Road of possibilities | Road 96

“The important thing is not the destination but the journey.”

Underneath this well-known adage, often linked to the road-trip, is the metaphor for the change experienced by the traveler or traveleress. A journey always changes something in itself: an enrichment, a maturing, a new encounter, the discovery of another way of life… From point A to point B on a road-trip, no matter where you end up, it’s above all what you experience and what makes you grow that comes out of it. This is as much about the physical experience of the road as it is about the chance encounters, the people you meet who call out to you, help you or, on the contrary, block your path. The road-trip thus becomes an initiation, like the traditional hero’s journey conceptualized by Joseph Campbell: antagonists, allies, obstacles and other journeys before reaching the end of a quest.

These allies and enemies are at the heart of the road trip: whether in a realistic, fantasy or science fiction universe, characters are the ones who provide a brief escape from a lonely journey: they can be allies who set off with the hero, dangerous encounters, unexpected support, reflections of the main character on another road. A lonely road trip has no flavour; you can look at the desolate landscapes and get lost in them, but that wouldn’t be enough to create a complete story. Among the videogames in this genre, Road 96 by the French studio Digixart understands this.The characters are teenagers on the run from the Petria regime, which is increasingly becoming an authoritarian, extremist society. Tyrak is the current president, opposed by the more pacifist Flores. Their goal? To reach Route 96, the border that will finally allow them to leave Petria.

To cover the thousands of kilometers to the Promised Land, the player has several options: hitchhiking, walking, driving a stolen car, taking a taxi or a bus. Each “segment” of an episode is procedurally generated, allowing us to cross paths with the seven non-playable, recurring protagonists of the story. With each passage, we learn more about them, their motivations and their pasts, sometimes at our peril. After all, choosing the wrong dialogue can lead to arrest or death…

As well as the great diversity of Road 96’s journeys thanks to the procedural system, it’s these secondary characters who make the adventure so special. Each one embodies something different, an ideal, a value, prompting our runaway to decide whether he or she wants to change society through pacifist votes, by force of rebellion, or by abstention, taking into account only his or her own desire to escape from Petria. Our decisions also have a certain impact on the game’s possible endings, and not just on our character’s relationship with those we meet.

The road trip imaginary

First and foremost, Road 96 conjures up a host of images in our minds as we embark on each new journey. A first-person view lets us embody our hero or heroine, letting us experience the whole initiatory adventure. Deserted roads lead us through forests or arid expanses, evoking a certain solitude broken by the distant lights of a car, or the warmth and liveliness of a roadside restaurant. Abandoned dumps and motels, ruined by time or fire, also remind us that if these roads are deserted, it’s because nature has taken over. Or a human incident has caused the inhabitants to flee. Sometimes it’s simply the horizon that punctuates the road, with its serenity and absence of danger; sometimes the road is discovered during a bus or taxi journey, on the fly, the wheels of the vehicle swallowing up the kilometres while we are in good or bad company. Chance decides…

The multiplicity of these situations is not in vain. The desolate roads are reminiscent of the devastated, crumbling highways and byways of post-apocalyptic series and games such as The Walking Dead and The Last of Us. This motel in the middle of the night, with that all-American look ?Remember what happens to Marion Crane in Psycho for putting her trust in the wrong person after a long night drive? This caravan camp, where permanent residents, transients and the homeless all live together ? It conjures up memories of films such as Nomadland, where indebted Americans can only live in caravans, and of the game Life is Strange 2, with its community living apart from society.

The road-trip makes you feel isolated, and forces you to rely solely on your own resources, your will to move forward and your own energy (the game also makes you watch over your character’s energy).

That’s until you come across these other characters who embody the many possibilities and derivations of the initial quest. And that’s just as well, because despite the obligatory passages, Road 96 never takes you on the same journey again.This is where the game’s procedural system comes into its own, allowing us to experience a unique journey each time, while still letting us decide how we want to move around. It’s even clever enough to continually surprise the player: you thought you could avoid Jarod (the taxi driver) or John (the lorry driver) by avoiding taxis and hitchhiking, or even force them to meet you by these means? Don’t worry, you’ll come across them soon enough elsewhere.

