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S2 Ep116: Bastion
75 Plays5 years ago
FULL SPOILERS: Bastion
Join Dave and Jake as they dig holes and build walls in this week's episode!
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Join Dave and Jake as they dig holes and build walls in this week's episode!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Bastion World
00:00:01
Speaker
The proper story is supposed to start at the beginning. Ain't so simple with this one. Now here's a kid who's whole world got all twisted, leaving him stranded on a rock in the sky. He gets up, sets off for the Bastion, where everyone agreed to go in case of trouble. Ground forms up under his feet as it pointed the way. He don't stop to wonder why. And then he falls to his death. I'm just foolin'.
Nostalgia in Simple Pleasures
00:00:36
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going, Dave? Pretty fucking good. Really? Yeah. That's pretty good. This is because of the banana avocado tip. It's just... Yeah. It's really changed my perspective on the world. And I hope to utilize it to its fullest extent.
00:01:01
Speaker
Yeah. By not clicking the link and forgetting about it. That's fair. You can follow through on the promise to put all of your free inbound brown paper bags and you'll incidentally take advantage of the tip at some point. Yeah, you know those for those lunches I make for those kids who live in my house?
00:01:21
Speaker
There's something satisfying when I worked in retail at Sears. It was something kind of satisfying to bring in the rolled up brown paper bag lunch. You got like a sandwich in there, maybe an apple or something.
Food Choices and Income
00:01:37
Speaker
I mean, it depends how you do it. There is something to having a packed lunch. And then when it's lunchtime, you're like, you know, check this out. And then you have the unveiling or the unboxing of the going to get out my sandwich, my chips, my apple, my drink, my gold. It's nice to like have it all laid out like this. This is mine.
00:01:59
Speaker
Now, the question is, do you eat things in order or ad hoc? And by that, I mean, if you're eating a sandwich, do you eat the entire sandwich before you move on to the next item? Or are you like a little bit of this, a little bit of that? Yeah, I add some hoc meat, not like a lot. It's a delicacy, but always ad hoc.
00:02:21
Speaker
I think I usually used a relatively standard order, but my lunches were pretty basic when I was in retail. It was like cream of wheat and an apple. So there's only so much mix and match you can do today. Wow. If we had never met, I would have known right then that you were white. Cream of wheat is very much a...
00:02:45
Speaker
No, it's when you're doing a job, it's harder to pack things you really enjoy for food because it's just like more of an eat to live. You're like, hey, this is my shift. I just want to get over with. I'll have some food. It's not like, oh, I'm going to have myself a little bit of break and sweet and spicy chili Doritos. The sandwich that I made from home. Oh my God, it has the best ingredients.
00:03:10
Speaker
It did make me, mentioning that, makes me think about like, I would occasionally go, like I worked in the mall, I'd go out in the mall and like order a slice of pizza. But I think one of the most noticeable tales about like the migration to middle class Ness, I don't know if I'm actually middle class now, but I feel like it.
00:03:29
Speaker
is you don't worry so much about just buying food. You're just like, oh, I'm just going to go get food or something. Whereas I remember back then or back when I was in school, it was like, I could get a large subway sub, but that's some money. I don't want to put myself in a corner. You find ways to
00:03:55
Speaker
fill out a meal, or you just or go certain things. Noodles and stuff. They'd be like, Oh, well, they have free water. Nice. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Back before I had
00:04:11
Speaker
I mean, I guess it would have been college. Like I would have had certain things expense on like a meal plan. Yeah. But I didn't have a job at the time. So any like of Dave spending money usually went to a small couple of things. Yeah. But yeah, you try and extend what you got. That's where you come up all these like cool ass college meals.
00:04:33
Speaker
which I won't go into now because we've already spent four minutes. No, it's fair. We can talk. We'll save some of this for the income inequality episode that we've got coming up here. We'll go into our backgrounds, talk about how we progress through life, our perspectives on some of this stuff.
Game Overview: Bastion's Unique Style
00:04:54
Speaker
But until then, we can talk about video games. And one of those is Bastion, also an Overwatch character.
00:05:04
Speaker
Yeah. Um, this game was actually named after the Overwatch character. It's kind of a spinoff. Yeah. I lied. You knew I was lying. Um, this is one of the rumored super giant games. The first one that we never talked about. We've talked about all the other ones since, and we just skipped over it the entire time. Did we cover transistor? We must bro. Yeah.
00:05:31
Speaker
Couldn't remember if we did. Oh yeah, yeah, we did. I remember the music now. I think we did Transistor, Pyre, Hades in that order. Or we did Pyre first, then we went back to Transistor. Yeah. In any case, this is Supergiant's flagship title. And I also just like saying that phrase. Supergiant's flagship? Well, flagship title. Oh, okay. No, that's fair too.
00:05:58
Speaker
I played this like two years, I think, after it came out. So it came out in like, what was it, 2011? I think I played it two years after that, 2013. So it was amazing.
00:06:14
Speaker
Um, and I went back and replayed it for this and man, it's, it's really just a little bit of top level overview here. It is a isometric action sort of, uh, with some RPG elements game. Um, but has all of the super giant trappings like every single one of them to the point where.
00:06:40
Speaker
Like, I don't want to say they're derivative against themselves because it really is their theme, but they always have the exact same, you know, strong points and core elements to all the games. I mean, that's not a bad thing, Jacob. No, it's kind of really relegated themselves to having good music, great art design, the voice acting is out of this world. Well, no, I mean, it's even more than that, though, like weapon challenges,
00:07:10
Speaker
Um, some similar combat, uh, you know, it was clearly based on modified engine, stuff like that. Um, I don't mean to say it is a bad thing because it's not like this is call of duty. It's not like, Oh, let's just repackage it. Right. They're not doing that, but, um, I do see what you mean though. Like I was using the.
