Catherine (video game)

Set in the American space colony of Neo-Brooklyn, the plot of Catherine is presented as a story within a story on Golden Playhouse, a television program described as "like a Saturday morning theatre, with a bit of a Twilight Zone vibe".[18] The Stray Sheep, a bar where the main cast frequently meets, acts as the stage for the game's major events.[19][20] The game focuses on four main characters:[21]

• Vincent Brooks, a 32-year-old systems engineer who acts as the game's protagonist and player character. Unambitious and lackadaisical, Vincent lives a stereotypical bachelor's life; he avoids the challenges of adulthood, including his uninspiring job, his run-down apartment, and his unwillingness to marry his girlfriend, Katherine.[21][22] Vincent is voiced by Koichi Yamadera in Japanese,[22] and Troy Baker in English.[23]
• Catherine, a 22-year-old woman. She meets Vincent at the Stray Sheep seemingly by accident, and ends up spending the night with him. This encounter, and Catherine's continued attempts to romance Vincent, become the catalyst for the game's events. Outwardly Catherine is playful, seductive, and free spirited; in reality, she is a succubus who tempts men for her own ends.[19][21] Catherine is voiced by Miyuki Sawashiro in Japanese,[22] and Laura Bailey in English.[23]
• Katherine McBride, a 32-year-old woman working as an office manager at a clothing manufacturer. A high school friend of Vincent's, they reconnected five years prior to the game's events and began dating. Katherine wishes to marry Vincent, and is increasingly irritated by his indecisiveness.[21][24] Katherine is voiced by Kotono Mitsuishi in Japanese,[24] and Michelle Ruff in English.[23]
• Rin, short for Qatherine, is a character exclusive to Full Body. An amnesiac who plays the piano at the Stray Sheep, Rin becomes a comforting presence during Vincent's journey.[16][17] Rin is voiced by Aya Hirano in Japanese,[16] and Brianna Knickerbocker in English.[25]

The supporting cast includes Vincent's regular drinking partners at the Stray Sheep: Orlando Haddick (Hiroaki Hirata/Liam O'Brien[26]), an old friend and divorcee who holds cynical views on marriage; Johnny Ariga (Takehito Koyasu/Travis Willingham)[26] an idealist searching for a soulmate; and Toby Nebbins (Kishō Taniyama/Yuri Lowenthal[26]), Johnny's co-worker who has a crush on Erica Anderson, (Junko Minagawa/Erin Fitzgerald[20][23]) a waitress at the Stray Sheep.[19][27] Thomas Mutton (Norio Wakamoto/Kirk Thornton[26]), nicknamed "Boss", is the owner of the Stray Sheep. The game is narrated by Trisha,[lower-alpha 5] (Junko Minagawa/Erin Fitzgerald[23][26]) who is the host of Golden Playhouse dubbed the "Midnight Venus".[19][28]

Vincent Brooks is unwilling to commit to marrying his longtime girlfriend Katherine. One night at the Stray Sheep Bar, a drunken Vincent meets an enigmatic young woman named Catherine; they have a one-night stand which turns into an affair. Simultaneously, Vincent begins experiencing surreal nightmares where he and other men must ascend a tower while outrunning terrifying demons; if they fail in the dream, they die in real life. The stress of his double life and the growing intensity of his nightmares eventually compel Vincent to end the affair with Catherine. In a violent confrontation between Vincent, Catherine, and Katherine, Catherine is seemingly killed; however, the incident is revealed to have occurred in the nightmare, from which Vincent and Katherine escape. The next day, Katherine — who retains no memory of the nightmare, but guessed his infidelity — breaks off their relationship.[29]

Vincent realizes he is the only person aware of Catherine's existence, and that all of her messages have vanished from his phone. Vincent confronts Mutton, the proprietor of the Stray Sheep who is the only other person he has witnessed Catherine speaking to. He learns that Mutton is Dumuzid the Shepherd, and that Catherine is a succubus who aided Mutton in his game to kill men who would not commit to marriage and family. Vincent enters the nightmare world one last time, on the condition that he and the other men will be freed if he reaches the top of the tower. Vincent is victorious and defeats Dumuzid, who is revealed to be an associate of Astaroth.[29]

