These are absolutely mind-blowing levels of detail and research. I'm personally on Team Moon, only because we have no way of knowing if the TV broadcasts are current, and going by the moon puts us more in the future. I don't think it's a huge leap to think that broadcasts in the slums might just be old rebroadcasts of prior episodes. There may not even be a point to updated weather reports anymore. Thanks for putting in this work!
This exactly, the moon is there, you can prove it. It's live. You can't be certain that the weather forecast is live. And as you said. There would be no need for walled city 99 to have a weather report
My 11 year old cat died literally the morning this game came out and I downloaded it! I still can't believe it. I woke up to play it and to find out my cat had been apparently stung by a scorpion during night (in my opinion, as I had just found one days before). She got paralysed, I won't even explain because I will start to cry... She appeared under a bed... paralysed... she couldn't breath well... her mouth went purple... the vets couldn't do anything... she died that morning in the veterinary. It is one of the saddest days of my entire life! I couldn't play the game for like a month, and when I did, I never finished it. Now I'm trying to finish it, one year later.
Thanks for letting me do the music for this video! Such a fun one. Also: Team Moon all the way. In the weather report the ceiling is open and it says it’s going to rain. Why would they care if it was raining while the city was closed? I will just ignore the fact that it was raining the night before when Stray is outside…
the thing is that for the moon theory to be true it would NEED to be in the northern hemisphere. In a sign in the control room, it shows that Walled City 99 is near South Africa, in the Southern Hemisphere
My brother found your video on Stray's true ending, and we both fell in love with your style of editing. I'm surprised you don't have more subscribers! Well, you got one right now. ;)
This video is just a prime example of how rich and well made stray's world is that you can take what should be just basic set dressing and figure out the exact day the events of the game take place without it being obviously stated by any character
Something you didn't mention is the clocks. All of the clock faces in Stray have 16 hours rather than 12. If something happened to the earth that caused the rotational speed to change, then the moon phases would also be different than the one we know right now, making the "team moon's" claim no longer relevant.
8 months later lol, but you're right! this is actually explained by the game itself, it was either one of the dialogues or a piece of text somewhere, which talked about the moon and how it decreases earth's rotation speed over time. i'm doubtful that in reality the earth's rotation speed decreases that fast, but i'm no scientist :)
A much simpler theory I've seen about this is that the people in the city just adopted a 16 hour day for some work reason; it's not like they have to go by the sun anymore once the ceiling closed forever. For the earth's rotation to be slowed so much that a day lasts that long, it would have to take place like a hundred million years in the future, since it slows only about 2.3 miliseconds per century
@@madmatt2024 With the kind of cataclysmic event to slow the earth rotation, it will dramatically impact life on earth, and likely won't be able to recover iin just a few hundred years, or ever. We are talking about a GIANT meteor strikes that shatter the planet level.
Stray really stuck with me. I cried at the end. It was a beautiful, engaging game, and the story was so dark but meaningful! It’s up there with my favorite games of all time, none of which got me on an emotional level! I keep looking for games that have a similar story or feel. I’m still chasing that feeling. Games I’ve enjoyed that feel similar are portal 2, control, Witcher 3, horizon series, outer worlds, journey to a savage planet- I know the suggestions are all over the place because I’m trying to think of games that both capture engaging storylines, likable characters, colorful worlds, high emotional stakes and/or components of a puzzle structure… any further suggestions are welcome.
Have you played SOMA? Since you haven't mentioned it so I'm assuming you haven't. SOMA deals with existential crisis and [without spoilers] has a certain theme that is very similar to Stray. The underwater sci-fi atmosphere is gorgeous. A masterpiece in storytelling, for sure. Yes, it's a horror game, but totally worth your time!
Probably team moon because the weather channel could be a replay or a recording. Moon seems a little more likely to me, but unless we get canon confirmation, you can totally be on the tv team and I'll support that :)
I think Oct 11 on the calendar is not correct because this calendar is outside the safe zoom of Robot. I think that is the last day where human lived or died during the pandemic so they could not tear off this calendar anymore. So we need to star with September.
Disagree. Pandemic clearly wiped off the population in different time; as it was told that there was enough time the upper level citizens to shut off the gates of the lower level as well as for the scientist to watch his love ones died. If people are not all dead on the same day, using your logic the calendar should not showing the same date either.
Also some calanders in the slums say october 11 aswell... coincidence probs... also do the devs want to use 50 different calander models throught the game... no
i just finished stray yesterday and ive been avoiding spoilers from reddit, youtube, and twitter ever since. now that i finished the game im very disappointed because it was such a cliff hanger and ive been searching for videos explaining the game ending. ive watched your 2 minute video as well, the one where you describe the true ending and revealing where stray's home is. im happy that stray got an ending (although is most likely a theory) where they got reunited with their cat friends. and oh, im a team moon. because who knows, the weather report could have been just a replay airing since forever and the moon is much more accurate imo. thank you for this video, you got another subscriber.
October 11th? No way! I started playing this game just a few days ago on the 11th, and thought it was in-game thing to match up with the real-time calendar set up on your system! What a huge coincidence for me!😅😂
I imagined October 11 was the last day humans kept track of time, seeing as these calendars are found in the Dead City too. It subsequently has been hundreds of years since October 11. Side note: October 11 is "National Coming Out Day" in the US and the "International Day of the Girl Child" around the world
Thank you! I was so confused when he isolated October 11 for that very reason! Like, those are all paper calendars, and most are in the dead city where the robots aren't, and even the one I saw in the slums doesn't prove that that is the date of the game, just that that was the last day anyone bothered to change the calendar. Which would make way more sense if it was only humans who bothered to do so, and the robots just left them alone after the humans were gone.
4:21 The plaque disproves this imo. It shows that last month was September. More importantly, it shows that the robots have kept track of months and years passing since the humans died. This suggests that the calendars are correct.
Idk about the Dead City (we are in a game, where objects are reusable after all), but the paper deteriorates over time and humans died quite long ago, so this doesn't quite line up. Also while typing this a thought sprang to my mind the Dead City became deserted also at 11th October, but like, a year or two ago so the paper wasn't so old and exactly a year or exactly two etc. passed.
