Our Inescapable Distance From Other Minds | STRAY Analysis & Review

The cat-astrophe of our remoteness from other minds and the difficulty in embodying those minds in a video game, as seen through the indie darling Stray. But what else do we fail to grasp? Two brothers discuss. Review and story analysis discussion.
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Chapters:
0:00 Emerging in a Time and Mind Unlike Our Own
1:46 Our Neighbors in This World, or The Distance of Other Minds
18:21 The World We Leave Behind, or What We Fail to See
31:40 A Final Moment of Reflection, or What Are We Doing?
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[@igorbonifacic424]

Really thoughtful discussion of Stray. One thing I'll add is that at the end of the game, the cat looks directly at the camera and slowly blinks. With cats, a slow blink is usually a sign of trust and love. I interpreted that as a thank you to the player for guiding them and an acknowledgment that the game was always a conversation between the cat, B-12 and the player.

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Oh, what an insightful detail. Thanks for pointing this out!

[@BioluminescenceOfTheSpirit]

The cat also addresses the player at the beginning, Just before jumping from the ledge of it's home onto the pipes leading down, as if asking the player to come exploring.

[@avar1ce319]

I’ve never seen such a philosophical take on a game about funny cats and robots

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Yeah, that's the weird niche we cover: games as the jumping off point for all sorts of ideas. It's definitely its own strange angle on things. Thanks for checking us out.

[@ozzy2here210]

“…you’re completely right, cuz it is about bein a cat and we’re gonna talk about what that means to be a cat” kills me for some reason

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Haha, I should've had a DJ scratch sound.

[@itsamilkshake]

B1/2 is very lonely. So when he talks to the cat, he is really talking to himself, like when pet owners talk to their pet. They don't know what we're saying, we're just talking for our own benefit. Likewise the robot is talking to the cat to help with his own loneliness and to process the world in his new body. A very interesting part of the robot society is the families they make. Seamus and Doc are son and father, there is a child robot among "grown up" robots in the Antvillage, and many robots in the Antvillage including the kid call Clementine their aunt.

[@Q-Vu]

What we expected: a cat simulator What we got: contemplating about the meaning of existence And great video, really makes me questioning a lot of things about life

[@BioluminescenceOfTheSpirit]

My view is the robots were servants, and now are the bodies of their former masters. An attempted form of transhumanism akin to B12's attempt to download themself to a new body, the robots forgot they were people once. You can see this in the burger shop, B12 recalls their favourite burger shop was run by someone whos' name began with an M. The robot in that shop, named Mattbee, starts with an M. That's the burger shop guy, forever doing his old job, serving oil and old computer chips, much like he did in life.

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

There's something especially sad about this: a repeat of past actions forever out-of-context and thus without meaning beyond its own repetition. Thank you for this insightful interpretation.

[@danielmastroni4087]

The message I took away: If we as players can step into the shoes of cats, we can step into the shoes of other people and try and better understand each other.

[@elkwolf2888]

What I like is it feels like both. I feel like I'm the cat, but also like I'm a ghost or spirit helping the cat. One could even argue you are seeing the cat from B12's perspective, if you're willing to accept the cat is more intelligent than a normal housecat. I just go with whatever feels the most fun at the moment. Also, noticing how silly society's norms/pretendings are is something many neurodivergent people never had a choice but to do. That's one reason I love the game, I feel more like myself from this cat's perspective. It felt familiar, not new. Freeing, not like a big mental shift. I even tried/wanted to climb everything as a kid and to this day dream about moving around like that, rather than being stuck in lines and walkways. Meanwhile, people's faces don't seem that different from a robot's to me, alien and hard to read without context clues. Only with actual robots, that's expected. I wonder how many of us not so typical brains love the game for these exact reasons.

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Oh, I love this comment!-Yes, yes, stay in that liminal headspace of fluidity and let the divisions wash over you as so many diversions from self! How freeing to be-and-yet-not-be a cat.

[@EvripidouM]

I feel more sorry for the robots after watching your video. I hope after the opening of the city, they get to go out and evolve into their own seperate beings.

[@lycorice2219]

Thank you for making this analysis video! You put into words the thoughts I had when I was playing with Stray. I was wondering what message the developers want its player to get from the obvious dissonance between symbols that humans intuitively understood vs. how a cat would interpret said symbols

[@majorman8482]

Thanks macro for recommending such an amazing channel

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Hey, thanks for stopping by!

