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Bastion
Full spoilers under the cut again! This is another Supergiant game (aka From The People Who Brought You Hades), actually their first game, and if you are specifically interested in playing All The Supergiant Games then yes it's an interesting experience and you should play it, but outside of the Supergiant angle it's not something I would go out of my way to recommend. My main issue is that I think it encourages the player to ask a lot of great questions and then for some reason the game is like "jk nevermind," which was a bummer! Looking at reviews etc I think it's a lot more respected for gameplay than story and I guess that explains why I, A Story Bitch, didn't fall in love with it. (Also I'm not knowledgeable enough to make a call on this but it's possible that there are gameplay elements that were very novel in 2011 that I simply take for granted now! Who's to say.)
Big picture: In Bastion, you play The Kid, who wakes up to find his world destroyed by the Calamity. At the direction of another survivor, you travel around to different areas to fight your way through them and collect items that will help restore the world. There are a bunch of different weapons, all of which can be upgraded in a handful of different ways. As you go, you gradually learn more about what the Calamity was and how it came to be.
FULL SPOILERS:
So here's the thing. The game introduces four survivors total:
1. The Kid, the player character, who was some kind of soldier/guard for the now-destroyed city of Caelondia.
2. Rucks/The Stranger, the game's narrator and the first survivor you encounter. Rucks created the Bastion, the game's hub area and Caelondia's sanctuary and evacuation point, which, if restored, would be the key to fixing everything.
3. Zulf, an immigrant from the Ura, a neighboring nation that Caelondia once fought a war against. You find him in a level and he comes back to the Bastion.
4. Zia, the daughter of Ura refugees who were allowed to stay in Caelondia after they were orphaned in the war. You find her in a level and she comes back to the Bastion.
Midway through the game, Zulf learns more about the Calamity, which prompts him to leave to find Ura survivors after destroying the heart of the Bastion. Later, after you've repaired most of the damage to the Bastion, those Ura survivors return and damage it further. The final item you need to fully restore the Bastion and save Caelondia is in a Ura settlement. You fight your way through and end up finding Zulf, who's been attacked by a group of Ura who are angry with him for leading The Kid straight to them. The game gives you a choice: You can either leave him for dead and keep fighting your way through the Ura, or you can put down your weapon and carry him instead.
Regardless of what you choose, you get the final item and bring it back to the Bastion (either with or without Zulf), where Rucks and Zia each make a case for what to do with the fully restored Bastion: You can use it to restore Caelondia to a moment in time before the Calamity happened, although there's no guarantee it won't just happen again and you may or may not retain any memory of what happened. Or, you can use the Bastion to evacuate yourself and your fellow survivors from your ruined continent and find a new home. Rucks wants to undo it all. Zia's happier post-Calamity and wants you all to stick together. It's up to the player whether to hit reset on the Calamity or go traveling with your fellow survivors.
Cute, I guess! UHHHHHHHHHH EXCEPT THIS IS A GAME ABOUT GENOCIDE?
There are hints almost immediately that people in Caelondia don't treat the Ura well. They seem to be subject to a lot of suspicion and heightened government surveillance. In one level, the narrator claims that the Ura were the ones who started the last war, then is like "well okay we maybe did kind of fuck up their homes first." You find a journal at one point that's written in the Ura language, and only Zulf can read it - Zia doesn't know the language at all, in part because of Caelondian suppression of the Ura. The journal is what sets Zulf off and prompts him to leave your group destroy the Bastion.
Eventually, you find out that the journal was written by Zia's father, a scientist who was forced by the government of Caelondia to develop technology that would eradicate the Ura in a preemptive strike. Unbeknownst to them, he built the machine so that it would backfire if it were ever used - and that's what the Calamity was. Caelondia was destroyed because they fired a weapon they thought would wipe out the Ura, and it took Caelondia out as well (the Ura were impacted but they do seem to have a lot more survivors than Caelondia does).
(Along with all this, there's also a growing sense that the monsters you're killing as you make your way through levels are sentient and doing exactly what you're doing - trying to bring survivors together and protect themselves using the same items you're after for your own protection.)
When you venture into Ura territory for the final item, the Ura survivors all mobilize to stop you. Which fucking MAKES SENSE, because you're trying to repair the Bastion, which will hit reset on the whole timeline and bring back Caelondia, at which point either a) everything happens again exactly the same, or b) Caelondia manages to fully wipe out the Ura without also blowing themselves up in the process. There doesn't seem to be a viable path to "you reset everything and then you all live in peace" or if there is it doesn't seem to be one that anyone in the game cares about finding. NO WONDER THE URA DON'T WANT YOU RESTORING THE BASTION?????
