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Ronald Bay zhi Hui

Ronald Bay Zhi Hui

GAT120F15

30 November 2015

TRANSISTOR GAME
ANALYSIS
Final Assignment

Ronald Bay Zhi Hui

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30 November 2015

Introduction()
Transistor is a sci-fi action role playing game developed and published by Supergiant
Games. The game was released on 20th May 2014 and was well received by critics.
Transistor was nominated for a few awards mostly based on the games soundtrack, music
and art design, it went ahead and won IGNs Best Art Graphics of 2014.

Mechanics()
Transistor is an action role playing with Red as the protagonist holding transistor, a sword
and her companion as she goes along to complete her goals in the game. Going straight into
mechanics, although Supergiant Games created this game around only a few core
mechanics. Having the player explore and tweak the mechanic to however the player wants
it to be, giving a wide array to how the player can go by playing the game, all this creates a
great depth in the game for the players explore and think around the problems presented to
them. I personally feel that depth in a mechanic always outweigh a complex mechanic or
many mechanics.

Limiter
Transistor does not have a difficulty option at the start of the game. Every player starts the
game off with the same difficult curve and have the same experience as everyone else.
However, players later but still near the beginning of the game have the choice to equip
limiters. Limiters are Conditions to make a more challenging game as compared to a normal
run-through. This gives the player the choice to manipulate their game play to suit their
desired difficulty.

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Function()
Function() are skills that the player can get throughout the game. Each of them is a Trace or
a presence of a person that used to be present in cloudbank. When the person is absorbed
into the Transistor, you can use them as a type of skill called Function(), and each Function()
works differently from another. The player is only able to equip 4 Function() at any one time
in the game.

Combat Mechanics
Combat in transistor is a birds eye view action based game. Battles are taken place in real
time and the player has to figure out how to defeat them with the current equipped skills. The
game uses the Function() as a basis of attacking. Without a Function(), the player would be
unable to attack in the game. The attack is only possible with the use of a Function().

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Turn() Mechanic
Transistor has a Turn() mechanic that stops the time in the game, allowing the player to plan
actions they would want to do next ahead of time. After ending the Turn(), the player is able
to execute the planned actions done in the Turn() with the enemies froze in time. However,
there is a limitation to the number of actions that Red is able to perform during the Turn()
depicted by the Turn() gauge at the top of the screen. This enhance the combat experience
and give a greater depth to the simple combat mechanic.

Arena System
Transistor uses an arena system whereby the player would be forced into a boundary that
would be formed around the player. Hostile enemies would then be spawned in the boundary
that the player is in. This forces the player to defeat everyone in the area before the
boundary disappear. Upon completing the stage, the player would have a popup at the side
showing the experience gained and enemies defeated.

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Upgradable Function()
The most satisfying mechanic is the Upgradable Function(), equipped Function() can be
combined together with 2 other function()s to improve or change the current skill of the
equipped function(). There is such a wide array of choices to make. Thinking of different
combinations for the 4 equipped skills was just the beginning. I had to then think about what
other Function() can be added onto the equipped function()s to suit my combination or the
play style I want to use in the game.

Passive Function()
You are able to equip Function()s as a passive ability instead of using it as one of the skills
or as an upgrade to a equipped skill. Each Function() has different passive abilities as well.
Giving me a wider choice of how I want to play the game, and how would I go around
destroying the different types of process. Do I want to go invisible after a Turn()? Or should I
equip a Function() that reduce the cost of each skill used in the Turn()? With many choices
for different play styles, it makes the game very engaging and interesting.

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Narrative()
Third Person Narration
Bastion was the first game created by Supergiant Games with a third person narrative as
compared to any other game in the market at that moment. It was unique and was
something that was never seen before. Creating quite a hype for the game at that moment.
The second game Transistor was also from a third person narrative.
A short introduction as to how the game started off is that Red, the protagonist, was a
renowned singer in the city cloudbank. At the end of one of her performance, a group that
calls themselves Camerata tried to kill Red using the Transistor. But her lover came in time
to take the blow for Red instead. Mourning beside her lover, red found out that his
consciousness was transferred into the Transistor and was able to speak from there.

Plot

Act I
It started off with Red and Transistor wanting Red to find a way out of the city. As Transistor
leads the way through speaking, he talks about a bike and about leaving everything behind,
heading for the country, lay low and mourn over what they have lost. Red made her way
towards the bike and encountered obstacles along the way called The Process. Upon
reaching her bike, she took it and instead of skipping town for the country, she went towards
town for a reason. Some of which we could guess are,
Revenge
Save Cloudbank
Getting her voice back
However, it was still not known as Red does not have a voice of her own, and Transistor was
only guessing what she was doing and more of worried what would happen to her.

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Act II
Red went on to fight one of the 4 people in Camerata and after defeating her, she gave the
location of the other two Camerata members. On the way there, Red and the Transistor
encountered something called the Spine. Once in a while, it post as an obstacle and appears
and disappears hitting Red as the opportunity strikes. The Spine also affects the Transistor
with its presence, and it makes Transistor talk in a more slurry voice that usual, affecting its
memories as well. Turning it into what seems like a drunken state of the Transistor. After
destroying the heart of the spine, Red went on to continue the pursuit of the Camerata
members.