00:07:33
Speaker
not what not the bow what's the repeater gun before you get pistols it's something fang yeah but yeah it's it's a repeater but using that or even using just a bone breaker bow i'm like hades it's like you do see a little bit of uh homage back to bash where they're kind of playing around some of those things oh my gosh yeah um
00:07:56
Speaker
So that was cool. I will say though, going back to this, it's definitely the clunkiest of the Supergiant games, but I didn't feel it at the time.
00:08:11
Speaker
Sorry, go ahead. I was going to say at the time, like everything you said felt really crisp and it was my introductory experience into it and it was choice. This game also made me cry. Like this is a solid game.
Emotional Impact of Bastion's Story
00:08:26
Speaker
I almost cried at the end of this when I beat it again. See, that's a fucking sign. If you've played through the game, through its entirety, again, shout out to Last of Us, and you get back to the same point and you start feeling those same feelings again, even though it should be a law of diminishing returns, you should already know. That means it actually has emotional evocation in those spots.
00:08:49
Speaker
I was gonna I was gonna say in regards to the clunkiness I didn't feel it as much there was a couple points But I think it could just be because you played Hades pretty recently It's definitely because I played Hades and just like to describe the difference I guess and like how they feel Hades is like a higher resolution Game is like literally what it feels like you have more room to play around more mobility Well, yeah, everything is smoother advance in all ways and it's designed as a roguelike
00:09:18
Speaker
Whereas Bash is more laid out as you're going through exploring the level. And one of the cool things before they do with the art design is for a lot of the level, you don't see it until you start moving in that area. And it starts to like kind of build it out in front of you. Yeah, I did not realize how prevalent that was. Yeah, it's something that's
00:09:41
Speaker
I guess like Transistor might have it to a lesser extent, a very much lesser extent, but Bastion had it in one part of the game in Transistor. Much less. At the end. But yeah, it's a cool style. So the world, I guess, this is post calamity, whatever that was. The kid wakes up and everything's discombobulated.
00:10:06
Speaker
They're all islands of squares and they build in front of you as you walk. Although I will say from a gameplay perspective that I found a couple times where that was actually a little bit obnoxious. The game has like a little helper system where if you take too long to find like the way forward, it'll be like, here's a blue arrow. But the reason they had to go back and add the here's a blue arrow for the way forward was
00:10:34
Speaker
Sometimes you don't know the way forward if you haven't gotten close enough
Core Mechanics of Bastion
00:10:37
Speaker
to it to start building out the platform. Oh, so you're just kind of like walking along the edges. You're like platforms. Yeah. One of these things is the trigger.
00:10:47
Speaker
I will say, at least for me, playing this time around, I can't speak to many years ago when I first played. It still feels fairly intuitive. I'm sure I did get kind of misdirected once or twice. Yeah, it was rare that I was actually lost.
00:11:06
Speaker
I kind of speed ran it this time. And the rate at which I beat it wouldn't have been possible if it was too confusing. Yeah, that's true. So quick mechanics question. So there is a dodge roll in this game. There is an active ability, which is like a special that uses like a charge. You have health, obviously. You can refill that with some potions. And then you have two weapons.
00:11:36
Speaker
Yeah. Now I found out again, like you do have some melee weapons, you have some ranged weapons, but you can double up. So you can have like this button is bound to weapon slot one. So for a little bit, I was running around with like shotgun and a carbine. I was just popping caps. What did you do for this playthrough?
00:12:01
Speaker
I'd switch weapons a couple times because I think some of the later weapons are just legitimately, oppressively good. Oh, my God. Even before like the super in-game stuff, but.
00:12:13
Speaker
So I barely use the hammer. I almost never use the hammer. It actually has some good upgrades to it, but I dropped it before even getting those upgrades. But Machete is amazing. The game has upgrade paths where you can get a something upgrade item. People from Dark Souls will remember these as something shiny or something smooth or whatever. Similar deal, something heavy, something sharp.
00:12:43
Speaker
and like there's something sharps can be used to upgrade the machete and one tree side of the tree is like crit it's all crit chance crit base whatever and i'm like dave took this probably and the other and the other side was a movement slow and a bleed yeah which which is the one i did
00:13:02
Speaker
Wow. One, I love that you know me because I will always fucking pray to RNGs is if I can boost my crit chance a little bit, because it's going to hit you and it's going to hurt. I mean, this is the game for it, though. There's other sorts of upgrades you can stack that can get your crit chance, like insane.
00:13:21
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't play around too, too much with abusing it. I know early on in my first playthrough, I did also gravitate to machete for that reason, because there's almost no delay in attack time. You can just keep mashing your attack button. Oh my gosh, yeah. If you need a ranged option, you can hold the attack and then it'll switch like throwing it out. And there are some upgrades where you can say like, oh, I will throw multiple machetes. Like, you know how they hold the knife and then like fans out and then throw out a couple?
00:13:50
Speaker
Um, the multi-shot arrow. I don't remember if I went shotgun or some other overly super oppressive explosive AOE rain option. I did this time, like mortar.
00:14:06
Speaker
Yeah, I had carbine as my offhand for a while, but I used it as like my primary attack because it's so good. And I had that in conjunction with like a lifesteal potion, which I love. And then I did go mortar because the
00:14:24
Speaker
the special from Mortar, the one that uses the tonics, is it creates a turret where the shot lands and the turret doesn't time out. It just exists there until it dies. So in like wave defense missions or things like that, you can just drop like five turrets as you continue to pick things up and you're like,
00:14:43
Speaker
beat the game for me, I'm going to be here. So there are different like passive, what Shakes referring to as tonics. You can equip for like, oh, uh, 10% damage reduction type things. And one of them is to boost your number of overall. What are the block potions called?
