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Iron Twinkie posted:See here's where I think the disconnect is. Does a character really have agency if nothing he or she did or could ever do mattered and except killing themselves to end their miserable existence? I don't think they do. The only difference between if she decided to lay down and die at the begging versus the end was wiping out the Process which in the end didn't really change anything. I think you may be conflating the plot with the story. The Process isn't really an antagonist, its just a plot device that fills the space between developments because this is a video game and video games have to have violence. But this is the problem with genre fiction. We ultimately can't empathize with a successful signer who has had her voice stolen by a magic computer-thingy while her whole world is devoured by robots. So, one interpertation is that Red's struggle against the Process is a result of her agency, and at the end of the narrative, she chooses of her own free will to integrate herself with the Transistor. Or, the story is nihilist and patriachical, and Red never had agency, her struggle to fix her life is in vain. These aren't neccesarily mutually exclusive of course, but in the interests of total cultural deconstruction, we should generally seek the most misogynist interpertation of a work of media as can be derived, because only by rejecting all of culture, can we hope to defeat the system of structural hate we live in.
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Jun 4, 2014 21:50
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Iron Twinkie posted:See here's where I think the disconnect is. Does a character really have agency if nothing he or she did or could ever do mattered and except killing themselves to end their miserable existence? I don't think they do. The only difference between if she decided to lay down and die at the begging versus the end was wiping out the Process which in the end didn't really change anything. Yes. They do. As I said above, I'm fairly sure you're mot upset that this is a nihilistic or negative story but Red's actions still had a permanent and consequential impact even if she didn't miraculously save the world. At no point is Red depowered or disallowed from making her own decisions. Agency isn't shorthand for "and then you're an amazing superhero who everything great happens to!" There are plenty of novels or movies with good female characters who still have unhappy endings or who are unable to change inevitability. Hell, there are even a lot of bad ones too. It's really clear from the way you write that you have a strong and heavy objection to anything involving suicide and you phrase it in the most extreme and objectionable way possible. However the fiction itself shows that the action here wasn't the end of existence but exchanging it for another one. This isn't even ambigious as taking people's data into the Transistor is what you do for the entire game and the ending shot shows a peaceful 'afterlife'. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Jun 4, 2014 |
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Jun 4, 2014 22:16
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By your argument no fictional character can ever be described as "having agency" because the author sets down the plot in advance.
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Jun 4, 2014 22:37
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Opposing Farce posted:So Royce saying "we're not going to get away with this" at the top of Recursion mode. It's totally just Supergiant loving with you but can anybody make it have greater significance to the story? It's Royce from the previous playthrough realizing that the process (the ENTIRE process, local time, Cloudbank, everything inside the Transistor) hadn't been stopped, merely looped back on itself, growing in intensity. The fading echo of him trapped in the Transistor gets now that escape is essentially impossible. The little slice of Cloudbank they're stuck in is defined at the front by Blue's death and at the end by Red's death, and every time it loops back on itself the tilt toward entropy gets more violent and assertive. They've been excised from whatever larger context they existed in before and Red is the only thing keeping them from winking out of time and space completely. She will eventually fail to reach her end, and that'll be that.
