The upcoming “EverQuest” reboot video game, “EverQuest Legends,” will launch with the Kerran cat breed, a fan favorite of the 25-year-old franchise, as playable characters.

The announcement was made Saturday at the “EverQuest Legends” panel at San Diego Comic-Con, just days before the game’s July 28 release.

“In our game, we are excited to announce for the first time that we will have a playable race called the Kerran,” said “EverQuest Legends” executive producer David “Sysyphus” Youssefi. Variety in an interview before Comic-Con. “They’ll be the same type of creatures you see on Kerra Isle in the original game, so not the version that was taken to the moon. And like the Frogloks, we’re excited that we’re going to reimagine this race of players in the original art style of the game. We’re taking those original models and updating the skins and animations to make them a playable race of characters, and that will be available at launch.”

Variety has the exclusive first-look images of the Kerran race of playable characters in “EverQuest Legends,” which can be seen at the end of this post.

Developed by debut studio Game Jawn in collaboration with publisher Daybreak, “EverQuest Legends” is a reimagining of the original 1999 MMO game by community members who are self-proclaimed mega-fans of the franchise.

While kept under wraps until now, having Kerran as a playable character option in the reboot has been a key component for the development team, even though Kerran was not a playable race in the original “EverQuest,” but was in “EverQuest II.”

“First of all, everyone loves cats,” Youssefi says of the decision to include the Kerrans. “The Kerran race is a race of cats. It’s a sort of tribal race from an area of ​​the game called Kerra Isle. One of the key features of ‘EverQuest Legends’ is the fact that we’re not really tied directly to the story or lore of the other ‘EverQuest’ games, so we’re going in our own direction.”

Youssefi adds: “And in ‘EverQuest I,’ there was a Kerran race on Kerra Island, but it wasn’t a playable character. It wasn’t until a later expansion, when, according to the game’s story, some of the Kerran creatures were moved to the moon of Luclin. They became a different type of cat race called the Vah Shir. So in ‘EverQuest I,’ the cat race that you can play as a player is called Vah Shir. and it looks different, and it’s a different timeline of the game.”

The choice was due to both internal and external demand, according to Youssefi.

“I think we knew from the beginning of the project that this was something we wanted,” says the “EverQuest Legends” executive producer. “Just to give you an example, in Kerra Isle, in our version of the game, we have renamed all the NPCs after the development team’s real-life cats.”

Youssefi adds: “But I will say that in the last few months, the outcry and demand from the player base for Kerran’s career has exploded. So it’s clearly both internal and from the fan base. We all want the Kerran.”

“EverQuest Legends” aims to capture the essence of the original game while incorporating new features and quality of life improvements. In particular, “EverQuest Legends” has been designed to appeal to solo and casual players, while still including groups (up to 4 players) and raids (up to 8 players).

“I think what we want people to know is that ‘EverQuest Legends’ is really unique in the sense that we’ve gone back to the original ‘EverQuest’ game from 1999 and reimagined it,” Youssefi says. “It’s kind of a preservation project, in the sense that we’ve had to go back and recreate some of the original areas, and then create new characters in the old art style, like the Frogloks and Kerran. And a lot of care and attention was put into recreating the game that those of us who are old enough to have played it back then remember from 1999, and it’s a really special and magical game that had a lot of immersion.”

Youssefi says he believes the “EverQuest Legends” team has “brought that back and modernized the game to make it more accessible to a casual player or have more modern gameplay features than the original game.”

“But it’s also an opportunity for people who played the game back then to enjoy it again, but in a more casual and relaxed way,” Youssefi says.