Catherine

Despite the shift onto HD consoles making their vision easier to realize, debugging for multiple consoles caused problems that pushed back the planned development schedule. The aim with Catherine was to create a game that was not within the role-playing genre as with the majority of Atlus' titles, in addition to making something that was aimed at adults.

The main aim was to create something new as a change prior to developing a new role-playing game. The chief designer was Kazuhisa Wada, while the chief programmer was Yujiro Kosaka. The main theme is love between men and women, although in its infancy the project was themed around conflict. In order to make the love triangle between Vincent, Catherine and Katherine sound realistic, he asked other members of Atlus staff for their experiences. One story, where a woman detailed killing people in her dreams, was almost directly referenced within the game.

Soejima, who had mainly worked on the Persona series up to this point, was most focused on making the characters' expressions seem realistic within the context of the story. Vincent exemplified these themes. The younger "Catherine" was designed to be beautiful and youthful when compared to "Katherine", who had an adult charm. Meguro began working on the first demo tracks for the game in August Meguro worked as the main composer, leading a team composed of himself, Kenichi Tsuchiya, Atsushi Kitajoh, and Toshiki Konishi.

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Kitajoh was the general coordinator and managed sound effects for the action scenes. The key words he was given were "classic", "adult oriented" and "erotic". To help cope Meguro received aid from Tsuchiya, a long-time collaborator on previous cutscene-based pieces. Catherine was first announced in August , along with its prospective platforms. The patches for both the PS3 and versions released in March. The version was not released in the region due to unspecified coding issues. Different cover artwork was created by Soejima for the and PS3 versions—the PS3 cover showed Catherine showing off her cleavage, while the cover had Katherine lying on her front showing her behind.

Soejima was originally told by Hashino to create covers that would catch people's eyes in stores; the different cover arts for different versions was chosen as they felt it would be interesting. The two characters were originally going to be in identical, near-naked poses. This was changed due to the character's different charms, which it was felt would be lost if they were posed in such a way. Soejima went through multiple cover designs, with one being the two characters holding different cutlery utensils. Hashino had little involvement beyond his initial instruction, but did ask that more of Katherine's back be shown in the image.

The covers exemplified each character's contrasting appeal: Catherine's cleavage showed off her youthful beauty, while displaying Katherine's behind was meant to evoke her more motherly charms. Catherine was initially not planned for a Western release. To convince them that the game was suitable for mainstream stores, Atlus USA put together a film reel of clips from unspecified triple-A games those stores did sell that featured more explicit content than Catherine.

When they met the retailer representatives, they showcased the film and pointed out that Catherine had none of that content, before showing off the most explicit scenes in the game to prove their point. The retailers were convinced and allowed Catherine to be sold in mainstream stores, and were also convinced into looking through their stocks as concerns were raised due to the film showcasing other games' erotic content.

In addition, they created alternate versions of those covers that toned down the suggestive elements for stores catering to more sensitive consumers. Though initial statements from Atlus said that Catherine would not be released in Europe, [51] its release in the region was leaked through a rating for the version in Germany.

Deep Silver was chosen as the publisher as they shared Atlus' enthusiasm about the game. Called the "Stray Sheep Edition" after a central location in the game, it had differing content to the North American edition. The game was localized for the West by Atlus USA , who had previously handled many of the company's earlier titles.

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Their main issue was with the dialogue, which was meant to be naturalistic despite some tongue in cheek dialogue, alongside jokes and references that needed adjusting so they would make sense to a Western audience. According to the localizers, the problem "[wasn't] translating the definition, it's translating the intent". While they were apparently all famous quotes, they had been taken from a Japanese book of quotes without any authors being mentioned, in addition to their translation into Japanese sometimes being poor.

In the event, Atlus USA went with new quotes to put in their place rather than trying to identify and translate the existing quotes. According to Chan, the main advantage of Catherine compared to other projects was that the situations and characters were ones he and other team members could understand rather than typical fantasy scenarios. Baker noted that it was a relative rarity for this to be the case in general voice acting.