Act III
Getting closer to the other two members of the Camerata Grant and Asher. Red starts to get
messages through corrupted OVC telling her about how they lost control of the process
when they lost the transistor and walled themselves in to prevent the process from reaching
them. Upon reaching them, both of them were found dead. Grant was unable to cope with
the loss of the transistor and the destruction of cloudbank, while Asher is not willing to
continue living without him. The Trace data left by both Asher and Grant lead them to the last
member of the Camerata, Royce Bracket.

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Act IV
Red has to backtrack to Fairview district, where Royce is waiting. Along the way there, it
shows Fairview completely processed, where everything was white and greyish. Royce
communicated with Red through a proxy, asking for a truce to stop the process. Convincing
Red that stopping the process is priority at the moment. When sucked into the transistor,
Royce was armed with a transistor of his own and tells Red only one person is able to leave
the transistor.
After defeating Royce, Red is able to interact with processed places near her to paint them
with her voice. After Red learns how to use it to get rid of the process, she is now able to
save the city from being further processed. However, while the Transistor ask excitedly
where she would like to start un-processing the city, Red turned a deaf ear to him and went
back to the mans body that saved her. After un-processing him, she sat down beside him
and killed herself with the Transistor.

A Narrator, not a decision maker

After reading through comments and reviews about Transistor, many complain about how
they wanted to hear more of Red than Transistor. They felt that Red was not given much
thought into and thus making Red a very shallow protagonist. However this is not true, in
actual fact Reds character stands out so much more even without a voice to accompanying
it.
Through the game plot, you would realize that although the Transistor is the main narrator
and mostly the voice of the game, it is not the decision maker in the game. Red is the one
that decides what she wants to do and the Transistor is only able to suggest. This is the
factor that distinguishes Red as the main protagonist rather than Transistor. It creates a
great underlining depth and character to Red that most players did not notice as their main
focus is to the voice of the narrator.
Red makes her own decisions, she wants to do what she wants to do and Transistor has no
effect on that. There are two most prominent parts that shows this happening. The first one
is where Red decides to go back into town instead of listening to Transistor and skip town to
go into the country, lay low and enjoy the peace. Another is at the end of the game, where

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30 November 2015

Transistor was excited to rid the city of The Process and return it back to the original state.
However, Red has plans of her own. She did not want a world without her lover, and would
rather die and be together with him in another place.

Aesthetics()
Visual Aesthetics
Transistor takes place in Cloudbank, a virtual world and is the home city of Red. A dense
populated area, Cloudbank is lined with massive towers and bright lights, making the city a
vibrant and beautiful place. However, as the story progresses the world turns darker and the
surroundings becomes more processed along the way. This shows the progression through
the story and how the process is destroying the world and the people in it.

Throughout the game, Red only encounters just The Process and the 4 members of the
Camerata. Besides this, people that Red encounters have mostly been processed and only
left with the Trance of them. But it leads me to wonder why is she alone all the time? There
were many indication and reporting of people. But she was always alone. Was it deliberate
as to convey a feeling of loneliness, isolation and sadness to the player? Or was it due to
development constraints.

Aural Aesthetics
Every soundtrack that is either sung by Red or played in the game, have a sense of
loneliness and sadness to it. I feel that this is to create the correct atmosphere and tells the
player about the feelings Red are feeling at the moment through aural feedback. When the
player holds the button Q when playing on the PC, Red would start to hum a song using
Transistor like a mic on stage. The background would blur out and focus on Red, like she is
in a performance. I feel that this is her way of coping what has happened to her, despite
whatever that is happening around her and without a voice, she drops whatever she is

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30 November 2015

doing, tune out everything around her and sing. Sing as much as she wants, like she is
reminiscing the past and how she wish it was back to how it was.
Voices of Transistor, Royce and Asher all conveyed a certain kind of feeling to the player.
Mostly the feeling of loneliness, sadness and maybe a little only helplessness. Although they
may be giving off a different feeling, the tone of the voice still say consistent, the feeling of
loneliness.

Symbolism()
Game World
In my opinion, the whole setting and game world suggests that Cloudbank is a sort of cloud
storage, with memories, pictures and files in them. So much that it could paint a whole city
and everyone living in it. Getting infected by the process is like a computer getting infected
by a virus. The virus which main goal is the wipe Cloudbank clean of its data.

The Process
I felt that the only the process was designed such that it symbolizes a virus infecting the
cloud storage. With the body of the process built around an eye or eyes. This make it seem
like there someone looking through those eyes. Manipulating the environment through
whatever the process sees. The process has somewhat similar traits as a Trojan virus. A
Trojan virus is a virus that is able to access the data that in is the computer and manipulate it
however the virus wants it to be. This implies that someone is trying to manipulate and
change Cloudbank through the eyes of the process. Exactly like a Trojan virus.

