Transsistor - Red's Place in Cloudbank

 Spoiler Warning: This video will be heavily spoiling the back story to a fantastic game which is much better played without knowing anything about it. So if you have not yet played the game Transistor, then I implore you to turn back now and do so. The content of this video is for people who have either played the game or have no intention of ever doing so.

Transistor, more than most games, has a heavy emphasis on the soundtrack and how the music plays into the game and the story. This seems to be a theme among Supergiant Game's creative style and the soundtrack is a much discussed part of the game, so their efforts in creating not only a video game, but a long-standing piece or art, is evident. In Transistor specifically, Red - our main protagonist, has had her voice stolen from the very beginning, leaving us, the player, to work out who Red is as a person by ourselves. Red, as a character, however, is far from silent, as rather than telling her story via dialogue, she tells us through the game's soundtrack.

Red is a musician, and a very popular one at that, and the lyrical music in the soundtrack of the game is thought to be Red's music. The reason for this is that specific songs play in sections where the lyrics become relevant, and the lyrical content of the songs speaks volumes about one female's feelings on Cloudbank. Further than this is the player's ability to add to the non-vocal songs during the game by holding a button that let's Red stop and hum to the music. Red humming to the songs shows she knows the music, and the voice of the hum and voice of the lyrics to the songs are both performed by the talented Ashley Barrett. This is telling to the player, because in the calmer parts of the game it shows a mix of Red's missing her voice and love of singing, that she uses it as reflection time even when the world is literally falling down around her. We have the option in this to actively stop what we're doing and just listen to her hum, an emphasis on music that holds an underlying narrative to the story of Transistor.

In order to understand Red, however, we need to understand the situation she is in, and to do that, we need to have a closer look at the city of Cloudbank. Cloudbank is in a permanent state of flux, with their democracy having progressed to a state that passers by on the street can use polling stations to vote on the daily, weekly, monthly issues. Anything can rise and fall by popular demand, and with this freedom and idyllic society, nobody is happy. The lack of happiness is an important part of why Red is such a popular figure. With everyone being logged on these machines and all of their decisions remembered, the entire city is part of a grid and your decisions will forever be known. This can be seen with people's statistics inside the Transistor, being carried by Red the entire game, into which people can be absorbed and their data used – the Transistor, being both a key and a weapon and our catalyst to the events of the game, is capable of regurgitating all of the data that is being held on people, such as the 8% of people wearing the clothes of Maximilas Darzi, or who voted on what colour Farra Yon-Dale should next paint the sky. There is no hiding.

Red as one hates the fact that she is logged, and more so than others. As a famous singer she keeps herself very privately, never truly wanting to reveal much about herself and states many of her reasons for doing the things she does as 'personal ones'. As part of her secret life, though is one man in particular who Red is drawn to for being the way he is. The unknown voice in the Transistor acts as our narrator through the game and seems not to know as little as the player does, because, like the player, he is also not a part of Cloudbank. The unknown man lives off the grid, never votes in polls or gets logged, he keeps himself as secret as possible, which is both why the Transistor has no data on him and why Red is drawn to him, because in essence, he doesn't exist. He is not part of the system. One of her songs, 'Paper Boats', seems to be about her relationship with the unknown man. In the first verse and chorus of the song has accompanying vocals by this character, which heavily suggests who the song is about. The song references how different they are in the world, with Red being such a widely seen public figure, and the unnamed man being unseen, and yet they have an almost magnetic attraction to each other. This is told in the lines such as 'The river always finds the sea.' or 'The earth and the moon' with one being big and still needing the smaller. This song, being such a personal one to her, also lets us in on her utmost desire – simply to move to the country, a fact which is also referenced in another song, which emphasises her desire not to be part of Cloutbank's system.

Red's music however, is not only personal to her, but some of her more general songs speaks to the Cloudbank public on a certain level. As their unhappiness stems, not only from the fact that their logged, but also their pressure to conform. With the almost idyllic democratic state of Cloudbank being in a state that seems to be so free and open to everyone's ideas, they are are suffocated by their own freedom. To speak out against democracy or public opinion puts you in a controversial category, so while some choice are base preference, there are other that are decided for you by public speakers, to speak against them will forever be remembered, so the majority pressures are high. This leads to people acting in what 20^th century philosopher Sartre calls 'bad faith'. Any time someone feels they should do something, or acting a way they feel they have to, is acting in bad faith. Bad faith, he claims is usually a product of a society shaping the ways people ideally should live their lives regardless of their preference, an example of this would be making girls wear pink, and boys blue – an arbitrary choice that many people live with in their thoughts because they are simply told it's what those colours represent. In many cases bad faith is harmful to the individual, especially so when, like In Cloudbank, people often must be knowingly acting in bad faith with little to do about it.

One of Red's songs 'Signals', tells this story about the society in general and suggests that Red is aware there are others like her who desire not to be a part of the system. The song emphasises her desire to break out of the system at any cost, with lines such as 'Take up the call and follow everybody, I won't be a number in the system', and perhaps more obviously 'We're all sending smoke signals, keep pretending we're one.' - with 'one' suggesting the way society acts in general with everyone following the crowd, but Red being aware that everyone are sending signals to each other that everything is not okay. With lyrics such as these, it is easy to see why some may have found her music to be provocative in the game, and why she plays such an important role in Claoudbank. Another song, 'We All Become' focuses much more on the idea of everyone becoming one whole unit, and her defiance against that. The lyric that most emphasises this feeling is where she says 'Think I'll go where it suits me, moving out to the country, With everyone, before we all become one.' This mention of the country twice strikes, to me, another philosophical idea in Locke's soft-determinism. Simply put, we are all on a set path of restriction, even though we seem like we have free will. So, even if someone wanted to leave Cloudbank, they would likely be prevented from doing so one way or another. This idea is a harmful thought and perhaps one that is reminiscent of what it is like to live inside Cloudbank.

While Red never intended to be controversial with her music, it did cause a stir, and she became incredibly popular; a suggestion that there are many people who her music speaks to, so even though they don't say it out loud, they are also unhappy with the way Cloudbank is. Red's place in Cloudbank, then, is not as a catalyst, but as an outlet to many people's inner thoughts, including her own. Yet, while she is aware of the reach of her music, Red remained mysterious, not willing to be a part of the hype and conflict. As The Transistor tells us, after an unspecified 'altercation' at one of her events she receded from the limelight in order to write new material, which we may infer to be the songs that appear in the game. Overall, Red's position in Cloudbank is both fortunate and unfortunate. She happened to be around at the time where collapse was imminent between the arrival of the Camerata and the cracks beginning to show in the public. Between her bold behaviour in writing controversial music and personal desire to stay mysterious and keep to herself, Red's entire story ended up being the beginning to the end of Cloudbank.