How to Ask a Question in a Video Game -

Bastion is a game that throws you into a world after a great disaster called the Calamity. It then asks you to play through a lot of levels to get crystals to power up a machine that will turn back time to before the Calamity, nullifying it in the process. The game does what all action games normally do by setting the hero up with a noble goal and lets you kill some enemies and destroy some stuff on the way. However, Bastion isn’t that simple.

By developing it’s world, it questions whether turning back time is a worthwhile thing to do. You find out that the people who’s civilization you’re trying to restore are genocidal. That they wanted to wipe out an entire race of people, and was about to do so before the Calamity hit. That’s the world you’re fighting to revive.

Bastion offers commentary on the society as a whole, asking us if righting the wrongs of the world is something worthwhile, or if the wrongs of the world have value that we should live with. This question holds more potency when you realize that as a player, you are destroying and killing everything in your path with the rationalization that all the destruction will be reset as long as you accomplish your goal. You as a player commit wrongs in hopes that you’ll create a better world.

The final decision in the game is whether or not you want to power up the machine to go back in time before the calamity. Because the player has caused so much destruction, the question cannot be answered on just the level of what is morally correct.

To answer the question is to accept the actions that you’ve done by playing the game, and the question becomes personal. The player is not just an observer, but an active part of the world, and they serve a critical role in the point the game wants to make.

This is what games should strive to do. No other form of media can accomplish what Bastion does the degree that it does. And that’s dope.

