Bastion’s Axed Gardening Feature Revealed

Eurogamer reports of a speech given by Supergiant Games’ Amir Rao at GDC where the studio’s director talked about a planned but ultimately cut feature of the indie action-RPG Bastion: gardening-powered upgrades. Here’s a snip:

“You might find a seed for a whole new world to explore. You’d bring it back to the Bastion and you’d have these planters that would open up gradually,” said Rao.

“If you only have four planters you’d have to choose – do I plant this new interesting thing that I got that I don’t know what it does, or this other seed that I do know what it does?

“You would water your plants with cores – which were these blue things you’d find out in the world. Slowly you’d get a sprout, you’d see what it would grow into and then suddenly you’d have its fruit. Every time you opened the fruit you would get a binary, interesting choice.”

…

“Players had no idea what was happening,” he admitted.

“I find a seed in the world, I plant it in the Bastion and it upgrades my hammer? That was a real thing that was going on. Nobody knew what was happening.

…

“The conclusion is: you know the one thing that people understand a lot better than planting? A menu. A menu is something that’s a good place to make decisions at and understand what’s going on.”

I can’t imagine anyone will mourn the feature’s loss, honestly.