This review contains spoilers

This was my favourite game ever at the time I first finished it back in 2011, and it only gets better every time I replay it.

There are a lot of things I personally love about Bastion: the gorgeous art-style, the steampunk aesthetics, the robust hack-and-slash combat (with a notable amount of customizable difficulty options, provided organically through gameplay), and especially the soundtrack, which is a mix of Eastern and Western string instrumentals combined with trip-hop and some hard rock.

One of Bastion's biggest draws, though - in my opinion - is it's stridently anti-imperialist narrative. While the game never outright states it's references to real world politics, it's fairly easy to parse out what it tries to allude to - specifically in regards to American imperialism, the War on Terror, and the spectre of nuclear annihilation.

Nativism, xenophobia, the building of literal walls to keep "outsiders" away, Caelondia (a stand-in for the United States) and use of violence as a first response to deal with crisis, the weapons of mass destruction that caused the Calamity in the first place; not to mention the narrative unreliability of Rucks, acting as Caelondia's friendly face, romanticising the past and omitting truths to the other survivors that he's too uncomfortable to face - all of these topics and more are touched upon and explored thoroughly (and tragically, a lot of it continues to remain relevant even a decade after the game's release).

To be fair, this is a lot of information for any kind of media to cover, but to their credit, Supergiant made the very salient decision to deliver this info during (or even by means of) gameplay, allowing the player to be an active participant in the story rather than just an observer.

This respect of player agency culminates in a final(ish) decision about how to move forward: either turn back time and go "back to normal" (but have their memories wiped of their post-Calamity experience, inevitably leading them to repeat the same patterns over and over again), or to continue living in their now-destroyed world, permanently preventing them from going back in time, but allowing them to help any other survivors they could meet.

This decision (along with the one immediately before it, which I WON'T spoil!) is something that's stuck with me on a personal level ever since.

I wish I knew a better way for me to end this review, all I know is Bastion is an absolutely wonderful game, and I'd recommend anyone give it a try if they have the chance.

Reviewed on Jun 04, 2021


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