Why Bastion Lies to You
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- Опубліковано 8 чер 2024
- Supergiant's first game, Bastion, deceives the player, but does so carefully and brilliantly. What does it say about our relationships to power, to each other, and to the world that surrounds us?
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Why Bastion Lies to You
Reconstructed # 10
Sources:
skyehoppers.wordpress.com/202...
Voicelines by Neil from @TheLeftistCooks and @VZed , both of whom make excellent videos you should check out!
All music from the OSTs of Bastion and The Stanley Parable (feel free to ask if you'd like to know a particular song)
Other cool video essays on Bastion:
Story Beats: Bastion by @InnuendoStudios • Story Beats: Bastion
What Makes Bastion's Narrative Stand Out? by @Ludiscere • What Makes Bastion's N...
Bastion - A Literary Analysis by @GameProf • Bastion - A Literary A...
00:00 - Intro
02:20 - Part 1: Proper Story
14:18 - Part 2: Pipe Dreams
31:40 - Part 3: Ol' Unreliable
45:40 - Part 4: The Good Ending
55:15 - Part 5: The Listening
59:07 - Outro
Bastion Video Essay
Bastion Analysis
Bastion Retrospective
#bastion #videoessay #analysis - Ігри
I never interpreted Ruck’s voice at the end telling you to get up as aggressive. Just encouraging the kid to finish what he started instead of laying there at the finish line, basic grandpa behavior.
I'll admit there is some ambiguity to it! I think the reason he sounds more demanding than encouraging to me is that he's less the Kid's grandpa than he is his boss. There is definitely concern in his voice, but also a sternness I wouldnt expect from someone hoping the Kid will get up for selfless reasons. I couldve talked about those lines for a lot longer but you cant talk about everything...Altogether stellar voice acting from Logan Cunningham no matter how you hear it
@@Skyehoppers I interpret this as denial. Rucks refuses to show much care because that would mean recognizing that Kid might actually die.
@@MrDwieszopyjackson Kinda like not naming a chicken you know is going to become dinner.
@@MrDwieszopyjackson Agreed. There is just a small tint of worry, at least that's what I'm hearing
Everything about the final walk with Zulf on your back is tearjerkingly beautiful. The music, the way you unflinching keep on when pelted with arrows, the visual story telling with the Ura ceasing fire, it alone is worth playing the game for.
especially them killing the one that shoots at you right before you leave
I would give anything to play that moment again for the first time 😭
I love that game so much. It's one of my most favorite games, if not the most favorite. Absolute fucking masterpiece.
It's so good because you literally choose to give up violence and death to save him. The most powerful weapon in the game tossed aside to save a life.
It still brings tears, such a beautiful scene. Games like bastion are a great proof of games are art.
One of my favourite details of Bastion is that if you do the combat challenges you can get rare upgrade materials early. Even for weapons you don't have yet.
They're generic items like "Something Heavy" for the Hammer, "Something coarse" for the Scrap Musket, and "Something Foul", a sulphurous material for the flame bellows.
Surprisingly early on you can get "Something Wrong" which is described as a kind of crystal not found in Caelondia before the calamity. Sure enough, the final weapon in the game is the Calamity Cannon, made my Rucks himself to harness the same power that ended the world. And you get this so late in the game that the main enemies you'll be using it on are the Ura.
I also think it might be meaningful that the Calamity Cannon and the Ram you get in the last level are both very powerful but feel kinda bad to use. Like... you really left an old friend to die so you could carry this big cumbersome piece of shit?
one shotting the URA with the calamity cannon felt so wrong that i quickly switched back to the machete and it doesn't help the fact that you get the cannon at the observatory which is designed to monitor the URA so they dont leave their cage of a home
Just to point out a few things about Rucks... You describe him later as not caring, maybe that's why he doesn't ask the Kid's name, right? I read it completely differently. Rucks knows the names and stories of *every* character you meet. The statues, the gasbags, all of them. I don't think you can know those things if you don't care about anyone or anything.
Rather, I took something else entirely away from it. Rucks doesn't ask the Kid's name... because he already knows it. He knows the Kid's story, and the kid's mother very closely. Even the name "The Kid" is meaningful here. I am pretty certain Rucks is the Kid's father. Not just any kid, but *his* kid. That Rucks left his family and by extension, the kid, to work on engineering for the city. And that his narration around those events belie his guilt.
I don't think it's any coincidence that Rucks and the kid both share white hair, and both throw away their lives and what was important to them to be used by the militaristic forces of their city.
I always thought that the white hair was just a trait that Caelondians share. The Ura all have pale skin and dark hair, do you think it could be something like that?
@@starcrest4486 Nope, can confirm that's not the case. In the backstory you get during the dream, Rucks says "His white hair didn't do him any favors", which says it's not a trait of the culture. In fact, it has to be a rare trait if it causes problems for someone growing up.
I agree with you about Rucks; I think he cares deeply about everyone who was lost. It's his caring that motivates him to bring them back, regardless of the costs. Even if he knows it won't be permanent, having just a little more time with those he cares about makes it worth it. Just as it is to Zulf.
I had a different take, however. I think that Rucks is the Kid, after saving the world, growing up, and watching it be destroyed a second time. This would explain why he doesn't have to ask the Kid's name. It might also explain why the Kid's name is kept from us, lest it make things too obvious from the start. It explains the white hair, especially as it is implied to be a rare trait. It explains how he knows so much about the Kid's past. It explains how he knew (or at least thought he knew) what the Kid is doing in the Terminals. Importantly, it explains why Rucks is so sure of what choice the Kid will make at the end: he already made it a long time ago.
Of course, contrary to what Rucks expects, the Kid isn't locked in to making all the same choices. In a way, this brings some hope to the Restoration ending. Maybe things aren't doomed to repeat in the same way they did before. Maybe it isn't just buying a few more precious moments with loved ones before inevitable tragedy comes again. But paradoxically, proving that a different outcome can occur (choosing Evacuation) also removes the last chance to get a different outcome and stop the Calamity.
One could argue that saving Zulf, something Rucks presumably didn't do as the Kid, and choosing Restoration, is the most hopeful ending. It proves things can change, and also gives them a chance to change. Personally I don't think it's enough, but I certainly wouldn't blame a less pessimistic person for disagreeing. And I wouldn't blame someone for deciding even if the outcome is predetermined, experiencing times of joy make inescapable loss worth it. But for me, Evacuation is the choice to start healing and moving forward.
Of course, it's all open to interpretation, and it's interesting to see alternative interpretations. It's been over 11 years since I played Bastion, and it remains my favorite storytelling experience in any game.
I felt it most heavily implied when you complete the "Training?" missions for the Shield. I think Ruckus described it as "He came back with a hint of pride in his eye...and more in mine."
Don't agree with the father theory, but either way he definitely cares. You really have to jump through some mental hoops to say Rucks doesn't care about the Kid. It was pretty clear in Who Knows Where that "a stranger who ain't even asked the Kid his name" is Rucks feeling a bit guilty and self-reflecting on whether it's right to make the kid do all the work or not.
The first time I played this game, I was in a mourning period from the death of a friend who passed suddenly and unexpectedly. The last couple hours of this game just had me constantly in tears. When I got to the choice at the end of restoration/evacuation, I tried to weigh what I had learned about the world, and I think a mix of the Grief Brain and my own desire for second chances lead me to picking restoration. I knew what had happened before could happen again, that the people who had brought the world where it was were bad and that this had happened because of them. But I wanted to believe that there was a chance things could be okay, that things could start over and be different and terrible things didn't have to happen.
Then when the credits showed them all in the exact place they were just before the calamity happened... idk I got really overwhelmed. Then the new game+ narration implying the time loop happens and well... I was well and severely fucked up for a bit haha. Finishing the game and choosing evacuate ended up being an important milestone in my recovery from grief. You can't go back, you can only go forward, and you have to do the best with what you have.
I do think both choices are valid, but the way I experienced them at the time I experienced them forever colored my feelings about the game.
Thanks for sharing that.
so sorry for your loss but I hope your story encourages more people to dwelve in games that makes you process stuff instead of actively dissosiate. Much love.
Thank you for being so publicly vulnerable. Your story means a lot to me.
I think the game has a hidden meaning not communicated directly throughout the game, and that is of loss. I noticed during my many play throughs of this game was that the City Crest is also the symbol of the Goddess of Loss and Longing, and looking at the game through this lens I noticed that every single survivor of the calamity has experienced some loss of some kind, each character forlorn and melancholic and the four survivors of Caelondia have experienced it heavily throughout their lives. Contrasting between the four Caelondian survivors is the huge swath of monsters and animals and the Ura people who have persisted after the calamity. Loss can separate us, put us on a floating island, where one could only wallow in the past and drinking ourselves in a stupor to forget the pain.
In this light the two endings takes on a different meaning to me, Restoration brings us back into the past to relive the same moments that break us on the inside over and over, but the Evacuation ending is leaving the past behind and moving on from the pain that isolates us. The advocates for the endings I feel represent this perfectly. Rucks is stuck in the past, obsessed with returning to what was, and urging The Kid to mow past enemy after enemy under the false hope that the Bastion will undo all this death and destruction. Meanwhile Zia is hopeful and is among people that accept her for who she is which gives her a future to look forward to, the past system only scrutinized and oppressed her and put her down for not being the correct race. This, I feel, makes Evacuation the correct choice, because there's only one true path in all of this and it's forward through the pain.
Great catch with city crest/goddess symbol! Never noticed that. Love you interpretation as well :)
That's the beauty of the game, and it's story, it's open for us, the player, to interpret the nuances of the world of The Kid, and his interactions, and of those around him. @@Skyehoppers
@KuruSeed Your catch on the crest/goddess connection is a keen one, sharp enough to enhance a weapon at the forge. I do agree that there's the sub-story of 'loss' within the whole game, as an overarching flavor, and how people handle it, with the ending.
More obviously, Rucks isn't wrong. He may mislead, but he doesn't directly lie (that is, until the last area, which even then, he says "I can only imagine..."). Having built the Bastion, he knows that any damage done now would be undone if The Kid chooses to use it's main, 'intended' function. It's not until nearing the end, closer to the actual execution of the Restoration, does he then begin to rethink things over, coming to the realization that "there is no real way to test it." With how everything seemed to work, based on systems he designed, he had a lot of evidence to believe it'd all work... that it'd all be undone... they'll all just go back...
It has to work, right?
not to mention, if rebuilt exactly and memories are wiped(if i recall its said expicitly), it is just reliving the past and soon calamity again, nothing will change, everyone will die and you will be put under the same choice, relive the past, and the whole jurney to now or accept the loss and move foward.
Bastion is an all time favorite game. It's THE game that convinced me buy every SuperGiant game. Transistor-Pyre-Hades. It convinced me to allow myself to be open to other types of gameplay and story telling. I thought Transistor/Pyre played strangely but I enjoyed them. I picked up the habit from Bastion of just pausing and listening to music in games and taking them in. Pausing and taking in the scenery as well (that was really nice in Skyrim+several other games).
There's a lot of truth in that final statement. "No one voice is exactly reliable. But that doesn't mean you plug your ears. It means you listen more."
A little thing I remember is the implication that Zia's father caused the Calamity. He tells Zia to stay home, and not come out, before going and tampering with the calamity. He knew it was going the Calamity was going to happen, and I assumed he triggered it as a desperate or vengeful way to protect his daughter.
I always figured the kid was a young adult and the narrator referring to him as the kid simply in the way the older generation calls anyone around 20-30 children. After working with an 18 year old as a 35 year old, I fully understand it.
I saw the ending of the game as 2 different neutral endings. Restoration being the "greater good" where you sacrifice the few personal story's you have seen for the thousands of ended ones like the barkeep and zolfs wife. The move ending being a taking what we learned to try to be better at the sacrifice of what it took to get there. Both endings made people suffer and we know the future of neather. The information needed to justify one being better is left off like how much if any is remembered in the restoration or is it just a reset button. But we used the power of the shards to move so what happens to the world now that they are gone and how much of the world is left. The only real good ending is to play the rest of the games.
