In Bloober Staff’s newest survival horror title, Cronos: The New Daybreak, gamers step into the magnetized boots of The Traveler: a mysterious feminine protagonist whose face is rarely proven. Just like the domed steel helmet of her Temporal Shell (learn: time-travel spacesuit), The Traveler herself is opaque. She’s arduous to learn, and apart from an timeless loyalty to the shadowy group she works for, referred to as The Collective, she would not have an entire lot of persona — or so I believed.
Most of Cronos is a solitary expertise. You will stumble upon a few people right here and there, although most of them are unfriendly at finest and downright paranoid at worst. However most of your encounters will probably be with creatures known as Orphans: horrific, twisted variations of people who’ve been corrupted by a lethal virus. However not lengthy into my trek by the sport’s creepy tackle Eighties Poland, I stumbled throughout a shock: A cat was in my path, and it marked the primary residing factor I would encountered in-game that wasn’t a terrifying monster or a harmful human. Even higher, I may pet it! The true query was: Why? Why would The Traveler — this seemingly unfeeling character who views the world by an especially utilitarian lens — trouble taking the time to pet a cat, not to mention name it a “good-looking boy?”
Based on lead author Grzegorz Like, Cronos‘ devs used two mechanics to indicate gamers a extra relatable, human aspect of The Traveler: music and cats. Like says he got here up with the sport’s cat-collecting mechanic as he was on the lookout for a easy solution to present that The Traveler has a spark of humanity inside her — a spark that gamers can select to fan right into a flame, or snuff out solely.
“She turns into increasingly human by petting the cats,” stated Like, who has two cats of his personal.
Every time I got here throughout a cat in Cronos, I took a second to pet it, and each time I did, The Traveler had one thing new to say. Generally she complimented the cat, typically she puzzled aloud what it was doing there, and at one level she even remarked that “We’ll quickly want a much bigger cat room,” referencing the Terminal room the place every cat you have pet might be discovered (and pet some extra). The sport even catalogues the cats you will have pet in a codex, and there is an achievement for petting all of them.
“There isn’t any, like, large principle behind that,” Like stated of the cats’ presence. “It really works as a result of she turns into nicer and extra heat by doing this factor.”
Cronos‘ cats could also be a easy mechanic, however their presence really does wonders for the connection between the participant and The Traveler, particularly throughout the first half of the sport, when she exhibits little or no emotion and is kind of troublesome to narrate to.
Admittedly, the cats aren’t the one ones doing the heavy lifting right here — voice actress Kelly Burke (who additionally voiced the protagonist in certainly one of Bloober’s earlier horror titles, The Medium) does an outstanding job of bringing this unusual, faceless character to life. However with out these feline familiars to work together with, gamers would not get to listen to Burke’s voice almost as usually, so the cats actually serve two functions: tethering The Traveler to humanity, and connecting the participant to The Traveler.
“Deep down inside each human being is the urge to pet a cat,” Like stated. “And it is stronger than every part.”
