(Note: This article contains spoilers for Pyre, Transistor, and Bastion.) 

2017 is a year that has made me want to escape, preferably to a part of the wilderness where no one would show me a newspaper or a tweet ever again. Since I get cold easily and I’m not as great at hunting live animals as Far Cry would have me believe, I opted for another source of escapism: videogames. In these often scary times, Supergiant's games Pyre, Transistor, and Bastion helped me stay sane.

Pyre drew me in with its candy-colored visuals and mustachioed dog, but just like Supergiant's previous games, it explores the very questions I was trying to ignore—how to bridge the differences in opinion that threaten our peaceful lives together, where the desire for drastic change comes from, and how to act in a time when the threat of war gets casually thrown around every other day.

Freedom and faith 

Mechanically, Pyre is a sports game. In its world of exiles trapped in limbo, you direct a lovable and diverse team of misfits through 'rites', which are athletic competitions in which you fling an orb into the opposing team’s pyre. Winning rites eventually means one of your team is freed from exile. If you lose, one of your opponents goes free instead. Either outcome is valid, which releases you from the pressure of competition entirely if you let it. I could just throw a mystic basketball around a court for a few blissful hours.

The most frightening antagonists are the ones we can relate to in some way

Once invested in the world and its inhabitants, I got to know an imperfect society both from the perspective of those who still lived in it and those who do not. Exile in Pyre is their one-stop solution for a variety of crimes, and the reason for this harsh punishment lies in a divine prophecy that might be all based on a misunderstanding. Questioning what your characters previously took for granted can end in your team being instrumental in nothing short of a revolution. How you finish the game, even whether or not you win, is not as important to its makers as giving you something to think about.  

Supergiant writer and designer Greg Kasavin sums it up: "Pyre’s story is an exploration of the relationship between freedom and faith, and what freedom and faith mean and entail," adding that the role these forces play in the lives of many people applies in the real world across countries and cultural boundaries.

In Pyre, your role in events is passive. You can't send yourself home. Instead you play for others, and have the inexplicably strong feeling of cheering someone on from the sidelines. It’s an empathy that seems to largely be missing in those marching the streets with tiki torches, demanding solutions that benefit themselves first and others never. The crisis of faith at the centre of Pyre is also a very modern concern. Changing a belief you have held onto for a long time, religious or not, can be difficult. 

The society in Pyre seemingly works, for the most part. Many of the game’s exiles want to return to it, but that doesn’t mean it is always fair and wouldn’t benefit from diversity. Exile makes everyone outcasts, and it’s from this new position of equality that they can attempt to overhaul the system if they keep working together, challenging previously established conventions.

It's important to Kasavin to not create black-and-white stories with clearly defined villains. "I think characters are far more interesting and believable if there's something about them that you can understand or relate to," he says. "At the least, you should be able to understand why they've made the choices that they've made, even if they've made poor choices. The most frightening antagonists are the ones we can relate to in some way, and see that whatever unconscionable choices they've made may have been well-intentioned somewhere down the line."

The Process

Supergiant’s 2014 game Transistor shows this best. The virtual metropolis of Cloudbank where it's set is being slowly eaten away by a virus called the Process, and it’s implied the Process was previously used to repair and alter parts of the city by its creators and civil servants—a tool made with good intentions taken too far.

I think it's important for the story to invite the player to be introspective about it

A group of such people called the Camerata feel their well-intentioned solutions going unappreciated, which leads them to drastic actions that pose a threat to the city's inhabitants. Even though they are established as antagonists, like all the characters you meet the Camerata share a strong identification with their home. It's only fear that separates you.

Transistor’s playable character, Red, is a popular singer and a muse to many. I believe the choice of occupation is deliberate. In our own "post-facts" era, faced with the fear of losing a national identity to globalization, many have started looking to public figures and national icons to help us form our opinions. But at the very beginning of Transistor, Red is silenced. She's the only one listening in a world where everybody seems to be talking.

Unlike Pyre’s team of magic basketball players, Red ultimately chooses not to try and save her home, overwhelmed by the losses she has endured. Some players have criticized this finale, but as unaccustomed to sad endings as we still are in videogames, I think this shows it‘s important to be realistic about what a sole person can accomplish and how much power we give an individual. While in Pyre you are part of a larger circle working to achieve change that includes everyone, Red is one person with the responsibility for many. Her position is not unlike that of the Camerata, who chose to destroy Cloudbank in the first place. 

