Game Theory: This Cat KILLED The Human Race! (Stray)

Matt: "Let me get

this

straight, do you just play as a cat?" Wonderful wonderful friend: “Yes, that's all, it's great! Have you ever wondered what it's like to BE a cat? Matt: "No." Excellent friend, definitely not writing these subheads: "Oh, come on!" Matt: “I have a cat. Sleep, A LOT. And when he's not sleeping, he's just a jerk. Awesome dude: “What? Skip is sweetheart!” Matt: "Watch." Beautiful Friend: "But that was just a..." Matt: "and again." Amazing Friend: “…I…” Matt: “And again…” Friendship is Magic: “Okay, okay. I get it." Matt: "And again." Hello Internet. Welcome to Game Theory, the most perfect program on the Internet.

Sorry. Sorry. That last pun was a catastrophe. But don't worry, I'll stop. I'm just a kitten. Woo. Good. Now that the bad puns are out of my system, let's talk about Stray, shall we? Following in the great tradition of Keyboard Cat, Nyan Cat, Grumpy Cat and Garfield, Stray is the latest internet cat obsession. In it, you control a nameless

stray

cat who wanders around a cyberpunk city where you literally fall. It's a good thing cats always land on their feet. We're also joined by a drone called B12, so if cute cats don't get you, then cute little robots will.Through a variety of pushing things off shelves, scratching doors, and parkouring around town, you know, typical cat stuff, you unlock B12's memories and the tradition of the world, discovering the truth of

this

to underground city and what happened to

human

s. that once lived inside it.

It turned out that the surface had become a baron's wasteland, so in order to survive,

human

s fled to these underground cities, creating robots called Companions to help them. Eventually, a plague developed that wiped out all humans. According to a note on a wall, this was about 2,544,875,556 days ago, or nearly 7 million years in the past! In the absence of humans, the Companion robots begin to evolve into sentient machines and develop their own society. But our friend B12 here is different. He is special. A big reveal of this

game

is that B12 is not just any robot, but a human scientist.

A scientist who uploaded his consciousness to the Net. This, therefore, makes them the last "living"-in quotes-human being. So it's a bummer that, in the end, B12 has to sacrifice himself to override the city's security and open access to the surface, which is apparently no longer barren but filled with green plants and armies of cats. The final shot of the

game

is our

stray

feline friend walking off into the sun, as the electronics at the edge of the underground city blink back to life. Aaaaa and credits roll. I mean, guys, all you had to do was give me a game where I... the cat... could purr and rub my face against things.

I don't think anyone expected such a story when they saw a big cat in the miniature! But we are talking; a post-apocalyptic world, a plague, 7 MILLION years of history! With all this, what more could a gamer want? Oh wait, I know. A

theory

! Because while everyone else is raving about how cute the game is and how nice the ending is, I'm sitting here thinking that this cat, that cute little floating ball? Yes, you just doomed the whole world. And it all comes down to the game's final shot: computers outside of town flashing as our cat walks away.

Now almost everyone I've seen play this game has theorized that this is a sign that B12 isn't actually dead. That by using the network to open the city, B12 may have sacrificed his robotic body, but he managed to upload his consciousness to the network and now lives within the city's systems. And you know what? That's a perfectly valid explanation that I honestly can't refute. Me though? I ALSO have a perfectly valid explanation that cannot be refuted. And mine is much darker as it ties up some loose ends that are never addressed in the game. I don't think those screen flickers are B12.

I think it's something MUCH worse. I think by opening up the city, we've actually ended up killing the planet a second time. And all the clues are in the game and already point us in this direction. One thing I haven't mentioned yet in our Stray review is the Zurk, these hideous creatures of meat that haunt our little floof at various points throughout the game. We learn that Zurk started out as a bacterium developed by humans to devour the garbage that accumulated in the underground city. Now the cool thing about this is that it's actually something that scientists are working on right now.

In Japan, in fact, they found a bacterium called Ideonella Sakaiensis, which has developed the ability to eat plastic. Let's just hope our scientists build in better safety precautions than what we see on Stray because once all humans are extinct, Zurk suddenly grows out of control, evolving to the point where he no longer eats just garbage, but everything he eats. finds in its path. , including metal, which will pose a direct threat to all our robot friends. Fortunately, we learn that the Zurks have a weakness: UV light. This means that when we opened the city to sunlight at the end of the game, we effectively eradicated every Zurk in sight, watching them explode faster than a thirteen-year-old's pimple problem.

We have defeated the monsters. The robots are safe. It's a happy ending for everyone, right? Uh, not quite. You see, that touching scene glosses over the most horrifying moment that happened earlier in the game. Down in the sewers, hidden from the sunlight, is the largest infestation of Zurk, complete with fleshy walls, bulging birth capsules, and huge eyeballs. Again, not something I expected from a game whose main selling point is "turn into a cat." But this also has backing in science. It has been suggested that the bacteria might have the ability to operate as a neural network, acting like the kind of hive mind we see in the sewers of Stray.

