00:00.00 Dave Hello everybody. My name is Dave Jackson and you're listening to tales from the backlog. This is a video games review podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it and discuss. My guest today is a friend of the show co-host of Low Five gaming and he's the voice inside all the swords at your local flea market. Alex welcome back on the show. Alex yeah, of course real excited to talk with you again. 00:24.80 Alex Hey Dave, good to be back. Thanks for having me man. 00:32.80 Dave Ah, longtime listeners will recognize Alex from the red dead redemption 2 episode along with his brother Luke and other other hosts of Low Five gaming and that was a really fun episode. So I'm excited about our game today which is Transistor. Transistor is an action/strategy. Rpg developed and published by supergiant games for playstation 4 and pc in 2 14 with future releases on ah other platforms. It's on basically everything now and if you haven't played Transistor here is the spoiler policy. It's the same as every episode of the show. We're not going to spoil the story for you. We're going to not really like talk shop too much in the first portion of the episode and then down in the show notes you'll find a timestamp for when spoiler time begins. So if you want to jump out. You can jump out at that point so fairly standard spoiler policy just like most episodes. We've got some elevator pitches for you in case you don't know what Transistor is. I say Transistor is one of Supergiant's most creative works and one that goes on to inform their later more financially successful and popular games. Alex what's the pitch for Transistor. 01:45.31 Alex Yeah, man that 1 checks out but what I have here is Transistor where turn based strategy meets action rpg in an unexpected marriage. That's like peanut butter meeting jelly at a new art punk dystopia, the genre mashup you didn't know you were craving. 01:59.98 Dave Yeah, absolutely man. There's a lot going on especially with the gameplay and Transistor and I'm really excited to talk about it again. I played this on the switch . This game looks fantastic on the switch oled screen. That's where I played it this time. This is my second time playing it. My first time was also on switch and a playthrough took me about 8 hours. This is a real pain in the ass if you want to track how long games take but ah yeah, how long did your playthrough take you. 02:31.16 Alex Yeah, so I also played on the switch. I have though that was good and I played 100% handheld so I was really taking advantage of that that beautiful thing that the ole gives us but I would say it was about 6 pass that it was about 7 or 8 hours for myself as well. 02:48.15 Dave Gotcha Gotcha So we'll jump into our personal histories with Transistor here and with supergiant games of course because they're they're one I feel like they're one of the darlings in the gaming industry From. Really humble indie beginnings all the way up to.. They're kind of a powerhouse Now. So tell me about your history with supergiant and Transistor in particular. 03:09.96 Alex Yeah, so I didn't know anything about Supergiant until Hades Hades was that indie darling that kind of took over the world. I think it was game of the year a few years back and everybody played it including me if you haven't played it. It's worth picking up and playing. 03:18.93 Dave Yeah. 03:28.31 Alex Ah there's a second one on the way so that will intrigue folks. Get some folks to play in the first one first but it was great. I fell in love with Hades and by proxy I fell in love with supergiant. I needed to know I was like damn where these guys come from so I started digging into them learning more about their studio and looking into their other games. And I made a short list of the you know of their games because it is kind of a short list but a lot of cool ones band and I put them on the eshop wishlist and then I got hit with a little notification saying that. Ah they were all on sale. So I swooped them around the same time that I beat Hades and um. 03:49.55 Dave Um, yeah. 04:04.48 Alex Shamefully I don't know if it's shade. This is the way it is man but they've been sitting in my collection. They've been sitting in my backlog. So needless to say I have not played. This is my first playthrough and we'll talk a little bit more about the implications of that later. I Assume the multiple playthroughs on this game. 04:07.64 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 04:20.22 Alex But it was a real treat dude and I'm glad because it's always been one that I wanted to pull up out of the backlog. So super glad when you hit me up and hey man you ah you interested in checking it out this year I was like yes hundred percent full said and I'm so glad we did. 04:33.14 Dave Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah, and correct me if I'm wrong. You guys did a Hades episode on low 5 right? Yeah so I kind of think I remember that and I was like yeah I wonder if Alex is interested in looking back at Transistor. Um. 04:38.51 Alex We did? yep. 04:47.48 Alex Right? And I think you hit me up I think right after we finished grease as well. Which is a very different game but there's some cool art themes that happen in both. 04:54.78 Dave Yeah. 05:01.10 Alex So I think a lot of folks when they speak about Transistor. They do talk to the music impact that Transistor has so I think there might have been some themes playing that maybe got you thinking? Maybe we'll get the low 5 boys on here. 05:11.69 Dave Yeah, for sure. Um, I also did an episode about Hades. It was episode 4 of tales from the backlog so way back in the day. So I really love that game but I got in on Supergiant back when. 05:17.14 Alex Oh Wow did. 05:26.34 Dave Not one bastion came out but pretty soon after I played it like on the xbox 3 60 it was one of the first like digital games that I ever bought because they had like the xbox 3 sixty arcade or whatever they called it. 1 of the first indie games I ever played was bastion. And I loved it when I first played it. I haven't replayed it since I'm a little nervous about going back to it thinking about how things have evolved since then, especially with supergiant. But I'm sure that there's something to like there. I'll get back to it sometime but I did play bastion and then I liked it. When Transistor came out I wasn't really like paying that much attention to what was going on I think 2014 I would have been just yeah would have just been playing stuff on the we you I didn't have a ps 4 and I didn't have a pc so I would never with this was just not on my radar and then. 06:11.62 Alex It sounds right. 06:23.99 Dave Kind of like you like I started you know I got a switch and I started looking back at you know stuff to buy and looking at lists of like best switch games and stuff and I was like oh shit the people who made bastion they made other games and so I picked this up. It goes on sale Real cheap, really often. So it's our It's a low investment. 06:39.80 Alex Give me. 06:43.90 Dave Ah, to get into it so I picked it up and played it. I didn't like to dig into it the way I did this time. The first time I played it I really didn't. I just kind of played it and just let it wash over me but I still enjoyed it and then of course I played Hades I also played pyre which is a really interesting game that I think would be fun to revisit. With the lens of doing a podcast in mind. But for the future. 07:06.24 Alex Yeah I haven't played pyre yet. It's funny with Supergiant man. I mean they really knocked it out of the park with Hades and that's not to diminish any of these other games because you but you see so much of these other games in Hades and so that's like. 07:21.34 Dave Um, yeah. 07:23.39 Alex Playing this game I started to really love it and then it also got it gave me that Supergiant itch again and I was like man I kind of want to see what's up with bastion I didn't give that game enough time I Want to go back and check it out and to be honest I feel like I was I also want to kind of go beat Dad again. Go take on you know, pick up Hades and. 07:31.77 Dave Yeah. 07:40.10 Dave That's right, yeah, that was one of the big things that stuck out to me the second time playing Transistor after I played Hades was I was like oh shit look at all of this Dna that started in Transistor or probably started even before that in bastion. 07:40.95 Alex And see what's up. 07:57.57 Dave That just got fine tuned in Hades and let Hades take off the way that it did but there's a lot of stuff in Transistor that it works basically the same way you can combine abilities to alter them. Um. You know the perspective, the colors, all of that stuff like it's kind of been here the whole time. So It was really interesting going back and playing this and this time I did dig into the story. I took the time to read all those entries about the Npcs I took time to think about. The implications of the things you read in those terminals and all of that stuff and I felt like that was worth it like that was very rewarding for me and knowing a little bit more about the gameplay like replaying it helped me experiment more.. There's stuff in the game that encourages you to experiment. I had a really great time revisiting this. I was really happy with it. 08:51.68 Alex Totally it's interesting. You bring that up man because I honestly think after rolling the credits on this because I had a slightly different opinion. This is my first playthrough. So. 09:02.95 Dave Yeah, yeah. 09:05.39 Alex To be completely honest, I think at first I wasn't paying close enough attention to like the different stories that you can read about the difference. Um, what do they call the characters that you get their essence or whatever. There's a word for it that they use. But um, you know they tell you the background and everything and I would skim over it be like all right? Cool Cool cool. 09:16.49 Dave Yeah. 09:24.00 Alex But then about halfway through pieces started to come together and I was like oh man. So like that's what's happening with this story and you know and then you can what's cool is you can go to the start screen and you kind of can dig through all of that lore and get into it a little bit more but I came to the realization when I rolled the credits on this one that this game. Although you don't need to, I think it is built with the idea that you'll give it multiple plays. Not those short multiple plays or well I mean granted by the time you're going all the way through Hades you're putting in at least an hour 20 minutes so you know this game does take about six seven hours eight maybe if you're really like poking around. 09:52.00 Dave Um, yeah. 10:00.14 Alex Um, so those are longer playthroughs but I think it's also that sweet spot like I love games that are around that 10 hour time period. Um, if I can roll the credits in 10 hours like man I feel like I've gotten into that world I also feel accomplished. 10:05.34 Dave Yeah, yeah. 10:14.20 Alex Like it's like that's my sweet spot man like it doesn't don't get me wrong I love long games too and short games. Great are great like short or green games are great too. But ah, this was like that. It's hit that sweet spot. But it also left me just hungry enough where I was like I'm not a new plus I'm not a new game. Plus. Like tap a dude man and for this game I'm like I I might do another run I might go and give it another 6 hours 7 hours 10:32.74 Dave Yeah, this game does kick you right into a new game plus as soon as you roll credits and stuff. It's like all right? So you want to go again. Um, and today I booted it up because I needed to fill out the notes with some stuff about the npcs but you can't read those until you get to like those. Terminal those save stations you know and so I started playing and I like a new game. Plus it's more difficult and you keep all your abilities and stuff and I was like this is still really fun and like it keeps getting harder but I keep like having a better understanding of how it all works and I kind of had to like to be like ok. 11:11.95 Dave It's time to put this down for now we gotta get ready for the recording and Stuff. So I get you? This is the draw for New game. Plus is there I think and then knowing what's going on in the story from the beginning you know going through it again I think you could start to See. Kind of breadcrumbs and stuff that's been laid the whole time. You just didn't know what you're looking for yet. 11:30.53 Alex 100% and it says another you know another nod to supergiant. They do this and in really all of their games but they really do a great job of dropping you into the game not forcing, not forcing you the story just letting you jump into the gameplay and figure it out. 11:50.30 Alex And like get hooked on the gameplay pretty quickly before they roll out more and more of the story and that was the case here. It's the case in bastion I think and then also in Hades I haven't played pyres that might be a little different but at least for that seems to be their formula and it seems to work really well. 12:06.14 Dave Yeah, for sure. So ah, let's listen to a little bit of music everybody from Transistor when we come back, we're going to set up what the story is all about in Transistor. You play as red who is a singer in the city of Cloudbank. Ashley Barrett provides the vocals for red both when you hear her voice and also when you hear her sing and this is going to become a trend when we start listing names of people involved in the project of Transistor. There are a lot of the exact same names from. All of Supergiants games and I think it's one of the things that lends to like ah a really consistent like quality but also a consistent type of like style throughout all of their games. It's because it's