From what I can gather (and I could be WAAAY off, but that's where you guys will come in!), Red is a singer in this futuristic city of Cloudbank where technology has become so advanced we've essentially reached a singularity of sorts; allowing for things like the day and night skies to be altered by flicking a computer switch.

The Camerata are a group of people who yearn for more control, seeking to knock back artistry, free-thinking and creativity for the sake of establishing order, to which they create the all-controlling Transistor to do so.

Then one night, there's a ruckus at one of Red's gigs as she's been marked for assassination by the Camerata, but escapes, getting her hands on the Transistor and taking the fight back to them - rebuilding the digitally-enveloped city along the way.

Sorry if that's way off (it's hard to know anything for sure when the writing is so deliberately cryptic!) and I've just jumped back into NG+ now to find out more from some more powers, but please if the people who have played/figured out the most could chip in and help with clarifying the events of the game and the motivations of the characters, I think it would be super helpful to everyone!

Cheers! :D

I don't think she was really marked for assassination. It seems like the Camerata go around Cloudbank killing all notable people and putting their "souls" into the Transistor. I'm not sure what this actually achieves, but I guess it helps them somehow?

I'm only a couple hours in but I figured the Camerata were gathering notable, impressive people for some purpose of advancement. They thought they were doing people a favor.

Yeah, they didn't want to kill Red but to integrate her into the Transistor, which is some kind of hivemind key to reshaping the city into a lasting perfection?

What was the Process? From some of the lines at the end, it seems like Royce wanted to give a body to the machinations or code or whatever that enabled people to change Cloudbank, and that's what became the Process.

What exactly is Cloudbank City? It's obvious that it's some kind of virtual world, but is it Matrix style where people have become digitized or are the people visual representations/manifestations of programmes? I saw an idea earlier on this board (raise your hand, sir) that the city is a hard drive undergoing a format, the Transistor a thumb drive. If this is accurate, were the people representations of the files that were being moved over to the thumb drive for safe keeping? Red would have been the user's mp3 files, the TV guy would have been video files.

I really like that the subtle narrative along with the story being just vague enough opens the game up to some rather unorthodox interpretations.

I have a theory that the transistor allows the user to have the abilities of the people integrated into it. Think about it:

In the flashback towards the beginning, Red is scared and has difficulty walking towards her friend's voice. A few moments later (the actual beginning) she's suddenly brave enough to go directly after <friend>'s killers. It's a pretty dramatic shift in her, unless you consider who the transistor just got done absorbing: someone brave enough to jump directly in front of a sword to save a life. I believe some of this aspect was transferred to Red after she wielded the transistor.

During the first interlude, Red drives a motorcycle at a breakneck pace towards where the Camerata are. Not long before this scene, she integrates a man into the transistor who just happens to be a world-class motorcycle racer. Red is a singer by trade, and riding isn't something I feel she'd naturally know how to do.

After the first boss fight, you integrate a member of the Camerata. Your next level up allows you to get into backdoor areas that are essentially admin areas of the program. A place that the Camarata probably had sole access to.

This would also explain why the Camerata targeted Red. As I seem to recall, one issue they had was the inability to make people listen, as they were only 4 people in a world run as a crazy super-democracy. It's noted in several terminals that Red actually has sway with public opinion with her music. The Camerata wanted her ability to influence the way that the people of the city thought.

I have a few other thoughts on the nature of the process and the discovery of the transistor, but I think I need some time to straighten out my thoughts first.

