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

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

“In our game, we’re excited to announce for the first time that we will have a playable race called Kerran,” “EverQuest Legends” executive producer David “Sysyphus” Youssefi told Variety in an interview ahead of Comic-Con. “They will be the same type of creatures you see on Kerra Isle in the original game, so not the version that was translocated to the moon. And much like the Frogloks, we’re excited that we’re going to be reimagining this player race in the original art style of the game. We’re taking those original models and updating the skins and updating the animations to make them actually a playable character race, 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 viewed at the bottom of this post.

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

While kept under wraps until now, having the Kerran as a playable character option in the reboot has been a key component for the dev team, despite the fact Kerran weren’t a playable race in the original “EverQuest,” but were in “EverQuest II.”

“First of all, everyone loves cats,” Youssefi says of the decision to include the Kerran. “The Kerran race is a cat race. It’s sort of a tribal race from an area in 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 history or the lore of the other ‘EverQuest’ games, so we’re kind of taking our own direction.”

Youssefi adds: “And in ‘EverQuest I,’ there was a Kerran race on Kerra Isle, but it was not a playable character. It wasn’t until a later expansion, when according to the lore of the game, some of the Kerran creatures were translocated 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 actually play as a player is called the Vah Shir, and it looks different, and it’s a different timeline of the game.”

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

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

Youssefi adds: “But I will say that over the last few months, the outcry and demand from the player base for the Kerran race has sort of exploded. So it is clearly both internal and the fan base. We all want the Kerran.”

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

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

Youssefi says he thinks the “EverQuest Legends” team has both “recaptured that and we’ve modernized the game so that it is more approachable for a casual player or has more modern game features than the original game did.”

“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.