LogFAQs > #951716969

I played the first few hours of Bastion tonight. The white-haired boy from the cover art is just referred to as The Kid, and even though he's the main character the narration is all done by another character, Rucks. I think The Kid is probably in his mid to late teens. The power up system involves him boozing and there's a part where he knocks himself out by smoking a pipe and then has a bad dream about his backstory, where it's stated that he used to get picked on for his white hair, which implies that it wasn't very common in the now-destroyed world he inhabited. Rucks has the same hair color, which makes me think he might be The Kid's dad, but maybe it's still normal for people's hair to turn white when they get old in this world. The Kid spent a lot of his childhood taking care of his sick mum and the rest of it as a member of the Night's Watch from Game of Thrones.

Besides those two, there are only two other characters in the entire game, named Zulf and Zia. They're from a country that used to be at war with The Kid's country. You meet Zulf a little after Rucks and Zia near the end of the first section of the game, which reminds me of the first Mario Galaxy, because you're collecting "cores" from all the levels to power the titular Bastion and unlock more features from it. I played until the Kid finds the last core, Zulf breaks the monument that powers the Bastion and leaves because he read something in a Ura journal, and you start gathering that monument shards instead of the cores.

I'd say I could take or leave the gameplay for the most part. The core combat is okay and it's cool how it has a lot of different options, but I tend to get frustrated when I try to do the optional "proving grounds" areas, which are mostly way harder than the real levels. I also died twice on the very last of the 20 waves you have to do for the Kid's flashback, which was upsetting. I've mostly been playing with the hammer as my melee weapon and alternated between the bow and the musket for range. I don't like the repeater that much and the dueling pistols look cool but don't seem that effective. The musket is nice for clearing out grounds but it sucks as long range which makes you very reliant on the parry mechanic to take out ranged enemies, so overall I find the bow better. When it comes to the different Q skills you can pick there are a lot I haven't tried out yet but I think the hand grenade is really good.

Still, whatever complaints I might have toward the gameplay, I am enjoying it so far. I think it's doing a good job telling a story through the limitation of having only one speaking character, and it manages to have at least some emotional weight behind things like the memories of the world before it was destroyed. It is overall pretty impressive just how many different little things the narrator has voice lines for. He'll comment on things as small as how many hits you took in a specific fight or how often you've fallen off the edges of the levels. It's a charming way to deliver the story and the voice actor is quite good.

---

I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 18/129
Currently Playing: Bastion