Davecha played the game Transistor From the Supergiant Games India Studio, how they position themselves "small developers with great ambitions". Their team is really small – 20 employees, and at the time of the creation of Transistor, in 2012-2014, the team was from 12 people at all.

Nevertheless, they got an integral and atmospheric game. She hooked me with her game processes, visual style, music and an unusual plot. I don’t know if I should paint the gameplay in detail, since although it is peculiar, but the mechanics themselves have already been sucked in a heap of a video about the game-after all, 8 years have passed since the release of the game. Better we will consider in more detail the plot, mentioning the gameplay only where it is important for history.

And the first such moment is now, since the gameplay shows with all its appearance that the action takes place in the virtual world. This is indicated by the method of fighting, more precisely, the regime of a tactical pause, in which we can plan our moves and the use of skills, spending action glasses on movement and alkali, almost like in the first two Fallout or X-COM, with the difference that in the pause the pause, we are given only at the time of planning, and when the plan we are moving together with enemies, albeit much more quickly, are much more quickly faster. There are no “moves” and outlining, but there is a reboot of the course and abilities that occurs after we went, at this time you can only use the ability Jaunt () or the one in which Jaunt () is installed as an amplifier, and if not, then slowly run around the limited field of battle and suffer.

History here and how it affects the plot? In short – narrative. If more, then the gameplay here is due to the setting, that is, the world and its laws, including the plot. Let me pretend that only now I wondered “why the character has, under our management there is an opportunity to put the world in a pause?". If I try to answer this question logically and coherently, avoiding the explanation of the spirit “this is a game convention”, then I will quite naturally get the answer: “The heroine received this opportunity thanks to the possession of an artifact-a transistor that somehow affects the world in the game”. And I must say that we collect information until the end of the game by bit to understand what kind of artifact it is and where did it come from. In addition, you need to look at the design of a tactical pause. We notice that there is not just a slowdown in time or its stop, here is the transition to another mode, when the whole world is on a pause, except for the owner of the transistor, this is noticed by a small but permanent detail – the heroine gets the melodies from the soundtracks in the game during a pause, that is, she sees about the same as the player, in the “real” world it is impossible. Yes, and the very visual style of the regime hints to us that it is the “transistor” that changes this virtual environment, as a certain control element of the entire system.

Why it is still important to mention mechanics and abilities – a solid part of the plot is served through them, because the ability in essence “casting souls”, or rather the digital trace of the chosen citizens, and in the game they are called functions, and their name is written with double brackets. Such syntax is used in many modern programming languages, these brackets are usually used to specify the arguments of the function. Each such “trace” has a description that is supplemented as used in different modes (active, improvement, passive), if you take analogies from programming, then in the “improvement” mode of the functions are indicated in the form of arguments for the main function. From the description of the functions, we learn about the biography of people whose casts of souls we received, how they “during life” influenced the city of Claudbank and how they influenced the position in which the city is currently located.

Cloudbank

So I got to the pulp itself -so that is the basis for the whole plot. Naturally I’m talking about the city itself Claudbank, What can be translated literally as a cloud storage, or more poetic – "cloud shore". The name itself is already referring to the cloud technologies used now, when the data is not stored locally, on a personal or working computer, but transferred to a certain intermediary to a remote server, access to which is only if there is an Internet connection. Because of what, sometimes there are debate of a philosophical and courier nature about whether you belong to the bought game in the same Steam/EGS, you just pay for it for its rental and, in which case, they can take it away (such as it was from Assasin’s Creed Liberation). But so far not about that.

Let us take a closer look at the city of Claudbank. As we understand from the plot, the city is very easily transformed, literally in one day you can build a statue, the next day to replace it with a bridge, to change it with a third with a third, and to the fourth back to the statue. And all this with a democratic method – direct voting for the initiative through OVC terminals – a data collection and processing company. Directly about the fact that the city is not said, but in another way to explain such a speed construction is not presented now. Even if you imagine that this is some kind of super-technological 3D print (and there was not a word about this), then this does not hit with the colorless blocks instantly appearing here and there. The only logical, for the world of the game, the explanation – these buildings appeared instantly, and their texture and finishing was engaged in a process that was invisible and, as it were, “background”, and later the cameet brought the process to the forefront, while the process, who was led by his logic, began to reorganize the city into a pristine form.

