Stray: Over Analyzing the most anticipated Cyberpunk Cat Game of 2022

What is Stray? Not much is known about BlueTwelve Studio's Stray, except for the appealing factor of playing as a very cute cat in a Cyberpunk environment.

The developers tell us that our goal in this game is to escape a mysterious, secluded, and forgotten city filled with a community of human-like machines. If you're wondering where the humans are, there is a message on a wall saying "Rip humans <3", so I think that answers our questions.

The gameplay consists of puzzles and platforming through the heights and different parts of the city. One of the trailers shows the cat drinking water, but I do not think there will be survival mechanics. Drinking might help us restore stamina or health as the cat gets injured or tired.

Our sweet cat is not alone however. A little rainbow eyed drone called B-12 (a callback to the studio's name), will accompany us and help us interact with the city, the machines, and help us fight hostile creatures.

The main enemy we will have to face in our escape attempt are Zurks, a cross between Half-life's Headcrab and an over-inflated tick, with a signature big orange eye. These creatures roam in swarms, and seem to come from inflated bulbs prominent on the walls of infected parts of the city.

These creatures can bite through metal, and even the machines are afraid of them. I do not think it is a stretch to say that these Zurks may be the reason there are no humans left.

In Stray, we will have to use our wits, B-12, and convenient 2x speed energy drinks to survive and somehow escape this city.

Now, let's start the analysis of the footage we have available. If you do not want any kind of possible spoilers, turn away and rest your paws for July 19th. This is all from public information, but if you want to go in fully blind, it is perfectly respectable. For this analysis, I will be considering the State of Play trailer, the Official Gameplay Walkthrough Trailer, and the VGC interview and footage. I am looking in detail at everything from big billboards to almost unreadable graffiti.

Please bear in mind that the Gameplay Trailer is 10 months old and a lot could have changed between then and now.

This analysis is purely speculation, and I do not expect this to be the full true lore of the game. I am taking wild, seemingly logical guesses from details I find relevant and that stood out to me.

The Cat:

Apart from it being male, we have no information on the cat, and that may be intentional. As we open the inventory space, we see a section dedicated to memories. I think it looks too accessible and important to be some quick mechanic to help us get an achievement by finding them.

I think, either the cat genuinely lost his memories, and slowly gains them back as the game goes along, or it is an immersive way to see the cat's past as we go through the city.

I think these glimpses into the past are key to understanding what happened in this city, and that the hidden mystery of how this machine society came to be is hidden in the cat's memories.

The City:

Stray is one of these worlds where the city itself is a character. It has history, secrets, and much to unravel as we play.

Let's start where we usually do for characters: a name. On the official website, a screenshot shows our cat looking up at an LED Billboard saying "Enjoy the world's safest city" above a globe looking like earth and a dot labelled "Walled city" followed by what I think is the number 99.

In and interview with VGC, the devs talk about the influence that Kowloon, the ‘Walled City’, had on the design of this cyberpunk setting.

Considering the aforementioned disappearance of the human race, this implies two scenarios:

Either the city was created to fight off the Zurk invasion and was unfortunately breached.

or

The infestation started inside the city and none of the humans were able to escape, dying inside the walls built to protect them.

I personally think it was the latter, as in that same screenshot, we see evacuation procedures written in English plastered on the walls. It seems that the humans living in the city at least believed that there was no threat outside of the city, or that there was a safe place to evacuate to. Now, many years later, I do not know if the Zurk infestation has stayed contained.

We also see one screen talking about a lottery to get a VIP ticket to "CLEAN CITY". I believe this is a remnant of when humans still lived there, as it is written in English. The existence of a "clean" city indicates the existence of non-clean cities, and the lottery aspect makes me think that most of the earth's cities were not considered "clean". Was it Zurks? Or maybe a city without machines in a world where machine/human relations were degrading? It would make the machines keeping the screen ironic and a nice inside joke.

I mention English, and that is because the main language the machines speak uses an unknown alphabet, and they seem to have abandoned the English humans spoke in their time.

Not all of them did though, but that is for later.

In a "barber" shop where a machine is adjusting another's appearance in front of a mirror, we can see a box with "MADE IN FRANCE" written on it. This is either to show that Stray is set in our world, or an easter egg from the French Studio, as the game is indeed, made in France.

The city is separated into two main zones. The upstairs city where the machines live and have built a society, and the downstairs, the sewers, where greenery grows where it can and Zurks run rampant.

There is also a sinister underground, coated in red, where Zurks seem to thrive in a desolate environment.

But there is another part we will come across, which, if I am correct, is named "The Tree Bud". A place in the sewers where a tower of buildings is topped by a humongous tree stretching out to the heavens, and where we are welcomed by "Safe zone" and "No Zurk zones" signs written in English. I believe this is where we will meet the machines most empathetic to our goal of leaving this city.

The Machines:

We do not know much about them, even what they call themselves. The developers simply call them "Human-like machines'', and so I shall call them machines. Most of them have what looks like an old PC screen as a head, and its screen shows either a neutral face of two dots and a line, or different screens for different reactions. The line becomes a mouth when they talk, the screen turns into a heart when the cat rubs against them, they even have a sleeping and music screen.

For machines, they are extremely human-like. They wear clothes, they have a sense of vanity, they drink, they play music, and they even have families. One of the named machines, Doc, has a son named Seamus, and another machine named Teddy has a grandmother. Are these machines really that advanced? Or maybe they're the remnants of humans who have transferred their brain into machines to survive the Zurk invasion?

