Pach's Real Talk: Catherine

Greetings gamers! It's time to get a little bit weird up in here. It's time to talk about your sex life. What is that, you ask? Well, when other human beings go outside the realm of video game blogs and hentai, sometimes they discover something... something horrifying. It's called a "girl". These "girls" are complex creatures that take on many different roles and forms, sort of like a shape shifter. "Girls" can have a plethora of effects on a gamer's life, they can make you feel big, make you feel small, and sometimes they can make you feel big and then small if it's really good (AMIRITE?!... totally getting banned for bigotry...). But all that aside, no game in existence lets you know what it's like to betray a girl quite like Catherine.

Real talk.

If you folks read my previous entry about Amnesia: The Dark Descent, then you know that the "feeling" of a game is quite important to me. Our ability to empathize with and put ourselves in the shoes of a protagonist is absolutely paramount to a game having a lasting effect on our lives. Atlus has done some super cool stuff in the past (Demon Souls anyone?), and with Catherine they have really outdone themselves.

Lets just jump right in, shall we?

I want you to use your imagination for a minute and put yourself in a situation you've probably never experienced before: You've got an attractive girlfriend. Picture it... think hard... no you can't have Jessica Alba... B-List please. Ok. Ok good. Now, I want you to imagine another scenario that probably isn't so far out there: You're a terrible person with stupid friends. Combine those two together and you've got our protagonist - Vincent!

But Pach! You just contradicted yourself! You said it was important to be able to put ourselves in the character's shoes and then threw a curve ball my way! Well, listen closely: I definitely mentioned the importance of being able to empathize with a character and then immediately afterwards put you in a scenario that you've probably never been in before... HOWEVER, what's important with connecting to a video game is not the specific detailing of the protagonist's daily life (you aren't a dude with a 10 foot long sword either but I bet you cried like a little girl when Aerith died). What's important are the emotions being expressed by the character - frustration, sadness, joy, triumph, betrayal, and the circumstances that surround them. These are the things that, if portrayed properly and realistically, ANY player can connect with on a personal level. It's a rule that applies regardless of a character's specific situation (i.e. what he had for breakfast, whether he's famous or a loser, hobbit or orc, etc.). It makes you "remember that time when..." and really puts you in a position of vulnerability to the game's story devices.

So here we go - You begin as Vincent, a mild mannered game programmer with a pretty hot girlfriend. She's got a job, life goals, and is successful. But after 5ish years, she finally wants Vincent to tie the knot with her. Unenthusiastic about getting married, Vincent consults with his retarded friends: a bro, a depressed chain smoker, and a college kid. They all give him terrible life advice about women, and then leave him alone at a bar. Sound familiar yet? Thought so. Vincent then proceeds to get completely blasted out of his damned mind. He begins talking to himself... mulling over the various horrors of marriage and so forth... when BAM BOOM BAZAOW!!!! A smoking hot blonde walks into the bar. Since Vincent is the only one there, she sits next to him. You both chat it up for a little bit, talking about relationships and the universe as a whole, and Vincent leaves pretty much empty handed. Simple.

Then, the next morning HOLY TAP DANCING JESUS she's in the bed with you... and yes, you guys totally banged. Oh, did I mention that Vincent doesn't live with his girlfriend after 5 years? Yeah, pretty sweet deal. So anyway, there he is with this crazy hot woman in his bed, and the story begins.

Now, without getting into any of the crazy plotline stuff or spoilers, lets talk gameplay elements. You as Vincent constantly cycle between two phases of the game - the bar phase, and the nightmare phase. Every day, some crazy stuff happens with Katherine (your girlfriend) and Catherine (the hot blonde) that puts strain on your relationships in various ways. Every night you go to the bar, do what you want, then go home and go to sleep. So the progression is bar, sleep, consequences, repeat.

Bar phase first - While in the bar you're in simple "I'm in a town in an rpg" mode. You can walk around, talk to your buddies, and chat up recent events with other patrons at the bar. Oh, and you can drink. You can drink a LOT. This phase is all about making decisions that affect both a.) the nightmare phase directly afterwards as well as b.) the story stuff later. The more you drink, the better you're able to handle the nightmare phase (your movement speed is increased and so forth), but the more you drink the more unstable your decisions are for the story stuff. That's part 1 of the bar. Part 2 is texting. You are constantly getting texts and/or phone calls from your girlfriend as well as from Catherine. The game has a pretty dynamic system that allows you to choose from various, situation specific phrases and then actively compose responses (line by line) to these text messages. The texts you receive can vary anywhere from your girlfriend nagging you to Catherine wanting to send you nudes (F*** YEAH!). Each text you receive and respond to can change the way your following morning is going to go. Also, as an added bonus: every time you drink a full glass of a certain type of booze, the game provides you with a fun fact about that type of liquor! These are actually pretty cool, and are different every night for every type of booze (there are 4).