all the same people they stuck around together. Ah, so Ashley Barrett she does the vocals for red and the game opens with red kneeling next to a man and this man has a giant glowing great sword stuck through his chest. The sword is known as the Transistor and whatever happened here. This attack. Took away red's voice and sealed it inside of the sword along with this man's consciousness. So the man he never gets a name from the wiki calls him. Mr Nobody he's voiced by Logan Cunningham who was the voice of the narrator in bastion 1 of. 13:37.14 Dave Gaming's best narrators of all time do the voice for the man in this game. He was also Hades in Hades the voice role for that. So again, same people over and over again. The man talks with you throughout the game and kind of serves as. 13:53.24 Dave A secondary character of course but also like this game's narrator in a different sense. He's just kind of he talks to red. He doesn't narrate. What's happening but that's these story delivery that you get from like these characters because red can't talk. 14:11.28 Alex Right? I was watching a Youtube video. I think no clip. Um, they do these crowdfunded documentaries on different video game stuff and it was a really cool piece because they were talking to the development team at Supergiant and. 14:19.87 Dave Um, yeah. 14:25.84 Alex Apparently ah red was not the original protagonist. It was the man with no name who was kind of when they're doing their original iterations of this game and it's always kind of fun to dig into the history of that type of thing and to see where a game ended up and where it started. Um, but yes, very cool and. 14:42.86 Alex Also that sword thing I bring this up because in the development process that the sword glows when it talks right? Or when do you hear it rather? But when people were playing testing they did. They're like oh they're doing the bastion narrator thing. Okay, cool. 14:51.18 Dave Um, yeah. 14:57.87 Alex And then the the team is like oh shit man like that's not no, it's we need them to know the swords doing this thing so they figured out a way to to make it work and I thought that is just a cool little tidbit like in the whole development process of it and and then you know to your point about this Team. You know it's because you have a smaller team working on different games. You see that stuff bleed into the next game and of course. Us as players are going to associate their work with their previous work. So It's kind of fun to know that they really wanted to make sure that yes, it's like a narration but it's this sword speaking to you right? you? So as you're not like where you're alone in a bastion, you're not alone Here. You've got the sword along for the ride. 15:33.22 Dave Yeah, so yeah, he sometimes talks directly to red and sometimes he gives like these hushed little like I would call it kind of a noir type like narration dialogue like these these quick little things will say like. 15:52.50 Alex Yeah, yeah. 15:52.56 Dave Ah, this alley. It was always shadowy or something like that and that's all you get when you move on to the next City block. Maybe you get another voice line. It's cool. Um, red can't speak but that doesn't mean that she can't communicate. 16:09.20 Dave At All and throughout the City. We've got these terminals Around. We'll talk about the terminals a little bit more but all of the terminals have the ability to write and leave a comment so red communicates with the guy in the sword by typing in these terminals and she'll often like. Type What she really thinks as a way to communicate to the guy and then she'll delete it and then she'll type like some politically correct answer and actually leave that as a comment in these these turmoils which I thought was a nice, Ah, nice touch and it really I think resonates once you figure out like what. The city of Cloudbank is all about. 16:46.90 Alex That was a cool little touch. It's the world building in this game. It's not heavy handed or anything and I think by the end of it. You really feel like Cloudbank is you know it's It's a it's a city. It's odd because folks have left like they're not whatever is going on with this weird event. 17:04.17 Dave Yeah. 17:06.80 Alex And that's another thing with this, you know with the story and this setup and everything is as you know I kind of mentioned earlier is they're not very heavy handed about this right? So you start to like maybe put a little bit of your own like oh this is maybe what's going on and like you know so like I Think. By the end of the game you have a solid idea of what just happened at least I feel like I do but I don't know how much of that is just me interjecting like some of my own thoughts of like who knows who knows but we can get into that in a bit. 17:35.49 Dave Yeah, it's definitely not heavy handed in the way the story is told like I think the first time I played this game I really didn't know what was going on in this story because I didn't do any of that extra work of reading those terminals reading what they're saying. Reading what red types and thinking about why she types it, digging into all of the extra Npc backstory that you get from using those abilities in combat that are tied to the Npcs. I Didn't do any of that So you can go through this game and just enjoy it as a gameplay experience and then like as a vibe I guess but if you do want to dig into all of that Stuff. You'll find what I think is a really interesting story about Cloudbank which is like high tech. 18:28.27 Dave Democratic Utopia where people vote on. Basically it seems like they vote on everything. Everything that could be a decision is voted on. The example that you see really early in the game is every day people vote on what color they want the sky to be and they vote on that and there's ah an npc. 18:42.37 Alex Yeah. 18:47.43 Dave Who you learn about who is like the sky painter and it's yeah set up like this democratic utopia so that theme of democracy and how democracy can go wrong. How people can use it to take over. That stuff is explored throughout the story and I thought that was really cool. 19:07.55 Alex It is. It's also cool that the game Not only are you getting this information but it's put into action. So like if you choose for it to be snowing the game. It'll start snowing in the game. So it's just kind of fun to see that actually happen and have your impact happen like it happens in real time. 19:18.16 Dave Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, people can vote on the weather and I'm not sure why anyone would vote for it to rain but you can if you want to, but it is cool. It's cool to kind of see this. You know. Democracy level 10000 or something like that where it's literally everyone who votes for everything. Everything is up for a vote and you go vote you a lot of times like those terminals will ask red to vote they'll say ah well who's your favorite singer. 19:41.40 Alex Right. 19:54.66 Dave Or what do you want the weather to be today? What color should the sky be and you vote a lot of times. It's like okay you voted for this one. The other one got 89% of the vote. So no. 20:08.81 Alex There's a cool thing with the percentages too in ah, the listener doesn't hold me to this because I didn't do my research hundred percent but I think that those numbers that you like they give because when you vote it shows whatever everybody else has voted. It gives you a percentage of the right to vote. 20:22.88 Dave Right? yeah. 20:26.25 Alex And I'm on I was deep and Reddit somewhere and I was reading that those are tied to actual users boats. So but like I said don't hold it to that I bring that you know Shady Intel to the pod. But that's a podcast of 4 right. 20:30.60 Dave Oh ok, it could be. 20:40.81 Dave Yeah, one of those votes that you read early on is ah a thing that asks who your favorite singer is so Red on that poll like in a landslide. So if it is like user data that makes sense. But if it's not user data. 20:53.22 Alex Um, totally totally. 20:56.54 Dave That's some world building within the story that like red is a ah, really popular singer in town here. Um in the story. The City of Cloudbank has been taken over by this army of like intelligent robots which are called the process in the game and. Throughout the game. You'll learn more about the process. What it is, where it came from, why it's you know, taking over the city like it is ah kind of infesting and taking over like entire districts of the City So initially red. Tries to escape but instead she turns around and goes deeper into the city armed with the Transistor. The Transistor is like this really powerful weapon so that's kind of like the inciting thing is whatever happened with you know the man getting stabbed through the chest with the Transistor. And then red decides to basically go deep into the city and you're off.. That's that's the story and you'll learn more about it as you go but I will put a pin in any more details until the spoiler section but just kind of like top level like. So Did you enjoy going through it? Did you enjoy what you learned about this story about these characters? 22:19.61 Alex I did I think I think I hit you up on Discord dude and I was like I don't know this story is like it's it's half throw away half intriguing I'm not really sure and that was when I was probably about halfway through the game though and once like I mean it's it's all kind of interconnected. It's pretty impressive. 22:38.36 Alex But once like once like the combat and all the gameplay stuff really started to flow for me like then. Then like started this the story started to heat up too and I started to be a little bit more invested in it and so it was a slow burn. But once it got going man once we got cooking like I was I was all in on it and. 22:55.39 Dave Um, yeah. 22:56.86 Alex Think it's really good. I think it's cool that it's not heavy at the end of the beginning and it stays that way throughout. But you definitely are fed more of this city more of what's happening and I thought it was done really well man I Thought you know full marks good Good story. 23:10.25 Dave Yeah, a lot of like the optional stuff too I think really helps fill in who these people are and how the city worked and there's an antagonist that likes other than the process. There's an antagonist that you are kind of dealing with. Ah, throughout the game and especially as it gets later on and learning about them and learning about their motivations was really really Interesting. Unexpectedly I think Supergiant did a really good job with um, like just kind of like you said. 23:44.65 Dave Kind of like giving you light storytelling throughout. But then there's a ton if you want to put in the work and like I said in the top of the show I felt rewarded by putting in that work because I thought like the depth of detail that they went to. Was pretty interesting all the way down. 24:01.47 Alex Totally and I got to give another gold star to Supergiant because like this is like a science fiction game like it presumably takes place in like a futuristic dystopia and. 24:07.40 Dave Um, yeah. 24:14.42 Alex You know it's not cyberpunk like I think at the beginning our elevator pitch I call it like noir punk or something because it definitely has a no our vibe but a lot of that comes from the ah the voice of the Transistor you know? Ah, but that's a hard vibe to nail and to like get people hooked on you know. 24:17.83 Dave Yeah. 24:31.40 Alex Like this idea of like because if you do futuristic settings like it's impossible for us not to look at our current situation in like current things and then kind of like you know to make those fantasies different right? because you can kind of go wherever with fantasy when you go into a future setting. You have to have elements that are like. Still somewhat tied to today that are relatable I mean you don't have to but it's like it's easier to buy into as ah as a player or a reader or a watcher. Whatever you're doing is us consuming the media. It's a lot easier to buy into if that's a case and man. Um I think we'll talk about it and ah talk about it more in a bit but. 24:54.92 Dave Um, yeah. 25:08.53 Alex Gen Z and the rest of the team did a really great job of you know, making sure that the player is able to buy into this world not only through the storytelling but through the visuals as well. 25:17.19 Dave Yeah, for sure like you see future sci-fi neon colors and your brain immediately is like oh yeah, cyberpunk cyberpunks hot right now. But like you said you're right? This is not a cyberpunk game, it just kind of looks like it. Um. 25:26.88 Alex Right. No, but also just soft enough where it's like not though dude like which is which is cool. 25:35.58 Dave Can we talk about that? Yeah yeah, we can talk about that art now. So you mentioned the main artist is Gen Z As in the other Supergiant games. You know that theme of ah everyone staying on board coming up again. 25:42.32 Alex Never know. 25:53.61 Dave So We have that vibrant bright kind of Neon. It looks like cyberpunk like we said again really pops on the switch oled but it's got a lot of you know there's a lot of black and then the contrast with all of those kinds of neon colors the blues and greens and. Ah, red, especially and then the contrast when you go somewhere where the process is the process is just like this flat white and black like a little bit of red but like this just. 26:27.96 Dave I Don't know this boring kind of dead feeling compared to the vibrancy of the rest of the city. 26:32.30 Alex Right? And then you bring up the process again and I have to note that like us after you played the game twice now me playing it once like honestly I didn't really I was like why don't keep talking about the process like what is this process things. So like it's you you spoke to it a little bit earlier. It's like this virus that's almost taking over the city. 26:43.66 Dave Um, yeah. 26:50.44 Alex Um, but it's like it's changing like it's ah, kind of controlling these different like robots that you fight throughout and then it controls differently. You know all the enemies but then it spreads out into the city and the buildings. 