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Fair Bear Maiden posted:To be honest, I'll need, at the very least, to play the game again to make up my mind on the story, but right now I sort of feel like I just witnessed a character-driven story that was trying its best to keep me at arm's length from the characters. I don't feel shortchanged by the ending and I really enjoyed the way it was executed, but I feel like I wasn't there with Red to follow her on the road that brought her there despite literally playing as her. I felt that her muteness did a lot towards that. It made for a lot of neat little moments like ImpAtom described, but still, I wonder if having her converse with Nameless throughout the game would flesh her and the world out a lot more. It'd also do something about how having Logan "narrate" again feels more...tacked-on, in a way. o god im disability-shaming this poor woman
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May 24, 2014 13:06
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Fangz posted:I think if you don't like a character, then you don't like a character, I guess. Just generally, is there is discontent on anything about a game someone comes along to explain how exactly we are wrong.  I found the fighting to be the only interesting thing in this game. Not because Red is female and a female can never be a hero, but the fact that everyone else is holy hell boring. Spoonfeeding? Nah, it's more the fact that you cannot grab onto anything to build from. Bastions first question was why was the world like how it is. They are answered as you go through the story. The first question I had in Transistor was what was the Transistor? a soul sucking sword, super user command. I don't know, but what about that world huh? What about these jokers who used it? EVIL Gibson fucked around with this message at 14:25 on May 24, 2014 |
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May 24, 2014 14:16
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Cowcaster posted:There's a difference between a game's plot not spoonfeeding you everything and a game just not explaining jack poo poo. Something like Dark Souls doesn't tell you doodley squat about the world but you can still piece it together from all the things left lying around. Transistor just doesn't even bother. It even pokes fun at the fact it's not explaining anything! Guess I'm just not avant-garde enough to appreciate it. I agree with you your point here. It would of been nice to have anything clearly explained but it never is.
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May 24, 2014 15:01
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Discussing the plot for this game is kinda like discussing Hotline Miami's plot in depth. It's fundamentally unsound, that makes any discussion of it pretty pointless. The major problems with it are that a device for directing the execution of the will of the population is a loving sword, and that with noname it inexplicably emulates his emotions rather than just his will like everyone else. The entire timeline noname only actually appears twice, once when he takes the hit for Red and once when they're together in digital heaven post-credits. That obviously wasn't their intention, the sword is supposed to be acting as a conduit for his actual emotions, but that makes even less sense because he's already in digital heaven and wouldn't have been filled with despair from the beginning but rather would have spent the entire game asking Red to join him, especially once it's firmly established that she is desperate to be with him again and there's no coming back for him. It's not a well written story, poorly written stories always entice you to dive into them trying to fill it in, but you shouldn't because it's just broken. Of course the difference between Transistor and Hotline is that Hotline has excellent loving mechanics to carry it and is in fact a game ABOUT mechanics, so the plot being nonsense is very deliberate. This game is entirely focused on its story and yet the plot trips over itself and falls on its face. None of that is to say that the aesthetics of the game aren't great and that the people who worked on those parts don't deserve a ton of credit. It's just a shame they weren't paired with better mechanics and a better story. K8.0 fucked around with this message at 15:10 on May 24, 2014 |
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May 24, 2014 15:06
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It all makes sense when you realise it's all a video game  It starts, it ends and then it starts over in NG+
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May 24, 2014 15:54
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 Someone put together an unofficial "Disk 2" of the OST with all the hummed-over and distorted versions, directly ripped from the files rather than recorded from the tinny jukebox in the backdoor. repiv fucked around with this message at 16:03 on May 24, 2014 |
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May 24, 2014 16:00
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repiv posted:Someone put together an unofficial "Disk 2" of the OST with all the hummed-over and distorted versions, directly ripped from the files rather than recorded from the tinny jukebox in the backdoor. This makes my loving week. I had actually done a bit of poking around the internet to see if there were existing ways to extract audio from .bank files, which is how Transistor was storing them. My conclusion was you'd have to write something specifically for it, which was a bit above my skillset. Excellent that someone actually did write something specifically for it, though!
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May 24, 2014 16:05
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repiv posted:
Yesssssssss
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May 24, 2014 16:09
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Argh who does Royce remind me of so much?! It's something in his speech patterns and that flat, weary inflection. I almost want to say Philip Seymour Hoffman but I can't think what role, someone help me out here.
