Atlus’s official site for their first HD game, Catherine, has been revealing a lot about the game lately, the latest of which is Vincent’s favorite hang-out, Stray Sheep, and the game’s ‘almost unique’ email/text messaging system.
Stray Sheep is described by the official site as a place where Vincent can soothe his distressed heart, as any bar or the like would be. There are some features that are not yet explained though, like music and booze.
Vincent, you got mail.
You can receive email from your girlfriend and your friends while at Stray Sheep, and reply to them using preset messages. The game let’s you ‘type in’ your messages line by line, and depending on your message, you can get a certain reaction or an image from the recipient.
Well, you can hear Vincent’s hesitation when composing email…
Also, some kind of Cupid meter shows up with a red and blue half:
Now, I am wondering if the meter is the same as Persona 3 and 4’s Social Link system.
The game’s email system looks like an improvement of the one from 5pb. and Nitro+‘s “hypothetical science” visual novel Steins;Gate. Both basically use the same system, it’s just Steins;Gate is letting the story to move not only through the use of preset replies, but also with the use of keywords in the messages.  We have yet to see more of Catherine before we can say anything more about its game system.
Catherine is developed by the team which did Persona, so you can expect strong mature themes in this game. The story opens with a string of unusual deaths of sleeping young men with frightening faces painted on them. It then tells the story of 32-year-old Vincent, your typical salaryman who, despite of going out with his girlfriend-childhood friend, appears to have no plans of settling down. However, his encounter with Catherine changes all that as he begins to experience strange nightmares.
Catherine is set to flirt with gamers come 17 February, 2011 in Japan for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. An NA and EU release is yet to be announced.