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Jun 4, 2014 23:19
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ZorajitZorajit posted:These aren't neccesarily mutually exclusive of course, but in the interests of total cultural deconstruction, we should generally seek the most misogynist interpertation of a work of media as can be derived, because only by rejecting all of culture, can we hope to defeat the system of structural hate we live in. I really fail to see how stating up front that I liked 90% of the game and thought the developers had the best intentions but there where to items I found a little problematic is seeking the most misogynist interpretation possible. ImpAtom posted:Yes. They do. As I said above, I'm fairly sure you're mot upset that this is a nihilistic or negative story but Red's actions still had a permanent and consequential impact even if she didn't miraculously save the world. At no point is Red depowered or disallowed from making her own decisions. Agency isn't shorthand for "and then you're an amazing superhero who everything great happens to!" There are plenty of novels or movies with good female characters who still have unhappy endings or who are unable to change inevitability. Hell, there are even a lot of bad ones too. Having plenty of examples in fiction where this happens to female characters IS my problem and that is what makes it WORSE. For 99% percent of the game, Red is a great character. She's not overly sexualized. She can be strong when she needs to be but can be vulnerable in her downtime. She's doing a great job of holding it together with some serious bullshit going on around her. Having the last five minutes of the game reveal that nothing she tried to do mattered and she never had the power to change anything and now its time for her see what her intestines look like is frankly, just loving bullshit. I'm not trying to be a dick here but I think we are working off different definitions of the word agency. quote:http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agency If we accept that getting rid of the Process didn't really do anything, how does anything that Red do meet this criteria? What end did she achieve that wouldn't have happened anyway if she hadn't killed herself at the start? haveblue posted:By your argument no fictional character can ever be described as "having agency" because the author sets down the plot in advance. That's a little extreme. Yeah, you can have a big budget Hollywood movie where poo poo just explodes and the characters are mostly there for the ride, then yeah they really don't have much agency. In most stories, there are at least some characters with agency. Circling back to the game, the only member of the main cast without any agency is Red. Royce found the transistor. Grant decided to use it. Sybil let her emotions get in the way of doing a clean assassination and Mr Nobody decided to step in front of the blade. All of these things were responsible for the ultimate fate of Cloudbank. Nothing Red did mattered.
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Jun 5, 2014 03:26
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Iron Twinkie posted:I'm not trying to be a dick here but I think we are working off different definitions of the word agency Because you're ignoring the "or" part there. The entire game is Red exerting her power. The fact that it is all for naught doesn't mean she didn't have agency. She made decisions, acted upon them, and took their consequences. Everything she did was done under her own choice and her own power (insomuch as the Transistor is her own power and it pretty clearly is in terms of the story.) Agency is a difficult thing to work out in inherently unhappy or tragic stories but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist if the protagonist fails. I said it before and I still feel that way. It feels like you're trying to use the agency argument to disguise a far more straightforward distaste and dislike for a nihilistic ending that includes (arguably) justified suicide as an answer. Which is an entirely different argument and not one that has anything to do with agency on its own. You honestly sound a lot more upset that the ending isn't more positive and upbeat. I'm sorry if that comes across as offensively but it is really the feeling I get. So I guess I'll ask: What do you think the ending should have been? What ending would have worked for you? ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Jun 5, 2014 |
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Jun 5, 2014 03:36
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Bought this because I'm a sucker for the art style the Steam ads used, and for redheads in general. Really enjoying this so far.
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Jun 5, 2014 04:21
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Red spends the game facing hardships to answer the question: can Blue and the city be saved? The fact that the answer is no does not make the journey meaningless, the hardships simple, or the growth unearned. On agency, besides the fact that it's starting to not look like a word. There's an interesting disconnect between the player and Red. While player agency is celebrated in 16 functions resulting in a geometric number of possible combinations (and about 4 good ones), the plot decisions are carried entirely by Red. The most striking of which is when the player restores Blue's body, and then Red takes the reins from there. I may be overthinking it, but thus conversation is reminding me of "Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead." Do characters have agency in a story that doesn't change? Maybe, but I'd hesitate to say the lack of it is due to any underlying misogyny.
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Jun 5, 2014 05:46
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M.c.P posted:Red spends the game facing hardships to answer the question: can Blue and the city be saved? I agree with this. Another incident that really demonstrates her agency over the player is when she decides to turn left despite blue's advice. That surprised me since, given his instructions, I figured the player would have to choose where to go. Otherwise why would he give detailed instructions? But nope, it's Reds choice and she chooses to turn left to go back into the city. No one else, not the player, or blue gets a say. The ending is bleak, but Red is definitely the one calling the shots. Just because the situation is impossible doesn't mean she isn't an active participant. If Red is anything, she is an extremely decisive person. Once she knew that she couldn't restore blue, she knew what she wanted to do. I mean if you think about it, blue is pretty much the "damsel in distress" that she will go to any length to save. If anyone is lacking agency, it's blue, since he is essentially turned into a tool that is unable to do anything without Red's assistance. He is 100% dependent on red in every sense of the word. Though I think that fits his character. JuniperCake fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Jun 5, 2014 |
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Jun 5, 2014 07:59
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Red's actions have one important lasting impact: They save Blue from an eternity of slavery. The bleak situation that most everyone agrees justifies Red's suicide would have probably been seen as a paradise to Royce. He wanted to be the architect of an unchanging perfect city, and had things gone differently he would have been able to bring it about using God's own paintbrush. He also probably would been more than happy to populate this world with "busy, busy, busy" genocidal Process bots. The fact that Red took one look at the power she'd been granted and said "Nope!" with little hesitation does a good job of contrasting those characters. It also speaks to the agency discussion when you consider that her choice wasn't as much of a foregone conclusion as it might seem.
