The Making of Bastion - Documentary
Ringkasan
TLDRThe video primarily focuses on the formation and success of Supergiant Games, with emphasis on their acclaimed game, Bastion. Key figures like Greg Kasavin, Amir Rao, and Gavin Simon are highlighted, discussing their backgrounds, experiences, and the collaborative journey in developing Bastion. The narrative explores the creative and technical processes that brought the game to life, including challenges and breakthroughs in storytelling, art, music, and gameplay mechanics. The use of voiceover, distinctive art styles, and engaging music significantly contributed to the game's unique atmosphere and success. Additionally, the video emphasizes the early indie game scene's influence on their aspirations and the eventual impact of Bastion on the gaming industry.
Takeaways
- 🏗️ Bastion was a result of shared dreams and collaborations among EA alumni.
- 🎶 The music, composed by Darren Korb, set the distinct tone of the game from its early development stages.
- 🎨 The art of Bastion evolved with input from artists like Jen Zee, who influenced its vibrant aesthetic.
- 💡 The game's innovative narration was a solution to blending story with continuous gameplay.
- 🎮 The shift from real-time strategy to action RPG involved designing new gameplay systems.
- 📦 Bastion was self-funded initially, with Warner Brothers assisting in publishing.
- ⚙️ Significant technical hurdles were overcome to optimize the game for Xbox 360.
- 🌟 Bastion's unique elements like world-building and character-driven choices contributed to its acclaim.
- 👥 Supergiant Games values strong collaborative relationships and creativity.
- 🏆 Bastion grew in success post-release, winning awards and critical acclaim.
Garis waktu
- 00:00:00 - 00:05:00
The narrator reflects on things he misses from the past, including the ambience and music of a place he once loved. This sets the tone for a reflective narrative that seems to be yearning for the nostalgia of better days.
- 00:05:00 - 00:10:00
The speaker recounts their early career beginnings at Electronic Arts and formation of friendships that would eventually lead to creating Supergiant Games. They discuss their initial projects and influences which laid the groundwork for future game development with Bastion.
- 00:10:00 - 00:15:00
The narrator details the transition from working at Electronic Arts to starting Supergiant Games, sharing personal advice from family that encouraged them to pursue their dreams while young. The founding members begin to shape their vision for an action RPG inspired by games produced by small teams.
- 00:15:00 - 00:20:00
Discussion of developing Bastion begins with concepts of world-building and unique gameplay elements like constructing the world as the player explores. The team reflects on initial game mechanics and the influence of early creative decisions, touching on inspirations and the collaborative process of game-making.
- 00:20:00 - 00:25:00
Challenges in Bastion's development included securing an artist and defining the game's aesthetic. The team found success with Jen, who played a pivotal role in solidifying the game's visual style. The narration style was developed as a solution to embed narrative without interrupting gameplay, enhancing player immersion.
- 00:25:00 - 00:30:00
The team faced technical challenges, particularly optimizing the game for Xbox 360. They resequenced data and utilized the console's hardware strengths to enhance performance, ultimately achieving smoother gameplay. Their dedication underscores a commitment to overcoming obstacles to realize their creative ambitions.
- 00:30:00 - 00:39:17
Bastion's completion was an emotional journey, marked by challenges and the eventual satisfaction of receiving positive reception. Securing a publishing partnership was crucial at launch, but the game's sustained success and growing acclaim solidified its impact, leading to a deeper appreciation for the collective effort.
Peta Pikiran
Video Tanya Jawab
Who are the key figures behind Supergiant Games?
Key figures include Greg Kasavin, Amir Rao, Gavin Simon, and accompanying team members like Jen Zee and Darren Korb.
What inspired the creation of Bastion?
Bastion was inspired by the desire to create an action RPG with unique world-building and narrative elements, influenced by games like Plants vs. Zombies and Braid.
How did music influence Bastion's development?
Music by Darren Korb was integral from the start, setting the tone and atmosphere that guided the game's development.
What challenges did the team face during development?