27:05.37 Alex So even after a bit of time into the game. You start to see that contrast in color and that's kind of how they show that like a lot of these like darker buildings or whatever are taken over by like this white look. It's very distinct for the process because a lot of the enemies are also like a white color as well. 27:19.34 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah, it looks like a um, it looks like a sickness if you see something That's just covered in mold or something like that. Definitely um, the character models I think are also like really of course. 27:27.49 Alex Right. 27:36.85 Dave Extremely Supergiant like if you've played a Supergiant game you can picture what like the character models ah kind of look like their portraits that go up. Um, the game is from a really zoomed out mostly isometric perspective. Ah, but when you go into the menus and you look at the portraits for the characters. They're all. 27:45.26 Alex Mm. 27:56.43 Dave Just these really vibrant, really distinct looking people. There's not that many of them like there might be 15 or so you know in the whole game. So. All of them are really distinct. I think that also that isometric perspective lets you see all of these. Interesting, um, ah like architectural designs throughout the city of cloudbank and skyboxes and stuff like that. It's all really cool. 28:18.72 Alex Totally. And it's actually super impressive. The fact that it's isometric and in a city doing something isometric and having tall buildings is nearly impossible to do so they did So yeah, So it's really interesting. 28:29.36 Dave Yeah. 28:39.10 Alex If you look at it and kind of see how they figured it out how to make it I mean you still get the it still gives you the idea there's tall buildings because maybe they're further back like in the you know your perspective line or whatever. There are certain instances of the game where a tall building will obstruct your view a little bit but not overly so where it's annoying. It just adds to the. 28:53.60 Dave Yeah. 28:58.84 Alex Feel like okay we're going up this tall tower and there's some other big buildings in the way. But I thought that was pretty cool when I was thinking back about it because if I mean the fact that they were able to do an extra game in the middle of what's presumably this huge city is it's pretty cool feat in itself. 29:11.94 Dave Yeah, yeah, none of those like visual tricks that make something in the foreground like transparent so that you can see your character or something like you're right, like something could block your view if you know you run up behind it and it's in the foreground there. But. 29:29.75 Dave Yeah I didn't have a lot of trouble finding the path forward because there was a building in the way or something like that. The level design supports that perspective that they did. There's also some sections that either switch to a side scrolling view or something more. 29:34.89 Alex Right. 29:49.34 Dave Trippy entirely like there's some very visually yeah Trippy is the word I'm going to stick with like sections kind of peppered in every now and then we're like whoa really went wild on this this little like one minute section of the game. 30:03.90 Alex Yeah, it's cool. They have ah the cutscene deals are pretty sweet too. I mean you mentioned the portraits are already detailed. I Always love it when a game totally flips. Whatever view they're going for and change like with the cutscenes I guess but like it's always kind of cool to see and. 30:05.44 Dave Yeah, okay. 30:17.81 Alex Ah, they have some cool parallax going around or on when, like you know, Red and the Transistor are driving or riding their boat or doing whatever they're on like having the little Monologues but it's cool man. It's a whole vibe. 30:23.10 Dave Um, yeah. 30:31.57 Dave Yeah, the ah hold on some noise in the other room also of note in Transistor of course is the music which is like 1 of the stars of every Supergiant game I was reading. 30:49.60 Dave An article I can't remember where it was from but they described the music in Supergiant as another character in all of their games and I totally agree with that music by Darren Korb who you guessed it has done the music for all of Supergiants games and recently got into. 30:58.51 Alex That's cool. 31:08.59 Dave Doing a lot of voice acting for Supergiant in Hades um, he described the soundtrack of Transistor as old world electronic post rock. So there's a lot of electric guitars bass guitar. 31:25.77 Dave Bass Guitar is really fuzzy in this game. I dig the keyboard and drums a lot. But then I think the old world part of that he added a lot of kinds of acoustic instruments to accordions in some places but it definitely has this. This kind of yeah-like post- rock vibe to it where you'll just have a rhythm or like a riff that's repeating over and over again. Um a lot of like ah electric guitar but not like playing chords is more like single string like plucking stuff. That just kind of has this melody. That's going on a loop as you're going through the City streets. Um, and then it's just really great and it's dynamic too. That's the other thing I Love about it is it picks up during combat when you open the menus it fades away till it's just the bass guitar when you're in the menus. 32:07.92 Alex Um, yep. 32:17.40 Dave Um, I love stuff like that. It's a good touch. 32:20.16 Alex Is' grade man and I think ah you know hat's off to Ashley Barrett who I think does the vocals like that's you know you mentioning that the music itself is a character that's a fun little thought for me and then like her voice in this you know she's she voices. Well she's Red’s. 32:22.96 Dave Yeah. 32:35.55 Alex Ah, singing voice but then also you know red as you mentioned at the head like loses her voice. So there's this cool mechanic that the game does where she hums right? So when she um when you're we, we'll get into we start talking about like the gameplay but you when you're doing the term play that. 32:54.21 Alex When you're doing the turn based combat you can actually hear Red humming as she like plans out the stuff and I thought that was a cool little thing too. 32:58.99 Dave Yeah, yeah, some of the songs too have full songs with vocals and stuff like that and there's not that many of them. But when they are in there. They're really powerful songs including ah. The one at the end of the game called paper boats which is just like ah that it's it's chef Kiss It's so good. The work is like you know the music of course but her vocals are so emotional and strong in that song and in the other ones too. Ah, in here. She's a great singer. Um, and it contributes a lot to the soundtrack even though the songs with vocals like that are kind of few and far between. 33:48.29 Alex Um, it's also you know and I hate to compare it to Hades all the time because it's really easy for me to do. But you know I do think that Hades has the tendency Hades is more rock and roll almost I would say um and it has a tendency to really get you amped up. 33:59.29 Dave Yeah, yeah. 34:05.50 Alex And you mentioned the dynamic you know soundtrack which is true I would say though there it was almost more ambient for me So like the overall like it just later. The music did a really good job of bringing me into this world that I was living in as red or whatever. Um. And it definitely I Mean you know it's cool with the comment. It definitely gets going and stuff like that. But it was almost more subtle. It was like it was done so well that it just worked well like it didn't seem out of place. It felt like it was supposed to be a part of this city. It made total Sense. You know it wasn't didn't feel out of place at all. But it didn't. It also didn't get me going like you know some of those Hades bangers but um, but still I thought it was very very good. 34:42.87 Dave Yeah, yeah, definitely not. It doesn't have that kind of heavy metal vibe of the Hades soundtrack. It's definitely more um more relaxed it does get into more of like that ambient mood because. Again, a lot of it when you're going through the city. You'll just have like a short melody that's repeating over and over again. Um I like ah when there is stuff going on like the villains or with the process. Especially there's some like really ah like. 35:02.20 Alex Um, right. 35:15.66 Dave Like high up on the guitar. We'll say it like the higher notes. There's some dissonance that they use to kind of throw you off guard and make you uncomfortable with the situation that you're in um I mean what? what can we say like I don't think that I've. 35:16.73 Alex Sure. 35:31.19 Dave Talk to anybody who is not like a giant fan of Darren Korb's music if you play the Supergiant games. It's like 1 of the standout things about them and again someone who's been there the whole time like it's just ah, it's remarkable to ah to see to have that kind of consistency like. Feel like no one has that in gaming like gaming is so fucking volatile all the time but this this like the the quality of writing the art and then the music altogether like that's like the core of Supergiant like. 35:50.60 Alex Um, right. 36:07.77 Dave I Feel like if the same people are involved no matter what they make you can count on those things to kind of continue that vibe. 36:13.74 Alex Totally I mean that's one of the beauties of ah you know having a smaller team. You know, especially a smaller team that's got the juice. You know so. 36:19.84 Dave Yeah, yeah, they got the juice for sure music so combat in combat in Transistor is again from that isometric perspective. So if you're coming to this because you played Hades first. You'll be familiar with the perspective and you can run around and do it as an action game. Um, you map up to 4 abilities on your face buttons. They're called functions in the game and ah those can be customized to your liking within a limit called memory. Which limits how many things you can equip. You can equip things as just straight up like abilities. They'll do the thing when you press that button so there's an attack called breach that's a long range attack crash is a short range attack. Ah, that lowers defense like they might have different properties like that too. There's one called jaunt that lets you do a dash There's one called switch that will charm an enemy to fight on your side for a few seconds stuff like that where like the mixing and matching really comes in. If you can take those abilities and use them to modify the ones that are mapped on the face buttons. So for example, if you put switch as a modifier on crash for example, now every time you use crash whatever you hit will then be charmed in fight. 37:48.55 Dave On your side and I want to say there's like I didn't write it down. But maybe yeah 16 to 20 of these abilities total that you mix and match whether it's you know on the buttons whether used as modifiers or you can also equip them as passive effects. Um, and you need to use them as all 3 of those to unlock all of the lore associated with that attack because you get all of these attacks by meeting Npcs in the game and they're all associated with a particular Npc. And so if you want to learn about that. Npc's backstory is basically who they are, then you need to use them as one of these kinds of roles in combat if you want to learn about how they got involved in the story. You need to use them a second way and then if you want to learn. How their story ends then you need to use them the third Way. So this encourages you to mix them up. Use them in all different forms. It's really really, um, smart I think because if you have someone who's engaged in the story. They're going to want to mix up these abilities. 39:03.50 Alex Yeah I love them and your experiences are slightly different because I didn't get as deep into those ah the stories of each of the Npcs. So when you pick up that I think they caught their trace or whatever. So that's like you pick up their trace and that gives you the new ability. Um, so I think. 39:08.20 Dave Yeah. 39:17.83 Alex When and if and when I ever go back and play this again I would definitely want to dig that I didn't notice it because it does. There's some visual cues that when you start using it I think it will give you a little blinky thing on the start screen or whatever The function screen is that tells you that there's new information so I did go in and check out them sometimes. But 39:30.67 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah. 39:37.49 Alex But to the same effect like there's a cool thing. You don't have a health bar in this game that is up to 4 different. Ah um, abilities that you can use when you get hit or I guess there's kind of a health bar but when you basically when that goes down and it removes one of your abilities right. 39:53.90 Dave Yeah. 39:55.32 Alex And then as your all of your abilities are depleted then you then you die you have to go back to the last 8 points or whatever. Um, but was interesting about that and it actually gets to a very similar effect of what you're talking about with the story is that if you lose an ability all of the one you're not allowed to use that ability anymore. 