When I first played Bastion I was expecting a fairly competent hack and slash game with an artistic aesthetic - what more could you reasonably expect from an indie title for $15? Once I got into the game however I began to realize that Bastion was far more than that; it engaged me in a way that I haven't been in years. Every facet of the game feels deliberate and necessary, culminating in one of the most powerful moments in gaming I've ever encountered.
But before I get too far ahead of myself...
Spoiler Warning
I'll be talking extensively about a lot of the major events in the game as well as all of the relevant context. If you haven't played this game yet I cannot overstate the need to stop reading and go play the game for yourself - the game is a work of art and worth every penny of the cost and every minute of your time.
For this analysis I'll be taking all the events and their implications when read literally. This is certainly not the only way to read the events of the game (there is a great analysis of the game as a metaphor for the end of a relationship over at Errant Signal) but even when read literally the meaning is very deep with plenty to analyze. One could easily write for ages on all of the potential metaphors, so for now I'll be limiting myself to the straight read.
Choice and Morality
"The choice between good and evil or between right and wrong is no choice at all." ~Robert McKee
While the actual mechanics of choice in Bastion are rather simple (generally taking the form of explicit choices listed for the player to choose from) they shine in the way they are framed and their implications. Rather than simply giving the player binary choices between "good" or "evil" actions you are presented with choices where neither option is clearly more or less moral than the other. While some may criticize Bastion for only having a few choices that don't directly impact the major story arc I would applaud them; they spend the entire game setting up the context and framework for a couple key choices, allowing for their impact to cut so much deeper than dozens of choices scattered throughout the game.
The Sentencing of Zulf
Zulf's parents died at a very early age, forcing him to resort to thievery to keep alive. He was eventually caught by a missionary, but instead of turning Zulf over to the authorities the missionary adopted him to raise as family. Zulf then took over the missionary's work upon his death, spreading a message of peace. This led him to leave his Ura homeland to travel to Caelonodia, where he fell in love with a woman. Zulf proposed to her in the Hanging Gardens, and once she accepted they both celebrated through the night.
While he slept the calamity swept across the land, and upon waking he found himself alone surrounded by the dead - including his beloved.
This is where the Kid first meets Zulf, poised on the edge of a cliff preparing to leap. Everything Zulf had treasured in the world had been destroyed by the calamity; he literally had nothing left to live for. The Kid talks him down and convinces Zulf to return to the Bastion with him, an act that may have been far more cruel than kind.
Over the course of the game it's revealed that the calamity was caused by a genocidal weapon being developed by Caelondia (for potential use against the Ura) that had been sabotaged. This enraged Zulf, allowing him to project the anger and sorrow he felt from his loss on the Kid and Rucks (as surviving Caelondians). This forces him into a mental state where his only purpose for living is exacting revenge on those he views as responsible for his loss, and he turns on the Kid while attempting to destroy the Bastion.
Fueled by his anger and need for revenge, Zulf leaves in search of other surviving Ura. Upon finding and joining the refugees, he relates the information about the calamity in order to convince them to attack the Bastion and collect components needed for the Bastion to be completed. This puts the surviving Ura in direct confrontation with the Kid, resulting in several battles where Ura are wounded or killed. The Kid is then forced to trail the Ura back to their refuge to retrieve a component they had taken, resulting in even further fighting and casualties. Eventually the Ura turn on Zulf himself, blaming him for the outcome; they severely injure him and leave him for dead when the Kid appears.
At this point the player is given two options; you can either set down your only weapon (and thus your only means of defending yourself while deep in hostile territory) to pick up Zulf and attempt to save him, or you can leave him for dead. This question results in a lot of muddy morality, both on an idealist level and on a pragmatic level.
Zulf actively worked against the Kid, effectively inciting his people into war with what little remained of Caelondia. His actions resulted in hardship, danger, and even deaths; yet he did so under the most extreme of circumstances. I cannot say with certainty that if I were put into the same circumstances I would act any different than he did, and although you can view his actions as terrible they were done for very human reasons. Can we really hold a man fully responsible for lashing out when he has been backed against the corner with literally everything taken from him?
Conversely, everyone you meet in the game has been thrust into similar situations. Everyone has had their lives shattered, and if humanity is going to survive it can't afford to use tragedy as an excuse to turn on one another. Even if we could morally justify saving him, what of the practicality of it - Zulf may decide to turn on them again in the future. The Kid choosing to save Zulf may directly equate to losing his own life down the road or even that very moment since doing so necessarily removes your one weapon. In a world where all organized civilization has been destroyed individual trust is all you have, and could Zulf ever be trusted after he's taken these actions?
Does a man that chose his actions due to unimaginable tragedy and loss deserve to die, and does a man who's done what he did deserve to be saved?