Cloudbank is actually "made" of the Process, that's why and how people (through vote, and then their decision is executed by the administration, like Grant) can shape it like they want (see the bridge to fairview for example). The actual design of particular things in the city is done by artists (like the cloud painter, Farrah Yon-Dale) or engineers (like Royce, who "found" the Process, and realized the nature of the city). Royce get frustrated by the circular way of how things keep continually changed by the citizens/voters (the park-bridge-etc) that cause his ideas to become ephemeral, he tries to create things so "beautiful" that the citizens would want not to change them but they reveal to be quite unpopular. Grant has been part of the Administration all his life, and he gets angered/depressed? by how he just get to execute the will of the voters while keeping his own ideas in check. Together they found the Camerata, using the power of the transistor to capture the "essence" (or trace, as worded by the transistor when you don't find the actual body of Platt on your way to Fairview) of individuals who excel in their particular field of experience or go near to finding out the existence of the Camerata (like Jallaford, the detective/forseer). Asher joins them after Grant become his mentor/lover and being an influencial journalist/writer helps them. The last member to join them is Sybil who suggest the idea of capturing the trace of Red too, but since she is in love with her she actually lie to the others Camerata about when to find her alone, when in fact she's with her lover who get captured by the transistor instead of Red (Sybil was jelous of him). Since the Transistor gets recovered by Red and they no longer posses it, they lose control over the Process, who begins to revert everything to a "blank" state (that's why everything turns white the more you go through the game). Sybil gets consumed by the Process and turn into that "monster", Asher and Grant find refuge on top of a tower meant to be a safe haven from the Process. Grant begins to be "unwell" and dies (by suicide or by being killed by Asher i can't understand) and Asher kills himself after, since he loved Grant. By recovering their "traces" from their bodies you discover that Royce is hiding in Fairview, you go to him and he proposes a truce and reveals that the only way to stop the Process (or actually make it fo away, since it can't be stopped in Royce's words) is to put the Transistor in his Cradle. Once you have killed Royce and escaped that weird countryside full of transistors and people in boxes (i have no clue what it's supposed to be, the "inside" of the transistor maybe? The farm is the same you see on the background of the final screen) you could restore and redesign the city how you wanted to with the power of the Transistor (that is the key and means to shape the Process/material) but instead you restore the body of your lover and kill yourself beside him to join him inside the Transistor forever.

That's what i've gathered, as always i apologize for any mistake

So this all went on for a bit longer than I'd expected it to. Hopefully nobody's beaten me to the punch before I post it. Anyhow, I'm not sure how much of this is right or wrong, and the chronology of the Camerata's actions are probably out of order here and there, but here's what I've managed to come up with so far:

First, I'm reasonably sure that Cloudbank is basically the entirety of the world. That's not to say that it's a huge, planet-sprawling city, just that this world only consists of this one city. "The Country" doesn't seem to be a place so much as it seems to be an afterlife. Royce mentions that going into the Transistor is like going to the Country: it's a one-way trip. That, along with the common usage of the phrase "see you in the Country" in reference to things or people who aren't expected to be alive for much longer seems to lend some credence to that. That said, I'm having a hard time just going along with the idea that Cloudbank is just some personification of a computer, like something out of Reboot. For all we know, it could be a self-contained universe that just happens to have a lot of coincidental similarities to computers like ours. There is never any mention of an outside world for people to freely visit. But I'm not sure that they're aware of that, either. The OVC reporter implies that the city's population would rather die than leave. Red's companion mentions that they should leave town, but that never seems to be taken seriously by Red. Her companion also muses that he's never actually seen anybody in the city's visitor centre when they pass it. People in the city never seem to consider leaving. Is it because of the city's influence? Does the Transistor prevent those inside of it from being affected by it? Or is he only stating the possibility because he's different somehow? I'm probably jumping at shadows there, but it still seems odd to me.

At any rate, Cloudbank is governed by the whims of its population, but those whims need to pass through the Administrators to ensure that those changes aren't made meaninglessly. After all, if everybody got their way all the time, the city would be in an endless state of change as people undid or altered what other people changed themselves. Royce was an engineer tasked with facilitating those changes on the behalf of the Administrators, and while the Administration ensured a degree of stability, he was always busy with that work as the whims of the population changed. At some point he began to recognize that the changes he made were cyclical in nature, and that all changes made to the city were still completely meaningless. The administrators did not provide stability; they simply slowed the process of change down to a crawl. For a time he tried to design a more permanent structure that would accommodate the whims of the population without the need for changing it, but the designs he produced were drastically less popular than the ones which would inevitably be replaced. He seemed to abandon that course in favor of determining the nature of the changes themselves, and was able to mathematically predict not only what would change and when, but also how. By understanding the nature of change in this world--the Process--he could eventually find a way to control it with the Transistor (though whether he designed it himself or merely found it, I'm not entirely clear on.)