Challenges included integrating strong narrative without interrupting gameplay, optimizing for console hardware, and initially lacking an in-house artist.
How did the narration style in Bastion come about?
The narration was developed as a way to include a strong narrative component without interrupting gameplay flow, featuring Logan Cunningham as the voice of Rucks.
What role did Warner Brothers play?
Warner Brothers helped publish Bastion on Xbox Live Arcade, providing support and resources essential for its release and promotion.
How did the art style contribute to Bastion?
Jen Zee's art enriched Bastion with its lush, colorful aesthetic, drawing influence from classic RPGs and orientalism.
What impact did Bastion have post-release?
Bastion gained critical acclaim, won numerous awards, and grew in popularity over time, allowing Supergiant Games to continue developing new titles.
What was the significance of the game's voice acting?
Logan Cunningham's voice acting brought life and atmosphere to Bastion, significantly enhancing the player's experience.
How did the team manage development logistics?
Initially self-funded, the team worked closely in a personalized environment, leveraging each member's strengths in a collaborative manner.
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- 00:00:00[TYPING NOISES]
- 00:00:10[MUSIC PLAYING]
- 00:00:14RUCKS (VOICEOVER): Listen, all this takes a lot of getting used to.
- 00:00:19And you do get used to it after a while.
- 00:00:24There's three things I'll always miss, though.
- 00:00:27One, not having to watch my step all the time.
- 00:00:32Two, well, forget about two.
- 00:00:36And three, I miss the songs.
- 00:00:41Folks from Caelondia knew how to carry a tune.
- 00:00:45Sure, we've got some songs on the old gramophone,
- 00:00:48but try and imagine what they sounded like
- 00:00:51playing to a room full of fine people
- 00:00:54unwinding at the Sole Regret after a hard day's work.
- 00:00:59Those were the days.
- 00:01:01[MUSIC PLAYING]
- 00:01:18GREG KASAVIN: My history with Supergiant Games
- 00:01:21precedes the creation of the studio,
- 00:01:24since I was working at
- 00:01:26Electronic Arts in Los Angeles.
- 00:01:29And I think from the very first day,
- 00:01:31it was in January 2007.
- 00:01:33I had just left my job at GameSpot,
- 00:01:36where I was editor-in-chief.
- 00:01:37And I'd been working there for ten years,
- 00:01:40so it was the only kind of real job I'd ever had.
- 00:01:42I switched over to pursue my lifelong dream
- 00:01:45of being a game developer and
- 00:01:46just being kind of thrust into a new organization.
- 00:01:49They were trying to finish a game
- 00:01:50Called Command & Conquer 3:
- 00:01:52Tiberium Wars at the time,
- 00:01:54and two of the guys I met early on
- 00:01:56were Amir Rao and Gavin Simon.
- 00:01:58We became friends early on
- 00:02:00and worked together through the end of
- 00:02:03Command & Conquer 3 and onto our
- 00:02:05Next big project, which was Red Alert 3.
- 00:02:08And we actually created like a little
- 00:02:10action RPG type of experience
- 00:02:12within what was otherwise a real-time strategy game,
- 00:02:15like a totally different genre,
- 00:02:16'cause we loved action RPGs.
- 00:02:18And I think some of the early ideas
- 00:02:22we ended up chasing in Bastion
- 00:02:24were definitely informed by that work.
- 00:02:28- So I was working at Electronic Arts Los Angeles
- 00:02:32as a level designer on the Command & Conquer team.
- 00:02:35So I was mostly making missions for Command & Conquer games.
- 00:02:37I'd been there for about two years,
- 00:02:39and went to my dad
- 00:02:41and I said, "Dad, someday I'd like to start a company."
- 00:02:43and he sort of said, "why don't you do it now,
- 00:02:45because you're only 25,
- 00:02:48and if it doesn't work out, you'll be 27,
- 00:02:50and can get a job somewhere else,
- 00:02:51and you can use my house."
- 00:02:53That sounded pretty interesting
- 00:02:55and pretty amazing. So the first thing I did,
- 00:02:57made a list of all the people I wanted to work with.
