"Supergiant's 2014 game Transistor is a love story in the drapings of an apocalyptic sci-fi action-adventure game. The protagonist, Red, is a singer whose voice is stolen after an attempt on her life. Her companion is the titular Transistor, a greatsword that killed and then integrated the soul-or data-of her lover, referred to in the game as only Unknown, who speaks to her through the sword and is the primary voice in the game."
"What is most appealing about Transistor is its restraint. It is not a long game. Depending on difficulty and the player's motivation to do combat-focused side content, the game is a tight six to eight hours with a tight six-to-eight-hour story. What it lacks in scale, it makes up for in formal precision. There are finer plot and world-building details that can be unlocked by tweaking combat builds, but the game understands that it doesn't need to explain all of the minutiae."
Transistor follows Red, a singer whose voice is stolen after an assassination attempt, and the Transistor, a greatsword containing the integrated soul or data of her lover, Unknown. Red returns to Cloudbank, a city being dismantled by the Process, a semi-autonomous system that has become destructive malware. The game runs about six to eight hours and favors restraint and formal precision over scale. Combat uses Functions named like coding syntax (for example Cull() and Void()) and allows build-based world details. Visual design, mechanical flavor, and a divided soundtrack (diegetic vocals and non-diegetic background music) carry much of the storytelling.
Read at Defector
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]