@@KaterynaSerhiienko-t6d during the zurk chase you only see a bit of zurk growth in the dead city as opposed to the sewers and rooftops, maybe shortly before the cat came the zurks took the dead city?
I’d watch this over Game Theory anyday. I commend this style of editing it really takes the viewers on a journey. It felt like you held our hand and took us on a research journey from your set up to revelation.
I love when the community comes together to solve gaming mysteries :) I may not be able to contribute much, but still fun to "discover" everything with you
This is showing a true masterpiece in gamng. its not only a very briliant game, it also has so many to discover and find out. im glad such game developers still exist. thanks for this game!
I really enjoyed this analysis. Nice work! My only quibble would be that it says "2544875556 days." It specifies the units as days, not seconds. So the companions have been sentient for 6.8 million years. However, I much prefer the conclusion you came to. Somehow, it seems far more bleak to think that humans have been gone for nearly 6.8 million years.
I am on Team Moon because unlike the news, it is essentially a freshly taken negative. It CANNOT possibly be wrong. Unlike the weather broadcast. We have no idea how current it is, or even if Monday is the current date, or if it was yesterday's or even tomorrow's weather. Team Moon is essentially impossible to disprove.
Beginning of the video: Stray is in the not so distant future when a lot of things from our current life still exists End of video: Stray takes place over 1000 years into the future...
@@Seasniffer69”timestamps are how programs and computers often refer to dated and time.” “this looks like a unix timestamp which is the number of seconds past “epoch” (00:00 Jan 1 1970 UTC). “If 2544875556 is read as a Unix timestamp it converts to Tuesday august 23 2959:11:06:56 UTC” Now think, why would stuff like cardboard, most tech, non faded away paint and no major evolution exist *7 million years* into the future? Why would stuff from 2017, 2084 etc exist after millions of years? and why would robots (companions) not use something like UNIX? point being, don’t trust matpat on everything
Thank you. I have been following the progress of this game since it was "a game set in Kowloon Walled City, maybe where you play a cat." Between this video and "Stray's True Ending", you are one of the best fans.
Team Moon FTW - computer systems can have flaws, calendar systems can be reset, TV programmes can be replayed, but the orbit of the Moon and Earth around the sun is really unlikely to have been changed. Brilliant video - thank you.
This video is so good! Like the editing, the use of the soundtrack ahhh so great! I found your channel through the last STRAY Video and this was just as cool. And yeah the cat is definetly employee of every month.
This is absolutely incredible. To dive in and expand upon the game lore like that is just amazing. I bet even the developers would scratch their heads at the question you posed, as well as be super impressed by the conclusion and logic it took to arrive at said conclusion.
SD! incredible video. love all the attention to detail - literally. felt like i was along on a detective case. i gotta say im team: this is just far af in the future lmao
It has been a year since i played this and this and the other video is what keeps popping up in my mind. Thank you for making an effort for us explaining these stuff
I honestly think that the weather report happened years ago and the TV was outdated that, it was set to 2827, and then the events of Stray take place in 3127.
Im team weather report. Assuming both could be intentional options since the devs are god-tier… As a 3d artist myself, my first instinct would be to add a moon that simply looked cinematic. Not one that was accurate to the exact day of the game, especially if the “realistic” moon didn’t look cinematic, and was entirely covered in shadow. Of course both could be true. But weather report seems more intentional to me personally. Great video btw! I just beat the game for a 4th time (1st time since my triple play through on release)
I think both the moon and the weather report have strong evidence in different areas, Team moon makes the most sense if you think about realism within the game where the moon is likely to be a more accurate indicator of time (because the report is possibly a re-run, evident by the ceiling being open in the report) Team weather report makes the most sense if you think about realism within real life where game studios would likely choose an aesthetic moon without intent for it denoting the date and add a more deliberate/intentional Easter egg such as the weather report to show the true date. Also, the report's rain and game's opening sequence's rain match up nicely I personally can't decide which team to be on, both are very compelling :( Although, team moon feels slightly more compelling to me from the perspective of thinking about the date solely within the game's world and ignoring what a real life game studio would do
Amazing video! This makes me wonder how the companion race is going to call this most special day in the future and how they’ll celebrate it. Maybe they’ll even start a whole new time and age after the cat and b12 freed them and led them into a bright future. I love this game and the heroes whose role you can take. It’s touching.
I just beat the game today and afterwards I’m finding all these theories and secrets and I honestly feel like the actual gameplay is so minuscule compared to the all the close detail knowledge that can and has to be found. Now I must go back and replay all the big chapters and really pay attention to small things cause now I really want to know exact answers to questions and know all the gritty details. I must now thank you and hate you for setting me on this path lol. Time for another detailed play through and hopefully find a clue that no one has discovered yet.
That was the best explanation and analysis I have heard yet. Some people are insisting that it’s MILLIONS of years which is preposterous. If anyone ever saw “Time Machine”, everything should be dust with no working tech that far out, and the cats would be way more evolved than the game. My nerd self just chooses to place this at the same time as Titanfall, because it also suggests humanity long since abandoned Earth and the fate of Walled City 99 is the fate of all who didn’t push into colonizing space. But that’s my thought for fun since I am a fan of that and Stray ;) Seriously great video.
I don’t get how it can take place no more than a thousand years from now when they even mention in the game that humans have been extinct for more than 7 million years
Yeah that part totally confused me in the game. Everything was hinting to the game taking place roughly in around 600-800 years but one character said that. However, it can’t be billions of years. Not a single structure would have lasted.
Stray needs a sequel where she / he goes back and gets B-12 where B-12 can be repaired / restored!! We need to see the machines leave their underground bunker homes but we also need to see if any people / humans did survive!! I believe the year is the later one because the machines probably set the TV Stations to be on a loop from old footage to make them feel more connected to the world but to also remind them to keep some hope that they are indeed not alone or abandoned!!
I think I’m on team moon. The weather report is compelling but as others have mentioned theres no real reason to assume it’s current. Also, from a developer intention standpoint, its buried as an easter egg, meanwhile the moon is front and center at the start of the game.
