There once was a great engineer. Arithmetic was his medium and a city was his canvas. He planned the roads, buildings, and byways. His work could not be more precise. Like everyone in Cloudbank, he served at the pleasure of the city's people. The city changed quickly and often, reconfiguring to best suit the contemporary sensibility. Thus the engineer's work was ephemeral. He loved his craft, but could not let himself become attached to the product of his effort.
Findings[]
Because the engineer's work was never done, it stayed fresh. With new whims came new challenges. Bridges. Gardens. Towers. Ports. None of it lasted very long. The nature of his work led him to notice certain patterns over time. The will of the people changed in cycles. Bridges would come down in favor of railways. Railways would give way to parks. New bridges would then be build upon the parks, and so on. Recognizing this, the engineer started fashioning avant garde structures and designs he believed would persist beyond the immediate urges of the population. Yet, these ideas proved much less popular, and before much longer he became obscure, and left his job to pursue personal interests on his own. It was then that he discovered a formula visualizing exactly how the structures of Cloudbank formed.
Travels[]
He studied this formula closely for it filled him with a deep sense of wonder and even deeper sense of dread. He developed predictive algorithms to determine where and when the visualization would take form, and began drawing it out with his own architectural plans, until one day he found it in its natural state. He saw beyond the confines of the city into something more, and there before him was something extraordinary. He took it, and realized the things he saw now stood at his call.
Confrontation[]
The encounter with Royce that takes place beyond the "cradle" is the game's final boss fight.
Once Royce finishes his opening dialogue ("Who gets to go first? ... How about ... me.") he immediately starts a Turn of his own, establishing the rules of the fight. This first Turn is automatic; the player can do nothing to stop it.
Royce's Turn operates almost identically to Red's Turn - like her, he has a fixed amount of Turn time to use and must recharge after he finishes it. He has access to most of the Transistor's functions, but not all. He most frequently uses Breach, Bounce, Crash, and Flood. Notably, he does not appear to have Get or Cull at his command, which means that getting distance from him is a very good way to stay alive. Unfortunately this arena is relatively small, and Mask does not fool Royce, so speed might be preferable to defense.
Like Red, Royce's Transistor will overload when he takes too much damage, depriving him of one of its powers. This is the chief way to finish him off - kill him in the same way the Process can kill you. This makes the battle a damage race, essentially - do more damage than Royce does in the same amount of time, and you can win. To that end, Cull, Purge, Void, Flood, and possibly Get are all excellent choices. Tap will also be a great help in staying alive.
However, it is very likely that Royce will be able to deplete Red's health at least once, and you will lose at least one function. To this end, make sure that you have at least two (preferably three) different ways of damaging him, because a single repeated attack will not be enough.
Trivia[]
Apart from the Transistor itself, Royce has the most spoken dialogue in the game.
Royce conveys most of his dialog via Proxy, speaking in an unusually calm, detached manner befitting a scientist too disassociated from his own sense of danger to react appropriately to the disaster at hand. His distant home in Fairview and his very short list of friends seems to indicate that he is socially unskilled, and he occasionally seems to forget whether or not other people are present to hear his musings. He is inclined to wordplay, stresses his own genius and infallibility and appears to expect others to prioritize the importance of his life and work over any of their own independent concerns, and shows no remorse for his actions or sense of responsibility for the fate of those living in Cloudbank, considering the disaster an opportunity to remake the city's "blank canvas" as he wished without the inconvenience of its inhabitants' wants or needs. When Red manages to injure him during their fight, he is incredulous at the idea of failure and wonders if she is reading his mind somehow, unable to understand how anything else could defeat him. Though he boasts that he would win either way, since he has always wondered what it is like to be trapped inside the Transistor, he balks at the end, crying out in horror when he is left there alone. His quiet voice and awkward repetitions have been likened by some fans those of Jeff Goldblum, Andy Warhol, or Nicolas Cage.
Despite being the one with the most knowledge of the Transistor, Royce admits that even he doesn't know what it is, describing its true purpose to an empty landscape while Red visits a Backdoor and declining to repeat his own unheard exposition when she emerges. He did not invent it, claiming he either "found it on a lark" or it found him, and added that lots of math was involved. He understands that Traces of people can be stored inside, but states that they are unable to see or hear each other once trapped within the device even though there are no walls to separate them, and describes the view inside it as "like staring at the sky."
Royce's knowledge that only one of two people could escape from the Transistor once trapped within it together suggests that he may have experienced a battle inside it before, and that this may have been the occasion of his "little look" inside it.
As early as 08-21-66, Royce encouraged the other members of the Camerata to choose potential murder victims, posting a sample list of four "subjects of a certain status, whose utter disappearance could be explained away." Listing Niola Chein, Wave Tennegan, Maximilias Darzi, and Shomar Shasberg, he urged the other members to use their imaginations and "live a little" by committing their selections to writing in their secured channel.
The soundtrack that plays when fighting against Royce is called Impossible. When the player first enters his secret lab, an alternate version of the track can be heard in the background, which has only a bass guitar. When it is Royce's Turn, the soundtrack replaces Red's humming with his bass guitar.
Royce's remark that the Transistor might have been looking for someone like him seems to credit it with a mind of its own. Greg Kasavin noted that if it does, Red's victory over Royce despite the latter's preexisting competence with the weapon may indicate that the Transistor disliked him.[1]
When asked how Royce hair "does the thing," Kasavin responded with the popular saying about Cloudbank in the game: "You can be anything you want in this town!"[2]
Royce Bracket's Trace Bank inside the Transistor.
Royce Bracket's Trace Bank is the rightmost unit on the top row, numbered 109. Unlike Red's, which is labeled "CURRENT_USER", Bracket's Trace Bank is marked only with his name, like the Transistor's other victims.