I fully agree. I don't see them as good or bad. What it shows is that in the end of it all you can only make the best choice for you with the information you have at hand. What the future bring is unknown.
Yeah, that's one of the things I don't think the video touched on as much as it should. Rucks having deja vu in NG+ is more than just a curiosity. It raises serious questions about the nature of the restoration. It's easy to conclude that things will happen again, if the Bastion is simply rolling back the clock (iirc Rucks even speculates on this himself, but I can't remember the line for certain). But NG+ makes us question that. Evacuation initially seems like the obviously better choice, but maybe it's not? Maybe we roll back time, and the calamity happens again, but things are clearly not exactly the same. Maybe if we keep trying, we can get things right. Both endings are very morally ambiguous, and that's one of Bastion's strengths.
I never liked “The Greater Good” as a term because it felt dripping with dishonesty for me. The Greater Good is the same as saying Lesser Evil. It’s just nicer sounding. To make you feel better about your choices, it’s lying to yourself as much as it is to other people. Anything can be justified by Greater Good. You abandon the world and leave it to decay with anyone else you didn’t take with you. Greater Good, Lesser Evil
@@Broomer52 I agree the turm has a ton of baggage but I was meaning to say the utilitarian solution. Like on paper the most good for least cost. Of course this is subjective based on the goal, and most dont agree what a goal should be.
@@Broomer52 How is greater good dishonest, obviously you can weigh outcomes and decide which is overall better, have you not heard of the trolley problem
Rucks reminds me of someone who knew they made a mistake and is trying to do better but let's his biases get the best of him at time. It shows that he is trying to be better and is relying on the kid to help him achieve that. In the end he understands his way isn't the only path and chooses to let go, its the youth's turn to choose what the path forward is, be it his way or the other way.
Ironically I took the endings as "Do we try again, try better and use what we know to avoid this crisis" while evacuation was "We can't save our mistakes and must move on from there. Using what we did to do better tomorrow"
When I played Bastion, it struck me as important that the Reconstruct ending leads directly into a New Game+ play through once the credits finished rolling, while the Evacuation ending goes back to the title screen. At least, that's how I remember it happening. It implied that if you activate the Bastion, it resets everything all right, but only to immediately after (or maybe as) the Calamity occurred.
Clever that you completely omitted Rucks's Who Knows Where segment (unless I somehow missed it, in which case whoops). Feels like a very intentional choice given the narrative thrust of the video.
Seems our essayist is an unreliable narrator as well.
@@furrymessiah I mean, he literally admits as much in the end.
I'm glad for part 5. I wanted to push back hard on the closing of part 4, solely due to the costs. The Calamity didn't JUST destroy Caelondia, it also destroyed the Ura and not just the cultures of both but its people. If the Kid is worth saving, then everyone else is as well. If the kid isn't worth saving, then the Ura are.
Putting aside the potential time loop stuff for the moment. 4 survivors leaving a totally destroyed land, country or even continent is by far the worse choice then making it so everyone survives. This is the inherent promise of Restoration and the gleam of doing it all but better, of everyone coming back, the promise of that very idea is why Rusk pushes for it and why he's been telling the Kid what to do all game.
To my mind, this too is part of the criticism, where ideas and ideals can have such an appeal and sway that they can make folks excuse and ignore the actions that are required to make them happen.
Because Restoration doesn't just bring back millions of people's lives or the destroyed cultures or even the natural world and all its creatures. It brings back the weapon that caused the calamity and the very people who made the decision to use it. The promise is immense. but the cost is it all happening again plus everything the Kid has done up to this point, all the peoples killed and lands destroyed in an effort to make the Bastion functional. After the Calamity large sections of the world around Caelondia remained. But after making the Bastion? Well the Bastion itself was all that's left.
I'm an optimist, I really want the best and I damn well want the Ura to get their land back, I don't want the last tragedy of Caelondia's evil culture to be the final destruction of the people they hurt and stole from as well as the destruction of all of its own innocents. I picked Restoration as I will every time, just for that chance for the weapon to not be used, for another way to prevail. Is this right? Am I just dooming everyone to the very same fate? Maybe. I'll have to live with not knowing if the decision was right.
However, picking back up the time loop stuff. On new game plus, the natation changes. Rusk feels like this has happened before, his sense of dejuvu and his occasional remembering of sequences proves the dream of restoration to be a lie. The Calamity happened long ago and the weapon firing and destroying the world was only its final consequence, you can not undo the culture that drove to this point by undoing its most recent action. It would be like trying to stop the usage of the nuclear bomb, by the time the Manhattan project came around it was already far too late.
Because of that, Restoration only holds the inevitable off, not even long enough to save one life. Thus that you can Evacuate and save 4 make the choice obvious. 4 is greater than 0, not that maths often comes into morality. You save anyone at all. Taking the time loop to be real, Evacuation seems the only choice there is.
I gotta say, when i played the game for the first time, i thought i'd be on the same boat as you. I consider myself as someone deeply emotional and empathetic, so i sat there for a long while, thinking and contemplating my decision.
But in the end, there is one thing i just can never let slide. I will never accept oblivion. People forgetting the consequences of terrible actions ,people erasing history.
And going back meant just that. It meant forgetting the tough lessons that must be learned. It means that we let them get away with it, we let awful people do awful things, rewarded with oblivion about those same actions, just hoping they'll be better next time. And they never are.
So i decided to push forward, to see what would come next. If nature could come back, so can everyone else. But lessons must be learned, people must remember, otherwise we're all doomed. And i just can't accept that.
So i completely empathize with your decision, and my choice wasn't an easy or clear one either, but in the end, i guess it just got muddled with my own beliefs. It forced me to put on a scale what do i value more, and what i'd do with those values.
Honestly, i didn't enjoy the game too much when i played it. It's just not my type of gameplay, even if i loved the world and narration, items and design. But that final decision is the reason i keep thinking about it time and time again. It's such an interesting game, and i really like that about it.
I have to wonder if the writers poured so much consequences into the Calamity and made so few promises or suggestions about the Evacuation ending, as a failsafe and an out for themselves, since they are American. In fact, just look at SuperGiant today; they've went from this (a small indie game that massively critiques Imperialism, colonialism and Empires like America as an entity that will always inevitably destroy itself) to Hades: A ludicrously successful title, made by Americans, callously stealing the culture of another country wholesale in a very insensitive and ignorant way, for profit (the UA-camr Lambhoot has a very good 2hr video diving into the subject from his Greek perspective).
And you yourself suffer from the same bias towards self preservation as SuperGiant. You're essentially saying "I'm an optimist, I literally have to force myself to believe that Restoration is the right thing to do and argue that position, because if I don't, my spirit will crumble and my worldview will fall apart".
Your point about how, thanks to the efforts of the Kid (Your own efforts), everything aside from the Bastion is now destroyed so 'fuck it, none of this is worth saving' is the textbook ideology of a genocidal colonizer, or the kind of person who inherited the world created by such people and shrug their shoulders, only to finish the job colonialism started.
The Fall of Rome cost many lives, and yet, I would not go back in time to save it, simply because a continuation of the authoritarian status quo would prolong the lives of "some" people. Rebellions against the British Empire that resulted in it's collapse cost lives on both sides, and yet every area that successfully freed themselves have become infinitely better off (Some of the fastest growing, wealthiest and most powerful nations in the world right now are former British colonies, who only got that way through independence).
And, if Climate Change brought an end to our current status quo, never in a million years would I even think about turning back the clock and retroactively giving the people who made it happen and everyone else who allowed it to happen, another chance.
Even if you could guarantee no time loop, the society that created and used the Calamity weapon, does not deserve a second chance.
@sleepykhajiit1875 I think you didn't take away what I had wanted to be taken away from my comment.
Let me put it more clearly. The actions we the player/the Kid take building the Bastion were wrong. The promise of the Bastion could be a trap, in the same way the promise of Rome or America or Freedom or Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité is a trap. In the time loop section, I talked about how the actual Calamity was the Caelondian culture that made the land destroying weapon and the undo button in the Bastion was not strong enough to undo that, making it a worthless option.
"To my mind, this too is part of the criticism, where ideas and ideals can have such an appeal and sway that they can make folks excuse and ignore the actions that are required to make them happen."
What do you mean by self preservation? I argued specifically that the Ura did not deserve to be destroyed, to not have their lands completely erased due to a hurtful culture. I then added on the folks who lived in that culture because they too were victims of its evil.
I find that in the real world, most problems are the result of a few people in power making a choice. This does not mean that the people working for/voting/enabling them are not culpable but that they are also victims too. I am applying this thinking to the game in this case.
I also have no idea where "Fuck it, non of this is worth saving" came from. On both sides of my argument it was about saving people. You seem to conflate the idea of undoing nuclear bombs with the idea of wanting 'The Empire of Japan' back, but those are two different things. You're also comparing prolonging the lives of 'some' people against undoing the fall of Rome, when the situation is more similar to retuning Rome and all its conquered peoples back to life. To be clear, in this game the original inhabitants were wiped out due to the Calamity and our acts as the Kid. The undo button brings them back, instead of having just 4 survivors.
I'll admit I'm a little angry you've put your own response in such an inflammatory manner, like sure question me, but comparing me to a genocidal colonizer for something I didn't say or allude to feels unfair.
@@ACEYGAMES "I find that in the real world, most problems are the result of a few people in power making a choice. This does not mean that the people working for/voting/enabling them are not culpable but that they are also victims too. I am applying this thinking to the game in this case."
And that's an extremely neoliberal way of viewing the world. The idea that a few bad eggs are spoiling the bunch and if we just remove them, or just put the right kind of person in charge, all will be well.
Something you have to realise about the world is that, everyone is at it; there are extremely few people who are truly "innocent". For example, something like 60% of all women have experienced sexual assault or rape in their lifetime. In the US Military alone, there are 20k rapes a year; on average, an American is raped once every 93 seconds and more than 70% of victims (especially minors) knew their rapist: they were a friend, acquaintance or family member.
1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men are subject to domestic abuse by their partner and tens of millions of kids are subject to abuse and neglect from their family every year.
Stats like these are just a fraction of the real picture (and only what is officially reported) and stats like these cannot exist if its just 'a few bad eggs'. The truth is that rape, abuse, mental illness, hate crimes, bigotry, violence and murder are all systemic issues, and when you look at the bigger picture of 'crime', almost every single person has broken the law; has stolen, lied, committed fraud and has done wrong by another person.
The very idea of "Innocent people" and the term "Civilians" is a modern invention, created to allow the majority in society (particularly the middle and upper class) to dodge blame for the various crimes they and their society and the government they voted for, commit (and also to avoid having to partake in the military or be seen as part of a war; civilians are meant to be totally exempt from fighting and their lives are protected by law). We never truly got away from having 1st and 2nd class citizens, we've just changed the way we define them.
This is what I was getting at when I said your views (and the way SuperGiant wrote the game) were about self preservation. Whether consciously or not, people are softer on the Caelondians than they should be and create categories that label themselves and their people as "innocent", and therefore beyond reproach.
When we add racism and what is implied to be an Industrial Revolution colonialist era culture into the mix, the idea of "innocent" people becomes even more disingenuous. Every single person not actively fighting against slavery, Jim Crow and the unequal rights of that time was guilty and could be justifiably written off as collateral were they killed in the name of equality, because they're either partaking in the dehumanization, mistreatment and enslavement of other people based on their race, skin color, culture, etc or they simply don't care and were happy to coast over the top of the underclass.
Even if, deep down inside, they believed in the liberation of the Ura people, but did not act, they would not be innocent and were they to die in the name of freeing the underclass and securing equal rights, their deaths would be justified.
"I also have no idea where "Fuck it, non of this is worth saving" came from."
I Never said that none of this is worth saving, I specifically said that, if a society (like our current one) was an abusive colonialist warmongering power, that abused it's powers, ravaged the land, genocided entire peoples and ultimately brought destruction upon themselves (even when they became self aware and knew this would cause their destruction) then that society and those people don't deserve a second chance.
