Bastion is a game about rebuilding the world, a game in which every step you take sees a lost landscape crashing back together around you, as fragments of paving tile and shards of scenery spin upwards to meet your passing feet. It feels like an illusion, but it’s not, the real trick lies with one of the other defining features: narration.
Bastion uses a pretty rare game play dynamic, it’s not a game in which the NPC’s dole out the way points and shuffle you towards the next fight to keep the game flowing. Instead the narrator describes every action you make with your onscreen avatar, detailing the exploits as they happen. It’s a fantastic trick built from hours of dialogue, in game triggers, simple sentences and your choices. It all comes together to engage the player in a way I personalty have never seen in a game before.
This amazing narration is just kept to the larger on screen events that take place towards the end of the game, but is doled out with every action you take along the way. Which path you take, which enemy strikes first, which weapon you choose, which power you use, all of it form an amazing story that feels every bit your own.
A favorite moment in the dialogue i found was right at the beginning when I misjudged a distance and slipped off the edge of the world falling to my death. “And then the kid fell to his death” the narrator exclaimed as my heart sunk knowing I’d have to start the level over, “heh, only kidding” he followed up with as my onscreen self re-appeared on the ledge. This is a simple re-spawn to any other game but in Bastion it feels like the narrator is right there, joking around as you play this adventure.
He’s a confidante rather than a commentator, and so it’s not so much a victory for storytelling as it is for basic emotional resonance. Strange as it sounds, you shouldn’t expect the voice in your ear to untangle Bastion’s plot for you (truth told, it’s still a thick fantasy snarl, albeit an unusually earnest one). Instead, it will bind you tightly to the unfolding action, weaving a conspiratorial spell that creates an unexpected intimacy as you move from distanced lock-on fire to more immediate button mashing. By the end of Bastion, you’ll feel far closer to the game than you might have expected. You’ll be invested in its outcome in a way that, say, merely understanding what’s going on could never have achieved.
The narration, in other words, helps to push you inwards as well as onwards, shoving you deeper into a game that is, in every way, worthy of such an eminently pinchable conceit. Each mission in this dungeon-crawler drops you face-first into a new environment, some made of long grass and mutant flytraps, others built from hippyish kibble like leopard-print throws, beads, and even stray sofa cushions. It’s a compact journey, but still an epic one, and the gravelly mysticism combined with the delicate autumnal art suggests an unlikely but potent creative partnership.
[showtime]
The Bastion itself is a refuge island that you’re helping to reconstruct piece by piece, with every core or shard of the old world that you recover from each of the missions. It’s a hub, a place for you to adapt your character and develop him as well as this floating island in the sky.
In fact, Supergiant Games takes the metaphor to its full extent, with every last RPG mechanic at your disposal represented in wood and stone. Switch loadouts at the arsenal, upgrade weapons at the forge (each choice locks another out, StarCraft style), and manage your leveling in the distillery, where perks have become bottled spirits. They’re a familiar, if reliable, bunch with boosts to the likes of health and critical hit percentages, but they come with beautiful doll’s house designs and clever names, like Stabsinthe.
Weapons turn out to be the game’s final victory, which is useful since Bastion’s short missions are crammed with enthusiastic blasting and bludgeoning. From the starting hammer to some of the final, explosive options, each weapon is distinct in handling, impact, and flavor of damage, and each brings with it its own range of special moves. Both mortar and flamethrower options are among the best you’ll find in any RPG, while the game is forced to ensure an uncommon sense of balance among everything from pike to pistol, since you can only swap equipment at certain points in each level.
Bastion is overall, a fantastic fantasy experience I would recommend to anyone. It’s available on the Xbox Live Arcade and for the PC you can grab it over on Steam.
If you want to see more about bastion, head on over to the HAC-Comic YouTube page where I’ll be uploading my own game play videos of my experiences in the world of Bastion!