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Jun 5, 2014 11:52
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Magitek posted:Red's actions have one important lasting impact: They save Blue from an eternity of slavery. The bleak situation that most everyone agrees justifies Red's suicide would have probably been seen as a paradise to Royce. He wanted to be the architect of an unchanging perfect city, and had things gone differently he would have been able to bring it about using God's own paintbrush. He also probably would been more than happy to populate this world with "busy, busy, busy" genocidal Process bots. I think more than one. It is nowhere near irrelevant that Red actually did stop the Process. Not before everyone in Cloudbank was Processed, no. But if there is a world outside of the city, and I think it is entirely possible that there is, she saved that world. If there is not a world outside of the city, and instead "going to the Country"--which was clearly not universally a synonym for death, as we see in several of the character bios--referred to unplugging from the simulation with the possibility of coming back, she left them a blank canvas of a city to rebuild and reclaim as they pleased instead of a hell-pit teeming with red-eyed killing machines. If any of the evacuated citizens referred to in the statistics did in fact get out of the city and survive, she left them the same thing--a home they could come back to, ruined but not beyond repair, instead of an all-consuming hegemonic swarm looming over their doorstep.
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Jun 7, 2014 08:01
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I just finished the game, and the final boss was really neat with good music, especially given that it was a bit of a departure in tone from the rest of the game's fairly somber music. As an overall statement about the game, it was just the right length and challenge, it was enjoyable, and I don't regret buying or playing it in the slightest, but it is honestly still a bit too Bastion-y, and I hope in the future the studio can get away from retreading the same style and, in all honesty, similar plot lines. They've got presentation and competent system design down easily, but they ironically seem to have pigeon holed themselves by trying to be really different in terms of story, if that makes sense. They can write an engaging story, I just hope they don't get stuck in writing the same story every time. I really should have finished this sooner to have fewer big, blacked out bars of text to go back and read. As for the story itself, there are a few details that still bug me. The ambiguity of whether the people who evacuated are alive or dead has already been discussed plenty, though going with the whole computer motif they would be essentially an external backup. And if all the traces in the transistor can't be brought back (which I suppose we are to assume from the ending) but are the essential system files, I guess all the people who got out must be the porn and music  . It bugs me a little that Red just brings back a small part of a bridge, discovers she can't bring back transistor guy, and then says gently caress it without trying to bring anyone else back first, but I guess that wouldn't give the bittersweet ending they were going for. Blue seemed to have been a bit of a special case, so it doesn't seem like a guarantee that it wouldn't have worked for anyone else. I'm not at all saying this shouldn't have been done since flawed characters are perfectly fine, but it does paint Red somewhat negatively that she wouldn't care about the world if she couldn't have the person she loved back.Regarding the early timeline of events, my understanding is that Royce was the original controller of the transistor, but ownership transferred to Blue when he was stabbed since it says something to the effect of its registration changed at the time his trace vanished. If that's the case, it begs the question what was particularly unique about him given that nobody else who was presumably stabbed by it took it over. Maybe it should be assumed that he's the user? Or is Red the user? For the final boss fight, I'm guessing it's supposed to be in some sense inside the transistor given the pods containing people's traces, but then what would be the significance of all the transistors in the background? Do Royce and Red have the same transistor? If we take Red as the user, then what is Royce? As a final comment on the story, I think it's interesting that all the characters are fundamentally motivated by their own selfishness, except maybe Asher. Red wants Blue back, Blue wants to be back with Red, Sybil wanted Red for herself, Grant had grown tired of subsuming his own desires to those of a fickle majority, and Royce wanted an unchanging world out of fear or exhaustion with change. It's a nice change from altruistic heroes and evil-for-its-own-sake or world domination villains. At any rate, I eagerly await Supergiant's next game. Edit: One thing that I was particularly impressed by is that they did, I think, a good job of showing Red's sexuality without making it feel exploitative, in the sense that when those various scenes popped up, it didn't feel like when she was putting on a show it was intended for the viewer so much as it was just showing how she would have been around Blue. It's the best handling of the subject that I've seen in the vidja games. chumbler fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Jun 8, 2014 |