[@Anonymous-73]

Cousins help one another. Sometimes to much (lmao Alabama incest is cool)

[@yjmantilla]

Truly amazing, also liked the poetry. Even thought you were going to mention Thomas Nagel. Would love your take on Rainworld , where the interface of english language to the player is mostly absent. Thanks for the analysis again, you deserve more views and subscribers.

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Rainworld is an excellent suggestion-a game we've had on our list for a while. I bought the game two months ago but haven't started it up. From what I hear of it, it sounds perfectly up our alley and like something we can chew on for a while. I appreciate your kind words and great recommendation. We have a couple other vids in the works, so it'll be a while before we have a chance to get to that one, but it's nice to know a viewer is interested. :)

[@yjmantilla]

@@ToGamesItMayConcern Problem is that Rainworld may be too hard (at least for me), kind of making a "the world is hostile and way beyond you" point. It is also not that famous (though I would say it has a loyal fan base). So the justification of the effort is debatable. But damn, it does have quite a lot of room for interpretation, in fact, a whole world of interpretation. In any case, Ill be sure to watch your other videos. This one just convinced me. Is pure quality content. Keep the game thinking going!

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

The constraint of too-little-time is a burden when it comes to covering all the games and concepts we'd like to. We have a long, long list and many topics in mind but know we'll never complete it. At this point-considering we're a small channel and thus haven't been captured by an audience to only do one niche thing-we follow whatever inspires us. The vids we're working on right now might seem an odd choice once they're finally out, but we found ourselves inspired, so that's where we're headed. Rainworld has courage in its design. That tends to hold our attention. We'll see how it goes when we finally give it a shot. Your compliments are reassuring. Thanks for being a viewer. 🙏

[@Ahmerizko]

The cat character your playing as falls into the dark abyss then spawns on a wheel barrow in a medieval setting an- wait a minute this is just skyrim

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

That should be a mod.

[@Anonymous-73]

This game has some serious mod potential. Imagine playing through Elden Ring or something like that as a cat

[@Mpmayer07]

Truly a game about cats and robots 👍🏻

[@c4sualcycl0ps48]

Annapurna Interactive rarely misses. The top two games I played this year were both published by them. These games just generate good video essays

[@bamboozle567]

How do you not have more subs??? This video was amazing!

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Thank you!!

[@Anonymous-73]

The algorithms show no mercy to the ones they find *unworthy*

[@ff7]

Great video, amazing narrative and editing. But Stray is honestly one of my favourite games of all time.

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Stray is amazing, and so is your review of it! Just saw your latest vid. Great stuff, man. Keep it up!

[@ff7]

@@ToGamesItMayConcern It really is an amazing game! Also, thanks for watching my video, it really means a lot to me. :D

[@ayaano_o9052]

This quality of video is not worth a mere 600 subscribers… amazing analysis

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Thank you for such kind words!

[@iestynne]

I think this video is a great example of the value of art. In this case, I mean that the game itself serves primarily as a canvas, onto which the viewer paints their thoughts through the process of spontaneous reaction. I honestly don't think the developers thought half as hard or as deeply as you did about the topics you discuss here. I strongly suspect that, in fact, they chose robots because robots are easier and cheaper to animate than humans :) Yet here we are, with the benefit of your thoughts having expanded the art to something broader and deeper than its original conception. I'm not even sure that 'great art' is much more than a statistical outlier; a randomly assembled shape, akin to a biological protein in its random genesis and similarly honed by the gauntlet of selection, that simply happens to bounce off the myriad minds in the world in interestingly generative ways. Something fundamentally only discoverable by rolling the dice inconceivably countless times... and accepting that almost every attempt made along the way will constitute a miserable failure.

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Great comment, deeply insightful and true! You got it 100%. We treat the work as separate from whatever intention resides behind its creation. We pick apart the ideas in it, not to reveal a statement of fact about the creators, but to reveal the work itself as its own vital microcosm of more. I adore the final section of your comment. It addresses exactly what we've been struggling with for the past couple weeks. I'm literally editing a section of our next video now that contends with precisely the free-flowing looseness you describe. If only we could've captured the thought with your same delicate phrasing. Fantastic, fantastic comment.

[@nickbooze9766]

Do you boys have a background in the Humanities? Hans Moeller is quite the name drop.

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Yeah, one of us works as an English teacher (myself), and we both do and have done editing work.

