If you haven't played Bastion yet, you need to play Bastion
I thought I'd put that out there right now. It's not often I demand that people play a game, but with Bastion I genuinely think it could change the way people think about games.
Bastion is one of those games that you can tell has been made by people who really love what they are doing. My hat goes off to Supergiant Games for putting so much effort in every facet of Bastion's design. From the graphics to the music to the gameplay, there is genuinely no weak link in the chain. But what makes Bastion ever stronger is the way that all of these elements have been artfully woven together.
I've often been of the opinion that gameplay is the most important thing in games. Sounds obvious but it needs to be said. Some developers have gone on record stating that gameplay can be sacrificed for the story, and I couldn't disagree further. Gameplay is what makes a game a game. The interactivity, your very involvement with a world is what differentiates a game from, say, a film. Gameplay is why LA Noire is a great game, but Heavy Rain isn't. And it's what makes Bastion so important.
You probably already know about Bastion's main feature, but in case you don't, it's simple. As you travel through Bastion's unique post-apocalyptic world, your actions are dynamically chronicled by a honey voiced narrator. Each fight, each path you take, each weapon loadout you choose is noted, sometimes humorously, sometimes seriously narrated. It's difficult to describe how it affects you as you play. Often it's the subtle things. In one of the early fights in the game, I took a few hits, and Rucks the Narrator commented on how I had a few scratches. It sounds like nothing but it binds the experience to you and makes it yours.
Bastion is a game about world building. It creates a beautiful world that you miss without ever truly knowing it. As you collected the weapons in the world, you learn more about the different factions, like the Menders, the Brushers or the Slingers. The relationship between the Caelondians and the Ura is slowly revealed and manages to surprise you at each turn. Yet Bastion never asks you to sit through walls of explanatory text. In fact the most it makes you read are simple sentences on the loading screens, more often than note confirming something that you already know.
It'll be interesting to see what happens with Bastion, and Supergiant Games as a company. The world they have is already strong enough to support other stories, and one of the two endings does leave the game open for a sequel. In my mind I could see something along the lines of "Beyond Bastion" which follows the adventures of the group after Bastion. Another option is "Before Bastion" which would look at Caelondia before the earth-shattering calamity. In fact, they might not even have to be games, these stories could translate equally well into the medium of comic books or animations. That's not to say I wouldn't like to see another Bastion game.
Now I just want to go off on a side tangent, a personal request if you will, in the vain hope that this might be read by any of the Supergiant Games staff. I know you are incredibly busy right now moving into a new location and so forth, but I'd like to make a suggestion. I realise that making a full XBLA title takes a fair amount of time and resources, but it would be great to see a new Bastion game at some point soon. In that line of thought, might I suggest releasing a Windows Phone 7 game? You could use it perhaps as an opportunity to explore the backstory of Rucks. The story telling mechanic could be kept in place by having the narration appear written across the screen as though Rucks was writing in a journal.
But ultimately that's just me wanting something new to play on my phone.
Bastion is a vitally important game. If you care about story-telling in games, play Bastion. If you value games as art, play Bastion. Simply put, if you care about video games in any way, you must play Bastion.
Because it will change everything.
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