Tear Jerker / Transistor

• There's a brief flashback to How We Got Here, before Red comes across the body of her friend. You can hear him panicking offscreen, trapped in the Transistor and unable to move.
  What…where…how…no - Hey…. Red where are you…! Where are you? Where are you… Don’t be gone, please don’t be gone. I can’t…I’m here. I’m over here, I’m over here, I’m…still here. Look if she’s hurt, if she’s hurt I’ll…I’ll what. I’ll what…? I’ll nothing.
  Stuck. I’m stuck, inside, am I…inside…that…thing…? Inside it. What is all this, there’s nothing—…Nothing.
  • In the flashback you will see an OVC terminal asking to sign a petition to build a bridge to Fairview. Losing her voice, Red typed in one word:
  > Help
  • The scene at Empty Set before that where Red hums to the microphone. It just drives home how hard Red's life came crashing down when she lost her voice (she's a singer). The Transistor consoles her that she'll come back one day. She does. But by then everyone and everything in Cloudbank became a total processed mess. There's nothing left.
• After Red exits her apartment in Highrise the Transistor comments that she's locked herself out and begins to ask what she's going to do when she returns but realises that she doesn't mean to return. Ever.
  "Locked yourself out. How're you gonna?...Oh."
• Near the end of the game, you find one final news story from Amelia Garbur, the reporter whose articles you've been reading during the course of the game, where she stands with the last remaining survivors at the edge of the city, saying goodbye before the process comes for them. After you read it, the Transistor starts wondering if they've already been processed.
  • When you see that OVC terminal, Amelia is being processed. When you approach it, the status turns to deceased right in front of your eyes.
• The ending. While Red has stopped the Process and gained total admin access over the city, allowing her to remake it to her whim at will, the Process still consumed all of the other humans, leaving her completely alone. She chooses to impale herself on the Transistor, even as the voice inside begs her to stop, killing her but leaving her soul sealed in the Transistor with her lover's.
  • Those people you came to know? Those districts you've heard about? All the efforts to keep the city running smooth and fine? In the end they're all gone in a span of few days. By the very thing that created Cloudbank no less.
  • Now listen to "Signals" (the bonus track that comes with the purchased soundtrack) in the context of the ending and try not to break down.
• It's Sympathy for the Devil, but everything to do with Grant and Asher Kendrell are this. The very first message from Asher starts the process of humanizing himself and Grant, who had previously just been more anonymous big bads, with each consecutive message giving more clues to his personality, his relationship with Grant, and their joint guilt over their well-intentioned extremism going horribly wrong, such that by the time you find them you will very likely grieve for your enemies, who you now recognize as a married couple who took their own lives, Grant out of horror of the consequences of their actions, Asher following closely behind him.

  "I'd sooner take eternity in the Transistor than eternity apart."◊

  • And then there's the battle with Royce, who personally has no grudge against Red and wants to stop the Process just as much as she does, but after both of them get sucked into the Transistor, only one of them can escape and they are forced to fight to the death to see which one of them it will be.
• Sybil Reisz. Her last words to Red are "Finally finally finally we can be..." The last word is likely "together". Because Red absorbs her into the Transistor right afterwards. And Sybil is happy about this, because she finally gets to be with her. Even though Red will never hear her voice. On top of that, Sybil's function is Help().
• Paper Boats, especially in the context of the end credits.
  • Not to mention who's singing back-up.
• In the middle of a tough battle, the Transistor will usually notify Red when Turn() has finished recharging. However, if her health has dropped drastically he instead starts to panic. If it drops even lower, causing the Transistor to completely overload, the last thing you hear is his voice glitching out while asking if she is okay.
• While the Transistor is being affected by the Spine, The Man will sometimes deviate from his loopy ramblings and quietly talk about how much he wants to see and touch Red again.
• The game's central theme. Cloudbank has advanced so much you could get anything you want instantly to the point that nothing has a value to it anymore. Yet almost nobody cares. The city just wants more and more regardless of what they have discarded. Nothing you do here will ever have a permanent long-lasting meaning.
  • One of the location Red visits is a balcony overlooking Highrise Canal where the game implies that she and Mr.Nobody once went on a date here, now filled from end to end with nondescript buildings and billboards with no canal in sight. Every memories, any attachments you have, replaced on a whim. It's a harrowing story, especially for some of the older audience who had experienced a transformation of the town they lived in.
• Many of Camerata victims were just people who tried to do right by the minority of Cloudbank, voices their own differing opinion a little too loud, or a normal people who pursuit a hobby for self-contained pleasure (that at the very least wouldn't harm anyone but themselves). The Administrator and large part of the society clamp down on these people who doesn't immediately 'serve the majority' hard despite being fellow citizens, forcing many of them towards Camerata.
  • Niola Chen wanted to create a gallery to showcase works from less-presented artists/workers, only to get the public accosting her for "calling attention to people undeserving of notice".
  • The profile of each Camerata member all implies that they are simply somewhat-creative people who felt suffocated by the society. Imagine what kind of a world that leads the Camerata to go ahead and ruin other people's utopia, just so they can follow their simple human 'wants' at all...
  Royce's terminal: Fairview wasn’t ever finished, wasn’t ever a priority. I mean, what good is a suburb when the town has got it all? Well I’ve been around enough, seen thing change, and change, and change enough, that well I realized I like the quiet here. I like the quiet.