GamerBraves Newsletter vol. 81 – How Petting Dogs Took Over Video Games

One of the big highlights of Pikmin 4 at the Nintendo Direct was that there would be a new dog-like alien that will help you throughout the game. It’s interesting to note as this would be the fifth video game from Nintendo in the last five years that has the player character interacting with cute dogs.

The other notable titles include Fire Emblem Engage, Astral Chain, Luigi’s Mansion 3, and Yoshi’s Crafted World. From there, it dawned upon me that a lot of recent video games in general allow you to play with or pet dogs: Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Hades, Monster Hunter Rise, and even the upcoming Final Fantasy XVI among many others.

It’s a small action yet so many games seem to feel a need to include it. Ghost of Tsushima even went back and added a patch so you could pet the dogs in a post-launch update (although you could already pet foxes in that game). So where did this sudden love of dogs come from and did it all stem from one Twitter account?

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