Sadly, The Ascent responds with easy answers, with other corporations stepping into the fill the gap, using you as the fist with which they make their power-grab. To ask what happens when such an inexorable power structure vanishes overnight is a fantastic baseline for exploring the consequences of allowing oppressive corporations to act as governments. The megacorps of cyberpunk fiction are so often presented as capitalist deities, inevitable, immortal, and omnipotent. It’s a cool premise for a cyberpunk story. Your situation changes radically, however, when the events of your initial mission lead to the entire Ascent Group going bankrupt. You begin the game working for the Ascent Group as an “Indent”, basically a slave in all but name.
While the title refers to your character’s journey through both the architectural and social strata of The Ascent’s sci-fi metropolis, it also relates to the more literal Ascent Group, one of several corporations that control not just your home city, but the entire local cluster of nearby star systems. Which is not to say The Ascent is entirely derivative. Neon Giant’s cyberpunk debut is a run-and-gun shooter that couldn’t be any more straightforward if its alien megacity was shaped like a giant arrow, but its spellbinding visual adventure carries its more derivative elements all the way to the finish line. The Ascent is a prime example of style over substance, but when your game has this much style, the need for substance is somewhat diminished.
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