Let me lay this down now; Bastion is my favorite game of all time. When Transistor was released, I could not stop myself from buying and playing it that day. Immediately, I could feel the similarity to Bastion. You hear echoes of it in the empty streets, feel the very same texture in the skein of its story. It’s even got the same evocative narrator, for goodness sake. If I were never to have known that Transistor was made by Supergiant, I could have guessed minutes after starting it. And yet, nearing the end of Transistor, I was asking myself:
Could this possibly be by the same people?
It was not a pleasant surprise.
Before I go on further, I should mention that this is not a typical review. I started out with the intention to write one, but to be honest, I cannot. There will, no doubt, be people who think Transistor should be judged by its own merits, not by how it compares to its predecessor. The problem with this is twofold. First, there were my expectations going in. Reviews cannot be purely objective, and I love Bastion. It is possible that I will be thinking about its story and listening to its soundtrack until the day I die. It was inevitable that I would compare Transistor to Bastion. Second, as I’ve mentioned above, the game is absolutely the child of Bastion. It is clear that Supergiant meant for this game to be a followup, so it is impossible to avoid a comparison.
Most of this is me analyzing why I was disappointed with the game. If you’d like a more overall review of the game, there are plenty of them on other sites. On the other hand, If you are wondering why the end of the game felt a little less good than it should have, read on. Major spoilers and nitpicking ahead for both games. You’ve been warned. If you haven’t played through either Bastion or Transistor, please do that first. Both games are much better when taken without preconceptions.
Proper story’s supposed to start at the beginning; ain’t so simple with this one. Let’s start with the most apparent similarity between Transistor and Bastion; the narrator. At the beginning of the game, it is immediately apparent who is speaking to you - the sword, the transistor itself. It is revealed relatively quickly that the man in the sword is an anonymous man who was killed defending Red from the Camerata, and it’s fairly easy to infer that he is Red’s lover.
Throughout the game, you learn a bit of his personality. He’s a cautious guy. Likes pizza. Very private. Despite this characterization, his commentary was not particularly evocative or interesting. Part of this may be the fact that he is, in contrast to Rucks, a participant in the events taking place. All his lines are reactionary, dealing with what’s going on at the moment, where Rucks could use his knowledge to foreshadow, hint at further knowledge, and string you along a bit.
One can infer so, so much from Rucks’ narration, including his own backstory. In fact, one can follow how he changes throughout the course of the story. At the beginning, he thinks nothing of ordering the Kid around, and still bears scars from the Ura-Caelondian war. He is mistrustful of everyone, and only thinks of how he can remedy the situation. At the end of the story, though? He is changed, just by the telling. He’s no longer so sure of himself. He thinks he knows the right solution, but… maybe there’s another way.
None of this applies to the man in the transistor. He is, perhaps, mysterious to a fault. His bio is never quite fleshed out, and he doesn’t really change throughout the story. His defining trait is his love for Red, but he doesn’t really have much beyond that. It’s hinted, here and there, that he had a very interesting backstory, that he was completely unlinked from this very connected society, but it’s never even talked about beyond the “missing profile” in the transistor. The game builds it up a bit, but then never does anything with it.
The reason I bring up Red’s lover first is that it is essentially the pattern for everything that is wrong about Transistor; A mysterious plot point is introduced, discussed briefly, and then never mentioned again. So many things, just like the mysterious man, never find a satisfying conclusion. The Process, the main “villain” of this tale, is a larger example of this. They were summoned by the Camerata… somehow. They were controlled… somehow. They broke free and ran amok… somehow.
If I had to hazard a guess, the Supergiant crew were probably going for something like this: the Process is a self-evolving program which started growing beyond the constraints the Camerata set out for them. The Spine, the great big worm you fight near the middle of the game, was the main catalyst for this loss of control. Its sole purpose seems to be to disrupt the transistor. However, this is a pure guess. One can hazard that Supergiant meant for it to be a puzzle, but I believe that the Process could have been a much stronger enemy plot-wise if they were simply explained further.
