Picking Up Steam: Bastion (PC)
When a story says that the world fell to pieces, they don’t normally mean it as literally as Bastion. After a Calamity hits Caelondia, all the ground is thrown to the sky and pretty much stays there. A white-haired kid wakes up on a bit of rock and finds the ground forming in front of him as he walks, so he sets out to see if he can set things right and find whatever survivors may still be kicking after such a fantastical disaster.
Telling Bastion’s story to you during your time with this action role-playing game is a man called Rucks, his rugged voice provided by then-new voice actor Logan Cunningham. He’s the one who’ll be cluing you in gradually to what happened to the world, telling it like a story in the past tense which can lead to moments where he foreshadows what you’re about to unknowingly face. Rucks is the kind of old man who has seen a lot but speaks with purpose, wisdom, and brevity. He’ll comment on your actions, even the ones that aren’t necessary to continue like messing around with your weapons, but he almost feels like a seasoned old cowboy reflecting on the past even though the floating skyways of Caelondia are such a strange magical occurrence. Your ears almost can’t help but perk up when he speaks, and while at first the history of Caelondia might not feel all that important, as your adventure goes from just trying to get your bearings in a fractured world to finding out more about why the Calamity happened and what can be done about it, you realize even this fractured land’s past is important to its strange present and whatever future you can put together for it.
You’ll be playing as a white-haired youth referred to only as The Kind in Bastion, most of the talking left to the narrator rather than the hero himself. The cast is reasonably small, most people you find in the skyways have been turned to ash, but the ones that do appear are given special sections that explore their past and help put together a plot that ends up asking a few questions about what to do in a world after a disaster and the game even lets you pick what responses you agree with to form your own ending. Before you can think about where the story ends, first you begin by heading to the Bastion, a place that was meant to be where the people of Caelondia would meet up should anything go wrong. The Bastion itself isn’t much to look at when you first find it, The Kid needing to go out to other parts of the fractured world to collect Cores that help pull the Bastion together into something more resembling a little town. You’ll get to pick the order of some of the structures you build for the Bastion, some providing straightforward benefits like a Forge for upgrading your weapons or the Distillery where you can drink down a new passive upgrade every time you level up. Others are more situational, like one that provides quests for more of the little blue fragments you spend at your facilities, and the Lost & Found is a nice addition since items you might miss while exploring will appear there later for purchase since you can’t go back to cleared levels.
When you set off from the Bastion and land in some other part of the skyways, the first few locations you drop in won’t stand out that much. Early areas are mostly made up of fractions of a major city, the world that’s building up in front of you always wonderfully realized in terms of its rich detail and coloration, and that might be way early spaces aren’t trying to stand out too much yet. There’s still a novelty to seeing the ground rise up when you reach the edge of the available walkways, and once you’ve settled into exploring the isometric environments some, then the game can start taking you to spaces that were once jungles or train tracks and have a visual direction that sets them apart. The folk rock music as you adventure is consistently strong though, many tracks becoming familiar yet nice to hear as they come and go, including some lovely lyrical tracks saved for key moments. The human characters themselves are squat and simpler representations, but the world of Bastion is consistently impressive, looking like an illustration in stills and yet you can watch it assemble piece by piece as you explore it, the skyways not even that hard to stay on since they’re often the right size for the battles you’ll be involved in.
The action in Bastion, compared to the rest of the package, isn’t as brilliantly realized but still provides a good form of interactivity. The Kid can carry two weapons at a time as well as a special move, the range of options gradually growing over the adventure and providing a good deal of variety so you have a reason to keep swapping in new tools. You start with a slow but strong hammer and a rapid firing bolt gun, but over time you’ll come across a pike that’s good for fighting from a bit of a distance and can even be thrown. A machete is fast but requires you to be in your enemy’s face, but a flame bellows works like a flamethrower while a musket can see you putting your faith in powerful slow shots instead. Upgrades can be quite meaningful too, allowing you to build up weapons in different ways like focusing on increasing the frequency and power of critical hits, the speed with which you can use stronger tools, or how much damage an explosive weapon can do. Every weapon even gets a special shooting range of sorts that helps you understand the strengths of your weapons while laying out a sometimes tough challenge with good rewards for trying to achieve perfection.