Build that wall

The predicament of the Kid, the protagonist of Supergiant’s first game Bastion, is similar again. In Bastion you get to be a kind of cowboy, saddled (sorry) with the responsibility of rebuilding his world after a catastrophe wipes it out. Just like Red, the Kid has to question whether his world is worth saving. He begins this task before he knows the catastrophic event, called the Calamity, was caused by his own country and meant to end a war over territory with their neighbors.

When I ask Kasavin why despite this you don't spend most of Bastion fighting real people, he tells me it’s always important not to trivialize violence. "It's not an accident that death is not a subject taken lightly in any of our games," he explains. "It's not something I'm comfortable making light of, and if one of our games is going to have a lot of killing in it, as in Bastion, then I think it's important for the story to invite the player to be introspective about it."

How do you act when you know it was your own country that did unspeakable things to win a conflict? Bastion explores the motivations of the people caught up in this and even suggest the monsters you fight as you try to restore order may be trying to stop you to ensure past mistakes aren't repeated. In the final moments of Bastion, you can choose to turn back time or to learn from those mistakes. Both decisions will affect those around you.

Supergiant’s three games all helped me consider the role of the individual and our relationships with each other in different ways. They made me see how hard it can be to challenge your own perceptions and how this can only work if we try to stay open-minded. They made me see how the wrong decision can seem like the right thing to do and how easy running from consequences rather than accepting them can look. 

Most of all, in Supergiant's games every decision has its origin and reason. If we try to listen more, even if it’s to a story a videogame tells us rather than the next newspaper horror story, that can motivate us to try to find ways we as individuals can deal with what’s happening around us. In a time where "be nice to each other" sounds like terrible advice, this team of game makers keep unflinchingly repeating just that. 

And if that’s too heavy for you, it’s also fine just to throw a mystic basketball around a court for a while.

Transistor was a gorgeous game. I spent most of my time wandering around the strange futuristic world, allowing protagonist Red to sing along to the strange soundtrack. Occasionally I'd take a break to kill whatever needed to be killed, but whenever a chance presented itself to hear Red sing, I'd take it.

So I'm happy to see that it's done quite well for studio Supergiant Games. According to a post on the studio's website the game has shifted over 600,000 units across Steam and PSN. Not only that, but since its launch last year the isometric RPG has sold at a more rapid rate than the studio's other hit, Bastion. 

Interestingly, the rate at which Bastion sold increased over time, with the studio reporting that the majority of sales happened "many months" after the game first released. It goes to show that launching a game with a huge marketing push is sometimes less valuable than word of mouth. As of now, the game has sold over 3 million copies.

Our Wes Fenlon liked Transistor when it launched last May, writing that "a brilliant and rewarding combat system propels a story that never becomes as interesting as it seemingly should."

It's been a while, hasn't it? Evan, Tyler, Cory, and Wes finally return to the podcast studio to discuss the many games they've been playing since our last episode: Watch Dogs, Transistor, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, The Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead, Hearthstone, and more. Plus, we've all played Turtle Rock's upcoming asymmetrical shooter, Evolve, and have a lot to say about it read Evan's most recent hands-on impressions, too.

But first, join us for PC Gamer Podcast #377 We're Back!

Have a question, comment, complaint, or observation? Send an MP3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com or call us toll-free at 877-404-1337 x724.

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Follow us on Twitter:

@ELahti (Evan Lahti)
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Podcast theme by Ben Prunty.

Ed. note: The full title of this episode is, of course, "We're Back! A PC Gamosaur's Story." -Tyler

Supergiant's first game, Bastion, drew much love for its space-cowboy score that fit perfectly with its fantasy world. The studio's sophomore work, Transistor, stages a gorgeous cyber reality accompanied by equally fitting electro-ambience from returning composer Darren Korb. And because Supergiant felt like being nice, the entirety of the game's music is up on Spotify for free listening.

Korb's expertise at combining heavy sampling with digital beats and guitars soaked in reverb effects weaves an auditory tale as strongly as the relationship between Red and the mysterious, talking Transistor greatsword. It's easy to feel as if you're lounging in a smokey cantina off some alleyway in Cloudbank, a no-name band plucking away at its synthesizers and guitars in a shadowy corner as you swirl your drink and contemplate the dying city around you.

Treat your eardrums to some sampled tracks below, or load up Spotify for the full album. Feeling generous? Send Supergiant some money by buying the digital or CD versions of the soundtrack for $10/ 6 and $15/ 9 respectively. Once you're in that cyberpunk funk, check out our review from Wes.

