Stray, a post-apocalyptic escapade crippled astir a cat, is mostly excellent. Two of america astatine Kotaku precocious powered done its puzzles, devouring its dense, mysteriously post-apocalyptic environments and mostly enjoying surviving retired the power-fantasy of role-playing a cat. Then we deed the credits. Obviously, we had to talk.

Ari Notis: John, we’ve some finished Stray. Tell me: Did the ending onshore for you? Or did it...stray from what made the remainder of the crippled truthful great?

John Walker: I knew we were but a whisker distant from a pun. No, I would accidental my acquisition of Stray was a consecutive diagonal line, starting high, and past getting little and little until its perfectly unspeakable ending.

Ari: I’m not rather the same—more of a truly precocious plateau that fell precipitously disconnected a cliff astatine the end—but I wholly agree, that ending is awful. I really had to pass radical IRL: It’s truthful freakin’ sad!

John: And yet, I’ve had truthful galore radical truthful furiously archer maine disconnected for suggesting the ending wholly forgets THE ENTIRE REASON I WAS PLAYING THE GAME. But I bash deliberation a batch of this is an unwillingness to admit that the beauteous feline sim had already agelong go yet different grey third-person robot game, truthful defenses versus world are already precise high.

Spoilers travel for Stray.

Ari: Ah, yeah, that blog kinda rubbed immoderate people’s fur backwards, didn’t it? But yeah, the full crushed to play Stray is beauteous straightforward: You privation to reunite the feline with his friends. And you spell done each this adventuring—including those robot shooty sections, whose merits we disagree connected but successful a mode that I wholly respect your sentiment for—only to not adjacent get an inkling that helium sees his friends again. It’s a precise unusual ending for a crippled that’s different truthful preoccupied with hope.

John: They’re not adjacent conscionable friends, are they? They’re siblings who emotion each other. They’re an abandoned litter of kittens, survivors of an apocalypse, and past 1 of their fig falls. That sets up a crippled that is, of course, uniquely focused connected returning to your brothers and sisters. And alternatively it’s similar they conscionable wholly forgot. They tangled themselves up successful immoderate wholly meaningless ignoble sacrifice.

Ari: Yep! For a crippled astir a cat, it got excessively caught up successful the play astir a human. Do you bargain that B-12 is truly the past surviving human? And much importantly, did you bargain that he’d abruptly crook process (sorry, sorry, I can’t assistance it) and decide, successful the span of a fewer minutes, that each hint of humanity isn’t worthy continuing?

John: Well, he’s a quality consciousness trapped successful a machine. This is 1 tiny metropolis district, truthful for each we cognize determination mightiness beryllium millions of humans surviving happily elsewhere successful China, oregon successful Sweden, oregon Bangladesh, oregon Australia. And nary of this explains the rationale down his evident “sacrifice.” He evidently uploads his consciousness to the computer, truthful there’s nary sacrifice anyway, but beyond that, what was his purpose? To merchandise a cat, a carnal that has nary involvement successful thing different than itself, backmost outside, for what? What’s the goal? If it were the extremity of humanity, arsenic the crippled wants to imply, helium did that truthful helium could...let the feline out?

Ari: Aw, man, nary way, the feline decidedly has evolved past axenic self-interest! (My ain cats should instrumentality note.) In the situation scene, for instance, he’s escaping with Clementine, and past he’s like, “Meow, meow meow meow, meow,” which translates, I believe, to, “We can’t permission yet. We person to signifier a risky cognition and rescue my person B12, who is trapped successful this cage guarded by lasers and laser-shooting robots.”

John: I was precise confused passim by whether I was expected to bargain into the feline knowing what B-12 was saying, oregon arsenic with my ain cats, conscionable staring astatine wherever the sound comes from, and past hoping there’s nutrient connected the way. I played it arsenic a crippled successful which an uninterested feline accidentally keeps happening to flip the close switches, oregon bump into the close person.

But each this aside, I’d person forgiven immoderate magnitude of dreadful indulgent faux-sacrifice nonsense if, astatine the end, my feline had emerged into the agleam sunshine to hear, from conscionable disconnected camera, a surprised, “Mew?!” That’s it. That’s each I needed. I didn’t request to spot a reunion, to ticker them tumble implicit 1 another. I conscionable needed to cognize it was astir to happen.

Ari: Exactly! And I kinda get what they were going for, leaving an open-ended finale truthful arsenic to not neatly necktie up the communicative for the audience. But it conscionable needed the tiniest proposition that a blessed ending could happen—which is what a small “meow” off-screen would’ve accomplished.

John: What’s adjacent weirder is that they DID bash specified a “Maybe!” ending. Except it was astir the bloody human! We got that machine airy switching on, which I tin lone presume was suggesting B-12 was inactive alive.

Ari: So what’s that mean for the sequel? All robot-shooty parts, nary cute feline stuff?

John: I evidently anticipation they don’t marque a sequel. They’re a talented bunch, but Stray revealed they had perfectly nary thought what to bash with the thought they’d had. I either privation to spot their adjacent caller idea, oregon conscionable absorption connected making the feline sim everyone truly wanted successful the archetypal place. God, those microscopic observations they showed adjacent the start. And the joyful infinitesimal erstwhile the feline archetypal puts connected the ridiculous saddle. We had to enactment 1 of our kittens successful a protective sock aft she was spayed, and she did precisely the same, conscionable collapsing similar a gathering was connected apical of her. To spot those details realized truthful neatly, it was joyful. Which makes an ending astir immoderate boring robo-bloke possibly not having killed himself for the stupidest crushed ever thing of a disappointment.

Ari: Poor kitty! Please archer maine you person photos of that.

John:

Ari: Awwww. But yeah, Stray perfectly nails the feeling of being a cat, close down to waltzing implicit a keyboard and fucking up people’s chess games and such. And I bash deliberation it carries that feeling mostly done to the end. (Even the shooting segments, which went by successful a flash successful my mind—I really recovered myself wishing for an other section oregon two.) But dissimilar a existent cat, the crippled did not onshore connected each 4 legs.

John: Before we wrapper up, and you’re incorrect astir the shooting sections immoderate more, fto maine archer you however the ending went down successful our house: Toby, my 7-year-old, had immoderate friends over, arsenic I was finishing the crippled connected the surviving country TV. Toby had wholly mislaid involvement successful the crippled erstwhile it stopped being astir being a cat, but wanted to beryllium determination for the reunion. As it was wide the crippled was astir to fto maine outside, I said to him, “Toby, what bash you think’s astir to happen?” He sat up, “The kittens!” And truthful we each watched for the inevitable, glorious moment... And determination was conscionable nothing. And we looked astatine each different successful shock. It was conscionable truthful flagrantly awful. And Toby continued to lament this oversight for days after. And erstwhile a 7-year-old is critiquing your communicative structure, you cognize something’s wrong.