I'm not purporting a nihilistic view of: "this is beyond saving, let it all die", I'm saying that, if we fucked over everyone and everything else on the planet (as we and the Caelondians have done) and then, despite being aware of the consequences, we brought about our own destruction, we should not be able to hop in a time machine and get a second chance at all this.
"To be clear, in this game the original inhabitants were wiped out due to the Calamity and our acts as the Kid. The undo button brings them back, instead of having just 4 survivors."
Yes, which is something I was bringing up at the very beginning of my last comment. It's all too convenient for an American game dev to be critiquing their own genocidal past and then emphasize that "oh well the Ura got wiped out too", just like how, if America was destroyed, technically the remnants of the Native Americans would get wiped out too and historically they were genocided by the Americans, so 'we're both in this together'.
This is the literary equivalent to using the natives you've slaughtered as human shields. You genocided them, you brought hellfire down upon them as well as yourself and then you're going to turn around and immediately use them as a moral bargaining chip to bring your own society back.
This is exactly how Rome treated other Europeans by the way; in the senate and in Roman society, they'd romanticise the "noble savages" and use them as an aspirational archetype or as a political topic to gain favor (as Ceaser did) but then in the very same breath, they'd genocide them out of existence for money, power and fame.
This is the bipolar way colonizers view indigenous peoples. They will big them up and use them as wedge issues when it's beneficial and politically expedient for them to do so, but at all other times they view them as expendable or don't even care to think about them.
"You seem to conflate the idea of undoing nuclear bombs with the idea of wanting 'The Empire of Japan' back, but those are two different things."
But by choosing Restoration, you are doing both, and in your original comment, you're supporting the idea of doing both.
I also think you're showing your own biases again by picking Imperial Japan as the nation to bring back, whereas I specifically chose Empire's throughout our own history that we are often told to look up to (Rome, America, The British). I did that for two reasons:
1. It drives home the idea that, despite what virtues we may or may not see within them, they did not deserve to be saved or resurrected, simply based on the amorality of states such as them
2. Bastion itself is asking us to reflect on our own father figure, our narrator, our historian. The story told to us about our own people and reflect on the morality of their actions that brought us to the Calamity.
You might want to have a think about why your brain went to Imperial Japan as an 'evil colonizer nation' that has been destroyed, while you're happy to defend and deflect when I bring up the likes of Rome, who were one of the most evil, genocidal, warmongering societies in human history.
@@sleepykhajiit1875 Edit: Expanded reformatted and tried to address each point.
It seems I was unclear with my wording in that sentence. I was specifically saying that the groups behind the people in power were culpable for both the groups actions and the people in power's decisions aka deserving of blame and that they were victims of their own culture. You can perpetuate a bad system and also be hurt by it, which is what I meant in this game.
I point towards the people in power, as having more power to change or fix things. I put the responsibility for that culture's actions on them, because they more then anyone had the opportunity to choose different.
I was not saying you had said 'fuck it none of this is worth saving', it was something you seemed to have thought I was saying due to your putting it as such in your first comment. I'm actually still curious to have you elaborate on how you had gotten that take away. I'd argued from a few positions, but none of them were fuck it all let that mother burn or anything like that.
Your critique of SuperGiant stands. I am not of the inclination nor in a position to address it.
Why I used Japan as an example?
Because Nuclear bombs were the only only real world comparison to the total destruction of a land and people that happened in the game. Not just killing everyone but also making it so no one and nothing can live there ever again.
If I could I would have used Agent Orange and Vietnam but I don't think there's any moral grey there. Pressing a button to undo the existence of agent Orange and the Vietnam war is unequivocally the right thing to do.
I also used Japan because I am unaware of any single particularly destructive weapon that undid Rome, I could be historically ignorant here.
Also also Japan was pretty recent and thus more in memory then Britain and Rome.
Lastly because if I had an undo button that got rid of any weapon there's none I want rid of more then nukes, their threat to the whole world and the horror of their indiscriminate murder and irradiating of the earth makes them an easy choice.
Nice job with the writing on your part. The switch over where "you lied as well," was really clever. Awesome editing and video. I'm always happy to see more content on one of my favorite games. Nice work.
I think this is the first essay on Bastion I’ve seen that points out its distinctly American themes. Really interesting and insightful.
For the record, on my first ending, I went back with Rucks because I wanted to believe he was right, even after everything that had happened. I wanted to believe we could fix it, prevent it, repair what was broken. But hearing that first line again “not so simple with this one” sealed it for me. We’re going to keep screwing it up unless we find some way to do something different. We can’t undo what’s been done - even what we ourselves have done - but maybe we can make different choices in the future as long as we’re not obsessed with recreating the past.
Nature renews itself through fire.
I feel like that's the canonical sequence of events. You choose Restoration the first play-through, and then Evacuation the second time with all the extra whispers and echos from that forgotten past reminding you that Restoration is a pipe dream with no chance for anything new or better to emerge out of it
I think this is the first essay on Bastion I've ever seen
How are the themes "distinctly" American? With an aesthetic tweak or two, it could be British, Roman, Norwegian, German, French, Egyptian, South African, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, or any other culture that had some historic notation of misuse of power. I think that might be why you've never seen another view like this. Because it's a really weak argument that generalizes everything to make it work within their narrative. Also, there isn't a single piece of proof or evidence in his essay about any of his conclusions that make them provable. It's all hearsay or "I feel" answers. Even with statements like "Zia's song is a threat" have no merit. It could just as easily be an allegory of the builders running away from the problem, then being stuck with the aftermath because there's nowhere left to run.
Talk about unreliable narration.
@@H2SJaegerIt is especially funny considering his point for it being distinctly American is Rucks accent, which obviously he has BECAUSE he is an American voice actor.
The point on silent protagonists is great timing given that for some reason a PCgames article came out saying that "mute protagonists make games...unable to communicate anything coherent"
But that's a small topical thing.
I appreciate your ability to delve into stories while doing far more than just summarizing, interspersing meaning and perspective.
Looking it up its a hitpiece on starfield. I wouldn't be surprised if it was an AI article that came about from someone typing "what are the negatives of starfield" and then "write an article about how starfields silent protagonist ruins the game"
Man, bravo! I just finished the Bastion Making of and then watching your game analisys its just like a masterclass on all things Bastion related. Keep the good work!
Rucks is a flawed character, but painting him as a villain is a bit much. I don't think Bastion even has any "true" villains. Even the Caelodians. It's easy to interpret them as such (and indeed they are basically the closest thing to a villain there), but it's not hard to play devil's advocate. Are the Ura really any better? Is it moral to respond to genocide with more genocide? You could easily argue that the Ura's actions go against the moral of Bastion's narrative as well. Bastion criticizes the actions of Caelondia, yes, but it equally rejects the "eye for an eye" mentality displayed by the Ura, and shows with Zulf that this mentality also leads to ruin.
This is my interpretation as well. But to add on: In a sense, the final choice is irrelevant. The choice that really matters is the one prior to that: Saving Zulf, or not. The Ura stop because they are touched. Because "they can be a great people, they need only a light to show them the way." So maybe we can be, too. At least at the moment we can't commit targeted genocide, we can't rewind time, and most of us can't just 'nope' off and explore the world. But we can be kind.
@@professorhaystacks6606 In my personal experience, my first playthrough was with the hopeful optimism that "Rucks is right, if we can rewind, we can fix all this. The sooner I can do that, the sooner the suffering will end." Left Zulf behind, plowed through to the exit because it didn't matter what happened, it was all going to be undone. Then you come to find out it didn't matter. It all happened again anyway...so when you get back to that point, you have to take Zulf with you. He's just like you: Hurt; broken, alone; a result of his actions and a mess of regrets. The least you can do is give him another chance like the Bastion gave you. Like what Rucks wants to do with the Restoration. Yet, you know the truth. The only real hope for salvation being to leave the past in the past and forge a new future with what remains and try to have a better life from that point on.
The ura had their land invaded, and many killed. They reacted by integrating.
The Caledonians THEN tried to genocide the peaceful people they had already subjugated.
The Ura reacting badly the second time is...not equivilant. If nothing else, it is similar to self defence. They still didn't aim for genocide, they still put their weapons down when the kid did.
These are not equal parties, at all.
Zulf and his eye for an eye mentality? I don't think is the Ura way. That is why they reject him, and why the ura first integrated, and later they laid down their arms even after the kid took out so many.
I think zulfs eye for an eye mentality comes from his time in Caledonia...
Rucks and Zulf are both villains who represent the worst actions of their respective cultures. This does not, however, make them not worth saving, nor does it mean either is incapable of learning and growing from the horrors they both perpetrate and experience. The question of the ending then becomes whether you attempt to fulfill Rucks's dream of undoing his mistakes or take Zia's advice and have all three or four of you move on.
I haven't finished the video yet, but i'm so happy to see other people still think about Bastion. This game still has my favorite soundtrack in Video Games as a whole, due in no small part to the way the music is used in the game's storytelling. Can't wait to see your thoughts on this masterpiece
I've been binging your content and I'm a little biased because we share a lot of interests, but your essays hit home for me every single time. Just keep that blue sky aesthetic moving forward for your channel, I love it wholeheartedly.
I remember that the narrator has a different voice line describing every combination of 2 weapon loadouts.
I would keep track and equip a different combination every time I got back to the bastion because I wanted to hear every description.
As someone who played through the game mostly skimming through the lore, I get so much excitement when I hear you talk through what the game was actually about. I have a hard time building stories over the course of a playthrough, so thank you so much for condensing it all into a single video. It's hard not to love your voice and storytelling. Hope you keep this up for a long time!
i played through bastion twice, one till new game plus and once maybe halfway through years before. i was enamored by the jangling guitar and smooth voice of the narrator, this somewhat simplified artstyle, and most of all its gameplay. i still really enjoy all those aspects.
this was not a story i had fully recognized as you saw it. i had some idea that a separate narrative was being developed than what rucks was saying, but i wont lie the gameplay and the look of the game got to me. i didnt even remember zia's song. my interpretation of the ending was that zulf was betrayed by his people's for somehow siding or working with rucks and the kid. i still chose not to kill him however because i wouldn't let zulf just die out here. thats the homie.
i cant remember if i chose evacuation or restoration. im inclined to believe i chose restoration, on account of that being the whole goal of the game originally. but this story you've presented me, kind of gives me a new narrative to layer on my own
im american but my family are nonwhite immigrants. my history books were whitewashed and sanitized to lessen the blow that what our country and history was really like was a bit uncertain. i could feel something was a bit off, but i was focussed on learning. getting older and learning critical reasoning and thinking helped me come to terms with genocides, the racism, the disdain for others not like the invading foreigners of europe. hell, took even longer for me to find out americans were pretty alright with eugenics about a century ago, and to some even now it looks good.
just like in real life, i accepted the narrative the story gave me and followed through with it. we should restore the world the way it was, so that everyone comes back. if we move forward, if we acknowledge the wrongdoings and change course from what we are told is the right thing to do, we move forward with so much less and baggage so heavy that it feels like itll only weigh us down.
but just like how i know zulf shouldn't die, regardless of if i know the true reasons behind his change of heart, i know to make my own decision. my own code of ethics.
man dude this a good ass video essay. you should definitely check out transistor, i think i got more out of it emotionally than spiritually than with bastion, but your understanding would b something im interested in hearing
Genuinely cannot sing the praises of Pyre enough. I hope that eventually you get around to it because it remains my favorite Supergiant game by far.
it never managed to hook me, what'S good about it ?
@@EleanorDev without giving too much away the game presents a wonderful problem of whittling away your team and forcing you into using unique strategies by the end of the game for it. I also found the story to be one of the most engaging they had written. Not a single bad character.
@@BrightofNight please give away as much as you need
@@EleanorDev well sure since you’re asking! Basically after a set circuit of matches you reach a “championship game” where the team that wins gets to send one of their members back out of exile to society. This presents a harsh moral versus gameplay dilemma where some characters who are super useful in the rites either need to be forced to be held in exile longer or sent home to live their lives and be free again. You go through several of these final rites so that by the end of the game if you’ve won every time you’ve given away 5-6 (I don’t remember the exact amount) of your companions literally taking away your options that you have been using to succeed in rites. It’s a really fun way to lose resources and need to get creative because you grow attached to these people and want to help ferry them out of exile.
