*SPOILERS* A pretty good explanation of Transistor ending

[Donna]

Hello, I am new here so forgive me if I make any newbie-mistakes.

I just finished Transistor (one play through so far) and I have been looking for explanations to better understand the plot, this world and the ending.

And I have read some things here on steam as well as online on different wiki-pages for Transistor. And I like that it's kinda ambiguous and open so that we can have these kind of discussions about it.

However, wide and complex speculations aside, it can feel good to also get some confirmation on a few thoughts too...

Well first of all I want to thank you all who have been posting about the story and your thoughts on the ending of the game.

And second: I came across this today and wanted to share it-

"The Story of Transistor" [www.tomnoir.com]

(The last comment by "Donna" is by me where I give a few thoughts of my own).

Like I posted there, I try to keep a less morbid feel to it than "Red committed suicide and went to "The Country" as in "heaven/afterlife" to find her Mr Blue and be dead together"...I am sorry if I sound naive and too optimistic but I think that is a far too simplified answer to what happened in the end. And it kinda doesn't fit neither the story nor the character. IMO anyways.
I believe it was a bit more positive than that.

I think, that at the end of it all, the country is the real world, the world outside of cloudbank, outside of that virtual reality. I believe "going to the country" is leaving/logging off from cloudbank for a less "perfect world where I can vote and get the changes that I want" a world where you have to take things as they are. So, for me, I think that the Camerata kinda succeeded with their plan to reduce the changes, by kinda "by mistake" making the people having to log out and go to the country.

Also, I think that the place where Royce and Red fight is inside the Transistor, not at "the country" and perhaps inside the transistor you can have that infinite loop some speak of, explaining the transistors in the background as other planes of that loop wherein cloudbank is existing.

However, I would like to believe that Red takes control over the transistor (for me this is the key to the portal (the cradle) between the real world (the country) and the virtual world (cloudbank). And with it she can use it to either rebuild cloudbank, now an empty virtual reality without any people, or use it to end that plane of existence. Removing herself from cloudbank (her being the last user, the last architect/programmer/admin of the transistor) she kinda shut down that virtual reality, perhaps ending the endless loop of recursion and managing to get out into the real world. I would like to think her actions released all the Traces/other people inside the transistor and allowed all the citizens to live a real life in the real world.

So that is part of my take, and still I have many questions and thoughts and all about many aspects. But I just really wanted to share these thoughts (and hopefully some can agree with some of this).

Either way, I enjoyed the game, the art, the music, the battle system. And I don't think any other recent games I have played have made me think so much about the plot.

Hope you all have a great day and thank you for reading this!

[david_cheeseman]

*SPOILERS* I think that is a pretty good analysis of the plot, but something tells me Red and the man in the Transistor have secrets of their own that the game does not reveal directly. Notice there is a lot of diegetic music in the both Bastion and Transistor, and sometimes if you listen to the lyrics it will give you hints about the plot. When you inspect the Breach () file that is pulled from the mystery man, it's a blank and he states that he "does not belong here..." I would bet that he has been pulled from one of the other universes, though he does not know it. When you're in the transistor, there are infinite other transistors probably, infinite recursions, and perhaps the man is mistakenly placed in Red's universe from another, which gives him and her control over it. Notice that it is only HER that becomes a user once it makes contact with the man, and that's precisely when the Camerata lose control of it. Also notice that it is Royce's voice that first comes out of the Transistor after you recurse for the first time - suggesting that he and the mystery man have some sort of link with the transistor - as if both of them and Red will inevitably meet in every universe because they are a part of the root programming of this universe. Anyways, I love speculating on this game, could do it forever, glad there are others who are just as delightedly perplexed as me.

[Donna]

I like your points too,

yes the lyrics of the songs can certainly be understood in different ways and there is a lot of ambiguity to it all.

Although I see the "Recursion" as more of a "new game plus" with a name and a detail that makes the loops and different planes optional so to speak. Like the possibility of there having been many loops before. But that Red perhaps finally chose to get rid of those loops. By removing herself completely as the last user of the transistor. The program can probably not exist without the architect. IMO. So perhaps she found a loophole and got out of the virtual reality alltogether and joined the real world with all the other citizens.

As one of the lyrics says somewhere something about wanting to be more than zeros and ones. Like she seems to have enough of this virtual plane.

Either way, Thank You so much for answering! And yes I could go on for great deal of time :P

Now, I think I am going to give Bastion a go, been reading great reviews on it. And maybe after that I may play Transistor a second time to get a better recap of the plot. Hopefully some things get a bit clearer when you know the story beforehand.

[Zubi Fett]

I know this is an old thread, but I would like to add my two cents.

The only thing that was clear to me is that everyone is living in a digital world, and it all goes south when they lose control of the process.

I like your theories but wish the game would be more confident with some of these and actually tell us. Because clearly, Red knows what the world is, and thus we should too to be able to understand better what we are doing and what's going on.

When people "die," they clearly leave something like their soul behind, which the transistor can absorb? I am not entirely sure if it's a bridge to the real world, as you say, or if it just stores people within it on top of controlling the digital world. "Unknown" is clearly the lover of Red, but that he is the one to speak through it could be because he was the first to be killed by it?

I enjoyed the game, but it left me more confused than anything else.