About a month or so ago, I turned into a major Supergiant fangirl with the release of Bastion; the beautifully poetic game about destruction and rebuilding. You’ve heard me hum the songs, swoon over Logan Cunningham’s voice, and even put up with me writing a gushing review of the game. To take my fandom to a new level, I sent a few questions off to Bastion’s writer and designer Greg Kasavin (former Editor-in-Chief of GameSpot and Producer for Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3). Greg was kind enough to give me a number of thoughtful insights as to the gestation and design process of Bastion, as well as a look at what makes their company so awesome.

How long was Bastion in production? What is the biggest difference between Bastion as you first conceived it, and the final product?

GK: Bastion spent a little less than two years in development. It didn’t start with an overly specific idea or a big design document or anything like that, so the main difference between how it was originally conceived and how it ended up is that it became a complete game with its own original setting. The initial thought was just to make an action RPG in which you build the world around you. The main character started as a sort of builder, and evolved into the Kid, keeping only his hammer as evidence of his true origins. We also wanted to make a game that was easy to pick up and play, and had a tight and responsive feel to the controls, along with a rich world and narrative. At the beginning of the project I don’t think we specifically imagined we’d end up making this fully narrated game, but looking back on what we did I still feel like it’s very true to the spirit of what we wanted to achieve.

Was there ever a point in production where you thought you may have bit off more than you could chew?

GK: I think all through production we were pushing ourselves just about as hard as we could. Since we wanted to create an atmospheric world in Bastion, we needed to make sure we could tune and polish the content that we had, rather than overextend ourselves and risk having everything feel rough and unfinished. We were very intent on making a complete-feeling experience in all respects. We wanted the game play ideas to feel fully realized and for the story to feel self-contained and satisfying in that way. There was more than enough work to go around for all of us and I’m sure we all had our moments of panic at how much work there was to do both as a team and as individuals. Since our core team is seven people, it meant a lion’s share of work for everyone. But we kept sane by focusing on the tasks at hand and reducing the work to bite-sized pieces, so it always felt like we were making good progress. It also helped that many of us knew each other and had worked together prior to this project, so we had an idea of what things would be like when the situation turned stressful.

What drove you to take the narrative approach you did? How did you find Logan Cunningham? Did you anticipate the gaming community’s response to Logan‘s voice?

GK: At the beginning of the project we were struggling with what seemed like a mutually-exclusive set of goals. We wanted a rich and interesting narrative to enhance the experience of the game, but we never wanted the story to interrupt the play experience either. Several months into the prototyping stage of the game, Amir Rao, our studio director, first tried using narration during game play, and this turned out to be the solution we were looking for. Part of the reason we could do something relatively ambitious with voiceover in spite of our small team size is because of Logan Cunningham, our voice actor, who’s a longtime friend of Amir and Darren Korb, our audio director. In fact, Logan and Darren were roommates at the time, so they could record new stuff pretty easily. We took full advantage of this by recording thousands of lines, and tweaking aspects of the script or the delivery of certain lines all the way to the end.

I’ve been a big believer in the power of storytelling through the medium of games since I was a little kid, so writing the story for this game was an incredibly exciting opportunity for me. I wanted the story to feel almost like a traditional fairy tale, where it could deal with some universal themes in an entertaining way that could, with any luck, leave a lasting impression on the player regardless of the player’s age or gender.

We all loved Logan’s performance in the game—though we didn’t know exactly how it would go over with players until we revealed the game at PAX Prime in September 2010. The response there was really fantastic—it was as good as we could have imagined. So from there, it felt like we had our work cut out for us. Even still, it was hard to know how players would take the whole experience until it was all finished and the reviews started coming in.

In many movies, such as the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, there are small details that would be missed by the casual viewer, but work subconsciously to set the mood. What elements do you think are overlooked by the player, but work to set the mood of the Bastion?

GK: We knew we wanted to establish a specific tone from the very beginning of the project, so I feel like the experience is filled with subtle little details that aren’t easily noticed—but still help create a certain mood. We wanted this to be the sort of world where all the details were significant if you wanted to look deep enough. For example, players start out with just one item in their inventory, the City Crest. There’s no reason to think much of it, though this same image is found throughout the game and is symbolic of aspects of the story and world.

