Build That Wall

Who'd have thunk, a game dev writing about a game he recently enjoyed? No way!!!! This isn't a new game necessarily, Bastion came out last summer, and its not like i'm speaking crazy saying its great, but I just had some thoughts about this experience I wanted to share.

I've been playing games a long time, so I find it hard these days to play something that is wholly unique. Heck, Bastion is an isometric homage to Super Nintendo top down RPG's like Secret of Mana and even Diablo. However, using a pretty simplistic design in its gameplay, this game was able to do something incredible in another area we sometimes over look in game development.

Out-fucking-standing Audio.

Let me start off by saying that if you don't have the time to go out and actually play Bastion and you're a music fan, do yourself a damn favor and download the soundtrack. Those exciting and yet hypnotic sounds coming through your speakers and drawing you into another world? Yeah, that's a videogame soundtrack you're listening to.

I feel like this is one of the areas we don't necessarily give as much thought into these days as we should be. Afterall,we live in the age of ipods and podcasts, so its safe to assume that if your soundtrack isn't top-shelf, players are just going to tune it out in favor of things they'd much rather be listening to. However, this game immediately makes you turn your ipod down and turn the game volume up with a very simple yet amazingly realized story-telling technique; the narrator.

Ruck is an amazingly well written character and voiced by Logan Cunningham. From a literary stand-point, he is not the typical narrator. He is a character in the game, and yet he is also omnipresent to whatever your character, The Kid, is doing at all times. While you're playing the game, he is commenting on a variety of things ranging from the events that lead to that point in  the world, the environment you are currently traversing, and even actions you the player are specifically doing with The Kid. Ruck works from a design stand-point because while he may be an actual character in the story, as well as its narrator, he is still impartial to the actions and decisions of the player. He is the main focal point the player has to draw story and setting details from, so its fitting that he never speaks in a way as to discourage a particular course of action the player may be doing at that moment in time. There is a particular moment at the end of the game where his character has the potential to completely break the narrative foundation the game has established with the player, and the developers were wise in having Ruck be silent at that moment.

It's disarming and unusual, and yet it works. Some have said that Ruck's constant talking is annoying, and I argue that if you don't like it you might as well not play the game. He builds the world and the atmosphere with his words. Without them, you might as well be playing in the dark. One of my favorite uses of Ruck is in a gameplay segment called 'Who Knows Where', a dream sequence the player goes to and faces off against waves of enemies. Between each wave of enemy, Ruck will tell the player a portion of the back-story pertaining to one of the characters. The player is being rewarded for lasting in increasingly difficult waves of enemies by filling in pieces of the narrative, all thanks to the excellent execution of a narrator in a game.

What also works well in the 'Who Knows Where' segments is the other side of the audio coin of this game; the music. In truth, the music works well everywhere, but it feels like in these segments the music acts as a framing device for the narrative Ruck is telling you about a particular character. Each song played fits the context of the tale being told, with the songs shifting into other melodies in order to match the change of pace in the story being told. It creates this added feeling of tension as the player becomes engaged in the tale and handles the opposition in a similar pacing of the music and the place in the story they are. Segments in the story that usually have a quicker pace usually spawn larger quantities of enemies that take very few strikes to kill, and it'll be at a moment like this where the music will fade into a number such as "Terminal March". When a game is throwing music at you which matches the feelings of the environment and scenario the player is placed in at that point, you know you're listening to some amazing stuff.

It's easy to recommend games for either its story or its gameplay, and it almost feels wrong recommending Bastion for anything else because it really does excel in those areas, but the audio design work here is too strong to be ignored. Ruck and the music bed that he speaks over create an interactive experience you gotta see and hear in order to believe.

Check out "Build That Wall", tell me this doesn't just take you to another world all on its own.