Image: Annapurna / Kotaku
If there is a cat in your house, how does it walk normally? With the tail pointed up, you probably already know, like any normal cat. But Stray’s feline protagonist is a little more modest: he mostly keeps his tail low, at least based on the game’s footage seen during a live preview event attended by Kotaku.
In other words, no, you probably don’t see much of the cat’s ass in Stray.
Stray, an adventure game that Annapurna Interactive will release for PlayStation and PC this July, is the debut of French developer Blue Twelve Studio. It takes place largely in a futuristic human-free city, mysteriously occupied by iPod-looking robots. While most games with this setup would put you in the tough boots of a soldier in battle armor, Stray puts you in the softest, infinitely prettier, and possibly deadliest boots (eh, if you know, you know ) of an orange tabby cat. The game caught a lot of rumors during its unveiling on a Sony showcase in 2020 and was initially slated for release in 2021 before being delayed until this year.
Throughout the preview, I couldn’t get a sense of it: Stray isn’t an adventure game where you play like a cat. Stray is an adventure game in which you are a cat, to the things you do in the game.
Swann Matin-Raget, producer of Blue Twelve, played for about 20 minutes of Stray, narrating various segments of a selection of levels throughout the game. (Although Stray is partially open-world, it will also feature more traditional, seemingly linear stages.) Much of the game without quotes focuses on extremely typical feline behavior. You can remove bottles and jars off the counter. You can interrupt a board game played by two robots, sending pieces of wood scattered in a burst.
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There’s also a legitimate mechanic in which you scratch all the things that cats like to scratch: the carpet, the couch, anything else that easily parades and that, by chance, loves you so much. By alternating right and left controller triggers, you can sharpen your claws into a litany of game objects. (On the PlayStation 5’s DualSense controller, you’ll hear a bit of Returnal-style force commentary.) That’s not just aesthetic either. At one point, Matin-Raget slammed an insignificant door into a neon-lit alley. A few seconds passed. A robot opened the door. This is how you move towards certain inaccessible areas.
“I’m doing something very unrealistic here [in] that I enter immediately “, said Matin-Raget. “You know any cat would probably wait 10 to 20 minutes before doing that.”
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 of the members of the studio have cats of their own. Just for the sake of pleasing the crowd, here are some of them:
Photo: Blue Twelve
In fact, even the cat you play is based in part on one of these cats: the orange tabby (pictured) is named Murtaugh and lives with the studio’s co-owners. Matin-Raget noted, however, that Stray’s player character has no name.
Before you ask, Murtaugh didn’t serve as a motion capture actor for Stray’s lost protagonist. No cat did. This will be hard to believe, I know, but apparently it’s not that easy to get a cat to wear a motion capture suit and follow the instructions on stage. Instead, Stray’s protagonist was fully animated by hand, presenting his own set of challenges.
“It’s much harder to animate a quadruped in general than a biped. The center of gravity is really different and the fluidity of the general animations has to be very high to be convincing,” Matin-Raget said. “Also, when you’re trying to animate a human, you can easily film yourself doing anything to use as a reference. But when you want to have something very specific with a cat, you have to extrapolate the material that you could find or create.” .
More than just “cat stuff,” Stray’s basic gameplay focuses on platforms with lightweight puzzle elements. You will automatically complete each jump of the game, always landing on your feet, and you will not suffer any damage as long as you just explore and move. Progression seems to be blocked mainly by environmental puzzles. At one point in the preview, Matin-Raget came across a spinning industrial fan. To stop it, he told the cat to grab a bucket near his mouth and then rolled it toward the fan. He snuggled between the fan and his lobby, stopping the blades to make his way to the next room.
Screenshot: Annapurna Interactive
As with most third-person adventure games, you see your character from behind. Obviously, this poses a potential problem. (Because Stray doesn’t support character customization, you can’t, for example, equip a Twinkle Tush.)
“We didn’t take any action specifically to prevent players from having to see their asses throughout the game,” Matin-Raget told Kotaku in a follow-up email. “But we worked a lot on the tail animations in several different situations, and that helps a lot.”
Something that struck me here: Throughout the preview, Stray’s protagonist kept his tail low. I have two cats. Many of my friends also have cats. (Welcome to journalism!) Most of these cats walk with their tails in a “flag” or straight position. According to Matthew McCarthy, DVM, the founder of Juniper Valley Animal Hospital in Middle Village, NY, this is an invitation to social interaction. It’s an indicator of a cat’s “desire to make a connection,” McCarthy told Kotaku.
“Scared cats will create a smaller silhouette,” McCarthy said. This can mean bending over, grabbing your ears back, or, yes, lowering your tail. “Out of sight out of mind. Hopefully.”
It’s sad, but Stray’s protagonist is very scared. When Blue Twelve first revealed the game, its rich, atmospheric environment, and, you know, the whole game like a cat, helped capture the attention of a lot of people. But there was not much information about what you really do. The general consensus at the time could have been summed up as follows: “Am I a cat? I walk through a city? Am I sitting at the bar? Great! Sold. Give it to me. “
Screenshot: Annapurna Interactive
But a trailer released last summer showed a completely different face to Stray. One scene showed the cat running away from a horde of antagonistic creatures, doing everything possible to escape. It is accompanied by a floating robot drone. Get on a high-speed chariot, dodging enemies and walking down a chasm as if you were starring in Uncharted: Cat’s Fortune. This was not the placid exploration game shown the year before.
The preview clarified a little more what was going on. According to Matin-Raget, the creative decision to introduce intense segments was a rhythmic choice made near the beginning of the game, which has been developed in some way since 2016. The name of the robot is B12 (an obvious soul in the homonymous of the study). He serves as both a protector and a translator, as he is capable of language and you, a cat, are not. When asked whether or not you’re limited to nine lives, Matin-Raget reprimanded and didn’t clarify exactly how health, damage, reactions, and the like work.
Manual previews rarely provide information on whether a game will be good. Most of the time, they are marketing scams, and even more cured by public relations than previews, as you can’t even get an idea of how the game feels. That’s why we usually move away from them in Kotaku.
That said, I came out of Stray buzzing with excitement to a point I normally wouldn’t. And this is from someone who is generally at the hype-meter-1,000 level for game ads, someone who (somehow) is still not damaged by the cynicism that infects so many people who turn a hobby into a job ! Maybe it’s just an instinct adjacent to the feline, but I have a good feeling about it. It will be, if not more, a welcome departure from the typical sarcastic action rate that tends to clutter the summer release schedule.
Just don’t expect any butts.