The latter would make sense as to why they are so human-like, but I do not think that is the case for multiple reasons.

The first is the concurrent appearances of the message "RIP Humans <3". Maybe it's simply ironic, saying humanity is now dead and the humans are now machines, but it would be in bad taste unless most of the now-machines were really against humanity as a concept.

The second is from a painting in the den of a green-faced, pyramid hat wearing machine called Guardian. One of four green-faced machines we see in all of the footage. They wield a long baton and seem to be going through a set of martial-art movements, while guarding sleeping robots all draped in cloth. Behind them, we see a painting of a human and a machine holding hands, with the machine pointing up. I believe these machines are part of a movement friendly to humans.

Or perhaps the machine pointing up signifies it taking humans to the future by letting humans become machines. Again, there is no concrete evidence.
The only thing we can be sure of is that humans and machines did indeed cohabit the city at some point.
And I do not think it went well.

The Plot?

Okay, this is where the tin foil hat comes on. This is mostly based on badly written graffiti in a couple seconds of footage. It could be nothing, but I do not think it is.

First, we need to ponder about face colours.

The reason I'm putting emphasis on face colour is because most machines in this world have blue faces.

And in this world of blue machines, the ones we seek help from, have green, yellow, red, and rainbow faces.

Another pyramid hat wearing machine is startled by us, and has a yellow face with a red eye. I do not know why this particular machine is so scared of us, but as it then goes to a screen to pretend we are not there, I believe either:

This is a machine which was once for our cause but may have left and has to be convinced to help us,
or
it thinks we are a Zurk, and due to its colour possibly making it more vulnerable than the blue faces, it tries to act normal hoping we won’t attack.

Now, why are some machines blue and some not?

In the gameplay trailer, we see the cat enter a room with heavily graffitied walls, with some machine graffiti, and some written in english. The English text says the following:

"The Tree Bud"

"Free Download ->"

It's the free download which really stood out to me. I was already convinced that anything written in English had to have a significance, and its prominence on the wall only made me think so more.

It could be that the free download references the humans downloading their brains into machines, but there are too many details that point me to another significance. The space with this graffiti is also where we meet one of the four green-faced machines in the footage. It is heavily wounded, with only its torso, head and left arm left. Soon after the cat comes across it, it "dies", or at least shuts down. With it coming from the place where the free download arrow is pointing to, I believe it went to get the free download at the Tree bud, and was overcome by Zurks on the way back to the city.

I think that most machines are blue as a default, that blue is the societal standard and the factory setting. But there exists a download to change their programming and let the machines tap into different colours. This download is available at the Tree Bud, where a community of non-blue machines has formed to fight against the system.

I think there is a possibility that this download makes the machines more vulnerable to Zurk attacks, as the aggressive signs in front of the Tree Bud show animosity towards them we do not see in the main city.

If the blue machines are indeed less prone to Zurk attacks, it would explain why this machine was able to make it to the Tree Bud to get its download, but unable to make it back.

What could the colours mean?

Why do I think colours are so important? Because of the sequence where B-12 uses violet light to disintegrate the Zurks. The developers talk of "spells'', plural, meaning the violet light might not be the only weapon in our arsenal. I think that each colour has a different ability.

Colours also have a role in the environment. Whether it be in the decor or on the terminal linked to B-12 on the cat's back.

The standard blue is used on surveillance drones we have to avoid in our escape. A standard, controlled machine wrapped in the system.

It is also the colour of security access terminals.

Purple is used both as we use what looks like UV light to defeat Zurks, and is the colour our terminal lights up when we use objects, linking it to technology.

With the footage of red drones attacking the cat, we can deduce that red is an aggressive colour, and may be downloaded by machines who want to fight.

Green is seen on two seemingly wise machines, both the Guardian and Doc, and we can deduce that it represents knowledge. It is also used when B-12 analyses an object on the ground.

This may be a coincidence, but the developers saying that we can learn to fight back, is juxtaposed with us meeting green-faced Doc, and followed by us using what looks like UV light against the Zurks and saving Doc from them. This makes me believe that Doc is the one to help us unlock B-12's abilities to fight the Zurks.

Yellow could be involved in communication. It is the colour our terminal lights up when we interact with the machines, during translations, as well as being the colour of the “Free download” graffiti. It is also the colour names take in dialog windows. Perhaps the yellow-faced machines served as the bridges between humanity and the machines.

We also see this yellow-faced bartender with pictures of beaches and the outside world on its wall.

Conclusion

With as little information as we have, I think I can at least say that there are two camps in machine society. Those who are happy the humans are gone and live happy blue lives in their machine utopia, and those who risk their lives for a free download because they need more.

As we see footage of the cat hiding from scan and attack drones, which I do not think are made by the Zurks, it is clear we'll have some intelligent antagonistic force barring our escape. There is a high possibility that this force is from the blue machines, or those who control them.

I think that, whatever the Zurks’ origin involves, the blue machines are happy to let them live in order to keep humans away from their paradise, even if that means some of them get attacked and eaten by the creatures, while the coloured faces will help us end the Zurk infestation once and for all.

This is just a theory (a game-), from a very limited amount of footage, and it might be completely inaccurate. I’m excited to be proven wrong or right on the 19th of July when we are finally blessed with our cute cat protagonist.

Stray will be available on Steam and Playstation at release, and later on Xbox.