I just finished playing through Bastion, and I’m just stunned by how great it was. For those who haven’t heard of it, Bastion is an isometric action RPG from the indie developer Supergiant Games. It combines stellar hack-n-slash gameplay, gorgeously evocative art, a wonderful story in the desolate Western vein of Cormac McCarthy, and the best sound design I’ve ever heard in a game. You can get a sense of the game’s atmosphere from the trailer, but it only hints at the brilliance within.
The sound design, in particular, deserves some elaboration, because it’s what sets Bastion apart from any game I’ve played. Bastion’s unique selling point is what the developers call “dynamic narration”: the game features a narrator who tells the story of the game as you play it, reacting to the player’s moves. For example, if the player spends some time smashing background objects, the narrator will say, “Kid just rages for awhile.” There is almost no other dialogue - rather than forcing the player to pause for exposition, the narrator simply delivers it as you play. The end result is a sense that you’re listening to a great storyteller do his thing while living out the story itself, simultaneously.
What makes this work is the quality of the writing and voice acting. The narrator’s voice is equal parts Ron Perlman and Sam Elliot, a worn and husky older man with a dry sense of humor. He never just blandly describes what you’re doing - there’s no “Kid attacks the monster with the hammer,” nor is there any fourth wall-breaking “Kid needs to press the left trigger to block” kind of stuff. It’s far cleverer than that. Instead, the narrator’s words might use your actions to provide character motivation, give insight into the world around you and the Calamity that destroyed it, or even congratulate you when your performance in a fight is especially impressive. Every line is carefully tuned to deliver the maximum amount of story in the minimum number of words (and importantly, the lines never, ever repeat).
For example, in the first fifteen minutes of the game, you find your first weapon, a massive stone hammer. The narrator remarks, “Finds his lifelong friend, just lyin’ in the road.” His words not only inform the player that the hammer is a tool to be taken, but also advance the player’s understanding of his character as a hard-working, blue-collar kind of guy who keeps to himself. There’s a moment later where the player runs across the body of a barkeeper he knew, burned so quickly in the Calamity that he remains a pillar of ashes with features intact. If the player destroys the ash pillar with his hammer, the narrator notes, “Rodney always wanted his ashes scattered here.” It’s a haunting moment that does more to color this post-apocalyptic world than any thousand over-bloomed brown desert environments with mutated zombie hordes could.
Anyway, if you haven’t yet played the game, I highly, highly recommend it. It’s available on both Xbox Live Arcade and on Steam. I haven’t spoken too much about the story, because it’s something that should be experienced unspoiled, but I’ll just say that Bastion has one of the best video game stories I’ve completed. It’s one of the few with an ending that feels satisfying both thematically and in terms of completing the plot. *Bastion *also has one hell of a soundtrack, which matches the melancholy fantasy-Western setting beautifully.
If you have played through the game, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the story. In particular…
What choices did you make at the end of the game? I was impressed at how neither choice was presented as a traditional Bioware-style “GOOD vs EVIL” moral decision. Instead, I had the rare experience of feeling genuinely conflicted both times. Ultimately, I chose to carry Zulf’s body and to Evacuate for my first playthrough, but will be going through the game again so I can see what happens for the alternate choices as well. I do have to say that the sequence immediately following the decision to carry Zulf is one of the most powerful I’ve ever experienced in a video game. For a game that relied so heavily on spoken dialogue up to that point, it was incredible how the Ura army’s reaction to that decision plays out without them speaking a single word.
