Category: cyberpunk

It took me two tries to really get into Supergiant’s action RPG Transistor , and boy am I glad I did.

I wasn’t in the right mood when I first loaded it up is the thing. I wanted fast and mindless. So I dumped a bunch more hours into the hamster wheel of Destiny, then returned when I was ready for the real stuff.

I’ve written about new cyberpunk here before, so no surprise that a new and unique treatment of the genre would attract my attention. But… nowhere on the game’s site is the word ‘cyberpunk’ mentioned. Why? I mean, your powers have names like Crash() and Ping().

Here’s my guess. It’s the pantone thing. As soon as you say the ‘C’ word, it’s all twitching data junkies in alleys and wraparound sunglasses with stark color gradients. Green and black. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!) The visual aesthetic of the genre’s origins has come to define it.

And along comes Transistor, closer to noir than anything else. You play as a famous singer, not a leather-clad street samurai.  It’s fashion and high art, not jackers and addicts. But the tropes are there — AI, technology and identity, personality as software. It’s cyberpunk without the trappings. A new take.

Four story-telling elements of note:

• Each new power is the… mind? soul? program?… of a human being involved in the back story. You want the full tale? You need to use the power in different ways to unlock it. A great way to blend a rewards system with world-building.
• The MC’s voice has been taken, and the sword-thing she’s carrying around won’t shut up. The voice of the transistor sets the tone of each scene and drives the emotional response without ever getting annoying. It’s very well done.
• Speaking of the transistor’s voice, on the PS4 it comes through the controller’s speaker. The guiding voice is coming from what you’re holding, just as it’s coming from what the MC is holding. It seems a small thing, but it really packs some emotional punch.
• So how does the MC (Red) communicate? How do we get a sense of who she is? News terminals are set throughout the city (classic cyberpunk there), and Red adds comments to the public feed. You see her type something, then change her mind. What does this mean? Is she impulsive, with just enough sense to keep her from saying anything too crazy? Is she a strategist, arguing with herself over the best play?
  • One particularly fine moment is the first Red uses one of these terminals something for the transistor to read. It’s the first actual interaction we see between them, and it comes unexpectedly. A cool, surprising use of the tech — which is what cyberpunk is really about, right? The street, and the protagonist, finds its own uses for things.

Gameplay is varied and fun as well. So go play it!

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My last post was about the new cyberpunk, defined by mobility, omni-connectivity, and slick black-and-white style. So I did what I always do: started a tumblr about it.

I wrote a story, too. It’s going through the submission gauntlet right now, so here’s hoping.

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I came to cyberpunk late, really. I read Snow Crash in ’98. The Matrix came shortly after, prompting some very obsessive behavior on my part. (I suppose I did watch Max Headroom back in the day, but the previous two mentions were the biggies for me). Etc. Etc.

Traditional cyberpunk, with all its pantone trappings, started a strong tech archetype: going in. The Metaverse is separate from the real world, and as blurred as the lines may get, they’re still lines. It’s a personality in the cable network, a terrorist in a shared dream. You jack in, log on, get inside.

The new cyberpunk doesn’t work this way, nor should it. The Verge posted a great article recently on “Tumblr’s cyberpunk renaissance”, in which the author cleverly points out that

Our Matrix is so much more diffuse, and our enemies so omnipresent — it’s the NSA tapping the iPhone in your pocket, the webcam in your shiny new MacBook Air. There really is no pulling out the jack.

Gone is the mighty edifice and the slick decker slicing his way in. It’s damn everywhere. Take out the main data warehouse? Please. It’s all redundant systems now, chirping to each other like a flock of birds. Kill one bird, the flock still lives.

And if that weren’t enough, we’re willing participants. We live online, knowing full well data on everything we do, everywhere we go, everyone we speak to is up for grabs.

So, what does this mean for cyberpunk now?

From a stylistic standpoint, the Verge article is the place to go. “…a hyper-refined and expensive sense of taste, favoring clean lines, baller outfits, powerful matte-black weapons, and the kind of opulence telegraphed by machines without visible seams.” Cyberpunk is as much about style as it is about tech, and the new stuff will follow suit. Check the Verge article for visual reference.

I’ve come across a two touchpoint characters and works which resonate with where the genre is headed.

Ken Liu’s The Perfect Match gives us Centillion, or ‘Tilly’, the omnipresent Google-like voice which serves as a personal assistant, recommendation engine, and Jiminy Cricket to everyone. This is our world now. It’s not some evil government — it’s a convenient service we all sign up for.

The story even gives us one of these new cyberpunks in Jenny, who wears “a thick winter coat, ski goggles, and a long, dark scarf that covered her hair and the rest of her face” in order to muddle the perpetual identity detection. Forget black jackets and mirrored glasses; it’s all ugly T-shirts and facial asymmetry.

After that, it’s Ubisoft’s upcoming Watch Dogs. Sitting at a screen is so 2000’s, as is hacking some static mainframe. Let’s talk about controlling traffic lights and city electric grids from your phone. Today’s tech rogues are on the move, and they can see everything about you in a little box floating over your head.

This is how the new cyberpunk works. The distinction between on the grid and off the grid is gone. There is no “going in”. And, perhaps more importantly, there is no getting out.

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