Ghostrunner Let's Play: Settling the Score with the Architect Across Four Boss Fights

After starting a new game, the protagonist kills one enemy right after waking up. Movement is WASD and jumping is Space, the "usual setup," as the commentator puts it. During play, a voice echoes directly in the protagonist's brain.

The setting is an enormous skyscraper. The world is engulfed in radioactive material, and what remains of humanity survives inside this tower. The protagonist is a "Ghostrunner," created to keep the peace, and the voice speaking to them belongs to the tower's administrator, the Architect. The Architect had the tower seized through a subordinate's betrayal and asks for help taking it back. Since the Architect explains a lot of things, the commentator initially takes them to be "a decent sort" and decides to cooperate.

To climb to the upper levels where the traitor is, the protagonist visits an elevator facility. There, T-073-M, nicknamed "Tom," blocks the way with a defense system that is, in the commentator's words, "like a theme park." To destroy Tom, two cables at the top must be cut.

Rather than climbing on foot, the protagonist moves by swinging from hooks. The commentator explains that you weave through gaps in the lasers as you climb so your body "doesn't get turned into steak." Aside from that, the only other moves are spinning your sword around and a short dash. The commentator stresses that even though it looks difficult, the actual controls are simple.

Cutting the first cable causes the system to stop temporarily from the impact. Along the way, a woman from the resistance had joined the protagonist. The Architect, the former administrator, apparently doesn't like her, and the two argue constantly inside the protagonist's head. The commentator brushes this off with, "Once we take down the traitor, it'll all work out."

On the stretch toward the second cable, the protagonist can also run along walls. However, lasers run along the walls too, so you have to leave the wall when one comes. The commentator calls it a somewhat tricky mechanic that requires timing things right and moving all at once, but praises the tension and sense of speed that come from new challenges arriving at a brisk pace. You wait with a jump, move with a hook, wait again, and then comes "fun running time." Dodging the orange obstacles with good timing, the protagonist reached the second cable.

Once both cables were cut, the defense system seemed to collapse. However, it's designed to keep running even when broken. The tower was designed by the Architect in the first place, and its emergency systems work properly too. The commentator quips, "Well, it got taken from them anyway." The core section runs on two batteries, and you just have to destroy them one at a time. Since the lasers sweep around clockwise, the protagonist also moves clockwise so as not to be caught, and destroys the batteries near the center. This exposes the system's core on a raised platform in the middle. Approaching the same way, the protagonist launched upward with a hook, destroyed the core, and shut down the defense system completely.

The next opponent is HEL. Sent by the traitor, HEL is a replica of a Ghostrunner created by the traitor, Mara, whereas the protagonist is an enhanced human "Ghostrunner" created by the Architect. HEL has been modified for combat and reportedly built with otherworldly movement.

A Ghostrunner dies instantly when hit, but HEL can withstand attacks. So instead of a one-hit kill, the fight is about gradually wearing down HEL's health. According to the commentator, the fight follows a repeating pattern. HEL moves at high speed after each slash, so you chase them by grabbing onto yellow rails. When you catch up, close combat begins, and pressing the button in time with the enemy's attacks plays out the fight in stylish fashion. Once that's over, it's back to movement.

HEL also uses ranged attacks. According to the commentator, by absorbing HEL's ability after the fight, the protagonist can use this technique too. When HEL's HP was nearly gone, the protagonist finished them off by taking it from them, and defeated HEL. With the traitor's henchman defeated, only the traitor remains.

On the way to Mara, the protagonist is attacked by terrifying experimental subjects. Mara's plan is to modify all of humanity, granting them abilities in exchange for giving up their humanity. The commentator explains that Mara also has a strong ideal of guiding humanity, and that this clashes with the Architect's vision. "And so, they fight to the death," the commentary continues.

Mara has a bunch of handy-looking tentacles sprouting from her back and swings them around to attack. However, she can only move one tentacle at a time. The commentator describes this as her "unfortunately" seeming to have only that kind of ability. You lure her attacks into the electric panels behind you, and cut the tentacle while it's stuck. Repeating this wears down her health.