Normally in this game, when you kill a monster, it just disappears. When you kill a Ura, their body stays on the ground. Ura bleed. The violence in these final levels is heightened. Beyond that, Rucks also airdrops you some WILDLY destructive weapons, so you are just DESTROYING these people as you force your way through their settlement to reach an item that, in your hands, could lead to them being wiped out completely. I felt INCREDIBLY uncomfortable with my progression through those levels, but in a way that I was fine with because it was clearly intentional on the game's part. I knew the game had branching endings. I was sure I was going to be forced to reckon with what I was doing.
And then...I really wasn't? Like I said, the first choice comes when you find Zulf getting attacked by his own people. Do you save him or do you leave him for dead? I've seen reviews praising this as the game giving you the opportunity to break the cycle of violence, but it doesn't feel like that. It feels like the Ura being further demonized and you being given the choice to forgive this one dude that you already have a history with. You're not saying "I don't want to kill these people anymore," you're saying "I want to prioritize saving this one guy over continuing to kill these people." If you choose to rescue him, your hands are full and you're unable to defend yourself for the final stretch of the level, and you're attacked by a horde of Ura who will eventually lay down their weapons and just watch you go, which I guess plays into the "breaking the cycle of violence" theory but legit makes no sense because why are they letting you just WALK OUT OF THERE WITH THE KEY TO DESTROYING THEM.
Then there's your second choice: Restore Caelondia or use the Bastion to evacuate? I evacuated because restoration just felt to me like at best, it all happens again, at worst, Caelondia survives at the expense of the total destruction of the Ura. I couldn't fix what happened to the Ura but I could leave what was left of them to rebuild in peace. I could atone by taking the last remnants of Caelondia somewhere else and ceding the continent to the Ura. I could choose not to complete the mission Rucks sent me on, now that I was in possession of all the information he had been withholding from me.
But that's not how the game frames it, and it's not a factor in the ending. I chose evacuation and then it was just like "time for four friends to go off on a grand new adventure! Rucks is going to need a first mate, and that's you Kid! Zulf is bummed but he's been through a lot, it's too bad all his buddies tried to kill him!"
For a game that didn't really grab me until I hit a point where I realized my character's righteousness was in question (a realization I felt was VERY well constructed), it just felt like a huge letdown to not have that play out and to not be asked to reckon with my actions in any real way. Evacuation felt like a copout - I feel like I should have been given the option to use the Bastion to restore Caelondia, with my other choice being to finish what Zulf started and destroy the Bastion so that Caelondia could never re-attempt genocide.
IDK, it was just a bummer not to have anything pay off! I felt bereft, getting to the end and having nothing happen! It was a fine game mechanically but it's just so weird that ultimately nothing meant anything! I should have been able to tell Rucks to go fuck himself!
Big picture: In Bastion, you play The Kid, who wakes up to find his world destroyed by the Calamity. At the direction of another survivor, you travel around to different areas to fight your way through them and collect items that will help restore the world. There are a bunch of different weapons, all of which can be upgraded in a handful of different ways. As you go, you gradually learn more about what the Calamity was and how it came to be.
FULL SPOILERS:
So here's the thing. The game introduces four survivors total:
1. The Kid, the player character, who was some kind of soldier/guard for the now-destroyed city of Caelondia.
2. Rucks/The Stranger, the game's narrator and the first survivor you encounter. Rucks created the Bastion, the game's hub area and Caelondia's sanctuary and evacuation point, which, if restored, would be the key to fixing everything.
3. Zulf, an immigrant from the Ura, a neighboring nation that Caelondia once fought a war against. You find him in a level and he comes back to the Bastion.
4. Zia, the daughter of Ura refugees who were allowed to stay in Caelondia after they were orphaned in the war. You find her in a level and she comes back to the Bastion.
Midway through the game, Zulf learns more about the Calamity, which prompts him to leave to find Ura survivors after destroying the heart of the Bastion. Later, after you've repaired most of the damage to the Bastion, those Ura survivors return and damage it further. The final item you need to fully restore the Bastion and save Caelondia is in a Ura settlement. You fight your way through and end up finding Zulf, who's been attacked by a group of Ura who are angry with him for leading The Kid straight to them. The game gives you a choice: You can either leave him for dead and keep fighting your way through the Ura, or you can put down your weapon and carry him instead.
Regardless of what you choose, you get the final item and bring it back to the Bastion (either with or without Zulf), where Rucks and Zia each make a case for what to do with the fully restored Bastion: You can use it to restore Caelondia to a moment in time before the Calamity happened, although there's no guarantee it won't just happen again and you may or may not retain any memory of what happened. Or, you can use the Bastion to evacuate yourself and your fellow survivors from your ruined continent and find a new home. Rucks wants to undo it all. Zia's happier post-Calamity and wants you all to stick together. It's up to the player whether to hit reset on the Calamity or go traveling with your fellow survivors.
