In Case of Trouble 2

A few months ago, I final­ly had the chance to set­tle in and give Bastion the good ol’ first playthrough. Which, as it turns out, very hand­i­ly gave way to the sec­ond and third as well. Planning a fourth as we speak.

I had heard tell of the Greatness That Was from the daily Ontological Geek office chat­ter. You know, in between shar­ing our favorite spots to pick up the most expen­sive evening enter­tain­ment while slurp­ing Patron sala­cious­ly through our six-figure grills out of our exclu­sive auto­graphed col­lectible Bob Barker teacups.

Now, when I’m given an admo­ni­tion to Check Something Out by some­one whom I admire, and whose opin­ion I respect, I take it very seri­ous­ly. Read: I very seri­ous­ly avoid even being near the rec­om­mend­ed object. For, like, about a year. Then I’ll ago­nize over how every­one else but me is in the Know, which will man­i­fest in a vari­ety of snarky and sub­ver­sive com­ments, cruel jokes, and touch­ing myself very gen­tly at night while bawl­ing in hideous, despair­ing aban­don.

Anyway, one day in fair­ly recent mem­o­ry, I broke up with my girl­friend of three years. We had been plan­ning on get­ting mar­ried.  I was very close to her par­ents and was, in all, a very major part of her life. Some things had hap­pened ear­li­er that year to both of us, pret­ty bad psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tur­bances, which wound up infect­ing our rela­tion­ship. Drove a wedge. It became evi­dent that our trou­bles wouldn’t cease until we had Moved On quite entire­ly. So, very mature­ly of us, we did. Before we got mar­ried. And even though both of us had seen those omnipresent but shame­ful­ly retrospect-specific Signs, for – well, as long as we’d been togeth­er almost, it was still a shock to the core when the end final­ly came along. All in a day. Just like that.

A cou­ple of weeks after the fact, my ubiq­ui­tous mix of detached bore­dom and intense­ly focused curios­i­ty com­pelled me to sit down, down­load and play Bastion. At first, I was mild­ly resis­tant to its clunky con­trols and rather – at first glance – trite and con­trived inter­face. But the con­ceit of per­sis­tent, dynam­ic nar­ra­tion, and very, very smooth game­play kept me trudg­ing for­ward. In a short time, I began devel­op­ing a very deep, res­o­nant emo­tion­al con­nec­tion with the game. It seemed to strike me on a basal level. Animal, very near­ly. I couldn’t pin­point what it was that kept me play­ing.

The art­work was excel­lent, the story, sub­lime (very lit­er­al­ly, in that it kept me yearn­ing for more, even as it sat­is­fied fun­da­men­tal, sub­con­scious desires). I became deter­mined to parse my reac­tion to it, fig­ure out what it was that made Bastion to spe­cial to me.

(Full dis­clo­sure: I had not felt such a pow­er­ful con­nec­tion to a videogame since Mass Effect 3, which deserves its own arti­cle, and before that, Diablo 2, for psy­cho­log­i­cal rea­sons about which I dare not spec­u­late.)

Imagine my sur­prise and aston­ish­ment, when, while comb­ing through the Ontological Geek archives in my quest to under­stand my reac­tion to Bastion’s nar­ra­tive, I came across our very Editor’s (Bill Coberly’s) pre­ferred inter­pre­ta­tion there­of:“…Bastion can be under­stood at least part­ly as being about how to pick one­self up and move along after a hor­ri­ble per­son­al Calamity.”

…

Wow.

Now.

We’re talk­ing about video games as art, and there­fore, fre­quent­ly as lit­er­a­ture, so we find our­selves faced with the irk­some task of des­ig­nat­ing the crit­i­cal form we deploy in their respect.

So far as my reac­tion to Bastion (and many other things) is con­cerned, I’m rather a fan of reader-response crit­i­cism. This crit­i­cal the­o­ry holds that the evi­dent mean­ing or truth present in a work of lit­er­a­ture is whol­ly depen­dent on the receiv­er. The player’s (or audience’s, or reader’s) indi­vid­ual reac­tion makes for the cor­ner­stone of any sub­stan­tive thought con­cern­ing the poignan­cy, rel­e­vance, or truth of an artis­tic instance.