Cameto

And now the time has come to talk about the camera, the plan and in general about what political and economic system was in Claudbank. And let’s start with the latter, since we have the least information on this occasion. I will proceed from the fact that Claudbank is a virtual space that expresses qualitatively to the real world, apparently for more immersion. Because of this, the city has no problems with resources such as food, building materials, space for life and all that. But there is a shortage in vivid emotions and stagnation in the development of the city. It would seem that everyone should be all well for everyone, no one is starving, available benefits, everyone can choose a specialization (or even two) to their liking, universal voting on city issues. But in fact, only all sorts of decorations and architectural and infrastructure issues, such as the color of the sky, weather and statues, but there were no development vector, great goals and aspirations are selected on these votes.

The game was simulated by a https://supremeplaycasino.co.uk/login/ society that reached the singularity of its technical development, but inside people remained the same, with the same vices, with the same hierarchy. And at the top of this hierarchy a plan was born in which they wanted to rebuild society, but which failed because of the same human vices. These conspirators were a camera. This society consisted of 4 people: architect Royce marriage, The city administrator Grant Kendrell, his lover (or even spouse), part -time correspondent OVC Esher Kendrell, And the organizer of the events Sybil Raiz. That they did not like and their plan was in what. They didn’t like stagnation and general voting. "If all changes, nothing changes" – this is what they opposed.

They probably had different motives, but Royz Bretet, architect of the city, expressed it most honestly. He was annoyed that his works of art were not delayed for a long time, were not valued enough, give people functional buildings and infrastructure for a simpler movement around the city. But by the time we meet this “figure”, he had already gone a little from contact with the foundations of the universe, which he opened after the transistor’s location and he rather just wanted to “spin all in the ass” so that it was all as before, but of course, so that his position was as before. Probably Roiz, as an architect, was probably the most immersed in the technical topic of the functioning of the city and, as a responsible engineer, dug up to the basics all the most effectively to fulfill his duties. At some point, the wandering of the code he stumbled upon the control element and decided that it would not be possible with it quantitatively, but qualitatively change the city system, give it historicality, development vector. But at the same time, he decided not to give such valuable knowledge wide publicity and thereby leaning on broad masses, but to collect a group of conspirators, with whose help to realize the plan and the masses to put the changes already before the fact of the occurrence. It doesn’t sound very democratic, to be honest, but if you take into account that in fact it all went through one place-there’s nowhere worse.

So, I’m all talking about the plan of the cameras, but I do not talk about the essence and practical implementation. Now I will. The conspirators were looking for bright personalities whom the public loved and who somehow changed Claudbank with their actions. The camera tracked them, sometimes established contacts and "Sucked from the city"(About whether the murder of this or something else will talk later), while the same" cast of the soul "or" digital trace "was placed in the transistor, which represented the totality of data about this person in the system, about his desires, specialization, the possibilities, the elections of which he did in the system, and since everyone was constantly in the system and nonstop with it interacted, this cast is essentially a clip of this person. So. The cameet, if I understand correctly, wanted to collect all the positive qualities of these people together, make a squeeze so that it serves the starting point for the further development of the city. At the same time, they themselves, though voluntarily and without “eviction”, made their digital traces for placing in a transistor. In parallel, they conducted the study of the background process and for some reason clearly objectified individual executive processes, perhaps in order for the process to act autonomously, based on the functions transferred to it, and not obeyed the votes and teams of the terminals.

But now we can say what and why went wrong. If we omit the moment that they went against the principles of democracy, on which the Clyidbank society was built, then the main character was the key X-factor, who was not registered in the system and the system was not tracked. Let’s in order. The main character is the singer under the pseudonym Red, it was developed by the agent of the cameras – Sibil Raiz. In the process of developing and collecting information, she apparently fell in love with our heroine. But Red, as is clear from the final credits, met with the nameless (for us and system) young man. When it came to processing the heroine of the camera, Sybil gave false information, saying that the RED after the performance would be one, although Sybil knew very well that her boyfriend would be with Red. Thus, Sibil wanted to get rid of a competitor. But the case took an unexpected turn.

Now I step on the unsteady ground of theories, but I have that I have. When meeting the RED, the cameet tried to “kill” it and pick up her digital trace, but the name was the name of the main blow to herself, the RED, while somehow it was also rejected by the effect of the transistor, partially conveying her trail and lost her voice and became the owner of the key. Perhaps this happened because the nameless possessed an incorrect digital follow, which was converted into a function and transferring his arguments to a transistor, he broke the algorithm built by the cameress in the transistor. I hope it is clear what I mean. But, of course, I can be wrong, there is no one of the same explanation in the plot.

From this moment the game begins. And from the same moment the process begins to clean the city, developing all more.

