Since this year is the 10 year anniversary of the series, it felt appropriate to take a moment and shed some light on the more mysterious aspects of the story.

I do realize that I have a reputation for rambling on a bit at times, taking side tangents whenever the opportunity presents itself. I'll do my best to keep it brief and to the point this time.

As I'm writing this, I'm traveling via train to a fishing competition hosted by the legendary Aprilli Kuravesi. This works out perfectly as a deadline. I'll explain as much as I can for the duration of the journey, and whatever is on the page when I arrive is what's released. Should keep the pressure on to avoid unnecessary detail and to only focus on what's truly relevant.

Ready?

Let's go!

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Lumi (that being the name of cat you play as in both games) has some additional bits of lore that, while written down in the official internal story documents, haven't yet been revealed to the public.

Fun fact: the name "Lumi" isn't actually mentioned in the games. That knowledge is exclusive to the world outside the games. It seems fitting to continue this tradition, and reveal something more about Lumi in the same manner.

I just realized that it's probably best if I shed some light on how this whole topic came about.

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Four decades ago (or maybe a bit more), in 1978, a millionaire by the name of Dick Smith towed an iceberg into Sydney Harbour all the way from Antarctica.

His intention was to solve Sydney's water crisis by simply selling chunks from the iceberg for 10c each, much less than the modern day three dollar average price of an ice cube.

That's some next level innovation right there! Truly inspiring. I wonder what happened to the iceberg afterwards...

Going back to the topic at hand...

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The Companion level pack, released in 2016, offered a lot of backstory for the gray square.

I've noticed quite a few different approaches to interpreting the events of the pack. There's one point of view in particular that I'd like to mention and discuss a bit more.

Which leads us directly into...

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Three seconds ago a random person walked past me mumbling something about spaghetti trees. After a quick internet search, turns out those are real! There exist actual trees that produce actual strands of spaghetti.

They can only be found in the Ticino region of Switzerland. During harvest, the spaghetti is very carefully picked from the branches of the tree, after which it is laid flat and left to dry out in the sun.

BBC Panorama did a segment on the whole process. I suggest you check it out when you get a chance.

And now that you have the necessary backstory, we can get back to the actual topic.

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The role of the narrator is not something I see discussed that often, if at all.

It's quite interesting from a lore point of view, since its a bit debatable if the narrator is a character at all. Technically they don't exist in the game world.

I'd like to offer an alternative point of view, that might make some people see the narrator in a completely new way.

Which actually reminds me of something...

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Do you ever feel like there's more to a webpage than what meets the eye?

Hypothetically, let's say you're on a page which seems to just be an endless amount of rambling paragraphs, with wild and nonsensical tangents to completely irrelevant topics and obvious hoaxes.

But as you keep reading you get this feeling that there has to be something more here. Perhaps something hidden.

Every time you come back it seems like the order of the paragraphs has changed, with some sections going completely missing. You're sure this page used to talk about penguins, but now it's about blocky apartment buildings.

There must to be some sort of order to all of it, but what is it? Where is it? Maybe if you come back enough times and let the text rearrange itself as it sees fit, a pattern will emerge.

And as you close in on the final solution, a single word keeps repeating in your head. The word of the year.

...

Just me? Eh, alright.

Let's get back on track.

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Even though the Companion's role and backstory was expanded upon in the Companion level pack for A Light in the Shadows, the gray square still has some undiscovered secrets.

One thing I haven't seen people discuss at all, is the four-cornered shape of the character. It actually holds quite a bit of significance.

But before going deeper into that topic, we need to take a small side tangent.

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Two is probably one of my favorite numbers. So many of my own personal favorite games have the number "2" in them: Half-Life 2, Portal 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Portal 2: Peer Review, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Portal 2: Sixense MotionPack, Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, and of course: Team Fortress 2 which Reddit actually bought from Valve back in 2013.

Or at least that's what Reddit thought. It actually went the other way around, with Valve buying Reddit by sneakily changing the documents while they distracted Reddit's legal team by having one of their employees launch a squirrel with a t-shirt cannon directly onto the meeting room window from across the street. Wild stuff.

Lesson of the day: the business world can be quite cruel. Especially towards squirrels.

Now, where was I?

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The abilities themselves are quite interesting from a lore perspective.

Often times they reflect what's happening in the story at that particular moment. A Better Place also differs from A Light in the Shadows by only providing the player one ability at a time.

Let's take a quick look at how that affects the story, as vice versa.

Speaking of which...

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Nine hour downloads for modern video games are ridiculous, right? We all agree on that?

Fortunately, CD Projekt Red came up with an ingenious solution to this problem. Cyberpunk 2077: Floppy Edition was released on over ninety thousands 3.5" inch diskettes. 97 619 to be specific.

Given CD Projekt's origins as distributing games on CDs, it actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it.

So with that additional context, we can now circle back to the previous topic.

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The green cat is quite different from the other non-player cats, as many people in the community have noticed.

People appear to be under the assumption that the character is a complete mystery. That there isn't much told about them in the games.

This seems to stem from one crucial detail being overlooked.

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And that's time! The train is just now arriving at the station.

Hopefully these explanations shed some light onto the more obscure aspects of the story and answered at least some of the questions you might have had.

I think I did quite well with regards to staying on topic, if I do say so myself.

Keep in mind that the 10th anniversary celebrations will continue for the rest of the year. And there's plenty more stuff in store! Make sure to stay tuned on our socials and keep checking the 10th anniversary page for all the latest updates.

See ya!
- Dev