Transistor begins with a woman, a dead body, a talking sword, and a dying city. Red is a singer with no voice, trapped in a sprawling digital metropolis being erased by white robot programs called the Process. Byte by byte, block by block, Cloudbank is becoming nothingness in the shape of a city. But Red has the Transistor, the mysterious sword she pulled out of the dead body at her feet. Red is the hero, but the Transistor plays both narrator and star. Eight hours after grasping that sword, I reached the end of Red's journey in love with the Transistor's deeply nuanced combat abilities and disappointed that the world around her felt so shallow by comparison.

Like Bastion, Supergiant's first game, Transistor is an action RPG set in a dying world, with a narrator keeping you company as you play. The narration works just as well as it did in Bastion (and comes from the same voice actor), lending emotion to a stoic silent protagonist and offering insight and context about the world. The narrator also does most of the expository heavy lifting, musing about the Camerata, the shadowy organization behind the destructive Process. As he talks, Red walks through linear environments, stopping every couple minutes for a battle that will be over in two or three minutes.
Cybertactics
Supergiant leans more heavily on the RPG half of its formula than it did with Bastion, as the Transistor can freeze time and initiate a planning mode called Turn() for queuing abilities called functions digital souls absorbed by the Transistor against the Process. Walking around the map and queuing abilities fill up an action bar, and more powerful abilities eat up more space on the bar. Positioning and planning the order of attacks is vital. Most abilities can hit multiple enemies when aimed by holding down a button and choosing an angle of attack. Crucially, any ability even one that would normally eat up half the action bar can close out the turn queue, even if the bar is nearly full. I learned to save my heaviest hits for last.

After committing to a sequence of attacks, the world snaps back into action and enemies move in slow-mo as Red attacks in real time. There's a great cadence to combat. I'll sometimes spend a full minute planning the most efficient turn, then watch Red execute four Process in as many seconds. The reward for mastery is a quick, satisfying victory.



Transistor's hybrid of real-time and turn-based combat is infinitely malleable thanks to the sword's functions. All 16 functions can be used as active abilities stuns, ranged line attacks, explosive AOEs, cloaking fields, dodges or as upgrades that augment the effects of other functions. Early in the game, I upgraded the slow-but-powerful Breach function with Jaunt, which made the attack trigger instantly and let me use it while my meter was recharging. Later I built my kit around Red's first function, Crash, which makes enemies vulnerable, and Cull, a devastatingly powerful knock-up attack that costs a huge chunk of the turn meter. But that didn't matter, since I could take down even the toughest Process in one turn.

As if there weren't enough active and upgrade combinations, all 16 functions have another effect when equipped in a passive slot. As an active function, Help summons an AI companion to assist in battle. Equip it as a passive, and it offers a 25% chance to become a SuperUser when triggering a turn, which grants unlimited movement range and a devastating one-hit-kill attack. Purge, a damage-over-time active, becomes an automatic counterattack equipped as a passive. My favorite passive is Bounce, which gave Red a lifesaving damage shield. But there's a trade-off: Bounce is also a great attack, as its bullets ricochet from enemy to enemy.

Transistor is built to be played with a controller, as each function is mapped to a face button and Turn() is controlled with the triggers. The default mouse/keyboard controls are a little clunky pressing 1-4 will highlight a function, and right mouse button triggers it but an alternate option will fire off the function instead of highlighting it. The keys can also be remapped, and Transistor has the most impressive on-the-fly UI switching I've ever seen for controls. Touch the keyboard or mouse, and all the in-game UI elements will show PC controls. Touch the controller, and they'll automatically switch to controller prompts. It's one of those little touches that's so slick, you wonder why it's not in every game.



There are thousands of combinations that can fill those four active slots, and the system opens up even more in Transistor's New Game+ mode. I kept playing after completing the story to get more of the combat. Combining functions is strategically rewarding, and there's a fun, exciting tension in triggering a turn and then dodging the remaining Process as it recharges. Combat is on the easy side, though I only died twice throughout the game, and I played at least half of it with a combination of "limiters" equipped.

Limiters unlock throughout the game and make the Process spawn in greater numbers or hit harder or gain protective shields. Fighting with limiters engaged earns Red more experience. I could've made Transistor even tougher, but I enjoyed the balance I found with three out of 10 limiters equipped. I never want to use the limiter that reduces my memory pool, for example, because then I couldn't have as much fun combining functions.

