Transistor - The Power and the Process

Spoiler Warning: This post will be heavily spoiling the back story to a fantastic game which is much better played without knowing anything about it. So if you have not yet played the game Transistor, then I implore you to turn back now and do so. The content of this video is for people who have either played the game or have no intention of ever doing so.

-----The 'explained' story of Transistor is further down the page. Begin with my first post on the philosophy of Cloudbank and  Who Is Red? Here.-----

     Transistor, unlike its spiritual predecessor Bastion, gives the player almost no narrative clarity as to the events throughout the game or the game's back story. In fact, where in Bastion what was happening was told by our narrator, voiced by Logan Cunningham, that same voice in Transistor knows as little as the player does. What is known has to be figured out, or inferred by the player and that kind of subtlety is rarely seen in games. The information, however, is all there and there are plenty of explanations given to things that seem to go unexplained weaved into the very fabric of the game. Due to the depth of story without much being told, however, what seems to have mostly cropped up in discussion of the game is the theory that the game's city of Cloudbank and all the inhabitants inside of it are actually virtual, therefore not real. While there is a fair amount of evidence for this idea, such as the name 'cloudbank' meaning a storage of virtual information and the Transistor represents those inhabitants being able to manipulate their own programming, I feel that this theory overshadows the story and events of the game.

     The thing about the virtual theory is that, true or not, it doesn't really matter. Descartes once made a similar suggestion about the real world, in thinking that what we sense and experience could be manipulations or a fake reality, so he reduced everything we fully 'know' to it's rawest form, and in doing so found that there is only one possible thing that must be true, and that is that we are thinking and therefore we exist. From here, many other things can be understood because there are only two possibilities that follow: either everything is real and we are not being manipulated, in which we carry on as normal, or we are being manipulated from outside influences, but we aren't to know that and we do have to survive in this world, real or not, so it doesn't matter. Overall, if Cloudbank is not real, even if the characters are programmed to act a certain way and have no free will – it makes utterly no difference, because the events of the game happen to us: the player. So, we can freely talk about the story under full assumption that it did happen and that it has an impact.

     What does appear to be real however, is the constant cycle of change that is apparent throughout the game.

     Let's say, for example, one day the people want a lovely bridge, so an architect designs a lovely bridge and a lovely bridge is constructed. Then a social commentator complains that there should not be a bridge there when there are poorer parts of the city with overflowing schools, so people agree on the polls and the bridge becomes a school very shortly after. Then people claim that there is no need for more education when there are not enough jobs for skilled workers, everyone agrees, and so the school becomes a factory, but then some years later, when society changes again, people whimsically desire that the spot would be a great spot for a lovely bridge, and it is made so. This kind of cyclical desire is apparent in all aspects of people's lives, and it is the very centre of Cloudbank's society. A society free to the whims of the people is somewhat of an ideal situation of democracy. Cloudbank, however, is also the epitome of a city in flux where everything is at the easily manipulated whims of the common populace. Everything in Cloudbank's life becomes fleeting and synthetic. So life in Cloudbank is in a constant state of change where people decide the changes and the changes get carried out in the background by The Process.

     The Process are a group of robots that nobody sees (likely due to hailing from a different 'dimension' - explainable by the virtual world theory) but everyone simply knows exists and takes for granted. People want that bridge turned into a school? The Process carry out the work. Need a skyscraper demolished? The Process can do that. Want the local park to just look a bit prettier? Consider it a blank canvas to The Process. They are unthinking, unfeeling beings bidden to the whims of the engineers such as Royce Brackett. I will discuss the different types of Process a little further on. So, with all the labour, creation, and menial jobs getting carried out by the process, that leaves a large amount of scope for people to do what they most desire. An example of this is Farrah Yon-Dale who learned to change the colour of the sky and so became a painter of it. Or Bailey Gilande who ended up as head of the city archives due to her excellent organisation skills and lack of social skills leaving her to enjoy the solitary work.

     The Process, then, are controlled robots of different kinds that do their work in the background. In the game of Transistor it becomes clear there is a malfunction and the Process appear to be recreating everything to the most basic state they can; which Red navigates throughout the game, seeing all of the different kinds of Process at work. Some examples of the Process and their purposes are as such: 'Fetch' are like guard dogs for any construction work happening, 'snapshot' take photos - either for reference or planning purposes, 'weed' and 'cheerleaders' repair and protect The Process respectively, while 'cluckers' and 'jerks' are used for destruction and flattening the ground. The stand out ones that do not appear to have an obvious purpose would me 'man' and 'young lady' which could be speculated to have been created by The Process for reasons we do not understand. While much of this can be marked as speculation, it fits into their purpose within the world so simply stands to reason. The Process however, as unthinking beings, have no real intention of harming people and destroying everything, however, something went wrong. What went wrong was the Camerata.

     The Camerata are a group of powerful individuals who desire to change the very foundations of Cloudbank to make it a more stable place rather than a cyclical city of flux. Their tag line 'Everything changes therefore nothing changes.” is a huge indicator that this limbo that has been created seems not to be a good thing to the Camerata. They are headed by people who understand the city better than the common people, or at least they think they do. As Cloudbank is supposedly an idyllic city, yet an underground resistance organisation had to be constructed in order to make any change happen, emphasises the huge faux pa to suggest any negativity with the way Cloudbank is. To even hint that Cloudbank is not great would be an insult to democracy itself and would suggest that people should not be in control. As a result the Camerata are essentially a resistance group of higher-ups rebelling against the people as oppose to the more common opposite situation. In essence, Cloudbank can be seen as a metaphor for people being so free that very few people can really afford to think for themselves, and this is what The Camerata are rebelling against (See my first post on the political philosophy of Cloudbank here). Where thinking for yourself can be dangerous, there are public figures who do the thinking for you such as Wave Tennigan a radio broadcaster, or Lillian Platt creator of the terminals, who both end up inside the Transistor.

-----What follows is a loose partly-speculative explanation of the story of Transistor: (Massive Spoiler Warning!)-----

     The story starts with Sybil Reisz of the Camerata hearing one of Red's songs at a concert and noting that Red appears to be unhappy with the way Cloudbank is in a similar way that The Camerata are. The Camerata are using the Transistor to absorb certain individuals that they think will be useful to use and recreate Cloudbank in a specialised vision resembling a messed up version of Meritocracy. Sybil's obsession with Red hit a peek when she noticed Red becoming more withdrawn from the limelight of fame and Sybil blamed this on one of her companions whom she did not know. It is then believed that, against the will of the rest of The Camerata, Sybill Reisz decided to absorb Red into The Transistor so her creativeness could be used and she couldn't be taken away from Sybil by this man. When she waited up after one of Red's concerts to carry out the task, she didn't count on the unknown man being there and Sybil accidentally absorbed him instead of Red.

     The problem was that he was an unknown - The Transistor could not handle this 'glitch' of an unrecorded person in Cloudbank and started to malfunction. Part of the result of this is the unknown man being able to talk through The Transistor and The Process breaking through to Cloudbank and recreating it like this blank slate of a man. Thus the events of Transistor begin. Red learns of The Camerata and what is happening throughout the game, and eventually decides to join the unknown man 'in the country' instead of using her new power and blank canvas to make Cloudbank anew.