There’s a lot of subtle stuff going on with the visuals, even though the visuals appear very vibrant. We have unique lighting and atmospheric effects in just about every different area of the game, and Jen Zee, our artist and art director, uses color extensively for setting the mood.

There are also aspects of the narrative that become more meaningful after an initial play-through. Mere seconds into the game, the narrator is revealing some important information about the nature of the story. A first-time player more than likely won’t make much of it but it’s there to add depth or reward successive play sessions.

What was the biggest lesson learned with Command & Conquer or GameSpot that you were able to apply with Supergiant?

GK: It’s hard to single out any one thing, though one recurring theme in my own career—speaking both for my GameSpot days and also my Command & Conquer days—is that having good tools is crucial, yet rarely given due focus, especially on larger teams. I was at GameSpot for a long time and during some years we had excellent tools designed to do just what we wanted them to do, and at other times we had to make do with stuff that was far less than ideal. Likewise at Electronic Arts, the design team I worked with was saddled with using a pretty dated toolset for content creation.

A skillful person can still eventually get a job done using bad tools, he’ll just grow to resent the process over time. On the other hand, a skilled person who has access to good tools will be much more productive not just because the tools themselves are better and faster, but because it feels so much better to use them. When someone has a challenging job, maintaining a good attitude and high morale is incredibly important not just to the individual but for everyone around that individual. So, investing in making sure the individual can perform his job as smoothly as possible is always a good idea in my experience.

What’s the beverage of choice (alcoholic or non) over at Supergiant Games?

GK: Despite the many late nights working on Bastion, there was a fair amount of drinking, at least by some of us. I was the writer and I’m originally from Russia, so from a certain perspective I have no excuse not to drink, right? Right?!

Amir makes a mean Martini so that’s the first thing that comes to mind. It’s the closest thing we have to like a celebratory, we-just-accomplished-something drink. Personally, though, I’m not very particular on that front and will try pretty much whatever as long as it doesn’t make me go blind. One of these days we’ll have to concoct real-life versions of the drinks in Bastion.

How did you plan out the story? Did you use storyboards?

GK: We normally don’t design anything on paper, meaning we go straight into the game with our ideas, though the story is the main exception. Initially I’ll start with a world document, basically a long form description of the game world, everything about it that I can think of—where does the game take place, what sort of people are in it, if any, what’s the history of the setting, what do people eat, how do they speak, what do they care about or worship, what technology do they use, and so on. Even if a lot of these details don’t end up in the game, they can deepen the experience by creating the impression of a fully realized world. At the same time I’ll be exploring the kind of tone I want the story to have, as well as the central theme or themes of the story and the experience as a whole. Once that’s far enough along, and the game play itself is better understood, I start outlining the actual story of the game.

The story outline is kept as nonspecific as possible to allow for the most flexibility later. Then, as we’re building out the content, I get to writing the actual in-game speech, based on all the other information I created.

Your success with Bastion has been well deserved. Can we get a sneak peak at what Bastion has in store for the future?

GK: Thank you, we’re very happy with the response! It’s hard to say as yet where we’re going to go next from here. A lot of folks are asking us to make a sequel, which we take as a compliment—though we never intended for Bastion to be, like, the first of a trilogy or the beginning of a franchise. If we wanted to keep making the same game over and over, we could have stuck to our big studio jobs. We just wanted to make a complete, stand-alone game that demonstrated our values around game play, world building, and narrative. We really wanted to surprise people with Bastion, and looking at the response, I feel as though we’ve accomplished that. We’ll want to do that part again with whatever we do next, so the last thing we’re going to do is just give people more of the same. That being said, I hope to one day look back and see we’ve delivered a whole bunch of games that feel great to play while also delivering a rich narrative experience in a way only possible through this medium.

Why are you guys so awesome?

GK: Awesomeness is subjective so you’ll have to decide on this one for yourself. Whatever it is that we’ve done so far, all I know is I want to keep doing it and make sure we can keep doing it indefinitely. We don’t intend to be a one-hit wonder and hope to keep making games together as a team for a long time to come.

The Beginning

Supergiant has been wonderful in their involvement with their community, and I am personally grateful to Greg to taking time to answer my questions. Bastion currently has five nominations in the upcoming Spike VGA Awards. They were nominated for Best Downloadable Game, Best Independent Game, Best Song in a Game (twice), and Best Original Score.

Bastion is available on Steam for $14.99