Another clue to the year may be in the Zodiac. The dates October 11, 2827 and October 11, 3127 fall in the Chinese years of the Rabbit which.... in Vietnam, they call it the YEAR OF THE CAT (they replace the rabbit with the cat). Those two dates coincide with either the Weather report or moon phase theories!
My Chartreux Cat, Tommy, passed away on August 9, 2022 (International Cat Day) at the age of 20, of natural causes, as may he forever rest in peace, as I’ve known about Stray, ever since his recent passing (and Jackson Galaxy playing through, when it was brand new, prior to Switch’s release), as this game is like he’s in the game, in spirit, even if he’s moved on, as I can still recall his sweet meows and doglike mannerisms, knowing which meaty treat he likes between chicken, beef, or fish, respectively.
I wrote the text below before watching the video, and I'm pretty happy how my theory worked so well. I just have a problem with the day, October 11th. The same day is also showed in the dead city, where for a longer time, no one was there so it cannot match the day in the slums, unless it's been exactly a year. And even then I'm still not quite sure, clocks don't work, unless each robot has built in clock on their own, or the time is just simply distorted for the companions. I actually think that it wasn't even that long ago before the humans went extinct. In the second scene, cats are sleeping on a piece of cardboard. They're outside. It can only be so much time, before that cardboard deteriorate. I think the day for the robots may only last 16 hours? They're inside the walled city and cannot know how much time passes outside so I think it's not a very good bet to assume that their sense of time is perfectly alined with the outside. Those clocks also don't work, any of them. The calendars are on October 11th only everywhere. I think the robots cannot have even a slightest idea how much time actually passes. They're pretty much constantly waiting. Waiting but on pretty much nothing, and while waiting even for us time seems to be passing so slowly. We think it must be at least an hour, but it turns out it's barely 15 minutes. I think that's what happens with the robots. They think, it was so, so many years since they have a consciousness, but with them not even having a shadow or sun position to look up on, they seem to not have any single clue what time actually there is. My bet is, it is much less, than we think.
robots use cardboard box too, for you to get the hard hat, you have to get inside one so a robot can take you inside the store, and at the factory you have a lot of them to hide in...
@@brunofelipe2 Yes, but the city is completely sealed, so it cannot be something from the inside, at least from after it was closed. Either it's completely from outside or it's from a time humans inside were still alive :0
Wow. Hats off to the devs for the intricate clues and lore. I'd happily pay for a DLC using the same assets. I'm on team weather report, which sounds very deliberate, while the full moon phase looks like nothing more than a design choice. Edit: Read the comments and it seems that the report is probably very old. Moon is the only option now...
there are arguments for team TV and team moon, arguments against team TV is "What if its just an old TV broadcast?" but this one does seem a lot more intended than the moon, considering the developers had all the time to translate the language to show it was a Monday, unlike where they could have just pasted a PNG of the moon without realizing the significance. arguments against team moon is "The developers didn't intend that, they probably just looked for images of a moon and that one looked the coolest!" And to be fair they are right, its really up to you to decide if you want to go off what the developers wanted, or what ended up in the actual game. Personally I'm on team moon because there is really no way to prove it isn't and old recording, and there's more evidence against team Tv than "The developers didn't intend that!", but really its up to you to decide
I wish to see a sequel of this game as I still play it even if I know it in all details. Playing Stray, a cat, was a great idea from developpers and I hope to play new Stray adventure soon.
This is incredible. You just got a new subscriber. The video and editing are superb, just perfect, with exquisite attention to detail and lots of great content. I saw this and your other video about Stray's tue ending and they are both really, really awesome, informative, and I'm beginning to lack words for how much I loved them. On a side note, I think you should warn there are lots of story spoilers before beginning the video. The video about "Stray's true ending" is really obvious that it contains spoilers (the entire video is about the story's ending, right from the title), so I think it doesn't need warnings, but this one isn't obvious and should probably include spoiler disclaimers.
It makes little sense that it's october 11 now, because we see those calendars also in abandoned areas where there is nobody to rotate them. October 11 should be rather the date when something happened to all humans.
Or it's the date when the city was sealed. Everyone might've agreed to keep them like that permanently, as a memorial to the last time any of the city's inhabitants had seen daylight.
the weather report shows the forecast for tuesday and monday, and the "moon" date, lands on tuesday, so i'm both, team weather and moon, because knowing b12 (blue twelve), it wasn't a mistake nor a coincidence, the date is tuesday october 11th 3127
Damn, that's the best video I've seen till now. Why is the time on the clocks 16 and not 12 though? Is it because binary for 16 is "10000"? I don't think that leads to anywhere, but thank you for the video, as many people probably would say, you are underrated, that storytelling and editing and everything is on another level! Good job!
Ima be honest and say I don't agree with this year estimate. There is another video I watched that explained that the 16 hour clock is due to the day cycle increasing due to longer day cycles. Our days get longer the older the solar system gets. If anything, the clocks and some other tidbits of information prove its about 2 billions years in the future. Edit: Also, this game has a lot of themes of evolution. Our cat in general is seen to be more intelligent and bacteria has evolved to giant eyes which again would have taken at least a billion years to evolve like that. This type of evolution would have happened over a long long time.
@@maxxsaigen5301 fyi if evolution truly works the way science declares, it might only take a couple million to evolve as you've seen the bacteria--something prone to rapid adaptation to begin with--and in Little Outsider, which is marked by his intelligence like you said. Cats are near-perfect in their composition as a regular tabby, black cat, tortie, etc. Dwarf cats and the like would never survive. They'd die or adapt. Most likely die, because breeding would be second to trying to survive, consequently ending in game over. Regular cats, however, are perfect hunters, perfect companions. They could throw a cat from a plane and it's estimated it has a 96% chance of surviving because of its ability to land in a way that mitigates impacts from high distances. Their night vision and stellar day vision, their hunting prowess and energy management, their ability to go long stretches without water, this makes them damn near perfect indeed. So intelligence is the only thing that would need to evolve, and it wouldn't take much. They've already proven cats understand complex emotions and physics. It's just getting them to fucking care is the hard part. 8[
16hrs is probably a thing of walled city's... it could be theorized that it took 2+ billion years, but that is just absurd. Cats would be very different by then and the most likely scenario why the bacteria evolved so fast is because they are genetically engineered Its just impossible for the city to exist for billions of years, naturally after several millions of years, the earths land formation changes which would devour and destroy such long standing citys... that is why humans will never find evidence if there is an intelligent life that exist on earth before humans
@@maxxsaigen5301 I guess a 16-hour clock is just a crazy design of some Companion who tried to be creative like a human. They attempt to make up their own culture, so sometimes invent weird things in the likeness of humans.
