User:Haleth/Kate Walker (Syberia)

Kate Walker
Syberia character
First appearance	Syberia (2002)
Created by	Benoît Sokal
Voiced by	Sharon Mann
In-universe information
Full name	Katherine Walker
Occupation	Lawyer
Origin	New York City

Katherine "Kate" Walker is a character from the Syberia video game franchise developed and published by Microids. A lawyer from New York City, she is the central character of all franchise media beginning with the first Syberia, where she is tasked with overseeing the purchase of the Voralberg automaton factory on behalf of her employer. She later abandons her assignment, as well as her life and career back in the United States, to accompany the factory's heir in his search for the legendary island of Syberia, a sacred site to a fictional indigenous Siberian tribe known as the Youkols and is said to be home to the world's last surviving mammoths. Subsequent sequels explore the consequences of Walker's life-altering decisions and the personal toll these takes on her.

Kate Walker is created by Belgian comic artist and video game developer Benoît Sokal. She is voiced in all media by Sharon Mann. Some commentators regard her as a memorable female video game protagonist with agency, while others have criticized her bland characterization and unconvincing motivations.

Concept and design

Benoît Sokal has explained his thought process behind Kate Walker's concept as a player character in a number of interviews, such as the promotional video The Making of Syberia. She was deliberately written to demonstrate her ingenuity and ability to solve her problems with her intellectual capabilities, as opposed to embodying what Sokal perceived to be masculine characteristics, like being physically formidable in battle or using of weapons

Like other characters in Syberia 3, the first entry in the series with fully 3D rendered graphics, Kate Walker was portrayed by a motion actor through performance capture. She is voiced by Sharon Mann in all media. For The World Before, Mann adopts a more gravelly and weary-sounding voice to reflect the hard life and emotional pain endured by Walker following the events of Syberia 3. Inon Zur composed her theme music in Syberia 3 and The World Before.

Appearances

Syberia

Render of Kate Walker's character model from the first two Syberia games

Main article: Syberia (video game)

Tasked by her employer at the American law firm Marson & Lormont with overseeing the sale of an automaton factory owned by the Voralberg family, Kate Walker arrives in the fictional European city of Valadilene and witnesses the funeral of the factory's recently deceased owner, which is conducted entirely by a troupe of highly advanced automatons. Inside the factory, she meets and befriends a sentient automaton named Oscar. She learns that he is created and designed by Hans Voralberg, the last surviving member of the Voralberg family, to drive a clockwork train that terminates at an undisclosed location in a Siberian tundra. Walker's subsequent journey across continental Europe and the former Soviet Union to find Voralberg is often interspersed with telephone conversions with her family and friends back in New York City, leading Walker to question her own life choices. Upon meeting Voralberg, Walker decides to abandon her assignment and joins him on the clockwork train to search for Syberia, a legendary island sacred to the Youkol people and said to host the world's remnant mammoth population.

Syberia II

Main article: Syberia II

Walker, Oscar and Voralberg continue on their train journey to search for Syberia and its living prehistoric mammoths. As a consequence of Walker's dereliction of her duties and refusal to return to the United States, she is pursued by a private detective hired by her former employer. Voralberg's health begins to deteriorate following a stopover, forcing Walker to seek treatment for him at a nearby monastery perched on a clifftop. After she treats Voralberg with an obscure remedy of Youkol origin which she discovered at the monastery, two local men hijack the train and forces Oscar to disembark and resume its journey. Walker catches up to the thugs and fends them off following a protracted pursuit. The train eventually reaches what appears to be its end destination in front of a large statue, soon revealed to be the site of a Youkol settlement hidden underground. Once there, Walker learns that Oscar's body is designed to be an exoskeleton to support Voralberg in the event of his ailing health, leaving her with a mechanical "heart" containing Oscar's memories and programming as a keepsake. The Youkol prepares a ship for Walker and Voralberg for their voyage to the island of Syberia, fulfilling the latter's lifelong wish to meet a living mammoth.

Syberia 3

Main article: Syberia 3

After abandoning the island of Syberia, a dying Kate Walker is rescued from a makeshift boat by the Youkol tribe. Determined to escape their common enemies, among them a Russian militia unit allied with a corrupt doctor named Olga Efimova as well as the private investigator hired by her former employer, she decides to help the Youkols fulfill their ancestral tradition of leading their snow ostrich mounts on their seasonal migration. Walker and the Youkols depart the town of Valsembor on board a ship named the Krystal, and arrive at an abandoned theme park in Baranour, a town which is devastated by nuclear fallout from a failed nuclear power plant. After finding a disused but intact Voralberg automaton in the park, Walker installs Oscar's mechanical heart into the automaton and revives her friend. Together, they help the Youkols find their lost temple and help navigate them across a bridge to reach a bordering country, where the snow ostrichs' breeding grounds are located. The game ends on a cliffhanger as Oscar is incapacitated by the militia and Walker is captured.

Syberia: The World Before

Main article: Syberia: The World Before

The World Before is set in 2004, a year after the events of Syberia 3, where Kate Walker is imprisoned and forced to work in a salt mine. She is depicted as being close to Katyusha, a fellow prisoner and former punk band musician.

Promotion and merchandise

As the central character of the Syberia franchise, Kate Walker is featured in the majority of the series' promotional material. In 2015, an augmented reality app titled Syberia AR - Meet Kate Walker, which allows users to project an animated image of the character, was released as a complimentary download on the Apple Store in 2015 to promote Syberia 3. It was meant to be used for the 56th Venice Biennale at the Glasstress 2015 Gotika exhibition, which was jointly organized by the State Hermitage Museum and Berengo Studio. The Collector's Edition of Syberia 3 includes a poster of Kate Walker, a copy of the comic book adaptation co-written by Sokal and his son Hugo, and a resin figurine of the character flanked by automatons.

