Someone Cracked Stray's Hidden Language
Stray has a lot to contribute when it comes to immersion. The feline favourite is desperate for you to truly feel like a cat. This is shown in the precise sound design, the equal reflectiveness and dinginess of the world's lighting, and giving the player the chance to curl up in bookshelves and scratch the living hell out of some rugs.
A lot of what contributes to Stray's immersion in being of a species without the abilities of a human (or robot, in this case) is the language in use throughout the game. Not understanding what signs mean and relying on your floating companion B12 is a huge factor in making you feel isolated and confused in the new settings - but one player has managed to sap that isolation entirely.
What Is Stray's Hidden Language?
Click to enlargeBlimey, the game's only been out what, a week? In no time at all, one Stray fan has gone to the effort of translating the language of the robots in the game, and now, detailed exactly how you need to decode it. Writing for Half Glass Gaming, Josh Wirtanen has revealed his new way of deciphering the game's language by reverse engineering the signs and posters around the game.
"I started with the chapter titles, and I began decoding those. Since those are written in both the code language and English, it was a decent place to start," he says. Firstly, Wirtanen figured out the level called "The Slums" is actually named "Home: The Slums Part One."
Other translations include a TV that reads "EATHER. In a VIP ticket for. If you want to live in clean city just," or what about a bag that simply says "best bag." It seems like a pretty foolproof translation - but the writer had a lot more work to do, as surprisingly, the game itself doesn't exactly stick to its own rules.
Stray Translator Discovers The Game's Inconsistencies
As it turns out, in the process of translating the game, Wirtanen has discovered that Stray itself has been poorly translated in some places. For example, there's one music sheet titled "Come On," but Morusque tells you that it's called "Cool Down." Plus, there are examples everywhere of the same text being reused, but B12 telling you that they're different translations.
It's quite impressive that the adorable adventure has been translated to such a degree that the translation can point out the flaws in the game itself. Either way, at least we'll be able to find our way around the world a little better. Knowledge is power, and we're about to be the most powerful cat in existence.
