He is the first openly non-binary character in the Crash Bandicoot series.
In addition to the usual characters known to all, such as Crash and Coco, Toys for Bob has announced that Crash Team Rumble will feature a new character, the first designed by the studio after taking over the series. It’s about Catbat, a character openly non-binary and inspired by David Bowie.
Those responsible for the game describe Catbat as a rock ‘n’ roll lover and his story is told through a comic that accompanies the ad. Is about an escaped prisoner of Dr. Neo Cortex who will not hesitate to make them pay.
New member of the Crash Bandicoot team
“On the artistic side, we were interested in this concept, aesthetically, of a character similar to David Bowie“studio co-head Paul Yan told Kotaku. “A rock star who breaks certain expectations and has a confidence and style that is simply magnetic“.
As for the decision to make a non-binary character, Yan says it was simply something the character seemed to ask for “Aesthetically, Bowie had that androgynous appearance rock star that we loved. As we started developing that character and designing him, we eventually got to a point where we had a model sheet and, as a team, Catbat began to be referred to as ‘elle’ and it was something very natural. It wasn’t a ‘Hey guys, we need to get together and have a meeting about this.’ Was a very organic way to describe that character And that was with us all the time.”
Catbat, like Crash Bandicoot, suffered the experiments of the evil Dr. Cortex, but managed to find refuge in music. you can see the short comic of its origins through Kotaku.
Toys for Bob anticipates that will continue to have new characters and, as in the case of Catbat, they will always do so responding to a clear purpose. “I think Crash Team Rumble, at its core, is a multiplayer game focused on a expanding cast of heroesand we want to make sure that as that cast grows, cover new groundYan said. “Whether mechanically in a design space, aesthetically, its silhouette, its color space. And I think that gender representation It’s just another vector here that we want to explore in that cast as it grows.”
Crash Team Rumble will be out next June 20th for consoles PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X | S and everything points to the fact that it will appear this afternoon at the Summer Game Fest. In fact, it is rumored that there could be more Crash games in development.