The probability that the moon was a accident is much higher than them putting a whole ass weather forecast with the wrong date into it. Also, its 1000 years in the future, its possible that the moon cicle slowly changed over time.
personally i would say 3127 because the weather report had both monday and tuesday, it couldve been a comparison, they couldve been comparing the weather on the monday to the weather they were experiencing that day which would be tuesday, therefore it makes sense because october 11 3127 was on a tuesday and it matched with the moon phase, you can narrow it down completely to that exact day. im not sure of this is correct thats just what my mind immediately went to
I really don't think team moon has a lot of ground, lunar or otherwise, to stand on. If developers are going to put that much detail in to point to the exact day, they wouldn't allow for two different ways to identify the date, they would all support eachother like in team weather reports case, not contradict eachother like in team moon's case. And the moon is a very common thing to overlook in a game, they may not have even designed that moon, it's very often an asset, premade. And the moon never shows up a second time for us to see if the moon phases are realistic or just coincidense. If you go the the trouble to make the moon phase accurate on a single date hundreds of years from now, you also go through the trouble to show that it was meant to be accurate by showing it more than once on different nights! Like, seriously. Everything points to the weather report being the correct answer. Also, I tend to favor earlier dates than later dates because SHIT HAPPENS, as Forest Gump wisely taught us. If this were another 500 years in the future, you're telling me that in all that time, a cat never fell into the city?? That none of those robots could find eachother again? That they'd go all that time down there plus 500 more years without anything happening?? That's a huge amont of time. A lot of shit would happen: earthquakes, tsunami's, tornados, impacts, hurricanes, a global erruption... It's always less problamatic if you pick the earliest possible date in this kind of situation, and if I were making this story, I would pick a date around that time, not tack on an additional 500 years for some random reason, and I certainly wouldn't go to the trouble to allow players to figure out the date only to put in something else that completely contradicts that date... What's more likely that it was overlooked, the weather report, where they went to the trouble to make a decodable alien language which tells the actual day of the week?? OR A FUCKING MOON GRAPHIC IN THE SKY SHOWN ONLY A SINGLE TIME??? It's obviously team weather report with the W here.
And now the open question:At which point in our history did the alternate timeline with the flat screen free world bend of and all those crt kept staying? And there is an indefinite delay when Stray gets imprisoned. You could plug the moonphase shift in there.
These are absolutely mind-blowing levels of detail and research. I'm personally on Team Moon, only because we have no way of knowing if the TV broadcasts are current, and going by the moon puts us more in the future. I don't think it's a huge leap to think that broadcasts in the slums might just be old rebroadcasts of prior episodes. There may not even be a point to updated weather reports anymore.
Thanks for putting in this work!
This exactly, the moon is there, you can prove it. It's live. You can't be certain that the weather forecast is live. And as you said. There would be no need for walled city 99 to have a weather report
I agree! :D
I think that it has to be team moon as the weather gives you the report and then the moon falls into place.
The weather report could even just be saying "Monday" as in reviewing yesterday's weather, with "Tuesday" being today's.
exactly my point!
This is great, the fact that the day matches up with the moon phase makes me hope the devs did this on purpose when deciding when Stray takes place.
and the game was developed in France that maybe the reason why the walled city is in the northern hemisphere
idea: the weather report was inaccurate since the calebder hasnt been calibrateed
Im weather team 🎉
@@plucas very hard to go against nature though, that moon phase is going to actually happen.
@@clementpoon120 this
My 11 year old cat died literally the morning this game came out and I downloaded it!
I still can't believe it. I woke up to play it and to find out my cat had been apparently stung by a scorpion during night (in my opinion, as I had just found one days before).
She got paralysed, I won't even explain because I will start to cry... She appeared under a bed... paralysed... she couldn't breath well... her mouth went purple... the vets couldn't do anything... she died that morning in the veterinary.
It is one of the saddest days of my entire life! I couldn't play the game for like a month, and when I did, I never finished it.
Now I'm trying to finish it, one year later.
Hey, were you able to finish the game? may your cat Rest In Peace
@@adityadeoprasad9296 Hehe, thanks a lot! Yes I did last October. It was incredibly good, and sad. I have a new kitty now btw. Thanks a lot!
So sorry to hear about your cat
now I'm gonna cry :(
sorry for your loss your catto is in a better place now ❤️
Thanks for letting me do the music for this video! Such a fun one. Also: Team Moon all the way. In the weather report the ceiling is open and it says it’s going to rain. Why would they care if it was raining while the city was closed? I will just ignore the fact that it was raining the night before when Stray is outside…
The night BEFORE, you say? As in...Monday, if you go by Team Moon?
the thing is that for the moon theory to be true it would NEED to be in the northern hemisphere. In a sign in the control room, it shows that Walled City 99 is near South Africa, in the Southern Hemisphere
@@basecatXD is there any possibility that might be showing the location of a different Walled City? it is called 99 after all
@@jacketofdiamonds but it has a marker saying Walled City 99
@@basecatXD okay I wasn't sure. anyway that might just be something they didn't realize during development
My brother found your video on Stray's true ending, and we both fell in love with your style of editing. I'm surprised you don't have more subscribers! Well, you got one right now. ;)
Same here! Subbed immediately.
This video is just a prime example of how rich and well made stray's world is that you can take what should be just basic set dressing and figure out the exact day the events of the game take place without it being obviously stated by any character
Something you didn't mention is the clocks. All of the clock faces in Stray have 16 hours rather than 12. If something happened to the earth that caused the rotational speed to change, then the moon phases would also be different than the one we know right now, making the "team moon's" claim no longer relevant.