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May 24, 2014 16:24
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Chard posted:Argh who does Royce remind me of so much?! It's something in his speech patterns and that flat, weary inflection. I almost want to say Philip Seymour Hoffman but I can't think what role, someone help me out here. Dunno about the voice, but he looks like one of the Doctor Who's.
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May 24, 2014 16:28
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Chard posted:Argh who does Royce remind me of so much?! It's something in his speech patterns and that flat, weary inflection. I almost want to say Philip Seymour Hoffman but I can't think what role, someone help me out here. He's got the syntax of Jeff Goldblum, that's for drat sure.
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May 24, 2014 16:38
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I really loved the voicework. Royce was just really weird but oddly fun and calming to listen to.Meiteron posted:This makes my loving week. I had actually done a bit of poking around the internet to see if there were existing ways to extract audio from .bank files, which is how Transistor was storing them. My conclusion was you'd have to write something specifically for it, which was a bit above my skillset. Excellent that someone actually did write something specifically for it, though! That's pretty cool that the files they store stuff in is called ".bank". Pretty sneaky. (Or not, I may not get the joke at all)
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May 24, 2014 16:56
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Just got the plat for this game and thought it was really well made. As always Super Giant Games make a great setting, with terrific voice acting. The combat is interesting, but falls short when you realize a single function combo breaks the entire game. Void + Cull one shots everything in the game, including ng+, challenges, and even limiters. While the functions give you a ton of choices, it's hard to compete with the shear overpowered nature of Void.
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May 24, 2014 17:44
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So I feel like that they did something amazing with the voiceacting. Not only cunningham delivering every line with a soul shattering voice, he manages to put so much emotion into every single piece of spoken dialog, that - altough Red is mute, and we never see any facial expression from transistor - their thoughprocess and relationship to each other is an amazing level. I felt like that he is torn between these two emotional statements. When he is able to protect her, he cheers her up, and almost sounds like he is glad that he could - albeit in a strange form - protect Red more than he could before. In the silent parts in between he sounds indicredibly sad and yet somewhat hopefully, probably becuase he knows he can never returns to his former state of being, and be with Red...and yet at the same time stay with her, all this time. For example, when Red first goes into the backdoor and plays with a ball, he says "Fun" in such a saddened state of being. I don't know. I may be reading too deep into that. But the fact that I can, and that the game makes me feel different emotions than enjoyment because a game is good or blind rage because my teammate are stupid...kinda tells me it's a good game, at least for me. And really, Logan's voice is just
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May 24, 2014 17:54
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Cardboard Fox posted:Just got the plat for this game and thought it was really well made. As always Super Giant Games make a great setting, with terrific voice acting. The combat is interesting, but falls short when you realize a single function combo breaks the entire game. Void + Cull one shots everything in the game, including ng+, challenges, and even limiters. While the functions give you a ton of choices, it's hard to compete with the shear overpowered nature of Void. Void really is crazy overpowered. It's got a ludicrously low Turn cost for what it can do, basically lets you one-shot anyone if it's fully stacked (or even just one stack, for most things). It doesn't count as an attack, so it won't break Mask letting you setup a massive unmask hit on anything. Landing it won't prompt a Younglady to teleport away and spawn a clone, either, even if Purge is applied when you do so. Stick Purge as a support for Void and you utterly trivialize Weeds, Haircuts, and Badcells since none of them live past the DoT effect. If you have the memory it'll give a silly damage boost to basically anything you sub it to. Void with Purge and Cull with Void/Help was all I needed to utterly annihilate the room near the end of the game with the optional fight against 6 youngladies at once and the billion badcells that come with them in NG+ with max limiters.
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May 24, 2014 17:55
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Cardboard Fox posted:Just got the plat for this game and thought it was really well made. As always Super Giant Games make a great setting, with terrific voice acting. The combat is interesting, but falls short when you realize a single function combo breaks the entire game. Void + Cull one shots everything in the game, including ng+, challenges, and even limiters. While the functions give you a ton of choices, it's hard to compete with the shear overpowered nature of Void. Really enjoyed Transistor, I can see why some people didn't like the ending which is fair. As everyone else has said, the art direction, soundtrack and voice acting are all brilliant in this game and it routinely floored me on that side of life. The combat system is really open to play around with and I never quite found a set of abilities I really settled on from start to finish, especially with how much it encourages you to try mixing abilities.