With three limiters engaged, I did bottom out my health bar in some of Transistor's more intense fights. But that's not a death sentence it overloads and disables an active function, restores your health, and lets you fight on. This led to some of my favorite battles, as I suddenly had to figure out how to finish off the Process with my go-to damage abilities disabled. I finished one battle with a single active function left. When they're all gone, it's lights out.

While Transistor's combat only gets more fun in New Game+, I also rolled into a second playthrough with the forlorn hope that there was more to Transistor's story than I'd gotten the first time around. Unfortunately, there wasn't.




Questions unanswered
The city of Cloudbank is stunning, a lusciously detailed, hand-drawn cyberpunk future built atop the memory of a red-gold art deco past. As the Process consume it, streets awash in vivid green and red and purple lighting fade to austere white. Cloundbank's end state will be like the Construct in The Matrix: endless nothing, ready to be overwritten.

At 1080p and 1440p I never saw Transistor's framerate dip from a smooth 60 fps. It was rock solid while exploring or fighting a dozen Process at once, even with neon particle effects overwhelming the screen. The framerate did struggle at 4320x2560 on the Large Pixel Collider, a resolution it clearly wasn't optimized for. Though the game was designed for 1080p, it looked great at 4K and at 1440p. Zooming in on 4K screenshots, I can see the signs of upscaled 2D art, but from normal sitting distance the game was unfailingly beautiful.

Exploring the empty streets of Cloudbank had me as entranced as the first time I stepped foot into Bioshock's Rapture. Supergiant's 2D art is that compelling, and the city's blend of sci-fi and classic architecture promises a fascinating backstory. I was still waiting for that backstory when the game ended.

There's this feeling I get when I'm dropped into a new fictional world like Transistor's in media res. It starts as an inkling of excitement. This imaginary world was established long before I got here. Events have been set in motion, and I'm playing catchup. What makes this world tick? How long has it been here? I want to know.



I start playing like an archaeologist, scouring the corners of a game world to find out more about this place and its characters. I start reading more closely, paying attention to character bios and posters and signs to piece the world together. I get more excited as I approach the payoff that moment when the worldbuilding clicks, when I come across the charred remains of the poor soul whose audio diaries I've been listening to in Bioshock, or read a passage of William Gibson's cyberpunk novel Neuromancer so evocative that I can see cyberspace clearly in my mind. This is the moment when I'm completely absorbed, and I know this world is complex and vital and alive beyond the narrow pathway of the specific story it has to tell.

Transistor never has that payoff. I thought the narrator's cryptic references to Cloudbank's past were building up to a moment that would do the city justice, but that moment just never comes. I hoped that I would encounter the people of Cloudbank and learn their stories, but after battling the Process from empty environment to empty environment, that hope shrank. I hoped sidequests or puzzles would feed me clues, but only a handful of terminals around Cloudbank offer cursory insight into the city's culture.

Like Bastion, Transistor is focused on a hero and a narrator traversing the ruins of their world. But Bastion had a hub point to return to where more characters eventually gathered. As the mystery of Bastion unfolded, it tied the fates of its characters to the fate of its world. It was that world's epilogue. Red's story, by contrast, feels like a sliver of what is interesting and compelling about the city of Cloudbank. Transistor is disappointingly linear in a city that begs for exploration.

The story Transistor does tell is dished out in tantalizing morsels, and I had to spend some time reflecting on the ending to decide what happened. Perhaps because of that vagueness, Transistor's emotional climax didn't hit me like Bastion's did. Supergiant's games are, in that sense, mirror images the first with shallower combat but a powerfully told story, the second with deep, tactical battles but a story that doesn t fulfill the promise of its world. Then again, that promise lives on even after the credits roll. I hope Supergiant isn't done with the world of Transistor, because there's so much more I want to know.

Consider this your official notice to get pumped for Transistor s imminent release. Even if you didn t play Bastion, every little bit we ve seen of Supergiant Games sophomore effort so far has looked excellent recognizably from the same studio, but different enough to carry its own surprises. The recently released launch trailer gives us few new details about the game, and it's looking better than ever.

With its red-haired singer heroine and her talking sword companion (voiced by Bastion s narrator Logan Cunningham), Transistor always gave off a futuristic noir vibe. This newest trailer leans in that direction even more, setting up the plot with a mysterious crime, and four problems, bad guys that we can assume you ll take on throughout the game.

The gameplay footage also shows off the game s Turn mechanic, which stops combat and transforms it into a semi-turn-based game. According Cassandra s hand-on time with the game at PAX East, it s one of the main differentiators between Transistor and Bastion.

Transistor launches on Steam May 20, and we'll have a review posted then.