[Spoiler] Transistor, by Supergiant Games

[Lmns Crn]

[ooc]This is the only post in the thread that's guaranteed spoiler-free.

Transistor is a really great experience. You should go into it blind.

Seriously, if you have any interest in games like this at all, go play Transistor. Don't read this thread until you're done.[/ooc]

So. Transistor.

You've heard about it, probably? It's by the people who made Bastion, the quirky hand-drawn adventure game with the awesome narrator? It's not a sequel, but it's got a lot in common with Bastion.

Transistor Stats:
- groovy, spooky, retro-futuristic feel
- linear story in a very cool setting with great atmosphere
- awesome narrator again
- soundtrack is really great (and is on youtube)
- strong theme of computer programming throughout, and many references and easter eggs to that effect
- isometric world that is gorgeous
- elements of real-time combat and turn-based combat (rather interesting system, really)
- you may find yourself all choked up at some point, just sayin'

We're going to use this thread to talk about setting/story spoilers for Transistor. Don't read the spoilers. Seriously, you want to find stuff out as you go.

Okay, spoilers start now! Stop reading!

[Weave]

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD.

[ic=Weave] I did it. I beat the game. Wheeeeeeeew that was neat. So much to think about - I want to make sure I understand the ending, first: did she "kill" herself to be with him? And what does that mean, exactly? Are we supposed to know what that means?

Also, them not specifying whether or not the world was some matrixy, .hack//Sign thing or a weird, I dunno, "uploaded" future was cool. They mention the Country and I can't help but wonder if that's the real world, but they also say that like the Transistor you can't just go and come back, so maybe it's some other... program? I dunno! Lots on my mind.

Your thoughts, reveal them to me.[/ic]

[ic=LC]I think the last thing Red did before she killed herself was try to use the Transistor to resurrect him, and found she couldn't. So she's in the city alone, no Process left to mess with it, and she has godlike powers to reshape the city, but she can't reclaim her own voice or bring back the people she cares about...

About The Country... I can't figure out whether it's a metaphor for death, or an actual place you could really drive to from Cloudbank like Red's boyfriend suggests early on, or if Cloudbank's a program or simulation and The Country's a different program, or the real world outside the program. All this stuff is left pretty vague and open-ended, but the more you dig around, the more you can find. (If you read Jallaford's bio in the Ping function description, that tells you a little bit by inference about what Cloudbank's people *think* about The Country.)

Right now, I think Cloudbank is probably not just futuristic, but actually digital. I think the Process is literally an out of control utility that is corrupting/deleting Cloudbank's data. I don't know what I think The Country is. It's comforting to think that it's the real world, that that Red was just "logging off" at the ending there, and made it out. But I don't really think this story has a happy ending.

Did you start a recursion playthrough yet? If not, listen close to the first line of dialogue spoken. I want to know what you think about *that* change.

In general, though... Thoughts?[/ic]

[ic=Weave]I actually haven't started a recursion playthrough yet - going to tonight probably. I also haven't decrypted everyone's files, so there's a lot left I have to read.

And yes, I agree, the more I think about The Country the more I think it's some sort of afterlife. All I know right now is that you can't go back to the city once you go there, so if it is a metaphor for death then the messages from the OVC terminals calling for citizens to move to the country is actually rather chilling. Interestingly, when the narrator comes across the bodies of... ah, I can't recall the names (Asher? Grant?), the guys who killed themselves, he calls them cowardly and doesn't mention the country, so I'm not sure if it really is the afterlife.

I'm of the opinion that Cloudbank is one of those "God programmed the world" type theories taken literally, in that while everything is digital, it's also the "real world," at least as far as the citizens are concerned.

I'm not sure what to think of the Process, exactly, or the Spine. Clearly they are some sort of crazy program, but I feel like there's something deeper about them I'm missing.[/ic]

[ic=LC]I loved the discovery of Asher and Grant, because it flipped my conception of what this game was about.

You fight Sybil and then get this exposition about the four members of the Camerata, and I'm already making typical video game assumptions-- Grant's their leader, so he's the end boss; we've already beaten one of his lieutenants so we'll fight the other two along the way, and the Process is their superweapon and/or their army of minions.

Getting Asher's messages on the way up the tower, then finding their bodies, that derailed all my assumptions and really drove home: hey, this story is a tragedy. The Camerata screwed up and can't fix it, and feel remorse. Even though Royce is the last boss, and is maybe a little bit more sociopathic than the Kendrells, he only fights Red out of necessity when they're both stuck in the Transistor. Up until then, he clearly doesn't trust her, but he's trying to help put things right and to explain what they did wrong, even though it's too late.

