The much-anticipated Bastion caused quite a stir among readers when we first previewed the game, but one of the main concerns voiced in the comments was the fear that the narration would become tedious, or even annoying. We caught up with Greg Kasavin from Supergiant Games to ask about how they avoided the trap of too much narration, and how the voice was designed.

Actually, that may be the wrong word. Kasavin wanted to sure assure us that the narration was provided by a character, not just a voice. Here's how one of our favorite games at E3 became great.

"During development, whenever the narration did not enhance the play experience of Bastion, we would cut it. While we ended up cutting hundreds of lines, we kept thousands. We heavily iterated on this and other aspects of the game to get it to feel right," Supergiant Games' Greg Kasavin told Ars.

It wasn't just a matter of getting the dialogue right—there had to be a kind of flow to the narration. It couldn't simply be a voice that is constantly yammering away into your ear. This may sound obvious, but it takes a tremendous amount of work to create something that seems easy. "We set a bunch of ground rules around our use of narration in order to ensure it achieved the effect we wanted," Kasavin explained.

"For one thing, none of the lines ever repeat unless the player repeats certain content or replays the game, though even then we tend to mix it up to some extent. For another, from a writing standpoint, the narration is never relegated to play-by-play commentary, and instead is always there to deepen the player's interactions in the world, by revealing information the player could not have discerned on his own—even if it's about the narrator's own personality," he continued. "The narrator is a character, not just a voice."

Each lined was tuned to fractions of a second during production. It had to sound natural, and it had to create, and then build on, the atmosphere in the game. Pacing was also a concern, as players needed to feel like they were moving things forward in a way that was comfortable to them, without the narration pushing them along. "To that end, players who progress through the game more quickly won't hear as much of the narration, though they'll still get the main thrust of the story," Kasavin said. "The result should feel like it was custom crafted to each player's particular style."

I've been lucky enough to play the game for a good stretch already, and the narration adds a lot to the game without becoming annoying or overbearing. Plus, the story of the game itself is interesting: it was created by seven industry veterans who left their day jobs in the industry to live in a house in California while creating the games they wanted to play. Last year the game was accepted into PAX 10, a contest for independent games and a slot on the floor at PAX Prime, Penny Arcade's show for gamers. Even before they pitched the game to publishers at PAX, they chose Warner Bros. due to its interest and enthusiasm. Soon after, the game was announced as coming to the Xbox Live arcade.

"[Warner Brothers] has enabled us to have a big presence at events like PAX East and E3, which has allowed us to stay focused on development. Our relationship's been going great," Kasavin told Ars.

This is one of those great stories you find in the industry: passionate people put together a great game, it gets noticed by the right people, and maintains its strong and unique ideas through development. We can't wait to play more.

Bastion is coming to the Xbox Live Arcade this summer, with a PC release coming later in the year.