Snake can't Resist the Temptation (to play Catherine)

[Solid Snake]

...I had a plan, I did.
I was a responsible human being once, I was.
I was going to become someone.

But then she entered my life.


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7APCf_NLC3U/Tbly2ICo0tI/AAAAAAAABuc/tYaypAI1WJU/s1600/01-catherine.jpg


...And she ruined everything.
All my plans.
All my dreams.
She tempted me to sin.
And I foolishly followed her into the realm of nightmares.

(This is a thread wherein I will document a Catherine marathon with decisions I've made. While making stupid life choices. Atlus, you have successfully created a game that has tempted me just as horrifically as the title character tempts Vincent.)

(...Also this is a thread for those of you playing Catherine to talk about Catherine.)

(I'll be sure to Spoiler-Text all Spoilers.)

[Solid Snake]

...My first update:

This Intro song is so cool I don't even want to start the game yet until I've listened to it. >.>

Also I have until 8:00 AM THURSDAY MORNING to beat this game.
Will it happen
Will it

(Probably not)

[Solid Snake]

Time for spoilers!

Shakespeare Quote!

Really weird introduction! Also, not all of Trish's dialogue actually meshs up quite right, she cuts herself off a few times.

...How exactly is Vincent supposed to feel unsatisfied dating a girl like Katherine, again?

...What kind of crazy rap is this?

Nice of you to show up wearing barely anything but boxers and a pillow, Vincent.
WHAT? IF I FALL I AM DEAD?!?

Who is this creepy announcer dude?

...It took me FIVE TRIES just to figure out what the hell I was doing long enough to survive that hellhole. I still got a "Silver Prize."

"Buy now! Only $80,000 for a Space Tourism?!?" wwwhhhhaaaattttt

All right hangin' out with Katherine. She's grilling him for working overtime without pay.
"I usually do the killing in my dreams." Katherine DO NOT make it impossible for me to choose you. =/

What is up with Persona games and news reporters.
Who are these jokers hangin' with Vincent?
How dare your girlfriend be ambitious, Vincent >.>

OH MY GOD IT'S YOSUKE'S VOICE
Also Paul is apparently dead

All right answering TEXT MESSAGES

My first text message to Katherine reads "Does it bother you? I worry about it too sometimes. Maybe we should talk about this. Drive home safe, okay?"
That seems appropriately sweet.
And it sends me into the LAW zone.

[greed]

ARGGGHHBBBLLE. My preorder is not coming in until the 29th.

Huh, so you're gunning for Catherine? Maybe I should shoot for Katerin, just so we can still be opposite path buddies.

[PyrosNine]

So...So...does the worst ending have you become so evil in relationships and so awesome in block puzzles that you must mack on Lucy Fur as your final challenge to join Hell's Legion and have life ruining one night stands with the forces of heaven?

Or are they saving that for the special edition?

[Solid Snake]

ARGGGHHBBBLLE. My preorder is not coming in until the 29th.

Huh, so you're gunning for Catherine? Maybe I should shoot for Katerin, just so we can still be opposite path buddies.

Gunning for the Katherine with a 'K' actually. (Though I'm not sure whether any decision I've made so far has particularly mattered.) I'm too inherently lawful to feel well with Catherine with a 'C', even though Rise's VA does a pretty good job with her.

[greed]

Ah cool. I get to keep my "always chaotic" on my first run habit going. Just recently did a playthrough of NV where I got Wild Child with EVERY faction.

[Solid Snake]

Ugh stuck on Level 6-2.

It is hell.
Last night I thought hell was ice.
Today I learned hell is bombs.

[Jagos]

You know what?

This is Inception the Videogame.

[The Sevenshot Kid]

You know what?

This is Inception the Videogame.

No, that's Psychonauts.

[The Wandering God]

It was already posted in the cool links thread, but...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWa1eiHPhKw

[Kim]

Got the True Chaos ending already. Working on getting the other two chaos endings right now. Great game all around. Will link review when it's up, but for the time being you all really owe it to yourselves to check this game out.

[Solid Snake]

I had to stop at 9-5, meaning I'll spend the next week moaning and groaning over not playing Catherine.

