The voice. Oh goodness, the voice. Games are memorable usually for one or two reasons. In Bastion, it is the voice of its narrator, Rucks.
Players fill the shoes of the Kid, a silent protagonist who wakes up to a universe that has been shattered and left with nothing but floating chunks of random rock.
Taken on its own, Bastion is a by-the-numbers action role playing game or RPG. Suitably armed, players slash and bash their way through stages that range from the remnants of meadows to howling tundras. Stages leap at you against a backdrop of fragmented stars.
But it is the voiceover, dubbed ‘dynamic narration’ that pulls it together. It works by having thousands of lines of voiceovers which react to your choice of action in the game.
The husky male voice calls the action. ‘And the Kid jumped around madly,’ he offers dryly as you pump the jump button.
By putting everything into voiceovers, Bastion weaves player choice and action like never before. It generates unintentionally dramatic moments. Rucks offers hints on what you need to do differently to defeat a foe, without ever saying so directly.
On top of this is fluff that extends the gameplay. Players can choose to pray to various Gods, which act as modifiers for levels.
For 1,200 Microsoft points, Bastion holds up as one of the best Xbox titles players should be picking up.
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