40:13.76 Alex Oh nor are you but the thing is like that ability. Maybe you can't use it but you can go in and you have more abilities so you go in and you start mixing and matching these different pieces and finding out different ways to make these you know different actions and you basically are encouraged and almost forced. Not to get stuck on the same build out. 40:31.30 Dave Yeah, yeah for sure like I think it's possible for you to play the game and not really mess around with switching things up too much like if you're good at the game if you're good at the combat you're not going to you know lose the abilities very often. But my first time playing it that happened to me at least a handful of times so I was forced I might be I don't know. Um, yeah I think it was the first time I played it. It happened a handful of times. 40:52.81 Alex You say I'm not good Bud. I'm not good at this game not but. 41:04.91 Dave So like you're right, you have the choice you can either play handicapped with only 3 possible abilities or you're forced to like bring something off the bench and start using that and then like after a set number of combat encounters I think it is the one that you lost will come back. You'll be able to use it again. 41:14.12 Alex Ripe. 41:21.51 Alex Yeahp yeah, you have to go and you check in that. What are the call those little checkpoints you have to hit at least 2 of them the access. Yeah, so once you hit like couple access points. So it lets you use them again I have the tendency to approach a lot of games like a tank like that's just my play style for a lot of lot of stuff. 41:24.22 Dave The access points. Yeah. 41:37.40 Alex So I'll find a really powerful move set that will work for me. But that's this you know if 1 if one of those gets depleted then I had to go in and kind of rejigger everything to figure out something else that works and it was fun. It was a fun process to like not the process but it was a fun way to. 41:49.33 Dave Yeah, yeah. 41:52.61 Alex To figure out like you know, different ways to play it and you know because there's I think there's actually like 202021 of these different. Um, you know different moves that you can use and then you start adding the different modifiers like there's a lot of cool stuff that you can get going in this and you know naturally I was like there's got to be a. 42:02.74 Dave Yeah. 42:09.65 Alex There's got to be something that is oppied and like everybody's using and I think there are a handful of like you know favorites that people use but that's truly everything was like I felt like was pretty well balanced and it suits a lot of different play styles. So Even though I'm traditionally a tank like you can figure out. Like different play styles like then you kind of learn how to use that and then it's kind of another level to this game where it's like it keeps it fresh the whole way through because you're kind of trying these different things. 42:35.50 Dave Yeah, absolutely, There's a lot of customization available whether I guess like whether you're struggling and you need to experiment to find something better or if you're just like me and want to mix it up because you want to learn about the Npcs. There's a lot of reasons to mix it up and there's a lot of ways that you can mix it Up. There are things that I found to be very very powerful like the one that charms enemies to fight on your side was kind of essential for me but a lot of. 43:06.39 Alex Yeah I use that one a bit. Um, I use that one a bit as well. I think bounce is really nice. Call was really nice. There's a lot of fun ones. What is it? There's another layer to this combat system. 43:11.33 Dave What's that, yeah. 43:22.45 Alex And it's another very Supergiant thing to do kind of what is it called though, there's um, not modifiers. It's that other menu that you get and you unlock throughout. Yeah the limiters dude so that was a really interesting thing too because basically. 43:28.35 Dave Um, oh yeah, ah I Want to say it's called limiters or something like that. 43:39.57 Alex What the different limiters that you unlock do it's another. It's a whole another tree to learn but you can activate these by choice and if you do that it will give you like a certain ah 2 to 4% like basically boost in how much um, ah like points that you're getting when you're fighting enemies or whatever. 43:57.41 Dave Yeah, it gives you an experience boost because you get experience and level ups in this game too. 43:59.48 Alex At the end of each round. Yeah exactly Yep Yep! So like it'll give you that experience boost. But it's totally optional because at the same time you'll get that boost. But then it's also going to Nerf something. It's going to make something harder for you to change something in the gameplay and I think that's a really cool way to approach this because for me. 44:12.40 Dave Um, yeah. 44:19.51 Alex Like I was I was turning a bunch of those on at first that's probably why I got all those like you know so why always had it like lose all my stuff I had all those legacy deals going but ah, but the thing is is like that would help my experience points go like I would like gain a lot of experience was I was able to level up faster. 44:24.68 Dave Um, oh yeah, yeah. 44:33.65 Dave Um, yeah, um. 44:35.67 Alex Um, but then I reached a certain point in the game where I was like all right I'm going to turn these off because I am starting to struggle a little bit. It's not as easy as it was before but at that point I felt pretty strong with my build and I had learned the combat system where I was I was happy to take those off. 44:48.69 Dave Yeah I didn't really mess with those I didn't mess with them in Hades Either Hades was difficult enough without those things but you know we we talk about things that were carried forward that feel like they started in Transistor and then became like a core thing in Hades as well. A lot of stuff from this gameplay. 1 thing that did not make the trip forward in time is so like I so we set this up like you run around. You can use your abilities to play it as an action game but like it's kind of slow your stuff recharges really slowly. It's kind of not very smooth if you play it that way. What you're supposed to do is press a button to pause and when the game is paused. You can issue up like a string of actions governed by like an app system like you know you have so much you can do in 1 turn like. 45:27.35 Alex Um, oh. 45:45.11 Dave Running takes time out of your ah your turn limit using different abilities will take different you know sections of this bar and once the bar is filled. You can't do anything else when it's time when it's paused then you unpause it and red will do all of these things. While the enemies are moving in slow motion. Um, sometimes like if you hit an enemy. You'll knock them far away. So it's possible to like Miss with the later things in your combo if you don't predict that very well. So it's not like you are completely overpowered but this. 46:22.81 Dave Does not feel optional to me. It feels like you have to do this and frankly, this is really really fun like setting up and strategizing like I'm going to I'm going to pause I'm going to hit this dude. It's going to bounce and hit that other guy then I'm going to dash behind the other guy backstab him for extra damage like there's a lot going on in the combat. 46:38.65 Alex You. 46:42.40 Dave There's usually a lot of enemies and then later on you get to a lot of enemies that have a ton of hit points and they hit really hard so your strategy is not always just straight up offense during this turn like you might. 46:54.34 Alex Um, right. 46:56.24 Dave Pause it so you can get the fuck out of there and buy yourself a little bit more time. 47:01.50 Alex It's a fascinating gameplay mechanic and honestly, it's 1 of the reasons I think I love this game so much. Um, and at first I just didn't understand it so I didn't like it at first I was like what's going on with this because I really was approaching this game with my Hades brain and I wanted to just like run through and. 47:12.87 Dave Right. 47:17.92 Alex And you know do that action you know rpg deal but really like that pause mechanic like it. It turns it into a term based rpg which is really cool and I think you're 100% correct and I think you know from some of the stuff I was watching and reading the developers would agree like this game is made. 47:24.43 Dave Me. 47:36.14 Alex And a very interesting way where you are definitely encouraged like you really do need to stop things and plan things out like the baddies are tough dude they are. They're fast and they're powerful. You know some capital G gamers out there might be able to take them down but you know me with my lowercase g. 47:43.10 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 47:54.10 Alex I was quite quite happy to to pause time and and and that's another beautiful thing about you're not timed on that either like it's truly turn based and what else I thought was really cool about that is you can because for me at least I would be in this like you have this like your adrenaline's pumping because you're in this crazy fight. Stop everything So I'm still moving kind of fast and like planning out my moves. But then I'm like oh fuck that's not going to work and you can actually recall whatever you've laid out to reset things and I think that's just so cool and you can Also it shows you little stats like you know, very like term based Rpg things. So like. 48:18.00 Dave Yeah. 48:28.60 Alex It'll show you if your placement on whatever particular move you're trying is going to take away this amount of damage and you're like I think I can probably get something better so you can take that back and you can try something else before you actually activate that. Ah, that Sequence. It's just such a cool thing man and it's actually like it's just. Like I said some of the Capital G gamers out there might be able to do this without stopping time. But you're really encouraged too and I think the baddies in themselves are developed to really encourage this type of gameplay and I've never played a game like that. It's cool. 48:57.98 Dave Yeah, it's really cool. I think a lot of your functions are not actually available outside of this like the pause screen. So yeah, you can dash around and there might be some. I think maybe 1 of the modifiers lets you use some things outside of like that pause screen. But 49:15.80 Alex Right? It's interesting. There's one of your friends I don't remember it's called but you like you summon a couple of your little dog homies little pups or whatever and that one you can't do on the when you pause things they has to be live action which is like this kind of interesting little things that this game does. 49:22.73 Dave Yeah, yeah. 49:30.51 Dave Ah, yeah, yeah, you're right, like the enemies move really fast and they hit really hard like red even though you know when you level up Red doesn't have a ton of health like I don't know if you can just sit there and tank stuff. So. A lot of combat encounters even when using this like pause and planning strategy I would still get hit because after you execute all your Moves. There's a cool down and you are in real time and you just have to like to run and there's always like these barricades. 50:01.45 Alex Yeah, yep. 50:05.53 Dave In the combat arenas so you go and hide behind those the enemies can destroy those you can't camp out there forever and then yeah you can destroy them too. Yeah, um, but yeah, this is like the depth of strategy that is opened up by this, like choosing which. 50:10.13 Alex Asking you I think. 50:24.27 Dave I Want to move. Maybe you have like a really strong attack but your planning like time will only accommodate like that 1 attack and then like a dodge and then moving a little bit like you sometimes you you really have to um. 50:34.34 Alex Right. 50:41.30 Dave Like purposely choose what you're going to use to fit in that time limit. So sometimes like that big attack that takes most of your bar will be worth it and a lot of times. It's not even though it's your most powerful thing. So yeah, tons of strategy here and when I started playing a new game. Plus it's basically like. You start with all your abilities and the enemies start at the end game level. So the first combat encounter in the new game plus is as hard as a regular encounter at the end of the game and so I was like oh shit like I can only imagine. 51:04.52 Alex Right. 51:17.63 Dave Where this goes like when you get to the end of a new game plus like I can imagine like really stretching your strategy brain out like in this combat system. 51:28.57 Alex Totally and that was one of the things I think you know why I didn't quite click for me is because I wasn't leaning in to the you know the strategy and I I just hadn't quite figured out the mechanics of the term base stuff yet. Ah because it's like I mean they tell you what to do, but it's not again, just like the story is not super heavy handed. And you know it. It just takes a little bit of time to learn. But once you figure it out like once you get cooking man Good shit. 51:50.37 Dave Yeah, this is really really good and so it looks like an action game and I wonder how many people approach it like you did where it's like oh it's an action game and I played Hades or I played bastion before this those are just straight up action games. 