In Full Body, Rin moves in next door to Vincent after taking a job at the Stray Sheep playing piano. Vincent and Rin grow close, with Rin comforting him in his nightmares by playing the piano. During one meeting, Vincent accidentally discovers that Rin is a cross-dressing man, which causes a rift between them following Vincent's shocked reaction. If Vincent chooses to reconnect, Rin appears in Vincent's nightmare and is captured by Mutton. Vincent rescues Rin by defeating Astaroth. Alternate endings for Katherine and Catherine are unlocked if Vincent sends them a recording of Rin's piano music.

From here, there are several possible endings, depending on the player's actions throughout the game:

• Katherine Endings: Vincent meets with Katherine, and asks her to take him back. In the "bad" ending, she refuses. In the "good" ending, she forgives him after Mutton and Vincent's friends reveal his ordeal. In the "true" ending, they are married. In the Full Body ending, Katherine again leaves Vincent, gaining new self-confidence while fondly remembering her time with Vincent.
• Catherine Endings: Vincent summons Catherine, and asks to marry her. In the "bad" ending, she refuses. In the "good" ending, she accepts; they live together in Hell despite the objections of Nergal, the King of Hell and Catherine's father. In the "true" ending, Vincent overthrows Nergal, becoming the King of Hell with Catherine as his queen. In the Full Body ending, Catherine transports Vincent back to his high school days and appears as a human, allowing them to fall in love and start a family.
• Freedom Endings: Vincent realizes he does not desire marriage. Having won against Mutton, he demands payment from him, which he immediately uses to bet on a wrestling match. In the "good" ending, he loses the bet. In the "true" ending, he wins and uses the money to fulfill his dream of visiting outer space.
• Rin Endings: In the "bad" ending, Rin leaves while wishing Vincent the best following Astaroth's defeat. In the "good" ending, Rin is revealed to be part of an alien race of "angels" after Rin's brother challenges Vincent to a final challenge to determine mankind's fate; Vincent wins, and he and Rin become a couple. In the "true" ending, Vincent becomes Rin's partner and music producer, organising piano concerts for humans and many alien races.

In all of the game's endings, Trisha states in a closing narration that the purpose of Vincent's story, and the player's actions in directing his story, was to determine whether the player desired a life of comfort or a life of excitement. She explains that the tower was a metaphor for the journey to adulthood, and that "there is no right way to climb the tower."[19] In a secret ending unlocked when the player clears the game's challenge stages, Trisha speaks directly to the player and reveals that she is Ishtar, with Astaroth having been one of her avatars. Tired of Dumuzid's infidelity, the events of Catherine were a test to find someone worthy of her love. She offers to make the player into a deity so that they can become her consort.[19]

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.[22] It used the third-party Gamebryo game engine.[45] Hashino had wanted an in-house engine, but the team's lack of experience with HD consoles meant this was impracticable.[46] While they had the option of developing the title for handheld consoles or mobile devices, Hashino felt that the game would lose its charm on less powerful hardware.[32]

The initial story was written by Hashino, who originally worked alone on the scenario before other writers were brought on to help.[36] The scenario's main writer was Yuichiro Tanaka, previously lead writer for the Persona series.[47] The setting incorporated both Japanese and American influences.[48] Hashino felt that Catherine was an ambitious title due to its themes and subject matter, saying that no-one but Atlus would have supported the project. 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.[36] Vincent was a very unlikeable character, but based on staff feedback he was adjusted to appear more sympathetic. As the initial premise could not be changed, the team instead added Mutton's plot and worked to make Vincent a more sympathetic character within this framework.[48]