Royce shared his findings with Administator Grant, who also felt uneasy about the nature of change. As his bio states, he had argued for virtually every social stance at some point or another in his career despite his own opinions. He was interested in the idea of harnessing the power of change to bring about some further degree of permanence, but I'd speculate that neither of them were entirely sure how to go about enacting those changes in a way that the population of Cloudbank would agree with, or at least be complacent about. They needed someone who better understood how the masses thought, and would also remain loyal to them. To that end, Asher was brought into the fold. As a reporter for OVC and as Grant's (heavily implied) lover, he met the criteria they were looking for.

Before continuing with the people involved in the story, I have to take a moment to speculate about the nature of the Transistor itself. I don't think it's a tool so much as it is a tool box. It needs directions in the form of specific functions to enact change on behalf of its wielder. Changes made to Cloudbank seem to be directed by the whims of its population. Those whims can be guided or changed by people of influence. By harvesting people with that influence, they can create a function that the Transistor can use to enact a specific sort of change. I can't recall which specific bio mentions the following, but there was some mention of one of the Camerata's victims producing a viable function in spite of their concerns over whether it would work with that particular person.

Because they needed influential people in order to further expand the Transistor's toolset, the Camerata also required someone who could help set their targets up for harvesting. This is where Sybil came in. With her extensive knowledge of Cloudbank's elite (as well as up-and-comers like Red) she was able to convince people to wander off into secluded areas where they could be acquired without causing a fuss.

While the list was being compiled, Grant used his pull as an administrator to cordon off a small area in the north-west corner of the city, covering parts of both the Goldwalk and Fairview districts. It was there that Royce began to experiment with the Process, which was ultimately responsible for all changes to the city even before its discovery. Despite the cordon, several people attempted to cross that line. Shomar Shasberg and Preston Moyle found their way in for the sake of a thrill, and never got a chance to leave. Henter Jallaford considered the location (and the Administration's answers about it) suspicious, and slipped the cordon for the sake of his investigation. Lillian Platt found her way there after her lover, Maximilias Darzi went missing. They weren't primary targets like Wave Tennegan or Maximilias Darzi, but their level of influence in society meant that the Camerata would take them as a bonus.

At any rate, their harvesting operation went well until Sybil let her jealousy of Red's companion get the better of her. She was infatuated with Red, but never really managed to get close to her. After a time, she became convinced that Red's companion was the cause of it. She convinced the Camerata that Red was a prime target for their cause, then claimed she could help them get to Red while the singer was alone, when the truth was that Red would be alone with her companion. Sybil's idea was that he'd be killed for being a witness.

Of course, that's not what happened. How the Camerata lost Red and the Transistor during that encounter isn't especially clear, but all the same, they lost their ability to control the process along with them. Royce had growing concerns as he witnessed the Process' evolution during his experiments, and he voiced as much to Grant in his reports on the emergence of the Young Lady, Fetch, and Man specimens. Though he had attempted to enact safeguards against the Process, it seems that without the Transistor in its cradle, the Camerata weren't able to convey their plans to the Process. The absence of a plan, in turn, seemed to be interpreted as a blank slate, and so the Process began pulling everything apart into its most basic state, but it might also have been influenced by the avant-garde architecture mentioned in Royce's bio that we never get to see, hence the sterile Cathedral/temple aesthetic rather than the white infinite void seen in other parts of the city.