@@BrightofNight thanks
Starting to explore the channel and I love your narrative style. Informative and cozy. 😊
When the first note hit at 1:08 I nearly cried on the spot, this game has always meant a lot to me and god its been good to relive some things
Im pretty sure restoration is the only way to initially unlock new game plus as your gear upgrades and xp is dictated by what was the last save you did restoration with. It also makes sense thematically that restoration still results in the calamity as the world is not stuck in a time loop, people have agency as demonstrated by the kid to make choices, but by the fact that the people didnt change when the bastion reset things. Caelondia is still Caelondia, imperialism and colonialism do not go away if no one is there to remember the consequences. Violence has made Caelondia rich, and it will continue to do so because the ones making these decisions dont face the consequences. The restoration ending shows life just before the Calamity, the life they return to, everyone did, which is why the mancers, or the people ordering the use of the calamity at least, will use it every single time. They cannot comprehend a world without violence as an inevitability, the displacement of indigenous peoples is treated often as a tragedy, but an inevitable one which wipes clean the hands of people who choice the most exploitative or aggressive options available. This is the same view as Caelondians, peace is not an option because violence is more expediant or effective in their minds, and as such, the alternatives do not need the same consideration. For them, it is harder to imagine the end of the world, then the end of the system, so they build a weapon, one literally able to destroy part of the world, but could never dream that their world, their system could be destroyed by it. I think an important note is that the Gasfellahs are described as being intelligent, like play the game over and over again and you realise that they are a literally slave race trying to survive, but it is never fully outright stated, just implied. I mean that is part of what i love about Bastion. It never states outright rhat Caelondia is a country founded on slave labor that exploits the indigenous peoples, but you play it enough, you realise the themes are there, and the more you replay, the more it sinks in. I also love that the game is thematically impactful on such a deep level while also having interesting character writing. I care what happens to the characters we meet. My main sorrow about Bastion is it is a game you could 100% in a day or two depending on how good you are at it. I want more as it just makes me feel so many emotions that has never quite been recaptured by other supergiant games, or possibly any other games. Its not for everyone, but it is for me in a way that no other game has been.
I chose evacuation the very first time and I KNOW for a fact that new game + still gave me my gear with it's upgrades back.
Hail Caelondia! They aren't wrong.
It is human nature. It is natural selection for Competition is a normal as breathing. Caelondia did nothing wrong. Because nothing they did was Unnnatural for humans or nature.
I had the same takeaway on this game, honestly. When it came to it I honestly couldn't bear to choose to leave Zulf behind and likewise couldn't bear to choose restoration. Even if the game passes no judgement I definitely feel strongly about these choices being correct.
There is no safe place to go. The world is crumbling, it will eventually take everyone.
I see Im blessed today🫶
How does that relate to the video?
It’s funny how you said Rucks is like the history textbooks from school; my history textbooks ram exactly what you were saying reality is down our throats without saying anything good about America.
history books shouldn't be some opinionated dogma preaching the greatness of the country they were published in; they are a set of records. biases are impossible to remove entirety but at the end of a day I think the goal and dream of most historians and educators is to present people with our best understanding of events that actually took place, and if simply listing information about the history of our country is enough to make you think it's intentionally being painted in a bad light, maybe that should make you realize that we are simply living in a deeply troubled nation and have been for a long time.
oh no Pyth's been turned into marketable plushies
You didn't mention it in the video, and I didn't see it in the comments (although apologies if someone already pointed it out!) but one thing I really enjoyed in line with the themes of the rest of the game, and imo in support of the evacuation ending, is the way the end theme actually reprises both zulf's and zia's theme, and in doing so, transforms them both into something that feels more hopeful than either of them alone-- rather than being about loneliness and missing a home that isn't there, or the threat of a people subjugated, it becomes about working together to search for new home for all people.
Excellent write up. Bastion never fails to bring a tear to my eye, it's such a powerful story told in such a powerful manner. I think the only "Good v Bad" ending decision is the point at which you can opt to save zulf or keep going on a rampage. I also think the ending Restoration option has more people picking it because it's also portrayed as a "New Game Plus" cycle-repeat kind of theme. That's, at least, the reason I chose it on my first playthrough, and I imagine I'm not alone.
If you loved Bastion this much for its story and themes, I think you'll also love Transistor and Pyre. Until Hades, Supergiant was known for having a few core subjects and refrains it returned to in all its games about earned apocalypses and the transformations that follow. Hades is the odd man out -- for one thing, it feels like more of a reformer than a revolutionary, plotwise.
damn, a video essay about bastion has been on my bucket list ever since i played this game back on the xbox live arcade on the 360.
This was a brilliant video about my favorite game of all time, fantastically narrated and brilliantly structured < 3
Great video but the audio from the game is way WAY too quiet compared to the audio from you speaking, I could hardly make out any of what the characters said. Especially when you were trying to show the one character singing, I had a hard time hearing them over the other sound effects in the game.
Okay, good feedback. I typically get the opposite problem so thats a bit odd. Were you watching on a phone by chance?
I was not. I was watching on PC with a headset, I was playing another game at the time but there were no voice lines in it and it didn't make hearing your voice any more difficult.@@Skyehoppers
@@Skyehoppers I second game audio being too quiet. It was way more quiet than you.
I dunno seemed fine to me.
@@Skyehoppers - seems fine to me, I think the problem they had with it is that while the game audio _as a whole_ seems to be the right level, the music audio is quieter. The gunshots and enemy sounds seem to be right, but for highlighting specifically the song it probably could have been turned up in-game.
Absolute masterpiece of a video! Bravo! Bastion was one of the first games to have an emotional impact on me, amazing work!👏
I lean very much into the time loop theory, and play the game multiple times in a way where the Kid is experiencing a long-term character arch. I do it in 5-6 runs. The first, the kid is reverent to the statues; the surrounded core? There is a cat you can smash to avoid destroying the people. He tries his hardest to do the least amount of harm. But then when the betrayal happens, he changes. He's hardened, and so the first run you leave Zulf behind. You've only known Zia for a short time, and Rucks is your countrymen, mentor and guide. So you listen to him, and restore the world.
Then you run New Game+, over and over, the Kid remembering more each time. He ends up becoming more callous, more thorough in your clearing of enemies. He stops caring about the statues. Maybe, he starts to clear them in purpose because he can't stand to see them over and over. And he leaves Zulf every time, and restores every time, and can't understand what he is doing wrong. Why it isn't working? Over the runs, he does the Who Knows Where levels, where he realizes people aren't who they seem to be. He gets closer to Zia, and Zulf, and realizes what he has to do, finally.
You do the final run after hitting max level. You treat the statues well again, a testament to the old world. And then you save Zulf. You save him, and you chose to evacuate, the Kid finally growing beyond his need to build up his walls.
That's just how I like to play it though.
I think it's interesting that you didn't mention the color scheme of the room The Kid wakes up in. It's blatantly an American flag torn to shreds.
I only beat the game once and chose the Restoration path. I just figured 'if we go back and do it all again, wont we get exactly what we already got?' But I suppose that's true of the Restoration path, because the fate of Caelondia wasn't because the Caelondian people were evil, but because that's the natural state of humanity. If Caelondia hadn't made Bastion, anyone else would have. Would they have felt the guilt of using it like The Kid does, even if it killed them and everyone they loved?
I guess I just don't see it as 'America bad', but instead 'everyone bad, America is just an example.'
I remember picking restoration because I thought with these 4 people going "back in time" they could change the outcome and make the calamity not happen. Now I'm not so sure ...
Back in the day, I think I took it as a rewind, no memories.
I figured what's the point reloading those springs so everything can happen a second time.
@@Poldovico Rucks leaves it ambiguous as to whether or not anyone would remember anything, so it feels like there's a chance it could work. My read on NG+ is that no, they did not remember, and everything plays out in exactly the same way.
@@Toksyuryel The thing is if it's "a chance" and it doesn't work, does that not guarantee it won't work on the repeats either?
And then on the repeats, you'll think it's the first time, meaning if you conclude it's worth a try, you'll conclude it's worth a try every time, and get stuck in a loop you don't even know about.
And then what of the rest of the world? The rest of the universe, even? What happens to time then?
I guess that's a level of overthinking well beyond the thematic realms of this story...
@@Poldovico Well that's why I think of Evacuation as the correct choice.
@@Toksyuryel I think Rucks leaves it ambiguous because he doesn't have a fuggin' clue himself. I think it's a "You don't know, but you know," kinda thing.
This video popped into my feed today and I'm so glad for it, I've watched another 2 videos of yours, they're really high quality
this was absolutely brilliant, i will absolutely be sharing this far and wide as a fantastic exploration of video games as a vehicle for storytelling and social commentary. in remembering my first playthrough i did think it was surprising both how the music (particularly the moment where you meet Zia) and the story structure made this game really stand out as a classic in the VG canon. You did a much deeper, more satisfying dive and have made a fantastic example of showing the potential depth that games have as a storytelling medium, and how the walls and rules of telling these stories are both so familiar and old and unnoticed.
Just as i finished binging your videos, theres another one :D
Also, try to take it easy, and dont worry about being consistent. Every video you make is definitely worth the wait, so take as much time as you need! I hope things get less busy for you, stress sucks :')
Someone shared this on twitter, It was so good and I'm glad to have stumbled on it ❤️
I just discovered your channel thanks to the recommendation I got from Rosencreutz's Majora's Mask video (having just discovered THEIR channel in the last few days too) and this video absolutely blew me away. Bastion is one of my favorite games, and one I've thought about quite a lot over the years, but you've managed to unlock whole new layers of interpretation for me. I will definitely be making my way through the whole back catalog now. It's rare to find a new video essayist of this caliber, you should be incredibly proud of the work you've done here.
Now, as for something you mention at the end of the video - you say you haven't played any of the other Supergiant games other than Hades, and that not to completion, and I am here to humbly make the case that you should make playing Pyre a priority. Transistor is interesting enough, and Hades is great fun, but Pyre is the only one of their games that surpasses Bastion in narrative and thematic complexity, and in my opinion the only one with a stronger and more memorable soundtrack and artstyle as well. It is the best of their games in every way, and I am always saddened by how comparatively few people seem to have played it compared to Bastion and Hades. I cannot recommend it strongly enough.
This was a very great listen. Thanks for your work. Please do more (on anything)!
Hi! I’m back! Sorry for the inconsistency but things just keep happening. I’m sure you know what I mean. What did you think of my Bastion analysis? Did I miss anything important? What other sorts of interpretations do you have? I think there is a certain flexibility to the writing that could lead to a lot of different takes so I’m excited to hear what others think! If you have the means, any and all support on Patreon (link in description) means the world to me and really helps me keep this going. Currents perks are just name in credits, early access, Discord server, and update posts. I’m going to rework the Patreon in a few months so I’ll save the stronger pitch til then! Below are a few questions to get the conversation started on analysis beyond what I covered in my video:
1. So why exactly did the Kid survive the Calamity anyway? He wasn’t underground like Zulf and Zia, and his dream level seems to contradict the fact that he was at home right at the start of the game, so what gives? Is it just a plot convenience or is there some deeper reason why he lived when so few others did?
2. Without totally spoiling them for me, do the themes of Bastion reappear in Supergiant’s other games? Or do they go in totally different directions thematically?
3. The intense bloom effect is one of the most striking visual effects in the game, and mostly occurs at particularly important moments in the plot. Does it have a consistent symbolic meaning or is it just there to be flashy?
4. The spiky black rocks that show up in the second half of the game are treated with some real importance, such as Rucks referring to them as a “disease.” Are they an aspect of the true nature of the Calamity and/or the meaning of the story?
5. There are a good few levels I didn’t mention in the video at all, even some of my favorites like Colford Cauldron. Each level has its own unique little storytelling nuggets. What are some of your favorites that didn’t make it into my script, and how do they affect the worldbuilding?