Idealism and optimism

In the imagination of the road-trip, we sometimes imagine encounters that are always benevolent, positive and free from the various shackles of society. If we wander the roads in this way, it’s often to escape something or to escape from it. In the world of Road 96, some of the NPCs you meet are idealists, in every sense of the word. Young Zoé, one of our first encounters in the game, is a teenager who looks like a daddy’s girl because she comes from a very wealthy and powerful family. But she flees her family environment because of political disagreement and because she can no longer stand the oppression that reigns there. Far from her material comforts, she takes to the road in the belief that she can change the current regime. Zoé is the rebellious, idealistic teenager who turns against the society she has always lived in. In this aspect alone, she is reminiscent of another famous road-trip character: Chris McCandless, a young man who actually existed, escaping from a life he could no longer stand capitalism and its shenanigans, preferring the rugged beauty of nature and the solitude of a life without ties. Although he is better prepared for this life on the road than Zoé, they are both naive in a sense. Simply running away is not the solution to every problem: you need money to feed yourself, papers to work, perseverance to avoid being found by those you are running away from…

Not far from Zoé is Alex, a slightly younger teenager who happens to be a genius hacker. Road 96 takes place in 1996, and the young boy is way ahead of his time, having tinkered with his own laptop and managed to hack into radios and other online services. Here again, Alex’s innocence works in his favour: rather confident, he nevertheless runs away from his mother, and tries to help the Black Brigades, the terrorist forces seeking to overthrow the current government. His idealism is double-edged, since depending on the dialogue we have with him, he may choose the path of violence, with bombs, or a more pacifist one, to change the course of things. Zoé and Alex are the two teenagers in Road 96: they embody the idealism, optimism and strength of youth, the desire to change things, without always realising that not everything in the world around them is black or white.

In terms of teenage runaways, they also evoke Daniel and Sean, the two brothers from Life is Strange 2.They are forced to flee their family home in the direction of Mexico because they appear to be responsible for a murderous event in their family. Their journey is emancipatory and initiatory, requiring them to fend for themselves, even if it means starving and sleeping in caves, relying only on themselves and chance encounters to survive and avoid the police. But with them, the world’s shades of grey are much more visible and present, through a whole new palette of varied characters. The road-trip reveals another vision of the world, sometimes isolated from society, sometimes far more pessimistic and violent, with the appearance of enemies seeking to exploit them at work on an illegal cannabis farm, or by trying to win them over to a cult, for example.

In any case, it’s with Zoé and Alex that the road-trip is most apparent in its (almost) carefree escapism, always helping us along our way, like a road-trip that can’t last.It’s only a parenthesis, a time for rebellion, not a way of life, even if it also allows them to deconstruct their vision of society and the regime in which they live.

The authority in place

In the course of Road 96, two faces of authority appear at regular intervals. Fanny is a policewoman, honest and willing to do her job and respect the law, even if it’s under the orders of an overly authoritarian regime. But she’s also not afraid to show a little personal ethics and flexibility by letting the runaway go when she needs to, or by asking our hero/heroine for help when it comes to doing things that are a little illegal. Fanny is also a mother, and a woman in love; a touch of humanity and personality that make her sympathetic and not just an adversary. She may be the image of justice, but she is also the embodiment of human justice – even if she doesn’t always let her feelings get the better of her sense of duty. The same cannot be said of the other police officers in Road 96, just off the Wall, who can kill the runaway or subject her to a border worker exam that promotes the regime’s propaganda with questions sometimes reminiscent of George Orwell’s dystopia 1984.

The most surprising figure in Petria and its authority is Sonya, the TV presenter who reminds us of the different runaways on the run in each programme and the percentage of the vote between Flores and Tyrak. The moments with her are by turns surprising, funny, festive or almost thriller-like, the young woman living in showbiz after all, perfectly willing to spread Tyrak’s propaganda far and wide. There’s almost no questioning of her, except at the very end, when she’s used as a tool of influence and propaganda without too much hesitation. It also gives us a glimpse into the vision of the opposing camp, the enemy we’re running away from, even if this doesn’t change our protagonist’s mind. Self-centred and superficial, Sonya is probably not our favourite character, even if she does introduce us to a nightclub/party in the middle of the desert, and gives us a taste of luxury while hitchhiking. We prefer to leave civilisation behind.

Amateur gangsters

But what would a road-trip be without bank robberies and highwaymen? Mitch and Stan are reminiscent of Bonnie and Clyde, the famous bank robbers condemned to live on the road to escape the police… only wackier and less talented. Sometimes delirious, sometimes menacing, we come across them trying to rob a restaurant (evoking all the memories of American film heist scenes, and even the lame ducks of Joel Coen’s O’Brother ), in their hideout or simply during a motorbike race almost as dangerous (but less spectacular) as those in Mad Max: Fury Road. Stan and Mitch are the sidekicks: they bring a sense of humour without taking themselves too seriously, while at the same time posing a threat to the player.