Cute, I guess! UHHHHHHHHHH EXCEPT THIS IS A GAME ABOUT GENOCIDE?
There are hints almost immediately that people in Caelondia don't treat the Ura well. They seem to be subject to a lot of suspicion and heightened government surveillance. In one level, the narrator claims that the Ura were the ones who started the last war, then is like "well okay we maybe did kind of fuck up their homes first." You find a journal at one point that's written in the Ura language, and only Zulf can read it - Zia doesn't know the language at all, in part because of Caelondian suppression of the Ura. The journal is what sets Zulf off and prompts him to leave your group destroy the Bastion.
Eventually, you find out that the journal was written by Zia's father, a scientist who was forced by the government of Caelondia to develop technology that would eradicate the Ura in a preemptive strike. Unbeknownst to them, he built the machine so that it would backfire if it were ever used - and that's what the Calamity was. Caelondia was destroyed because they fired a weapon they thought would wipe out the Ura, and it took Caelondia out as well (the Ura were impacted but they do seem to have a lot more survivors than Caelondia does).
(Along with all this, there's also a growing sense that the monsters you're killing as you make your way through levels are sentient and doing exactly what you're doing - trying to bring survivors together and protect themselves using the same items you're after for your own protection.)
When you venture into Ura territory for the final item, the Ura survivors all mobilize to stop you. Which fucking MAKES SENSE, because you're trying to repair the Bastion, which will hit reset on the whole timeline and bring back Caelondia, at which point either a) everything happens again exactly the same, or b) Caelondia manages to fully wipe out the Ura without also blowing themselves up in the process. There doesn't seem to be a viable path to "you reset everything and then you all live in peace" or if there is it doesn't seem to be one that anyone in the game cares about finding. NO WONDER THE URA DON'T WANT YOU RESTORING THE BASTION?????
Normally in this game, when you kill a monster, it just disappears. When you kill a Ura, their body stays on the ground. Ura bleed. The violence in these final levels is heightened. Beyond that, Rucks also airdrops you some WILDLY destructive weapons, so you are just DESTROYING these people as you force your way through their settlement to reach an item that, in your hands, could lead to them being wiped out completely. I felt INCREDIBLY uncomfortable with my progression through those levels, but in a way that I was fine with because it was clearly intentional on the game's part. I knew the game had branching endings. I was sure I was going to be forced to reckon with what I was doing.
And then...I really wasn't? Like I said, the first choice comes when you find Zulf getting attacked by his own people. Do you save him or do you leave him for dead? I've seen reviews praising this as the game giving you the opportunity to break the cycle of violence, but it doesn't feel like that. It feels like the Ura being further demonized and you being given the choice to forgive this one dude that you already have a history with. You're not saying "I don't want to kill these people anymore," you're saying "I want to prioritize saving this one guy over continuing to kill these people." If you choose to rescue him, your hands are full and you're unable to defend yourself for the final stretch of the level, and you're attacked by a horde of Ura who will eventually lay down their weapons and just watch you go, which I guess plays into the "breaking the cycle of violence" theory but legit makes no sense because why are they letting you just WALK OUT OF THERE WITH THE KEY TO DESTROYING THEM.
Then there's your second choice: Restore Caelondia or use the Bastion to evacuate? I evacuated because restoration just felt to me like at best, it all happens again, at worst, Caelondia survives at the expense of the total destruction of the Ura. I couldn't fix what happened to the Ura but I could leave what was left of them to rebuild in peace. I could atone by taking the last remnants of Caelondia somewhere else and ceding the continent to the Ura. I could choose not to complete the mission Rucks sent me on, now that I was in possession of all the information he had been withholding from me.
But that's not how the game frames it, and it's not a factor in the ending. I chose evacuation and then it was just like "time for four friends to go off on a grand new adventure! Rucks is going to need a first mate, and that's you Kid! Zulf is bummed but he's been through a lot, it's too bad all his buddies tried to kill him!"
For a game that didn't really grab me until I hit a point where I realized my character's righteousness was in question (a realization I felt was VERY well constructed), it just felt like a huge letdown to not have that play out and to not be asked to reckon with my actions in any real way. Evacuation felt like a copout - I feel like I should have been given the option to use the Bastion to restore Caelondia, with my other choice being to finish what Zulf started and destroy the Bastion so that Caelondia could never re-attempt genocide.
IDK, it was just a bummer not to have anything pay off! I felt bereft, getting to the end and having nothing happen! It was a fine game mechanically but it's just so weird that ultimately nothing meant anything! I should have been able to tell Rucks to go fuck himself!