I'm still slowly playing my way through some of the narrative games in my backlog, and I finally got to Road 96.
I was curious about this game because I've seen it described as procedurally generated road trips. In practice how that works is that as you travel across the map in the game, the encounters that you have or the things you experience are somewhat randomised, so that each journey potentially feels unique. There are some encounters that you will definitely have; the game does need you to play through certain characters' storylines up to a certain point in order to arrive at the ending. But the rest of it will vary depending on things like how you travel different legs of your journey (eg: by bus, by walking, by taxi, by hitchhiking or stealing a car), and how far you've advanced in the storylines of other characters. This does feel pretty refreshing.
The scenario in the game itself, or the reason why you're always on the road is that you're playing a succession of runaway teenagers, who are trying to reach and illegally cross the border of the country you're in, Petria, in an attempt to escape to a less repressive nation.
It's possible to fail to escape along the way, and also to be apprehended at the border. Each time you either escape or you fail and are detained, the game will then move you into playing another teenage escapee with randomised stats (like how long they've been on the road, what their health level is, how much cash they're holding when you start to play them.)
While all that is going on, time is moving forward in the game, and in the overarching plot you're heading towards what may be a very contentious election day in Petria.
I had mixed feelings about the way the game handles politics. On the one hand, I like that it's openly going there. There is plenty of political commentary on along the way. The president of Petria appears to be Trump-like. He's built a wall on the border that you are perpetually trying to cross. His propagandist news service is a fairly large theme in the game; one of the characters you often encounter is a news anchor for a Fox-News-like station that amplifies the rightwing President's talking points.
On the other hand, the analogy with Trump only goes so far. Trump built walls to keep immigrants out, whereas this entire game is about trying to escape as a refugee to another country. The walls are supposedly there to keep you in.
Does that matter? It does, yeah, because a wall built to keep people in is different from one that is trying to keep them out. In the first instance you might talk more about racism and xenophobia, for instance - something that this game doesn't really do.
From an analogy that initially felt as if it was meant to be satire of Trump, I then found myself wondering if Petria was actually meant more to be like a nation that's closer to an outright dictatorship, like maybe North Korea, where people are forbidden to leave. But at the same time, democracy does apparently work in this game - the election day you're heading towards can have an impact on the nation's future, and there are actions you can take throughout the game that may skew election results one way or another.
So it's not quite Trump's racist America, where immigrants from across the border are unwelcome. And it's not quite a dictatorship, where there's no real political change on the table short of an outright revolution. It's some unclear third thing. That didn't feel very grounded in reality for me.
I mention outright revolution, because another possible outcome of the game is that you can be part of formenting one of those. Ie: instead of choosing to support change via the process of an election, one possibility the game offers is to support the cause of a violent revolutionary movement.
Again, I respect a game is trying to go somewhere politically, and isn't pretending to be apolitical (as if that's at all a possible state to achieve!) I want to give this game credit for trying to explore a variety of stances.
But again, I felt like this potential plotline in the game became a touch ungrounded, or at least it lacked nuance. My frustration there would be: why is the prospect of revolution only offered by extremists for whom action involves indiscriminate violence?
Some of my reaction might be because of where I am in the world right now: I'm living in Tory Britain, and a Tory Britain that has been growing increasingly facist and bigoted over the last decade.
If I look at which non-politicians have been committing politically motivated violence over here, if I leave out instances of terrorism committed by religious extremists, what I have is a history of violence carried out by the far right, and not the left. I'm thinking (for instance) of the murder of British MP, Jo Cox. This was carried out by someone who had been radicalised by the far right. If I call to mind any more recent instances, what I think of is the attempt, just towards the end of last year, to firebomb a migrant centre in Dover that was carried out by yet another person who had been radicalised by far right ideologies.
This is to say: when in recent years has the left tried to commit real, abhorent violence? I can think of people throwing milkshakes at racists, or throwing eggs at King Charles on his most recent British walkabouts. But I can't think of an instance where the left has actually had proponents who go out and commit substantial real world violence.
So why feel the need to come up with some kind of far left terrorist group in this game - again, a game that's confusingly set in a country that feels like it should be America, but also kind of isn't? I feel like the game is trying to set up a spectrum where you, the player, can take a more centrist position - and I think this is one of the easier routes through the game - or you can take a more "extreme" position. But there's no real nuance between: "let's rely on an election to change things", or the extreme of: "let's get out the explosives - it doesn't matter if civilians are indiscriminately killed in the process."
This isn't any leftwing position that I'm familiar with in recent politics in real life. So why paint that extreme possibility into the game? What's the point of that? It feels like a thought experiment rather than something that's grounded in any recent real world experience. Again I feel confused about this because is this meant to be like Trump's America, which is still a democracy, even if there's also voter surpression? Is this a dictatorship like North Korea, or somewhere like Putin's Russia? Because the extent to which you, the player, are up against a dictatorship does matter in terms of what means you might want to restort to.
I'm just not very convinced by the politics in Petria. Beyond a surface-level similarity to parts of the real world it doesn't ring true, precisely because the similarity is only partial. I feel like in this game I'm playing with political ideas, but not in a way that has real nuance, or that I can rely on to really help me work through real world dilemmas about what constitutes good action in the face of repressive politics. It feels like it's written as a kind of abstract, speculative thought experiment, whereas I have a real longing for media that engages with how things are, and that tries to say something substantial about what it's like to try and survive in these real world conditions we're all in. That's why I loved Andor so much - the Star Wars universe is ostensibly even more of a fiction than the world of Petria. But something like Andor rings true, in terms of the angst of trying to survive oppressive, facist systems.
The politics in this game is a bit cartoony, is what I'm trying to say. And I'm a touch baffled and disappointed by that because it feels cliche in what it has to say about revolution, or elections, or repressive regimes.
That's my main issue with this game. That one frustration aside, I've really enjoyed it. The mini-games are fun. The different character's storylines are written in engaging ways. I think it's possible to get 3 different endings, and in my first playthrough I got possibly the best one if you care about the other characters you meet on the road: I got to see them winding up in good situations as the credits rolled. When I saw that happening, I realised how much I'd come to care for the characters, and that's usually one of the things that makes a narrative game a big success for me.
There's a new game plus; you can continue to play after you reach the ending, without giving up any of the benefits you've acquired from your first playthrough (eg: it's possible to unlock an expanded health bar or other nifty advantages along the way.) I was motivated to play on, because I wanted to see more of the other character's storylines; ones I hadn't 100%'d in my first playthrough. That's a sign of good writing for me, at least when it comes to the characters.
On the whole I would recommend this game. Just don't expect much nuance from its politics, or don't go in hoping to get deep commentary on what you might be trying to live through in the real world.