Annnnnd the nightmare phase - This is where things start to get a little weird. To make a long story short, if you die in the nightmare phase you die in real life... so it's important to not die. The nightmare phase is where the actual "game" takes place. The nightmare places you in large, creepy rooms of a giant cathedral... and you are constantly climbing various towers of blocks. Wait, what the huh? This is a block puzzle game? What? Where am I? Who am I? I thought this was.....ngFUUUUU- (bear with me). The block puzzles involve you climbing this tower with speed and mental dexterity so that you can escape a dark force that is constantly pursuing you. You are able to shift the blocks around to make your passage more efficient, as well as collect power ups that allow you to avoid the many traps and special blocks that obstruct your path.

The dark force takes on many forms and for the boss fights it actually takes on physical entities that put a fun-house mirror to what's happening in the story (have you ever been attacked by a monster that is an embodiment of kama sutra sex positions? Man, you just haven't lived yet...). There are usually 3 block towers to climb per room, per night, culminating in a boss battle. In between each puzzle you find yourself on a central hub area that remains frequent throughout the storyline. Oh, and you're surrounded by sheep-people dressed in human clothing... WHAT THE- (bearrrrrrrrr with me).

The sheep people are also trying to escape the block towers, and give you various hints on how to not die. You can chat them up, find out their hopes and dreams, and sometimes see them climbing their own towers in the background of the various levels. Often times you may even find yourself sharing a tower with other desperate sheep... who will totally push you off if you give them the chance because sheep are dick bags. Many of the sheep on the hub are actually reoccurring characters that you can talk to each time you reach a new level. Then, to transition from the hub to the next block tower... you go to sit down in a church confession booth and talk to a mysterious voice... OK SERIOUSLY YOU'RE NOT EVEN FORMING REAL WORDS WITH YOUR MOUTH ANYMO- (bear with me bear with me you're almost there!).

Finally, once you're sitting in the confession booth, the mysterious voice asks you a very personal "door 1 or door 2"-esque question about your own personal relationships. Anything from your thoughts on marriage, to whether your significant other dressing like a baby and sitting on your lap would turn you on or not. This is followed by a graph showing you what others answered on the same question (via online survey), and a transition to the next block tower. Ok... ok whew. You made it.

So the next question you should be thinking is "WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD EVER, AND WHY DO YOU LIKE THIS GAME!?!?" The answer, my dear gamers, is metaphor.

While it may be difficult to explain all the strange, ridiculous, sheep loving, often subtle details of the game, this is allllll one big metaphor for relationships and how we deal with them. The developers at Atlus wanted you to feel like you're constantly doing what we all do when placed in awkward, uncomfortable situations: run... run and try to avoid the problem. Let's be honest, this is an impulse that we ALL deal with to a certain extent when faced with confrontations of deep, emotional vulnerability... and Catherine forces you to face those confrontations head on. You run, climb, jump, and try to escape the problems that are chasing you (via the block towers and dark force in various forms) only to find out that you CAN'T run from these things and are forced to make a decision (via the confession booth). Then you watch that decision played out in real time the next day, blending everything together from texts to block towers to decisions to sheep. Why sheep, you ask? Well, the idea is that the more you face your problems, and don't run from your own emotions, the more you take control of your life and break free from the "herd" as it were. The more you learn about yourself, the more you're able to stand out from the crowd and become less of a victim. I know, it sounds like a long-shot but you had to be there...

So why does Pach love this game? Well, to further drive the point home, lets take a look at what this game actually does to you.

1.) You're forced to deal with meaningful temptation that requires personal reflection.

At our very core, we all want something more. We all want a hotter girlfriend/boyfriend, better careers, more money, better anything. Associated with these things are various forms of temptation that usually involve cheating or betraying our fellow human beings to get there quicker. It could be anything from leaving your wife for a more attractive friend of hers, to stealing a co-worker's big report and claiming it as your own. We all wonder what life would be like if things were a little bit different... a little bit "better". Being satisfied is something we all certainly dream of, but in actuality it's extraordinarily difficult to be completely "content". Proper use of temptation is a wonderful thing in video games... mainly because it is something so hard wired into our sense of self-worth that we can't help but to fall prey to it.

