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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. 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. 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 with Rin, he appears in Vincent's nightmare and is captured by Mutton, with Vincent rescuing him 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:.

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.

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.

Catherine was developed by the "2nd Creative Production Department", a team within Atlus who had previously handled development for the Persona series, a subseries within the Megami Tensei franchise.

The chief designer was Kazuhisa Wada, while the chief programmer was Yujiro Kosaka. Catherine was the very first title developed by Atlus for high-definition HD video game consoles , specifically the PlayStation 3 PS3 and Xbox 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.

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.

The port's female protagonist runs into Vincent, who makes reference to the events of Catherine. 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 initial story was written by Hashino, who originally worked alone on the scenario before other writers were brought on to help. 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. 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.

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. Catherine was initially not planned for a Western release. 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". 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. 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.

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. 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 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 port included expanded graphics options, controller customization, and the English and Japanese voice tracks. 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. The tournament would become the basis for the game's competitive scene. 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: a cited example was the fight between Katherine and Catherine, where the two actresses adlibed 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. 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.

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.

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: 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.

Even with the modifiers and optional items to help Vincent ascend the tower, moving blocks is repetitive, and a couple of the obstacles are really annoying: being knocked off a specific block by a boss's super ability, for example, or encountering enemies who can knock you down, sometimes to your death. If this was a game just about climbing these towers, I probably wouldn't play it.

I actually think Catherine is slightly stronger as a life sim, where you can ponder Vincent's situation, and make decisions based on what you think is right or wrong. If you want Vincent to pursue Catherine and see where that path leads it might surprise you , go for it. If you want to be faithful to Katherine and make up for Vincent's mistakes, you can do that too.

You don't really shape the story—mostly just the ending—but being asked to choose these things by a game is refreshing. The way the game portrays Vincent's situation has some problems, though.

By never remembering the times he sleeps with Catherine, he doesn't really take responsibility for what he does in the story, even if he feels some guilt for it.

Likewise, Katherine's depiction in the game frames commitment as being this incredibly scary thing that's being inflicted on Vincent, a man who's pathetically helpless to make his own decisions. Catherine, meanwhile, represents the opposite of that—she's interested in Vincent and designed to be the object of his lust. Both women are depicted as controlling figures in his life, and not much more for the majority of the game. While Catherine definitely has interesting things to say about adult relationships and the morality of how you treat the other person brought to life by excellent voice acting , it also doesn't pass up the opportunity to have an anime lady message you naughty pictures, or for gratuitous camera angles.

It can be insightful, but also too heavy on fan service. Filed under: News PC Gaming. Catherine comes to PC today. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Atlus Catherine , the romantic thriller-meets-platformer developed by the Persona team, is now available on Steam. Grid View. Sign up for the newsletter Patch Notes A weekly roundup of the best things from Polygon Just one more thing! Change language. Install Steam.

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