8 months later lol, but you're right! this is actually explained by the game itself, it was either one of the dialogues or a piece of text somewhere, which talked about the moon and how it decreases earth's rotation speed over time. i'm doubtful that in reality the earth's rotation speed decreases that fast, but i'm no scientist :)
The "tv" broadcast could be a recorded broadcast they watch on loop at the slums...
A much simpler theory I've seen about this is that the people in the city just adopted a 16 hour day for some work reason; it's not like they have to go by the sun anymore once the ceiling closed forever. For the earth's rotation to be slowed so much that a day lasts that long, it would have to take place like a hundred million years in the future, since it slows only about 2.3 miliseconds per century
@@1tyrus I was thinking more along the lines that a cataclysmic event caused it to slow, rather than it naturally slowing over millions of years.
@@madmatt2024 With the kind of cataclysmic event to slow the earth rotation, it will dramatically impact life on earth, and likely won't be able to recover iin just a few hundred years, or ever. We are talking about a GIANT meteor strikes that shatter the planet level.
Stray really stuck with me. I cried at the end. It was a beautiful, engaging game, and the story was so dark but meaningful! It’s up there with my favorite games of all time, none of which got me on an emotional level! I keep looking for games that have a similar story or feel. I’m still chasing that feeling. Games I’ve enjoyed that feel similar are portal 2, control, Witcher 3, horizon series, outer worlds, journey to a savage planet- I know the suggestions are all over the place because I’m trying to think of games that both capture engaging storylines, likable characters, colorful worlds, high emotional stakes and/or components of a puzzle structure… any further suggestions are welcome.
Have you played SOMA? Since you haven't mentioned it so I'm assuming you haven't. SOMA deals with existential crisis and [without spoilers] has a certain theme that is very similar to Stray. The underwater sci-fi atmosphere is gorgeous. A masterpiece in storytelling, for sure. Yes, it's a horror game, but totally worth your time!
You should add Rain World to that comment.
t
Made me cry, too I like it's basic dystopian idea.
If you haven't tried Subnautica, I think you might like it.
The amount of detail devs put in the game is amazing but the fact that you put that much effort in videos is even more amazing.
Probably team moon because the weather channel could be a replay or a recording. Moon seems a little more likely to me, but unless we get canon confirmation, you can totally be on the tv team and I'll support that :)
I think Oct 11 on the calendar is not correct because this calendar is outside the safe zoom of Robot. I think that is the last day where human lived or died during the pandemic so they could not tear off this calendar anymore. So we need to star with September.
Disagree. Pandemic clearly wiped off the population in different time; as it was told that there was enough time the upper level citizens to shut off the gates of the lower level as well as for the scientist to watch his love ones died. If people are not all dead on the same day, using your logic the calendar should not showing the same date either.
Ummm... do i have to mention that it says he was employee of the month for September meaning september has past and its october now
Also some calanders in the slums say october 11 aswell... coincidence probs... also do the devs want to use 50 different calander models throught the game... no
Why does it have to be humans ripping the pages off?
i just finished stray yesterday and ive been avoiding spoilers from reddit, youtube, and twitter ever since. now that i finished the game im very disappointed because it was such a cliff hanger and ive been searching for videos explaining the game ending. ive watched your 2 minute video as well, the one where you describe the true ending and revealing where stray's home is. im happy that stray got an ending (although is most likely a theory) where they got reunited with their cat friends. and oh, im a team moon. because who knows, the weather report could have been just a replay airing since forever and the moon is much more accurate imo. thank you for this video, you got another subscriber.
October 11th? No way! I started playing this game just a few days ago on the 11th, and thought it was in-game thing to match up with the real-time calendar set up on your system! What a huge coincidence for me!😅😂
SAME
SAME! I literally finished it on October 11
I imagined October 11 was the last day humans kept track of time, seeing as these calendars are found in the Dead City too. It subsequently has been hundreds of years since October 11.
Side note: October 11 is "National Coming Out Day" in the US and the "International Day of the Girl Child" around the world
October 11th is also National Sausage Pizza Day, and National Peyronie’s Disease Awareness Day.
Coincidence?
Thank you! I was so confused when he isolated October 11 for that very reason! Like, those are all paper calendars, and most are in the dead city where the robots aren't, and even the one I saw in the slums doesn't prove that that is the date of the game, just that that was the last day anyone bothered to change the calendar. Which would make way more sense if it was only humans who bothered to do so, and the robots just left them alone after the humans were gone.
4:21 The plaque disproves this imo. It shows that last month was September. More importantly, it shows that the robots have kept track of months and years passing since the humans died. This suggests that the calendars are correct.
Idk about the Dead City (we are in a game, where objects are reusable after all), but the paper deteriorates over time and humans died quite long ago, so this doesn't quite line up.
Also while typing this a thought sprang to my mind the Dead City became deserted also at 11th October, but like, a year or two ago so the paper wasn't so old and exactly a year or exactly two etc. passed.
@@KaterynaSerhiienko-t6d during the zurk chase you only see a bit of zurk growth in the dead city as opposed to the sewers and rooftops, maybe shortly before the cat came the zurks took the dead city?
I’d watch this over Game Theory anyday. I commend this style of editing it really takes the viewers on a journey. It felt like you held our hand and took us on a research journey from your set up to revelation.
I love when the community comes together to solve gaming mysteries :) I may not be able to contribute much, but still fun to "discover" everything with you
This is showing a true masterpiece in gamng. its not only a very briliant game, it also has so many to discover and find out. im glad such game developers still exist. thanks for this game!
I really enjoyed this analysis. Nice work! My only quibble would be that it says "2544875556 days." It specifies the units as days, not seconds. So the companions have been sentient for 6.8 million years. However, I much prefer the conclusion you came to. Somehow, it seems far more bleak to think that humans have been gone for nearly 6.8 million years.
Moon because the weather report probably isn't accurately dated because who would be doing a weather report in a giant dome?