With Vincent, we see it everywhere - Vincent tempted into being a more outgoing person through alcohol, Vincent tempted into a better sex life with women, Vincent tempted into being the envy of his friends, and so forth. While this isn't necessarily the all encompassing list of what most of us have ever been tempted with, these are things that most people have desired at SOME point during their adult lives... and the game has some very clever tools that keep you constantly deciding which impulses to give in to. Let's briefly break each one down:

Temptation #1: You know that liquor is bad for your character's self-control, but it helps you deal with the nightmares more easily and teaches you fascinating things about the world (through the fun facts). The game provides you with enough of an incentive to at least TRY walking on the wild side, despite the dangers, and after each stressful event you are forced to re-evaluate how you would like to treat this part of your life.

Temptation #2: You've got a girlfriend... but DAMNIT Catherine is hot. She's fun loving, speaks your language, and she comes with zero serious commitments. Through the texting mechanic, you are forced to decide how much you want to deal with each of your separate responsibilities to both your girlfriend and Catherine, and the game does it in a very intelligent way. Rather than forcing you to make BIG decisions like "Marry girlfriend", "Sleep with Catherine tonight", or "Tell girlfriend the truth", the game forces you to make extremely frequent LITTLE decisions. When your girlfriend says "I love you" in a text, and you're out with Catherine, do you say "I love you" back? When Catherine tosses you a text about wanting to send you nudes, do you respond to it after your girlfriend just cleaned your house? All of these little things eventually add up to form the big picture of Vincent's life as you see it.

Temptation #3: Your friends are ridiculous, but hey... they're all you've got. After finding out what you've done, your friends (and the other patrons at the bar) react in various ways to your fidelity issues. Some think it's awesome, some wish they were in your shoes, others think you're making a mistake but will support you, and so forth. Their reactions change based on how you deal with Katherine and Catherine... so while they don't directly affect the gameplay, they affect you by making you choose whether you want to live by their standards or not.

2.) You're able to project pieces of yourself onto Vincent throughout the story.

While it is very important to be able to hop into the shoes of the protagonist, it's an element that is often difficult for developers to "plan" for in games that involve large amounts of dialogue. It's quite simple in a game like Zelda because your protagonist doesn't speak... so it's much easier for HIS voice to be YOUR voice. But in a game like Catherine, with a fully flushed out character like Vincent, it's a bit more complicated to mold that kind of experience. So what does the game do to mold Vincent appropriately? Well... they ask you!

Each and every time you complete a puzzle (there are about 25-30 in all), you are forced to answer a question that profiles how you think relationships should be. By question 10 or 11, the game can have a pretty fair understanding of how you think things should go down in the protagonist's life (assuming it asks the right questions, which it does)... and the game adjusts accordingly. This is a very unique mechanic that is reminiscent of "Silent Hill: Shattered Memories", where again the game finds out how you would like the story to progress by straight up asking you (and totally judging you based on your answers).

3.) The game forces you to make realistic choices

In a wide variety of games that allow story line decisions, alignment choice plays a big factor. Are you good or evil? Do you murder the guy or let him live? Do you steal the item you need or earn it through hard work? And... to be perfectly honest with you... I loathe these types of games from a narrative perspective. That is because what these games do (more often than not) is put the world in black and white, then reward you for choosing a side and playing it to the fullest. While yes, this does allow an amount of replay value and creates somewhat of a unique experience... have you ever thought about what these mechanics are actually for?

The ability to choose your own adventure goes allllll the way back to the wonderful world of D&D, and to tell you the truth - they built a system that did it right. How did they do it right? Because while there were always "good" and "bad" decisions to be made in every campaign, that wasn't the point. The point was that it was YOUR adventure. The point was that from beginning to end you were deciding how you wanted the world to work, and the game reacted to you on a moment to moment basis.

Now to be fair... each game of D&D does have a human mind controlling the progression of the story to a certain extent (meaning there are added opportunities for improvisation and various options), but the basic idea of creating your OWN story remains the same. Video games with branching storyline progression were built to mimic this pen and paper masterpiece... and more often than not, they fell short. Why? Well, we can claim it's because it's impossible to predict everything a player can come up with, but predicting player behavior isn't the point. Games aren't meant to account for EVERYTHING that a human mind can come up with, because they still must have a ruleset and patterns that you as a player are forced to operate within... just like anything else. However, what branching stories are meant to do is provide a player with interesting choices within the rules of the game (even if it only allows for a few), have those choices be truly meaningful to the game's progression, and then execute whatever path the player chooses with relevant consequences.