This was done to give the acting and performances a more natural feel. This meant that the voice actors had more freedom to adlib parts of their performance: The aim for realism also meant that the performances were more restrained than those given for Japanese anime, which leaned towards stylized performances. Baker, Bailey and Ruff had all previously worked with Atlus on the Persona series: He noted that the themes in Catherine were far more controversial compared to earlier titles he and Atlus had worked on, and that it was a unique voice acting opportunity.

Having already heard of the project in the press, Bailey accepted the offer; during her time recording lines, she found the experience strange as she considered Baker to be a brotherly figure, starkly contrasting the relationship between Vincent and Catherine. She saw some footage of Katherine to get a feeling for her relationship with Vincent, but did not try to sync her performance with the Japanese.

This was partly because of the planned English sync adjustments, and partly because she heard Japanese voice recording and cutscene finalization was still in progress. Arem described each main actor's strengths during recording: Baker had good timing when it came to delivering his lines, Bailey required few retakes, while Ruff was able to realistically convey a variety of emotions. She also noted the work done by Fitzgerald, the voice actress for both Trisha and Erica; Fitzgerald had difficulty with the timing for Trisha's lines, but managed to "pull it off".

Catherine is occasionally played competitively in eSport tournaments. The game's professional scene began when FGC member David "Dacidbro" Broweleit desired to learn the insides of the game's engine.

The tournament would become the basis for the game's competitive scene. Catherine received mostly positive reviews from critics. It holds average aggregate scores of 82 and 79 out of for the Xbox and PlayStation 3 versions, respectively, on Metacritic. Atlus has since released a patch that includes a Super Easy mode, which is included in the English version. The PlayStation 3 version topped the Japanese charts in its opening week with over , copies sold while the Xbox version came in 7th with over 21,, and was able to outsell Marvel vs.

Fate of Two Worlds , which was released on the same day, by a margin of two-to-one. Club chose it as the third best game of the year. Since its release, Catherine has appeared on several lists of the top games of the seventh generation era of video game consoles. In August , IGN placed the game at number eighteen on its list of "The Top 25 PlayStation 3 Games", with editor Colin Moriarty praising it as "authentically unique" after calling it an example of something "that's so radically unlike anything else that came before it that it's hard to ignore.

Your Top " as voted by readers of the website. The port's female protagonist runs into Vincent, who makes reference to the events of Catherine. Vincent can't catch a break between Catherine seducing him one minute and manipulating him the next; Katherine isn't much better with her passive-aggressive push toward marriage. Considering both appear as horrifying boss battles, they can easily be any man's worst nightmare. According to Auerbach, the game is "a bellwether for what tech culture and gaming have come to mean for a lot of men: Full Body , which will feature new gameplay features, an online mode, a third character as a love interest named Rin, and additional endings and chapters.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Catherine Uncensored PS3 cover art featuring Catherine. February 17, NA: July 26, EU: February 10, AU: February 14, WW: Describing the localization as a positive experience, they were free to adlib with their respective characters. Retrieved March 7, Retrieved April 1, Catherine Sexes Her Way to the Top". Archived from the original on February 28, Retrieved March 18, Learn your Love Here!

Archived from the original on February 5, Retrieved February 15, Depending on the way certain questions and text messages are answered, Catherine has a total of eight endings based on three central narratives. The alignment endings i. Catherine and Katherine feature a good, bad, and an extended true version while a neutral "Freedom" ending only has two versions. Vincent gives up his humanity to be King of the Underworld, with Catherine as his Queen. A final ninth ending is unlocked when the player completes all the Babel challenges. Trisha breaks the fourth wall by revealing that she is actually Ishtar, one of the goddesses overseeing the entire nightmare process, and that the true purpose of the nightmares was for her to test the player for fitness to replace Mutton, the last man who successfully climbed the tower, as her consort due to his infidelity.

Catherine deals heavily with the themes of commitment, relationships, love, infidelity, sexuality and sexual abuse, maturity, while intertwining the horror and mystery of a rash of unexplained deaths of young men, rumored to be the "Women's Wrath": The game also contains examples of female-on-male-rape Vincent by Catherine, and Archie Wallace by his mother. The game avoids the concepts of "good" and "evil", but rather, embraces "Chaos" and "order". For example, Katherine isn't necessarily "good" and Catherine isn't necessarily "evil".