00:15:03
Speaker
I can't remember. The charge for the weapon abilities. You can increase the number of those. So I think normally it's like three health potions, three black tonics. Yeah, like another two, I think. Yeah, you can do that for either of them. But yeah, I guess Jake went the route of going very spell cast. Yeah, I was just if they can't see me to aggro on me and I can kill them, then we're good.
00:15:33
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, the weapons, the weapons are really fun. I think that they definitely start you on
Exploration and Challenges in Bastion
00:15:39
Speaker
the most boring kit, which I mean, from a game design perspective, you probably should. I mean, it's like tutorial stuff. And they're like, hey, here's how you roll. Here's how you smack things with a hammer. Here's your shield. And here's how you can like perfect guard stuff.
00:15:53
Speaker
I did like that one of the the the technique you can unlock with a hammer is like an uppercut but you have to be standing stationary to do it so it's the like weapon that actually has tech in a way but I'm just like I don't have the self-control to actually use it like that so I'm just gonna use something else you mentioned the shield though shield is the true man's weapon
00:16:16
Speaker
It's really good, the kid's weapon I should say. If things are hitting you in the front, you're good. If things are hitting you from the side, you will be hit. But if you time your block correctly instead of just holding it out, you can deflect projectiles back at people.
00:16:31
Speaker
You can also essentially deflect melee attacks, where they take the damage instead and they get kind of stunned and knocked back. Usually there's a little bit of recoil if you just block a melee attack on their part, but if you straight up counter it with a deflect, they're just out of it for several seconds.
00:16:52
Speaker
Also, one of the reasons you don't want to be knocked back is like how we talked about before about these platforms that kind of generate the map as you go. Um, there's no bounding boxes for any of like, you're always on a floating platform in the sky somewhere. Yeah. So you can get knocked off. Now it's not instant death, but it will take some of your health and like drop you back on lock you to style. Mm-hmm.
00:17:17
Speaker
There's actually a, I don't know if it was a potion, I think it might've been a potion, that reduces your fall damage, the damage you take when you fall off and fall back, and increases the damage you deal if you fall on an enemy. So you could literally let yourself just to kill an enemy.
00:17:37
Speaker
You could do that, but there also are like some really big bads who their attacks will knock you up if you don't block it. And you can press A to land faster so you can kind of skyfall on them. Yeah, it's like it's like in Hollow Knight speedruns where you have to press a button to mitigate your your fall animation. It's the exact same thing. Press a button or he'll he'll have like a get up animation when he lands. You got it. Okay. Yeah. Ground tech that shit.
00:18:09
Speaker
But yeah, it's got some really solid weapons in there. There's like the flamethrower, which I only use as long as I have to. Mortar's amazing, and then like game nonsense. But they're all kind of paced. Usually the ranged weapons have like a refire delay or a cooldown of some sort. So it's a little bit harder to exclusively rely on them.
00:18:36
Speaker
You actually took two ranged weapons. One of the things I loved was anytime you switch your weapons out, like at the arsenal, which is the building where you can do this, you get a unique line of dialogue where Rux will comment on whatever your loadout is. He's just like, oh, he's taking a Bushman spear and a shotgun. It's like, wild's better, watch out or something like that. You're like, yeah.
00:19:05
Speaker
Oh yeah. They do a lot with minimalism. Cause I feel this game doesn't give you a lot in the way of.
00:19:18
Speaker
story. Now let me clarify the fuck out of
Narrative and Character Development
00:19:22
Speaker
that. It does have a really good and decently in depth story. But like putting bullet points underneath what you're saying. But like similar to Dark Souls, it doesn't say, here's the story, you get a lot of things very piecemeal. When you start out, the narrators talking about some stuff,
00:19:46
Speaker
You don't know what's going on. And even when you find out what's going on, you still don't really know what's going on. And it's not really until the end of the game, and even at the end of the game, it's possible that you missed what had happened. Yeah. Which I mean, I definitely got because I played it when I was a young lad.
00:20:06
Speaker
Actually, if I do the math, I was at least 20. Shit. But that's one thing I like. A lot of it is built out through small journal entries, or if you pick up an item while out on a mission, then you bring it back and you talk to an NPC, you get to hear a couple sentences of like,
00:20:26
Speaker
Oh, hey, this is from that thing. And here's its context. You're like, okay, I'm learning a little bit more about the world. So I like that it does that, that it's not over the top in its storytelling. You have to pay attention. But then you learn, you're rewarded for it.
00:20:44
Speaker
In a way, it's kind of like, I'm going to have like a weird comparisons for all this stuff, but in Doom 2016. Oh, what the fuck? You got like story about the Slayer by interacting with like the demon runes, like in hell. You would just recount like a story about it and then completely optional. You don't have to interact with him whatsoever.
00:21:07
Speaker
And the devs are just like, if you just want to smash things in the face, don't bother with them. It won't matter. And similarly, in Bastion, these trinkets and collectibles you find, you can just show them to people and be like,
00:21:22
Speaker
What's your opinion on this Marshall's badge? And like Rux or the narrator, the old guy will be like, oh, you know, he'll talk about how the Marshalls are good for society and all this stuff. But like somebody else might be like, oh, this was more of a symbol of like rules and oppression or something like that.
00:21:45
Speaker
And I loved, like, that method of storytelling, because the protagonist is completely silent. The kid who you play as, like, doesn't say anything, just makes falling noises, I think, and grunts when he lands. As one would. Kind of pulls the the link thing a little bit. Oh.
00:22:09
Speaker
But like showing these trinkets to all these other people and getting their perspectives on the world is what fills out like all of the world building. Oh yeah. 100%. You are just correct.
00:22:28
Speaker
You get up to three different perspectives because you have the narrator, the old man, who's there initially. You have Zulf, who's in Ura, which is different from the narrator guy who is, say, Londian. It's like a slightly different complexion and hair color.