Regarding your question on the other Supergiant games vs Bastion thematically, that question is rather complicated. From what I understand Pyre and Transistor have themes similar to Bastions. Pyre in particular does continues to build upon the anti-colonialist anti-imperialist themes of Bastion and at times pushes these themes even further. I haven't played Pyre myself yet (even though I own it) so I dont know how true this is but this is what I have gathered from my (extremely limited) understanding of the games narrative and themes. Transistor meanwhile plays with the idea of power and class a little thanks to its core setting being that of an upper class civilization, but I havent played the game long enough to say whether the ideas of power and class just set-dressing for the setting or if they carry deeper significance to the central themes and ideas the game wants to convey. Transistor also continues to play with an unreliable narrator thanks to again having the narrator be a diagetic part of the experience and be an actual character instead of random disembodied voice. Now whether or not Transistors narrator is as unreliable as Rucks I'm uncertain of as again, I did not finish the game.
Now Hades I have actually played to competition. As such, I feel rather competent in saying that it does not continue build upon Bastions foundation, but rather creates its own thematic throughline. This is largely because unlike Bastion, Pyre and (possibly) Transistor, Hades lacks almost completely any commentary or critique of larger societal structures and injustices caused by different power structures. Instead, Hades is a far more smaller scale and personal story, choosing to focus on themes of persistance, dysfunctional families, forgiveness and the inheritent flawness of human nature. The game presents *some* ideas surrounding power structures thanks to the big bad dad being the ruler of underworld himself, but these themes act more in conjuction with the games larger themes rather than being those larger themes themselves. Theres much more emphasis put on Hades being...not the best father to Zagreus rather than what kind of ruler he is, even if that does play a little bit role to the larger narrative. Besides that, the one thing Hades shares with Bastion (besides its great gameplay-storytelling synergy) is a core idea of empathy, how every major character is painted with some kind of nuance and understanding, even those presented as antagonistic. Much like Rucks, Hades is very much not a good person and serves as the games main antagonist, yet the game treats him as a fully realized human being with their own worldview and perspective instead of a cartoon villain meant to serve as the thematic strawman opposing whatever the narratives themes are.
But yeah, I'd say Pyre is the most similar to Bastion thematically and by far the most overtly political,while Hades is the least similar and least (purposefully) political (all art is political but not all art attempts to be political and instead tries to be more interpersonal or philosophical with its themes).Transistor stands somewhere in-between.
This is the first video of yours I've seen and I'm glad I did, this was really great! This is a really good and comprehensive investigation of Bastion's storytelling. I'll definitely be checking your other videos now.
I really recommend Transistor very highly. It's not the same as Bastion thematically, but it is still about a civilization doomed to destroy itself, the specific agents of that destruction and their motives, and the specific way that it happens. The main difference thematically is that Transistor doesn't really touch on oppression and colonialism. I don't want to spoil the story though, and it's been since 2016 that I played it (when I was 18 and not the best at media analysis) so I probably missed some of the subtler themes anyway. Also it doesn't really have a narrator, despite what a lot of people say when comparing it to Bastion. It's got a character who speaks about things as they happen, but he's not telling anyone a story, and doesn't have any particular outside knowledge, so I wouldn't call him a narrator. It's also not all that long, I finished it (non-completionist; I did the whole main story including most if not all optional parts but didn't go out of my way to get achievements or make much use of the training areas) in under 8 hours over two days.
The gameplay is also an interesting evolution on the fairly baseline action RPG mechanics of Bastion but I wouldn't call it an unambiguous improvement. It's harder to get a hang of but I can see it getting better with NG+ (which I didn't do, because the ending frustrated me and turned me off the game, for reasons I now realize have much more to do with myself than the quality of the storytelling). A single playthrough just isn't long enough to build up an intuition for the very unique mechanics. Bastion managed to give each weapon a lot of space to shine with most of the levels being built around one in particular. Transistor didn't really do that on the main path.
Hey this was a REALLY good video.
But as someone who had tried to keep myself completely in the dark about Immortality before playing it, it would have been really nice with a mention at the beginning of the video that you also intended to spoil a part of what "Her Story", "Immortality" and "The Stanley Parable" was about.
I would've appreciated some talk of Windbags and their role in the story. Their function within the city even with the scant descriptions given by Rucks paints a stark picture of their lives.
They're ghettoized workers -- At the intersection between bad and wrong -- vital to the function of Caelondia. Whose children are directly commodified as with squirt cider and used as with the mortar's firing grounds as fodder to test the might of their army upon.
They call their grotesque proletariat -- The people doing the dirtiest jobs imaginable within their society -- "Scumbags", the most under of the underclasses despite how necessary that role is. They're "The bottom feeders", as their song goes.
"So why exactly did the Kid survive the Calamity anyway? He wasn’t underground like Zulf and Zia, and his dream level seems to contradict the fact that he was at home right at the start of the game, so what gives? Is it just a plot convenience or is there some deeper reason why he lived when so few others did?"
You've misunderstood The Calamity - 'underground' was always a sort of *suggestion*, a thing the game liked to give you as a possible reason. If it could be thwarted by being underground, what would be the point of it being a 'final solution', anyway? It made sense when The Calamity was some untargeted natural disaster, but you have to remember: The Calamity is not actually some unknown event. It is a targeted destruction of life.
Zia and Zulf survived because they had Ura blood. But we know that Rucks, and by extension, The Kid are in no way partially Ura - while The Kid is established to have an absent father figure, Rucks is far too old. We've established at this point that Rucks was one of the Chief Engineers regarding the Calamity - he held an insane amount of power over this project. Have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe, Rucks - much like Zia's father - had his own safeguard in place? That's a common conceit of biologically targeted superweapons' creators - when they create, they protect themselves. Unfairly, unjustly, they ensure their own weapon can never hurt them.
So... Have you ever considered that might be another layer of the game's storytelling? Rucks was in a position of power to ensure The Calamity could never hurt him specifically, a level of power he never tells you he had. In fact, this power was so specific it would suggest Rucks is not just An Engineer behind the Calamity, but amongst its *most central*. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Calamity, and how to wind things back - not showing the sort of mindset of a politician who was simply aware of it, but the creator who is most familiar with how to take things and unfuck them so that they can get everything working again.
He most likely didn't anticipate Zia's father's adjustment to the program, but he had simply implemented an adjustment that prevented it from hurting him at all, ever. He might have even assumed they might adjust the targets to include him, just to wipe out the most knowledgeable people involved in the Calamity - to help escape blame if any of them ever felt remorse.
And then The Kid enters the Bastion. Rucks sees his younger self in The Kid, and recognizes (from all of the people left who have been dusted) that something is wrong with how the Calamity is supposed to target people. But I don't think he realizes until the second half the reason that The Kid survived.
Rucks and The Kid are almost 100% related. The reason The Kid's father was "missing" lines up perfectly with the fact Rucks has been involved in top secret levels of governmental control as a scientist figure for literal years. I could dive more into the implications here, but I feel like you get it - many fans like to say "haha Rucks is just different timeline Kid", but I just think that yeah - no, their white hair and brown eyes matching always did mean something. Just not what people thought.
It adds a new layer because Rucks identifying himself as The Kid's father would be exposing a new layer: "I know you're my kid because I know why we both survived", which is to say, "I know you're my kid because I was able to tamper with the Calamity's targeting system itself". That's a whole fucking other level of admission of complicit guilt. Rucks could have fucked the Calamity up far more, even made it do nothing - but all he did was protect himself. And he was just lucky that The Kid could get him out of it.
I also think this adds a new dimension to The Stranger's Dream, the Rucks-specific DLC. I always thought the ABC book was a sort of interestingly childish spin on Rucks' dream - considering he's this mastermind like figure who clearly had WAY more going on than people recognized from his deflections. Why would it establish him as writing a children's book? Isn't that counterintuitive?
But... This is The Kid's dream. And... I think it makes the most sense to me that a researcher would write his son a book before he left. If he didn't know how to read, ABCs would make the most sense - you could rely on the mother to help teach it, form some kind of bond, participate in his ability to learn well after. The mention of Nordy establishes this book was written at most 10 years ago (though likely closer to 5), so this wasn't something Rucks wrote a long time ago. He wrote this recently, and with reason despite his career implying he held immense knowledge and power.
All of this to say: The Calamity killed all Caeldonians, except for Rucks and his direct descendant - the Kid. Hard to say if he actually knew about The Kid at the time or not, but do you think that the book from Rucks' Who Knows Where is reflective of a book he left for The Kid in infancy? Or was it reflective of a book he wrote, but never gave?
The part you didn't touch was the virtues of Rucks. Duty, faith, honor. It would be the easiest thing in the world to not restore Bastion, to abandon the thing he's been entrusted with. And yet, he sticks to it to the very last choice never wavering in his resolve.
Sometimes the change is good and not all ways are worth preserving. But sometimes they are. Your call.
Because he's indoctrinated. Old fashioned. Stuck in his ways.
Considering the ways included genocide...
Yeah, it's your call on if those ways are worth preserving. But damn, that's a hell of a hill to die on.
@@FFKonokoAmd today. The World is intent to render families and normal human behavior old fashioned in Favor of fetishes.
I got Bastion on the Xbox when I was just getting into video games using the money left over after buying one of the popular games at the time and the game has never left my mind
Whenever someone asks me about what my favorite games are it immediately comes to mind even though I haven’t played it in ages and this video has only sparked my urge to replay it
This game really shifted my taste in games for the long run and I’m not complaining at all
This was absolutely amazing, thank you for making it!
When I first played Bastion, I was so excited about it that I literally bought it for everyone I knew who had a Steam account, and it remains one of my favorite narrative experiences, in games or any other medium, to this day.
I remember one of the friends I bought it for telling me that he didn't like how the story had "only two meaningful choices" that were both right at the end of the game. Although that felt... incorrect to me, at that time I didn't have the understanding to express why. If I remember correctly, I went on a ramble about all the different weapon loadouts and character builds, similar to the one at 9:30 in the video, not understanding that I was refuting a different point from the one being made.
Looking back with more mature eyes, he wasn't wrong that until you reach Zulf in the Terminals, your choices have no real effect on what you're doing, only on how you do it. But it didn't occur to me that depriving you of that agency, having Rucks make decisions for you and even speak on your behalf, could be an intentional feature of the story, such that making any plot-altering decisions at all, even late in the game, even if all it affects is the ending sequence, becomes an act of genuine autonomy.
This was so good! I never got a lot of this when playing Bastion, and even picked the Restoration Ending, haha. It's much more thoughtful story than I gave it credit for. And you're absolutely right, all you can do is listen more.
For what it's worth, I do think both Transistor and Pyre have interesting stories as well, and you'd like them both! Transistor in particular has such a tragic, interesting narrative to me.
"Build that wall and build it strong, we'll be there before too long" at first sounded like she and other people would move in to live there..... but later it sounded like she's part of an invading threat that the wall is meant to defend against.
man I haven’t even played the game but the first few seconds hooked me. Amazing video, going to enjoy some of your backlog while waiting for more :)
Really enjoyable analysis! I never finished Bastion because I'm not really into the combat angle, and so I missed so much of this. Supergiant is so good at turning your expectations on their head, no matter how you think you anticipate it.
And I think you're right, so that helps ^_^;
The endings aren't good and bad, the endings are worrying and somewhat less bad. Restoration is almost explicitly rewinding the clock, with no real timeline changes, so everyone is alive again just as they were...which means the calamity will happen again, in the same way, ad infinitum. The escape, on the other hand, forsakes the the dead in favor of actually having a future. The survivor count is much smaller, but those who do actually survive in the long term, and learn how things can go wrong. They're not good and bad, they're status quo with oncoming inevitable disaster, and devastation with potential for hope.
Incredible video all around. Analysis, editing, structure... This is an absolute top-tier video essay that anyone with an interest in narratives should watch. Bravo.
This was an amazing video. Thank you for making it.
This is by far the best Bastion video essay on UA-cam. Absoultely brilliant take on this and great to see how in depth you went on the analysis.