These two hooded brothers are the fun side of road-tripping, when you do karaoke in the car, when you take the wrong road but end up in a nice place, these completely crazy encounters that give a sparkling and humorous side to the trip. It’s also the characters that you don’t expect, who turn out to be deeper and more generous than expected, like the car driver in Peter Farrelly’s film Green Book, played by Viggo Mortensen. In short, Stan and Mitch forever.

Revenge with a double face

On the other hand, two protagonists illustrate revenge and a slightly darker, bitterer and more painful side of the game. Road-tripping is a way of escaping, sometimes from yourself. John, who looks like a simple lorry driver, hides behind his fatherly bear attitude a terrorist activity: he’s a member of the Black Brigades and is determined to avenge his fiancée, who was killed in a previous attack. Despite his kindness and even his wisdom, he could easily be identified as an enemy who hides his game well.

Yet the most striking thing about him is the scene at the top of a cliff, under the stars or the sun, where we discuss and receive his almost philosophical advice. He’s a father figure to our hero/heroine, but also a little reminiscent of Sean Penn’s Into the Wild, with his regrets and hopes, the loss of loved ones, a melancholy that we feel in the face of nature, where solitude forces us to introspect. John is one of those characters that we like and that we easily find in the road-trip fantasy, a mentor who is quite sincere and determined, despite his built like a tank-physique.

To round off this journey of encounters, there’s Jarod. A taxi driver, he’s the ultimate menacing and creepy antagonist, appearing when you least expect it, like in a horror game, and ready to kill you if you have the misfortune to annoy him. Jarod is a chilling menace, reminiscent of those psychopaths and sociopaths you might meet along the way who would kill you because you had the misfortune to flash your headlights at him. It’s reminiscent of a similar scene in Tom Ford’s film Nocturnal Animals, which ends very, very badly.

Jarod is the only character (apart from the border police) who can kill you almost every chapter. Like all the other NPCs in Road 96, his story needs to be explored to understand him better. But he remains deeply unpredictable, terrifying, ready to drag us into his dark affairs and make us uncomfortable as soon as we see a plastic dinosaur in a new place. Jarod is the epitome of the unpredictable hovering over the road-trip, the dark and enigmatic man in black, smoking a cigarette between two silences, ready to kill us for a misplaced word. He is the darkest facet of humanity in the game, devoid of empathy or compassion. Horreur 404 was fortunate enough to interview Kham, one of the game’s game designers and Jarod’s character designer.

The road trip as a microcosm of lives and characters

What Road 96 succeeds in showing us through its varied characters is the microcosm that is created in its road trip. The road-trip takes many of the protagonists on the road for a variety of reasons: the desire for revenge, the wish to rebel, everyday missions, the search for someone in particular… The hero or heroine who travels carries with his or her own world and will, as do those he or she meets. Along the way, allies and enemies reveal themselves, and everyone brings something to the table. A word of wisdom, a touch of humour, an ability to see beyond appearances, an understanding of the strength of family ties and friendships. You’re bound to come away from these journeys enriched, unlocking new gameplay capabilities (creating an invigorating drink, being able to pick locks, etc.) or a better understanding of the protagonists you meet. And, therefore, to be able to act differently with them, beyond just trying to understand them.

When we think of road-trips in fiction, it’s this knowledge of others and of oneself that often comes to mind, made necessary by the need to keep moving forward. The people you meet on the road represent a small microcosm of a larger society. The Walking Dead (whatever its medium: comics, Telltale, series) is a proud example of this, with this continuous road for years, from refuge to refuge, where we come across the worst and the best of humanity, like The Last of Us. Dmitri Gloukhovski’s novel Metro 2033 comes to mind. While young Artyom’s road trip takes him underground, from metro station to metro station, each is an opportunity to encounter a different way of life: transit camps, a neo-Nazi station, a village nostalgic for Stalinism and Communism… The road can also be synonymous with happy and enriching encounters, with a mentality that evolves in a positive way (as demonstrated by the feel-good film Green Book), or the path towards the last ruins of an annihilated humanity (the cannibals in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road ).

The road-trip would not be what it is without the passengers, drivers and travellers also encountered along the way. Otherwise it would be nothing more than an introspective look at oneself and nature, while the encounters also allow the hero or heroine to evolve in their vision of the world, to undergo their own evolution in their initiatory journey. With this in mind, it’s not so surprising to see the fashion for road-trip novels, in which characters who are sometimes at odds with each other set off on a journey or cross paths, and come to understand each other better. With its hazardous adventures and the feeling of leaving one’s path to the mercy of fate and encounters, the road-trip evokes the unknown and the change it provokes, in an urban world where chance and adventure have far less place than before.