Such a deep research. I appreciate your hard work in this 👏👏
I am on Team Moon because unlike the news, it is essentially a freshly taken negative. It CANNOT possibly be wrong. Unlike the weather broadcast. We have no idea how current it is, or even if Monday is the current date, or if it was yesterday's or even tomorrow's weather.
Team Moon is essentially impossible to disprove.
Beginning of the video: Stray is in the not so distant future when a lot of things from our current life still exists
End of video: Stray takes place over 1000 years into the future...
1000 _is_ not so distant when taking human history to scale...
@@SomebodySharpin the slums you can find a prompt that says how many days since the humans left and it was like 6 million years
@@Seasniffer69 It's a unix timestamp. Pause and read in 1:02
@@Seasniffer69”timestamps are how programs and computers often refer to dated and time.”
“this looks like a unix timestamp which is the number of seconds past “epoch” (00:00 Jan 1 1970 UTC).
“If 2544875556 is read as a Unix timestamp it converts to Tuesday august 23 2959:11:06:56 UTC”
Now think, why would stuff like cardboard, most tech, non faded away paint and no major evolution exist *7 million years* into the future?
Why would stuff from 2017, 2084 etc exist after millions of years?
and why would robots (companions) not use something like UNIX?
point being, don’t trust matpat on everything
1:04
Thank you. I have been following the progress of this game since it was "a game set in Kowloon Walled City, maybe where you play a cat." Between this video and "Stray's True Ending", you are one of the best fans.
Oh someone that actually knows where the city took inspiration to be made!
As if I couldn’t have loved the game enough already, this just takes it to another level.
you are absolutely underrated my man, congrats!
Community like this is every dev's dream
Amazing Research, Cut, narration and content! Underrated af!!
Team Moon FTW - computer systems can have flaws, calendar systems can be reset, TV programmes can be replayed, but the orbit of the Moon and Earth around the sun is really unlikely to have been changed. Brilliant video - thank you.
wow, this is the most realistic timeline I've ever seen, good job
This and your other Stray video are so amazingly well done. Thank you
This video is so good! Like the editing, the use of the soundtrack ahhh so great! I found your channel through the last STRAY Video and this was just as cool. And yeah the cat is definetly employee of every month.
sdk, I greatly appreciate the time and effort you've put in these videos. The edits are absolutely amazing and immersive. Thank you
This is absolutely incredible. To dive in and expand upon the game lore like that is just amazing. I bet even the developers would scratch their heads at the question you posed, as well as be super impressed by the conclusion and logic it took to arrive at said conclusion.
SD! incredible video. love all the attention to detail - literally. felt like i was along on a detective case. i gotta say im team: this is just far af in the future lmao
Thanks! Team Moon over here. This and "Stray's true ending" are the perfect compliment after finishing this game! Excelent videos!
It has been a year since i played this and this and the other video is what keeps popping up in my mind. Thank you for making an effort for us explaining these stuff
WHAT A PRODUCTION, please keep making videos in this format
I honestly think that the weather report happened years ago and the TV was outdated that, it was set to 2827, and then the events of Stray take place in 3127.
Im team weather report.
Assuming both could be intentional options since the devs are god-tier…
As a 3d artist myself, my first instinct would be to add a moon that simply looked cinematic. Not one that was accurate to the exact day of the game, especially if the “realistic” moon didn’t look cinematic, and was entirely covered in shadow.
Of course both could be true.
But weather report seems more intentional to me personally.
Great video btw! I just beat the game for a 4th time (1st time since my triple play through on release)
I think both the moon and the weather report have strong evidence in different areas,
Team moon makes the most sense if you think about realism within the game where the moon is likely to be a more accurate indicator of time (because the report is possibly a re-run, evident by the ceiling being open in the report)
Team weather report makes the most sense if you think about realism within real life where game studios would likely choose an aesthetic moon without intent for it denoting the date and add a more deliberate/intentional Easter egg such as the weather report to show the true date. Also, the report's rain and game's opening sequence's rain match up nicely
I personally can't decide which team to be on, both are very compelling :(
Although, team moon feels slightly more compelling to me from the perspective of thinking about the date solely within the game's world and ignoring what a real life game studio would do
wow this is incredibly detailed , im surprised all these details in the game actually match up with each other wow mindblowing
What you have done is absolutely incredible. I've never played Stray but i was so drawn to your video every second from start to finish. Bravo🎉.
You're a genius, you dug deep on this and it all adds up. I hope you get some response from the writers at some point.
Love your analysis!
Thanks so much for showing how easily the stray was reunited. And i guess he can show them they can come back in and not be strays any more.
Wow, I am a huge fan of stray and I am grateful for every new piece of information. Thank you so much for all of your reasearch.
Dude you're a genius. Some big brain power must be there!
Loved the video
That was really fun to watch. I really liked your style and how you presented the whole narrative. A breath of fresh air for sure. Great job.
This is the best video I've seen. Just... outright
This is the kind of Stray content I'm dying for, I love your video so much.
Amazing video! This makes me wonder how the companion race is going to call this most special day in the future and how they’ll celebrate it. Maybe they’ll even start a whole new time and age after the cat and b12 freed them and led them into a bright future. I love this game and the heroes whose role you can take. It’s touching.
I just beat the game today and afterwards I’m finding all these theories and secrets and I honestly feel like the actual gameplay is so minuscule compared to the all the close detail knowledge that can and has to be found. Now I must go back and replay all the big chapters and really pay attention to small things cause now I really want to know exact answers to questions and know all the gritty details. I must now thank you and hate you for setting me on this path lol. Time for another detailed play through and hopefully find a clue that no one has discovered yet.
This is amazing.
Thank you!! Glad you enjoyed it!
That was the best explanation and analysis I have heard yet. Some people are insisting that it’s MILLIONS of years which is preposterous. If anyone ever saw “Time Machine”, everything should be dust with no working tech that far out, and the cats would be way more evolved than the game.
My nerd self just chooses to place this at the same time as Titanfall, because it also suggests humanity long since abandoned Earth and the fate of Walled City 99 is the fate of all who didn’t push into colonizing space. But that’s my thought for fun since I am a fan of that and Stray ;)
Seriously great video.