Their deaths were the clue that this game is not actually about the Camerata at all, but you're up against a force of nature. Plus, that this is a story about anticlimax and tragedy.

I missed that bit you mention about the terminals encouraging people to flee to the Country. That's dark in a lot of ways, jeez.

Quote
I'm of the opinion that Cloudbank is one of those "God programmed the world" type theories taken literally, in that while everything is digital, it's also the "real world," at least as far as the citizens are concerned.
Yeah, and this thing appeals to me.

I'd been kicking around the idea for a while about a setting where scientists discover that we're living in a computer simulation, and outside our universe their are beings who are running that simulation, as an experiment. And you could play with weird religious angles where there are attempts to contact the beings that run our universe, let them know we exist, beg them not to throw the switch to shut it all down when they're done with their observations. I never fleshed it out all that much, though, so it went nowhere.

The "whoa, what if you were really a sentient AI and you didn't know it?" thing is neat, though.

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I'm not sure what to think of the Process, exactly, or the Spine. Clearly they are some sort of crazy program, but I feel like there's something deeper about them I'm missing.
Royce talks about the Process a bit, talking about being an architect and working on the ever-changing city. Basically, it seems the Process are something like the source code that runs Cloudbank. The Admins would change Cloudbank in various ways, but behind the scenes, the Process is really doing the work, the same way you run programs on your computer to do things, but it's really the source code of those programs doing the work.

The Camerata decided to try to manipulate the Process directly, to have greater control over the city. They went from being like computer users to computer hackers. (I think that finding and using the Transistor to murder citizens for their useful Functions was part of this plan, but I'm not clear on that.) But they screwed up and it all went to hell, clearly. Maybe they were bad hackers and crashed the program?

I think the Spine is just a really enormous Process, to the point where it slows the system down when it's running (like a program taking up too much CPU). Interestingly, it's another one of those things that, because this is a game, you'd think might be super important, but turns out to not be.

Incidentally, did you grab the soundtrack? There are a few theories out there about how Red's already got a song called "The Spine", and that maybe the Process are becoming infatuated with her once she controls the Transistor.[/ic]

[ic=Weave]I actually had the soundtrack long before it was available for macs, so I've listened to it many times over. It's a fair point to wonder if the spine was something spawned from her song or if the song was named after it.

The game really is a fascinating deconstruction of Democracy, I think. I fell madly in love with its nuances ever since I watched the trailer for it (if you haven't played Bastion, their premier game, I strongly advise doing so). And you're right, they really do pull the rug out from under your feet. I wasn't even sure what to expect when I went into Grant's "domain," though that final fight was very cool.

Transistor, to me, as a setting is one of those "why didn't I think of that?!" things. It's just a really cool take on an uploaded reality. I mean, I'm sure they called it Cloudbank to intentionally draw parallels to the real world equivalent of the Cloud. And as much as i love how they left things open to interpretation, I always find myself wanting more. You should revisit your setting idea.
[/ic]

[Llum]

I haven't played the game since the weekend it came out (Going to have to go and replay it this weekend...)

I remember thinking that the city was some kind of post-scarcity place, not necessarily digital although it gives off that as a huge vibe. The Country I was positive was just somewhere else, like the area where you go before you fight Royce. Somewhere far from the city. I kind of got the vibe that Cloudbank was kind of self-obsessed, anywhere else was just "The Country", an unimportant elsewhere.

For the Process, I just figured it was you're classic "grey goo" of sorts scenario.

[Numinous]

I haven't played it since I picked it up, so since June really.  I'd hate to just walk into a thread and agree with everyone ahead of me, but I really do.  The game just blew me away in a way that Bastion didn't.  Maybe it was that the game itself didn't seem to get between me and the story, but it really felt a helluva lot more like art than anything else I've played besides maybe Bioshock.

Speaking of the Bioshocks, having not played infinite, Transistor feels vaguely anti-Randian in a similar way to me at least, speaking of the tragedy of the extraordinary thinking that they do not need to abide by the same rules as everyone else.

Regarding the Country, it's almost as though the game knows that it is a game.  Like the whole city is virtual and it knows it is virtual, but people still live there.  Almost like a life of luxury where you log in and never log out, full Matrix style.  Except, y'know, the steak tastes really good and logging out is unthinkable.  But that's just rambling.