The Game that I'll be talking about today is an action role-playing game that offers both entertainment and a great story that uses its game mechanics to help further develop it. This is developed by an indie team of only seven people who go by the name of Supergiant Games. This game is special to this team as it is their first game they've made. A game called Bastion.
Supergiant games team
The Story:
opening
The story begins with the main character, who is referred to by the narrator as "The Kid" who has woken up to a world destroyed by what is known as The Calamity. The Calamity has left the city of Caelondia Into floating pieces of rubble and broken up land. In case of any emergency that occurred in Caelondia, the people had to go to a place meant to help and save them from situations like The Calamity. This place is called the Bastion. as you set off towards the Bastion, pieces of the floating land form from underneath your feet thanks to a piece of the Bastion the you carry on your back.
Bastion Cog
Once the Kid reaches the Bastion, he finds only an old man named Rucks. Rucks is a Mancer, who are the leaders as well as the scientists of Caelondia. Mancers are one of the many jobs in Caelondia since they operate under a guild system. The Kid being a Mason who are builders and defenders of the city.
The Bastion
After meeting Rucks the Kid finds out that the bastion isn't working since it's doesn't have enough power. Rucks tells the Kid that the Bastion requires cores to get it back up and running again. But the only other cores that still work were the ones that used to power Caelondia. Seeing as how the city doesn't need it any more, the Kid ventures towards each of them to obtain their cores. To reach these locations in a place where the land is a bunch of floating pieces is through the use of skyways. Skyways launch the Kid into the air in order to help the Kid fly to the core locations. The more cores you collect for the Bastion, the further the skyway can launch you to more cores.
Skyway map
During your adventure you find two more survivors of the Calamity. Zulf who is an ambassador of the Ura people and Zia who is also an Uran, but was raised in Caelondia. Before the Calamity, The Ura and Caelondian's were at war with each other.
(left to right) The Kid, Zulf, Zia and Rucks
After the Kid, Rucks, Zia and Zulf spend more time with each other, Zulf reads the Journal that Zia had which belonged to her father Venn who like Rucks is a Caelondian Mancer. He finds out through Venn's journal that the Mancers had developed a weapon that was meant to destroy the Ura during the war, this weapon had worked, but it worked too well, as it had destroyed Caelondia and is what caused the Calamity. In Zulfs anger he sabotages the Bastion and escapes back to Ura territory. Upon the Kid's return to the Bastion with the last core, he finds only Rucks and Zia in a damaged Bastion. Rucks instructs you to then retrieve Shards to repair the Bastion.
Zulf's Wrath
Now that Zulf has become an enemy of both you and Rucks, you encounter Ura warriors while retrieving the shards. Instead of the harsh Fauna of Caelondia that you dealt with when retrieving the cores.
When you return to the bastion with the second to last shard. you find that the Bastion being attacked by Ura warriors. After defeating the Ura attackers you only find Rucks remaining as some of the Ura had kidnapped Zia. Rucks then explains to you about the whole Mancer's doomsday weapon.
The mancers had initially made this weapon not to directly kill the Ura but to use it to prevent another war from happening between them and the Ura again. It was Venn who had triggerd it in an effort to destroy the Ura, but it backfired on Caelondia. Zulf however was unaware of this part of the story.
In an effort to end what Rucks and the Mancers had started. The Kid travels to the Ura's homeland to save Zia, obtain the last shard and solve the conflict between the Caelondians and the Ura. Once you rescue Zia she explains that she had voluntarily left with the Ura when the Bastion was attacked to find out more about their intentions. As you fight deeper into Ura territory. The Ura warriors turn on Zulf as they see that it was him who brought The Kid's destruction to their home territory. After saving Zulf from the angered Uran warriors you have the choice of either helping Zulf get out or leaving him there to rot.
