The newest entry in the Tron universe is Tron: Identity, a video game created by indie studio Bithell, known for their hits Thomas Was Alone and John Wick Hex. This time around, Bithell is entering the Tron universe with a new choice-based video game that centers around a giant mystery.
Released on April 11, Tron: Identity is a stylish, noir-infused narrative adventure. The visual novel is centered around choices – from actions and decisions to the numerous response options players have when interacting with the game's characters. Tron: Identity has a full audio soundtrack and will release on Steam and the Nintendo Switch.
Tron: Identity Centers Around A Crime
The main story of Tron: Identity is that players operate the protagonist, Query, a detective-like program who has been called to the Repository, a sort of central governmental building, to investigate a crime. Someone has broken into a high-security vault and stolen what's inside.
Players will need to find out who the culprit is, but as the investigation goes deeper, it's revealed that the crime is tied to an even bigger danger. Gamers will need to interrogate suspects and decide who is friend or foe, who is telling the truth or lying, and ultimately, uncover who is behind the crime.
Diverging Paths Dictate Gameplay
Whereas a lot of games have alternate endings, Tron: Identity will have alternate pathways…and a lot of them. Depending on the choices players make and how they respond to characters, the story's trajectory will shift in real-time, making Tron: Identity a visual novel with a unique twist.
Characters can become bigger or smaller parts of the story, they can become allies or enemies, and their involvement might make other characters happy or mad, influencing how they perceive the player and altering the game's events. Interestingly, the game only has one ending, but multiple stories that lead to it, creating a huge variety of outcomes and plots.
Tron: Identity Takes Place In A Second Grid
The video game takes place in the Tron universe, but in a completely different grid than the first two films. According to the game's lore, Kevin Flynn created a secondary grid before getting trapped in the main grid in the original cult classic Tron movie. This second grid, however, has never had any human involvement, so the programs have never encountered users like the ones in the main grid have.
That has led to the programs within the grid creating a full society and way of life without any outside involvement. However, some programs idolize users and study the human artifacts that Flynn had digitized into the grid before he became trapped, seeing them as religious objects and believing users must be some kind of deities.
The Game Takes Place In Present Day
While the second grid was created decades ago, the game takes place in the present day, after the events of Tron and Tron: Legacy. However, time moves differently inside the grid, so while the second grid has only been active for a few decades in human years, the computer programs living inside have undergone thousands of years of evolution and development.
Their society is now in the distant future, giving them an ample amount of time to create a rich culture and society filled with its own history. Players will discover some of that history and culture when interacting with the other characters in the game.
The Game's Style Is Heavily Inspired By Tron: Legacy
Tron fans will instantly recognize the style and vibe of Tron: Identity. Deep, dark, black backgrounds with glowing neon highlights, often in shades of blue, are directly inspired by the 2010 sequel, Tron: Legacy. Players will also notice the game's music has the same electronic style as Tron: Legacy's famous soundtrack composed by Daft Punk.
The game's developers said they purposefully used the vibe of the second film as inspiration to help showcase that Tron: Identity is firmly within the Tron universe and to immerse gamers in the vibe and feel of the Tron grid.
The Puzzle Sections Are Inspired By A Tron: Legacy Scene
In one scene in Tron: Legacy, Quorra (Olivia Wilde) gets injured, and Kevin Flynn needs to repair her by navigating through code on her identity disk. In Tron: Identity, some portions of the game transition from a visual novel to having puzzle elements, where players must access information from identity disks. These puzzle games were inspired by the Tron: Legacy scene and let gamers further explore Tron's famous identity disks.
The puzzle sections are based on solitaire, combined with extra rules of where each tile can be placed, making it harder to match and eliminate tiles. These puzzle sections were partially inspired by one of Bithell's previous games, The Solitaire Conspiracy, where gamers played a techno version of the classic card game. From there, the developers combined their love of solitaire with Tron lore, bringing the identity disk repair scene to life.
Tron: Identity Adds More Diversity To The Tron Universe
The game's developers noticed that characters in the Tron universe have so far been lacking in diversity. To address this, they added more characters with diverse backgrounds. The game's creators have said that programs within the grid are modeled after humans, so it's only natural that those programs would reflect humans, meaning they'd be just as diverse as the human race.
It's unknown if this push for diversity will continue with the upcoming Tron: Ares movie, as so far the only casting announcement has been that Jared Leto will star as the lead. It's also been revealed that the movie will be a direct sequel to Legacy, meaning there's a good chance Jeff Bridges, Olivia Wilde, and Garrett Hedlund could return.
The Video Game's Release Will Coincide With Disney's New Tron Coaster
Tron: Identity isn't the only new addition to the Tron universe coming in early April. Just a few days before the game's release, Walt Disney World will unveil Tron Lightcycle / Run, a roller coaster that lets riders take part in one of Tron's most iconic scenes, the light cycle race.
The story behind the coaster is that Sam Flynn, Kevin's son from the second movie, created a portal into the grid to foster competition between humans and programs for both worlds to better understand each other. The game and the roller coaster are debuting just one week apart from each other, so Tron fans will have a lot to look forward to after the underrated sci-fi franchise has sat dormant for an entire decade.