Youâve heard Catherineâs premise already: Commitment-phobic, indecisive Vincent must choose between marriage to longtime girlfriend, Katherine, and the allure of a sexy affair with a younger girl, Catherine. You already know is itâs bizarre and surreal, and that the narrativeâs interspersed with tough puzzles. Youâve heard itâs supposed to be an âadultâ game, a story about relationships. But what we havenât discussed much of yet is how well that story works â and how well it achieves its promise of a mature narrative.
One of the things gamers wanted from Atlusâ Catherine was for it to deliver on that promise, and one of the consequences of that wish was some mulling on what qualifies âmatureâ. Although the game got audience attention for its suggestive visuals and sexual themes, the things that were mature about the game had little to do with sex itself (Catherine alludes to, but never portrays sex directly). Ultimately, Catherine aims for maturity by portraying relationships between adults.
How well it succeeds is a matter for debate, but itâs certainly an appreciated attempt. Most hero games portray a solitary character whose romantic relationships are plot dressing, secondary to whatever world-saving mantle the hero or heroine must assume. In particular, Japanese games of the mold from which Catherine is loosely cut generally focus on the lives of teens and early twenty-somethings, and Catherine is refreshingly different, a story of working adults of marriage age.
Actually, that the adults have reached marriage age is the precursor to the gameâs primary conflict. Hereâs something Iâve started learning myself, lately: The twilight of your late twenties into your early thirties represent a sort of shift in the substance of your life conflicts. You start migrating from a focus on âlearning experiencesâ into a kind of anxious limbo that echoes the one you went through after high school. You know, it translates to Iâm done with this bit, so what do I do now, and am I doing this âlifeâ thing right?
All your life, youâd been taught to be independent, that you shouldnât throw your life under a bus for love. All your life youâd labored under the expectation that you should always want to do better and be better than you are, and that eventually youâd arrive at that perfect love, that final permanence with the ârightâ person, ride off into the sunset, fin.
Then you hit 30 and you realize youâre not really into riding off into the sunset after allâ that some parts of your life are actually just beginning. You realize that with actual adulthood has come your unbridled freedom to do whatever you want without fear of judgment â and now, really, is supposed to be when you tie yourself to someone else and make yourself subject to their judgment? Really? Even if you had, all your life, wanted some kind of home, family, commitment, how do you know that youâve found the right one, when so much of your life sprawls like an unfarmed plain in front of your newly-minted grown-up eyes? And should it mean you have to give up things like drinking late nights with your friends, or â dare we wonder â attractive younger sex partners? Forever?
There are actually a lot of extremely complex life issues that Catherine-this game about block-puzzles and yes-or-no answers posed by mysterious voices â pivots on, even if it paints them in broad strokes and not in the sort of lifelike nuance we expect from late-night Emmy-winning dramas or life-changing independent films.
It seems Catherineâs been hard for some people to get their heads around because itâs so stylized, featuring anime art and a surreal narrative that plays with concepts of a manâs disassociation. Part of that stylization is just game design logic: Itâs a choice-based game, and yet the choices the game offers are more about leading toward one of eight endings than affecting the material fact of the gameplay itself. Thus itâs beholden to a certain vagueness, because it has to âworkâ no matter what the player chooses. The gameâs dialogue and events are only subtly and occasionally influenced by how the player chooses to live as Vincent; the presentation of choice in the game seems more geared at encouraging the player to think about him or herself, and of oneâs own views of relationship, commitment and moral rightness.
Catherine should be praised for its gray areas. If you ask someone whether cheating is good or bad, you create a black-or-white binary. But if you ask someone, as this game does, whether they should preserve their individual freedom or sacrifice themselves for others, you inherently create a much broader spectrum of nuance.
The game wonât answer these questions for you; it has no message. All of its characters are frankly despicable: Catherine is clueless, manipulative and overbearing; Vincent is mop-headed, frog-eyed and dull, floating passively along the river of life into whatever choices are easiest or create the least conflict, and Katherine is judgmental, shrewish and unforgiving. As a player, you can experience attempting to actualize idealistic relationship values in a world of gray areas and difficult people just as surely as you can experience the disheartening conclusion that nothing you want is without trade-off, that no one really knows what they want.
As an example of a âmatureâ adult narrative, Catherine certainly has its shortcomings â spiraling off into clear-cut fantasy right when the interpersonal conflicts reach a fascinating fever pitch, for one. But probably the only way for me to illustrate why Catherine is, in fact, a game that speaks to real-world issues for people on the verge of adulthood is to get slightly personal. Sorry.
When I started playing Catherine, what I immediately understood is that Vincent is the kind of guy a girl can meet in a bar anyway; the one that when you ask him âdo you wanna hang out sometime,â he says âokayâ not because he likes you, but because he canât think any further than a couple of days ahead. He says âokayâ even though heâs still âkind ofâ involved with his girlfriend. You donât really find this out about him until later. Lest you think Iâm bitter, this isnât some great crime thatâs been done to me once; sometimes thatâs just how dudes are, in a city where everyoneâs trying to make it, where everyoneâs just basically curious about whatâs in front of them right now after theyâve had a few rum-and-diets and everyone is making friends.
I recognized in Vincent all manner of guys Iâve been out with, who have a woman at home that theyâre just a little bit hesitant to talk to me about. Because theyâre weak or theyâre lazy at best, or at worst because theyâre all-consuming and manipulative. I actually felt a little sorry for Catherine â even though sheâs temptation incarnate, home-wrecker incarnate. Even though choosing Catherine for Vincent, over Katherine, was probably the quintessential, immoral selfish thing that I as a gamer could do, I did it. Because I knew it was the wrong thing for Vincent to do; because I knew heâd be punished for it, and part of me kind of wanted him to. For myself, you know?
Iâve since talked about my choices in Catherine with a number of my friends â from the happily-married men whoâve never been tempted to the girls hoping for a commitment from their mop-headed, sleepy-eyed boyfriends and beyond. And the fun thing I found is that everyone had a different perspective; everyone evaluated the video game called Catherine differently depending on their personal experiences.
The result is a widely variant opinion on whether Catherine succeeds or fails as a highly stylized portrayal of the issues men and women alike face when they realize theyâre on the verge of adulthood and donât want to be alone, and neither do they want their lives to be effectively âoverâ in terms of fun and excitement.
But whatâs most interesting to me is the fact that weâre talking about it, that this Japanese puzzle game catalyzed these discussions. What does it mean for a narrative to work â do we learn something from it? Are we talking about important things because of it? Thatâs good enough for me. Thatâs what maturity means to me.
How about you? How did you play Catherine, and why? Did it have to do with your own life experiences, your own loves? Are you mature yet? Are any of us?
Leigh Alexander is editor-at-large for Gamasutra, author of the Sexy Videogameland blog, columnist in Edge Magazine and games editor at Nylon Guys, in addition to freelance reviews and criticism to a wide variety of outlets. Her monthly column at Kotaku deals with cultural issues surrounding games and gamers. She can be reached at leighalexander1 AT gmail DOT com.