- 00:02:59That was pretty easy, 'cause I lived with a lot of them.
- 00:03:02I was living with Andrew, who is someone I met,
- 00:03:04he was an intern at Electronic Arts.
- 00:03:07Greg was living down there in the other bedroom.
- 00:03:10He was working at Electronic Arts also.
- 00:03:13And then Gavin, who's someone I worked with
- 00:03:15closely at Electronic Arts.
- 00:03:17Gavin was the programmer AI designer.
- 00:03:20- Since I do have a computer science
- 00:03:22background and did engineering work
- 00:03:24at EA, I had just started kind of
- 00:03:27tinkering and building stuff in my own time.
- 00:03:30And then Amir came to me
- 00:03:33one day after work, and we got dinner,
- 00:03:35and laid out his whole idea, and it was
- 00:03:37kind of like a perfect match to merge
- 00:03:40them together at that point.
- 00:03:41AMIR: Me and Greg and Gavin, and other people,
- 00:03:44were playing a lot of games like Plants vs. Zombies
- 00:03:46and World of Goo, and Braid,
- 00:03:48which were made by really small groups of people.
- 00:03:50And we sort of wondered, could we do that, too?
- 00:03:53- You know, we would discuss things,
- 00:03:55brainstorms, ideas, whether that was
- 00:03:57gameplay ideas or ways that we would
- 00:04:02want things to happen, and
- 00:04:04just coming with the actual way that
- 00:04:07that could happen, and then
- 00:04:09building out whatever was necessary for that,
- 00:04:12whether that was like a new tools to
- 00:04:14make an editor to allow Amir
- 00:04:16at that point to put stuff onto a map.
- 00:04:19or make new data structures or data values,
- 00:04:23so that he could change a bunch of numbers.
- 00:04:25- So Gavin and I were the first to sort of
- 00:04:29be able to make this happen
- 00:04:31and make the jump.
- 00:04:33We quit our jobs at EA in July.
- 00:04:36- We just had a whole bunch of computers
- 00:04:38and servers in the closet,
- 00:04:41and sleeping in bedrooms down the hallway.
- 00:04:44And we'd just kind of, like, wake up,
- 00:04:46roll down there, and start working
- 00:04:49until whenever we got tired and went back to sleep.
- 00:04:53But it was just kind of us just sitting next to each other
- 00:04:56back and forth looking at each other's
- 00:04:58screens and banging out things
- 00:05:01in a very collaborative manner.
- 00:05:03- And over time the two of us became
- 00:05:06seven people. Andrew was able to join us.
- 00:05:10Greg was able to join us.
- 00:05:12Jen, Darren, Logan, and that was seven human beings
- 00:05:18working on Bastion.
- 00:05:20[MUSIC PLAYING]
- 00:05:27On the U-Haul drive up to San Jose,
- 00:05:30we started talking about ideas
- 00:05:32around action RPGs, Gavin and I.
- 00:05:34And prior to that, I'd also sort of floated
- 00:05:37some conversations with Greg, where Greg asked
- 00:05:39a really, really incisive personal question.
- 00:05:41He was like, "what would be your perfect game
- 00:05:44that you would make?" At the time, I think
- 00:05:46the answer I gave him was like, Diablo II
- 00:05:48and Viva Piñata. Like, that game.
- 00:05:50Whatever that game is, I would love to play that game.
- 00:05:53And so Bastion started out sort of as a really big idea,
- 00:05:58which is what if you had an action RPG
- 00:06:00where you could build the whole world yourself?
- 00:06:03[MUSIC PLAYING]
- 00:06:05GREG: Definitely one of the core ideas on Bastion
- 00:06:08that was built into the game at a very low level
- 00:06:11was the idea of the world building itself
- 00:06:14as you ran across it, which, of course, ended up being
- 00:06:18a core aspect of the narrative of that game.
- 00:06:21But that kind of just started with, like, a gameplay idea
- 00:06:24of not having to have a mini-map,
- 00:06:26and to kind of have the level, like,
- 00:06:28guide you as you go.
