If there is one development house responsible for getting me into the indie-scene, then it was Supergiant Games and their distinct standards. Rarely does a studio live up to its name, yet Supergiant is deservedly worthy of praise; it’s not their narratives and their gameplay alone that make these games superior but their ability to create new titans other studios, big or small, can stand on their shoulders. How many modern titles owe themselves to the iconic voiced narrator or the small, big headed boy/animal in a giant scary adult world heralded by Bastion? How much would the Banner Saga have improved if it released after Pyre, which ironed out its ideas of a storybook, choice-based game? Transistor is the one exception where it’s difficult to see other game emulate its excellence as a strange hack-and-slash/strategy hybrid of real-and-pause time combat or its ability to tell a character-driven narrative through piecemealing details, which never resonated with me from the SoulsBorne series.
Now none of these games are what I would call flawless, but rather monumental attempts at innovation. Even among their own games, the only similarities Supergiant games share are their isometric art style and gameplay, their one-voiced narrator, and their emphasis on telling personal journeys. Execution will always be a higher standard of quality, yet originality can also benefit one’s thoughts on a creative work; however, in the case of Transistor, both qualities are what excel it as the pinnacle achievement from the studio.
Hey Transister, Heard You Swinging Singing on the Radio, Allegro, the Way You Move Ain’t Fair, You Know?
Out of their games, Transistor is Supergiant’s best example how their niche storytelling style and gameplay contribute to their creative tales that befit their worlds. Whereas studios like TellTale condition players with a false sense of consequence or how often open-world games emphasize “Player Choice” as a stand-in for cohesive stories, Transistor is a linear game that perhaps connects more with players through its limitations. The rationale behind why it works is that the game knows what elements and at what times players should have control versus the moments where their agency is taken away to emphasize Red as a character, which is often done between the muted, typed-out conversations between Red and the voice trapped in the Transistor. Refitting Red’s skills at the checkpoints, hanging out and completing challenges in the Sandbox, and the small scenes hidden away as rewards are all gameplay incentives for players to connect with the story. Although the idea may seem incompatible, the gameplay elements you can manipulate also tie into how you unravel and comprehend the larger narrative beyond Red and the Camerata, namely the lore entries unlocked by trying out different combinations of abilities (functions).
Although lore entries are not exclusive to Transistor nor are more complicated narratives hidden in notes, what makes Transistor’s attempt noteworthy is how it ties narrative engagement with gameplay progression. Functions serve more purpose than various gameplay modifiers as they are an extension of the utopian world of Cloudbank, codifying not only the Transistor more as a master-user tool than a weapon but also the inhabitants as virtual manifestations of people in a cybernetic pseudonym reality. In this future, humanity has created an artificial super reality where everyone are prodigies, where everyday decisions as mundane as the weather is voted on as a committee, and where everyone always seems to be yearning for the next thing to enthrall them in this perfect world. This setting is the core basis behind the gameplay as holding the Transistor unlocks commands from users, which you can see as computer code when using the pause-and-play combat. Some commands create reactions like bomb and sword burst, so there is reason to experiment with these systems. Neither method of play (real or time-based) is a priority; the cooldown timer and the ease you can easily be killed balances both methods as you must play more tactfully and optimize your combos.
However, solid gameplay and storytelling alone doesn’t provide the whole context of Transistor; challenge is another vital component as Supergiant games flesh their narratives through incentivizing the extra obstacles. Bastion always lacked this feature with its difficulty modifiers whereas Pyre took what Transistor achieved further by tying the difficulty into individual rites as well as removing companions. What Transistor should be praised for is how it incentivizes experimentation by its ramping challenge and difficulty modifiers, which offers a gameplay rationale for bonus abilities and rewards along with the narrative reason to understand every characters’ motives. Simply reading these entries on a wiki would not be the same as you would dilute the progression, relying on the same tried and true tactics rather than creating new builds and gaining new insights. The storytelling, as a result, is cohesive from Red’s perspective, yet the larger context is obtained through the tribulations of the gameplay. This interplay of all these elements makes Transistor a far subtler, yet constantly engaging, experience.
When Everything Changes, Nothing Changes, You See?
Earlier I had mentioned there were flaws behind how brilliant Transistor is as a game; fortunately, these issues are more about missing details left open to interpretation than gameplay. This statement doesn’t meant gameplay is perfect as the most annoying feature is when you die you lose access to a random function and reset to the last checkpoint, which if you make a build based around one method of attack can cripple you. The four-to-five hour run-time also didn’t bother me as Resurgence is a NG+ mode with new encounters, which makes a second run more interesting with no new narrative threads. What really hinders the storytelling are somewhat important aspects to the plot, namely the concept of death in this world and the blinding sentimentality of its ending.
Cloudbank is essentially a virtualized reality connected to pods where humans are connected to a server, which is something illustrated earlier but its concept of death is confusing. Whenever death is referenced it’s often called when people “go into the country” (the cityscape is all the inhabitants ever experience, so the euphemism works), which begs the question if these people ever unlink from the servers to know what a country is but also how new people are created into this world. This issue may seem minor, but when the Process attacks Cloudbank like white blood-cells in a human body it’s a bigger issue when traces of code are all that is left of the inhabitants, which are absorbed into the Transistor. Are these people dead, or are their virtual forms returned to baseline code? The game never clears up that ambiguity as much as defining what the Transistor really is as well as what happens to people who are taken into the Transistor—the best assumption is it’s another reality within a virtual reality, and that conclusion is the only basis given from the sentimentality overshadowing the narrative.
Normally I avoid discussing endings in detail, so the most I can say without spoiling it is that it feels sappy for no practical reason. In the moment, the emotional reaction is meant to evoke far more from you than what is really going on if you analyze why Red makes the decision. As previously mentioned, the concept of death is not given enough explanation, which impacts that final scene’s importance if it was meant to display the impact of death. Instead, after the credits roll, the emotional weight is instantly taken away as the song as well as the visuals paint the sappy ending merely as a façade to a happier conclusion compared to the dystopian scenario you went through. This whiplash effect is hard to write into words, but the point is it feels like a bait-and-switch with no build up or payoff—only if you understand the story with enough details can you come to a more sensible conclusion behind Red’s motives, so I suppose it’s almost a reward from taking the time to appreciate the narrative. Abrupt and confusing it may be, the sense of closure makes the story feel like it came to an end, though perhaps not one you may expect.
Unforgettable In Every Way, And Forevermore That’s How You’ll Stay
Similar to the Calamity of Bastion or the Resurgency of Transistor, the cyclical nature of analyzing and playing Transistor is kind of the main thrill that never seems to end until you decide when its finality comes. Its brevity as an experience is something few games could be spun into positive light, and yet it’s certainly not an unrefined game or devoid of meaning. Perhaps the most plausible explanation why few games, even Supergiant themselves, don’t attempt to recreate what Transistor strives for is the simplest answer: It’s difficult and a lot a work to get right, and Transistor gets enough so well that it makes up for any faults it may have. Someday some developer may take inspiration from Transistor and perfect its ideas with better execution; however, for the time, it’s a one-and-done style of game that truly has no equal.
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