Just realized how long it’s been since I’ve written on here. I figure I should probably remedy that situation, hence this post.
Life has taken a turn for the busy. Not really sure why exactly, but I’ve found myself with less day-to-day free time than in months passed. I haven’t been writing nearly as regularly as I’d prefer, and that’s a situation I need to remedy. But more on that later.
I’ve been slogging through Grounded Mode of the Last of Us. Actually, slogging might be the wrong word for it. Slogging implies it’s something I’m doing begrudgingly. In actuality, I’ve been enjoying Grounded Mode immensely. Having played through TLOU about seven or eight times, I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with the AI and the patterns they operate within. Grounded Mode throws a wrench in the works of all of that. Sure, while the enemies haven’t aggro’d on you their patterns haven’t changed, but once they’re aware of your presence, things get hairy really quick. It’s changed the way I play. The spaced-out checkpoints make for some frustrating deaths, especially when you die and lose 25 minutes of work. I was stuck in the coal mine part of winter, in the final room with David, for quite some time. I honestly wasn’t sure how it would be possible. But I got through. I’m still in the winter section, and should be wrapping it up in the next week or so.
Something got in the way of completing it though. This week, Transistor came out. If any of you are familiar with the game Bastion, it’s made by Supergiant Games, and this is their first game since.
I enjoyed Bastion while I played it, but the ending just absolutely stuck with me for a long time after finishing it. In addition to a great narrative, it had some of the best music I’ve heard in a video game before. I’m happy to say that Transistor follows suit. The storyline was very affecting, and the music… oh, the music…
I completed the game this morning, and I can confidently say the ending is going to stick with me for a long time. I don’t want to spoil anything so I’m not going to say anything about it, but it’s excellent. Really, it is.
One thing I really liked about the game, and something that’s made me think a lot about the novel, is how heavily it relied on the intelligence of the player. When I say it doesn’t hold your hand at all, I mean it. You are thrown into the game with no context or explanation of why things are the way they are. Now, this isn’t a novel concept (pun!) BioShock did this. My novel actually does this, as well. But Transistor takes it a step further. It gives you extremely rudimentary instruction as to how the combat system works. The rest of it is up to the player to figure out through experimentation and iteration.
They’re putting a lot of faith in, and giving a lot of (perhaps undue) credit to, you, the player, to be able to piece things together. I love the fact that they did this. I can see how it might turn some people off to the game. Not everyone has the strange brain that loves to poke and prod things to see how they work, or to peel back little obscure pockets of information to claim a scrap of knowledge to add to the back story.
There’s so little traditional exposition in Transistor that, for a great chunk of the game, it’s hard to understand what’s going on in Cloudbank, the futuristic sci-fi city that is painted with a delightful mashup of cyberpunk and art nouveau. Its modes of filling in back story is incredibly unique. Information can be gathered in snippets from OVC Terminals, kiosks where the populace of Cloudbank can gather and vote on a wide variety of (seemingly trivial) issues, to details embedded in the files of Functions you pick up that serve as your attacks in the game. I’ve never heard of a game filling in plot in such a way, and I thought it was delightfully original, if not a bit confusing at first. Obviously, they don’t explain why there’s an identity attached to every Function you pick up. You have to figure that out for yourself. They tell you just enough information that you can put the story together, but no more. I love it.
These things have made me rethink some things pertaining to the novel. I feel compelled to go back and reread, seeking out sections that I feel are overly expository and reworking them in a way that lets the reader piece things together rather than having me spell it out for them. It’s going to be a bit tricky to balance this, as Declan is writing a historical account of the whole situation that gave rise to the current world. But I think I can do better.
That’s something I love about great stories. They make you rethink the way you look at the world. And then there’s that ending. I need – NEED – to come up with something that poignant. It was damn beautiful.
Well, that’s pretty much all for now. I’ll try to be more regular with this, but it would be imprudent to make that a promise. So, I’ll see you when I see you.
–J.
The Hammer of Thor 