- 00:06:30But then that whole thing ended up
- 00:06:32being built into an underlying system,
- 00:06:34where the entire terrain of the game would kind of
- 00:06:38form under you, in hopefully a very natural way
- 00:06:41to guide the player along, and
- 00:06:43to feel and look good as it was coming in.
- 00:06:46AMIR: The very first weapon that went in the game was the hammer.
- 00:06:49We had this hammer 'cause we knew we wanted
- 00:06:50the character to be a builder. The idea was
- 00:06:52okay, you're going to fight enemies out in the field
- 00:06:55and get resources, and you're
- 00:06:56going to bring them back to this place called the Bastion.
- 00:06:58And you're going to build it up over time.
- 00:07:00And we had all these grand designs
- 00:07:02over the first year of that game
- 00:07:03about like the stuff you were going to build.
- 00:07:05And then I was deeply interested and invested in
- 00:07:09the gardening part of it.
- 00:07:11And like, you were going to like, garden the Bastion also.
- 00:07:15And everything is so janky, because the art is
- 00:07:17scanned out of D&D books,
- 00:07:19and I modeled the main character, and he's
- 00:07:21just like swinging a hammer really stupidly.
- 00:07:23But Darren's music is like, really awesome
- 00:07:25in the background, because music can just sort of be done
- 00:07:28like at the very beginning, it turns out.
- 00:07:30And that was something that kind of ended up
- 00:07:32following us through all these projects,
- 00:07:34where like, the music is often the first expression
- 00:07:36of the tone and stuff that we end up using.
- 00:07:39- Well, I think there was a tone for the project
- 00:07:44that everybody was sort of trying to establish,
- 00:07:47that I was also working toward, which was
- 00:07:51what if Cormac McCarthy made a fantasy video game?
- 00:07:54And that's how I kind of crystallized my idea of
- 00:07:58what the tone of the game was going to be
- 00:08:00and what the tone of the music should be.
- 00:08:02And because I didn't have experience composing for anything,
- 00:08:07something that for me was the way that I could try to unify the music
- 00:08:12for the project without traditional tools of a composer
- 00:08:16was by setting up a genre for myself
- 00:08:19that I could sort of make all the music fit somewhere inside of.
- 00:08:22You know, I kind of get the intention
- 00:08:25of how the music was going to be used.
- 00:08:28We needed something for the town area.
- 00:08:30We needed something for this first area,
- 00:08:33this first level, we need--
- 00:08:35And my sort of takeaway was, well, okay.
- 00:08:37I sort of processed that however I could
- 00:08:41and made my approach, my version of town music
- 00:08:43for the Bastion area, and then would throw that back over the wall.
- 00:08:48Sometimes there would be feedback,
- 00:08:50and sometimes they'd just chuck it in.
- 00:08:52I know the actual name of the file
- 00:08:56that we used for the music in the Bastion
- 00:08:59is "TownMusicRough." That is the literal-- [LAUGHING]
- 00:09:04my named file that I sent them, and they
- 00:09:06were just like, yep, that's it.
- 00:09:07- The whole kind of aesthetic of Bastion,
- 00:09:12aspects of it were there from the start,
- 00:09:14like the game never had a code name.
- 00:09:15It was always Bastion. So aspects of it
- 00:09:18we always knew what it was going to be
- 00:09:20from before Supergiant even existed in some ways.
- 00:09:24So it had some of the aesthetics of like a Zelda game.
- 00:09:28Superficially it's very deliberate, so this kind of bright,
- 00:09:31colorful, you know, almost like a JRPG looking world,
- 00:09:35and ostensibly, a story about saving the world, right?
- 00:09:38But we knew it was going to be about
- 00:09:40something other than that.
- 00:09:41So the idea that Cormac McCarthy, this great American author,
- 00:09:45would be writing these little JRPGS, that was, like,
- 00:09:48humorous to us, and we wanted to would be writing these little JRPGS, that was, like,
- 00:09:48humorous to us, and we wanted to
- 00:09:51sort of chase that and see what would happen.