00:22:53
Speaker
Well, there's two different groups of people. Uh, there's also Zia who you find later on who is also an aura. Right. Yeah. And, uh,
00:23:05
Speaker
Like, I guess we should talk about what the overarching, like, objective is, at least initially in the game. Should we describe what Bastion is, at least? Yes, probably. So, like, when you first arrive in Bastion, I think you pick up a core before you go there the first time. I'm not 100% on that, though. You do. Yeah.
00:23:27
Speaker
The old man's there and Bastion is a nice green floating island and the main objective for the first probably not half but like 30-40% of the game is just collecting cores.
00:23:44
Speaker
Then each time you grab one, you put it in this monument at the center and Bastion expands and you can bring in buildings for like upgrades and customization and stuff like that. And you're basically like building a city. Yeah. So essentially the lore around Bastion is it's where people plan to meet up if shit ever hit the fan. Shit clearly hit the fan with the calamity, which we still don't really know what that is at this point. Yeah.
00:24:11
Speaker
But given these cores, Bastion, the Bastion, is able to essentially rewind time or bring back something that was destroyed. So it's slowly like rebuilding parts of this destroyed society. So like Jake said, you are going through and collecting the cores to do that.
00:24:32
Speaker
They don't dump that on you until like really late, that it's actually to fix anything. You just know that you're fixing the Bastion. And as a player, you're like, oh, cool, I can now pray to the gods to make things more challenging. I can go to a Lost and Found as like a side shop. That's another mechanic. I can upgrade my weapons here. In their games, right? That one's pretty consistent. Yeah.
00:24:54
Speaker
I think they have something against praying to the gods. I think the developers may have some issues because they're like, do people want to pray to the gods to make our lives harder? Let's put that in all of our games. But some of the best god names like ever.
00:25:09
Speaker
They're so cool. Anyways. Do you want to regale us with some? I don't remember them. I don't remember any of them. My favorites are definitely from Pyre, though, because they sound like Cthulhu-esque, Outer Worlds-type deities. The only one I can remember from Bastion is Pith, which is fun to say. Pith.
00:25:29
Speaker
You're going to pith me off. Sorry, low hanging fruit. But they actually wait to tell you that Bastion can rewind time and undo the calamity. But it explains one of the characters like mannerisms, which is the old man basically never, he never asks your name. He doesn't actually try to get to know you.
00:25:56
Speaker
or really invest in socialization at all. He just wants you to repair Bastion. And it's because it wouldn't matter. Like, as soon as it's done, we're just going to go back and undo this. So what's the point? Yeah, I like that. I never actually looked at his perspective as much in that regard. I remember if he had
00:26:25
Speaker
full knowledge when I was playing through or ulterior motives. But I guess he did have knowledge. Yeah, he made the Bastion. He was like the lead designer or the person who created the system, basically. Oh, wow. I clearly missed that on my second playthrough. Yeah, that doesn't come through until pretty late. And it's mostly in his interactions with Zia that that's really revealed.
00:26:53
Speaker
Talking about Zulf a little bit, though. Yes. Also, as you guys should know, it is spoilers. The game has been out for a while, but it's still a solid play. Read the descriptions, people.
Unveiling Zulf and Zia's Backstories
00:27:07
Speaker
Also, it's nice to have this as like an untainted experience for reasons that we'll get into a little bit later. But the whole thing with Zolf is when you find him, he's just kind of standing there agape because he lost pretty much everything in the calamity, as did a lot of people. You're just staring at this guy. What do you say to a man who's seen too much? Kid hasn't a clue, but he says this.
00:27:35
Speaker
We have to go, please. He's a proper gentleman, that man. His name is Solf. Also, usually any bodies that you've found have just been kind of calcified. Or like ash. Yeah. They just kind of got wiped out like a nuclear explosion or something.
00:27:56
Speaker
So when you find Zulf, he's a survivor. And then later on when you find Zia, you do find a journal of Zia's father. Yeah.
00:28:08
Speaker
and it's in the era's native tongue. And now Zia grew up in Ceylandia, so she's not really able to read it. She didn't grow up traditionally. Yeah. And so the only person who can really read it is Zulf, but when he reads it, he gets heckin' pissed. Yeah. He's actually...
00:28:31
Speaker
There's a line when the narrator, when you show them the book, the narrator says, like, Zulf, like, learns a lot reading the journal too much. And then it was just like, what was that? What was that last thing? Yeah. Nick gets explained later what that actual piece is. But essentially, do you want to just hop into Deep Plot stuff or where you want to leave that? Yeah, I mean, I'm fine with whatever.
00:29:00
Speaker
The plot really develops.
00:29:04
Speaker
A lot of it's concentrated toward the end, I would say. Like you're picking up these people, you're bringing them to the Bastion. Each person is kind of like a beacon of hope in a way, because they're another person you can talk to, you can show them all the collectibles that you showed everybody else prior to kind of like catch up on their perspective. But the game like leaves things unanswered for a while. They're just like, no, just find the next core. What are you doing?
00:29:34
Speaker
Yeah, you're kind of left with this feeling of there's something I'm not seeing yet. Yes. I keep saying like, hey, there's some other stuff going on. You're like, what is that stuff? Yeah. And the kid really doesn't take like the perspective of an investigator. This isn't like call of Cthulhu or something. No, it's literally just a manifestation of the player. That's it. Yeah.
00:30:02
Speaker
but yeah Zulf starts out like really friendly and like you said when he sees the journal when you pick up the singer Zia who you also meet in this nice like tranquil area and you hear her singing as you approach
00:30:45
Speaker
I dig my hole, you build a wall. And I'm just like, man, this game is so good. It's so good. Yeah. Since Jake is editing this week and since he already has the idea, but I will also put that seed in his brain.