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Jun 8, 2014 06:45
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Transistor ownership: It seems like each citizen of Cloudbank would solidify their interests with "Selections". For example, Red chose Music and Linguistics. The Camerata were looking to imbue the Transistor with these traits. However, Blue is possibly the only person in Cloudbank who refused Selection. He was a null. When the Transistor tried to absorb him, it broke. It didn't know how to process him. (Or perhaps it assumes "blank" users like Blue are administrators? The nature of the Transistors isn't well understood by anyone.) He became the root users of the Transistor, I guess. Or something like that. It's not just that Red couldn't bring Blue back -- while not being able to revive him was a large part of the ending, it implied that she couldn't bring ANYONE back. It would have been an empty city. What's the point, when Cloudbank is driven entirely by the desires of its citizens?
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Jun 8, 2014 17:18
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Solumin posted:Transistor ownership: It seems like each citizen of Cloudbank would solidify their interests with "Selections". For example, Red chose Music and Linguistics. The Camerata were looking to imbue the Transistor with these traits. However, Blue is possibly the only person in Cloudbank who refused Selection. He was a null. When the Transistor tried to absorb him, it broke. It didn't know how to process him. (Or perhaps it assumes "blank" users like Blue are administrators? The nature of the Transistors isn't well understood by anyone.) He became the root users of the Transistor, I guess. Or something like that. Yeah, that's definitely the most common reading. Blue was a walking NaN in the Transistor/Process/Cloudbank registry. It's not surprising that plugging him in as the main parameter in a value-returning function would have rather screwed things up. It's also probably relevant that everyone else the Camerata targeted, they specifically targeted alone, and indeed they targeted Red when they thought she would be alone. That may have had more reasons behind it than the obvious; the Transistor was actively integrating her when Blue smashed his way into the middle of the process, torso-first. I mean, the Transistor categorizes the data it got from him as Breach(), and the data it got from her as Crash(). That's pretty telling. EDIT: On a related topic, the events near the beginning of the game and the events near the end of it sure look to me like two attempts at the same basic recovery process: "try to go home to the admin's space, then reinstate admin permissions for whoever is there." Iny fucked around with this message at 08:17 on Jun 9, 2014 |
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Jun 9, 2014 08:04
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Well, just started recursive mode. That was something. Will i expect more surprises?
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Jun 10, 2014 05:38
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Fargin Icehole posted:Well, just started recursive mode. That was something. Will i expect more surprises? Yeah, up to beating it 5x. After that there isn't anything else.
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Jun 10, 2014 08:30
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Turtlicious posted:Yeah, up to beating it 5x. After that there isn't anything else. So what changes after you beat it the 3rd time. Is this the same stupid rumor where Red says "I love you Trevor" if you beat it 7 times?
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Jun 10, 2014 15:39
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Turtlicious posted:Yeah, up to beating it 5x. After that there isn't anything else. Wait, do things keep changing after the first recursion? The only major differences I noticed in NG+ (outside of the combat I mean) were Royce at the beginning and I think a few extra Transistor quips so I can't imagine there's a whole lot else different in further recursions. Opposing Farce fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Jun 10, 2014 |
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Jun 10, 2014 16:02
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drat, game keeps freezing every time I hit the fourth wave on the final Performance Test 
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Jun 10, 2014 16:49
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Exmond posted:So what changes after you beat it the 3rd time. Is this the same stupid rumor where Red says "I love you Trevor" if you beat it 7 times? Turtlicious started that rumor in the first place. He's bullshitting you.