Contrast this to the enemies of bastion, every single one of which had reasons for existence. Those tiny floating blue things? Harvested for their nutritive qualities. The hooded ones? They’re miners. Big blue gas bags? Cleaned the garbage. The wallflowers, lunkheads, and so on in the wilds didn’t have “purposes” per se, but they sure weren’t just enemies, either. They saw the kid gathering the shards, and so they started doing so themselves, to try to build a bastion of their own. They aren’t just beasts of the wild - they may attack you, but just like any other organisms, their desires are simple. They want some peace and quiet, some food, and progeny. We, unfortunately, can’t give it to them. Look at it’s this way - it’s them, or us.
And then, there’s the Ura. I won’t claim that they’re given a rich culture, but enough is offered that you can imagine all sorts of possibilities. They have their own dress, their own musical style, their own language. They live beyond the wilds, in the icy Tazal Ternimals. They were put down by the Caelondians, who spent time and resources on making a weapon of mass destruction to wipe them off the face of the planet. They are capable of hate. The calamity failed, he said. But I… will not. And yet, they are still capable of compassion. The Kid in one corner, and Zulf in the other… ain’t much of a fight.
Extreme racism is the Ura’s motivation; what’s the Camerata’s? Royce Bracket mentions that bringing the Process in was supposed to be a driver for change; that Cloudbank had stagnated to an extreme degree. However, this is not readily apparent. I never got the sense that this incredibly vibrant-looking city could actually be rotten on the inside. In fact, the info on the people you absorb into the transistor almost directly contradicts this.
Not only are the Camerata’s motivations nebulous, the Camerata themselves never seem to be the enemy. The first boss of Transistor is Sybil Reisz. At that point, your enemy is clear: the Camerata. They murdered your lover, stole your voice; of course you’d have a grudge. But, wait… Sybil was weirdly white and bleeding strange substances? That’s odd. She obviously wasn’t a person at that point, couldn’t be reasoned with. Why? Another plot point never explained.
The confusion only amplifies when the next portion of the game completely ignores the Camerata, and pits you against the spine. From there, the nature of your enemy only becomes less and less clear. The transition from “I’m going to get revenge on these people who wronged me” to “oh crap we have to stop the apocalypse” is incredibly jarring.
How about the eponymous transistor itself? It’s a very cool concept; that you can absorb people’s memories and experiences and make them concrete, shape the city with them, is an amazing idea. In a real sense, though, how does it work? It’s never even really lampshaded, in the way that the floating ground is in Bastion; Ground forms up beneath the kid; doesn’t stop to wonder why. Perhaps the Transistor universe is fundamentally different from ours, technologically and physically. Maybe the city is built on technology - hell, maybe the city is technology. It’s just never touched on.
And what about the rest of the uses of the transistor? Why can it be used in near-instantaneous combat? Why would you place limiters on it? How are you supposed to level it up? Again, many guesses and inferences can be made about these, but in Bastion, it’s very clear. Every gameplay element supports the story. The shrines don’t just up the difficulty, they show you the ruthlessness of the gods. The spirits in the brewery offer a bit of flavor. The weapons in the armory hint at a culture of men and women, specialized for coming the wilds, for keeping the peace, for making weapons of mass destruction. Everything serves the story while still keeping gameplay solid.
And what a story that gameplay served. Let’s skip mentioning the rest of Bastion’s story and skip right to its highlight; the ending. It is a beautiful thing, a worthy climax to a rollercoaster of emotion. You fight your way through the Tazal Terminals, through the Ura who just want to protect their culture. Then, you find Zulf, abandoned by his own people, furious that rescuing him led you here. If you have any heart, you would have chosen to carry Zulf back to the Bastion.
There is nothing more I need to mention about that section.