Transistor as an amplifier
Transistor in the game symbolizes a transistor in reality. A transistor is used to amplify or
switch electronic signals and electrical power. Which symbolizes the same thing in the game,
with a small swing of voltage, a transistor can amplify it into a large output of voltage.
Notice how they used the Transistor like a sword, with a swing of the sword, the Transistor is
able to amplify and throw out a large amount of voltage output like a weapon.
While playing the game, I realize that although Transistor symbolizes a weapon, it is not a
weapon. Looking at how the attacks functions during the game, Red is unable to attack
without a Function(). There is no basic attack of the Transistor, it is only able to amplify

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30 November 2015

something that is existing but not powerful enough, and not create power. This further proves
that transistor is more of just an amplifier rather than a weapon.

The voice of power

Since Transistor is an amplifier instead of a weapon, the attacks must come from a source,
the source which I feel is Red. When playing the game, you would have already noticed that
Red always grunts or shouts when attack. It tells me that Reds voice is transferred through
Transistor as a weapon. It further proves my point later in the game after defeating Royce,
using the transistor, Red sings to clear the processed areas of the game world. This may be
the reason why the Camerata wanted Reds voice in the beginning, to have the power to
control the process.
Why is voice a power in transistor? The world of transistor revolves around voting,
everything has to be voted for, even food. To be able to vote for what you want is having to
voice out your choices. This tells me that the bigger voice you have, the more powerful the
person would be in transistor.

The triangle
Symbols of a triangle is abundant in transistor in the game. In my opinion, as the game is
based on a virtual world, the triangle symbolizes voltage in reality. Where voltage is present
in everything that has to do with virtual components. Without voltage, there would not be a
Cloudbank or a city or anything in it. That is why the world of Transistor revolves around the
symbol of a triangle.

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30 November 2015

Transistor harvesting power?

From the last boss fight, we were able to go into Transistor and fight with Royce there.
However, what caught my attention was the capsule containers in Transistor. When going
into Turn() mode, we are able to see through the capsules. Each capsule actually contained
people? The people we Saved by sucking into Transistor? From my initial thought of when
sucking a trace of the civilians, I expected that the citizens were walking around freely and
giving us the power when we needed on their free will. But this scene lead me to believe
something else.
The capsules made it looks like Transistor was harvesting the power of the citizens instead
of the citizens lending it to us on our free will. Were we actually using the citizens and
keeping them locked in those capsules like a captive? This kind of explains why Royce didnt
want to stay in the Transistor, saying don't leave me before the Transistor disappeared.
Was it because Royce would have been kept a captive like the rest of the Citizens?

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30 November 2015

The Country
Talking about the country would be confusing. There were a lot of reference to the country
that they speak of. But lets try to break it down to understand it easier.
1) The country was spoken of early in the game when Transistor was telling Red to skip town
into the country, where they can lay low and grieve on the loss of Reds voice.
2) When fighting inside the Transistor, the surroundings looks like a countryside, which
somehow tells us that maybe it was the same country as Transistor was talking about in the
beginning
3) The ending after Red killed herself, she appeared together with her lover in a countryside
setting that they always wanted. It also shows us that Red got her voice back.
Wait what? Skipping town would go to the country and dying would go to the country too? If
she didnt die but went into the Transistor, then was the country in the Transistor made up? If
she did die and went into some sort of heaven, and her lover was there, then who was that
in the Transistor?
There are a few possibilities that could be presented here. The ending part was vague and
not concise enough to explain fully as to what happened. But lets look at the most possible
meaning to the ending.
Transistor wanted to skip town with Red and leave everything behind to be with her. But she
didnt want to do it. Red chose the path of vengeance instead of peace and went back to
town to face the Camerata instead. Transistor had no control over Reds actions and just
went along with it. But Transistor didnt have enough power to fulfill that wish for vengeance.
So Transistor started harvesting the power of the citizens to gain power. Since Transistor
was not able to get his way and went to the country to be in peace, he created the ideal
setting he wanted inside the Transistor, his own personal safe heaven. Not knowing that Red
would one day suck herself into the Transistor. Since we went with the fact that Red went

Ronald Bay Zhi Hui

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30 November 2015

into the Transistor, there were still no signs of the citizens or any other people that was
sucked into the Transistor, which was quite puzzling.

Conclusion
Transistor was visually and aurally stunning piece of work. Everything was aesthetically
pleasing and everything fits so well in the game. Although the story and plot of the game
could do a little more work, most underlining parts are very vague and sometimes seems
unlinked, or even just for story plot convenience. Combat mechanics on the other hand was
very satisfying. I found myself spending most of my time trying different types of
combinations and linking skills together in Turn() to get the best effect out of it. Even going to
the practice mode to play around with skills that I can use. Overall the game was satisfying
in terms of gameplay mechanics and a simple sad story of the two lovers and their obstacles
they face before being together again.
I would give Transistor a 4/5 rating.