening in the world one sees on the screen.
What it also does is to provide a way for the contemporary, mostly adult audiences to actually
feel this game as a coming-of-age story. Still, I don't believe that is what is at the forefront of the story Road 96 is trying to tell. First and foremost, the game is an attempt at an inquiry into totalitarianism, mostly performed as a straightforward satire of Trump's era American politics. I would like to state that I believe videogames to be as valid a medium as any other when it comes to engagement with the broader contemporary society and culture. However, the moment such an examination is introduced into a work of art (putting away, for now, the topic of whether any cultural entity might exist without engaging with the broader context of culture), I believe whatever statements art makes become valid points to be discussed in the context of review.
Road 96 doesn't even attempt to conceal the fact it references the 2016 USA elections as its starting point. Still, this vision of the America mixes in some elements from regimes such as North Korea (offshore worker examinations) and Putinist Russia (oligarchical control of refineries), the end result feeling like it engages with neither in a satisfactory way. There are three approaches player might take in their struggle against the regime - revolutionary, election-oriented, and indifferent. The last one would be an understandable option if there was anything at stake concerning the survival of the player character, but as I mentioned before, the tension quickly moves away in favor of the focus on the grander picture. That means, quite bluntly, that it is an
evil option of this game - where nothing gets fixed, everything is horrible, and the player gets a disapproving look from the developers.
The following paragraph contains spoiler concerning the game's endingsThat leaves the revolutionary and election-focused options. Here, authors unambiguously share their sentiment over which one is preferable.
Both options lead to the same outcome, that is the game's stand-in for Hillary Clinton assuming power, except the revolutionary way leads to numerous human causalities in the process. The idea here seems pretty clear - electoral, non-violent mass movements are as effective as revolutionary armed action, but they do not engage in the perpetuation of violence. This is the moment, I feel, where the fact that the game tries to engage with both Trump and Stalin at the same time leads to immense awkwardness. Many totalitarian states do not have functioning, independent electoral systems. Myself, throughout the game I found the idea of actual engagement in electoral politics under regime where the results will inevitably be rigged a waste of energy. That is why I consistently picked revolutionary options, and it was with a great suprise I found out
the dictator can actually be... voted away? The problem here, and I suppose the problem of many people playing the game, is that I was thinking Stalin, but the developers were thinking Trump. That is why, ultimately, I consider the game's political statement to be confused. If the idea was to engage with Trump, there should've been an inquiry into the issues of systemic racism, social inequality, and other conditions that made his electoral success possible. If the idea was to engage with totalitarianism, then the game's exploration comes off as shallow and plain naive.
No more spoilers beyond this pointHowever, some themes are still presented in an outstanding way. The most engaging one is the presentation of adolescent people, who want just to be happy, thriving and free, being put against an enormous machinery of a totalitarian state. (It could be said that the shallowness of the political examination is purposeful, as to underline the idea of
"They're just teens!", but I don't find the argument convincing). I understood the idea mostly through the experiences of eastern block 80's youth, (
The Last Schoolbell comes to my mind) but I believe the theme is universal enough to resonate everywhere, especially with how well it was presented.
The writing is witty and engaging. You genuinely find yourself invested into the lives of the people you meet on the road, the situations you keep finding yourself are tense when they need to be tense, but also funny when they need to be funny, with many moments of genuine warmth despite
the great threat above. The writing engages with the themes of the role of the police in the violent system, importance of familial relation vs. political disagreement, and many more. It presents you a cast of intriguing characters, and invites you to learn more about them, while placing the player inside scenes that wouldn't feel out of place in a gripping movie. I sincerely recommend giving it a try. Even with overall political message being muddled and confused, there are countless moments of genuine charm worth experiencing.
Excellent soundtrack though, and very immersive atmosphere. Gameplay is pretty fun most of the time.