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.[22] All the characters were designed around being realistic, with their proportions being more akin to real people rather than stylized figures.[49][50] According to him, he was influenced by the game's themes of instinctual desire intruding into everyday life, the desire for sleep, and the concept of greed. Vincent exemplified these themes.[51] Vincent's character was based on and named after Vincent Gallo, specifically his appearance in the 1998 film Buffalo '66. The younger "Catherine" was designed to be beautiful and youthful when compared to "Katherine", who had an adult charm.[36] The pink coloring of the game's user interface was intended to evoke its sensual and "kitschy" atmosphere.[52] The cutscenes were created by anime production studio Studio 4°C.[33] While the Persona games up to that point boasted around half an hour of cutscenes, the number in Catherine came to considerably more. Studio 4 °C spent around a year working on the anime cutscenes.[36]

Catherine was initially not planned for a Western release.[53] After an initial leak through listings on EB Games and GameStop, Atlus USA confirmed that Catherine would be released in North America.[54] The game was localized for the West by Atlus USA, who had previously handled many of the company's earlier titles.[23] Main localization staff included editors Mike Meeker and Clayton S. Chan; and quality assurance staff Scott Williams, Jonathon Reinhold, Kourtnie McKenzie, Allie Doyon and Charles Chaikaew.[55] Compared to previous Atlus titles, which had focused on Japanese culture, Atlus USA had comparatively little work adjusting things for a Western audience as the game was set within a North American city environment. 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".[18]

A major issue the team faced was with the quotes used in loading screens. 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. The quotes used were from multiple sources, including Douglas Adams, George Carlin and Rodney Dangerfield. 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.[55]

Atlus USA initially had difficulty persuading mainstream stores like Target and Walmart to take Catherine due to its suggestive cover art and marketing calling it an "adult" title, which was mostly associated with erotic games not sold in such stores. 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, while also looking through their stocks after seeing the content of currently-stocked titles.[56] As with the Japanese version, Atlus used alternate covers for the 360 and PS3 versions, and alternate versions of those covers toning down the suggestive elements for stores catering to more sensitive consumers.[57] Catherine released in North America on July 26, 2011.[58] In addition to the standard edition, a special limited "Love is Dead" edition was created for both PS3 and 360.[59]

Though initial statements from Atlus said that Catherine would not be released in Europe,[60] its release in the region was leaked through a rating for the 360 version in Germany.[61] Its official release was confirmed in a press release from Atlus shortly after the leak. The title was published by Deep Silver across all PAL territories, and featured written language support for English, Spanish, German, French, and Italian. Deep Silver was chosen as the publisher as they shared Atlus' enthusiasm about the game.[62] Catherine released in Europe on February 10, 2012.[63] As with North America, the PS3 and 360 versions had a limited special edition. Called the "Stray Sheep Edition" after a central location in the game, it had differing content to the North American edition.[64] In Australia, the title was distributed by QV Software.[65] The PS3 version released on February 16,[66] while the 360 version released on February 23.[67] A Microsoft Windows version, titled Catherine Classic, was published worldwide by Sega on January 10, 2019 through Steam.[68] This port was the first modern Atlus title ported to the platform, as the company were previously averse to it. The port included expanded graphics options, controller customization, and the English and Japanese voice tracks.[69]

Since release, Catherine has occasionally been 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.[70] The first notable tournament was an event called Super NorCal Install, which took place in 2012. The tournament would become the basis for the game's competitive scene.[71] Publisher Atlus would later officially sponsor the game as a side event at Evo 2015, while streaming it on their Twitch account.[72] The attention surrounding the event would later carry on into Evo 2016, CEOtaku 2016, Genesis 4, as well as a dedicated event in San Jose called The King of Catherine, which had awarded a US$5,000 prize pool to winners.[70][73][74] Speaking later, the developers said they were surprised with how popular the game became in the international esports scene.[46]

Troy Baker (left) and Laura Bailey (right) were the respective English voices for Vincent and Catherine. Describing the localization as a positive experience, they were free to adlib with their respective characters.[75][76]

