The Transistor as seen in the game's desktop icon.
The Transistor is a powerful tool wielded by Red. Described by Royce Bracket as "a brush, with the [Processed] City as its canvas," it possesses the ability to instantly alter Cloudbank in any way according to its current User's whims. It controls the Process, which is implied to originate from within it. The Transistor's docking point and intended location is the Cradle.
Unknown resides within the Transistor following his integration, and can be heard by Red when he speaks from inside it. For the majority of the game, Red is unaware of the Transistor's utility as a tool, and only uses it for combat.
The Transistor resembles a large, broad sword. It has a thin gold and silver hilt and a neon teal "blade" that bears a resemblance to a microchip or circuit board. Gold extensions decorate the far side of the blade, and a large red circular "eye" occupies its center. Whenever Unknown speaks to Red from inside the Transistor, the blade's neon blue surface glows and fades in time to his words.
As Red drags the Transistor along the ground, elaborate illuminated teal and yellow circuitry is briefly revealed in its wake, and there is a noticeable lack of any sort of metal-against-ground sound; this hints at the Transistor's role in shaping the city.
The Transistor suffers several aesthetic changes when under the influence of the Spine, though its combat utility is not affected. Proximity to the Spine in Highrise causes the Transistor's "eye" to glow intensely red, leaves Unknown’s speech somewhat slurred and confused, and makes the circuit board glow red rather than teal when Unknown speaks, an effect which also translates to Playstation controllers. Upon returning to Goldwalk, the entire Transistor glows red continuously, and the circuitry revealed on the ground is red instead of gold until Red takes the Bike back to Goldwalk Bay. Entering a Backdoor removes the Spine's influence for as long as Red remains in the Sandbox.
History[]
Spoiler warning! This article contains major spoilers for Transistor.
Prior to the events of the game, Royce Bracket, an engineer who actively worked on shaping Cloudbank, discovered the Transistor and the Process on Fairview Island. He was utterly fascinated by their power and took to studying both, making notes of his discoveries in the form of encrypted comments within the Transistor's Limiters, which themselves are a product of Royce's testing. He mentions having found it near the Cradle, or possibly within the Cradle itself.
During the course of his research on the Transistor's ability to control and direct the Process, Royce lent it to the leader of the Camerata, Grant Kendrell, making him the device's active User. Under the Camerata's control, the Transistor was used to assassinate people the group deemed useful or antethical to their goals, integrating their Traces and granting it new Functions.
The night before the game's opening scene takes place, the group convened at the otherwise-deserted Empty Set to attempt to integrate Red, whom they had identified as a useful target due to her cultural influence. Sybil Reisz, however, misled the other members of the Camerata into believing that they would find Red alone, hoping that Red's lover would be killed instead. Grant threw the Transistor at Red in an attempt to murder and integrate her, but Unknown interposed himself and was killed instead, and the Transistor, possibly malfunctioning due to the lack of official Cloudbank records associated with Unknown, integrated Red's voice as well as Unknown's Trace and teleported the pair to Goldwalk Channel.
Upon its separation from Grant, whose had inadvertently signed out as a User by allowing the Transistor to leave his possession, the Transistor's active connection with the Cradle was broken and the Process escaped from its control. Red, retrieving the Transistor from Unknown's body, inadvertently signed in as its new User and assumed the same level of control Grant had wielded over the device. However, its control over with the Process could not be restored without returning it to the Cradle, and the Process began to disassemble Cloudbank as Red, alone except for Unknown, set off to search for answers.
With Red as its new User, the Transistor initially only provides access to two of the Functions carried within it. Red gains access to Functions previously integrated by the Camerata by integrating the Traces of partially-Processed citizens or by leveling up after using the Transistor in combat. The device's Memory (MEM) can also increase through level-ups, and over time, Limiters can be accessed and equipped to increase XP gain while facing greater challenges.
Twice, in Highrise and later upon return to Goldwalk, the Transistor comes within range of the Spine. Its influence leaves Unknown fatigued and disoriented for a time, but the Transistor otherwise functions correctly and returns to normal once the Spine is left behind.
Towards the end of the game, Royce communicates with Red via Proxy and explains the Transistor's history and use. He urges Red to restore the Transistor to the Cradle in order to resume control of the Process, and uses the Proxy to lead her to its location.
When the docking is complete, the Process is successfully contained, but Red and Royce are transported to a location inside the Transistor. There, multiple Transistors are visible in the distance, ranging in size from the one Red wields to several on the scale of large buildings, and individually isolated Trace Banks contain the Traces of most of the Transistor's victims. Royce, wielding his own separate Transistor and capable of a fighting style Red has never faced before, claims that the only way out is for one of them to defeat the other, upon which the winner's Transistor will allow departure while the loser's Trace will be integrated and trapped for good.
If Royce wins, he leaves Red inside the Transistor and sets off to reshape the remains of Cloudbank to his own liking. If Red wins, she is returned to Cloudbank. She uses the Transistor to restore the Fairview bridge and makes her way back to the game's starting point, where she recovers Unknown's body from the Process's ravaging but is unable to return him to live. In the game's closing cutscene, she hugs the Transistor, seats herself beside Unknown's body, and, despite his protests, stabs herself with the device, integrating herself like so many others before and ultimately reuniting with Unknown inside the Transistor.