52:04.52 Alex From him. 52:08.68 Dave And I wonder how like how many people would play this and be like this is a shitty action game like what the fuck's going on and then you you hit that pause button like it teaches you I think to do it but you hit that pause button and then you're like oh I'm so powerful I have so many options and then you add in. 52:18.78 Alex Yeah, it does. 52:27.48 Dave All the customization with the functions and stuff and it's really like if you have a strategy brain I like turn based Tactics brain I Think there's a lot to really like here. 52:39.30 Alex Totally and it's kind of fascinating too that the next game that Supergiant went to put out was indeed ah in our you know turn based Rpg Inspire tunebus and I actually haven't played pyre. 52:49.84 Dave Ah, no pyre is ah Pyre is a visual novel with a you remember that game on American gladiators where they have to take the basketballs to each end and like throw them in the little. Ah, the little thing That's what pyre is. 52:51.11 Alex Oh. 53:04.30 Dave Yeah, it's a really really oddball game they went they went totally ah, totally on the other side with that game. Yeah, so anything else about the combat system here or the gameplay in general that you found ah interesting. 53:09.30 Alex I dig it. 53:22.70 Alex Ah, there is the 1 other bit that is similar to those polls that we're talking about when you go in and you start picking your different you know, um your different mo sets or whatever we're called whatever we're calling them your different functions. It also gives you a percentage of. 53:35.28 Dave Um, yeah. 53:40.36 Alex Like and I'm again I'm not 100% sure about this if it's from the user base or or maybe it's a percentage that I was using it but it gives you a percentage of there is a percentage of use on there and I'm not sure if that's form the community or just me and because the ones that are that you get. 53:52.27 Dave Um, oh okay. 53:58.55 Alex Early on in the game are definitely heavier. They're like more around like 40% or something like that and the other ones tend to be lower and some are around 0 So maybe it's perhaps that number is coming from my own gameplay and I thought that was just another little cool piece of you know the little numbers that they're throwing in for you to look at and it helps with the planning and it. 54:15.79 Alex For me when I was building out stuff I got to a point in the game where I was like well I started pushing the limits and testing things. Ah but it was like another nice little litmus test to be like oh yeah, like because there's a lot man like 21 different functions. There's a lot to manage. 54:27.85 Dave Yeah. 54:30.81 Alex So it's like oh yeah, that's like crash like crash is easy to remember but like you know for whatever like cull is one that I really like obviously because it's got this number next to it. 54:38.87 Dave Yeah, true. Um, oh I guess 1 thing that I would like to teach you because like you said there are a lot of functions and you get to a point where you'll switch them up or at least like I kind of felt like I picked up a new thing I got to find out what this does. But you know combat's really tough. So I don't know if I want to throw it in there and hamstring myself in the next combat or something so 1 cool thing they do is there is this kind of beach dimension that you can go to yeah the back door and. 55:09.79 Alex And the back door. 55:15.39 Dave In that they have these combat Arena challenges and there are different types. There's one where you can, you know, start with a set like a preset set of abilities and um, it'll just say okay take everything out, but these are your abilities You can't change anything. 55:34.63 Alex Um, right. 55:35.22 Dave And they'll constantly mix that up and throw in those things that you never use so that you get a chance to see what they do and a lot of them are really impressed by them in those challenges. So I made them a part of the regular rotation. There's other speed challenges. There's just like. 55:53.19 Dave Survive for 2 minutes type challenges. There's a lot and I did most of these like I did pretty much all that were available. They're really fun. 55:54.79 Alex Yep. 56:02.86 Alex I think I did the has say man I think it was one of those things when I found the first when I was like oh this cool little area kind of weird and like nice little challenge but those the the back door that little beach area is actually what really opened up the game for me because it was ah it sounds like a playground. 56:17.85 Alex Ah, challenges. But then it's like it also forced me to because they're giving you certain functions that you have to use for whatever challenges like it made me play with different combos that I wasn't playing with in my actual gameplay and some of those challenges are hard dude. So I had a doom you know I'd lose and I had to keep on trying. 56:28.38 Dave Yeah. 56:35.70 Dave Um, yeah. 56:35.76 Alex Because I'm not going to let the game win I got to win eventually so you know, um so that's actually how I ended up getting good at this game as I was just hanging on the backdoor area. Yeah, doing the different challenges and then you also increase your experience points there so it levels up your character I would love to see. 56:43.26 Dave Yeah. 56:52.72 Alex Like a breakdown of the time that I spent in the back door versus like the actual like game world because I bet you it's like maybe it's not as balanced as I'm thinking but like I definitely feel I definitely felt like I spent a lot of time back there because there's a certain you know every time you find one of those doors and allows you to do it varies like whether it's 1 3 4 ah, because you there's like maybe 7 doors within that area and they do either this display. You're saying the speed test or once it's like an endurance thing. Um, so you and then of course like I'm like well I did that one I got to do this one. Oh I'm getting x b at these things I'm going to do them all right I like close all the doors. 57:22.51 Dave Yeah, yeah, that's the thing too. Yeah I I'm not sure that I would have done them if you didn't get real experience points for doing them. But you do so like that's another reason to go do them. But once I was drawn in. 57:30.51 Alex No, not at all. 57:41.63 Dave Getting experience points I realized just how fun they are as little strategy challenges. There's also one where you have to kill all the enemies in 1 turn like pausing and planning and that was always really fun to just. 57:50.26 Alex Right. 57:57.62 Dave Figure out how much you can stretch this to get all of this done in 1 turn. Those are really satisfying when you get it? yeah. 58:00.79 Alex Yep, it's a really cool way to teach players how to play the game to be honest, like it's almost a sandbox that when you leave that area like you're you're equipped to lose new knowledge and like well shit I'm gonna try that. 58:15.10 Alex And you know I'm going to try and get that to work in the actual game. 58:18.73 Dave Yeah, it's yeah, it's great. Great ah, great little touch in there and um I just have like pretty much nothing but good things to say about this game like I'm I'm really impressed by it. So let's listen to a little bit more music. And when we come back, we'll give our wrapup thoughts. I would do a little bit of housekeeping then hit that spoiler section. So in this section. We always just kind of wrap up any thoughts in summary of stray things that you want to collect but then also answer the question. Who would you recommend Transistor to, Alex. 58:55.94 Alex Oh man, how to recommend Transistor to anybody that has maybe played Hades I think that's a good starting point. Be ready to have it not be Hades. But I think you'll really, I think if you've played Hades and enjoyed Hades like I think it's like Supergiant systems. Ah, fascinating. 59:03.67 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 59:13.24 Alex Like the development team to me because of what we've been talking about the you know the different Dna that you see in all the games and like playing Hades maybe want to play Transistor playing Transistor makes me want to go play bastion. Um, it's just so cool. It's so cool to see the different pieces that carry over to the next ones. Ah, but you know if action rpgs are your thing. There's a piece of this game that you're really going to like if term base rpgs are your thing you're going to really like pieces of this game like I think it's just different enough like to to you know, have its own flavor and I think that's intriguing. But so I guess that's who I would ah that's who I would tell to play this game. 59:46.40 Dave Yeah fans of Supergiants other work. No matter what it is I think that again because a lot of the same people and the same creative forces are behind this as their other games If you're a fan of their other games. There's going to be something that you're going to like in this game too and. Being their only game that is turn based like this like pyre has like a bit of planning because you're playing a it's a sports game. You know, kind of so there's a bit of that planning in here. But this is a strategy game. Yeah. 01:00:19.13 Alex Dog I'm so excited to play Pyre now is wild. 01:00:24.40 Dave It's real interesting man. Um, and this story's really cool and the music's great. You know a lot of the stuff that you can kind of bank on with Supergiant like they haven't missed yet in my opinion. Um, they take really big creative swings and for a while they were on this. 01:00:34.39 Alex Um, right. 01:00:42.38 Dave Track where every game was very different from the previous game and obviously now at the time of recording they're making Hades too and part of me is like well I wonder what they would have done. You know if Hades was like a ah mid- success and they could fund their next game and try something completely different. 01:01:00.73 Alex Right. 01:01:02.45 Dave I'm sure they come up with something cool but like I can't fault them for making a sequel to 1 of the most successful games of the last like 5 years or so I can't. I can't get mad at them for it. So. 01:01:08.58 Alex Ah, know how you don't. It's interesting though because they are a developing studio like that that was like 1 of their like they wore that badge of honor like that they weren't making bastion to because bastion 2 was you know a decent brace breakout hit. But they're like no, we're going to do it. We're on to Transistor. 01:01:18.77 Dave Right. 01:01:25.66 Dave Um, yeah, oh yeah, hell yeah obviously yeah. 01:01:25.82 Alex And ah so my hope I'm I'm going to play Hades too. Of course, but but but my hope is that they continue to push the envelope. You know my hope is that a lot of these you know everybody on the team as much as it can you know, stay friends, stay coworkers and keep making cool shit because I think in today's climate of video games. This is what I personally want more of. I want people to push the envelope on gameplay. I want like this beautiful art. My games I think it's super cool. 01:01:53.58 Dave Yeah, absolutely so this is a pretty easy recommendation to play Transistor. Especially if you are either new to Supergiant because you played Hades or like if you've tried out a couple things but just missed on Transistor like. Give it a try. I think it's a really really good game. Easy recommendation for people who like kind of uncovering a story for people who like that turn based tactics aspect and then people who like the Supergiant aesthetic the the music and the art There's a lot here so we. 01:02:25.13 Alex Um, and it's like 7 hours dude that's pretty good. 01:02:29.27 Dave Oh yeah yeah I mean that's just adding to the pitch. That's that's the cherry on top whenever you're trying to like recommend a game to somebody you put out all these like wonderful points and they're like yeah but is that shit 60 hours long no Transistor is under 10 hours and you can get it on sale for like three bucks 01:02:48.34 Dave Like every other month you know so yeah, easy, easy. Ah Alex let's ah, let's kick off housekeeping by talking about Low Five gaming and tell everybody about the show and what they can expect over there. 01:03:00.96 Alex Yeah man, Low Five gaming is ah a podcast ah that I do with my little brother Luke back club but book club style so we pick one game per month we go back and forth on who picks the game sometimes new games at the moment. A lot of times also crossing off a classic from the backlog. 01:03:18.73 Alex Take the month to play that game and then we we convene we talk about it at our Discord then we convene and and talk about our experience and that is in essence what it is so it's a monthly backlog book club you can head to lowfivegaming.com to kind of see all things Low Five gaming and get the pod there. I also write some blog posts from time to time there and I'm cooking on some other content. So check us out. 01:03:37.67 Dave Yeah, absolutely, it's good stuff like we said on that other episode that you guys guessed that obviously you 2 are brothers so you got a good dynamic between the 2 of you. It's always fun to listen and like you said a good mix of stuff like at the time of recording. The most recent episode was Majora's Mask, so one of those old classics is out of the backlog. But before that stuff like jusant which kind of took everybody by storm for about a month or so and um, you know a lot of stuff like that Gris gone back further in the backlog Hades and red dead redemption 2 and. 01:04:01.79 Alex Um, right. 01:04:16.40 Dave All kinds of cool stuff. So. 01:04:17.58 Alex Yeah I think we're the one we're on now. So by the time this comes out it either. We'll be right around publishing or it'll be it'll be close but anyways we're working on um the next one is prince of Persia the lost crown which is fun because the first episode we ever dropped was prince of Persia from 1989 01:04:30.60 Dave Right? Yeah yeah, oh hell yeah, nice, nice. Nice. Yeah yeah, I highly recommend that ah people check out Low Five gaming. Oh it's always a good listen you 2 are a good hang so we'll put links. 