Bastion Previews

A couple more sites took the opportunity at PAX East for some hands-on time with upcoming action-RPG Bastion, and to talk to the developers, the six-man studio Supergiant. Armless Octopus.

The feature that immediately grabbed my attention was the striking fidelity of the visuals, which bear a strong resemblance to that of Final Fantasy Tactics. This comes as no surprise as it is lead artist Jen Zee’s favorite title. The colors are vivid, and imbued with a soft filter throughout, all the while offering various shades of the scheme as the kid traversed through exotic locales. First, the awkward comfort of his bedroom though in an unfamiliar state, followed a mountainous terrain far off the distance, before transplanting him into an alluring oasis. Furthermore, the levels built dynamically as I advanced, where blocks rose from the ground and created a platform to walk on and others crumbled behind me. Seeing Bastion in motion further solidifies why the title was nominated for an IGF Excellence in Visual Art Award at GDC.

Gaming Update.

Created under a sliding difficulty system that rewards the player for selecting a more difficult setting, the game feels a lot like a fusion between the typical RPG Action-Adventure and a Third-Person Shooter, especially with respect to combat, which has a more realistic approach than most RPG’s today.

Battle in the game is based upon leverage — when you are on the move you have less than when you are standing still, so pausing to fight delivers better results than if you try to run and gun — not that you will be ‘gunning’ really, as the larger variety of weapons in the game are more suited to melee combat.

Warp Zoned.

The story for Greg and his team is somewhat typical of the studios you see today making games like Bastion. They come from one of the bigger publishers as a result of either layoffs or disenchantment with the corporate structure and they branched out to do their own thing. (It’s our first game together as a studio, the co-founders and I worked together at EALA prior to forming this company. So yeah, it’s our first game and it’s just been awesome to see people responding to it really well and getting really excited about it,) Greg said. Like the development culture, the kinds of games they make has also changed considerably. (We worked on the Command & Conquer series, so it’s a bit of a leap. We worked on Command & Conquer 3 and Red Alert 3 together and left in August of 2009.) The next month, they started work on Bastion. (One of our guys did work on Generals. We’re all like the remnants of the Generals team.)

Our discussion then shifted from company history and art style to narration. While the aesthetics certainly distinguish the game, it’s really the use of the in-game narrator that has gotten Bastion its buzz. ((It) sort of has to be experienced. talking about it doesn’t really do it much service because the idea of an old man talking to you while you play doesn’t sound that cool, but in practice we’re really happy with it and people’s response to it.) The idea of a narrator interacting with the player’s actions could be an entire game concept on its own; I’m sure many of Super Giant’s peers are jealous they hadn’t come up with it themselves. As such, I was very surprised that it was something that just kind of came to the team along the way.