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May 24, 2014 18:39
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Void's pretty much the only ability I keep as an active all the time. Generous AoE, cheap Turn() cost so getting that three stack is easy, and the debuff is massive. Crash and Purge kicks rear end with it. Definitely OP in the first playthrough with no limiters, but absolutely invaluable in NG+ with limiters; 3.0 Processes are real scary and there's a lot of them so I need every bit of cheese I can get.
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May 24, 2014 18:49
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I want the versions of the songs with her hum in them. Those are just too good. This sound track could have been like 2.5 times bigger if they just added the humming versions and the distorted versions. EDIT: If I read the page I would have seen my prayers have been answered. BAILOUT MCQUACK! fucked around with this message at 18:58 on May 24, 2014 |
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May 24, 2014 18:54
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I'm trying to avoid reading up in the thread to avoid spoilers, but I still can't launch this game after a few days of waiting. I just get "Transistor has stopped working". Any chance anyone has found a fix for this yet?
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May 24, 2014 19:16
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DarkAvenger211 posted:I'm trying to avoid reading up in the thread to avoid spoilers, but I still can't launch this game after a few days of waiting. I just get "Transistor has stopped working". Any chance anyone has found a fix for this yet? Make sure you have the latest Nvidia or AMD non-beta drivers. Go into Catalyst or Control Panel to make sure that you are not forcing ANY options onto the game. Usually it's something you've set in "General"/"All Programs" to be forced and simply have to make a profile for Transistor. If you are running Crossfire or SLI attempt to turn it off. You can attempt a fix found on the Steam forums: quote:I've finished downloading Transistor, but nothing happens when I click play. It opens up the "Launching Transistor" window but then nothing happens. Note that I own this on PS4 and not PC so this is just stuff in general I do with PC games and have heard other people mention. More attempted fixes can be found at Crash Wiki: quote:1) The game won’t start From the comments of that page: quote:Go to the game folder _commonredist and install all the applications there. I thought i was up to date, and i didnt have the 2012 installed. It’s working now.
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May 24, 2014 19:26
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The OST is amazing. Just picked it up from the Supergiant store in FLAC. It's over 800MB. Interesting FYI: Download URL may be used 10 times, total.
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May 24, 2014 19:47
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Chard posted:Argh who does Royce remind me of so much?! It's something in his speech patterns and that flat, weary inflection. I almost want to say Philip Seymour Hoffman but I can't think what role, someone help me out here. My first thought when I heard him was Owen Wilson.
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May 24, 2014 20:54
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Good, I was hoping for the hummed tracks. This is great!
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May 24, 2014 20:58
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Tin Hat posted:My first thought when I heard him was Owen Wilson. He reminds me more of Brad Dourif's character in Dishonored.
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May 24, 2014 21:20
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Royce reminded me a little of Jeff Goldblum (as others have mentioned) but also Christopher Walken. The pauses, choosing emphasis and wording... I don't know. But I think it helped establish his character a little, a someone who is just a little off and "out there". As for the story: looking back on it, it feels more like a short story than anything. A particularly pessimistic/nihilistic/melancholy story about love, loss and revenge. Just enough of the world was set up to act as a framework for the story. Things were left vague because they weren't really needed. It's not like a typical video game story, which do tend to be "hopeful save-the-world" deals. Games typically don't end with (arguably successful) characters killing themselves. There's no way for Red to rebuild, and there's no reason to since Blue/Break()/Swordguy can never be with her--not to mention that the city is utterly devoid of other life. I do agree that some of the loose ends really should have been filled in.
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May 24, 2014 21:44
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Ularg posted:Make sure you have the latest Nvidia or AMD non-beta drivers. Go into Catalyst or Control Panel to make sure that you are not forcing ANY options onto the game. Usually it's something you've set in "General"/"All Programs" to be forced and simply have to make a profile for Transistor. If you are running Crossfire or SLI attempt to turn it off. Thanks, I tried most of this out already, except the last one. Still not working for me though. :S. This has never happened to me before on this machine.