[@nickbooze9766]

It shows. I've really never seen this caliber of analytical analysis through the lense of these disciplines w/r/t video games on this platform. Nobody else is doing this stuff fellas. @@ToGamesItMayConcern

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

That is such an immensely kind compliment. Thank you! We don't have as much time as we'd like-work requires us beyond our desires-but we hope to fill a space in video game discourse when we can, "taking games seriously" being what we keep telling ourselves we're doing. I know it's such a massive video in terms of length, but you may especially appreciate our OMORI one. In my view that's the most "literary" in terms of analysis of what we've done so far. As soon as work allows us to, we're hoping to return to that same level of care. But, of course, it takes time and is hard work. Your appreciation goes a long way toward motivating us. So thank you very much for that.

[@xXGeckoManXx]

Great vocabulary

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Thank you!

[@sina3347]

I can already tell this channel is going to be a banger

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Thanks! Feel free to suggest any great or obscure games and/or topics you'd like us to cover. We have plenty of games in mind, but recommendations are always welcome.

[@BioluminescenceOfTheSpirit]

I see where you see how animals like a cat don't see language the same way as a human, not quite, only after I was 20, did I realise that other people hear a voice when they read, or think, only then, did I start thinking in language, what language does a baby think in? I know, the same language I thought in. It wasn't linguistic, it wasn't visual either, symbolic of sorts, (but I'm not sure how people with aphantasia would see the world how I did before I learnt to speak) they learn how humans think based on their interactions with me (I have had many cats, trust me, they learn) the biggest difference between man and animal, is their thinking is rigid in a different way than mankind's is

[@anba7151]

Amazing high quality video

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Thank you! We worked hard on this one.

[@sheevpalpatine4413]

Macro sent me. Nice content!

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Thanks for stopping by!

[@LB_]

What are your thoughts on the ending of the game, with the robots that are completely ordinary with no human-like behavior? A lot of people see it as evidence that the rest of the robots are actually humans who did what B-12 did (or tried to do), they uploaded their minds into the robot bodies to escape the plague and then forgot they were human. There's also some other pods like the one seen at the beginning of the game and the one in in the big tree village that B-12 comments on, and you actually knock down the head of the robot B-12 had tried to upload into at the start of the game. I think the ending re-contextualizes a lot of the game, since until that point B-12 leads you to believe that the robots developed sentience on their own after humans died out. So you go through the game thinking of things in one way, and then at the end you end up seeing it in a totally different way. (If you already commented on this in the video I apologize, my ADHD makes me zone out a lot and I already tried to listen through the video twice.) As for the cat, it's implied that a significantly huge amount of time passed between humans dying out and the outside world being able to support life again, so it's possible cats could have evolved to be more intelligent in that time. That's my headcanon.

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Hmm, someone else left a comment with a similar hypothesis about the robots having the minds of former humans. That would certainly explain so much of the fixation on human activity; over time, those associations may have become scrambled, and thus they become malformed copies of humanity. This interpretation grants a deeper tragedy to the whole story: humanity is now a husk of its former self. Really interesting, and thanks for sharing!

[@EvripidouM]

A lot of people see it as evidence that the rest of the robots are actually humans who did what B-12 did (or tried to do), they uploaded their minds into the robot bodies to escape the plague and then forgot they were human I see it as evidence that the robots in the lower levels evolved their own conciousness by mimicking human life. The robots at the top were office robots, never experiencing that, so they had nothing to copy

[@EvripidouM]

@@ToGamesItMayConcern I see it as evidence that the robots in the lower levels evolved their own conciousness by mimicking human life. The robots at the top were office robots, never experiencing that, so they had nothing to copy

[@ericpeterson9110]

@@EvripidouM I had this interpretation aswell. The lower robots saw the nitty gritty of human existence and with time minicked that, while the sanitation robots above never truly saw the full range of human interaction. Additionally the robots in other areas have the sentinels and zurks which would effectively apply pressure to them to survive those adverse conditions. Meanwhile the robots above never experienced any adversity in their sealed environment and therefore never had any pressure to adapt or develop.

[@verycoolpotato]

macro sent me, great quality vid kept me. subbed

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Appreciate it!

[@Lucksuck]

HOW DO YOU HAVE SO LITTLE SUBS THIS VIDEO WAS AMAZING!

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Thank you!