@finscher i'm just speculating for the sake of it, but wouldn't it be possible that people in this reality are "made" of the same thing that the city and the process are made of, only inhabithed by traces? Like if they were a natural expression of their own function, while not contained by the transistor. After all the bodies of people you find dead become the same type of blocks the rest of the city become, and when you find this kind of blocks where the body of the guy outside the exhibition was, the transistor says "...it's not just trees, and things". That could explain why nobody actually leaves (if we consider the country as a real place and not the afterlife) since they have almost a physical connection to the place. I'm not saying the Process and people are the same thing, just that they are formed of the same thing (like if the Process would be nature while people a sentient expression)

@cagliostro88: I'd say that seems probable. Matter is matter regardless of its form. That said, I'm not entirely sure if there's much difference between your distinction between the Process(/nature) and traces(/sentient expression.) There's some ambiguity about whether the manifestations of the Process are shown in their natural state, or whether they are material constructs driven by the Process in the same way that people in Cloudbank are matter driven by traces. Royce mentioned that he found a way to put the Process "center-stage," to give it credit for the real work it did. What if he found a way to allow it to manifest itself in bodies of its own design? It would explain why there seemed to be an evolution from rudimentary, specialized builders to more humanoid and aggressive forms. He didn't have an explanation for some of the forms it developed. It could be that the Process was trying to understand its newfound place in the world by emulating its inhabitants, and perhaps even became jealous of those who were controlling it. Given time, it may have become complex enough to develop a more nuanced personality (or set of personalities) depending on its experience... though that's probably me getting ahead of myself through speculation again.

Cloudbank is just one city. It struck me as being like Rapture, a place for the most talented, intelligent and wealthy of people to go to. The Country, is for everyone else.

The Camerata want to control Cloudbank, they're "offing" the most intelligent and creative types like Red into the Transistor where they'll "live" and be used to control the Process and shape the city to the Camerata's view point.

I'm not sure why the Process rebelled, other than it gained sentience of some kind and figured it had better plans.

I don't really know how it works, but I think they were inside the transistor. When you use your Turn(), sometimes you see the boxes highlighted with names of the people you have absorbed traces from. I guess that's how the people/functions are stored inside the transistor.

@finscher: This is essentially what I had figured out, too. Mixing up combat abilities early and often definitely helps clarify the story. I feel like a lot of people just stuck with Crash, Breach, and Friend and missed a lot of bio and enemy info while playing, because the story seemed totally legible to me as I pieced together the bio info. I did miss the detail about the city being cordoned off on my first playthrough, though, but I'm hoping to complete all of the Bios by the end of my second run.

I was under the impression that the whole a Cloudbank was a computer world not unlike the Matrix or Reboot - Every characters seemed perfect - or rather, seemed to fit a role in the artificial society setup - things like the sky changing was simply editing values in the program - Things that the process would do as clearly the process built the world. If they are trapped in Cloudbank or choose to be there is not really explored but they do mention 'escaping' to the county a lot (which it's clear to see the country as an afterlife type deal)

My running theory on the Camreta was that they had the right idea and could maybe be viewed as heroes they just acted a bit extremist on the whole thing (some more than others (Royce)) - I think there was WAY more going on with Grant and Asher (I love how much they played up Grant for his payoff to be so shallow - just a microcosm of the entire storytelling style) and perhaps they had good intentions at heart.

I think ultimately there was a lot unsaid on purpose and I think they really played off of the fact that the narrator in Bastion knew so much but the sword in Transistor knows less than he even thinks he knows. Small piece - that doesn't lose a lot if you haven't played Bastion but such a nice nod.

I bet that the Supergiant guys have it all mapped out and on one hand it would super cool to see it all spelled out - but I also love the mystique of the universe setup by them.

I think it sucks that this thread has to exist. I just finished it and I have no idea what the story was. Other than girl has boy in future city, he is put in sword, then bad people, then suicide.

Honestly it's a fairly simple story.

Cloudbank is a true democracy. Unlike our republic that requires elected officials to vote for segments of the population, every citizen of Cloudbank is able to vote on any matter. Because of this, government is mainly relegated to serving to will of the people.

Grant is the administrator of Cloudbank, and get's a bit mad that the people don't see the bigger picture for the city. Rather then build new districts, or expand, or anything he views as important they spend all day voting about what color the sky should be, or if something should be a monument or a park. He mentions this to his friend Royce, who is the main engineer for the city. Royce tells him about the Process, a computer program that reshapes the city to the wishes of the people, and the Transistor, the command console that controls the Process.

