Vincent Brooks is a cowardly, deceitful, selfish manchild. This was the only conclusion I could come to as I completed Catherine, the 2011 Atlus published title. During the course of the game, Vincent cheats on his longtime girlfriend, Katherine, lies about it to her, and drinks like a fish in order to avoid his problems. He refuses to take responsibility for his actions or acknowledge the needs of those around him. However, for all of Vincent’s failings, he clings strongly to his agency, and in the process demonstrates the narrative possibilities of a character whose actions directly conflict with the player’s intentions.

What I found most fascinating about Vincent is how atypical he is as a gaming protagonist. He possesses few admirable qualities and the entire premise of the game rests on his poor judgement. One evening, he’s approached by a comely young woman, named Catherine, who flirts aggressively with him. Cut to a nightmare sequence that seems to be taking cues from his current relationship woes, and in the morning he wakes up to realize that he cheated on his girlfriend. Rather than own up to his mistake, Vincent attempts to hide the situation from both women, and what results is a very complicated and draining week for our idiotic protagonist. As the days march on, we begin to get a clearer picture of what’s happening. There appears to be a plague of bad dreams affecting many in Vincent’s town, and young men are being found dead in their beds from unknown causes. Vincent himself has settled into a routine of emotionally and physically avoiding Katherine, drinking away his evenings, experiencing progressively more hellish nightmares, and finally waking up to realize he’s spent yet another night with Catherine.

While a linear narrative and player character agency aren’t necessarily new things in games, rarely do I so vehemently disagree with their decisions of said characters. Normally, my objectives and those of the protagonist are one and the same, or at least somewhat aligned. But with Vincent, I find myself struggling against his immaturity to an extreme degree. Part of this stems from the fact that Catherine’s central conflict is a lot more relatable than something like saving the planet from the Locust horde, but another part stems from the game teasing me with ways to change the story. The game gives me some leeway to affect things, including conversing with patrons at the local bar, responding to relationship questions, and texting (or not texting) Vincent’s lovers, and many of these actions feed into a meter that is purposefully left unexplained. But despite these opportunities to alter Vincent’s behavior at the margins, the big decisions remain painfully his own. One can forgive him waking up each morning with Catherine next to him, owing to his supernaturally induced blackouts, but his continued lack of transparency with Katherine vexed me to no end.

This idea of experiencing an unlikeable character’s journey in a video game is such a compelling concept to me. Unlike other media, there’s very little distance between us and the protagonist in a game, and the line between our desires and those of the character often blur. To create the character in such a way as to conflict with the player’s wants is risky, but as Catherine proves, it can be incredibly rewarding. I remained enraptured by the story from beginning to end, and a big reason why is because I found Vincent’s poor decisions and their effect on those around him to be endlessly fascinating.

Catherine is such an odd game. Made by the Persona developers, it reflects their famed series in terms of brash presentation and fully realized characters. That it was able to come out as a boxed game despite its subject matter and narrow scope speaks to a much different games industry in 2011 than we have now. A game like Catherine released in 2016 would almost assuredly be an indie title made on a shoestring budget, and that would be a shame. The story and themes would not have made nearly the same impression on me without its gorgeous art style and emotive characters. Who knows when or if we’ll see such weird one-off games make a comeback, but for now I’m glad I got to experience Vincent’s frustrating journey.

I never connected it to Persona, it kind of makes a bit more sense. Broadly I agree, but I do not think it was authorial intent as much as a conceit to have Vincent keep climbing those towers. Also that one demon ending. But authorial intent doesn't matter.

I've also ever watched a Let's Play of this, but I always thought that you got sway more towards a more loyal boyfriend. I think it did a good job to raise those question within the player, but sort of ended there. As a lot of anime especially dealing with relationships it stops waaay too short of the meat of a relationship for my personal tastes.

Yeah sometimes I miss the pre-indie world in the sense that you could get wacky unusual games with a budget you wouldn't expect.

But I recognize without indie games we wouldn't get those games anyway, games cost too much today for companies to take that kind of risk.

I liked flawed protagonists too, if for no other reason than variety's sake. Games tend to reuse a lot of the same tropes and archetypes over and over, it can be a but stifling for stories. I think the fact that player character was no angel was part of what made Grand Theft Auto III/Vice City/San Andreas so compelling to a lot of people.

@slag: You're right that indie or no indie, we'd probably not see these types of games anyway. That said, with companies like Ubisoft and EA dabbling in smaller budget development, perhaps we'll see those types of games get bigger budgets. Maybe that's the way we get quirky titles with production behind them to be a thing again.