[@turquoisemaple]

i really loved this game and this video was also great, thanks for sharing! [game spoilers below] a theory i had when playing that this video reminded me of: when i played it, because of how you find your little flying robot friend next to that pod thingie and a "dead" robot, and later with the game plot twist, i had the feeling that all the robots in the game were originally human. they don't even remember that anymore. but at some point, like the little robot friend, they transferred themselves to these robots to survive the meat-eating monsters, and tried to carry on with life. that's why the robots down there are so different from the ones on the surface, with zero personalities, just sort of continuing with their tasks. they were human once, and they're still trying to be, in a way. somehow that makes the whole thing sadder to me? haha

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

I'm finally checking my KZbin notifications, and I really love all of your comments on my vids! You seem genuinely thoughtful about these games-Maybe you should start a channel too! Honesty is key to standing out, and you've got the inclination for it. Speaking of your inclinations: this is an excellent interpretation of the robots. It adds so much to the human-like behavior and fixations of the bots, and adds a deeper history and-frankly tragic-backstory to each machine that now lives on in the remnants of the humans who came before. Sad, sad, sad, indeed!

[@codenamejo8410]

Macro sent me here

[@chenerovianen2029]

Same

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Thanks for stopping by!

[@viperjaxx3650]

Same

[@bryanhendry1627]

Here from macro

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Thanks! Hope you enjoy the vid!

[@Deadforge]

I've watched this video at least 3 times so far and I love it. I enjoy your thoughts and opinion on this game. I beat it on PS4 and planning on beating it for Switch and making my own video eventually.

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

I really like that you've enjoyed it so much. This video is special to me. It came together in a meaningful way for us.

[@Deadforge]

Haven't watched the video yet but I know it will be great. This game was awesome 👌. It was a very insightful and thought provoking experience. I really enjoyed it on PS4 with HDR. I'm probably gonna buy it again on pc to be able to record footage and make a video. I also wanna see it at 144hz and max settings.

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Thanks for the confidence in my work! Yeah, it's refreshing to have a well-paced, linear experience that both looks gorgeous and spurs thought. I wrote a ton of notes while playing, and this video is the culmination. I really hope you like it! And if you make a video in the future, you have to share it with me!

[@Deadforge]

@@ToGamesItMayConcern You're welcome! I love the amount of passion you bring to your videos.

[@SillyCam15]

Tell ur cousin I love him

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Haha, will do.

[@SillyCam15]

@@ToGamesItMayConcern I love u too

[@meme_beans]

Nice vid. love this channel. You should have more subs

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Thank you! We work hard to produce quality stuff. If you know of great or obscure games we should cover, let us know!

[@DavidGonzalez-fr6ni]

Macro sent me here, no regrets

[@shoelicker]

The cat simulator everyone wanted and got

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Now we just need a sequel.

[@shoelicker]

@@ToGamesItMayConcern i was exactly thinking that about like an hour ago

[@connorgahan5197]

one very dark theory is that it is in an ordinary city with ordinary humans it just seems alien because he/she is a cat even tough cats see humans a giant cat not as robot's

[@Ahmerizko]

This game is awesome and i really love it but i just wish you could choose what type of cat you are

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

You know, that's a good point: it wouldn't dramatically change the story to let the player decide on the appearance of the cat. At the opening of the game, all the stray cats are sitting beside each other-that's the perfect moment for the player to select which appearance of cat they prefer. I wonder why the devs chose not to do that.

[@Ahmerizko]

@@ToGamesItMayConcern all the cats are probably gonna be paid dlc tho and we all know it XD

[@Q-Vu]

@@ToGamesItMayConcern They said they wanted this story/adventure to be specifically for this particular cat, so no customization

[@KayenPepper24]

Macro sent me aswell

[@malik.the.elite562]

Y A N O O B

[@notmik]

Hello macro cousin

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Hey, thanks for stopping by!

[@halalwuu9618]

Ahh yes the macro

[@just.some.guy.]

Macro beckons you

[@flecklberry]

U will always be known as Macro”s cousin

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

I always will _be_ Macro's cousin. Convenient.

[@flecklberry]

@@ToGamesItMayConcern yes

[@XStills]

Wtf i just watched 😳♥️ Subscribed man🫂

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

Haha, getting a WTF is perfect. I'm being genuine-not just trying to promote something-but if you're searching for some further shock, check out our 3-hour Omori vid. We go in some oddly personal and deeply philosophical directions in that one. Also the story of the game itself is _WILD_ .

[@XStills]

@@ToGamesItMayConcern ofcourse I'm gonna watch whokw video while eating meals thankyou for amazing content man👌

[@ToGamesItMayConcern]

You're a champ. Much appreciated. Glad to have you around. 🙏