The question is further muddied by considering what Zulf himself may wish. He was on the brink of suicide when he encountered the Kid, and the calamity has now proven to be the first in a long line of tragedy and loss for Zulf. If he is saved again what more does he possibly have to live for? Sentencing him to death may prove to be far more merciful than sentencing him to life.
Zia and the Victims of Restoration
Late in the game it is revealed that the Bastion theoretically has the ability to reset the entire world to a time before the calamity occurs, thus reversing the apocalyptic catastrophe. Alternatively the Bastion can also be used to evacuate the area, preserving what little is left of humanity in an effort to start rebuilding society.
In this framing for the final choice in the game, Zulf is the personification of those that were sacrificed in the calamity. While he didn't lose his life he lost everything that mattered to him, thus if it were up to him the restoration would be a given instead of a choice. All of the gameplay up to the end seems to be in support of this idea as well - Rucks continually narrates about all that was lost in the calamity and the levels are all the remnants of society that are absolutely beautiful even in their ruined state, so it's not difficult to imagine how stunning it must have been in their original state.
Not everyone suffered such extensive loss from the calamity however, and Zia is the personification of those that actually gained something. Zia was an Uran that had been born in Caelondia - her parents had been refugees from a past war between Caelondia and the Ura. Her mother had died during childbirth, and her father was often out working. Caelondia never allowed Uran refugees to leave the city as they were afraid of secrets leaking out, so Zia was effectively a prisoner from birth. Zia's classmates routinely accused her father of being a traitor, and she was tricked by one she she had grown fond of so that Zia and her father were arrested. Her father had to agree to work on a genocidal weapon (that was in the end the cause of the calamity) in exchange for Zia's freedom.
However, after the calamity Zia is found by the Kid. She immediately becomes friends with everyone and is finally accepted simply as a human being rather than being discriminated against, accused, and manipulated while imprisoned. If the Bastion restores the world she would go back to her previous life and imprisonment, losing the freedom, friends, and place she has found now. She even goes as far to explicitly state, "Any moment I'd want to live again... happened after the Calamity, not before." Zia represents everyone who stands to lose everything if the world is restored.
In addition there are two technical catches to the machine; it has never been tested and thus may not work correctly, and even if it does indeed work there is no guarantee that the calamity wouldn't just happen again.
The first of these issues brings up the moral question of if it is ever acceptable to sacrifice lives for the chance to save others. If the Bastion doesn't work correctly it's certainly possible that it could simply destroy everything - a machine designed to wind back time malfunctioning could easily have devastating effects. You would be betting the lives of the few that are left in the hopes of restoring a great many more lives - however you would be doing so against their wills. Can it ever be acceptable to endanger people against their will even if it is to save thousands or millions of lives?
The second issue is an exploration into determinism vs free will. Normally a deterministic world is identical to a world with free will, however this situation is different. If the world truly is deterministic then resetting the world to a time before the calamity occurred would be in vain - everything would be identical and thus not only would the calamity be destined to happen again but the restoration via the Bastion, thus locking the world in a time loop for eternity, constantly destroying and restoring the world until the end of time. Conversely if free will exists then the outcome would not necessarily be identical every iteration, thus restoring would truly give another chance for humanity to redeem itself.
The natural inclination of most is to believe that free will exists - many do not like the idea that all their actions are pre-determined and all choices are illusions. However this situation forces the issue due to the fact that you are betting the world on it. You are again faced with the question of if it can ever be acceptable to endanger people against their will to potentially save others.
Moral Question vs Divergent Choice
The choices present in Bastion have a fundamentally different purpose than most of the choices in many other games. In games like Mass Effect the choices presented are intended to allow for the story to diverge and change based on your decisions, in theory allowing you to explore a story that follows an arc you choose rather than one that the developer chooses. In that case the depth and impact of choices is applied to the game, and their success is generally measured in what degree of freedom the player has within the story.
Bastion's choices do not do this though. Only two choices exist, and only one of them has any impact on what happens during the game (and even then it only lasts a few minutes). Instead the choices in Bastion are intended to be moral questions and not divergent choices. While divergent choices are intended to allow a player to express themselves in a game world, moral choices are intended to cause the player to think and wrestle with the situation.
By design moral choices must have ambiguity to be interesting, so any affect there is in the actual game as a result can easily cripple the effort. This is why the ending of Bastion has to be so open ended - showing what the final results of the choice would cause players to try and choose by what result they think is best rather than by what action they think is best, thus negating the purpose of the moral choice. Think of Mass Effect again - how often do you hear people talk about which characters they manage to save compared to how often they talk about which moral action they chose?
In the end where divergent choices are intended to impact the game, moral choices are intended to impact the player. Supergiant Games did a fantastic job of presenting their moral question and used the entire game to frame the context around it in a way that is seldom seen in games. I for one would love to see more games tackling serious topics like this.
No comments:
Post a Comment