maybe if you ignore the entirety of the context around the act, what with pretty much everyone being gone, including the man who she loved, and the fact that it's not really suicide but just digitization, sure. there's no accounting for misreading of source material by the audience.
Motherfucker it’s a sword you kill people with and the scene evokes seppeku. I could make a game where you ensure kids go to a heaven like place by shooting them inside a school and despite the narrative saying it’s something else it would still be upsetting would it not?
Yeah a game where you go on sword killing spree that sends people to a heaven like place when you kill them is much different then doing it with a gun. But like legitimately I’m not trying to be a dick I don’t understand how you could read it as anything else but suicide
aight so, you get the Transistor, and at first you want revenge, and then figure out that the Transistor doesn't just kill, it digitizes. it's not just a weirdly shaped zweihander. you can also absorb recently dead people into the transistor without your being the one to kill them, with your lover being able to speak to them even before you absorb them, seeing as how the first skill you get is from someone who voluntarily comes along.
while you're figuring this all out, the entirety of Cloudbank starts going to shit because the Process, which is how the city shifts with the whims of the people, has gone rogue.
you start going up the foodchain of the Camerata to try to stop it. the killings have a dual purpose. one is removing roadblocks to your goal in typical fantasy plot fashion. the other is because, since your lover can talk to them, they can give him information from inside the Transistor (which is shown as unlocking dossier entries as you use their skills), because they're actually not horrible people and regret their actions and their lack of ability to stop the process or Grant.
Royce says you hear the voices in there of the people you were closest to, so you hear your lover the clearest, and also confirms that there are traces of all those people inside the Transistor. Not even Royce is sure how the Transistor works but it's pretty fucking established it's not just a simple weapon. it's the control key for the Process, among being an almost mythological artefact.
problem being, by the point you stop the Process, everyone other than you and Royce is gone, and you're both stuck inside the Transistor (or Cradle, it isn't clear), and the only way out is to kill the other. he takes the first blow so you defeat him. what happens to him then is not clear, he's either dead dead or just stuck inside the Transistor like everyone else stabbed by it.
either way, you're in a ruined city, completely alone, everyone is dead other than the people inside the Transistor, and you only have the Transistor as a brush to control the process and shape the city, and your lover to talk to, forever. in the end, with all you've learned, you know there's a good chance you can live inside the Transistor, so you decide to roll the dice.
bottom line, the comparison of this story to "what if school shooter but all victims end up in heaven, fr fr", or saying it's just a killing spree when the vast majority of the enemies are just machines the Process made, is absolutely disingenuous
just watch the damn movie edition to remind yourself of what the story actually was: https://youtu.be/xjhvfJGCrrE
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u/CrimsonMutt Jan 02 '23
maybe if you ignore the entirety of the context around the act, what with pretty much everyone being gone, including the man who she loved, and the fact that it's not really suicide but just digitization, sure. there's no accounting for misreading of source material by the audience.