00:31:08
Speaker
there is something that they do throughout the game where they have different themes for characters, namely Zolf and Zia. And they're two great standalone songs, and I like them. But there's a point at the end of the game where they literally play them at the exact same time, and it fits perfectly, and I cried for other reasons. But
00:31:36
Speaker
The game's so good in that regard that I forgot my train of thought. Supergiant makes ridiculously good. Like, Darren Korb makes ridiculously good music, and in particular for Supergiant games. It's hard to over-hype it. It's tough to pick. There's, like, emotionally impactful soundtracks that still hit me. It's like Supergiant's games, Undertale, and
00:32:03
Speaker
Not a whole lot else that I can put like in the top spots, the very top spots. But this is one of those top spots. Yeah, it's without putting you on them. Without trying to force you to come up with number three. I was like, green greens? I don't know. Gourmet race. Yeah. Crazy chocobo.
00:32:27
Speaker
No, but it's just such a beautiful scene when you find it the first time. And you talked a little bit about a backstory. The game eventually does give you more detailed information about the characters, but it's always in this, like, it's the opposite of the Batman earpiece, where it's like, hey, we're going to slow the player down and make sure that they get this narration, this dialogue.
00:32:57
Speaker
instead they're like battle arena and i'm gonna be talking over all of it go yeah there are like a couple of trinkets you can get where they become interactable in the bastion the first one i think is like a dream pipe and i think that gives you the backstory of the kid and you find out like
00:33:19
Speaker
He had like a single parent. His parent died. He was a soldier, fought on the wall for a bit. He went back twice. He was the only person to go back to the wall. Yeah. I don't think he had anything else. Yeah. He came back and his mom was dead and the money he was sending her was gone. Yeah. He's like, I'm just going back.
00:33:42
Speaker
Then there are other ones for Zulf and Zia as well. But like Jake said, it'll show like, hey, here's so many memory fragments you have left, right? What? And you're on this isometric square, basically, maybe some other minor hurdles or barricades. And they just start spawning in waves of enemies. And they'll kind of talk a little bit about like, Zulf grew up
00:34:09
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I'm not doing the narrator's voice justice, but it has you always hanging on the edge of your seat and you want to know. Also, you don't get your ass kicked, but it does a good job of driving you forward. And they're tough encounters, too. Like they get pretty hard at the end. At the end of, I think, Zia's in particular, they put you up against like two boss monsters. That's where Jake has the turrets.
00:34:38
Speaker
Yeah, it was such a pain not having the spear because there are these guys that like burrow under the ground and then like you have to walk over them, they'll burst up trying to kill you. Oh, I did a lot of roll turn and then there's an upgrade for the shotgun where it does like a double blast. And I would repeat that.
00:35:01
Speaker
Yeah, these are those encounters where having like effective weapons are actually against this particular enemy is really good. But the narration is like amazing. Rux is the name of the narrator. I think the only place that you see his name is like in a loading screen. Yeah, I think it legitimately, legitimately is not in the game anywhere else. And he's the only person talking throughout the whole game outside of Zia's singing.
00:35:30
Speaker
Yeah, and the very, very, very, very end, like at the final choice. And I forgot, I forgot about this part. I've really forgotten about this, please. But at the very end, when you're showing Zia like the last collectibles,
00:35:47
Speaker
to get basically her opinion about what you do at the end of the game. She doesn't, it's not the narrator telling you like her thoughts really anymore or like her opinions and stuff. She just speaks to you. And it's like, oh, I get chills. That has to be so impactful because
00:36:06
Speaker
Literally, if you don't have if you have something removed the entire time, as soon as you introduce it, it's fucking gigantic. Like Undertale did a great job of this. Throughout the first part of the game, you're doing like, hey, here's how combat works. You're in this little box, you move left and right, you're kind of just floating there. And then I think it's
00:36:32
Speaker
not sons. Let's go. Papyrus. Papyrus is fight. It starts adding in these new mechanics where one, gravity is now a factor. And also you can kind of float off the screen at a point and it breaks your reality. Cause it says like, Hey, here's what the pace is going to be. Here's the level bar. And this is all you're going to get rise. So when they do that, it can become very impactful, especially with actual dialogue.
00:37:02
Speaker
Oh my gosh, yeah. A hundred percent, yeah. Because like, there's also, there's reasons why it's impactful in this moment. And one of them is like, because from a certain perspective. So we're at the very end of the game. Let's come back to that in just a second. We'll explain the context for it.
00:37:24
Speaker
You know what this was as soon as you clicked the link. Sit down. This is the lore episode with Dave and Jake. But going back to Zia, in her gauntlet thing, you find out that she, like you mentioned, lived in Ceylandia. She doesn't know the language of the Ura. She can't read it at least.
00:37:52
Speaker
But she meets this. And she's she's basically persecuted because they were at war. So Londia and the era were at war. Yeah. Where the era were. Have you heard this one before? Treat as second class citizens. Yes, exactly. It's like the era attacked the Ceylondians. You're like, oh, that's bad. It's like because they built a railway through the middle of like their their natural area or whatever. You're like, oh, that's also bad.
00:38:18
Speaker
But anyways, people think she's a spy and basically she's just here. She can't leave the city because people are afraid that she'll steal secrets or something, right? But her dad is working for the Ceylonian government and he's also her, obviously.
00:38:37
Speaker
Anyways, other kids aren't nice to her, but one kid is. There's this nice Alondian boy who is just super interested in her culture, all this stuff, and she falls for him. Eventually, they go to meet her dad, and the boy talks to her dad in their native tongue, in Urine. I don't know what it is, the Urine tongue.
00:39:02
Speaker
And the dad gets indignant, really angry, throws him both out. What the girl doesn't know is the boy insulted her father by using the ura language. Because he's not of ura descent. Exactly. And this is all just like his long ploy, I guess. He convinces her to leave.