Together they go and get the Transistor, and come up with the idea of a meritocracy. They will collect the greatest and most influential minds of Cloudbank, and put them in control of the cities development, taking those choices out of the hands of the people. They plan to find the best and brightest, integrate them into the Transistor, then presumably integrate themselves after their work is done. This will allow Cloudbank to be ruled by those who know how to rule it best.

One of the Camerata, Sybil, falls in love with Red, and asks Grant/Royce to include her in the integration. She lies to them, and convinces them Red will be alone after her performance, in the hopes she can kill two birds with one stone, killing Break/Blue, and becoming one with Red. Unfortunately for them Break/Blue sacrifices himself to save Red.

This is where everything goes to hell. Break/Blue never actually "Selected", or became part of Cloudbank. Because he never registered, the Transistor doesn't have him on record, and he isn't able to integrate with it. In his desire to get Red OUT of the area the Camerata is in, he manages to teleport the two of them away from the attack, but he's never able to really control the Transistor. Because the Transistor has no master, the Process has no master, and they go feral, resetting Cloudbank back to factory default.

Red refuses to leave her boyfriend as a sword, so she goes to try and figure out how to fix him. She fights her way back to the stage, and finds Sybil most of the way processed by the Process in the area. Again, with no master they've turned on the Camerata, and started processing them into new Process. Sybil is bested, and tells them Grant/Asher are in Bracket Towers. So Red heads on over to Bracket Towers to confront Grant/Asher, and hopefully figure out a way to get Break/Blue back.

Once she gets there, she finds they committed suicide. Grant couldn't accept what he did, and what has happened to Cloudbank, and Asher couldn't live without his husband/lover. However they direct her to Royce, the man who knows the most about the Transistor, and might be able to help fix the mess.

She fights her away back across the city to Royce, and he tells her the only way to fix anything is to give the Transistor/Process an actual master, because Break/Blue aren't able to control it. Once the sword is in the cradle, it draws in both Red and Royce in an attempt to figure out who should control it, with the loser being integrated into the Transistor as well. Red kills Royce, becoming the master of the Transistor/master of the Process.

She attempts to bring back Blue, but the Transistor either can't bring back the dead, or since he wasn't properly integrated she can't bring him back. She decides that rather then live in a dead city, she'd rather be in the Country with him, so she kills herself, integrating herself into the Transistor. Then in the end they are together again.

I got like 90% of this through OVC broadcasts from Asher/Royce, as well as reading the Bios. It's in the game, you just need to work for it.

Not sure if someone pointed this out yet, but seems everyone is a program living within a system, not actual human beings. This idea is what brought the story together for me, and really makes the cyclical story/end make sense.

@nals said:

Theres the problem right there, I started the second playthrough and I'm reading the "text logs" they are padding out the story but thats not what I expect from the studio that made Bastion. Audio logs are a lazy and fast way to get story across, text dumps like these are even worse because its telling the player to STOP playing the game and read. Its not that I can't read them, its that I really don't want to have go into a menu (with limited access mind you) press some buttons and read some paragraphs of text. It'd be fine if the rest of the story was delivered well enough that I wanted to read the text. If nothing else we can probably all agree the story is by far the worst part of this game.

Having just finished the game i'm still processing my thoughts on the whole experience, a lot of the posts have rung true with my own feelings but I think @nals has the right of it - yet I don't think it's that cut and dry. What happened to the people of Cloudbank that lead them to disappear? What greater roll did Red's beau play in this? I feel wrong time wrong place doesn't fit this story.

I'm not specifically trying to spar for the plot meaning as i'm still processing it myself and look forward to a replay to pick up on the story beats again. However I do think this is a good story well told, whether it's simple or not shouldn't affect the discussion on the various plot points. My initial reaction was this was a story of awakening enabled by the Transistor in a matrix-esq environment, having since considered the bios and the posts here makes that a little more, well ok a lot more, complex.

