Catherine was recently released in the US, and at this time I took it upon myself to examine the contents of the disc. I imported the game since I was eager to have a go, and I found it to be remarkably fun, so I thought that it might be cool to see if there was anything on the disc that may have been left behind…
While there was in fact several unused images for the cellphone, as well as a few other random bits and pieces, I also found a user interface sheet for PS3 controls (and this is from the Xbox 360 disc) as well as some other interesting icons…
On this sheet you can clearly see keyboard keys without any key on them, as a template for the controls, as well as several different mouse icons. Now, mistake me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe the 360 or PS3 versions of this game support such control mechanics…
Based on this picture being found in the “Test” folder, I can easily assume it never even got out of the testing stages in terms of development, but what we can tell is that Atlus wasn’t just thinking of developing this game for a console. Not only that, but it also tells me there are several parts of this story that have been slightly changed over time – This can be examined through the use of cell-phone images that never made it into the final game.
Additionally, I’m not sure what to really take from this picture taken from the “Title” folder, which generally will hold any screenshots, or singular image items such as Game Over screens, or the like. It’s a picture of what would appear to be two real life people playing out the roles of Catherine and Vincent – however, they look nothing like the two character shown in-game. Your thoughts? I know that multiplayer within the final game allows you to play as a coloured sheep – but then explain the following image as well…
Check out the gallery for some of those cellphone images I took from the disc, as well as the above images in full resolution – I’ll be putting more items up on The Spriters Resource when I’ve finished examining that game. I’m hoping to also find some unused characters in here too, through the 3D models, but no promises.
Obviously some items are slightly NSFW, so do be warned… AlsoI guess maybe possible Spoilers?
edit: I’d also just like to point out to people who aren’t familiar with the site that we also run a site called The Spriters Resource, which often contains unused graphics from games if you look closely, or even sprites from unreleased games… Just, you know, if that’s your kind of thing.
wow seriously? thats weird
I played the demo on PS3 with my US account and I was impressed. Sadly though, I can’t afford to import it. I really hope it gets an EU release.
it is deep silver (the guys behind dead island) are publishing it in the eu
Very cool dude! Could you explain how you accessed the files from the Xbox disc in your PC? Are those files just visible by inserting the disk in a PC drive or did you have to unencrypt them somehow?
The files are within a archive file related to Criware. I extracted the files, and found which items in the archive were image files, and then decompressed them. I believe they were .dds files, which again is standard with Criware games.
There’s tonnes of tools online to help you with this sort of thing. You just need to know what to look for :p
Just to clear something up, as I found article from Kotaku and Gamefaqs, the C/Katherine cell phone pictures are and can be viewed in-game on your cell-phone. They are not hidden at all, as most article stated based on your article.
But very interesting find on the other pictures, especially the Character Select ones.
Oh, I was more referring to the later images, that weren’t used. See the last pics, that aren’t actually finished being drawn.
I see. I must admit that Vincent and Catherine picture is an amazing find, very impressive!
Looking at the background of the “real-life” image you can make out Catherine (in her in game form) clearly in the very back and some other RL guy in a chair… really wired business in that pic O_o
And it seems every sheep on the right side is Steve Delhomme.
Judging by the hair Id say she was supposed to be Katherine instead, and I just noticed the sheep on the right all being the same after reading that comment, that is a very odd picture indeed. anyone know what to make of the other character select picture? I cant figure out what im looking at
Do want hi-res of cell phone pics… Er hem.
I know you can use a keyboard on a PS3, and maybe a mouse too. So in case the game didn’t have PC in mind whatsoever, then that might’ve been it.
This is mostly likely it. I guess they contemplated adding usb keyboard/mouse support at one point in development. To my knowledge, the only notable PC game published by Atlus is SMT: Imagine.
I’m willing to bet that the image with the “irl” people in it is a concept image for what became Babel. They were probably debating how they wanted the character’s to be posed. If you look carefully at the guy’s shoes, you can see where the image cuts off, thus proving its a photoshopped cutout (that probably didn’t take much time to do in the first place). I noted at the bottom the left/right arrows, I believe, say, “Character Select” or something similar. Also if you look carefully at the “Character Select” image, you’ll notice the white area is the landing from the previous image (you can see where the characters are positioned, though small). I think they intended to allow you to pick which characters you wanted to play, probably for Babel and/or Co-Op, but maybe due to time constraints couldn’t include it. It would be a nice future DLC thing though.
The odds are overwhelmingly such that Atlus used a generic controller software library—possibly internal, providing controller functionality on PC, Xbox360 and PS3—that was packaged with those images and that they did not bother going to the extra effort of stripping those measly few images from the library, because they occupy completely negligible amounts of space on the game disc.
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xbox is better and the game is already out