Game of the Year 2011: #12 - Bastion

14 Dec 2011 at 10:30:00 by Peter Parrish

Bastion was a wonderful, joyous surprise. It was one of those games that, for me at least, managed to arrive devoid of hype. Better informed folks had probably been looking forward to the game for some time, but I first learned of its existence during E3 2011. That was only a couple of months before its release as part of Xbox Live’s ‘Summer of Arcade’, and Supergiant Games thankfully chose not to spend the intervening weeks saturating the internet with promotional videos.

By the time I received it for review in July all I really knew was this: it was a top-down-ish hack ‘n slash title, it looked absolutely gorgeous and it had some kind of narrative voiceover. Not a terrible little summary, but one that was wholly inadequate for a game with this much charm.

One of the main delights is the voice work of Logan Cunningham, who provides note-perfect narration of the player’s adventures as enigmatic protagonist ‘The Kid’. It’s the stand-out, innovative feature in a title already packed with splendid touches, taking the idea of reactive feedback to its logical heights. Where other games have commented on in-game, player-driven events with external devices like radio (as in Fallout: New Vegas) or television (Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines, amongst others), Bastion uses Cunningham’s tones to personalise every step of the game’s story.

While much of the reactivity is smoke and mirrors (the story is essentially linear, so there are only certain moments that alter with different actions), as a method of drawing the player in it’s a complete success. That’s thanks to some terrific writing, which pitches Cunningham’s dialogue somewhere between grizzled American frontiersman and oral historian. Bastion is no one-trick pony, and the game would’ve probably survived without the added narration, but it’s now quite impossible to imagine the title without it.

It helps that The Kid’s world is such a rich one to describe. There aren’t really any other worlds (gaming or otherwise) to compare it with, which is about the highest compliment I can pay. It’s possible to draw parallels with Firefly’s ‘cowboys in space’ approach, and the game touches on broad themes like frontier expansion, the plight indigenous peoples and apocalyptic destruction; but the details of the universe itself are brand new. There’s no danger of Bastion’s watery, inflated Scumbags or flaming Wallflowers being derided as lazy knock-offs of previous creations, and that’s something which feels tremendously invigorating in an industry bogged down by derivative fantasy realms stuffed with Orcish and Elven equivalents.

Jen Zee’s hand-painted artwork gives the lands of Bastion a unique look that’s both alive with colour and still has the kind of crisp clarity required by an action game. Another of the title’s fine touches sees the various levels of Bastion construct and arrange themselves before The Kid as he advances, providing a neat visual simile for the unfolding adventure. Each locale has its own character, from the volcanic plains that seethe and pulse in deep reds to the lush jungle sectors that teem with bizarre (and appropriately deadly) fauna.

Supergiant Games’ Darren Korb supplied such a magnificent soundtrack to these strange corners of the universe that players clamoured for an official CD release of the title’s music (which, happily, was forthcoming). Korb’s work is a sci-fi take on old Spaghetti Western tunes, mixed with a couple of mesmerising folk songs that sound as if they really could have been composed from within this alternative universe.

Bastion isn’t just a triumph of audio and visual style. The central game plays its light, dungeon-crawling hand fairly safely, but the execution has enough substance to be enjoyable in its own right. Simple tactical elements like the timing of powerful shots and when to reflect enemy projectiles keep the action lively, and the deft world design permeates here too, providing exotic sounding weaponry like the ‘Fang Repeater’. Indeed, almost every aspect of the game unites the creative depth of the world’s mythology with practical considerations of gameplay. In this way, a comprehensive system of customising the difficulty level becomes a full pantheon of gods, complete with theological backstory and the ‘new game plus’ option has a logical, narrative-consistent explanation for its existence.

During the creation of Bastion, Supergiant Games were a team of seven operating out of a living room. That’s not an unusual set-up for an independent title, but few games with those restrictions on resources come out as well-formed and, well, tight, as this. There are no loose ends to Bastion; the story flows smoothly from a mysterious opening to emotional conclusion and every feature has a clear, defined purpose. It’s a magnificent achievement, and should go down as one of the all-time great debuts of videogaming.

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