Def team moon. And wow, this is so awesome that you put this together!
I love this!!!!Keep up the great work👍
Kudos! The only remaining thing to do is ask the developers for their opinion.
I don’t get how it can take place no more than a thousand years from now when they even mention in the game that humans have been extinct for more than 7 million years
Yeah that part totally confused me in the game. Everything was hinting to the game taking place roughly in around 600-800 years but one character said that. However, it can’t be billions of years. Not a single structure would have lasted.
Unreal detail! Great video!
Stray needs a sequel where she / he goes back and gets B-12 where B-12 can be repaired / restored!! We need to see the machines leave their underground bunker homes but we also need to see if any people / humans did survive!! I believe the year is the later one because the machines probably set the TV Stations to be on a loop from old footage to make them feel more connected to the world but to also remind them to keep some hope that they are indeed not alone or abandoned!!
I think I’m on team moon. The weather report is compelling but as others have mentioned theres no real reason to assume it’s current. Also, from a developer intention standpoint, its buried as an easter egg, meanwhile the moon is front and center at the start of the game.
This time a LOT of time, I wish I had it, but I love this video. Thank you for making it.
Another clue to the year may be in the Zodiac. The dates October 11, 2827 and October 11, 3127 fall in the Chinese years of the Rabbit which.... in Vietnam, they call it the YEAR OF THE CAT (they replace the rabbit with the cat). Those two dates coincide with either the Weather report or moon phase theories!
My Chartreux Cat, Tommy, passed away on August 9, 2022 (International Cat Day) at the age of 20, of natural causes, as may he forever rest in peace, as I’ve known about Stray, ever since his recent passing (and Jackson Galaxy playing through, when it was brand new, prior to Switch’s release), as this game is like he’s in the game, in spirit, even if he’s moved on, as I can still recall his sweet meows and doglike mannerisms, knowing which meaty treat he likes between chicken, beef, or fish, respectively.
I wrote the text below before watching the video, and I'm pretty happy how my theory worked so well.
I just have a problem with the day, October 11th. The same day is also showed in the dead city, where for a longer time, no one was there so it cannot match the day in the slums, unless it's been exactly a year. And even then I'm still not quite sure, clocks don't work, unless each robot has built in clock on their own, or the time is just simply distorted for the companions.
I actually think that it wasn't even that long ago before the humans went extinct. In the second scene, cats are sleeping on a piece of cardboard. They're outside. It can only be so much time, before that cardboard deteriorate.
I think the day for the robots may only last 16 hours? They're inside the walled city and cannot know how much time passes outside so I think it's not a very good bet to assume that their sense of time is perfectly alined with the outside.
Those clocks also don't work, any of them. The calendars are on October 11th only everywhere. I think the robots cannot have even a slightest idea how much time actually passes.
They're pretty much constantly waiting. Waiting but on pretty much nothing, and while waiting even for us time seems to be passing so slowly. We think it must be at least an hour, but it turns out it's barely 15 minutes. I think that's what happens with the robots. They think, it was so, so many years since they have a consciousness, but with them not even having a shadow or sun position to look up on, they seem to not have any single clue what time actually there is.
My bet is, it is much less, than we think.
robots use cardboard box too, for you to get the hard hat, you have to get inside one so a robot can take you inside the store, and at the factory you have a lot of them to hide in...
@@brunofelipe2 Yes, but the city is completely sealed, so it cannot be something from the inside, at least from after it was closed. Either it's completely from outside or it's from a time humans inside were still alive :0
while i was playing this for the first time, i was thinking to myself "there cant be that much lore to this game" yet here is that said lore
Seeing all the Colanders set to October 11th (my Birthday), made the game even more special :D
Wow. Hats off to the devs for the intricate clues and lore. I'd happily pay for a DLC using the same assets. I'm on team weather report, which sounds very deliberate, while the full moon phase looks like nothing more than a design choice. Edit: Read the comments and it seems that the report is probably very old. Moon is the only option now...
I’m on team weather report ngl 😊
It’s so cool how the team added these little things into the game! I’m so exited for the movie.
Thank you for making your videos in HDR
Kudos to the developers for all of these details!!
You sir, are hereby Goat'd 🐐
Im team moon. The tv could easily be a rerun
edit: the tv is definitely a rerun You can see the open roof in one of the channels
The weather on the tv could be outdated and it cant be fully proven but the moon can
I take comfort from the fact that, whatever mess humans make of the planet, cats will still be around long after we're gone.
there are arguments for team TV and team moon,
arguments against team TV is "What if its just an old TV broadcast?" but this one does seem a lot more intended than the moon, considering the developers had all the time to translate the language to show it was a Monday, unlike where they could have just pasted a PNG of the moon without realizing the significance.
arguments against team moon is "The developers didn't intend that, they probably just looked for images of a moon and that one looked the coolest!" And to be fair they are right, its really up to you to decide if you want to go off what the developers wanted, or what ended up in the actual game.
Personally I'm on team moon because there is really no way to prove it isn't and old recording, and there's more evidence against team Tv than "The developers didn't intend that!", but really its up to you to decide
Oh wait, the 20s walk away end from the start thing was your video! Thank you for that, I will sub now :)
most underrated youtuber Keep it up and please make a lore vid on "one Endling: Extinction is Forever"
♥
bro you are so underrated i feel bad but i just know you gonna be big one day
Wow 🤩 this is incredible detective work and so entertaining! Great job 👏
I wish to see a sequel of this game as I still play it even if I know it in all details. Playing Stray, a cat, was a great idea from developpers and I hope to play new Stray adventure soon.
This is incredible. You just got a new subscriber. The video and editing are superb, just perfect, with exquisite attention to detail and lots of great content. I saw this and your other video about Stray's tue ending and they are both really, really awesome, informative, and I'm beginning to lack words for how much I loved them.
On a side note, I think you should warn there are lots of story spoilers before beginning the video. The video about "Stray's true ending" is really obvious that it contains spoilers (the entire video is about the story's ending, right from the title), so I think it doesn't need warnings, but this one isn't obvious and should probably include spoiler disclaimers.
