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.