By the way, I can recommend Transistor. I haven't played Pyre or Hades yet, but just like Bastion, Transistor was awesome
Bastion presents the player with 3 important choices in the story, though only 2 are obvious. The first choice is either to abandon Zulf or return him to safety, which only impacts the Evacuation ending. In the Restoration ending, Zulf is alive regardless. The second choice is activating the Bastion to either abandon Caelondia or return it to a previous point in time. To return is to restore life to everyone affected by the Calamity in the hope it won’t happen again. To abandon Caelondia is to move forward in the hope of the few remaining that things will get better, though it’s not guaranteed with most everyone dead and the Ura left with a decaying, collapsing land. Whichever of these choices are made determines the ending and the fates of the many. But whichever ending you make is definitive, but only until the third choice is made.
The third, less obvious choice, also is to choose between returning or abandoning. Either abandon the game ‘Bastion’ and let the ending you choose remain, or return to the game and press New Game +, causing The Calamity. The Calamity doesn’t happen at the end of the credits after all, it only happens by starting a new game. By choosing to abandon the game, things go on either with Caelondia returned to its former glory with the many returned to their former lives or the four characters we’ve met venturing into the unknown depending on the ending chosen. By returning to the game we undo the previous two choices, and press the button activating The Calamity, instantly destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands if not millions of individuals and placing the main characters back in danger. Returning to the game and initiating The Calamity is the only way for the time loop to continue, with every playthrough invalidating any previous choices. By returning to the game, any hope of Caelondia avoiding the calamity or the main characters finding a new life is gone. So play the game, make your first two choices, and leave confident in what you’ve done. Or play again, cause The Calamity, repeat the cycle, and know it’s all your fault. The main antagonist of the game isn’t Rucks, it isn’t Zulf, it’s not the Caelondians or the Ura. It’s you.
I just found your account and I am immediately subscribed. You’re energy and explanations are both engaging and calming and it was just such a pleasant experience. As someone who watches a lot of video essayists I am so impressed already and will have to go back through your old videos. Legitimately, thank you for such a good reading on a great video game and also for reminding me of the music of this game. I used to have it on my playlists until I switched music apps and promptly forgot about it lol.
The game hints the Restoration / bad path has been selected at least once before, and that Rucks has some memory of it, in how he seems to have memories of moments he isn't actually witnessing, and, if you choose the Good options like Saving Zulf, he remembers them incorrectly. This could be interpreted as speculation on Rucks's part, but I prefer a different interpretation.
In this respect Rucks represents history itself. He knows this story. He's told it 1000 times. It has repeated over and over more times than he can remember.
But we the player have not. The boy has not. Neither the player nor the boy has any memory of the "last time."
At the end of the game, the final choice is not whether to *repeat* the cycle, but whether to *continue* it, and that distinction is critical. History repeats, people do not. We the player, the human, often only have one chance to "get it right" in life. Rucks will go on either way. He'll tell the story, and retell it, as many times as it happens. But it'll be a different boy. A different first-time player. We can reload a save or roll New Game+, but it's not the same.
The reason Rucks starts getting it "wrong" if the player saves Zulf is because this isn't how the story normally goes. Mercy from the boy? The Ura holding fire? This is no way to continue a cycle of violence!
Yes, the game lets you make a couple of very key choices, and doesn't force you to go one way or the other. But if you listen closely you can hear the game begging you to get it right.
All of this is just speculation and 10-year-later-quarterbacking, but I think it stands up, I think it is a valid interpretation, even if not the only one.
I wish more games would use silent protagonists for narrative/thematic purposes like this; maybe I'm just a bit of a weirdo but I'd much rather have a hero with a distinct personality and thoughts than one meant to substitute for my own because of course video games can't shape themselves around my thoughts
quick question: have you played Live a Live?
If not then I recommend it..
Thats all.
It seems hard to accept that Evacuation is the good ending when it leaves all of the Ura that you killed during the building of the Bastion dead, but you have the power to undo that. Maybe nothing will change in the Restoration ending, but aren't we obligated to at least try? If Caelondia destroys the world again, we can try over and over until we build the perfect timeline, until we get it right.
In partikular it's not just the Ura we killed. It's all of them! If we choose evacuation the remaining Ura that refused to shoot us will soon die, the world we leave them in is constanty crumbling and falling appart.
Imagine 6 people say the world is going to end unless we stop something. No one is going to believe them and is near impossible to change even if you're in power. It takes time to change and there is not enough time.
And since NG+ from the Restoration you will NEVER get a perfect timeline.
@@Buglin_Burger7878 I'd say Ng+ and it's changes are more of an easter egg then a comment on the main story. Proof: If this were not true your choice of ending wouldn't mean anything either way.
No one's "obligated" to do anything. If you reverse time, it is heavily implied that it only reverses to just before the calamity occurs. As in, it's probably already been triggered. There is no way to prevent it.
I played through this game twice so far, and I saw the restoration options as the option for the kid to reverse all the violence he committed after the calamity, violence which had a deep significance to me due to the characterization of the windbags and the Ura. So restoration undoes that violence, but leads right back into the calamity. Evacuation on the other hand, is the kid accepting what he has done and moving on, on to a brighter world where he can rest. It’s my idea of how the story goes, indulging once in the undoing of your wrongs, then accepting they are a part of you and forging ahead. Excellent video!
I loved the video. Bastion is one of my favorite games growing up, one of the first PC games I played, and it introduced me to indie games in a way. I'm the kind of person who tends to easily forget the games I play and the movies I watch, but I remember how they made me feel. Every time I hear the music for Bastion, those feelings come rushing back. As I watched your recap, I remembered more and more. I never remembered what load out I was using or even the monsters I fought, but I remembered the story that I experienced. I also was able to look at things from a new perspective that I hadn't thought of before. Things I didn't think about or really understand as a kid playing the game. Things that I know and understand now that I didn't then. It's amazing the things we realize when reflecting and remembering on our experiences.
Well, having stumbled across this and having listened to it all in one go, I feel like I should provide a couple items to use as food for thought. One abnout how many of the problems people talk about with the US are the results of radical changes to help people back in the 1800s. And one about how we might be trapped in cycles of prejudice and destruction due to physical limitations.
If you dig into the history of the US, there are a number of laws that people (especially Europeans, in my experience) criticize as "outdated" and "bad." One example is how bankruptcy laws work. The amount of times I've heard that the ability to completely discharge debt is a terrible thing, and the law should instead focus on repayments at least to some degree, is more than I can remember. But the reason bankruptcy law exists like it does in the US is because it was attempting to make European-style debtor's prisons impossible. The fact that Europe doesn't have debtor's prisons NOW doesn't change the fact that they did when that framework was put into place. And many of the underlying legal philosophies of the US have been less about "What can we do with this power?" and more about "How can we limit the damage any one individual can do?" The game "Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura" actually has some interesting dialog about a very similar idea. If you've played through the story, you can probably guess what I'm thinking about. And it's definitely worth keeping that viewpoint in mind when considering any kind of radical change.
The reason we might be trapped in cycles of prejudice and destruction is because of the human brain. It can only hold a certain amount of information. And, arguably worse, it has a very limited amount of bandwidth. Some numbers I've seen for vision is that your brain is drawing input of the equivalent of roughly 8 megapixels, but your perception is over 500 megapixels, just as an example of the limitations you're working with. And that limited bandwidth leads to the lovely problem of stereotyping. And it's impossible not to stereotype. Your brain just can't process data fast enough, so as a very young child, it forms stereotypes about the world. You have stereotypes for "chair" and "book" and "table" and "wood" and "ball" and "metal" and "tree" and so many more. When you come across something, instead of having to store all the details about it, you just have to store the differences between that thing and whatever your stereotype is. And since storage space is at a premium in your brain, it will slowly update those stereotypes. An example would be if you moved from somewhere with predominantly concrete sidewalks to somewhere with almost exclusively brick sidewalks. Eventually your personal stereotype of a "sidewalk" would shift from concrete to brick, because that's the default that takes up the least space. But that can apply to any stereotype.
When you think about how the human brain needs stereotypes, and add in the concept of Dunbar's Number, you run into a problem. Dunbar's Number is sometimes described as the maximum size of a group for which a person can know how an action that impacts one member of that group will end up affecting every member of the group. If one member of a group gives some of their food to another member of that group, how will the other members respond to that, and how big can the group get before you start answering "I don't know?" The best estimates for maximum size that I've seen fall into the 150-160 range. Which suggests that once you grow a group above 150 or so people, you start running into the problem of some members of that group being physically unable to see other members of that group as human beings. And that goes back to mental bandwidth and brain capacity.
Since you mentioned the concept of environmental sustainability, one of the most potent greenhouse gases is sometimes known as dihydrogen monoxide. It's possible to reduce greenhouse gases by pulling that water out of the air and putting it back underground. Like in the aquifers it was pulled out of. Maybe someone could come up with something along the lines of the vaporators in Star Wars. A starting point of solar panels, a heat pump, and some kind of storage tank would probably be workable. But that would depend on design, and I'm not an engineer. I'll leave that for someone else that wants to save the world.
And to end on the note of games, it's pretty obvious that you have stereotypes of "Good Ending" and "Bad Ending." How did those get built up? And is there anything in them that you don't even realize you don't notice? It might be worth trying to figure that out. Right now my view is that if a story has a predetermined "Good Ending" and "Bad Ending," then the story is too simplistic to do deep analysis on. Some parts of it might be interesting, but how you interpret "Good" and "Bad" is highly subjective. And I could point out that Babylon 5 had a plot point that was essentially the same decision as the ending to Dark Souls (made much more obvious because of Frampt's dialog about collecting the souls to fill the Lordvessel). When given the choice in an ending, I want something where you could argue for any given side. There are arguments that Ending 3 in Armored Core: for Answer is the most moral one. And there's some justification there. But it's definitely not the "Good" ending. And that's an entirely different rabbit hole. I needed to be in bed 3 hours ago, and instead I started writing this and kept rambling. So I'm calling it here before I lose any more sleep.
I would love to see your analysis of Pyre and religious oppression. It'd be fun to see a similar "unreliable narrator" analysis due to how the narrator of Pyre is actively working against the player character in real time.
i just finished Bastion and this was exactly what i needed after, great video. (also hi, i recognize you from twitter!)
back after the last section and man, that was lovely!!
Whoa, hello and thank you!! Youre easily one of my favorite writers on the platform so that really means a lot to me 💙
Oh man this video made me remember all the feels again. Thank you.
Great video. I chose evacuation. Early on i thought about restoration but as the game went on i did what you talked about i listened and i found something odd. You may not agree but Rucks seem so much more despondent when he talked about caelondia the further we got into the game and the more memorial items i found. What really linched it for me was when i went for the calamity prototype weapon test facility for the weapon skill test.
Rucks didnt say it in so many words but it shoes how much regret and loathing he has. He deisgned and helped create the bastion such a wonderful thing yet he also knew about the calamity, the weapons tests and how his nation literally had a weapons facility right on the border of a nation they were supposed to be at peace with.
Even when he talks about the restoration at the terminal andits flaw he doesnt sound confident at all that if they go back anything will change at all. He sounds so sad and broken in a way as he admits in the end to just how flawed his home his nation was.
I played Bastion in preparation for your video on it, and I'm really glad I did. Your videos always make me think about different angles for interpreting stories that go beyond what we enjoy and don't enjoy. It's something I try to think about, but there's always going to be perspectives I didn't consider. Personally, the gut punch of the game really being about imperialism hit me hard, but for me it was affected by me not enjoying the style of the narration much. It just wasn't a voice or style I found interesting, and that affected by ability to take in the worldbuilding and care about it. Without your video I never even would have considered how important of a layer it adds, that it's about the story being told as much as the acts of imperialism. It had to be a southern accent, because that has to be American, can't just be from Canada.