00:39:23
Speaker
Uh, tries to run away with her like together, but he actually turns her and puts a family in a corner and her dad's taken away basically in exchange for her freedom. The last thing your dad says is like, go to the basement, lock yourself in. Uh, which she does with his journal and then the calamity happens. All right. Fun part twist, right? So we know how we said we don't know what the calamity is or how it happened.
00:39:53
Speaker
So the calamity was actually something designed by the Ceylonian government to wipe out the aura. Essentially, it's the equivalent of an atom bomb. So obviously, Zia's dad knew this.
00:40:11
Speaker
I don't remember if he was actually, I don't think he was working on it, but I think he was aware of it. He was basically forced to work on it. Okay. That was his exchange for having like status and society. Yeah. But he ends up
00:40:28
Speaker
He knows what they're planning to do, but he's fed up with them as a whole. And he says, fuck you, I will use it against you. So when he tells his daughter Zia to lock herself in the basement, he knows she'll be safe there. And then he literally sets off the nuke that they were planning to use against the Uras territory. Yeah, he had like modified it. So it was indiscriminate, basically.
00:40:58
Speaker
Cause before it was like specific ethnic cleansing. Yeah. And now it's just, everybody's going to have a bad day and everyone has a bad
The Calamity's True Nature
00:41:08
Speaker
day. So now we know what the calamity is, right? And now we understand the purpose of the passion is like a way to reset all the damage that had been done and set things back. Now, why is Zulf angry? You may ask. Mm-hmm.
00:41:25
Speaker
One, they were trying to wipe out his fucking people and they're already at odds to a degree. Yeah. A decent degree.
00:41:39
Speaker
But then he reads Zia's dad's journal and understands what they were actually trying to do, and then also understands the purpose of the Bastion is to be able to fix any damage that was done to Ceylonian society.
00:41:56
Speaker
So his concern now is that they're going to bring back, say, Londia as a whole and bring back all these bigoted, hateful people who are, again, going to try to destroy what is left of the Ura survivors. Yeah. And there's I don't know if the game's like specific about whether it always also if it like rewinds time. And so thus would bring back the Ura. But Rux mentions that like in exchange with the
00:42:24
Speaker
he's not, given that they'd literally be going back in time, he's not sure things would end differently. He's like, you might be asking what would prevent the calamity from happening again, and I have no answer. So, like, Zulf doesn't need faith. Like, he doesn't, shouldn't have faith in that. And his whole backstory, TLDR, not going into the detail I went with Zia,
00:42:50
Speaker
He was raised by a foreign missionary who taught him good things, all this stuff.
00:42:55
Speaker
He basically advocated for Solandia, came with his own people, was in Solandia, was accepted, everybody loved him, got proposed to a Solandian woman, had a list Solandian wedding or whatever, and then on the night of their wedding or whatever, she died to the calamity and he survived because he was super drunk and he passed out. So he's had a rough life.
00:43:22
Speaker
Not saying alcohol will save your life, but try it out. Right. Just in case of the calamity. Yeah. And the specifics of the calamity or not, I don't think they go into detail. It basically broke the world and turned people to ash. Other than that, we don't really know what happened. Yeah.
00:43:44
Speaker
But yeah, so his life is turned on its head. A lot of people's lives are turned on their heads. So it's interesting to have those perspectives which all kind of guide you to your decision to what are you going to do? Are you going to
00:44:01
Speaker
keep finishing the Bastion and set things back to the way they were in the hopes that they will be fixed. Or you're going to try and build your own brighter tomorrow because you can't go back to the way things were. Those ways were fucked, even though
00:44:17
Speaker
So I watched a YouTube video of a guy doing his take on this, and I really liked his thoughts of you're going through and collecting these shards to rebuild the Bastion. Now, if you're going that way, you can technically justify all of your destruction of the natural wildlife and the people you find, which are usually, I should think, only Ura survivors. It's worth mentioning.
00:44:45
Speaker
that these areas usually fall apart when you steal a core or a sword. It's wildlife teams around this because it's a source of stability that you steal.
00:44:57
Speaker
Yeah. It's like some natural resource that is providing this, but you kind of go through, you eat it, and then you literally get the fuck out of there because things do start to break down. So if you are going through trying to rebuild everything, you could say, Oh, Hey, um, it'll be fine. I can undo everything. Right. Ultimate justification.
00:45:24
Speaker
Yeah, which was with future diaries had a similar plot trope where the person just keeps going ahead. Like it doesn't matter. Once I win, I can go back and fix everything. Yeah. If you can be God, you can, if I can make anything I want happen.
00:45:42
Speaker
And I can undo all this murdering chaos. And that's the justification Rux gives you in the game whenever you've done something that could be considered nebulous morally. He's like, as soon as we're done, this will all be worth it. We'll fix it. It'll be like it never happened.
00:46:03
Speaker
Yeah, but also a lot of times as you're playing through the game, if you don't know the ramifications, it just seems like a one off statement like, hey, kid, you're on the mission. Welcome back type thing. It just seems very off the cuff, nonchalant. It doesn't seem like you are literally destroying something. Yes. In the hopes of building something else.
00:46:26
Speaker
Nobody's telling you like, no, you have to do this. You need to kill this wildlife and seal their shard. We absolutely need it. He's just like, I'll just get the shard. Do what you have to do. They don't put emphasis on it. It's something you kind of discover a little bit. Yeah.
00:46:43
Speaker
But the game toward the end, like Zulf you mentioned, he gets really angry. He tells his fellow Ura who come and attack the Bastion. They put this in quotes, steal away Zia, but actually she goes with them. You find out once you find her to figure out what they're like. And then the kid goes for the last shard. He has to get the shard, because again, like you were saying,
00:47:11
Speaker
This is his imperative. This is how he fixes everything. This is how Rux fixes everything. So nothing you do on that path is unjustifiable and you kill a lot of Ura. Just a whole, I'm gesturing with my arm as I do this, a whole lot of Ura. Yeah, it's it's done in a way to emphasize how many. Like it's a comedic number. The game, the game has you, it'll put you like on one little island with terrain.