Went the Order route almost perfectly just by being honest with my answers. A few chaos answers crept in there, but not many.
I'm not sure if I am quite as enthusiastic as NonCon about this game; I'd still say it's very, very good, but I think it just misses the top tier of videogame greatness, a title I would not similarly withhold from Persona 3 and Persona 4. I have a couple very minor quibbles and criticisms, mostly relating to gameplay, but I will wait until I (and others) have finished.

Still, this is well worth your money. The story is mostly phenomenal; a rare mature title that actually grapples with real-world adult issues and not just gore and cleavage. Music is not quite P4 level but it's very good aside from that awful rap attempt. Nearly every character has likable traits that coincide with their flaws. I really personally wish one late game plot twist that I will not spoil didn't happen, but the vast majority of Catherine's twists, particularly its earlier ones, are quite well-done.

[Jagos]

I still think Vincent is a gutless spineless manchild that is afraid to make a damn decision in his life. But that's just me.

[Kim]

I still think Vincent is a gutless spineless manchild that is afraid to make a damn decision in his life. But that's just me.

You... You do realize this is the entire point of the game, right? That this isn't accidental? You know that. Please tell me you know that.

[Azisien]

I just can't shake the feeling that Master Chief is some sort of space marine...I'm not alone on this, guys, am I?

[Jagos]

You... You do realize this is the entire point of the game, right? That this isn't accidental? You know that. Please tell me you know that.

I beat the game. His flaw is really hard to overcome.

[Kim]

I beat the game. His flaw is really hard to overcome.

It's a story about his flaw. You're not supposed to "get past it."

[Jagos]

*sigh*

Nearly every character has likable traits that coincide with their flaws.

This is what I'm responding to. I like every person's character a lot more than Vincent's. I don't see much to like with him.

I just don't respond well to how he is. Maybe it comes from me not playing the Persona series and seeing where Vincent came from, but that's just how I see it. Everyone else is a lot more likeable than he is.

[Kim]

Vincent doesn't come from the Persona series, and is a very different character from anyone in the Persona series. That said, Vincent *does* have positive traits. The way he encourages others trapped in the nightmares is an excellent example of this. It's also less about liking Vincent and more about understanding him. His flaws are very real and human, and based in fears I think most people could very easily relate to.

[Solid Snake]

I agree with both NonCon and Jagos.

Subjectively speaking, I feel like Vincent, particularly early on in the proceedings, is a bit of a self-centered, immature jerk. I acknowledge and accept this, but I like the fact that he's flawed. Katherine is flawed too, and so is Catherine. (More on that later, actually, regarding one of my few personal spoilerific criticisms I have of the game.) So are pretty much all of Vincent's friends at the bar.

That's an example of good writing in and of itself, but it's really a testament to Atlus' credibility in the writing department that I think their Persona team is perhaps the only one working in videogaming who'd make a character so flawed and so gratingly passive and incapable as Vincent into someone you simultaneously disliked and rooted for. I almost felt insulted on behalf of Katherine for the way that Vincent handled certain situations, but I also wanted to see Vincent grow and mature.

In that sense, Vincent actually makes for a nice contrast with Squaresoft's Squall Leonhart. Both were characters deliberately given unlikable character traits in an attempt by the writers to evoke certain reactions from gamers, but Atlus remembered to give Vincent just enough of a genuinely good heart to make me sympathetic towards him, whereas Squall just received all my hate. All of it.

Personally, I wish we had a slightly greater degree of control over the narrative -- it was somewhat annoying how the Order / Chaos dichotomy really did not effect anything aside from Vincent's inner monologues, and it would have been more interesting if such decisions actually impacted some dialogue and scenes among the characters. Still, despite the fact that I sided with Katherine in virtually every one of their early discussions, and despite the fact that I can't imagine suffering from a similar degree of relational indecisiveness, Vincent is well-written. There were moments where I wanted Vincent to fail, where I wanted Katherine to leave him and where I wanted him to suffer the consequences for his actions, but I never quite reached a Squall Leonhart-esque point where irrational hatred of the character overshadowed him, and Vincent redeemed himself nicely with his handling of the final day (and his interactions with various sheep.)

One interesting tidbit to keep in mind -- and another thing I really liked about Atlus' handling of Catherine -- is how the story is clearly told from Vincent's POV, and how Vincent's POV actually distorts the narrative. This is fairly brazenly made apparent based on the exaggerated reactions, interactions and fantastical elements during conversations among characters. More on this in the Spoiler section, but I generally liked the idea that what we were seeing wasn't entirely objective. I'm not sure whether Katherine really was as threatening as Vincent occasionally perceived her, and in fact, much of her dialogue (taken on its own merits) really doesn't seem quite as daunting.