01:04:46.83 Alex Ah, thanks man. 01:04:48.16 Dave Yeah we'll put links down in the show notes for everybody to easily find the stuff that Alex and Luke are doing and yeah time to ah, talk about myself for a minute. Thank you for listening up into this point by the way. I would really appreciate it if you left a rating in review if your podcast platform allows it like Apple Podcasts Spotify or podcast addict. You can also join the discord server if you want to come in and talk about Transistor. You want to talk about Supergiants other games or. If. You just want to join a cool community of people. The Discord server is a cool place. There's an invite link down in the show notes. I also have another podcast called a top 3 podcast where we do top 3 lists and we draft weird topics. That's a fun time and then finally. If you want to support the show monetarily you can do that at patreon.com/realdavejackson and oh yeah, this game is on the show partly because it won a ah poll on Patreon I do monthly polls for games to appear on the show and Transistor won that poll I should have shouted that out. Ah, much earlier than this but here we are so thank you to everyone who voted for Transistor and gave us the chance to play it. I love that. 01:06:04.99 Alex Yes, I'm going to echo real quick. They've a fun discord fun patreon, Dave’s putting out really cool content in the Patreon lot of cool stuff. So go check all that stuff out 100% 01:06:13.71 Dave Yeah, thank you man. 01:06:16.85 Alex And yeah, give him that given that rating he's talking about because you know what his puppers will get a treat. 01:06:21.91 Dave That's true. Yeah, if you give a rating on your podcast platform of choice I will give my little miniature schnauzer a blueberry and he loves blueberries So hell yea. 01:06:32.34 Alex That's worth 5 stars right? there. 01:06:36.52 Dave We are going to take a break and when we come back full spoilers begin for Transistor. 01:07:27.78 Dave All right. Alex and I are back in. It's full spoiler time for Transistor and we'll start out with kind of that inciting incident in the game that I was kind of tiptoeing around what was going on so the antagonistic force that we didn't talk about at all in the non spoiler section. Um, not sure that it's a giant spoiler. But there's this group of officials called the Camerata and it's a small group. I think there's 4 of them which was by design. They said that that was part of their plan to keep the group small and the Camerata were trying to make change in Cloudbank because they hated. 01:08:06.40 Dave This constant voting constant change Basically like I think one of the quotes from the camerata is when everything changes nothing changes and you know? Yeah yeah, so like everything in the city basically changes on the whims of. 01:08:14.20 Alex I Think that's their thing, that's their thing that's like. 01:08:24.72 Dave The people in the camerata didn't like that so you kind of uncover their story of how they went about trying to make this change but at the beginning you pick up the people who killed the man with the Transistor that was the Camerata and more specifically. 1 of red's friends named Sybil is part of the camerata and was like a mole to help them get close to red and they yeah yeah, and so they tried to kill Red but the man jumped in front of the attack and kind of saved her and then. 01:09:03.23 Dave I Guess the camerata got spooked and ran away when that happened or something like that and that's what kind of sets off the rest of the game. 01:09:09.14 Alex Yeah, so they would have lost the Transistor at that point which is why this gets a little heady but like the Transistor is controlling or has the ability to control like all of the stuff that's going on in this city right? So to my understanding is when they tried to kill Red with the Transistor like there's a cool cut scene at it's. 01:09:20.41 Dave Yeah. 01:09:28.37 Alex Doesn't happen at the beginning of the game. It's maybe midpoint. Um where you see that scene where they throw the sword and the unknown you know the person who has no name kind of jumps in front of red and takes the sword instead of her. But um, but then from there everybody kind of you. 01:09:46.55 Alex They part ways but red ends up with the Transistor which is a big piece of this story as well. Because ah the is it not at not asher but Royce Royce wants it back. Um, this is this whole deal. 01:09:59.70 Dave Yeah, yeah, they want to get the Transistor back. So that's why they're kind of after Red but it's not like you're. You're not like going through the streets fighting the members of the camerata or something like you're kind of on their heels trying to catch up with them once you figure out that they're. 01:10:10.73 Alex Um, right. 01:10:17.55 Dave Responsible for what's going on and and a cool thing about the Transistor that you learn is that the Transistor is this magic sword that can create stuff like create matter out of nowhere. There's a part later where you use the Transistor to make a bridge and it's kind of like that's. 01:10:18.24 Alex Right. 01:10:37.20 Dave Part of its ultimate power. But if you kill someone with the Transistor. Their soul gets stuck inside of it and so that's why the man's voice is inside of the Transistor and red's voice is also stuck in there for reasons that I'm not super clear on but it's also stuck in there. 01:10:54.40 Alex Yeah, I'm not sure that That's also how you're picking up those traces we mentioned earlier is that it absorbs the trace from the dead Npcs that you find along the way. Um, yeah, super heady. Dude It's cool. That's like another thing about this story though is that they give you just enough pieces. But it's. 01:10:55.75 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:11:12.27 Alex It's also just obscure enough and there's just enough holes where you're kind of left to your own devices. A little bit. 01:11:15.53 Dave Yeah, so like like the early portion of the game. You're kind of just like figuring out what's going on and kind of following the camerata trying to catch up with them and I guess one of like the biggest things that starts happening is. I Forget why this started happening but the voice in the sword starts to get really weak and like staticky and distorted and it's not until you kill one of these like huge process monsters that it actually gets healed. Yeah, the Spine. It's like a ah big. Ah big Snake creature. 01:11:44.54 Alex Right? The spine. 01:11:53.45 Dave That's like. 01:11:53.62 Alex Yeah, it's wild like that tail has like a very sharp end to it and it's huge is like gigantic and it will just like just come out and attack you Um, but it's this. That's another weird thing. They don't really tell you exactly what the connection is but it's like the spine is basically like this. 01:11:56.31 Dave Yeah. 01:12:10.66 Alex From what I what I was able to put together. It's this big. It's like a process but it's almost like a super mutated process like it's gone Beyond like um, you know what you're seeing in the other stuff and that's something that is having an effect on the Transistor itself. 01:12:24.23 Dave Yeah. 01:12:26.16 Alex Which is interesting and I think that's where you get the fluctuations with the voice and everything and it's almost like it changes color too. The sword changes like a red instead of being It's traditional green. It's ah, it's interesting storytelling. 01:12:37.82 Dave Yeah, so um, the cameratas whole thing and I think this is really interesting and it's something that you can completely miss. I Think you can play this whole game and just kind of like. 01:12:49.55 Dave If you click through or like half listen to the dialogue and you don't read anything extra I think you can miss what the whole point of the camerata is and they kind of have a sympathetic side to them I feel like because again they don't like this. 01:13:03.57 Alex In here. 01:13:09.42 Dave Like ultrademoracy in cloudbank they feel like there's no way to make positive permanent change of any kind whether it's evil or you know Noble. You can't do it because people are voting on literally everything every single day. Ah so everything changes too much and I wonder like I don't know if like the people in Cloudbank would be sick of this too like they're like man can the cloud just be the same color two days or the sky just be the same color two days in a row like is that too much to ask for or something. But. 01:13:39.53 Alex Right? Well, it's interesting because they're definitely the baddies. You know where we're meant not to like them. But at the same time. It's one of those instances in storytelling where they set out to do something noble, at least that was what they had in their minds. 01:13:44.58 Dave Is it? Yeah yeah. 01:13:53.70 Dave Yeah. 01:13:56.97 Alex Ah, but then as the story progresses you know? Ah, even they I think realize that they fucked up. 01:14:01.67 Dave Yeah, So what happened was the process which is you know they're the monsters that you're fighting these robots are like this corrupting kind of force. The process was the mechanism that. Things would change in the city. I think it was the mechanism for changing the sky. It's like the program behind it all or something like that. But the camerata tried to control it and then lost control of it and so that's why it's spreading out like this because it broke containment or something. 01:14:26.23 Alex Right. 01:14:39.26 Dave And I think that the camerata trying to use the Transistor for their own means I think that's explained as like why they lost control of the process like the Transistor was keeping them in check somehow I think yeah. 01:14:53.47 Alex Yeah I mean that checks out man like it's. 01:14:59.50 Dave But what I thought was cool about this aside from learning about their motivations and how like you said, like how noble their beginning motivation was because I think that we well I don't know how you feel I think that this is like ah cool. Representation of like yeah everyone loves the idea of democracy but like they took democracy too far in Cloudank I think so when you look at the camerata you're like yeah what their initial goal kind of makes sense. 01:15:24.85 Alex Um, yeah. 01:15:29.98 Alex Yeah, it's definitely supposed to be this uber perfect democracy and that's like I mean it's kind of the trouble with democracy democracy and a lot of our a lot of these institutions in itself is in theory sure this is this is great but in practice is it and I think that's um and I also think that you know we're humans and I mean. This is a video game and these are characters but you know the humans in these characters like they want to control and they're they're a little selfish as well. So like Royce is kind of the main batty at the end and like you know you can tell that he may have had noble intent but he's also. 01:16:03.89 Alex Like that Antenna has also been. You know the water's been poisoned because he obviously also wants a little bit of control. He wants it his way you know so it's not truly democracy at that point. 01:16:08.93 Dave Yeah, right? So it's like the starting state of that hyper democracy that's not working for them. I'm sure there are other people in the city that are like hey again like you know I'm tired of the weather changing. 01:16:27.90 Dave Like this just depending on what people are feeling like every day or something like that. But then they try to grab power and we're not really sure if they were going to use it for good or not because they failed pretty quickly like they lost control pretty quickly. It feels like so. 01:16:42.49 Alex Right? And it's it's a little inconclusive exactly why they targeted red but I you know there is a point that they they had like a short list of the folks that they wanted to Target and I think from what I was able to to gather is like red has a very I mean she's super influent. 01:16:46.14 Dave Ah, but the mechanism. 01:16:54.64 Dave Yeah, well. Um, yeah, yeah. 01:17:01.72 Alex Influential. So I think they were trying to take that power from her and by the the way the sword works I Guess that would maybe like they would take on her influence take it and then maybe I guess well there's the whole point of taking the voice I Guess that's what it is is like taking your voice taking your influence. 01:17:13.52 Dave Yeah, so that's their plan right? like so part of their plan is they're going to try to use the process for their own gain but like their democratic takeover because they want I think they want to win support from the people is. 01:17:32.85 Dave To use these influential people around cloudbank to either use them as supporters or mouthpieces or something or people who would represent you knows a roadblock for them. They would try to remove them basically and integrate them into the Transistor. Ah, which makes the Transistor more powerful every time they do that and then they remove all these people so like I don't know that that part kind of rings true where this political faction wants to use influential people to serve their own gain. It's kind of like that. Right now as we're recording this There's a whole bunch of talk about how the democratic party wants to get Taylor Swift involved in their campaign and it's like I was like oh yeah, it's with yeah so it. Ah yeah, this kind of like fits with that where it's like okay well. 01:18:17.94 Alex Get her involved. She just won a super bowl for them. 01:18:30.44 Dave How do we influence the general population? Well we get the most popular singer and the most popular athlete and local politicians and stuff like that. We get them on our side Somehow whatever it takes like they do evil shit to get people on their side in this game. Um. 01:18:41.42 Alex Right. 01:18:48.64 Dave So some of those people that I wrote down like there is a professional motorcycle racer. There is the person who paints the sky who is ah yeah, so that is Preston the motorcycle racer Farah the sky painter. Ah there's wave 10 again which is a great name for a broadcast personality. There's Red whose music has like great influence on society. There's this guy named Olmarq who's a professional athlete. 