Relationship to the Process[]
It is heavily implied the Process originates from within the Transistor. Royce states that the Process comes from "elsewhere," and details that the Process are the unseen, behind the scenes sculptors of Cloudbank with which every change is made; furthermore, he describes the Transistor as being the key to completely controlling both Cloudbank and its environment, via the Process.
Terminating a single Process reduces it to one or more Cells, which are then absorbed into the sword; the first time this happens, Unknown remarks that they've gone "back where they belong," suggesting that the "elsewhere" Royce claims they come from may be inside the Transistor itself. Likewise, when the first Limiter is activated, Unknown remarks that "something's happened. In here." This suggests that rather than being simply a game mechanic, Limiters are a way for the Transistor to directly reconfigure the Process' behavior even without being docked to the Cradle.
The Transistor's main utility comes from the Functions that can be equipped within it. Under normal circumstances, these would have been used to increase the Transistor's breadth of influence in shaping Cloudbank, but Red uses them solely for combat. Most Functions are derived from the Transistor's contact with an individual's Trace before or after death; a suitable Function can be derived from each Trace absorbed by the Transistor. There are sixteen equippable Functions, and a few others become available under certain circumstances.
The only Function that is not explicitly stated to be derived from a Trace is Turn(), which allows the Transistor to pause time and queue up movements and attacks so that the user can plan and execute complex attacks against the Process. Turn() is a function innate to the Transistor, as is demonstrated when Royce is able to commence his own Turn() when using his own Transistor.
The User is able to examine the Transistor's current available Functions and equip them in a different order each time they visit an Access Point.
Limiters are properties of the Transistor that were studied by Royce. Without Royce's interference, the Process would be much more dangerous. Equipping a Limiter effectively removes a safeguard instituted by Royce, and acts as a debuff causing some aspect of the Process to become stronger. Equipping Limiters grants the User more experience points from combat at the expense of more challenging gameplay.
MEM[]
Each Function installed in the Transistor allocates a specific amount of the device's available Memory (MEM), which displays as a stack of horizontal bars at the upper left of the screen when using an Access Point. Each Function takes up anywhere from 1 to 4 MEM, increasing if they are upgraded with other Functions. Red can choose to unlock four additional MEM slots, to a maximum of 32, at certain level-ups. The Limiter Responsibility removes access to 6 or more MEM.
Unknown's behavior under the effects of the Spine may be explained as a case of MEM overload, as the Spine itself is a massive Process operating under the Transistor's memory.
Trivia[]
Those aware of the Transistor's true nature are able to command it without holding it, as seen by the way Grant attempts Red's integration and the way Red uses it in the game's ending. It is unclear at what point loss of contact with the Transistor results in signing out as a User and breaking contact with the Cradle.
Royce is very protective over the Transistor. He calls it a star, and is upset at Red when he discovers she was dragging it on the ground. This is likely due do his fixation both on it and the power it holds.
He states that one may hear the voices of those contained within the Transistor if they knew them beforehand. Red very clearly and effortlessly hears her lover's voice from the Transistor, suggesting that the stronger the bond was, the more clearly the User can hear the voices of those integrated. Sybil Reisz, however, can also hear Unknown's voice, indicating that User status is not required and mere acquaintanceship may be sufficient, and Red does not seem to hear Sybil's voice, although they were clearly acquainted earlier.
Royce, who had never met Unknown before the events at the Empty Set, doesn't seem to be aware that Red can hear Unknown from within the Transistor, and cannot hear him himself.
Royce compares the experience inside the Transistor to "staring at the sky," remarking that although there are no walls within it, each Trace it contains is trapped and cannot communicate with other Traces. However, Unknown states that when he "looks up to where the sky should be" within the Transistor, he sees Red.
While Unknown communicates with other people as their Traces are integrated into the Transistor, he subsequently does not seem to see them there with him, and Red cannot hear their Traces conversing with his.
Royce's remark that the Transistor might have been looking for someone like him seems to credit it with a mind of its own. However, Greg Kasavin notes that if this was true, Red's victory over Royce despite the latter's preexisting competence with the weapon may indicate that the Transistor disliked him.[1]
The Transistor's Root Access area in an early version of the game.
In an early version of the game, Red could enter an area called a "Process Socket," comprised of a silhouetted side-scrolling platform with circuit lines in the foreground and background; this was described by Unknown as the "home" of the Process, suggesting that it is contained within the Transistor. It contained an edifice providing root access to the Transistor, which allowed Red to unlock new levels and upgrades.
A real transistor is an electronic component that allows one weak electrical signal to either amplify or shut off another signal. Transistors can be combined together to make logic gates, which can then be further combined to make sophisticated digital circuits like those found in CPUs. The transistor is one of the most important inventions in computing history; it acts like a vacuum tube, but is many times smaller, more efficient, more reliable, and easier to manufacture in bulk. Without transistors, it would be impossible to make computers small and cheap enough for regular individuals to own.
The Transistor may have been inspired by the Aleph found in William Gibson's cyberpunk novel Mona Lisa Overdrive, as both are electronics within which a reality is contained, and both involve a person's mind being directly uploaded onto them.
The Transistor appears on the icons for two Achievements: Bye(), obtained upon completing the game, and Goodbye(), obtained through Recursion.
Related Achievments[]
See Function and Limiter pages for Achievements relating to Functions and Limiters.
Icon
Name
How to Obtain
Memory()
Unlock 32 MEM. Gained naturally through leveling.
User()
Unlock every Upgrade Slot and Passive Slot. Gained naturally through leveling.
