Tron: Identity transforms the cyberpunk world into a noir detective game

The question of identity – what makes a person who they are – is as much a matter of experience as it is of the perspective of the one asking it. This is as true in life as it is in the Grid, the spectral digital dimension in which the Tron series primarily takes place.

in the world of Tron: IdentityNew Visual Novel Adventure Game by subsurface circular And john wick hex Seen through the eyes of developer Bithell Games, lead designer Mike Bithell and company, The Grid takes on an entirely new perspective: a noir-like mystery drama of half-truths, hearsay, and conspiracies nested within secrets. . Even though my time with the game was relatively short, the experience was such that I walked away with an overall glowing impression, eager to dive back in for one more playthrough to uncover the clues to the still lingering questions. .

Set sometime after the events of 2010 Tron: Legacy, Tron: Identity puts players in the role of Query, an intuitive program tasked with investigating a mysterious explosion. Said explosion occurred in the Repository, a vast, fortified nexus of highly classified information controlled by a governing body of high-level programs known collectively as the Core. However, something else is amiss: the entire facility is empty except for a handful of suspects. The explosion, which rocked the facility, erased the memories of many on-site events, compromising the credibility of their testimony. Despite the blaze potentially being triggered to cover up a robbery, no one is particularly inclined to say what – if anything – has been taken, least of all the facility’s administrators.

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Image: Bitel Games

As a member of the “Disciples of Tron”, a sequence of programs that work independently of the system in their pursuit of capital-T truth, you must only observe and investigate. But before the night is over, you’ll have to make some tough choices – choices that will affect not only your own future, but those of the entire grid.

As far as how the game exists alongside other visual novels, Tron: Identity Quite a straight forward experience. Ain’t no left-field fourth-wall-breaking twist à la Doki Doki Literature Club or romance subplot à la dream daddy: a dad dating simulator, but rather a pure focus on the core essence of the genre: reading through text and shaping your own character’s personality by choosing between dialogue propels that branch into more possibilities. The Query is more or less a blank slate at the start of the game, an event whose entire workings are defined by fairness and non-interference. However, in order to develop a rapport with suspects and negotiate their willingness to assist in your investigation, sooner or later you will have to break one of your own rules: caring enough about the lives of others to either intervene on their behalf or Standing between them and their goals. The overall game-play experience is smooth and enjoyable with the sole exception of one mechanic: the defragmentation puzzles.

Image: Bitel Games

As a disciple of Tron, you have the ability to do something that no other program can: rebuild and restore the “identity discs” of programs whose minds were wiped in the wake of the explosion. The Defragmenting Identity disc takes the form of an elaborate card game, in which players remove cards by sliding them down a ring-shaped interface. To proceed, players must remove enough cards until the number remaining matches the prerequisite number listed in the corner of the screen.

This minigame is more frustrating than the novel, with increasingly detailed rules that only become more taxing as you have to redo previous moves over and over again to find the right combination of cards to complete the required sequence. is forced to. To the credit of the game, Tron: Identity gives players several opportunities to alleviate these pain points, including allowing the game to automate the elimination of a minimum of three cards per puzzle, and even allowing these by selecting options from the game’s menu screen. Skip the riddles altogether.

Image: Bitel Games

As someone who didn’t particularly enjoy these puzzles and found the challenge of interacting with them more obnoxious and frustrating than gratifying and intriguing, I ended up completing them in order to get back to the actual detective work of the game. Kindly chose to leave. While the option to bypass these puzzles entirely was welcomed and appreciated, it still makes the defragmentation puzzles feel like a bullet-point element Tron: Identity Rather than a meaningful addition to the overall design of the game.

Tron: Identity A visual novel adventure through and through, and an especially well-written and entertaining one at that. It might not be enough to move the needle for devout Tron fans who might otherwise have little interest in the genre, but it’s nonetheless a creative take on the series with a rewarding story and intriguing characters that take the series in bold new directions. Extrapolates onto Tron’s universe. Defragmentation puzzles aside, this is a dramatically stimulating and engrossing story that’s well worth experiencing whether you’re a Tron fan or not.

Tron: Identity was released on April 11 on Mac, Nintendo Switch, and Windows PC. The game was reviewed on PC using a pre-release download code provided by Bitel Games. Vox Media is an affiliated partnership. These do not affect editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find Additional information about Play Gamez’s ethics policy here,