The point is this: just because you can be GOOD Luke Skywalker or EVIL Luke Skywalker doesn't change the fact that you're still playing a linear adventure with Luke ****ing Skywalker... even though game devs would like for you to think otherwise. It's very rare for decisions you make in a game to mean something relevant to the progression of the game, and often times you are manipulated into playing "purely" good or "purely" evil because the game rewards it more than playing the middle ground. What you end up with are simply 2 separate games to choose from rather than 1 unique game.. 1 truly unique adventure that is catered to your tastes. The truth is, life is not black and white. We flip flop every moment of every day on our decisions, because human beings are complicated creatures... and any game that advertises unique storyline progression should cater to that. Often times what games will do is either a.) make your decisions matter moment to moment (but not in the big picture), or b.) make your decisions matter in the big picture (but not moment to moment). An example of poor usage of each would be a.) it doesn't matter whether you choose a red car or a blue car to get to your destination, because you're still getting there regardless... or b.) it DOES matter which car you choose, but you end up not caring in the end because the destination is unrewarding, boring, similar to other destinations, and/or watered down to save time and developer resources. Each of these things causes you to stray more and more from the original intention of having your own, unique adventure where anything is possible.

Catherine, however, does this successfully by making your decisions matter on BOTH levels and by rewarding you for playing yourself (imagine that!). You are free to react honestly to situations because you are rewarded moment to moment based on how you deal with your texts, drinking, and friends... but you are also rewarded in the grand scheme of things because each of those moment to moment choices adds up to a unique big picture decision (i.e. how you want Catherine and Katherine to perceive you). The game doesn't punish you for playing the middle ground. In fact, it allows itself to be more interesting than black or white because you normally do play the middle ground in your everyday life.

Not only that, but the game does a very good job of making both Katherine and Catherine endearing parts of Vincent's life. More often than not, we feel like we have to make a hardcore decision in terms of how our game experience is going to go. Devs cater to this by making characters appealing in two polar opposite ways, mirroring your storyline choices with simple cookie cutter character choices (Brooding badass companion, anyone? Naive-but-means-well heroine companion, anyone?). But... what if BOTH characters had EQUAL value in terms of progressing the story? Whaaaaaaaat?! Normally characters are made to cater to either a "good" or "evil" side of you, and while at first K and C might seem like that's what they're doing, they are actually both catering to equally valid sides of the same coin. It's not as simple as one being what you're "supposed" to do and one being what you're "not supposed" to do, it's a matter of choosing how your life should be lived decision by decision. Risk vs. Safety, Unpredictable vs. Planned, Freedom vs. Order... and while you may think you want one more than the other, on a moment to moment basis things change and the game doesn't allow you to make sweeping statements about your alignment. You could want to have a cheeseburger today but still want to go on a diet tomorrow because THAT'S HOW HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY WORKS.

4.) The game indirectly exposes parts of your subconscious through gameplay.

Ok, we've gone all over the board with this write-up, so before we wrap things up I would like to point out one final important thing: you're a terrible person. No, seriously, you are... and this game will show you. It's one thing to say that you're a good person, or that you "wouldn't" do one thing or another, but if you put ANYONE in a controlled environment with no real life consequences for their actions... you're gonna see some hooker killing. That's what makes these open ended games so fascinating - you see sides of yourself that you didn't know were there. The developers at Atlus really made it clear that they wanted to see exactly what would happen if you played the game honestly... and they weren't afraid you were going to break their linear adventure if you strayed from the norm.

Ordinarily, would you have the balls to have an elaborate affair on your girlfriend/boyfriend? For most people the answer is probably not, and if you did you'd only do it with limitations for your own personal well being. But what if you could honestly go out and make a dramatic change in your life with zero meaningful repercussions for your actions? Like I said... a lot of dead hookers. Now, this isn't to say that in a game like Catherine your actions don't affect that world in a meaningful way... but it does allow for you to honestly, truly "act on impulse" in a lot of different situations, and the results can (and should) be startling. This is probably the most meaningful consequence of any good work of art - it reveals something about the audience that they never knew was there. Let me say that again - it reveals something about you, the player, that you never knew before playing the game. How cool is that? In a safe and controlled environment, you can actually learn more about what makes you tic as a human being... and have a pretty compelling story told to you at the same god damned time. That's what it's all about people.

So, in conclusion, this game is definitely on the weird side of things. It definitely runs the gambit of being too metaphorical and has some complicated stuff flowing through its plot... but at its very core the game is extremely well put together. It boasts an experience that most other games can only claim to hold a candle to, and it makes every adventure real and personal to you as a player. Who cares if you're not going to play through a game twice? The one time you played it, it changed the way you perceived the world. Will Catherine do that? Maybe not in so many words, but it will definitely make you think about yourself in a much more dynamic way and will definitely challenge you on many different psychological levels. Not a lot of games do that nowadays, and it's something that should be given more attention in all aspects of gaming and game design.

Catherine is rated M for Mature.