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May 24, 2014 21:44
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K8.0 posted:Discussing the plot for this game is kinda like discussing Hotline Miami's plot in depth. It's fundamentally unsound, that makes any discussion of it pretty pointless. The major problems with it are that a device for directing the execution of the will of the population is a loving sword, and that with noname it inexplicably emulates his emotions rather than just his will like everyone else. The entire timeline noname only actually appears twice, once when he takes the hit for Red and once when they're together in digital heaven post-credits. The plot in transistor is basically Jazz. It's hashed together aspects of various things - some anime, some cyberpunk, some meta, some greek tragedy, some melodrama, some this-and-that, and then presented in a fresh way. We only get enough information to let us fill in the gaps for ourselves, which I think is great. If the game got too literal is would come off as lame. Whether you think some aspects of that jazz mix of aspects could have been done better is open for debate or subjective view I guess though. Bastion too was a game about meta-reality stuff that didn't ever get terribly literal, and only told you *enough* to keep you guessing about the rest. Spacedad fucked around with this message at 22:05 on May 24, 2014 |
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May 24, 2014 22:00
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The transistor is the brush, Cloudbank is the canvas. The superfriends were building a palette of colors/concepts with which to re-make the world to their liking. That was the whole hit list - integrating concepts they deemed valuable. Things went off the rails when Red's assimilation got interrupted by a guy that was the conceptual equivalent of turpentine. The transistor glitched out and tried to go home, which is why it (and the two people in contact with it) got violently teleported most of the way to Fairview. Edit: Also, regarding the ending - It's a layered simulation. The 'country' is the admin/lobby for all the little worlds being run beneath it. That space is full of transistors serving as the rulesets/governors for their respective worlds. As for Royce, he was wielding the transistor for Fairview, a world neighboring Cloudbank that hadn't been finished yet, but that was tentatively connected at the edge, exposing the core process/transistor for both. When Red "repaired" Cloudbank by re-seating the transitor she effectively created a single new space out of the two, a space that could only have one controller. Royce and Red were kicked out into the lobby to resolve the conflict. Cephalocidal fucked around with this message at 22:37 on May 24, 2014 |
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May 24, 2014 22:07
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Chard posted:Argh who does Royce remind me of so much?! It's something in his speech patterns and that flat, weary inflection. I almost want to say Philip Seymour Hoffman but I can't think what role, someone help me out here. Did you watch the walking dead? This is the guy who voiced Royce http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunkrish_Bala
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May 24, 2014 22:35
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I think whoever said Owen Wilson is on the right track, he's got that sort of spacey drawling tone to his voice. Anyway Royce's VA is superb, really fit the part well. I also really like how Red cradles the Transistor while she hums. I've been trying to use it as many places as possible in NG+, and it's rather bittersweet; a lot of the songs, to me, sound sad and with a sense of loss, which makes perfect sense with the story. Seeing her basically comfort her half-dead lover is touching, and since it's totally optional using it reflects the player's level of investment with the characters. Does the flourish actually do anything, or is it just for fun/they had an extra button?
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May 24, 2014 23:14
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I have to say, Bala's performance was every bit as good as Cunningham's. Maybe better, his voice was as creepy as his was comforting and yet still very pleasant to hear.
The Unlife Aquatic fucked around with this message at 23:30 on May 24, 2014 |
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May 24, 2014 23:22
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I finished this about 2am last night and wow, the terminal where the news announcer calmly explains every's about to die together, and signs off with a thankyou has haunted my dreams all night.
