Cronos: The New Dawn’s 10 Cats Make a Faceless Time-Traveler Feel Human
Bloober Team’s survival horror game Cronos: The New Dawn features a mechanic where players can pet cats scattered through the world, and those interactions change what the game’s faceless protagonist, known as The Traveler, says. The Traveler wears a domed Temporal Shell and her face is never shown. There are ten pettable cats in total, the game records which ones you have petted in a codex, and there is an achievement for petting all of them.
Cats and The Traveler
The Traveler is a mysterious female protagonist who works for a group called The Collective. Throughout most of the game she is reserved and shows little outward emotion. However, developers added a simple mechanic so players can interact with small animals: cats.
Each time you pet a cat, The Traveler utters a different line. For example, she sometimes compliments a cat or wonders why the animal is present in a given area. In one instance she says, “We will soon need a bigger cat room,” referring to a Terminal area where petted cats are gathered.
How cat interactions work
There are ten cats you can pet. When you approach and interact, the game plays a short line of dialogue from the protagonist. The cat interactions do not require additional items or quests; they are found in the world and counted when petted.
In short, the mechanic is straightforward: find a cat, interact, hear a line, and the game records the encounter. Moreover, the interactions increase the number of spoken lines the protagonist delivers during the early part of the game.
Codex, Terminal and achievement
The game keeps track of which cats you have petted in an in-game codex. In addition, petted cats appear in a Terminal room where players can see and interact with them again.
There is also an achievement tied to petting all ten cats. Therefore, players who aim for completion will need to find and pet every cat to unlock that award.
Development notes and voice acting
Lead writer Grzegorz Like described the cat-collecting mechanic as a way to show a more relatable side of The Traveler. Like said, “She becomes more and more human by petting the cats.” He also commented, “There’s no, like, big theory behind that,” when discussing why the cats were included.
Voice actress Kelly Burke provides the protagonist’s spoken lines. Burke previously voiced the protagonist in Bloober Team’s earlier title The Medium.
Like added, “Deep down inside every human being is the urge to pet a cat,” and he noted his personal connection to the idea by mentioning that he has two cats of his own.