By leaving him, you then have to fight you way out with the last shard. Whereas if you decide to save Zulf you give up the only weapon you were carrying to carry Zulf's injured body through Uran Warriors. You are then set at a slow walking pace by Zulfs injured body, having the song "Mother, I'm Here (Zulf's Theme)" playing in the background as the Kid walks through a barrage of Uran arrows without slowing down. After a while the Ura see that the Kid isn't fighting back and stop firing at him, allowing the Kid to leave with Zulf. Even though saving Zulf doesn't effect the rest of the game very much, it does make for huge Video Game Caring Potential
Saving Zulf
Evacuation
Restoration
My Opinions of the game
Unlike the other games that I've talked about, where the focus is on the game's narrative, Bastion excels in all aspects including: soundtrack, game play and narrative. It's able to tell you it's story at a good pace, provide the fun and varied game play to accompany it and while also giving some extra challenges,levels and replayability to the game if you still want more from it.The Balance between game play and story is what makes it one of my favourite video games of all time.
things that I'd like to take about in this game are mainly about the Ending choice, the Rucks' importance to the whole game, the soundtrack and other little bits of information here and there.
Learning The Back Story
Through the story, narration and journals you obtain, the game tells you about the past history of Caelondia and the events that took place before The Calamity occurred. Between the 4 characters in the game they each have a lot of their own back story which connects with each other. The more complex character being Rucks as previously explained.
There are some ways to find out more about the history of the world and the characters of Bastion. One of my favourite ways is through the Kid's mind. In between levels, when you come back to the Bastion there is a pipe, if you interact with this pipe the kid get's knocked out and we enter his mind, which becomes a horde mode. Here is a point where the developers connect the game play and the narrative. After making it past a certain wave of enemies the narrator provides back story about the Kid and if you want to learn more about the Kid, you'll just have to fight through more waves of enemies.
The Back Story
Before the Calamity, there was the Caelondians and the Ura. Caelondia had it's own Americanized culture as they lived in a city with a guild system, whereas the Ura lived in caves and had very traditional culture similar to asia. Between them was the Rippling walls where Masons like the Kid spent most of their time repairing, building and defending the wall.
Both the Kid and Zia never had proper parents. With the Kid, he never knew his father and his mother died the day he first went to the Rippling walls leaving him all alone. Zia on the other hand lost mother as she was giving birth to Zia. At this point Zia was only left with her father, Venn, who later dies in the Calamity. since it was him who triggered it.
In the City of Caelondia were the Mancers who thought that the only way to prevent any further wars with the Ura was to create a weapon to kill off the Ura in the event that they did attack again. Both Rucks and Venn were mancers who worked on this weapon.
There was an unnamed Caelondian man who had a plan to stop the Mancers and the creation of the doomsday weapon. This started with him seducing Zia and convincing her to leave Caelondia with him only to betray her to the authorities in an effort to blackmail her father, Venn, to prevent him from returning to work with the Mancers. Because of his anger towards this unknown person, Venn assumes that he is one of the Ura and decides to use the weapon on them, only to have it backfire and destroy Caelondia.
During the game, Zia feels somewhat guilty about the Calamity because she thinks that in a way, it was her that caused the Calamity.
Zulf's role before the Calamity wasn't to fight against the Caelondians, in fact as the ambassador he planned to travel to Caelondia to improve the relations between the Ura and Caelondia. During the game he turns away from this passive side of his and chooses to continue the conflict between the Ura and Caelondia even after the Calamity. Simply because Rucks hesitates to tell him the whole story about Venn and the Calamity being an accident.
The Back story reveals a lot about one of the themes of the game which is that most conflicts are just a miscommunication between both sides. How Venn assumes that the man blackmailing him is Uran which leads to the Calamity and that the conflict after the Calamity between the Ura and the Kid, Rucks and Zia is all because Zulf didn't get the whole story which is caused by Rucks' hesitation to tell Zulf.
Rucks/the narrator is voiced by Logan Cunninham, who acts as the never ending narrator for the duration of the entire game. Narrating from the beginning of the game, Rucks only introduces himself to The Kid in game when you reach the Bastion. He will comment on either what your character does, your current situation and more importantly he will also provide the back story of a character you encounter, as well as that of the world that you're in. the tone of the narrator's voice combined with the great writing prevents the narrator from being boring and annoying and instead makes him awesome and important to the whole story.
