Strange Gaming Diaries: Bastion, by Supergiant Games

so, because bastion's story revolves pretty strongly around twists, and also because bastion is over a decade old, this is another instance where I'm gonna put an umbrella spoiler warning over everything so three quarters of this doesn't have to end up in a details element. enjoy!

I was pretty late to this one! I started playing transistor back in the day, and when hades proceeded to garner unfathomable amounts of attention from those around me, I figured that it was worthwhile to check out some of the earlier games in supergiant's lineup before taking their newest one for a spin. still need to get around to pyre, but I'm very excited for that one!

I almost feel a little embarrassed to be writing a diary entry for this game, because surely in the nearly thirteen years that it's existed, people have already talked about most of the things that are worth talking about. it was really one of the first of its kind, and that a game of this combined narrative and mechanical quality sprung up out of the woodwork as the first game of a brand new studio of seven people was surely a shock to the system of the 2011 public.

let me at least get this part out of the way: the gameplay was pretty good! a bunch of fun toys for you to try out and a satisfying upgrade system that sprawls out in endless direction so you always have goals to work towards. nothing super exceptional, and admittedly there came a point at which I spent most of the combat encounters on autopilot, but they kept me engaged enough with the game to be paying attention when it dropped more story beats on me and I don't think I ever had an outright bad experience with the mechanics, so I'd say it does the job well enough.

no, the real star of the show here is of course the story. bastion's narrative tone settles into a place of deep, yawning melancholy, with all of its characters simmering with regret and frustration and deep, clawing guilt. its characters are compellingly flawed, with rucks (better known as the stranger) being a special standout—that someone who would otherwise slot into the stock role of the wise mentor figure is someone who willingly participated in the development of a genocidal weapon is not something the story allows him to breeze past, and it's ultimately left up to the player to decide their thoughts about him—a satisfyingly hands-off approach for a story focused on such ethically charged topics as war and genocide.

there is a quite a bit of unfortunate both-sidesing going on when it comes to the conflict between caelondia and the ura, though. despite caelondia clearly being the industrialized colonizing force and the ura being the traditionalist native civilization, the story does at times back on the rhetoric of "both sides could have lived in peace if they had put aside their differences" as though one of the two factions didn't get absurdly rich off of stolen land and develop the Giant Genocide Machine in their spare time.

still, it's obvious that the narrative is overall firmly stating that the people who made the Giant Genocide Machine are unambiguously the bad guys here, and the lavish worldbuilding that goes into establishing the history and structure of caelondia is interwoven with details that make it clear that the civilization was a ruthless and aggressive one. the calamity is positioned as the ruinous consequences of their disregard for the value of the world around them, and they're made to pay the price as everything they made comes falling down. hardly the first time this sort of story's been told, but it's through the deftness of its writing and the deliciously gloomy tone that it had me hooked the whole time I was playing.

I find myself without many other meaningful remarks about the game besides "it was good and I liked it"—it's a solid game that told a solid story that doesn't take itself for granted or aspire to something loftier than it can pull off. not only that, but it's an important point of origin for a studio who regularly rocks the indie world every time they put out something new, and so it makes sense for their very first game to be much humbler and simple by comparison. I have a lot more feelings about their follow-up game, transistor, but I haven't played that recently enough to be able to write effectively on it, so that's being filed away for the future. for now, I'm just glad to have this game filed away as done—now for the sports game! then I finally get to play hades and see what everybody's been raving about nonstop for the past few years. that's how it works. such is my curse

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