You learn a little bit of history with every weapon you find and the spirits that passively upgrade your stats get described in terms usually reserved for fine wines and liqueurs. “Spicy with a smokey aftertaste,” indeed. In the Bastion, you build things that you need to survive disasters: forges for arms and improvements, distilleries for potions that help you get through the brawling, a lost-and-found where artifacts and forgotten talents can be had once again. It’s a common trope in RPGs to spend experience points. Bastion‘s sure-footed tone provides a nice twist to the mechanic, as it drives home the idea that what you’re spending are the things that experience is made from: namely risk, effort and memory.
What’s left of Caelondia is made out to be a rough science-fantasy milieu with a steampunk manga tinge to it. The action unfolds in an old-school isometric camera view that gives players a 2.5-D feeling, meant to invoke games made during the late ’80s heyday of the Super Nintendo home console. The gameworld design is broken up into tiny hubs where the landscape itself seems to improvise itself into existence around you, like floating jigsaw puzzle pieces. Errant steps will send you tumbling into the abyss–only to slam harshly back onto solid ground–having to take a hit on health and humility before figuring out where to go next.
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That last bit’s important. Bastion leans on the idea of the crossroads as an existential signifier. As they’re used in the blues idiom, crossroads represent where we come from, the choices and people that got us here and how we move forward. All those considerations come out in Bastion. The game itself is both a work of nostalgia and a commentary on wistfulness. As you play, the shades of the deceased linger in the world and all you can really do is destroy them and move on. Just as in life. The central mystery of the game is what exactly you’re moving on to.
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