You bring up a good point about GTA protagonists being evil people. But I would argue that the games celebrate these men, making what we would consider evil acts in the real world to be "good" acts in the games' world. Catherine, on the other hand, seems to present a facsimile of our world, one where cheating is a bad act. I'm not really trying to argue your point, though, as you're probably right about the allure of immorality is a large part of the GTA games' appeal. I was more trying to find a distinction between why I didn't mind Tommy Vercetti & company while still hating Vincent.

@an_ancient: I'm interested in why you think authorial intent doesn't matter. Certainly, I get the validity of the player's perspective of what's being presented is most important, but the creators' intentions can absolutely affect the experience for me. For instance, Easy Level Life is a pretty short interaction that probably isn't a great game, but by considering the perspective of the creators and the context of policing issues in the United States, the game leaves a greater impression on me. Just my two cents.

@darth_navster said:

It's an interesting topic. I also liked the protagonists of GTA III and Vice City, but disliked Vincent (and CJ).

I think it's because Claude and Tommy Vercetti know that what they're doing is evil, and they don't care. There's a unity of intention and action that makes stepping into their shoes a bit easier.

On the other hand, CJ thinks he's only doing right by his neighbourhood, and Vincent is acting out of childishness. They don't want to be evil, but they do evil things. So as a player, I'm forced to take on their intentions and their poor judgement. It doesn't work because it's these two things that are the source of conflict. The game is basically asking you to be your own obstacle.

Vincent's character is one of my favorite things about the game. I really enjoyed how he felt weakwilled and cowardly and just that little bit more human than any regular superhuman protagonist. Part of it is that I almost never project myself or my opinions on a character too heavily, and tend to struggle to immerse myself into feeling like I AM the character I'm playing. So just getting some good writing and an interesting character with fairly interesting problems was a really nice change of pace. The futility of trying to do the right thing for Katherine as the player, but being held back by the real character's own judgment and willpower is a pretty cool dynamic. And if you want to go the opposite way and just nudge him to revel in his mistakes is both much easier to do and feels just about as terrible as it should.

Cool game. I remember making a thread about thinking the difficulty scaling being a bit off, but that's my only real complaint with it. The puzzle sections were still pretty fun.

Thanks for writing.

I may not be remembering some of the finer points in the narrative or characterization (it has been a while since I played Catherine) but I don't remember finding Vincent that unlikable. It's not atypical for the protagonist in an Anime to be a loser. I think not wanting to grow up, finding out Katherine's pregnancy was quite a shock and 'caused a lot of bad decisions to be made.

Yeah I've enjoyed Ubi's arthouse kick in the last couple years. Unfortunately they seem to be moving away from that. They recently announced they intend to focus on "service oriented games" in lieu of single player experiences, meaning stuff like the Division instead of, well maybe even, Assassin's Creed as we knew it. TBF with Vivendi close to launching a hostile takeover they probably have to go full on Wall Street to have an hope of saving their independence.

You're right about the GTA protagonists, those games are still basically a power fantasy. They are the heroes of their own world in a way (the people they kill are just as bad or worse than they are) as you and @mandude pointed out. So I guess that does make them "likable" in that way.

I guess maybe Hope from Final Fantasy Xiii would be a point of reference for discussion comparing to Vincent. A lot of gamers just hated Hope, found him incredibly irritating. But that was kind of the point of his character arc, he was a sheltered wealthy early teen who lost his mother in a horrific tragedy right in front of him. I felt the script had him react in a very human manner, which for a kid his age isn't going to be a pleasant to witness (or rational) one. He was incredibly angsty, earnest, whined and raged while looking for an outlet for his pain.

I thought he was a good character, one of the better ones in the game. Not likable but a good one. But he was absolutely reviled by most. I think part of it is that maybe his character holds up an unflattering mirror for some of us of what we might have been like at times as a teen, but perhaps the bigger issue is the amount of time players have to spend with him basically in close proximity. It's one thing to read a story with an upsetting character (where you don't actually have to hear their mannerisms) or to watch a 2 hour movie or an hour tv show, but in a game you are stuck with this person anywhere from 8-80 hours.

And I think that illustrates the challenge Games have as a medium, especially big budget games, in telling better stories, You need flawed characters like Hope and Vincent to be able to tell richer and more varied stories . But if being in their presence is too alienating for players, you risk losing too many sales in a commercialized product to justify the creative decision. And thus we end up with scruffy 30's white dude power fantasy guy as protagonist more often than not, because that's what the number crunchers think has the highest sales potential.

