Image: Annapurna / Kotaku
If you have a cat in your house, how do you usually walk? With a tail pointing straight up, probably – you know, like any normal cat. But Stray’s feline protagonist is a little more modest: he basically keeps his tail down, at least based on gameplay footage seen during a preview event attended by Kotaku.
In other words, no, you probably won’t see much of Stray’s ass.
Stray, an adventure game that will be released by Annapurna Interactive for PlayStation and PC this July, is the debut of French developer Blue Twelve Studio. It is largely set in a futuristic, human-free city, mysteriously occupied by iPod-looking robots. While most games with this setting would put you in the sturdy boots of a battle-armored soldier, Stray puts you in softer, infinitely sweeter, probably more deadly (hey, if you know, you know) orange cat boots. The game caused a lot of noise during its unveiling at Sony in 2020 and was originally planned for 2021 before being postponed to this year.
During the preview session, I couldn’t shake one feeling: Stray is not an adventure game in which you play like a cat. Stray is an adventure game in which you are a cat, down to the things you do in the game.
Swann Matin-Raget, producer of Blue Twelve, played about 20 minutes on Stray, telling several segments of a selection of levels throughout the game. (Although Stray is a partially open world, it will also include more traditional, seemingly linear stages.) Much of the gameplay with quotes and without quotes focuses on some extremely typical feline behavior. You can push bottles and jars from the counters. You can disrupt a board game played by two robots by scattering pieces of wood.
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There is also a legal mechanic in which you scratch all the things that cats like to scratch: the carpet, the sofa, anything else that wears out easily and is also dear to your heart. By alternating the right and left triggers of your controller, you can sharpen your nails on multiple objects in the game. (On the PlayStation 5’s DualSense controller, you’ll feel some forceful feedback in the Returnal style.) It’s also not just cosmetic. At one point, Matin-Raget slammed an unsightly door into a neon-lit driveway. A few seconds passed. The robot opened the door. This is how you progress to certain inaccessible areas.
“I’m doing something very unrealistic here [in] that I will enter immediately, “said Matin-Raget. “You know that every cat will probably wait 10 to 20 minutes before doing so.
It makes sense that the people of Blue Twelve are so well positioned to skillfully capture what it means to be a cat, as many members of the studio have their own cats. Just for the sake of satisfying the crowd, here are some:
Photo: Blue Twelve
In fact, even the cat you play is based in part on one of these cats: the orange tabby (pictured) is called Dead and lives with the studio’s co-owners. Matin-Raget noted that his player was not named Stray.
Before you ask, Murto did not serve as a motion capture actor for Stray’s homeless protagonist. No cat did that. It’s going to be hard to believe, I know, but it’s obviously not that easy to get a cat to wear a motion capture suit and follow the instructions on stage. Instead, Stray’s protagonist was entirely animated by hand, which presented his own set of challenges.
“In general, it’s much harder to animate a four-legged animal than a two-legged one. The center of gravity is really different and the smoothness of the overall animations has to be really high to be convincing, “said Matin-Raget. “Plus, when you’re trying to animate a person, you can easily capture yourself doing everything to use as a reference. But when you want to have something very specific with a cat, you need to extrapolate the material that you can find or create.
More than just “cat stuff,” Stray’s main gameplay focuses on platforming with lightweight puzzle elements. You will automatically complete each jump in the game, always landing on your feet and will not suffer any damage while just exploring and moving. The progression seems to be largely blocked by ecological puzzles. At one point during the preview, Matin-Raget came across a rotating industrial fan. To stop him, he directed the cat to take the nearby bucket in his mouth, then turned it to the fan. He got stuck between the fan and his lobby, stopping his blades to open a path to the next room.
Screenshot: Annapurna Interactive
As with most third-person adventure games, you see your character from behind. Obviously, um, that’s a potential problem. (Because Stray doesn’t support character customization, you can’t, say, equip Twinkle Tush.)
“We have not taken any special steps to avoid the need for players to see the ass throughout the game,” Matin-Raget told Kotaku in a follow-up email. “But we worked a lot on the tail animations in a few different situations, and that helps a lot.”
One thing that struck me here: During the preview, Stray’s protagonist kept his tail down. I have two cats. Many of my friends also have cats. (Welcome to journalism!) Most of these cats walk in tails in flagshirks or face up. According to Matthew McCarthy, DVM, founder of Juniper Valley Animal Hospital in Middle Village, New York, this is an invitation to social interaction. This is an indicator of “the cat’s desire to make a connection,” McCarthy told Kotaku.
“Frightened cats will create a smaller silhouette,” McCarthy said. This could mean squatting, pinching their ears, or, yes, pulling their tail down. “Away from the eyes, away from the mind. Let’s hope so.”
It’s sad, but Stray’s protagonist has something to fear. When Blue Twelve first unveiled the game, its rich, atmospheric atmosphere – and, you know, the whole game like a cat – helped get a lot of attention. But there was not much information about what you were actually doing. The general consensus at the time could be summed up as, “Am I a cat?” Am I touring the city? Are you sitting at the bar? Great! sold. Give me.”
Screenshot: Annapurna Interactive
But a trailer released last summer showed a completely different side of Stray. One scene shows a cat moving away from a horde of antagonistic creatures trying to escape. He is accompanied by a floating robot drone. He jumps on an accelerating cart, avoiding enemies and moves across the precipice, as if participating in Uncharted: Cat’s Fortune. This was not the quiet research game shown last year.
The visualization clarified a little more about what was going on there. According to Matin-Raget, the creative solution for presenting intense segments is a choice of tempo made near the start of the game, which has been under development in some capacity since 2016. The robot’s name is B12 (an obvious nod to the studio’s namesake). He serves both as a defender and a translator, because he is capable of language, and you, a cat, are not. Asked whether you are limited to nine lives or not, Matin-Raget objected and did not clarify exactly how health, damage, rebirth and the like work.
Previews rarely give an idea of whether a game will be good. More often than not, they are marketing charades – and even more curated by PR than practical visualizations, as you can’t even get an idea of how the game feels. That’s why we usually deviate from them in Kotaku.
Still, I walked away from Bray, buzzing with excitement to an extent I don’t usually do. And this is from someone who is usually at the hype-meter-1000 level for gaming ads, someone who (somehow) is not yet spoiled by the cynicism that infects so many people who turn the hobby into a job! Maybe it’s just a cat instinct, but I have a good feeling for that. If nothing else, this would be a welcome departure from the typical nagging action rate that tends to overwhelm the summer launch calendar.
Just don’t expect any assholes.
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