Kate Walker (Syberia)

Benoît Sokal has explained his thought process behind Kate Walker's concept as a player character in a number of interviews, such as the promotional video The Making of Syberia. She was deliberately written to demonstrate her ingenuity and ability to solve her problems with her intellect, as opposed to embodying what Sokal perceived to be masculine characteristics, like being physically formidable in battle or the use of weaponry.[1]

Like other characters in Syberia 3, the first entry in the series with fully 3D rendered graphics, Kate Walker was portrayed by a motion actor through performance capture.[2] According to Stéphane Longeard, the CEO of French developer Anuman Interactive, 3D environments offers the character more liberty to move as well as the opportunity for the developers to introduce new or unprecedented gameplay mechanics.[3] She is voiced by Paris-based American actress Sharon Mann in all English language media.[4][5] In The World Before, Mann adopts a weary and gruff quality for her voice to reflect the hard life and emotional pain endured by the character after the events of Syberia 3.[6] Israeli-American composer Inon Zur is responsible for her theme music in Syberia 3 and The World Before.[7][8]

As the central character of the Syberia franchise, Kate Walker is featured in the majority of the series' promotional material. In 2015, an augmented reality app titled Syberia AR - Meet Kate Walker, which allows users to project an animated image of the character, was released as a complimentary download on the Apple Store in 2015 to promote Syberia 3. It was meant to be used for the 56th Venice Biennale at the Glasstress 2015 Gotika exhibition, which was jointly organized by the State Hermitage Museum and Berengo Studio.[9] The Collector's Edition of Syberia 3 includes a poster of Kate Walker, a copy of the comic book adaptation co-written by Sokal and his son Hugo, and a resin figurine of the character flanked by automatons.[10]

Rachel Kaser from TheNextWeb and Catalan publication Ara considered Kate Walker to be part of an emerging trend of realistically clothed and proportioned female protagonists who have become increasingly prominent in the video game industry since the 2000s.[11][12] Argentinean narrative designer Alejandra Bruno considered Walker to be her favorite character and highlighted her significance as the protagonist of a graphic adventure game in which she shows a strong and empathetic temperament. To Bruno, Walker's portrayal in the Syberia series demonstrated that video games have the potential for "narrating complex, deep events, and of transmitting subtle sensations, such as nostalgia". Walker also has a well-resolved transformation arc through action in Bruno's opinion, which she found interesting from the perspective of a video game's script.[13] Katherine Cross, writing for Boing Boing, argued that Kate is an uncommon example of a female video game protagonist who is allowed agency and full-fledged character development. Cross particularly liked how Walker was written with "grace and maturity" when she discovers her fiancé Dan's infidelity and the way she ends their relationship.[14] Jonathan Kaharl from Hardcore 101 was intrigued by Sokal's exploration in Syberia 3 of the "ever growing need to conform" in the face of "threatening antagonists and sights of modern decay" through Walker and the Youkols, which gives the game a darker undercurrent compared to its predecessors.[4] French website Le Point positively appraised Kate Walker and declared her the opposite of sexualized and combative video game heroines like Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider franchise.[15]

Conversely, Kaharl faulted Kate Walker's presentation in the first Syberia and called her a boring character. He conceded that while it is easy for players sympathize with her because her frustrations are universally relatable to people living in modern society, the character's dialogue lacks personality and that she "does not seemingly to react to the fascinating things she sees". This undermines the game's writing in his opinion and made it "not quite as effective as it should be" when players may not care about her emotional growth beyond their own projections and assumptions.[16] Kaharl thought that she appears to have experienced character growth by the events of Syberia II, but was unconvinced by the reasoning behind her decision to actively pursue Voralberg's dream to find living mammoths, criticizing it as a "deeply unsatisfying explanation". He was also puzzled by the developers' handling of the subplot involving her employer and the private investigator they have hired to pursue her, as the game's story never delivers a satisfactory payoff for that arc.[17] With Syberia 3, Kaharl expressed concerns that Kate's relationship with the Youkols, who are presented as cartoonish stereotypes, comes across as a white savior trope, a sentiment shared by a reviewer from Rock, Paper, Shotgun.[18] Shuva Raha from Adventure Gamers praised Walker as an inspiring heroine who is "practical yet vulnerable" in earlier Syberia titles, but was disappointed by the handling of her character development in the narrative of Syberia 3.[19]

Mann's performance as Walker has received an overall mixed response. Kaharl initially felt Mann was merely competent with her performances as Walker in the earlier Syberia titles.[16] He praised her reprisal of the role in Syberia 3 and said she came across as being very comfortable in the character, "giving every sarcastic barb with perfect precision".[4] Bella Lara Blondeau from CGMagazine praised Mann for bringing an emotional intensity and plainspoken charm to the role, and that she helped make Walker an "immensely likeable protagonist".[20] Raha appreciated the continuity of Sharon Mann reprising her role as Kate Walker and remarked that she mostly sound the same as when she first performed the role years prior.[19] However, John Walker from Rock, Paper, Shotgun found Mann's performance as Walker in Syberia 3, a seemingly elderly voice coming from a woman in her 20s, to be "jarringly peculiar". In a preview article published by Adventure Gamers, Richard Hoover felt that Mann's gruffer and more exhausted voice complements a seemingly renewed focus on Kate's growth as a character in The World Before.[21]

Some critics have adopted a queer reading of Walker's character arc throughout the Syberia series. Aimee Mann calling Walker's unconventional life choices "an excellent allegory for the coming out process" of people who identify as LGBT and a "dramatic break from heteronormative capitalist expectations". Mann noted that Kate shares in a sense of otherness with the new community of friends she gather around herself, just as friends and peers take on a much more significant place in the lives of queer people, who by choosing to live out their own truth are often rejected by their family of origin, or struggle to maintain intimacy and trust.[22] Walker's seemingly intimate relationship with Katyusha in The World Before also led critics to speculate about the presence of LGBT themes in preview articles about the game.[21][23]

• "Kate Walker". Speciali The Games Machine - Gli eroi dei videogiochi (in Italian). No. 8. Sprea Editori. November 2008. p. 25. ISSN 1826-9117.
• Flamma, Adam (2019). Teresa Jaromin; Anna Kęsek-Chyży (eds.). "Cuadernos Iberorrománicos" (in Polish). 1: 179–181. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Engelns, Markus (2018). "Geschichten über Metall, Holz und Schnee". Cahiers d'Études Germaniques (in German). 1 (75): 95–106. doi:10.4000/ceg.3590. S2CID 188518209. Retrieved March 13, 2022.