^Watch our Tron: Identity video review above!
TRON is one of the most historic films in the Disney catalog. Perhaps more than any other film, it was well ahead of its time: the technology developed to film it has evolved over the decades since its production became the norm in big-budget filmmaking. It’s had a huge big-budget sequel, an animated spin-off series, and a string of video game adaptations (including the excellent TRON 2.0, which remains a worthy sequel to the original film). So, why is this major franchise that hasn’t produced anything since the early 2010s coming back with, most importantly, a visual novel?
Look, TRON is weird. The original movie, which I loved, was goofy and critical. Liberal use of computer-generated images, which look archaic by today’s standards, turns out to be strangely timeless, combined with much of the film’s shooting process being about porting the actors into a film made of CG and matte. A world in which paintings change – a film where nearly every shot is a visual effect – was almost unheard of at the time.
Now, that’s how the vast majority of big-screen extravaganzas are filmed. The Star Wars prequels pioneered the de-facto workflow of digital filmmaking, where the vast majority of creative work is done in post, and casting is just another slab in the compositor’s inbox. But it was Tron in 1982 that first signaled its direction.
As far as filmmaking craftsmanship goes, this is a truly landmark film. But time has not been kind to TRON. Love is a hard thing because let’s face it, it’s so stupid. For God’s sake, they had the late David Warner moping in glowing spandex. They have Jeff Bridges, the Cool Regent, who looks like a complete fool next to Bruce Boxleitner, who is best known as the Commander of Babylon 5 (the least cool thing ever, and I’m talking about being a Loved it so much that I bought the digital 4K remake).
The 2010 sequel, Tron: Legacy, cleaned up a lot of Tron’s goofy edges, reimagining The Grid as a slick, cool, moody cyberpunk cityscape: a new kind of Tron for everyone in Cyber dog to get their pants on. But most people thought it was a bit of an anachronism, and in the end its only real cultural impact was that the Daft Punk soundtrack was really good, which they used a lot in Top Gear afterward.
Therefore, TRON is a very important, historic and very well-known asset with a huge fan base. But every time it shows up, it fails afterwards. So it makes perfect sense to bring it back in a form that doesn’t require hundreds of millions of dollars to produce. Viewers are allowed to dip their toes in the energy pool without committing to a Jeff Bridges breakfast order. Enter Tron: Identity, a game in true Bithell Games style that does a lot with very little.
This is one of the most perfect combination of game studio and IP ever. In stark contrast to John Wick Hex, which many felt wasn’t the spectacular triple-A treatment John Wick deserved. Bithell Games appears on the scene of Thomas Was Alone, an adorable story about several quadrilaterals of varying lengths and widths who are actually representations of rogue AIs that have gained sentience and helped each other in a massive computer system navigation.
I mean, it’s a TRON game in all but name. I almost kicked myself, I didn’t see it before. But the rest of Bithell’s catalog reads almost like a mood board for Tron’s pitch ideas. Consider Volume, a Metal Gear Solid stripped-down, neo-Robin Hood-esque extravaganza that ensured Thomas would stay after he put Bithell on the map. Its art style is, again I kicked myself for not timing it at the time, pure TRON. Spandex, glowing pieces, flat goro shaded surface. Put a few futuristic motorcycles in there, and Disney may have grounds for legal action.
Of course, the most obvious lead for Identity is Subsurface Circular, Bithell’s incredible visual novel from 2017. Set entirely on a subway car, it tells the gripping story of the robot uprising through dialogue of choices and consequences and gorgeous graphics. Achieved visual effects. In a way, it feels like a premium visual novel, as its art can seem like it could be cannibalized from a more expensive game, and its writing is a masterclass in slow reveals, with each layer being The detective mysteries you’ve already deposited raise the stakes more and more until the finale has as much impact as the last episode of one of your favorite shows. I choose deep space nine, substitute whichever one you like, don’t call me a weiner in the comments.
Finally, The Solitaire Conspiracy, Bithell Games’ attempt to reinvent the classic card game as a game for the bored contact center worker, making it sleek and stylish enough to carry FMV narratives and spend everyone with power-ups The strategies add a tactical element to their entire lives honed without their bosses noticing. Solitaire enters Tron: Identity, very twisted but still recognizable, as a defragmentation mini-game that’s your only interaction with the game world, beyond dialogue. With it, you can discover the memories of NPCs whose data streams have been corrupted by a mysterious explosion in The Grid’s repository building.
Tron: Identity is short and entirely in one location, but it contains a lot of complex ideas and touches on many of the more metaphysical aspects of TRON: Are users gods? Do they even exist? If they don’t exist, who wrote them to us? etc. It started, like Subsurface Circular, ostensibly as a detective story, but grew into something much bigger, with far-reaching implications for the wider world. As the first step into a new era of TRON, it works beautifully and leaves you wanting more.
Regardless of the outcome, one thing is clear: Bithell Games can use the humblest toolset to build big stories that shake the world. Spielberg has explained that “Lawrence of Arabia” is his favorite film because it uses only captured light and sound — the most basic medium available to a filmmaker — to tell the grandest story ever told. one of the stories. Tron: Identity strives towards similar goals with a similar basic toolset: scripting, interactivity, and art. I want this story to continue.
