One looming problem that taxed the value of everything in Bastion was just how empty the Bastion felt. For the first hour or so of the game, Rucks talks endlessly about rebuilding the Bastion and rebuilding the world. I couldn't help but think, for what? For who?
"Don't worry, hammer. I'm going to make a better life for us."
The scene where the Kid finds Zulf and the narration around it have the appropriate gravity (just try not to get goosebumps when the Rucks quotes, “We have to go. Please.”). But I felt like this should have been earlier in the game. The Bastion needed more survivors. The game needed the feeling that the Kid and Rucks were rebuilding for something. The stages needed occasional survivors to rescue, and others could have drifted in between stages. They didn't need to add much – just a few faces, a few more tents, and a few more lines – to make it feel like you were really fighting for something.
This all gets addressed late in the game, though, when Rucks reveals that the Bastion is actually a time machine that will reset everything as it was before the Calamity.
I'm going to do a whole rant on reveal stories at some point, but for now, suffice to say that not every story has to be a reveal story. In most games, the inevitable reveal just comes across as forced and pointless. In Bastion, the reveal is actively detrimental to the game.
Many of the things that I didn't like about the game make a lot more sense in the context of this reveal. I couldn't understand why Rucks kept justifying murdering creatures and animals (the animals are quite sentient, too) for our own, two-person rocket ship. I didn't get who or what we were fighting for. All alone on a pile of rocks with just the Kid (no personality), Rucks (more narrator than character), and Zia (going to be sad and pretty no matter what happens), I really had a lot of trouble caring, despite the love and detail put into the world.
Even more than that, the slow but steady discovery that Caelondia was not a utopia – but instead a rather horrible place in many ways – would have been much more powerful if we knew we were fighting to return everything to the status quo. Paced and revealed correctly, the game could have given its players a very slow-burning conflict: Maybe we don't want things to be the way they were after all.
And then the branching endings would have had that much more weight, too.
Unrelated. I just love this picture.
From a story perspective and from a character perspective, there was no reason for this reveal to be a reveal – other than for the sake of being a reveal.
But all in all, as someone who loves story telling, loves video games, and loves good writing, Bastion delivered. From neat touches about the setting to jaw-dropping scenes, the game is a work of art. As a whole package, I honestly can't think of another game that combines its writing, its visuals, and its music (oh my god, the music) into such a tightly-woven package.
Seriously. Try not to get goosebumps.
No comments:
Post a Comment