00:47:40
Speaker
And then you'll like fight some guys move off the island and then it'll be like day three and One of them's like you're resting in a campfire and a guy tries to like kill you in your sleep But he wakes up, but you wake up at the last moment you fight him off It's literally a montage a travel montage of the kid
00:48:02
Speaker
Man, this game is heavier than I remember it going back. But it's all important because, again, Supergiant made this game. So things mean things. Yeah. But it makes the ending matter when you get there.
00:48:19
Speaker
You always notice that their endings are kind of bittersweet. Yes. They know how to inspire feels. Hades, TVD, official ending. I know it's like a different game style. Ending for Hades spoilers. Just never listen to the podcast again.
00:48:37
Speaker
But obviously with Pyre, you can't save everybody. Certain people will be stuck in the downside. Transistor, obviously. We're going to spoil all of them. Skip ahead 15 seconds. I'll just cut this whole thing out.
00:48:58
Speaker
They're good at bittersweet. I'll leave it all in because we didn't actually spoil anything. Just went around it.
00:49:11
Speaker
So basically after a point, you do find Zulf. Yes. I do not remember the exact state you find him in. He's getting the crap beat out of him by the aura. What changed there? Why are they doing that?
00:49:31
Speaker
So this is like basically over or around a week of you venturing into their territory chasing him down and they've realized at this point that the reason that you're here is because he has the last shard and you they like wrecked
Moral Dilemmas and Player Choices
00:49:49
Speaker
the bastion on his behest and he's brought
00:49:52
Speaker
I'm going to say the slayer, the doom bringer down upon them in the form of the kid. And they're not okay with it. They're like, you have cost us, you know, however many lives at this point, a lot. And for what? Yeah. You've brought this upon us literally. Yeah. And for no gain for them. They didn't get anything out of it.
00:50:17
Speaker
It was just devastation. But yeah, you can fight off the ones that are beating him up and then you're presented with the choice. The choice from this point, you have like this god weapon at this point. It's a it's a battering ram. Yes, but it like auto deflects shots and then it does insane amounts of melee damage. And it's other attack is like this aoe like
00:50:46
Speaker
Earthshakers stop. It's yeah, it's insane. The black tonic move rains fire from the sky. It's a meteor swarm. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't. I to this day have no idea why this is in the game. Magic. But you have the option to keep going through, kill all the aura and then take the shard or you can stop. You can pick up Zulf and essentially carry him out. Yeah.
00:51:16
Speaker
I think at this point, you actually get the shard right before the choice for Zulf, because the aura had taken it. I'm gonna goof on this last bit a decent amount, I apologize. Oh no, that's fine. The only reason it matters is because you don't have an either-or choice. It just takes Zulf or leave him. Yeah.
00:51:36
Speaker
But if you do take Zulf, you cannot attack. Yes. I would like to point that part out. You are armed with a man. Yeah. You can't block with the man either. I want to point that out. You're literally just slow carrying him. So as you're going through these hordes of Ura with a lot of guns or bows, projectiles usually, they keep attacking you as you're walking.
00:52:03
Speaker
And it becomes scripted, like you're not actually taking health damage. It's more... You do for a while though. They put the UI, they take the UI away, but you still get prompts. The screen turns red and it's like, use a potion. I'm like, okay, I'll use the potion. And you could use a potion. Oh, wow. Yeah. Like I said, I'm going to keep goofing on the last impactful moments of the game. Well, you're also correct. I don't think they would... I don't think they kill you.
00:52:28
Speaker
No, I don't think you can actually die. Um, but at a point they actually stop. Like they realize you're not on like a wanton rampage.
00:52:42
Speaker
They're out there to really kill them anymore. You just, you see Zulf, somebody who was your friend. And you're just looking to take him out of that place. You want to take him back. Make sure he's okay. Who's beat to shit. You're getting beat to shit. And it just, it felt me with so much feels.
00:53:22
Speaker
I sit myself Fly, the wind it will take me Back to my home, sweet home
00:53:41
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, no, it's it is quite a moment.
00:53:48
Speaker
They do a lot of storytelling by just showing you things. And this scene is emblematic of that, I think. There's just like, what's the kid's motivation? Well, if he chooses to take Zulf, it's to literally lay down his weapon, put his life in the hands of these Ereah, and rely on their ability to forgive him, basically, for all the people he's killed, but also recognize he's just taken Zulf out.
00:54:17
Speaker
Or you keep the weapon and you're just like a murderer or something. I don't know. Nobody does that. But like one of the enemies towards the end actually seeing you approaching like opens up and starts firing at you again. And then his ally, this other Ura, cuts him down because he's just like, no, what are you doing? Let them go. Right.
00:54:42
Speaker
You dishonor on you.
Concluding Themes in Bastion
00:54:46
Speaker
It's really well done. And then at the end, you are presented with that final choice of, hey, do I rebuild the Bastion with all those ramifications that we mentioned? Or do I not with all those ramifications that we mentioned?
00:55:02
Speaker
you basically got like a button at the end that's just like primary function and then auxiliary function or the primaries go back in time and auxiliary is just like go airborne essentially become howls flying bastion or whatever howls moving bastion
00:55:21
Speaker
Yeah. And this is the part where Zia actually talks to you. And the reason we got back there, we made it full circle back to the end. The reason the fact that she has a voice at this moment has impact is because Rux all the way up to this point, including kind of when you talk to him is like, you know, let's go ahead. I mean, it's your choice, but
00:55:43
Speaker
I mean, you've done a lot of things, we should go back in time, right? Like if you don't go back in time at this point, then what you did is no longer justified, right? Like you will actually be taking all of that consequence upon yourself. And Z is like,
00:56:06
Speaker
I don't want to go back. I want to go forward. She's like, I want to travel the world. I want to, you know, actually learn who you people are. Um, and going back to not knowing and in a world that'll probably end up the same way.
