Bastion Interview

The folks at CPUGamer had a chance to chat with Supergiant Games’ creative director Greg Kasavin about their recently released XBLA/PC indie action-rpg Bastion on subjects like the game’s reception, what inspired the title’s peculiar aesthetic and more. Here’s a sampling:

POD: One of the most interesting and unique things about Bastion is the Narrator, voiced by Logan Cunningham. Was this something you were always planning on including in the game, or did it develop later on? What ultimately gave you the idea, and what, if any greater thematic symbolism does the Narrator have?

KASAVIN: Our narration technique wasn’t there from the start, though as mentioned, we did know we wanted to make a game that could create a meaningful experience of some sort. We also knew we didn’t want to interrupt the play experience for any reason, which at first seemed to contradict the other goal how can you deliver a story without using cutscenes or text, right? This eventually led to the narration.

It was only possible because of Logan. He’s an actor in New York and is a longtime friend of Amir Rao our studio director and Darren Korb our audio director. If we didn’t have such good access to voice talent, we never would have pursued something like this. But with Logan in our corner, we realized we had a means of creating atmosphere and player engagement and thematic meaning all through a voice. And it never needed to interrupt the play experience, so players could move through the game at their own pace.

As far as the narrator’s thematic symbolism he’s very connected to the world and themes of the game. He’s very motivated to tell this story of how the Bastion is being completed, as sort of an argument in favor of his desired outcome, and how everything will be all right in spite of the Calamity. You can tell he has a real nostalgia for the way the world used to be, and carries some deep regrets about what happened. This sense of overcoming regret is central to the themes of the game and is embodied in the narrator. It felt like rich territory to explore, and encompassed a set of feelings anyone of just about any age could relate to.

I created a lot of backstory for the game that was never intended to be included in the game itself, just so every sentence from this guy could sound like it’s rich with subtext. There’s something else lurking behind everything the narrator is saying.

POD: The world of Bastion seems incredibly vast, and the game hints at an incredibly intricate lore just beneath the surface. What was the biggest challenge you faced in properly conveying that scope in an arcade title?

KASAVIN: I think finding the right economy through the use of narration was important. Even though there’s a lot of narration in Bastion, each sentence is meant to be very efficient.

From a story perspective I had to be careful not to overload too much information on the player, and recapitulate key points multiple times in a manner that didn’t seem condescending. We also had to make sure as much as possible that the story’s key points played out during moments where the player’s attention wasn’t being spread thin by heavy combat or anything like that.

There was a natural challenge on the writing side, to create a multifaceted world from scratch. This was one of my main interests on the project of course, so it’s something I tackled very eagerly.

I was also very interested in using fiction to tie together disparate game systems, to make everything in the game feel cohesive. In the game, we have systems like the Distillery and the Shrine, which started off on a conceptual design level but didn’t gain their identities within the gameworld until the design ideas were better formed. Finding opportunities to tie together lots of little gameplay details back to the fiction I think makes for a richer setting but also requires a detailed backstory to work from.