Reflections: Transistor, the Game that Made Me Cry

Games don’t make me cry very easily. I went into Transistor expecting good things from Supergiant after playing Bastion (which also made me very emotional), but I didn’t think that I would get so much out of the game.

The combat took a while to get used to, honestly. However, it was really super cool. Everything in the world of Transistor meshed together so nicely, including the combat system and the names of all the moves (all actually code functions, which you could modify with different functions used as parameters). The world is so rich, but the game doesn’t shove it down your throat. Actually, there are only a few voiced characters in the whole game, the main one being your friend who is trapped in your sword. If a player didn’t want to think about the story or world and just wanted to play the game and beat the battles and challenges, that was available to them. However, the players who wanted to know more could go the extra mile to learn about the world. Terminals are spread throughout the world, updating you on what is happening to the city while also slowly revealing details about the past and how the city got to where it was. Players are expected to be smart and be able to piece together the story themselves, which I love to do and see in games. Some players just aren’t interested in the story or understanding the world, but those who are generally love to put in the extra effort to get all the information themselves.

In order to unlock information about the world of Transistor, the player needs to use different moves, known as functions, differently. Each function can be used in three different ways: as a move itself, as a parameter to change what another function does, or as a passive effect on your character. Each function is linked to a different character in the world, some of whom are major characters in the plot and the others being people who changed the world of Transistor to what it was and who realized that their world wasn’t perfect, which is what led to the main story of the game. Each character had three different pieces of information about them that needed to be unlocked in order to get their whole story, which could be used to piece together how the world works. Each of these pieces of information was unlocked by using a function in a different way, meaning you had to use every function in each of the three possible ways you could in order to learn as much as possible from each character. This was a really unique way to allow players to learn about the world. I was enthralled with the information I could unlock, and spent a lot of time thinking about the world and the characters and how everything fit together.

I will always recommend Transistor to people. The soundtrack is fantastic, really bringing you into the world. And, of course, it ends in absolute and terrible heartbreak, and I proud to say that it made me cry. Supergiant doesn’t disappoint.

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