Plot

Well, let’s go through the path of our heroes after this small preface. Yes, it is the heroes, since we control the RED directly and, it turns out, indirectly control the transistor, in which the beloved is imprisoned, who speaks to us as a ordered voice. It is worth noting that all the functions inside the transistor are quite “saying”, but we hear only our friend, since only with him the heroine has a strong emotional connection. She does not speak with her function, because there is an incomplete part of it, only her voice.

So. The main motivation of the hero is to save the Red, first withdrawing it from the city, and then just help to figure it out. The main motivation of the heroine, as we understand, is to return his boyfriend to an ordinary, living state (hmm, about what I have already made a review). To do this, she goes to the concert hall, where she meets her familiar actress, who, in the absence of another adequate container for her digital trace, was embodied in the form of a process. Having defeated the algorithm and taking to his transistor the actress, we learn more about the cameet, we decide to go to the city administrator.

At the same time, we have a safe space where you can relax, practice, increase our level, while performing Chelenji, listen to music, play with cyber-tunneling in the ball and think, laying on a hammock. On the way to the administration, we kill a boss process under the name “axis of the world” or “ridge”, this is already more likely. We pass through the archives, in parallel through the terminal, communicating with Ash, listening to excuses and whining. When we get to the administrator’s office, we see two corpses, Ash and the administrator itself, one could not withstand the entire load of responsibility for the deed and drank poison according to the covenants of Padoncuff, the second, the second, as Reigent Romeo followed him.

As a result, we understand that we just lost time here, we return on the carpet woven from the process back to the stage. There is a certain backing, but already according to a densely populated process the city, which all begins to resemble a clean sheet. We reach the place where we started and meet Roiza, or rather a soaring monitor through which he communicates with us. We still build a ill-fated bridge in Fairue and make our way through the Belarusian platforms (sometimes upside down), on which the process began to settle with “people” as he sees them. At the end, we are brought to the need to insert the “cradle” transistor to its rightful place.

Further without a glass it is already difficult to figure out. We are drawn either to the transistor itself, or in the cradle. One way or another, we fall into the internal simulation and fight with Royz for the right to get out of. At the same time, the area around is similar to rural, and on the battlefield, we see containers with the silhouettes of people inside (apparently the same functions). We safely leave the asshole in imprisonment, we find ourselves on a bridge, where we find the opportunity to restore the city with our singing. But since Red does not find a way to save his lover, he decides to sit down side by side and stops himself with a transistor. Happend! As an epilogue, we see scraps of joint history of RED and nameless and in the shutters of the frame as they are pleased to run by the handle along the wheat field.

And before moving on to the final analysis, I want to say a few words about death in this game. She, as I understand it, is called either “leaving the city” (in Russian localization), “moving to the village” (Go to Country, in the original), which seems to be hinting at the rural pastoral, which was shown to us at the battle with Roiz and at the end of the game and at the end of the game. For myself, I have identified at least three possible options:

Since this is a virtual city, leaving the city == disconnecting from a virtual network, after which it is very difficult or impossible to return to the same digital avatar (whether this is a technical restriction, rather internal rules of the server).

This is actual death, and the rural pastoral is loosening here due to the fact that the virtual space inside the “cradle” or transistor looks like this, and not the original gets there, but the “digital trace” that is placed there. Here we can talk a lot about what this digital trace is, whether it is considered a consciousness or not, but this is a question for philosophers.

The countryside here is the final version of Claudbank, which built the process after all the events of the game, conducting a sufficient number of recursive iterations of the cycle

The third option is based on the theory about the recursion mode, which can be started after the first passage of the game. The local "New Game+" in which you go all over again, but with already reinforced opponents, and while maintaining the pumping accumulated for the first passage. The theory is that each passage is a cycle that launches a process for debugging peace and collecting full data. And, they say, when the process finishes the analysis, then it will reduce the new version of Claudbank to the necessary requirements laid down in the transistor with a cameress. But this is already a vague LNGS, so I do not say anything.

What do we have in the end? What kind of message you can see here, and what we can take out of the plot (but not the fact that the screenwriter consciously laid it)? We are shown a technically progressive society that does not experience a deficit of resources, but which is in a stagnation and does not have a development vector, an ideal that should strive. The city has implemented a system of universal democracy, but which does not really affect anything other than external attributes, by the type of infrastructure and weather. Voting was implemented through a private organization OVC. Real power is concentrated in the hands of a small group of administrators. The technical component of the city, on which it depends on the city, in the hands of one person (I’m talking about the "process"). As a result, it is not surprising that without an adequate election, the mechanisms of calling the administrators from management, and public control of a bunch of conspirators, it was possible to put all society on their knees and, probably, rolling mankind several stages ago, not to mention the fact that the whole system could simply collapse, burying in the process of all people.