I do agree that the game wants you to pick Zia's ending, not Rucks', but my own biases are in that view as much as yours are for you. I think the game, in a way that's simultaneously independent and inextricable from the themes of societal change, is raising a question of causality and fate, with the time loop ending. It doesn't make an objective statement about whether the exact same things are guaranteed to happen, or whether there's some random or free aspect to events, and people might just make better choices the second time around. You can't answer that kind of thing, and it's not like we really know how reality works.
That's mostly a philosophical question, but I think it parallels a very similar one about society. It's not like it's an utter guarantee that society needs to fundamentally change, to improve. It's not like it's theoretically impossible for the right people to get elected, the right laws to get enacted, and the overton window to shift completely to the right place. But is that a 1% chance? A 0.1% chance? A 0.000001% chance? I have no idea. When people make the statement you've made, that society needs fundamental change, is that meant as an absolute statement, that it really is the only way? Or a practical one, for the sake of making the point that the odds of improvement without that change are so low that chasing them is pointless?
I disagree with people who pick Rucks' ending, but I get that some people, maybe, see that chance of improvement as greater than what's possible by starting anew. After all, countless lives are at stake, in this case. And I can't blame anyone who by instinct, upon hearing that it can be a time loop, naturally believes that the outcome isn't set in stone, that it can be fixed. That after countless retries, eventually one will happen where the suffering is avoided.
As a side note from all that, this also has me thinking about the role of fun violence in games like these. Mostly, because I think Bastion could honestly be a lot more fun. It's good for 2011, and my opinion on this mostly comes from the fact that I played it in 2023, but I just found the rolling and attacks clunky. But when the point of the game is to criticize the violence, does it defeat the purpose to say that the violence was supposed to be more fun? But on the other hand, the ways the violence wasn't fun enough for me don't seem like intended parts of the game, but just clunkiness from its age. But does it need to be intentional to accomplish that effect? Would the game be more impactful if the combat was smoother, more satisfying, and even more addictive, to make that choice about whether to save Zulf harder? Or is that an excuse I'm making because no matter how much I try to appreciate the societal criticism in the themes, I'm still just biased by my desire to play through fun violence?
Idk. But the fact that your channel helps me appreciate the identity of games like this outside of how polished the combat is by 2023 standards is something I appreciate greatly. Fantastic video, Skye. Can't wait for the next.
I've had bastion in my backlog for 4 years and Part 1 of this vid was what convinced me to play it already. I'll come back after the weekend when I've finished playing it.
(thx for your vids Skye!)
i still shed a tear when I hear the music kick in when you choose to lay down your weapons and care
Honestly from the first 10 minutes you've made me want to pick up the game really badly! Will do that and then I'll finish this awesome video essay
i really find you read way more into things than are actually there-- from the zelda thing to the america as a motif to this.
the designers at supergiant have been incredibly candid and transparent about the story, its development and meanings they wanted to communicate over the many years since this has been out.
yea cool, you drew a kinda unique take out of the story and its neat that it moves you emotionally, as does the games typical impact for folks who actually played through. frankly however, it doesnt cement those views and interpretations as anything more than just an asserted opinion. in less charitable light it would appear that youre using the narrative of this piece of art as a tool in service to your own worldview and biased ends, which certainly cheapens and insults the piece.
I do think this is a story discussing some broader ideas of imperialism and the concept of winners and losers-- but I think its more about kindness and rising above.
is the evacuation the 'good' ending? funny, I always saw it as the selfish choice-- you opt for *your* freedom, your immediate wants over the countless souls lost to the decisions of people over their heads and outside of their control. while the stranger is absolutely an unreliable narrator, its hard to believe that the entirety of caelandia was just full of hateful monsters. restoration isnt a time loop when you have people who retain memory of the calamity, that the world is *marked* from the use of the Weapon. just as you forgive zulf, you're presented with the option to forgive the city and try again for better. *that* would be the mature option.
I typically avoid direct statements from creators on what their story is about when writing my videos because i am more interested in death-of-the-author style of analysis, but now that its done Im curious where theyve directly talked about the story's meaning. Any links?
Also as for "the zelda thing," why do you think they made a bunch of feminine clothing options for link in botw/totk?
(Also also fuck you for saying this is an insult to bastion. Thats a fucked up thing to say to me)
I thought I had little trouble distinguishing between where the essayist was analysing the game and where he was saying overly sweeping things about politics etc. To his credit, he included the 5th segment of the video, so to say that he insulted the game itself is uncharitable indeed. I've seen other essayists do significantly worse on account of both the quality and shoehorning of their rhetoric (*cough, Adam Millard, cough*).
'But I think it's more about kindness and rising above.' I've never liked it when people introduce false conflict of ideas into narrative analysis with the ' but I think it's more about' clause. But you're right that it's also about kindness and rising above.
To Skyehoppers, if you read this, I'm glad that you mentioned that Zulf ought to be forgiven. People struggle with forgiveness, instead they downplay and excuse, or disavow and condemn. I'm not optimistic about it, but I hope that Australians can learn from America's mistakes as we trail behind it and walk the delicate tight rope of separating the wheat from the chaff. Your video wasn't perfect, but it was worth listening to.
@@Skyehoppers There is a group of entirely female bandits called the Gerudo and Link dresses as a woman to gain entry to their town in BoTW, as they exclude men. Considering this exclusive nature in their writing of the story, at the very least in the world of the Legend of Zelda, gender roles and gender identity are more traditional and strict. That being said, Japan's culture doesn't take gender ideology very seriously and are much more strictly traditional with gender roles as well.
@@Skyehoppersoh no he called you out for having a hate boner for America and that your ridiculously bias against it devalues the game
@@animeproblem1070criticism of the "richest and most powerful nation in the world" that is literally built upon the bodies of the people that it tortured and slaughtered to extract that wealth is not having a hate boner for America. You should try seeing America with eyes unclouded by it's propaganda.
Wow what a great video! Seriously loved it and it made me see things I never got when playing.
I remember playing this off the chrome webstore when I was like six and falling in love with the game.
I have so many fond memories of just listening to the soundtrack over and over while I do homework and shiz.
A Nintendo direct and a Sony play
Then an essay on super giant and why they are liars
Let's go it's a videogame day
Wow these are cool vids. Just found this channel. I’d love to hear your take on Iconoclasts, that was my first real noteworthy indie experience and I was blown away by how good a game can be even when made by just one person but also how much complex characterization and storytelling can come from one persons passion project.
Noted!
Thanks for a trip through one of my favourite video games.
great vid, thanks!
Despite all the love for Hades, Bastion remains my favorite Supergiant game. It ties with Transistor for best in-game art direction and official/key/promo/whatever art, (I prefer the more painterly look without hard black contour lines,) has the overall best soundtrack, and just felt the most thoroughly enjoyable beginning to end. Transistor felt too short, and Hades quit giving you additional permanent upgrades way too soon to stay fun beginning to completion. Also, as a roguelite, Hades relied way too much on doing the exact same rooms over and over. I'd rather have a short game of unique maps and locations than a longer game primarily padded out through extensive repetition.
With that being said, I have always taken issue with the Zulf choice, as it's a classic video game case of giving me a choice... that isn't really a satisfying choice because none of the options were specifically what I wanted to do. Call me crazy, but I wanted to save Zulf AND keep fighting the rest of the Ura. Zulf's an okay guy who got a raw deal, but regardless, if the Ura wanna lay their weapons down first, that's cool, but no way am I stopping first. I've got every bit the right to fight for my goals as they do theirs. But nope, the game packs "help Zulf" and "stop fighting" together, a classic forced combo meal of choice where a choice of action is packed with a presumption of underlying motive that does not match my personal reasoning. (A problem I also constantly have with real life politics, by the way.) So yeah, it kinda kills the immersion there for me either way, because unsatisfying choices just bring personal agency to mind without actually giving it to me, which is sorta like smelling delicious food you can't eat. I'd rather a game gives me no choice at all than makes me choose when no available options are what I'd actually want to do in that situation anyway. That's the worst possible level of choice.
As for the big final choice, that's another example of neither choice feeling right. First, Restoration feels wrong to me because by all available evidence, it looks like Restoration is most likely a perfect time loop. And that doesn't just mean not fixing anything that time, but makes fixing things completely impossible for the rest of looping eternity. Because of course, if I chose to reset this loop, I'll choose to reset next identical loop so on and so forth. Even if it's not certain, even a reasonable likelihood it's a perfect time loop is too much of a risk to take. With that being said though, if Restoration could somehow be proven not to be a perfect time loop, and it instead just goes back far enough to stop the Calamity from happening, then yeah, Restoration is THE way to go no question. Soooo much less death for everyone.
But okay, if I don't like to chance the time loop softlocking reality itself, then Evacuation is the way to go? No, because the whole darn game seems determined to make it seem like the Calamity has made the world absolutely, completely unlivable. Apparently 99.99999% of the entire planet is just.... gone, I guess? Since all ledges are a death plummet after all, and at no point is simply going down to the new ground level treated as an option. And if the Calamity wasn't complete planetary destruction, and there's simply a really big hole where Caelondia was, then there definitely would have to be a new ground level at some lower point. Far as I can tell, the Calamity nuked most of the planet except for some disconnected bits of the world that are still floating in place thanks to magic crystals or whatever, and clearly even that much is pretty unstable. Which seems about right for how bad the Calamity is made out to be, the literal state of the game world itself as presented, and how the Calamity's creators thought a time reset was the only thing that could possibly be done about it. I too would say nothing short of going backwards in time would fix total planetary destruction. So before the merits of new beginnings and all those grandiose ideals can even come into the picture, my misgivings about Evacuation come down to a lack of cold, hard, practical information. At the very least, I'd need some significant clarification about what state the world's actually in, and if... what, the "floating wreckage over a void" nature of the level design is an overly literal interpretation of things? And the world hasn't been reduce to a hollowed out shell where even most of the shell was destroyed as well? Because unless the Bastion is a space ship, my reaction to Evacuation is... Evacuate where? We already took all the things that were maintaining what little rest of the world there was to get this far. Seriously, my one biggest complaint about the game's story by far, is that most of the presentation is kinda vague, but makes it seem like the Calamity was the literal end of the world, but then right at the end Evacuation implies there must be some world left out there to evacuate to, leaving me perpetually unclear as to just precisely what the Calamity did. Heck, even if I was sure of the the extent of the destruction specifically, I'd still be unclear as to exactly why the Calamity apparently completely disintegrated most stuff, left small some small antigravity floating bits behind but with otherwise normal gravity on top of them, petrified some humans while ignoring others, and never petrified monsters and wildlife at all? It's gotta be one of the most vague, random doomsday devices ever.
So yeah, to me, Restoration and Evacuation weren't a battle of greater ideals like new beginnings versus maintaining a flawed status quo, or righting past wrongs, or systems of power. They were just objective, logical choices about how to best save the most people/nature/world possible, which unfortunately I didn't feel capable of properly making because the game didn't give me enough information. I totally get not being sure if the time loop was perfect or not from an in-story perspective, but there's absolutely no reason The Kid, speaking for me the player, couldn't have tried to gather more information about just what precisely the Calamity really did and how thoroughly destroyed the world truly was. If the game really wanted the final choice to be a matter of higher principles and lofty ideals, it should have made it clear that Restoration definitely led to a variable time loop which did allow for stopping the Calamity next time around, at least in that particular short term instance, even if it and general strife would still be a looming threat under the contentious status quo that Restoration returned the world to. And conversely, that in the case of Evacuation, there definitely was some livable non-Calamity'd world out there to escape to at all. That would have made for a much more difficult, and meaningful choice, then being stuck between two equally bad, unclear outcomes.
17:50 Link isn't using "gender expression" the armor is quite literally only used as it's intended purpose in the game. Link doesn't flirt with men in the game, he doesn't flirt with men/ show interest towards them. Now, from what we saw with Link getting pulled under the flower as a reward, we know what that hints at; when the creator of Zelda wants to hint something, a bit spicy; he drives the hint as close to home as he can.
Some players enjoy making Link more feminine and the armor sets are designed to enable them doing so
@@SkyehoppersOk but that's just a personal enjoyment thing; you said "gender expression" as in what the game intended, NOT what the PLAYERS intended; a VERY big difference.