All in all I appreciate the story and look forward to delving into this more, my initial reaction to it all was very pleasing!

@brightside:

At the start, Goldbank/Fairview are locked off, and have been for weeks. Royce has been using them as testing grounds for his Process studies, so Grant had them declared offline pending investigation. This is why the Detective/Magician wanted to sneak in and check them out so badly, because nobody was allowed in or out for several days.

Highrise/the Canals are basically ground zero. Between the Spine and what happened to Haverson's Hall, it's very safe to assume everyone is either dead or ran away as quickly as they could. Realize it only took about 5-6 hours for the Process to kill almost everyone in the city.

As for Blue, it's very simple. Everyone in Cloudbank was encouraged to register, so they could vote/take part in city functions. Blue never did, although he never gave a reason for it. Since he didn't register the Transistor couldn't recognize him, and couldn't cede ownership to him. He was able to do some very simple things, such as teleporting Red away from the Camerata at the start, but he couldn't control the Process. Hell, being near larger Process like the Spine had them almost take control of him he was so weak.

Him not being able to control the Process is the basis for the entire story. The Camerata could control them without being integrated, presumably because Grant was considered it's owner prior to Blue's integration. However without a master, the Process decided to revert the city back to it's factory settings, ie white/colorless/dead. It's a safe bet when Cloudbank was originally made, what the Process started to turn it into was it's original form, and only years of voting turned it into the more "cultured" place the people knew by Red's time.

My guess? The Country is the real world, the world outside of Cloudbank. Cloudbank is a computer program people chose to live in, because it was a social utopia. The Process/Transistor were put in place to keep things regulated, and make sure nobody ever needed to do any manual labor themselves. Nobody in the world of Transistor fears the Country, especially not like people here fear death, instead treating it as just another stage of life. I don't even really think it's an afterlife, just a place you go after you are done with Cloudbank. I think Jesus.Phish has it right that the Country is for normal people ( ie Earth ), and Cloudbank is basically a cyberworld you can choose to live in if you are well off enough. A way to escape presumably global warming/overpopulation/war/whatever problems Cloudbank's Earth has. At the end Red/Blue meet again in the Country, away from the death of Cloudbank.

@nals: sorry, I know it's been months and months since you wrote this, but do you still remember where you got the evidence for your "Breach/lover never registered to vote", I've been scouring the files and I can't seem to find anything which suggests this is why he got corrupted....

@thefinaltardis said:

Basically, everything in the Breach personnel file implies he is an unregistered citizen, but the filing system says that should be impossible because obviously every citizen would want to register with the city and do their civic duty and blah blah blah. The implication is that he's a bad boy rebel who lives off the grid and doesn't participate in all of their cyclical municipal voting and probably doesn't have an officially recognized job. At least, that's what I took away from his personnel file. I don't think the file got corrupted when it was absorbed into the Transistor, I think it's more that any record of mystery boyfriend has been removed from Cloudbank's record intentionally, or because he never chose an officially recognized job the system doesn't have any record of his adult life, or possibly mystery boyfriend came in from outside of Cloudbank and was never in their system in the first place. Maybe he came from the Country? (It infuriates me that the game never defines the Country, and whether it's just the untamed world outside of Cloudbank or its just a euphemism for certain death outside of the protection of Cloudbank.)

My problem with the story is that what I just alluded to is literally all you ever get on Transistor/mystery boyfriend, aside from his general personality from dialogue and those handful of scenes in the credits where you see Red and Transistor/mystery boyfriend have cute couple moments. It infuriates me that the game never expands on how commonplace (or not) it is that some citizens live off the grid and don't want to participate in the song and dance of Cloudbank high society. Obviously the Camerata are disillusioned with that society and have their own way of dealing with it, but there's the (incredibly) loose implication that Red and mystery boyfriend (and possibly other people in similarly creative pursuits) just don't care about all of the bureaucracy and order of Cloudbank and want to do their own thing. Or at the very least, my takeaway was that surely Red and mystery boyfriend can't have been the only people having some illicit romance or whatever behind the scenes.