Amazing, well done to the exploring of this game
I simply love it 👍👌
It makes little sense that it's october 11 now, because we see those calendars also in abandoned areas where there is nobody to rotate them. October 11 should be rather the date when something happened to all humans.
Or it's the date when the city was sealed. Everyone might've agreed to keep them like that permanently, as a memorial to the last time any of the city's inhabitants had seen daylight.
This is a delightful video! A lot of work obviously went into it and I really enjoyed it. Good work to you and everyone who contributed!
the weather report shows the forecast for tuesday and monday, and the "moon" date, lands on tuesday, so i'm both, team weather and moon, because knowing b12 (blue twelve), it wasn't a mistake nor a coincidence, the date is tuesday october 11th 3127
I’m gonna be ready for the year 2198 and when it does happen I’m going straight to the closest elevator
Damn, that's the best video I've seen till now. Why is the time on the clocks 16 and not 12 though? Is it because binary for 16 is "10000"? I don't think that leads to anywhere, but thank you for the video, as many people probably would say, you are underrated, that storytelling and editing and everything is on another level! Good job!
Ima be honest and say I don't agree with this year estimate. There is another video I watched that explained that the 16 hour clock is due to the day cycle increasing due to longer day cycles. Our days get longer the older the solar system gets. If anything, the clocks and some other tidbits of information prove its about 2 billions years in the future.
Edit: Also, this game has a lot of themes of evolution. Our cat in general is seen to be more intelligent and bacteria has evolved to giant eyes which again would have taken at least a billion years to evolve like that. This type of evolution would have happened over a long long time.
@@maxxsaigen5301 fyi if evolution truly works the way science declares, it might only take a couple million to evolve as you've seen the bacteria--something prone to rapid adaptation to begin with--and in Little Outsider, which is marked by his intelligence like you said. Cats are near-perfect in their composition as a regular tabby, black cat, tortie, etc. Dwarf cats and the like would never survive. They'd die or adapt. Most likely die, because breeding would be second to trying to survive, consequently ending in game over.
Regular cats, however, are perfect hunters, perfect companions. They could throw a cat from a plane and it's estimated it has a 96% chance of surviving because of its ability to land in a way that mitigates impacts from high distances. Their night vision and stellar day vision, their hunting prowess and energy management, their ability to go long stretches without water, this makes them damn near perfect indeed.
So intelligence is the only thing that would need to evolve, and it wouldn't take much. They've already proven cats understand complex emotions and physics. It's just getting them to fucking care is the hard part. 8[
@@maxxsaigen5301 Yea, but it took 1.6B years for us to go from 18hours day cycle to the 24h... That's older than grass itself and trees.
16hrs is probably a thing of walled city's... it could be theorized that it took 2+ billion years, but that is just absurd. Cats would be very different by then and the most likely scenario why the bacteria evolved so fast is because they are genetically engineered
Its just impossible for the city to exist for billions of years, naturally after several millions of years, the earths land formation changes which would devour and destroy such long standing citys... that is why humans will never find evidence if there is an intelligent life that exist on earth before humans
@@maxxsaigen5301 I guess a 16-hour clock is just a crazy design of some Companion who tried to be creative like a human. They attempt to make up their own culture, so sometimes invent weird things in the likeness of humans.
The probability that the moon was a accident is much higher than them putting a whole ass weather forecast with the wrong date into it. Also, its 1000 years in the future, its possible that the moon cicle slowly changed over time.
Notice that the clocks have 16 hours. In the future, the earths rotation will slow to make the day 25 hours. How far in the future is this?
Does anyone else not notice walled city 99 like there could be more walled citys
Criminally underated video
personally i would say 3127 because the weather report had both monday and tuesday, it couldve been a comparison, they couldve been comparing the weather on the monday to the weather they were experiencing that day which would be tuesday, therefore it makes sense because october 11 3127 was on a tuesday and it matched with the moon phase, you can narrow it down completely to that exact day. im not sure of this is correct thats just what my mind immediately went to
Another amazing video! I love the editing.
I really don't think team moon has a lot of ground, lunar or otherwise, to stand on. If developers are going to put that much detail in to point to the exact day, they wouldn't allow for two different ways to identify the date, they would all support eachother like in team weather reports case, not contradict eachother like in team moon's case. And the moon is a very common thing to overlook in a game, they may not have even designed that moon, it's very often an asset, premade. And the moon never shows up a second time for us to see if the moon phases are realistic or just coincidense. If you go the the trouble to make the moon phase accurate on a single date hundreds of years from now, you also go through the trouble to show that it was meant to be accurate by showing it more than once on different nights! Like, seriously. Everything points to the weather report being the correct answer. Also, I tend to favor earlier dates than later dates because SHIT HAPPENS, as Forest Gump wisely taught us. If this were another 500 years in the future, you're telling me that in all that time, a cat never fell into the city?? That none of those robots could find eachother again? That they'd go all that time down there plus 500 more years without anything happening?? That's a huge amont of time. A lot of shit would happen: earthquakes, tsunami's, tornados, impacts, hurricanes, a global erruption... It's always less problamatic if you pick the earliest possible date in this kind of situation, and if I were making this story, I would pick a date around that time, not tack on an additional 500 years for some random reason, and I certainly wouldn't go to the trouble to allow players to figure out the date only to put in something else that completely contradicts that date... What's more likely that it was overlooked, the weather report, where they went to the trouble to make a decodable alien language which tells the actual day of the week?? OR A FUCKING MOON GRAPHIC IN THE SKY SHOWN ONLY A SINGLE TIME??? It's obviously team weather report with the W here.
And now the open question:At which point in our history did the alternate timeline with the flat screen free world bend of and all those crt kept staying? And there is an indefinite delay when Stray gets imprisoned. You could plug the moonphase shift in there.
Oh do you mean when Stray cat gets put into prison?😢 i remember that part
The fact that a CAT saved this entire city with the help of a few robots is absolutely crazy also team moon how do they have weather???
Absolutely fire video
I wish I could live on the slums or midtown... so cozy, along with this cyberpunk feelings
Excellent video! Good job!
I am impressed.. your attention to detail;s and research