Japanese Persona developers Atlus have earned themselves a stellar reputation for creating uniquely stylized and surprisingly deep RPGs. Their next game, Catherine, may be a departure from that recipe, or it may not; little is known about it. What is known, though, is that it will feature loads of highly suggestive and erotic content.
Unless it’s the next Record of Agarest War, the 2009 PSN title that promised T&A and totally failed to deliver, press and trailers released so far for Catherine suggest that it will be a Japanese developer’s attempt to bring their culture’s brand of animated sexuality to mainstream American gamers.
But will the inclusion of sexting be too much for our buttoned-down society? At the end of the above trailer, protagonist Vincent is staring incredulously at his cell phone. It’s hard to decipher that look on his face, but based on the image he’s reportedly just received in that scene, that’s probably his boner-face.
Atlus hasn’t even confirmed that the game will be hitting our majestic shores, but with our love of the Persona series and the buzz surrounding Catherine, they’d be fools not to. Yet if the game gets big enough, they just might have a Mass Effect (“SE”Xbox 360 anyone?) sized outrage on their hands.
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After all, parents and their watchdog groups have been more concerned with the “sexting” phenomenon over the last couple years than just about any other issue. Sexting made headlines nationwide, and in 2009, thousands attended day-long conference in Washington D.C. to discuss ways of making their kids act less like horny sluts, which is what they are.
To me, it just proves this age-old knowledge: if you give a bunch of kids a shiny new chunk of technology, they’ll find a way to A). have sex with it or B). smoke pot out of it. It’s just the nature of the world. The job of parents is to quell that nature as long as they can. Thus, outrage over “sexting.”
It appears players will have some degree of control over Vincent’s cell phone. Can we whip it out and check out all those dirty sexts whenever we want? Can we make it our phone background? Will we be able to sext her back? It won’t matter if the Parents Television Council or the Family Online Safety Institute gets wind of Catherine, the Japanese sexting simulator for kids.
