Catherine

About

Catherine is an adult-themed, puzzle-platformer developed and published by Atlus. It follows the story of Vincent Brooks, a man caught in between the choice of marrying his long-time girlfriend, Katherine, or moving on to a mysterious woman he had an affair with, named Catherine, all the while having a series of supernatural dream sequences where Vincent must climb a tower by moving blocks lest he fall to his death, which would, in turn, kill him in real life. The game boasts a morality system, where the player's actions affect the dialogue and outcome of the story. The game is also known for its difficulty among puzzle games.

History

Catherine was first announced in Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu in August 2010, with an English trailer showcased at E3 2011. The game was developed by the team that developed the Persona series of games, a team led by Katsura Hashino. It was the first game developed and published by Atlus for the seventh console generation, being released in Japan on February 17th, 2011 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and then on July 26th, 2011 in North America.^[14] Catherine was also released on PC on January 10th, 2019.^[15]

On December 19th, 2017, Atlus announced a remake of Catherine for the PlayStation 4 and PSVita, entitled "Catherine: Full Body." Slated for release on February 14th, 2019, the game will contain large amounts of new content, including additional levels, a new main character to the story, named Rin, and crossover content with the video game Persona 5.

Reception

Catherine was met with a mostly positive reception from critics, aggregating a weighted score of 82 and 79 out of 100 on Metacritic for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3^[12] respectively. The game was praised for its story and gameplay, although early criticism was made towards the game's harsh difficulty. The game received numerous awards, including "Best PS3 Story" from IGN,^[1] along with a nomination for "PS3 Game of the Year." The game would also receive multiple nominations in GameSpot's 2011 Game of the Year awards, including "Best Puzzle Game."^[2] IGN would go on to list Catherine in their list of "Top 25 PlayStation 3 Games" in 2012^[3] and 2013.^[4]

Fandom

Catherine sports a dedicated subreddit^[5] and gaming wiki.^[6] On February 1, 2012, a TVTropes page was created for Catherine.^[13] Catherine also has a budding competitive scene through its local versus multiplayer mode that is unlocked after beating the game. There is often debate amongst competitive gaming enthusiasts on whether to classify the competitive gameplay of Catherine as a "fighting game," despite the game mode not being designed as one.

Related Memes

Catherine Box Art Parodies

Catherine Box Art Parodies are a series of images and fanart that parody the box arts of the game Catherine, utilizing characters from other popular media replacing the characters on the box art.

Save Steve Delhomme

Steve Delhomme is a character in the game that previously had an affair with Catherine. Among the other sheep NPCs in the game, he is defined by his signature necktie. Fans of Catherine often fantasize a way to save Steve from his doom to the point of creating a petition^[7] to Atlus to have a way to save him in Catherine: Full Body. There is a dedicated fan page of Steve Delhomme on Facebook, where fans wish there was a way to save him from his fate in the game.^[8]

Transgender Controversy

On December 22nd, 2017, Atlus released a trailer for Catherine: Fullbody which has received 1,320,376 views and 11,000 likes in a year (shown below).

After viewing the trailer, fans speculated Rin to be transgender. This sparked controversy online as Atlus' past treatment of LGBTQ characters has been met with backlash.^[9] The new controversy was covered in gaming journalism outlets, like Polygon^[10] and Kotaku Australia.^[11] Some fans have dubbed Rin as Traptherine due to speculation of her transgender depiction.

On February 14th, Catherine: Fullbody was released in Japan. The western release is set for September 2019.^[6]

The next day, spoilers were released regarding the game's ending in which the trans character Erica does not transition, leading to ResetEra^[16] user HylianSeven to post a thread titled "[Major Spoilers] One of the endings in Catherine: Full Body gets extremely transphobic… moreso than that original." Many Twitter users responded by denouncing the Atlus (shown below).^[17][18]

On February 16th, Twitter user @Proleptigram tweeted that the controversy took "the ending out of context" and that "there are no lines about trying to improve Erica's life by not having her transition" (shown below).

External Links