Supergiant is unique among the earlyish indie revolution studios for arriving on day 1 with technically proficient visuals and sound design, standing out as the most presentable of the bunch. Their contemporaries tended to be focused on a then-radical return to the mechanical purity of the NES era or pushing procedural generation out of the realm of terminal games into the light of accessibility, while Supergiant instead focused first and foremost on making something polished to standards that at the time only really existed in the realm of AAA.
And that's what makes going back to the start of Supergiant so weird: they had all the ability in the world to make a masterpiece and polish it to perfection, yet seemingly had no ideas they wanted to flesh out. Bastion just kind of piddles around, never really having anything to say or do. Its barebones mechanics, flashy hand-painted visuals, and ever-present solemn folksy narration prepare the player for some kind of emotional ride, experimental revelation, or strong thematic core which never really comes. It's disappointing, since god knows you're not having fun with each new weapon being slightly more annoying and less satisfying to use than the last.
Granted, this came out at a time where attempting to be "serious" in any remotely popular games was still very much in its infancy. Outside of the world of text-based interactive fiction, this was still the era of Heavy Rain silliness and its backlash. As the preconditions for gamergate fell into place, tension mounted over games trying to be anything besides simply fun tests of mechanical mastery. To be perfectly blunt, the fledgling indie gaming audience was not really willing to accept games which were primarily focused on trying to say things. To many of them, political messaging and narrative complexity were exactly what the indie movement existed as a reaction to. They missed the games where running and jumping were all you really needed.
Bastion did, in its own way, fly in the face of that. There's next to nothing to dig into in terms of mechanics, with the game instead pushing you to listen to the narration and let your primary takeaways be from the narrative and aesthetics This was not in any way new to gaming, of course, but for indie gamers of the time, it certainly stood out. While not particularly thematically potent in the grand scheme of things, Bastion would sure seem that way if you had been grinding your teeth while trying Super Meat Boy levels over and over for the past few months. I have to give this game at least some credit for that, even if it's banal and tame to more modern sensibilities. That is, MY more modern sensibilities.
Also, I say "technically proficient" when I refer to the art instead of "good" because to be completely honest, I ignored Bastion back then because I found it extremely muddy and busy, which I still think it is. If this game counts the number of times you fall off the map anywhere, that alone would be a testament to how awful the visual style is for actually making sense of spaces. They've improved much on this front nowadays, but I'd be lying if I said they've completely gotten past it even in Hades.
Side Note: I've always confused this game with Braid, which I still haven't played to this day due to its own ugly-ass art style.
And that's what makes going back to the start of Supergiant so weird: they had all the ability in the world to make a masterpiece and polish it to perfection, yet seemingly had no ideas they wanted to flesh out. Bastion just kind of piddles around, never really having anything to say or do. Its barebones mechanics, flashy hand-painted visuals, and ever-present solemn folksy narration prepare the player for some kind of emotional ride, experimental revelation, or strong thematic core which never really comes. It's disappointing, since god knows you're not having fun with each new weapon being slightly more annoying and less satisfying to use than the last.
Granted, this came out at a time where attempting to be "serious" in any remotely popular games was still very much in its infancy. Outside of the world of text-based interactive fiction, this was still the era of Heavy Rain silliness and its backlash. As the preconditions for gamergate fell into place, tension mounted over games trying to be anything besides simply fun tests of mechanical mastery. To be perfectly blunt, the fledgling indie gaming audience was not really willing to accept games which were primarily focused on trying to say things. To many of them, political messaging and narrative complexity were exactly what the indie movement existed as a reaction to. They missed the games where running and jumping were all you really needed.
Bastion did, in its own way, fly in the face of that. There's next to nothing to dig into in terms of mechanics, with the game instead pushing you to listen to the narration and let your primary takeaways be from the narrative and aesthetics This was not in any way new to gaming, of course, but for indie gamers of the time, it certainly stood out. While not particularly thematically potent in the grand scheme of things, Bastion would sure seem that way if you had been grinding your teeth while trying Super Meat Boy levels over and over for the past few months. I have to give this game at least some credit for that, even if it's banal and tame to more modern sensibilities. That is, MY more modern sensibilities.
Also, I say "technically proficient" when I refer to the art instead of "good" because to be completely honest, I ignored Bastion back then because I found it extremely muddy and busy, which I still think it is. If this game counts the number of times you fall off the map anywhere, that alone would be a testament to how awful the visual style is for actually making sense of spaces. They've improved much on this front nowadays, but I'd be lying if I said they've completely gotten past it even in Hades.
Side Note: I've always confused this game with Braid, which I still haven't played to this day due to its own ugly-ass art style.
Whom
1 year ago