Reception

Argentinean Narrative Game Designer Alejandra Bruno considered Kate Walker to be her favorite character and considered her significance for being the protagonist of a graphic adventure game in which she shows a strong and empathetic temperament. To her, Kate Walker's portrayal in the Syberia series demonstrated that video games have the potential for "narrating complex, deep events, and of transmitting subtle sensations, such as nostalgia". In addition, Walker is also a character who has a well-resolved transformation arc through action, which she finds interesting from the point of view of the script. Rachel Kaser counted Kate Walker among the notable female characters who are more realistically clothed and proportioned that have started an emerging trend and began to take over a portion of the gaming market from the 2000s. Jonathan Kaharl from Hardcore 101 was intrigued by Sokal's exploration of the "ever growing need to conform" in the face of "threatening antagonists and sights of modern decay" through Walker and the Youkols, which gives the game a darker undercurrent compared to its predecessors.

On the other hand, Kaharl found Kate Walker's presentation in the first Syberia to be lacking and called her a boring or bland character. Kaharl conceded that while it is easy for players sympathize with her because her frustrations are universally relatable to people living in modern society, her dialogue lacks personality and that she "does not seemingly to react to the fascinating things she sees". This undermines the game's writing in his opinion and made it "not quite as effective as it should be" when players may not care about her emotional growth beyond their own projections and assumptions. With regards to Syberia II, Kaharl thought that she appears to have experienced character growth, but was unconvinced by the reasoning behind her decision to actively pursue Voralberg's dream to find the mammoths, criticizing it as a "deeply unsatisfying explanation". He was also puzzled by the developers' handling of the subplot involving her employer and the private investigator they have hired to pursue her, as the game's story never delivers a satisfactory payoff for that arc. With Syberia 3, Kaharl expressed concerns that Kate's relationship with the Youkols, who are presented as cartoonish stereotypes, comes across as a white savior trope. Kate Walker is not exactly Lara Croft (reaction to her appearance from contributors to the “Syberia Blows” forum thread at idlethumbs.net was mixed, ranging from “she’s hot!” to “bloody non-descript euro-chick”), she is nevertheless a female avatar created by a male artist and observed that Sokal seemingly exhibited paternal pride when he discussed Walker's personality.

Kaharl initially felt Mann were merely competent with her performances as Walker in the earlier Syberia titles, but praised her reprisal of the role in Syberia 3. He said she came across being very comfortable in the character, "giving every sarcastic barb with perfect precision".

Analysis

been maintaining in the “real world” of corporate America; in promising instead to help Hans reach a mystical island of mammoths called Syberia, she reclaims her own repressed sense of the transcendent. She is aided and hindered in her quest to find Hans and take him to Syberia by various good and bad automaton-like characters, such as the “simple” child Momo; assorted unhelpful, robot-like clerks, storekeepers, and bartenders; and, most importantly, an actual automaton—the latest model, with an “additional soul auxiliary”—a mechanical railway engineer named Oscar (see Figure 14.6) who drives the marvelous wind-up train that takes Kate on her journey into Eastern Europe and Russia. Oscar plays something like the subaltern role of C3PO to Kate’s Luke Skywalker, manifesting a charmingly naive (or stubborn) literal-mindedness at times and at one point becoming the victim of a scavenger of automaton parts who resides in an old Soviet mine.

serves as a good example for how the relationship between avatar and player can also be influenced on the narrative level. Kate Walker, the avatar in SYBERIA, is given strong psychological traits; she is compared to others an exceedingly defined and personalized avatar. This implies that the player’s way to interpret the game world is to great extent left out. He is forced to adopt Kate’s perspective. It is often argued that avatars need to be flat characters that leave room for the player to come in. Yet it seems, depending on the game genre, that also games with round, i.e. autonomous characters are attractive for players, because they offer new schemata of thinking and acting that can be; other than in literature, tested. This relationship between avatar and player can be considered a form of emotional involvement. In the case of SYBERIA, it is possible that the player rather than thinking about what he himself would do, might get to a point where the answer to the question, “What would my avatar do in this situation?” is more relevant to him. Judging from what he already knows about his avatar already, he might then find the solution to the given problem. What I just sketched out can best be realized in adventure games because they have a determined game structure that leaves only little room for deliberation and negotiation on behalf of the player. Conference Proceedings of The Philosophy of Computer Games 2008 edited by Stephan Günzel, Michael Liebe, Dieter Mersch pages=102-103

ic; it is not a solitary journey or a struggle between life and death. Instead, the player is constantly in contact with other characters inhabiting the space. In contrast to most Arctic representations, which assume a male subject or a masculinist paradigm, the action of Syberia II is driven by a female protagonist, Kate Walker. Some of the game’s action requires actively overcoming other characters’ sexist assumptions about Walker’s abilities and motives and sacrificing self-interest to move the game forward. In Syberia II, in place of the typical player-versus-death scenario, there is either progress or stagnation.

Further reading

• Flamma, Adam (2019). Teresa Jaromin; Anna Kęsek-Chyży (eds.). "Cuadernos Iberorrománicos" (in Polish). 1: 179–181. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Engelns, Markus (2018). "Geschichten über Metall, Holz und Schnee". Cahiers d'Études Germaniques. 75: 95–106. Retrieved March 13, 2022.