You get back to the Bastion, and an amazing moral dilemma awaits you: return, or move on. Do you think you will remember enough to revert the disaster in the past? Will the stones’ power be enough? Or are you a forward-thinker, and think the past is the past? Are you a determinist, and think that there is no free will anyway? Either choice tells you something about yourself. I sat at that screen for several minutes, just staring, deciding what I truly thought would be the correct decision. It was agonizing and beautiful all at once. Every bit of exposition, every moment of the game, built up to this moment. I truly cared about what happened to these people, to this world. And yet, it was merely a binary choice, affecting made-up people in a fantasy tale.
Here’s what happens in Transistor.
You come back to the spot of your lover’s death, having tracked down Royce Bracket, the last member of the Camerata. Nearly the entire city has been consumed by the Process; disaster is no longer imminent, it is here. You don’t know what happens next, or how you can fix it. You’re told that the transistor is actually a mechanism to reconstruct and enhance the city, which (as previously mentioned) is pretty darn cool. You think, oh cool! We get to repair everything!
What follows is not that. There’s about twenty straight minutes of exposition from a floating iMac G3 (Royce Bracket’s proxy), while you suffer through endless Man fights, all leading up to what’s supposed to be a tense scene against an enemy you no longer care about to get out of a place that you’re thrown into without warning. “Only one of us can leave here”, Bracket says barely any explanation as to why, hefting an unexplicable transistor of his own. Remember when I said that at some point, the Process became the enemy? Well, guess what - abruptly, it’s back to fighting the Camerata.
Then, you’re treated to one of the most clever and enjoyable fights in the entire game! This is not sarcasm. The last fight is thoroughly entertaining, especially after so many Man fights. It’s unique, a mix of real-time and turn-based combat… but it could have transcended merely “enjoyable”. As it stood, the entire setup is so contrived. You’re simply thrown into a situation where “only one can leave”, in some weird surreal world. What happened? You stuck the thing in the cradle - was it supposed to do this? If so, why would Bracket goad you into it? There’s little reason for Bracket to continue his vendetta against you. The Camerata’s plan has succeeded to a fault, and it’s apparent that Red can hold her own against the Process. Why not collaborate and work toward a solution, rather than simply annihilating each other? As with every other part of the game, there do exist plausible answers, but none are offered.
That’s not the absolute ending. Having learned that she cannot revive her lover using the transistor, Red impales herself to join him within the sword. I can’t say I didn’t feel anything. It was heartfelt, and it made sense. In the end, though, after having met so many baffling, mysterious events and characters I didn’t care anything for, it didn’t matter.
Despite the previous 2000+ words, there were things I liked about Transistor. The battles were really something; they worked, they clicked. The style was incredible. Darren Korb’s still got it. However, in everything else, something was fundamentally off about Transistor. However, I think all of these complaints can be boiled down to this: nothing was explained well enough. If only they would have more clearly explained the Camerata’s motives. If only they had explained just what the Process was. If only they had introduced Cloudbank more, if Bracket and Asher had revealed more than just abstract details on the transistor, if they had given me more reason to care about Red, if they had just explained things better, I think I would have had less reason to write this post.
Going back and thinking about it, though, there are also things that are unexplained in Bastion. For example, just how is the Calamity supposed to turn everyone to stone? Why is the land torn apart? How are stones that have memories supposed to provide energy as well? For some reason, none of this mattered in Bastion - no explanation was necessary. At some point, it just all fell apart in Transistor; my suspension of disbelief fell apart, and I just was not willing to allow things to slip by.
I don’t know. I realize that might be asking a lot. I doubt I that I could have made a better game than Transistor. Maybe it’s just asking too much for Supergiant to duplicate the triumph that was Bastion. Hell, I’m sure there are people out there that hated Bastion, and like Transistor better. If you’re one of those, I’d like to hear your thoughts on it. As for me, I was expecting something with as much emotional impact as Bastion, and came away sorely disappointed.
Thanks to this guy for the Bastion quotes.