I like this because I’m self­ish. Irrevocably so. Although I have grown up, and real­ized that much of the impor­tance I ascribe to myself (and, for that mat­ter, my fel­low humans, in the Grand Scheme of things) is a chas­ing after of the wind, to a cos­mic degree. I think that reminders of human insignif­i­cance have eth­i­cal impor­tance gen­er­al­ly, and so I try to remem­ber my own on a con­sis­tent basis. But I still can’t help feel­ing, espe­cial­ly with videogames, that there is Something there for Me.

In short, I felt such a pro­found con­nec­tion to Bastion because I felt I could iden­ti­fy, on a per­son­al level, with the Kid’s tri­als and tra­vails in the ruins of Caelondia. I felt myself wan­der­ing among the wreck­age, won­der­ing what to do. I saw a path before me, and couldn’t explain its ori­gins or impli­ca­tions. But I fol­lowed it nonethe­less. What I fore­saw was none too promis­ing, at the begin­ning. But as my deter­mi­na­tion per­sist­ed, so did my hope that what lay around the cor­ner was some­thing…grand.

So, I woke up one day. Saw that my whole world had got­ten “all twist­ed.” Floating pieces, every­where. Of me. Of my friends, my for­mer social life (hard won, you see, as at heart I’m a loner). My most trea­sured memen­tos. Sacred relics.

I got up. Set off for the Bastion, the safest place I know. Along the way, I found myself hav­ing to face the rem­nants of my for­mer life. Now, all undone. I heard voic­es, advice of a Stranger, knew that the straight-and-narrow would form under­neath my feet. So long as I kept mov­ing, It’d “point the way.”

I fina­gled my way through all of my emo­tion­al entan­gle­ments, back to the place from whence I came. Even before arriv­ing, I knew that things wouldn’t be the same there, either. Many things had come apart. Even then, I saw a hint of won­der, true adven­ture. Exploration, the poten­tial for some­thing beau­ti­ful to rise from the ashes of my total eman­ci­pa­tion from every­thing I once held to be con­stant and immutable.

I made new friends. Upgraded my inven­to­ry. Drank a bit. All of the self-medicating pro­ce­dures the Kid employs to get through, and to do what needs to be done.

In the end, I chose to Evacuate. Created for myself a New Life by aban­don­ing the old one. Gathered my sur­vivors – those things and peo­ple, mem­o­ries I chose to keep around. Detonated the cores – those heady per­son­al com­mit­ments keep­ing me bound to my for­mer sense of self. Attached sails to the Bastion – gave my life a sense of mobil­i­ty and unde­ter­mined free­dom, so that I could see where the winds might take me.

So far, the jour­ney has been worth it. I don’t regret it. I don’t know if I could do any­thing about it if I did.

I con­fess that I’m a dread­ful­ly sen­ti­men­tal fel­low, at heart. But Bastion helped get me through one of the more dif­fi­cult peri­ods of my exis­tence to date. I ascribe this to my own reader-response.

Partially.

Because a read­er has to have some­thing to respond to.  The devel­op­ers of Bastion knew that their work would be open to man­i­fold inter­pre­ta­tions, respons­es, and crit­i­cisms, praise and, pos­si­bly, vehe­ment repu­di­a­tion. In so doing, they opened up the pos­si­bil­i­ty for peo­ple to dis­cov­er it, and find it life-changing, action-inducing.

I know I did. In fact, I’d even go so far as to offer a rec­om­men­da­tion: if you, dear read­er, have found your­self faced with the prospect of hav­ing to deal with pick­ing up the pieces of your life, your very world, do me a favor. Give Bastion a try. Treat it as a sort of sur­vival guide, an Aesop and intro­duc­tion to that bootstrap-tugging we all must do from time to time, no mat­ter what besets us. It worked for me.

One thing’s for sure. Calamities do come along, and when they do, we’ll only have our­selves to rely on, for a time.

But there’s always anoth­er adven­ture. Whether we chose to save or destroy, restore or aban­don.

And it just might be bet­ter than any­thing you could have imag­ined.