01:19:25.67 Dave Um, all people who I think they wanted to win support of but there's also a bunch of npcs who would be like opposition forces that they try to um, remove there's ah, a scientist named Lillian who they viewed as ah, a meddler. There is. A. 01:19:50.48 Dave Detective named henter jaliford or something like that I think that's how they said it um a detective who is investigating the camerata so they wanted to get him off the trail so they took him out. So we have this list of all these influential people for different reasons that the Camerata were trying to deal with and then one by 1 they killed them all. Basically part of their plan also was to find these people who they could like. Easily explain if they disappeared so it's like there's this guy who's like a stunt man and he did this like stunt where he's going to like paraglide into like this dangerous area of town. That's like run by the corporations or something and they're like well he'll just paraglide in here and they'll never see him again and that's easy to explain away stuff like that. So their plan to win influence I thought was really interesting and this is what you learn by reading all of those function descriptions as you go. 01:20:54.57 Alex Yeah, this is like listening to you and looking at your notes Dave. It's fascinating because that is something that I miss in this game by not reading all of the notes on each of the functions. That's such a cool piece of this story just like to see how that's integrated. 01:21:03.75 Dave Yeah. 01:21:11.49 Dave Yeah, yeah, it's cool like I think once I made the commitment to try to dig into it. You know like I play all the Fromsoftware games every time I start a new game. 01:21:11.56 Alex Makes you want to hit that new game plus. 01:21:27.56 Dave I'm like I'm going to read the item descriptions this time I'm going to put that story together and I never fucking do it I never follow through on it. So I started this game with that same kind of idea with like okay I'm going to read these descriptions I'm going to take some notes on who these people are why they're influential. What did the camerata want with them. 01:21:46.63 Dave And it quickly became apparent that number one. It's easy to like to piece them together. Unlike the fromsoftware item descriptions. Um, it's easy to piece them together and it's easy to see immediately like their role in this story. Why is the camerata interested in them. So it was really easy like once I. 01:22:06.39 Dave Started with that to continue with it and most games don't really get me in that mode. You know, like or read, spend the first couple hours reading everything and then I'll be like okay this is all kind of bullshit. It doesn't matter that I'm not reading anymore, but not this game. 01:22:11.57 Alex Right. 01:22:24.43 Alex That's cool and it's cool that they're all like each of those stories is attached to 1 of the functions too. So it's like you know it gives a little bit more agency. 01:22:31.10 Dave Yeah, right? So yeah so again it's like if you read let's say you pick up Cull. You mentioned that as ah, ah an ability you liked and then you really like using it as like 1 of like the. 01:22:42.77 Alex Yep. 01:22:48.20 Dave The attack functions right? like for its basic function. But then you read about it and you're like oh okay, so this is Olmark Olmar is a professional athlete I want to learn more about olmarq but in order to learn more I've got to stop using it as an attack and I got to use it as a passive now. 01:22:49.62 Alex Um, it will eat me. 01:23:07.60 Dave To unlock that other part of Olmark's story and I thought that's really cool. That's a nice way to get you to mix it up if you're invested in this then this is a way to get you to experiment more. 01:23:14.40 Alex Yeah that's another thing that kind of carried over to Hades in a way where you're getting different pieces. Not the exact same way I think this is fascinating the way that they actually integrated into the gameplay but where you go and talk to folks in Hades and you get another piece of their story. It's kind of so. Kind of cool to see that DNA here as well. 01:23:34.92 Dave Yeah, or if if in in Hades you know you you really like learning about ah fucking dionysis or whatever like you're going to pick up his boons whenever you see it because you get to you get to talk with dionysus every time you do that. So. 01:23:42.52 Alex Right. 01:23:48.44 Dave Kind of similar here. Yeah. So Let's get a music break So Eventually, you get on like the trail of the camerata and you kind of all of this is backstory for stuff that happened like before the game. 01:23:55.44 Alex Right hours. 01:24:06.47 Dave We didn't mention this in the non-spoiler part but all the characters are dead when you find them all the npcs it's not until like I don't think it's until you meet Royce at the end that you talk to another living person right. 01:24:19.19 Alex Yeah, didn't think about that. That checks out. I mean you're talking to the Transistor the whole time that you're your buddy or your lover and the Transistor but yet I don't think there's any other. It's just empty. It's an empty city. Yeah. 01:24:26.81 Dave Yeah. Yeah, and like you talk with one of the camerata members asher on the phone for a while or like on like the call or whatever but he's dead by the time you reach him. So yeah. 01:24:42.99 Alex Right? That was nice . It was another story . Really, it had been picking up for me at that point but it was a part of the game I hadn't been paying attention to yet. So I didn't wasn't for sure how far I was and I felt like I was like oh I might be approaching the endgame here. And then I walk into the room thinking I'm gonna fight like ah because this is right after you fight Um, one of the main bosses is it. Is it that big? Um, what do we call that thing earlier a spine. Yeah I Don't think it's that far after the spine but you go in. 01:25:11.60 Dave Like the spine. 01:25:18.83 Alex He went in thinking we're going to fight asher and his buddy and they were just dead already I was like oh all, right? This is not the end game, still a couple more hours ahead of me. 01:25:21.66 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, they do kind of set you up like it's going to be a confrontation but something was happening and they were I think. The asher said that this guy named Grant was sick so he died. Okay, yeah yeah. 01:25:41.73 Alex It seems like he was corrupted by the process. I believe that's what I took from it. It was kind of like messing with his brain, which is another interesting thing. You know we mentioned it there. There's no people throughout the city but you do hit a point in the game where you run into the process. Baddies all have names. Um, whether it's um, woof which is like the little dog thing. It's called something like that. Um, yeah, yeah, totally which is all pretty fun and then you run in this one that it's called a human. 01:26:03.19 Dave Um, yeah, or like the lady or the I think there's one called like a snapshot or paparazzi or something like that. Yeah. 01:26:19.85 Alex Which basically looks like you know it's a human with like there's something weird going on with its head but presumably like the process is infecting the humans in the city as well. 01:26:26.10 Dave Yeah, yeah, and those become a lot more common as you go on because you go through like I think you're going through like you know so parts of the city that haven't been hit super hard by the process but eventually you double back to the place where the game started. 01:26:45.18 Dave And it's like completely overrun by the process. So like you start out in that really you know it's a nice look in a section of the city and then it's just completely white and gross by the time you get back there? Um, so. Royce kind of contacts you and he wants to um, kind of help fix the mistake that they made so you go back. He says that the way to do this is to put the Transistor back into its cradle which will erase the process. But 01:27:22.10 Dave Ah, putting the Transistor in the cradle would mean that you would lose the voice of Red's boyfriend. I don't think we ever said this but like it's they're definitely like partners. Yeah yeah, so he would be gone if you put the ah the Transistor into that cradle. 01:27:33.60 Alex They're lovers for sure. Yep. 01:27:40.45 Dave Um, because Souls get trapped inside there and they can't get out ever again and there's a ah touching moment where like you know they kind of say goodbye he tells red that he loves her as she puts the sword back in there. 01:27:56.43 Alex No, that was cool and the tension that's another you know another like you know nod to the team that made this game into the game itself like there's some real tension in the way that it's laid out and just the dialogue and everything where. You know you kind of feel like you're watching Red make some decisions you know you're guiding her along the way Obviously, but um, you know this is some isn't' some pretty heavy stuff she's got to make decisions on you know is gonna save her. You know her soulmate or partner or whatever and is she gonna save the City. You know what? So what? What is she going to do? 01:28:15.78 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:28:28.63 Dave Yeah, and I guess like when you make the decision to put the Transistor back in there. You're not really clear on what's going to Happen. You're just kind of trusting that it will destroy the process and it does but then things kind of get weird after that. So. They've been mentioning this place called the country which you don't know what this is quite yet. But after putting this in the Transistor. Um or putting the Transistor in the cradle and there's ah one of those songs with the vocals in it during that part. Um, you're out in the country with royce. 01:29:08.45 Dave And he has a Transistor also and he this feels like a kind of a game contrivance but like he's like oh we both have a Transistor but only one of them can take us back to the city or something like there could only be 1 or some shit so you have to fight him. 01:29:27.44 Dave But it's a cool fight because he can do like the pause and issue commands shit that you can do too. It's the only time you fight someone like that. 01:29:29.24 Alex Yes, it was a weird flip of you know is weird flip the script dude because you do get used to. You know that turn based combat and like kind of planning everything out, but you know when you get an idea of what all the baddies do kind of what they're you know what to expect. And then to have Royce who essentially has all the exact same powers as red or or your character or yourself you know and then to try and think about like okay like I need to rethink about how this is going to work like I need to you know I need to stop and I personally had to be way more defensive like I usually didn't. 01:30:06.48 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 01:30:07.39 Alex I usually didn't use my time and you know that little bar that allows you to do what you can take care of within the pause section to run away from stuff I would just run in real time but against Royce like I had to be a lot more strategic about my defense. Um. 01:30:22.52 Dave Yeah, it felt a kind of dirty like I was being violated in a way where it's like you can't, you can't pause it. You can't do that to me. Um, and it was tough. He he it's and it's not a I think it's like a best of 5 fight or something like that like. 01:30:25.37 Alex Yeah, right? This is gold. 01:30:38.57 Alex See yeah I was a little I'm a little confused and exactly how that worked for you I mean it's a regular supper for him. You got to bring down his health bar at least 5 times I think it's calls it like. 01:30:40.57 Dave It's not just like one health bar for each person. 01:30:53.51 Alex I think it states it's 3 rounds but 2 of the rounds have two full health bars or something like that. So I don't know. 01:30:56.86 Dave Something like that. But you have to take him down multiple times so it was fun. It was a fun kind of like it's a fun way. A fun creative final boss will say because this is the final boss and. 01:31:03.29 Alex Definitely. 01:31:12.91 Alex Definitely mm. 01:31:15.44 Dave Up until then the bosses had all been just like a really big process robot or um in the case of the spine that was ah a unique kind of thing but then they really flip the script on you with Royce being able to posit so good. A good challenge like. 01:31:30.74 Alex It's elderly. 01:31:32.88 Dave It's a way for you to test out all that strategy that you've learned against someone who can do the same shit that you can. I liked it. 01:31:43.96 Alex I think um, the only other human but I think Sybil the first boss is someone she likes. You find her and then she likes the process takes her over immediately. I think she might already be dead actually and then she gets taken into the process. Um. 01:31:57.40 Alex But yeah, as far as living as a human or whatever, he's definitely the most powerful boss that you run into and the smartest. 01:32:03.94 Dave Yeah, for Sure. So Once you kill him you go back to the city with the Transistor and Red has her voice back and you have this mechanic where you can sing to kind of heal parts of the city and Red does that a couple of times. But. She gets back to the point where the dead body was and the body is like. 01:32:25.13 Alex Yeah, that was that part of life so that was the thing. So like the reason that Royce and to my understanding wanted to well 1 he wants to live but 2 like getting out of the cradle with a Transistor would give them the opportunity to. 01:32:43.78 Dave Yeah, yeah, right. 