Valerie Arem of PCB Productions was the voice director for dubbing.[23] Rather than recording as a team, each actor recorded their lines separately.[77] Baker, Bailey and Willingham, the respective voices of Vincent, Catherine and Johnny, described the voice recording period as a positive experience, reinforced by the fact that they were all old friends. Baker noted that it was a relative rarity for this to be the case in general voice acting.[75][76] Ruff, the voice of Katherine, was helped in her performance by both Arem and Atlus staff.[77] In contrast to the majority of Japanese game localizations, the lip movements for some cutscenes were adjusted so they would sync with the English voices. 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: a cited example was the fight between Katherine and Catherine, where the two actresses ad-libbed the majority of the characters' argument. The aim for realism also meant that the performances were more restrained than those given for Japanese anime, which leaned towards stylized performances.[23] For real-time cutscenes, lines had to be matched with gestures and line lengths to within 0.2 seconds; the Atlus staff needed to go through the Japanese script and create a dedicated column for speaking times, then they acted out the lines themselves so they had a reference for the voice actors, and finally they would allow an actor to alter things a little to suit their performance and document those changes so the subtitles matched.[55]

Baker, Bailey and Ruff had all previously worked with Atlus on the Persona series: Ruff voiced Yukari Takeba in Persona 3 while Baker and Bailey respectively voiced Kanji Tatsumi and Rise Kujikawa from Persona 4.[75][77][78] In an interview, Baker described the Atlus USA staff as giving him and the other English actors a great deal of freedom when it came to delivering lines and portraying their characters. 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.[75] Bailey was working on another Atlus project when she was offered the opportunity to voice Catherine. 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.[76]

Ruff was offered the role of Katherine based on her acting abilities and her previous work with Atlus. 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.[77] This was confirmed by Arem in a separate interview. 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".[23] The amount of voice acting involved was so large that the actors felt they could not finish it.[75] Looking back on the production, Arem said she would not recast any of the characters.[23]

Cover art of the Full Body version featuring both heroines in front of new character Qatherine (Rin)

Catherine: Full Body was developed by Studio Zero, an internal team founded by Hashino after the release of Persona 5 with multiple Persona staff. Hashino envisioned the game as the definitive version of Catherine, the aim being to present the team's mission to create new and innovative gaming experiences by returning to one of their more unconventional titles.[2] Hashino and Soejima returned as producer and character designer respectively. The director was Kenichi Goto, who worked as battle planner for the PlayStation 2 Devil Summoner games and Persona 5.[16] Studio 4 °C returned to produce twenty more anime cutscenes.[16][79] The game was ported directly into the in-house engine used by Atlus for the Persona Dancing games and Persona 5.[3] The gameplay was tweaked based on fan feedback, and easier difficulty was added so players could enjoy the story.[46] The game includes downloadable content (DLC) that features Persona 5 protagonist Joker as a playable guest character.[80][81]

The keyword for the project was "diversity", expressed in both the narrative and the unconventional gameplay compared to other titles on the market.[46] Rin was included in Full Body as part of Hashino's wish to update the game's sensibilities and subject matter based on current trends.[79] When asked to create a third "Catherine", Soejima was initially unsure how to proceed. As he designed Catherine and Katherine as "hot" and "cool" respectively, he chose a "cute" design for Rin.[82] Soejima designed Rin around a lack of aggression, from the character's expression and coloring reflecting this.[2] Hashino also asked Soejima to redesign Trisha's hairstyle, which was changed into twin bun-style afros on either side of her head.[46]

The game was released in Japan on February 14, 2019.[83] A notable addition to the Japanese version was a choice of eleven different voice actresses for Catherine, nine of which were DLC. All the actresses had previously played adulterous characters.[79] The voices available in the base game were the original voice Sawashiro and Mamiko Noto. The Japanese DLC actresses were Ami Koshimizu, Aoi Yūki, Yui Horie, Kana Asumi, Haruka Tomatsu, Megumi Toyoguchi, Rie Kugimiya, Rina Satō, and Nana Mizuki.[84] Each actress portrayed Catherine with a different personality, with Noto's version being described as a "yandere lady".[79]