Instead of black-and-white "right" and "wrong", the story focuses on grey-and-grey moral ambiguity. For example, players can view Katherine as "wrong" because of her bossy, domineering attitude towards Vincent, lying about her pregnancy so he won't leave her, and trying to pressure him into marriage which he isn't comfortable with.

Catherine can be viewed as Vincent's savior from Katherine; despite that she is a succubus who will contribute to his death, Vincent can arguably be seen as bringing this fate on himself for cheating on Katherine. Catherine can also be seen as "wrong", since she is a succubus who enters Vincent's life, knowing that she may kill him as a result. Catherine can also be viewed as a rapist towards Vincent. While Katherine can be seen as a rational and caring counterpart, as seen when she send text mails asking about his well being, giving him cake as a present and worrying about his expenses and how in the end she tells Vincent the truth about her pregnancy being a false alarm even if it meant he might leave her.

The game does not try to shame or guilt trip the player for choosing one woman over the other and accepts both possibilities for whoever they pursue, nor does it shame the player for choosing neither women and going with the Freedom ending. At the very end of the game, it is revealed that one of the main characters, Erica Anderson , is a transgender woman, a demographic not often represented in video games.

Catherine is a puzzle-platformer adventure game in which players control Vincent Brooks, who begins having strange nightmares after his girlfriend, Katherine, begins to talk about marriage and commitment. This matter becomes more complicated for him when he meets a girl named Catherine, and begins an affair with her, and the nightmares get more and more intense. The main story mode, Golden Playhouse, follows the story between Daytime and Nightmare scenarios.

During the daytime, Vincent will converse with his friends as well as try to handle his relationships with Catherine and Katherine. Most of this time takes place in the Stray Sheep bar where Vincent can save and send text messages from his phone, talk to customers, order drinks, play a minigame titled Rapunzel or listen to a jukebox containing tracks from other Atlus games such as the Persona series.

The main gameplay takes place in the Nightmare stages, which occur after daytime hours are over. In a nightmarish dreamworld inhabited by other men, who are represented as anthropomorphic sheep, Vincent must climb up giant staircases that are slowly collapsing underneath him and safely reach the top.

To accomplish this, Vincent must push, pull and climb blocks as quickly as possible while avoiding various traps such as spikes and ice. Climbing up steps in quick succession increases a score multiplier, and at the end of the level, players are given an award based on their score. Each stage is split up into numerous areas, culminating in a boss stage in which a nightmarish creature also attempts to kill Vincent.

When Vincent is close to the top, he will hear the ringing of a bell. Vincent can move faster depending on how much alcohol he drinks during the day and can earn pillows that allow him to retry levels. There are also several items which can be found or purchased in between stages, such as spare blocks, lightning which removes enemies and energy drinks that allow Vincent to climb more steps at a time.

Vincent will die if he falls off the bottom of the level, gets caught by a trap or is killed by a boss, with the game ending if Vincent runs out of retry pillows. In between action stages, on Landings , Vincent can interact with the other surviving sheep, save his game, learn techniques from the sheep on how to survive the climbing levels, or spend Enigma Coins on special items. By sharing this information on how to survive, they band together to give each other enough hope to continue through the trials.

Throughout the game, the choices the player makes during certain sections of the game will affect the development of Vincent's character and the route the story takes place. The earliest known use of the Greek name is in reference to Saint Catherine of Alexandria. The theory that the name comes from Hecate , the name of the Greek goddess of magic, is regarded by the editors of the Oxford Dictionary of First Names as unconvincing. The former spelling, with a middle a , was more common in the past and is currently more popular in the United States than in Britain. Katherine , with a middle e , was first recorded in England in after being brought back from the Crusades.

In Britain and the U.

The most common variants are Katherine, Kathryn, and Katharine. The spelling Catherine is common in both English and French. The form Karen , of Danish origin, is now often considered an independent name in English. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.