Road 96
Christian Haines, Managing Editor
Talking politics is awkward. As soon as we say “politics” in a conversation, all the details of life become charged with significance. Does voting fulfill one’s civic duty? Is eating meat okay? What about long car trips or international flights? Climate change is a thing, after all. The things we take for granted have history and consequences, and politics is the name for how we argue, fight, and decide these weighty matters.
Road 96 (Digixart) is one of my favorite games this year, because it risks talking politics. Some folks will find the repeated question, “Are you political?” voiced by a number of the game’s NPCs (non-player characters) to be cringe-inducing. However, this kind of embarrassment or discomfort might just be the cost of being an openly political game in an industry that too often rewards shows of neutrality. Road 96 doesn’t tell you what to think. Instead, it begins with the premise that nobody can avoid political decisions and then asks you to consider the values that inform the way you interact with the world.
Road 96 is set in the fictional authoritarian nation of Petria. It takes place in 1996, during the lead up to an election that pits a Trumpian strongman against a politician promising change. You play a series of teenagers on the run, trying to escape the country for the sake of freedom. Each teenager you play has some basic characteristics, but for the most part, they’re anonymous vehicles for exploration. You accrue some basic abilities like hacking and lockpicking, but gameplay mostly consists of poking your nose around different locales, engaging in conversation, and playing the occasional mini-game (air hockey was probably my favorite of these). In one episode, I found myself canvassing a motel in an effort to figure out the identity of a radio pirate. In another, I worked as the camera operator for a news team covering a right-wing political rally (in a nice touch, you can choose to focus on the protestors that interrupt the rally, frustrating the conservative news anchor who’s hired you).
Each run in Road 96 is organized as a set of episodes. While there’s an overarching storyline, these episodes are self-contained. This isn’t surprising given that the game procedurally generates the sequence of the episodes, that is, instead of the sequence being scripted in advance, it emerges on the fly by combining a set of patterns with computer randomization. I have to admit that I was skeptical of how well such narrative randomness would work. The developers advertise the possibilities opened up by procedural generation – “No one’s road is the same,” “There are thousands of roads across the authoritarian nation of Petria” – but I worried that the game might devolve into chaos or become a kind of flavorless mush.
Road 96 succeeds, however, for two reasons. The first reason is that the general structure of escaping for freedom gives the game not just thematic consistency but also a sense of suspense. This isn’t an action game, but there are stakes to your decisions. Although it’s not very clear why early on, teenagers are being rounded up by the government. Many of the episodes involve encounters with the police and one wrong move can mean your entire run gets cut short. This vulnerability to the police echoes the game’s more general political urgency. The game never shies away from reminding you that the object of your quest is freedom – freedom from the strictures of an authoritarian regime – though it does tend to imagine this freedom in rather idealistic terms. A successful run sees you walk into a literal white light representing your newfound liberty.
The other aspect of Road 96 that makes the game so successful is its wonderful cast of characters. In many respects, the episodes of the game are built to showcase its side characters, which include a trucker mourning a lost love, a trumpet-carrying teenage girl who’s also on the run, a precocious hacker kid, a pair of goofy bank robbers, a conservative news anchor, a murderous taxi driver, and a police officer. Because of the game’s procedural and run-based structure, the teenager you play doesn’t really develop relationships with these characters. You’re doomed to play the stranger, a comet quickly entering and exiting the lives of others. On the other hand, as the player, you do get to know these characters. You learn why John, the trucker, seems so melancholy, and why Zoe, the teenage girl, is reluctant to talk about her father. You also discover their political leanings, which range from lazy apathy to left-wing militancy. Without giving too much away, there are connections between these characters, and these connections feed into the game’s overarching narrative.
Talking politics is awkward, but there are ways of easing folks into it. Artistic mediums such as literature, film, and video games can use stylistic devices and narrative techniques to disarm their audiences of their preconceptions or prejudices. They can estrange us from the ideological standpoints we occupy and ask us to deeply consider the conditions in which we exist. Which doesn’t mean they can’t take a stand or that they have to pretend to be neutral. Road 96, for its part, doesn’t present different political positions as if they were equivalent to one another. There’s no siding with the right-wing populist leader – a clear sign that flirting with fascism isn’t in the game’s vocabulary – though it does let you choose from three recurring stances: apathy (who cares?), reform (let’s vote for change), and revolt (let’s tear the whole corrupt system down). The game clearly delineates which is which in the dialogue options, tallying your choices to determine the ending you’ll receive. To be honest, though, what’s most interesting are the conversations, learning about the folks you encounter on the road, shooting the shit about the state of the country, hoping aloud that your country might change.