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Jun 10, 2014 16:50
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A bit late to the party, but I just got through it myself. I don't really have much to say except that was just a really good and pretty game. The gameplay was fun and well integrated into the story, the art was pretty and the soundtrack owns. I did really enjoy how so much of the background and story was shown implicitly rather than told through blunt exposition.
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Jun 10, 2014 17:17
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Oxxidation posted:Turtlicious started that rumor in the first place. He's bullshitting you. You are literally the worst. 
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Jun 10, 2014 17:49
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Actually the name that's said is pulled from a different line of a special encrypted game file each 8th time you beat the game. Turtlicious got Victor, but I got James. A friend of mine says he got Barack. Maybe this game has a sense of humor we just don't know about. Don't worry, I don't need video proof, just take my word for it.
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Jun 10, 2014 18:19
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Turtlicious posted:You are literally the worst. Yeah, what you're doing isn't actually funny. You're just being a dick.
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Jun 10, 2014 18:30
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I think it's funny.
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Jun 10, 2014 21:02
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It might have been funny once but it sure as hell isn't funny every single time someone asks about recursion.
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Jun 10, 2014 21:07
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If you beat it ten times in ten hours Red says "I love you Justin Bailey" and then you get to see her in a bikini!!!!!!
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Jun 10, 2014 21:23
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I heard there's a secret function combination that lets you push the bike from its starting location to reveal the 17th function.
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Jun 10, 2014 21:32
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gandlethorpe posted:I heard there's a secret function combination that lets you push the bike from its starting location to reveal the 17th function.
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Jun 10, 2014 21:34
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After you've beaten the game sixteen times, you can freely explore and transform Cloudbank. If you then use the Transistor at that kiosk where you originally ordered the flatbread, it will deliver a potato to your old apartment. If enough people do this before the end of the month, Valve will release Portal 3 early.
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Jun 10, 2014 21:35
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I hear if you Turn() right as the first snapshots appear in the game and during that turn you Jaunt() into a virus column, you unlock god mode and can find an object called SECRETBUTTON.
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Jun 10, 2014 22:24
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Sardonik posted:Yeah I found it too, μ(), it's pretty average though. If you install σ() in an upgrade slot, it starts to deviate from the norm pretty significantly.
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Jun 10, 2014 23:46
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It's cool how on later recursions the levels start to reflect your hard drive directory structure.
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Jun 11, 2014 00:10
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Fangz posted:It's cool how on later recursions the levels start to reflect your hard drive directory structure. No it's not, I lost the fight against Firefox three times and it erased my bookmarks.
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Jun 11, 2014 00:12
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Fangz posted:It's cool how on later recursions the levels start to reflect your hard drive directory structure. Got stuck in my own porn folder for three hours.
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Jun 11, 2014 00:18
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Not getting into recursive mode, wanted to say this game definitely met my expectations, and Transistor was worth the wait, and my 30 dollars, because the soundtrack is loving awesome. Shame they don't have the process versions though, and you'd have to look them up on youtube without looking up spoilers because you wanted to hear the Sybil fight song again.
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Jun 11, 2014 01:34
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Fargin Icehole posted:Not getting into recursive mode, wanted to say this game definitely met my expectations, and Transistor was worth the wait, and my 30 dollars, because the soundtrack is loving awesome. Shame they don't have the process versions though, and you'd have to look them up on youtube without looking up spoilers because you wanted to hear the Sybil fight song again. You want this link here.
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Jun 11, 2014 03:09
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So I'm not exactly sure what I did here. I got two of the super-clones with me after my last fight. Hitting Q switches between Red and them, and both can still shoot their kill ball. Haven't gotten into another fight yet. Should I be worried about this? Edit: They disappeared when I entered the next area. so v  v
Brainamp fucked around with this message at 04:04 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 04:02
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Sardonik posted:Yeah I found it too, μ(), it's pretty average though.  You can clone the first μ() to get a second one, which is even better.
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Jun 11, 2014 17:29
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So... when Red kills herself at the end, she calls Crash() on herself, which is why NG+ is called Recursion mode?
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Jun 11, 2014 17:40
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