@darth_navster said:

I meant it in the way it also doens't matter for books, music or movies. While yes it can and does matter, ultimately it shouldn't. Yes we can be lead in games and come to certain conclusions that the authors intended, but we also engage in a lot of interpretation. There's also the idea that a game during development takes on a character of it's own and with multiple people working on a single game, I think a authorial intent becomes fuzzy. Even if you did question the devs, there is the risk of them giving a more safe answer as they are part of a pretty volatile industry. Not to mention that their expression can be undermined as games get fixed all the time.

While yes, smaller games might do a better job of being a conduit for the author, with the benefit of time we will see just what the great works of our medium are what worthwhile ideas it will produce. To that end, I appreciate what the author intended, but I would probably only want to know after I've finished the game and thought about the game myself and I think there will be cases where I would disagree with them.

@an_ancient: Thanks for the clarification. Now that I think about it, I think my opinion on authorial intent is similar to your own, especially when you point out the sheer number of people working on a game all with their own viewpoints and experiences.

@slag: Now that I think about it, Hope is a great example! I totally remember being completely put off by him for the game's first 10 hours, and then something just clicked with that character to make me appreciate his journey. The consistency of his characterization was key. And yeah, we absolutely need more unlikable characters in games for the medium to tell richer stories.

@liquiddragon: That's an interesting point that Vincent's behavior may simply be a trope of anime, which is a medium that I'm not entirely familiar with. That said, I found myself connecting much more strongly with the characters in the Persona games, so perhaps I just didn't like this particular characterization.

@tobbrobb: I really need to check out the "Catherine path" as I steered Vincent towards Katherine in my playthrough. Like you say, I felt at odds with what Vincent wanted for much of the game, so perhaps having him embrace his baser urges would have resulted in a more tonally consistent game. Huh, that's actually a pretty interesting way to think about the game.

@mandude: You bring up a good point about the character's intentions being key to their likability. I definitely felt that in GTA V, where I liked Trevor for embracing the role of a chaos agent, whereas Michael and Franklin seemed too normal to be engaging in GTA style shenanigans.

@darth_navster: I think you are looking at the scenario from one dimension. Yes, what Vincent does (or doesn't) over the course of the game is questionable and can seem down right deplorable. And the way you're feeling is kind of how I interpreted the story after my first play through. But after my second run, I found both parties to be at fault for a lot of Vincent's behavior.

Now, hear me out please. Vincent is reaching the middle of his life and has begun to feel unfulfilled. He has remained with Katherine out of fear of being alone and continues to cling to his "normal" life as a means of feeling "complete". But the truth is that he and Katherine aren't truly happy. They have just been together so long that it was implied as a societal standard that they take the next step. It is natural for someone to begin to have doubt and guilt when they don't really know what they want from life. That is why Catherine exists, she represents the life that Vincent is missing. The game then gives you the choice of deciding what future Vincent deserves.

To reinforce my theory I would like to point to the other customers of the Stray Sheep Bar. Through your adventure, you help them through doubt and over hurdles that they are facing in their daily lives. You can either choose to be selfish or selfless when you run into them in and out of the dream. But in one way or another, you're helping yourself by helping others. You can see with transparency, what is wrong with their lives and apply it to Vincent's. I don't think the intention of the game was meant to be simply an exercise of evil and good. But more of a commentary that peoples lives aren't so cut and dry, that there is a lot of gray when it comes to our decisions and what we choose in the end.

Though the game's narrative becomes more "anime" than reality, you find out that Vincent genuinely cares for Katherine and allows the player to decide their future. For me, I have found the neutral good ending to be my one of choice. Vincent ends up with neither Catherine or Katherine and follows his dream of going to space. They all learn from the experience and grow as people. I think that is the best outcome you can ask for considering the prior.

Again, this is my opinion and just wanted to compliment your work. Thanks!

@cannonballbam: You make some great points, especially about how Vincent and Katherine may simply be going through the motions in their relationship. Admittedly, my perspective as a 30 year old guy who is married colors how I view Vincent's decisions. It's true that the game is more about the greys in life than the black and white, but I'd also argue that Vincent's immaturity is really what's on trial here. I don't feel that the game necessarily condemns him for feeling unfulfilled with Katherine, nor does it criticize him for lusting after Catherine (who is his type, after all). Rather, I think the game (as represented by Boss) takes issue with Vincent's refusal to take action. He's very passive through much of the game, letting things happen without asserting what he wants. In fact, I think an argument can be made about the player's involvement in deciding the ending is just Vincent passing the buck yet again, except this time it's through the fourth wall.

I only found out about the neutral ending after playing through the game, and it does sound like it would be the most fitting for Vincent's journey. It's no surprise that it's the hardest one to obtain.

Also, thanks for the kind words! I'm always happy to hear when someone enjoys my writing.