Also why did I not get this notification?
The game intended for the player to be able to do that
@@SkyehoppersDo you have any actual proof like developers mentioning that or are you just going out on a limb?
Just because it let's you wear dresses doesn't mean it was "intended for the player to do that" now if the game expanded upon the concept in other ways, I could see what you're saying as being valid.
@soundrogue4472 rereading your initial comment Im not sure were on the same page on what i mean by gender expression? It doesnt have to do with sexuality, its just the ways one expresses their gender (clothes, makeup, etc). Link's gender expression is flexible in botw/totk. Thats just true, right?
I thought about this game a little bit ago. This covering of it is masterful. Thank you for reminding me I need to revisit it.
I need to watch more of your stuff.
Well explained, captivating and clear.
I loved that by the time the topic of an unreliable narrator came up, I was questioning if you were somehow not fully providing a detail that I needed to complete my understanding.
Very, very well done.
40 some minutes in, HAVE YOU BEEN IN AN AMERICAN SCHOOL IN THE PAST DECADE
Yes, obviously. What do you mean
I think it's odd that as much as the American School System is shit on, people still cling to it like it's the cornerstone of their own education. Expose yourself to the outside of your bubble.
Honestly, this strikes me as creating subtext from whole cloth where none or at least very little exists. It's not an INvalid reading, to be sure, but it's also built predominantly on inductive reasoning. Meaning is inferred, accepted as fact, and only then is supporting evidence presented. Often this evidence is ambiguous and unspecific. Yes, maybe the story is a metaphor about the colonisation of North America specifically. Or it could be that that specific story is so common that it pops up virtually everywhere. Not just that, but you lean a bit too much on "asking questions" which can't really be answered, then treating them as answered for the benefit of subsequent points. To me, this reading of Bastion feels less like analysis of the text or even subtext, and more like fanfiction. Again, that's not a bad thing... but it is unconvincing.
Let me put it this way. The TV show Wakful features an antagonist by the name of Nox, a time wizard. He intends to roll back time and revive a loved one. Because he's going to roll back time anyway, no amount of damage and harm is too much. The culmination of his story arc involves him attacking and nearly destroying the native plant people of the Sadida in pursuit of their resources and magic. I can make the exact same argument about that show as you do about this one. Granted, I'd have to do more mental gymnastics simply because Wakfu is so intentionally stupid, but it wouldn't be too much more of a stretch.
This right here is why I've really soured on Indie games over the years. Indie developers seem to have recognise what amounts to a real-life exploit: tell as little of the story as you can get away with, be weird and unexpected, then let players write a better game in their own heads. Bastion is less guilty of this than its peers (Limbo, Inside, Braid, etc.), largely because it actually has... you know, an actual story. But this level of reading narrative into it is about on the same level.
This is fair criticism and my style of analysis isnt for everyone. But as for why it feels specifically like a metaphor for American colonialism, that's because it has a lot of features that are distinctly American, most notably the voice of the narrator. Does that not track to you?
@@Skyehoppers To be fair, I don't think you said anything wrong. Your reading is valid, absolutely. It's internally consistent, it's based in the plain text and it's well-argued. The substance of your reading is quite well-put-together, and I can't really argue with it. Yes, the southern drawl of the narrator is straight out of an Old Western movie, and the plain reading of the plot is consistent with colonialism. Of that there is no doubt.
My issue was more "death of the author", I suppose. Which is to say, reading intent into the text which isn't plainly visible in it. In my experience, an audience's willingness to do this enables game developers to "cheat" in storytelling. Rather than telling compelling stories, indie developers often choose to tell no story whatsoever, but instead hint at a story which doesn't exist and be weird. The audience will do the actual writing for them. I personally find this to create worse products overall.
So yeah - your critique tracks. You're a good writer :)
This is an excellent video, with excellent editing and excellent analysis. You deserve many times more subscribers!
I regularly listen to the Bastion and Transistor soundtracks while driving, such good songs. I particularly like the smashup of Build that Wall and Coming Home.
Amazing review. Personally, I am much more conservative, and while I do believe that America has problems, I don't think I total reset is the answer. Not yet at least. And even if it were to be reset, I think it's foolish to ignore the great things America does offer (freedoms for the most part). It's not a perfect solution, what we have now, but it's far from the worst outcome.
But that's just me being the narrator. Being able to step back, and acknowledge your own bias, and calm down, and compromise. THAT is how we build a better nation. THAT is how we build a better world.
Ehh, I think "privileges" is a better word to use here. I do not think denying said "Freedoms" to others based on shallow, discriminatory reasons sounds like Freedoms to me. That sounds like "privileges."
I don't think a reset is possible, nor would it ever be a good solution. The planet cannot magically accommodate that for us, the repercussions of such an event would be much more tragic than it already is. Progress is possible, it's just a shame there are those who are brainwashed or selfish and think their privileges are under attack by those fighting for progress.
44:02 Yeah I grew up hearing about how Native Americans were treated from my history teacher. My teacher was passionate and you know; care about his job.
Also; yeah, every nation and tribe (even Native Americans) are built upon bloodshed and murder. 44:06 Trails of Tears taught in school.
There's also no comparison to the sheer scale of genocide that American countries committed and are still committing to this day, to the conflict between Indigenous communities that preceded the European Invaders. That argument is core to the genocide denialism/justification that's popular among your types who say this. There was very much civil and non violent compromises and resolutions to conflict as well. Painting every Indigenous community with one broad stroke is just ignorant.
@@SoulFire9001That isn't even true in the slightest; Gangas Khan is a perfect example of someone who stabbed his allies in the back and slaughtered a lot of people.
South Korea had one of the strongest slave trades in history.
The Spanish with the amount of people they slaughtered/ killed.
Africa still has a slave trade and tribal African tribes may not be large but still perform plenty of brutality.
Hitler geocide people he considered dysgenic on a sheer scale like no other.
So no it's not "an unseen scale"
@@soundrogue4472 What is your argument here? Your examples have nothing to do with what I said.
@@SoulFire9001My point is; there has been plenty of genocides worse than what America has done.
@@soundrogue4472 That has nothing to do with what I just said...?
Also lmao American apologists, fucken sad. Comparing genocides too, oooooof. Stay in your hole kiddo
incredible work!! i'll be keeping an eye on this channel, keep it up :))
Always blown away by how good your videos are
That Link tangent is some extreme cope. It's just funny for a man to dress as a woman, no matter what John Money loving weirdos with pronouns in their bio may say.
Aside from that, interesting. As someone not American, and playing it when it came out, I never realised what the story was implying. Was just a simple hack n slash with cool music.
Is the frostbite armor supposed to be funny? Expand your mind, they give Link feminine clothing options for the same reason you can do the divine beasts in any order
@@Skyehoppers No?
Ever seen the Carry On movies? English comedies? Almost every movie a man dresses as a woman for comedy.
As for expanding your mind, try and understand this - Japan isn't America.
How does killing bosses have any relevancy to an American ideology? Genuinely curious how the two are related.
What I meant by that is that botw and totk have a fixation on player freedom, always prioritizing allowing the players to choose for themselves how to play. Allowing them the dress Link in a variety of ways follows that same principle.
Japan isnt America, of course, but Japan does have a rich history of queer subculture itself. They have different words and conceptualize it differently but the underlying truth is the same, and the fact that you think an idea as basic and straightforward as "gender expression" is distinctly American shows youre susceptible to conservative mistruths about the newness and artificiality of trans people when they are in fact ancient and enduring.
Also yes crossdressing is (too often) played for laughs, but the punchline is usually that the man looks horrible. And Link looks really good! So it is a joke, to a real extent, but that is not the whole of it
It's an amazing analysis, I hope you get more views soon.
My only nitpick is with the suggestion that America should change. I speak as a native Pole who has never been to Freedom Country. Conquering the weak and taking their land is the most natural way to our planet. First plants geniced numerous lifeforms because they released oxygen absent in the primordial soup. American natives weren't saints themselves, taking land of defeated tribes and geneciding (you used this word first ;p) bafulos. As the saying goes: the strong do what they can and the weak endure what they must.
Ah, thats less of a nitpick and more a fundamental difference in how we see the world haha....
And it wasnt Indigenous people who killed nearly all the buffaloes. That was also the white settlers!
@@Skyehoppers They may not have killed the buffalos, but the Natives did kill each other. They conquered each other and committed genocide upon each other and oppressed each other. The only real difference between whitey and the natives was that Whitey won.
I really don't like the 'noble savage' - 'America was built on genocide and thus isn't a legitimate country' angle. It's extremely, supremely dumb. Every country on earth was founded on the genocide of those who lived there before, and that includes the Native Americans. How long must you have lived in a spot to have a legitimate claim? Because, if Caelondia (and, thus America, by association) deserves annihilation, so did the natives, really.
Also, your 'America doesn't teach about the genocide of the natives because they usually don't call it a genocide and declare America to be an illegitimate state ' bit is... dumb. Because, though they usually never call it genocide, they certainly lie about it to make the colonizers seem worse. Smallbox blankets are a myth, for example, and that gets taught in schools all the time. Oh, certainly, what America did wasn't right, but it wasn't so one sided. We gave, and we got.
Also, the evacuation is objectively the wrong option, because the calamity spread rock cancer. Even if it was just this continent for now, I doubt it would stay that way for long, given how it spreads extremely fast when unsuppressed. This is less a 'culture got what was coming to it' angle and more a 'everyone is dead and the world is uninhabitable' angle. Restoration is the only option from that perspective. Even if it failed the first time, or the next time - people remembered what was happening... somewhat. A little bit. Letting it run an arbitrary number of times would eventually have to end with it ending differently, thus preventing rock cancer from ruining the planet.
Also, uhhh... the Ura v Caelondia war thing seems far more two sided than you make it out to be. Both sides wanted the other dead, bad. The Ura build that wall song is a "We are going to invade your city and kill you, and you can't do shit about it" song. The song is pretty confident about the fact that the Ura were pretty sure they could win. Both sides wanted the other dead.
Also, who caused the Calamity is... left unsaid. Oh, it's certainly implied that Zia's father was forced to activate it, and just aimed it at Caelondia - but it is only implied, and there is room to say that her dad just pulled the trigger on his own - or that he was discovered and pulled it then. Who taught Zia that song, after all?
Although the views of the developers are obvious, given the clues in this one, as well as their later games, they left enough wiggle room in this one so that an argument could be made for them being wrong.
@@mylesjablin1130 Ugh another "White Man won everybody else lost." So deluded. Smallpox blankets a myth? Jesus man, how is it that after World War 2 only Germany has learned that Genocide Denial/Justification is bad and should be fought.
@kukuki5000 What.....who is teaching you all that bullshit. Buffalos were a precious resource not only for tribes that relied on them, but for the plains environment they resided in. After the Americans hunted them to near extinction, the plains itself suffered a great loss. That was a big contribution to the Dust Bowl that happened decades later.
@@SoulFire9001 Just checked it out and you're right. There even was a guy called Buffalo Bill. Can't remember who told me about indigenous Americans exterminating buffalos.
FINE ill replay bastion again, sense you asked so nicely
The Kid almost feels like a narrative parallel with his namesake in Blood Meridian with how this video extends my understanding of him. Very much a person who came from an immensely rough background and does have a name but who is unnamed for purposes that are central to how the story is told. Constantly committing violent atrocities against native populations at the behest of others but holding no real allegiance to any cause or purpose; merely surviving the only way they know how, through bloodshed and occasionally linking up with other lost people or people who seek to use him and cooperating with them or obeying them respectively. They’re also capable of compassion or helping people, and have little moments in their stories where they do so, but can’t stray far from what they do and what it’s made of them.
Oh shit thats really cool! I havent read any McCarthy so I couldnt really make much of that comparison, but clearly the influence runs deeper than I expected
@@Skyehoppers If you want there’s an absolutely magnificent audiobook version narrated by Richard Poe, which is a piece of art in and of itself for how well he captures the essence of how you’re generally expected to read the text. It’s all up on UA-cam if I remember correctly.