The attacks gradually intensify, with a quarter of the floor at a time becoming electrified. You have to dodge the floor attacks and the tentacle attacks at the same time, and the commentator says there's a lot to think about. On the other hand, things progress surprisingly slowly, and the commentator jokes that maybe Mara is busy with the controls too. When the entire floor becomes electrified, you hurry to take refuge on the walls.

Here the commentator praises the design of this boss fight. Fights between humanoids tend to look plain, but this one keeps things entertaining with flashy mechanics that make use of the terrain. On top of that, the commentator felt the direction of the mechanics had "the warmth of something made by people," comparable to something like Donkey Kong.

When the second tentacle is cut, Mara gets angry, throws the tentacle, and attacks relentlessly with the remaining ones. Since there are six tentacles, the commentator expected to repeat the process six times, but the enemy only had one round of health left. This time an electrified floor covering half the area appears, and the commentator reads from its appearance that it's clearly going to rotate. Dodging tentacles in the cramped area is tough; horizontal swings are fine, but vertical swings have to be dodged to the left or right, so it's dangerous without leaving yourself some room. The commentator waited at the very edge on the left and dashed right to dodge when a vertical swing came. Since the tentacles still only move one at a time, they say you'll be fine if you stay calm and take it slow.

After a break, the whole floor becomes electrified again. Here the commentator says their favorite moves in the game are the wire action and wall-running. These basic movements feel great, and just moving around is enjoyable in itself. Mara had called the Architect a "mad machine," but the commentator, remarking that "she's pretty mad herself," delivered the final blow. Mara, who had betrayed the Architect and seized control of the tower, was thus defeated.

Right after Mara is defeated, the protagonist's vision starts to blur. With Mara gone, the Architect's power was restored, and they pulled the protagonist into a space called the "Cybervoid," targeting the protagonist's body.

The Architect had once lost their physical body to Mara and had been living in the digital world. Their plan was to recover their power and ultimately take over the protagonist's body. The commentator reacts with "Unforgivable," and sarcastically notes that something similar happened when they were recently reincarnated into another world (thought to refer to another let's play), and that the higher-ups think the same way no matter what world you're in.

The Architect's goal was to bring people's thoughts completely under their control and unify the will of humanity, thereby bringing eternal prosperity to the tower. The commentator calls this "a delusional architect who's gone too far." Mara rebelled precisely because she saw through this plan, and the commentator reflects that, setting aside her human-modification plan, she had her own sense of justice.

The protagonist races through the Cybervoid, heading for the summit where the Architect is. This world is an intranet-like space that will vanish if the Architect, its administrator, is defeated. Since the protagonist also runs on this network, defeating the Architect means the protagonist will vanish too.

A Ghostrunner is an entity with almost no sense of self, and should have been easy to control. But that's not how it turned out. Defeating the Architect is, at first glance, an illogical action for a Ghostrunner. However, through repeated conversations with the woman from the resistance, the protagonist came to understand the feeling of "independence." So they are now acting to defeat the ruler, aiming for a world where humanity can be independent, as the commentator sums up the story.

The Architect is furious, but the commentator coldly points out that programs don't do what you think they'll do, they do what you wrote, and that being angry about a bug you put in yourself is none of their concern. Still, they add that they might understand feeling all the more irritated precisely because it's your own mistake. The commentator says that for them too, it's harder when a problem is caused by their own mistake than by someone else's, and that it's exactly at those times that they tend to look for someone else to blame.

As the protagonist nears the Architect's location, the final gauntlet appears. Getting hit by a bullet means instant death, and falling also means instant death, so you need to time things carefully and hurry without panicking. In the scene where you board a train, the commentator thought they could probably make it, but deciding that "dying while dashing for the train would be no joke," they waited for the next train and boarded when the left side opened up. Finally, they stepped on a jump pad and reached the Architect.

The protagonist names themself "Jack," the nickname their resistance comrades had called them, and finally defeats the Architect. With the administrator gone, the Cybervoid begins shutting down, and the Ghostrunner fades away along with it. The ending song then plays.

The commentator looks back on getting to experience racing through a distinctive world of mysterious neon-lit signs, swords, mechs, and a dictator through action. They wrap up this adventure by saying the best moments were when a move landed exactly as they had pictured it.