Game with Narration
Much like the narrator in The Stanley Parable, Rucks will notice anything that happens in the game and will comment on it. whether is be the weapon combination you have, how well you're doing or even information on a character or enemy.
In one sequence of the game you find ashen statues scattered throughout the level but these ashen statues were once people, who are now the result of the calamity. As you pass by, Rucks tells you each of their names and provides a bit of their back story.
Rucks acts a bit like an unreliable narrator since everything he comments on is from his point of view. Meaning that the way he talks about some things allows you to dig into his mind. This point of view has a big effect on the choice you have to make at the end. Rucks seems to talk a lot about things from the past, like how beautiful The city of Caelondia was before the calamity hit and how he remembers the names of all the ashen people you come across. Even the ones he didn't like.
The Ending
Other than the choice you have whether to save Zulf or not. The choice given to you in the end is the only other story altering point in the game where the player can choose where the story goes next. Even though this this the only major point that the player has control over, the game is able to make this the player's most difficult choice to make as it has been providing you with information for the whole game, that give you good reasons for both Restoring Caelondia and Evacuating it as well.
When learning about not only Zia but the Kid too. You find out that for most of their lives they've spent alone since they either never knew their parents because they left or died, or in Zia's case where her father was focused more on his work than his daughter.
After this whole adventure Zia tells you how she's felt happier after the Calamity rather than before simply because she had you, Rucks (and maybe Zulf) as her new proper family. This of course pushes you to choose the Evacuation protocol of the Bastion.
Whereas after learning about Rucks' nostalgia for the past and how he's told you about it for the whole game, it can make the choice at the end difficult, as Rucks' narration pushes you to choose the Restoration protocol to see the Caelondia that Rucks has been talking about the entire time. Interestingly, there are some indications that the Bastion's restoration function has been tried many times before with lines from Rucks such as "Seems like this story has been told a thousand times" at the start of new game +.
Knowing that the restoration protocol has been used before and that it has had the same outcome all the time. It shows that the Calamity is unavoidable and that Rucks should let go of the past and start a new life with Zia and the Kid and Zulf depending on your previous choice.
In reality either choice you make between Evacuation and Restoration only results in a photo and some dialogue, but because of all the information given to you during the game. The player feels under a lot of pressure for this one point in the game.
The soundtrack
The man responsible for composing the soundtrack is Darren Korb, even with such a small team Darren was still able to make a total of 22 tracks for the game. Out of the 22 tracks, 5 had vocals that featured both Darren Korb and Logan Cunningham as well as Ashley Barrett. The rest of the soundtrack being I instrumental. Much like the rest of the game the soundtrack had the western steam-punk fantasy style to it where each track was different and focused on a particular emotion whether it be the moving percussive beat of intensity and urgency with stings in "Percy's Escape", the slow bad-ass, western acoustic guitar in "Slinger's Song" or even the distant guitar playing in "In Case of Trouble". Even outside of the game, no matter how you feel, at least one of the songs in this soundtrack could match that feeling.
1. Get Used to It
2. A proper Story
3. In Case of Trouble
4. Bynn the Breaker
5. The Sole Regret
6. Twisted Streets
7. Terminal March
8. Percy's Escape
9. Faith of The Jevel
10. Mine, Windbag, Mine
11. Slinger's song
12. Build That Wall (Zia's theme)
13. Spike in a Rail
14. What's Left Undone
15. Brusher Patrol
16. The Mancer's Dilemma
17. Mother, I'm Here (Zulf's Theme)
18. Pale Watchers
19. The Bottom Feeders
20. From Wharf to Wilds
21. Setting Sail, Coming Home (End Theme)
22. The Pantheon (Ain't Gonna Catch You)
I could go on talking about other small aspects that this game has like the item and weapon variety or how the floating land that form from underneath your feet is a metaphor for the Kid trying to piece his life back together, but this blog post is long enough.
Luckily Me and other fans will be excited to know that Supergiant games has planned to release their second game called Transistor.
"I'll see you in the next one..."
-Rucks