00:56:28
Speaker
but maybe isn't enough for her if she wants to go forward. So they give her a voice because it's not just the narrator telling you a different perspective of what he feels.
00:56:39
Speaker
Or what other people were thinking. Exactly. Or a little bit of that. But usually the voice they use for the narrator, if it's someone else looking at it, is they'll use a voice of... He kind of has an omnipresent tone, but he's telling their story from a third-person perspective. Yeah.
00:57:00
Speaker
it's pretty well done but and then you actually make a choice you either do rewind at which point you go back to the beginning of the game um or you don't and you get this nice credit well you get credits in either case but credits and like a um
00:57:21
Speaker
bunch of splash screens of them exploring and flying and like Zulf learning how to cook and all this stuff. And it's just, it's all just this most heartwarming, fluffy marshmallowy goodness. Which did you choose, Jake? I mean, I always choose to go forward. I feel like it's, the only time I haven't chosen to go forward in Bastion was like once to see what would happen.
00:57:47
Speaker
But it's by far the most impactful ending. It's like, yeah, it makes the kid basically a murderer and someone who's done absolutely terrible things in this new world and is not really all that lighthearted, but it's also taking responsibility for it. And I will always appreciate more so when
00:58:16
Speaker
consequences happen when decisions, even if they're like bad ones, mean something and stick. Exactly. I don't like little story points that get written off like we're going to retcon that shit or it didn't matter that much.
00:58:32
Speaker
That's why like stories like with Code Geass where, oh, here's his master plan. Oh, that fucked up. Oh, we ended up killing a whole lot of people. I got to own it and ride this wave. And he just keeps descending further and further because he's afraid to go back.
00:58:52
Speaker
He knows it would all be for nothing if he doesn't actually achieve his goal. And it's very dirty and messy. And it's not morally right. It's very morally ambiguous. But I like that. I like it exploring that and not just shying away from it. Right. I think, I mean, the hero's journey is really boring if it's just succeeding at every turn.
00:59:19
Speaker
and Bastion and other Supergiant games, as you mentioned, really inject some heartbreak in there, or sacrifices made along the way, or
00:59:35
Speaker
even if you're not losing people you care about, you have the choice to basically save all of the main people in Bastion if you choose to save Zulf at the end. But the kid has also done a lot of terrible things, and maybe he's changed for that, right? That's the price you pay at the end.
00:59:55
Speaker
Um, is you got to give up like a little bit of yourself or at least your moral high ground. Cause you did do a little bit of ethnic cleansing toward the end. Not a lot, but there was a little bit there. I'd have to raise some eyebrows. Right. Yes. Um, so anyways, this is a game about why ethnic cleansing is bad. And, uh, it's a lesson we can all afford to learn.
01:00:20
Speaker
from playing video games. Bastion is so good. I saw some of your early notes here and there's some things about
01:00:36
Speaker
I saw a little bit of criticism possibly in the movement and things like that. I had to resist the urge to just be the shadow of its defense. To this day, I get why Bastion is a lot of people's favorite.
01:00:53
Speaker
I mean, it was, I'm trying to remember the actual time that it came out, but there wasn't an indie game like this, as I recall. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And this was the water. Yeah. And it was crazy big, crazy impressive for what it was at that time. Still is an amazing game. Just mechanically going back. It's not as smooth as some other things that I'm used to for today's day and age. Again, it's a nine year disparity. I don't want to disparage it.
01:01:23
Speaker
It is still insanely good. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. As we've pretty much spoiled everything. I mean, I guess I already said I went back and I cried anyway, so play the game anyways, I guess, even if you listen to this one having not played it. Our descriptions cannot do it the same justice as you playing through and having your own experience with it. It's true.
01:01:45
Speaker
And we're not good at singing the songs. So you have to rely on the snippets I put. That would have been a good edit. I already had a note for one of them. But oh, you mean us singing this song? Oh my gosh. No, that's.
01:01:57
Speaker
Well, we want people to make it through the episode, Dave. That's the one thing we got to get through. It's a fun idea. Keep that in mind. Pocket that one. Oh, man. Pocket strap. Horse jig to sing. I'm just imagining. So we don't go into politics that much. I realize we're a little we're going a little long, but
01:02:22
Speaker
I need for a debate prior to one of these debates that comes up. Joe Biden saying I'll dig a hole and then Trump at the same time saying I'll build the wall. And there you go. Oh, dude. Done. Got him. I like that idea. We'll pitch it to them. I don't want to play either part, but I'll do it for the me.
01:02:50
Speaker
Anyways, Bastion is an actual masterpiece and one of the best games ever made, so check it out. And then play all of the rest of Supergiant's catalog. Yeah. Honestly, just go through an order. Or just, if you see one that might have a... Because they're all a little bit different genres. I guess Bastion and Transistor are probably the closest mechanically. But find one that catches your interest. Check this shit out.
01:03:19
Speaker
Yeah, Bastions like action more, Transistors more like tactics. Pyre is a sports game. And it's good. Anyways, well, thank you guys for listening. This is one I was looking forward to. It's always fun to talk about games that we actually enjoy.
01:03:47
Speaker
Although sometimes we speak on the other ones just for some balance. Right. Um, as always, you could send in your feedback, uh, to our email at soapstone podcast at gmail.com, or one could join the discussion on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. Um, man, bashing such a good game. Jake, we have to end the episode though. Until next time, we'll see you in the next one.
01:04:17
Speaker
Have a good night.
01:04:56
Speaker
It's not fair