Late-Game (but not Ending) Spoilers:

The one twist I really didn't like, and I wonder how NonCon might agree or disagree with me, is Catherine being a succubus.
I actually really preferred the earlier-days dynamic between Vincent, Katherine and Catherine, back when I assumed that Catherine was in fact a twenty-two year old girl with slight sanity issues who really had become hopelessly emotionally over-attached to a random 'lucky' guy she happened to meet at a bar one night.

I think I preferred this in part because I liked envisioning all three characters as multi-dimensional "shades of grey' human beings, and in part because I didn't want to think of Catherine solely as a sex object. I thought Vincent's biased POV was in play here -- just as I felt Vincent had exaggerated certain gestures and behaviorisms of Katherine's to make her seem more domineering and pervasiveness (to play into his fears of his loss of freedom as she essentially controlled their relationship), I wanted to imagine that Vincent's biased POV gave him a warped perspective on Catherine.

In other words, Vincent wanted to see Catherine as a beautiful sex object. He glossed over her physical flaws and viewed her as a physically perfect female perspective because he wanted to see that. Catherine certainly wasn't objectively unattractive, but I wanted to imagine Vincent was building her up in his subjective mind as a fantasy and as Katherine's polar opposite when she wasn't. Vincent wanted to believe Catherine was this wonderful carefree alternative to Katherine, when she was in fact crazy and manipulative in her own way.
There's one particularly great conversation between Catherine and Vincent where Catherine tries to tell Vincent that she "doesn't usually do this kind of thing" with men that I felt was particularly enlightening. I wanted to actually believe Catherine there because I wanted to actually give her character depth (you really can't after learning she's a succubus.)

The problem with turning Catherine into a succubus is you pretty much reduce her into a one-dimensional demonic agent. I really preferred the realism of Catherine over its supernatural final-act elements, and so I'd actually prefer it if Catherine, Katherine and Vincent were just three ordinary people with gifts and flaws who found each other in an awkward situation due to Vincent's negligence. Catherine's much more likable and relatable when you believe her when she implies she has no clue Vincent's dating Katherine.
And it's not like one-night stands among normal adult human beings never happen. They do happen, and if human, Catherine would not be a worse person for it. (God may now revoke my Christianity card.)

[Kim]

All I have to say in response to your spoilered part is that after you get all the Lovers endings, get the cheaters ending. Partially because it's ~awesome~, but also because it addresses your complaints to a small degree. BARELY, but it does.

[Jagos]

It just hit me...

Vincent is an adult Scott Pilgrim (comic, not movie).

I'm trying to figure it out...

His bar and nightmare scenes stand out with him being a good person overall. It's just the interactions with Kat & Cat that make me not like him. I mean they're great and everything, but it's like how Snake hates Squall. I don't really HATE Vince, it's just such a jarring thing to see him go tongue tied over these two women. In almost every other situation, he can be the go to guy.

It kind of says something that I never even thought about the fact that this is told through his POV though. I just took the story at face value, ignoring parts of the depths.

[PCD]

One slightly hilarious, if not a bit annoying facet of Vincent is that, no matter how big a dick you try to play him when you have the option, when you talk to the other sheep he plays encouraging and leaderlike. It can make for a weird dissonance. (Also, if you're really shitty at the puzzles, it's hilarious when they go on about how great you are.)

But I agree, sort of, with Snake's complaints. The characters are most interesting when the mythological and supernatural aspects just serve as background noise for real-life issues. I love the game as a metaphor, as something to think about the psychological effects of how we look at relationships, growing up, and responsibility.

For example, I was convinced that the "someone who wants you dead" was, in fact, yourself. All the sheep talked about their utter shame for things they've done in the past, and if you don't pep talk them, a lot simply die because they give up, under the impression they don't deserve to keep moving. These nightmares were, I thought, designed to get the men to reevaluate what's important in their lives, and if they had the force of will, reinvent themselves to be happier, more mature, and really striving for what they want, rather than just wallowing in shame and pity.

But no, it was just that the bartender is pissed that men won't put out and so they should die. That's silly. Silly, I say!