Bacteria can also develop more social behaviors, with different bacteria performing different tasks. Some of the most notable are biofilms that form sticky sheets that can adhere to non-living surfaces and myxobacteria that form bulbous pustules, much like the fleshy walls and birth pods of the Zurk we see in-game. But what most people forget is that the biofilms and giant eyes we see in Stray's sewers aren't affected by ultraviolet light like the rest of Zurk. You can swing your cat's UV gun all you want, but no matter how close you get or how long you hold the button, the eyes continue to stare at you.

They cannot be

killed

. They have evolved beyond their weakness to ultraviolet light. So while the endgame wants us to believe we've eradicated ALL Zurk with the sun's ultraviolet light, that's not true. The strongest Zurks are still alive in the sewers, immune to the same weakness as their little brothers, the bacteria. But that's okay, at least they're stuck in the sewers, right? Well, you WILL be right if it weren't for one important detail: THIS guy right here, hanging from one of the sewer walls. That right there my friends, is a robot. We've been told specifically that Zurks eat metal, we see them try to consume Doc when you open the door for them, we see the rest of the robots act terrified when we first arrive in town because they think we're a Zurk trying to eat them.

And yet this robot here is in the middle of the Zurk activity, it's literally surrounded by the stuff, and yet it's still alive. He has not been consumed. Because? Well, it's because Zurk clearly doesn't want to eat it. Instead, they want to LEARN from him. He is kept here as a prisoner. But to understand why, we have to turn our attention to our new friend, B12. As I already mentioned, B12 is a human consciousness that has been downloaded into the body of a drone. The quote in quotes "last surviving human." Prior to this, his consciousness was stored and alive in something called "the network".

Not much is known about the network. What we DO know is that B12 was in it for so long that it somehow allowed them to hack into most of the city's systems and translate the language of the Companion robots. All we know is that B12's human form was able to upload his mind into the network through a white capsule that looks like this. But that raises an interesting point: we see B12's capsule in his lab at the start of the game. And yet... there is a second white pod here. Clearly, B12 is NOT the only person who has uploaded awareness of him online.

In fact, what if I told you that most of the other robots in this world act like humans because they are humans...or at least have human consciousness inside of them? In the same town where we found the second white pod, we meet a robot who tells us that they "love the smell of fresh paint", only to later remember that they can't smell anything. That's not something you'd fake to appear more human, nor is it something an AI is going to develop naturally over time. They're recalling a real memory here! Just like we see B12 recalling actual memories throughout the game.

Collecting one of the memories in Midtown, we see B12 talk about how they loved ordering burgers from a particular place where the server's name started with an "M". If you go to the restaurant in Midtown, the server at the burger joint is named Mattbee. The human consciousness that is inside that server robot remembered his name. The memory is buried deep, but it is there, somehow influencing current actions. These robots didn't just evolve as the game tries to tell us, they are all humans who have downloaded their consciousness into robot bodies. They have been around for so long that they have forgotten that they were ever human.

That's why they eat food when they weren't built with digestive tracts. That's why they cut their hair, despite not having hair. His human habits still take effect even though the memories have faded millions of years ago. In fact, we directly see confirmation of this in the B12 lab. Take another look at the room where we see B12's Pod. The capsule isn't the only thing in there; it's connected to a bunch of cables, all of which are connected to a robot that's sitting right next to it. The Net was not meant to be B12's final destination, nor was the drone he ended up on.

Instead, they were trying to get on that Companion bot, except we know the transfer process didn't work entirely. Instead, they ended up inside the drone. Which brings us back to our unfortunate robot friend who is imprisoned in the manhole wall, because if you look closely, you can see a lot of wires coming out of that robot and going into computer monitors, LIVE computer monitors. If the humans were able to connect to the network and transfer to the robots, then it's possible that this is what the Zurks are looking for as well. The hivemind can use this imprisoned robot to access the network, learn from it, and potentially upload itself onto the network.

Or to go a step further, to unleash the hivemind on an army of robots. Allowing them to traverse the landscape during the day, to reach the facility where they can later experiment on and enhance Zurk's abilities, to make them completely resistant to ultraviolet light. That's why the flickering monitor at the end of the game is so sinister. It's not B12, it's the Zurk strain from the sewers. All they needed was the ability to bypass the city's security. And we did exactly that for them. By unlocking the city, we gave them the key they needed to escape, and in the process, we have doomed all of society.

Didn't I tell you at the beginning of the episode? Cats are idiots. But hey, that's just a

theory

. A GAME THEORY! Thanks for watching.