All dogs are good dogs. However, some of them live in bad worlds. Worlds devoid of pets.
Exploring the streets of Washington, DC in Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, I was delighted to encounter a lone dog. I, too, was a lone soul, just trying to eke out a tolerable existence in this empty world. I saw in his soft brown eyes a kindred spirit, a spark of understanding waiting to be nursed into the warming fire of friendship.
I approached slowly, wary of scaring it away. It looked a bit frightened, but I was confident I could win it over with a gentle petting and maybe some food.
Unfortunately, it was not to be. I bumped up against the canine, circled it, even approached from different angles, but no prompt for interaction ever appeared. It turns out that, while you can shoot the dogs in The Division 2, you can’t pet them.
You cannot pet the dog in The Division 2 pic.twitter.com/p0GGXWpDpY
— Can You Pet the Dog? (@CanYouPetTheDog) March 12, 2019
I’m not the only one frustrated by my inability to express love to video game dogs in particular. Earlier this month, Twitter account CanYouPetTheDog began listing pettable and unpettable in-game dogs. Speaking to Slate, the person running the account cited The Division 2 as their tipping point.
“I was playing The Division 2 beta when I found an unpettable dog, which frustrated me,” they wrote in an email to Slate. “I saw others making similar complaints, which helped validate my feelings. I thought it would be helpful to establish which games contain pettable dogs and which do not.”
CanYouPetTheDog’s creator further reflected on the importance of petting video game dogs in an article for Fanbyte. “Yes, petting a dog almost always offers no tangible benefit or bonus to the main game. But that is precisely why it feels so good. Those quiet moments of stolen comfort are a pressure release.”
You can pet the dog in Far Cry: New Dawn pic.twitter.com/DJmkny5g5w
— Can You Pet the Dog? (@CanYouPetTheDog) March 5, 2019
“When it comes to video games, that reprieve is a small miracle — one that evokes the liberating sensation of escape from escapism itself,” they said.
“In a world where games are trending towards complicated, service-based affairs that increasingly ask more from the player, petting a dog restores a small amount of joyful frivolity back to the proceedings. It is an interaction worth having purely because it is worth having.”
It’s a sentiment many seem to share. As of writing, CanYouPetTheDog has nearly 129,000 followers.
You cannot pet the dog in The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask pic.twitter.com/Ai7jC4erXp
— Can You Pet the Dog? (@CanYouPetTheDog) March 17, 2019
So far, the Twitter account has chronicled whether you can pet the dog in around 90 games, including Far Cry: New Dawn (yes), Yakuza Kiwami (no), Fallout 4 (yes with a mod) and Okami (technically no, as you are the dog and inspire others to pet you).
Also listed is pay-what-you-want PC game Pet The Pup At The Party, in which you must find and pet a dog at a house party as quickly as possible. You can pet the dog in this one.
You can pet the dog in Pet the Pup at the Party pic.twitter.com/99Kh6Akk1N
— Can You Pet the Dog? (@CanYouPetTheDog) March 22, 2019
CanYouPetTheDog is a little loose in its definition of “dog”. It includes in its list Trico, the flying bird cat thing from The Last Guardian, which is not a dog and I will die on this hill. But overall, CanYouPetTheDog is a very good collection of very good boys.