The original English voice cast reprised their roles for new dialogue, with Brianna Knickerbocker voicing the character of Rin.[25] The localization team had to translate roughly 165,000 Japanese characters and over 6,000 new lines of spoken dialogue. As the original script altered several established lines, the team constantly referenced the Japanese script and worked hard to smoothly incorporate new and original text. While the team could have recast due to the lapse of time between the original and Full Body, the team wanted to "preserve the integrity" of Full Body and so brought back the entire main cast and most of the supporting cast. There were problems with how some voices had aged over the past eight years, and due to concerns over Baker's voice the team opted not to re-record a scene where Vincent screamed for 20 seconds.[85] A notable adjustment for the Western release of Full Body was the crediting and dialogue for the transgender character Erica. She was originally referred to in the English credits using her birth name with her chosen name in parentheses. The Japanese version of Full Body retained this, but Atlus changed it for the Western release to use Erica's chosen name. This is notable because the game appeared in the news following public debate over whether the original credits were transphobic.[86] Some dialogue within the game related to Erica was also changed for similar reasons.[3] The PS4 version was released by Atlus in North America and Europe on September 3, 2019.[87] For the European version, the localizers had the extra task of translating the text into French, Spanish, Italian and German.[85] The lack of an English localization for the Vita version was attributed to the console's discontinuation outside of Japan that year.[69] A Nintendo Switch version was announced during a Nintendo Direct in March 2020 titled Catherine: Full Body for Nintendo Switch in Japan and simply Catherine: Full Body in the west. It was released on July 2, 2020 in Japan[88] and July 7, 2020 internationally.[89] The Nintendo Switch version includes all downloadable content in the game.

Meguro began working on the first demo tracks for the game in August 2009. Meguro worked as the main composer, leading a team composed of himself, Kenichi Tsuchiya, Atsushi Kitajoh, and Toshiki Konishi. Kitajoh was the general coordinator and managed sound effects for the action scenes.[90] Meguro did not have much freedom with the project, as Hashino was specific about what he wanted the music to be like, giving him the key words of "classic", "adult oriented" and "erotic".[22] The music team used multiple genres for the music in Catherine, switching genre depending on the flow of gameplay; action segments used remixes of classical music, quiet moments used jazz, and the animated cutscenes used symphonic-based music.[91] As the animated cutscenes were produced by an external company, Meguro found creating music for them difficult when compared to previous projects of his, as he had to sync the music to something he had no creative input with.[92] Meguro was highly impressed by both the sound quality compared to his previous work, and the amount of control he had to adjust the relative volume of music and sound effects.[22][92] Rapper L-VOKAL contributed to the score.[93]

For Full Body, in addition to Meguro's original work on the score, music company Inspion Izene was brought on to both arrange and add to the soundtrack. The company had previously helped with the original game's sound design, and were brought in to help distinguish the game's sound from that of the Persona series and its parent Megami Tensei.[94] L-VOKAL returned to help remix tracks.[93] Inspion Izene composed seventeen new tracks for the game.[94] The theme song for the game is "Re:set" by Sekai no Owari.[95] The theme was performed by Chinese singer Satsuki; the team wanted a voice that would stand out, so they sought out a foreign singer who could speak Japanese.[93] However, Re:set is removed for Nintendo Switch version.

The PlayStation 3 version topped the Japanese charts in its opening week with over 140,000 copies sold while the Xbox 360 version came in 7th with over 21,000, and was able to outsell Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, which was released on the same day, by a margin of two-to-one.[113] The game has also been commercially successful in America, selling 78,000 copies across both systems to consumers in its first six days, making it Atlus' biggest launch yet for a game.[114] The game had sold around 500,000 copies by the end of 2011, being a huge success for the company;[115] 260,000 copies were sold in Japan and 230,000 in North America.[116] By 2017, the original game had shipped one million copies worldwide.[16] The PC port of the original game was among the best-selling new releases of the month on Steam.[117][lower-alpha 6]

Upon its Japanese debut, the PS4 version of Full Body reached second place in the sales charts with sales of nearly 52,000 units. The Vita version was thirteenth with sales of over 9,000 units, with combined sales being just over 61,000 units. This was considerably less than the original game's regional debut.[119] It remained in the top 20 best-selling into early March.[120]