01:32:44.42 Alex Remake the whole city. It's basically like it's a blank slate. So as she's singing. She's singing but as a Transistor she's able to basically rebuild the city any way she wants. Um, so that brings us to you know? So that's what she's doing there to my understanding. She's like I think she's singing. 01:33:00.72 Alex Um, because she's got her voice back but then she's using the Transistor to kind of rebuild the city and then she comes to a crossroads. 01:33:06.91 Dave Yeah, yeah, um, she gets back to the part where the boyfriend the the unnamed guy his body's there, but it's like completely taken over by the process and she I think she kind of heals that like kind of puts it back to normal. 01:33:24.63 Dave But then ah like you kind of think like okay, we're going to go. We're going to fix everything in the city but red kind of sits down next to the body and then she sends the Transistor out and turns around to face her and the guy's voice gets really desperate as everyone realizes what's about to happen. Ah, he's like the voice acting here like he can hear the desperation as he's like Red. No and ah yeah, she kills herself with the Transistors so that she can join him inside of it and live there forever with him and this is where that song paper Boats plays where the. 01:34:04.25 Dave Um, the lyrics are talking about like the big chorus in the song is I will always find you like it's written in the stars so that kind of made me think about this ending like red didn't fix the City. She just. Went to go be with the man that she loves and it it's kind of yeah ah, kind of made me think like red basically spurned any like responsibility that you think she might have had to to fix things she was like no fuck that I don't. 01:34:22.58 Alex Love man It always wins. 01:34:40.90 Dave Apparently she was like I don't care about the city more than I care about him So I'm out. 01:34:44.98 Alex Right? Yeah, that's ah, that's one of the fun things about this story man like that particular scene like it was you know coming off of the final baddie the final boss and then you I kind of had like okay like she's just gonna fix a city like that's what makes sense. Um, but then for her to make that choice I was like. 01:34:59.64 Dave Um, yeah. 01:35:02.86 Alex I was like oh shit like no way and then and then you like and then you like you after you know it's only 7 hours but like that's 7 hours where I'm like hanging out with red control and red and I'm like damn off or not but but not off or not she did it for love man she did in the. 01:35:05.45 Dave Um, yeah. 01:35:14.80 Dave Right? right. 01:35:19.27 Alex And then they so like ah presumably they get to be together and love in the Transistor for all of eternity which is poetic but um and also it's hard to say like I don't really know entirely What's going on with the lore and everything with the city itself like it. You know from the scene that we saw like that. 01:35:22.62 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah for sure. 01:35:37.78 Alex People are gone so like she may be able to rebuild the city but I don't know if people would come back Anyways I'm not sure how that would work so that may play into her decision a little bit but I think that it's powerful. It was a very powerful scene dude and it was fun. It was like it was cool too. 01:35:42.81 Dave Right. 01:35:54.22 Alex Yeah I did not, I did not see that coming. 01:35:55.40 Dave Yeah I think that part of it is because I think it's natural for people playing the game to assume that red is taking on the quest of saving the city once because it is early in the game. She's. 01:36:07.77 Alex Listen. 01:36:12.77 Dave Leaving on the motorcycle and then she turns around and goes back into the city and so you think I think you just assume because you play video games or something that you're like oh she's going to save. She's going to beat the process. She's going to save the city but she never stated that that was her goal. The. 01:36:25.73 Alex Right. 01:36:31.66 Dave Guy Never like said oh I see what you're doing here like of course, let's go take the fight to them. That's what we do. We're going to be the Heroes like nobody ever says that you just kind of assume it because you play video games and you know how stuff works but that was never the point. 01:36:42.44 Alex And I can't remember right. I can't remember the exact dialogue but the and the unknown lover he mentions a couple times throughout like that they you know before she takes that turn the whole idea is like they're going to skip top. They're going to skip down. 01:36:56.24 Dave Yeah, yeah, you're going to escape. Yeah. 01:36:59.85 Alex And get out of this whole thing and it's interesting that you know clearly after so you know getting to the end game. It's like that decision to take that left even though he wanted to keep going out of town that decision to go back I Guess like you're saying you presume that. Ah, it is to save the city but truly she's trying to save her relationship. 01:37:16.61 Dave Yeah she's trying to be reunited with him in a more natural way like maybe she decided after that like you know that first half hour that first hour whatever that like. Her having her body and him being inside the sword was not like the state that she wanted to continue with this. So yeah. 01:37:38.35 Alex Right? Super interesting though because he was by the end of the game. Um, you know the Transistor fellow is hard term not having a name but anyways, he ah you know he becomes complacent with like he's like he's like down for it. He's like you know what? I'll just be your companion like I'll continue to. 01:37:44.82 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:37:54.56 Alex To live in this sore deal and we can still be together this way and she's like yeah, not not quite like that we'll still be together but not like that. 01:37:57.79 Dave Yeah, yeah, so it turns out this was never really a story about saving the city. I think that all the things that happened like defeating the process and finding the camerata and stuff like that was just. Stuff in the middle like stuff that was in the way of the ultimate goal rather than like red having some noble purpose to to save the city so that was cool Now you mentioned trying to figure out like what is the deal with the city. 01:38:17.21 Alex Right. 01:38:33.72 Dave And so did you have any indication or thought that this was not just people in a future setting like real people. You know. 01:38:46.52 Alex I Did some digging and I've seen some discourse on the internet that had some theories that like maybe it's ah you know this is a digital world to begin with and like the country is leaving that area but I'm not sold on that idea I don't know what you are thinking. 01:38:53.58 Dave Um, yeah. 01:38:57.43 Dave So definitely. The first time I played it I thought that this was just like regular real people in a future city and then there's magic. There's a magic sword like I can suspend disbelief and accept that there's a magic sword. Of course. 01:39:15.63 Alex That's more or less where I was at on my playthrough to be to be honest, like with a little bit deeper than that. But more or less that. 01:39:15.73 Dave Ah, yeah, yeah, so then there's just a lot of stuff like the way things are coded in the game like the way things are named and the way things work. 01:39:28.55 Alex And gloom. 01:39:33.40 Dave Would lead you to believe that this could be a digital space like the process is like a cancerous program like a virus or something like that. Um all of the functions. 01:39:47.26 Dave Have those names but we didn't say like it will say like crash and then it will have like parentheses afterwards like you know a coding language would have or something like that. Um, and I thought that the country was like a euphemism for programs. They get deleted kind of like how parents would tell their kids that they're. 01:39:50.81 Alex Um, yep. 01:40:02.93 Alex Okay, sure. 01:40:07.22 Dave Their pet went out to live on a farm or something like that. Um, so I heard about the theory that this is all a digital world and that got me thinking that maybe this is like a digital heaven or something like that or just a um. 01:40:09.91 Alex Ah, right. 01:40:26.36 Dave I Don't want to say you know other stories where consciousness gets digitized and then goes to live in like this digital world or something and that Cloudbank is something like that and that would explain why it's set up as this utopia or something because if someone created it they would want to make it to be. Ah, wonderful. Beautiful place to live where your choices matter and stuff like that, like if there's going to be a government in Heaven. It might as well be something where you have a voice you know. 01:40:55.45 Alex Right? There's ah the part where asher and is a grant asher and grant like so they take their own lives and there's the unknown Transistor fella says something about that being selfish I Want to say. 01:41:12.32 Alex Um, but that particular piece is what threw me off to like because it makes sense and I love and then definitely 100% like it's so very interesting. How like there's a different coding language thrown in throughout. So like. I Can't tell if that's just because it's like this supposed to be this futuristic world. That's very integrated into like a digital system or if it has these different planes of existence. It's hard to say and it's all speculation like I think that's you know it's for us to decide. But I think that was the weird part I Guess for me was like the. 01:41:35.17 Dave Right. 01:41:48.29 Alex His comment about them being selfish about leaving the place that would theoretically in this case, be like heaven or the afterlife to go back to the normal world that that part just like threw me off. 01:42:01.68 Dave Oh yeah I hadn't even considered that they could go to a non-digital space that would be. 01:42:10.90 Alex Right? because it does end with um you know the 2 lovers in like next to a barn in like a field you know and it looks more well, it looks like the country but it also looks more real world esque you know. 01:42:21.31 Dave Yeah I Wonder if the country is inside the Transistor like you know, red and her lover are now both inside of the Transistor and. 01:42:25.00 Alex Could be could be. 01:42:36.59 Dave I Think the country was kind of explained as a place where like you know people could go so it could just be like a recreation inside the Transistor. So like if Cloudbank is a digital world or a digital heaven or something like that. 01:42:44.17 Alex Right. 01:42:56.54 Dave Inside The Transistor is a digital space inside of a digital space and you keep going down like levels. You know. 01:43:03.10 Alex Yeah, yeah, yeah until you get to until you get to hell and you have to fight your way out as Zagreus 01:43:09.52 Dave That's true. Yeah, exactly so that was ah cool like a cool theory to just kind of like. Take as okay, a possibility and then see how all of this stuff fits in and it was someone. 01:43:22.38 Alex Right? I think that's what's cool about the story itself though I think a lot of some really successful stories leave that openness you know like we don't one a hundred percent like because I'm not anti that angle I think there's a lot of stuff that lines up for that. Um. So I think it's cool that we can. We can speculate and kind of think about it like well is that what the deal is um because we can't be sure. 01:43:44.30 Dave Yeah, and I think I want to shout out I think it was people in the Discord Server pie boy and artful scruff who kind of pose this as a possibility and just kind of like. But not saying like this is what's going On. It was like hey did you consider like there's this theory and then yeah, everything in the game fits really well into this all being some kind of digital space. But then you know. 01:44:00.90 Alex Right. 01:44:14.93 Dave Could just also be a high-tech place with magic. That's also fine with me . I can handle that too, so cool. It's cool. Um, and the fact that the game gives you so little like direct. 01:44:29.90 Dave This is what Cloudbank is, this is how Cloudbank was built like they don't tell you any of that. So you're left you can fill in all those pieces. That's one of my favorite types of stories where they give you enough but they don't give you everything. So. 01:44:41.91 Alex Right. 01:44:53.46 Dave This has been a good time. I appreciate you taking the time as always to come on and chat about this game with me. Always fun. 01:45:07.24 Alex Hell yeah man, Thanks for having me back. It's honestly a treat. Dude you do ah you put out some awesome content I Love your show. Both shows are fun and is this really.. It's fun to talk about this game with you and as I edit my podcast I'm excited. That you get to edit this one. But 01:45:24.30 Dave Oh yeah, Absolutely yeah, always a good time. But you know I record these so far in advance that um, by the time I get to editing this I will have forgotten most of what we say So I get to listen back to the conversation and relive it one more time. So yeah. Thank you again? Man Thanks for the kind words Thanks for the conversation as always.. It's always a pleasure and thank you everybody for listening. I Appreciate you sticking it out to the end as always and if you want to come in again if you want to talk about those theories about what's actually going on in Cloudbank. 01:45:46.17 Alex Hell yeah man. 01:46:00.12 Dave What the fuck is the Transistor come into the Discord server and chat about it with us I'm looking forward to those discussions. So thank you once again for everybody who listened all the way to the end and tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog.