Bastion Interview

The New York Post has put online a short interview with Supergiant Games’ creative director Greg Kasavin, which focuses on the company itself and its only released title so far, the colorful action-RPG Bastion. Here’s a sampling:

WV: Bastion is a large and complex game. How long did it take you to pull the pieces together?

GK: Bastion spent a little less than two years in the making. We kept plenty busy, though especially seeing as this was our first game as a studio, we felt very invested in making the most of it with the resources that we had.

WV: Why did you choose to tell Bastion’s story through a 3rd person narrator?

GK: As mentioned previously, our design philosophy is oriented around problem solving through rapid iteration. Our reactive narration technique emerged as a solution to a problem we were struggling with at the outset of the project, where we wanted to make a game that was very easy to pick up and never interrupted the play experience for the sake of its story, and yet we wanted to make something with emotional weight to it through its use of story.

Having a narrator enabled us to deepen the player’s interactions in the world at the player’s own pace. Making him react to the player’s actions meant we could have this crafted narrative that was driving toward a specific conclusion while at the same time making the story feel very personal to the player’s own experience.

Another advantage was that we had Logan Cunningham, an actor based in New York who’s been friends with [Supergiant team members] Amir and Darren since middle school. He was roommates with Darren at the time. So we had this unprecedented level of access to voice talent, which meant we could do something relatively ambitious with the voiceover. We really liked the effect of the narration, and felt like it was missing wherever we didn’t have it, so soon enough it had become a pervasive part of the game experience.