In a regular level though, your weapons will do their job well enough, The Kid often going up against foes like ghostly miners, thorn-firing plants, and ornery birds. Weapons can only be swapped in the rare Armory or the one you make back at the Bastion so you need the right pair for the different types of trouble you’ll face, but some later foes do start to push the combat system a little bit. Foes who can teleport right up towards you can be hard to predict and when there’s a good deal of enemies things can feel a little messy, your health bar disappearing in a flash since it can be a bit hard to make out all the incoming attacks. You do having healing bottles that are easy enough to find refreshes for to top you off plus revives that are refilled on a per level basis, plus the Bullhead Shield that prevents almost all damage so long as you face it the right way. One little problem with that shield though is it causes you to lock onto a nearby enemy when its raised, and with some foes appearing during a fight, The Kid might turn towards the new enemy and mess up your attempt at protection. At the same time, the shield can deal damage with a counter, stun foes, and reflect projectiles, giving you a nice way to combat some of the chaos, and those weapon training grounds will also help you become better at figuring out how to approach fights. A dodge roll helps with smoothing over things the last little bit, the action able to unfold cleanly enough much of the time with the issues surprise disruptions rather than frequent woes.
THE VERDICT: Bastion reels the player in with the beautiful environments that get constructed before you as you walk, hits you with a narrator whose voice and words make you lean in, and plays a soundtrack that adds some extra character to its deceptively layered setting. The action isn’t always clean or particularly advanced, the weapon range and customization giving you ways to play how you like but interactions during a fight aren’t always the best. However, the training ranges and levels that push things into new directions still make the combat and exploration a worthwhile piece of this artful package.
And so, I give Bastion for PC…
A GOOD rating. The enemy design, as well as little things like the lock-on issues when raising the Bullhead Shield, are what keeps Bastion from being as great as it could be. Most foes aren’t pushing you to get too adept at the combat despite its interesting flexibility and room for growth in a direction of your choosing. The shooting range levels end up an interesting highlight though because they are catered more closely to the capabilities of each weapon, some rather tough because you will probably need a few upgrades and a good understanding of the gear first but their sharp focus means they get the most out of what they feature. Fighting across the skyways isn’t done poorly, there’s some excitement in utilizing your weapons well to hold back groups of foes, but with few foes that feel like they even count as bosses and some of the simpler enemy behaviors, the combat doesn’t end up being a standout part of the experience so much as the interactive piece that does its job to keep you involved in its world. The skyways are fascinating visually and the narrator helps the story unfold in a clean and compelling manner. It’s not too detached thanks to the reactive comments nor is it overbearing because Rucks isn’t a man to prattle on, and the way the setting and its history gradually emerge as more than just a way to set the stage invest you in The Kid’s efforts.
There are moments in Bastion that can give you pause and make you sit back to appreciate what you’re seeing since it is all so lovingly realized. Bastion is clearly created with care and vision even if developer Supergiant Games would need more experience to make the action as much of a draw. Considering the greatness they’d move onto with games like Hades they did eventually find a way to make the whole package exceptional, but Bastion’s action isn’t bad so much as lacking the exceptional touches its other elements feature. That might be the reason I stopped playing it so many years ago, the hooks of the narration and environments hadn’t had time to sink in yet so the enjoyable but not exciting action was not leaving a strong early impression. Still, going back to finish it was definitely a worthwhile task, not just because of all the artful parts it revealed with a bit more time, but because the game can put together gameplay challenges worth seeing too when it applies the same degree of thought to what you’re doing and not just what you’re seeing and hearing.