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May 24, 2014 23:31
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When I first encountered Royce's voice acting, I said "yesss" aloud. It perfectly established the sort of character they wanted to give him. I think his art looks kind of out of place, though -- he looks just as much like an outgoing public figure as the other three Camerata, and the expression on his portrait doesn't look like one that would ever be worn by the Royce portrayed though his actions and words. Also: The Royce fight made me really curious to see if a multiplayer transistor fight would be fun. I suspect I'm not alone in that. A straight-up 1v1 duel would suck, since it'd reduce to "who can spam the most damaging combo during their turn()", but there are other options. If it were a 2v2 fight, you'd have to consider strategies involving hitting both enemies at once, or timing your attacks during your partners' debuffs. Or perhaps both you and your opponent have a posse of Process, and it's a race to kill your opponent's minions while disrupting their attempts to kill yours? A fight with three or four different factions could also be interesting. Ditocoaf fucked around with this message at 23:59 on May 24, 2014 |
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May 24, 2014 23:50
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As far as the ending, I still think it wouldn't feel so anticlimactic if the gameplay hadn't felt so anticlimactic. All those battles with only one kind of (relatively simple) enemy somewhat ruined the pacing, and then the battle with Royce doesn't feel like a "final boss" battle. I, too, was expecting another hour of the game after I returned to Cloudbank. I didn't have idea what I was expecting, but it felt like there'd be more, that there would be some weird new development as the result of beating Royce and returning to Cloudbank. Red's actions totally make sense in context, but the world felt like it should have had another layer revealed, forcing or inspiring more action from her before she gave up the ghost. This could have been avoided by reworking the third act of the game, having something more complex and interesting while making our way towards Royce, but as it was, it felt like it the calm before a storm that never came. To elaborate a bit more: I really appreciated how two of the camerata just... died and committed suicide before Red even reached them. With that, Supergiant revealed something I was already expecting: the camerata weren't antagonists to be destroyed, they were instigators that suffered for their mistakes on their own. They were only relevant to Red if they could help her fix the few things she still had hope for. But consequently, fighting the final Camerata was never going to be a suitable final action beat. I was looking for another layer to the plot, revealed as we pushed aside Royce. Instead, the Royce encounter was it. And the only reason she went to Royce in the first place was to check whether he'd lead her to a way to save Mr. Nobody. So she checked, the answer was "nope, and now you've got to fight him", so she fought him then had no more leads so gave up. The entire third act was just "checking our last lead for a solution, which was a dead end." EDIT: VVVVV right, drat, sorry. VVVVV Ditocoaf fucked around with this message at 00:01 on May 25, 2014 |
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May 24, 2014 23:50
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Edit: Cool, nevermind
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May 24, 2014 23:55
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The one thing I didn't quite understand on hindsight. If the Process essentially deletes/wipes people from Cloudbank, what happened to Sybil? Was it because she wasn't fully processed yet? How come she had a form to fight?
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May 24, 2014 23:56
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Flipswitch posted:The one thing I didn't quite understand on hindsight. If the Process essentially deletes/wipes people from Cloudbank, what happened to Sybil? Was it because she wasn't fully processed yet? How come she had a form to fight? There was an interesting theory about that earlier in the thread, which I think has merit. The Process is basically defragging the city, making it more organized. Obviously, this isn't a good thing to happen to people. But Sybil was already a very meticulous and organized person, so the Process didn't complete destroy her like it did other people. One counterpoint is the historian lady, whose name and Function I do not recall. She seemed organized too, but she didn't survive the Process. @Ditocoaf: I think that if anyone but Red had defeated Royce, there would have been a good reason for another hour of gameplay. As it stands, she had finished what she wanted to, and she managed to reunite herself with Blue. That's all she really wanted, wasn't it?
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May 25, 2014 00:05
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Flipswitch posted:The one thing I didn't quite understand on hindsight. If the Process essentially deletes/wipes people from Cloudbank, what happened to Sybil? Was it because she wasn't fully processed yet? How come she had a form to fight? Different things seemed to happen to people, depending on circumstance. Some important people just got sucked into the transistor. Red got winged by that, so lost one "element" of herself, her voice. The vast majority of the population just got straight-up killed by lasers, leaving behind an essence/backup we could grab with the transistor. The administrator guy seemed to have been tainted by the process somehow, or he became too linked to the Transistor to live without it, and was slowly dying? Sybil's case might be something similar, she was corrupted by the process it somehow, so when they lost control of it that problem was compounded (as opposed to the Creeps just turning and killing her). Sybil and the administrator guy (I wish I remembered his name) were at Ground Zero of their plan going wrong, so it makes sense that they might have some unique glitches. Ditocoaf fucked around with this message at 00:14 on May 25, 2014 |
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May 25, 2014 00:10
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Solumin posted:There was an interesting theory about that earlier in the thread, which I think has merit. I don't think the historian person (note her gender in her bio  ) was Processed; she was one of the people who got ganked by the Camerata.
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May 25, 2014 00:12
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I've tried to get other ghosts to hum a tune with me by idling around in high traffic areas whilist humming, but very few bite, and almost nobody hums back. It is funny when the lone person runs up to me out of curiosity though, zig-zagging over my position.  Completely done with the game though, apart from wondering when the next game will be announced. Oh yeah. One more tiny tidbit to read way too much into about the end: When you choose to exit game or start your new game plus, if you Exit Shell, the game's wording is peculiar to me. "Thank you for using the transistor." Probably just more reinforcement that the transistor is a brush/admin tool. Erata fucked around with this message at 00:28 on May 25, 2014 |
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May 25, 2014 00:23
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