- 00:09:53That seemed to tie strongly to the sort of
- 00:09:57overtness of what was going on
- 00:09:58of actually kind of restoring the world.
- 00:10:00And we liked the idea of, you know,
- 00:10:02Amir and I were talking early on about what's kind of the tone
- 00:10:05of this game going to be? How's it going to, like--
- 00:10:07How's it going to do something that just
- 00:10:09doesn't feel like stuff we've seen a million times?
- 00:10:12[MUSIC PLAYING]
- 00:10:17RUCKS (VOICEOVER): Now there's something I want you to see.
- 00:10:21- The most challenging parts of Bastion were
- 00:10:24really just that we didn't know what the game,
- 00:10:29what the whole game would look like.
- 00:10:31We didn't know what the challenges were going to be.
- 00:10:34Certainly, one of the earliest challenges
- 00:10:36was we didn't have an artist.
- 00:10:38Between Amir and I, we have, that's kind of
- 00:10:41the one thing we were missing, is we had
- 00:10:43zero artistic ability. So we spent a long time looking for
- 00:10:48an artist, and we're obviously
- 00:10:52super grateful that we found Jen
- 00:10:54along the way, because of course
- 00:10:55our games have become known for their art,
- 00:10:57among other things.
- 00:10:59- I was working at a company called Gaia Online.
- 00:11:02It was my first job, and I was actually
- 00:11:06doing isometrics worlds for the little avatars they have.
- 00:11:11And I was working with a guy named Alex Ahad.
- 00:11:15He was good friends with some people who knew Amir Rao.
- 00:11:21They were, at the time, working on a prototype of Bastion.
- 00:11:24They essentially wanted a redux of the prototype art
- 00:11:28they already had, and they asked
- 00:11:30me to redesign the Bastion,
- 00:11:32and told me they wanted this lush and beautiful
- 00:11:36green world that had been shattered, but still retained
- 00:11:40a lot of its charm and loveliness.
- 00:11:43I, building upon the many years of JRPGs that I've played,
- 00:11:47just immediately spat out, you know what I thought felt good
- 00:11:52from a gut level, and then they liked it.
- 00:11:54So that led to a couple months of productive
- 00:11:58contract work together, and then after
- 00:12:00a couple months, they asked me if I wanted to
- 00:12:02convert to full-time and work in
- 00:12:05Amir's dad's living room with them,
- 00:12:07And I said, "I've never been more excited.
- 00:12:10I have been prepared my whole life to work
- 00:12:12in the living room of someone's father."
- 00:12:15[LAUGHING] "My whole life has been
- 00:12:17leading up to this moment."
- 00:12:18I was, like, very interested in
- 00:12:21more Moroccan and kind of orientalist designs, as well.
- 00:12:27And I was given the creative opportunity,
- 00:12:30so I thought it was the perfect chance for me to
- 00:12:33kind of integrate some of my own passion
- 00:12:35into their world that they were
- 00:12:38trying to put together, too.
- 00:12:39I actually was given a lot of creative
- 00:12:42freedom right off the bat with the initial work I did,
- 00:12:45even as a contractor. They, I think,
- 00:12:48encouraged me, actually, to just kind of
- 00:12:50look at the prototype, and see what I thought
- 00:12:54would work best based on my own instincts.
- 00:12:57I looked at the prototype. The art that was
- 00:13:00in there already, I think was by an artist named Tierra Lott.
- 00:13:04It was very creative, but it was a little more somber
- 00:13:09and I could tell based on the story I was being fed,
- 00:13:14based on my own experience and my own love of, you know,
- 00:13:18these isometrics or top-down RPGS from the SNES era,
- 00:13:22the Playstation era, where everything's kind of
- 00:13:25beautiful, and colorful, and lush,
- 00:13:27I wanted to kind of brighten up the world.
- 00:13:31So it was, in some parts, a reaction
- 00:13:35to what was in the prototype already, which was really useful.
- 00:13:39And another part is I had all these games
- 00:13:43from my childhood that were influencing me,
- 00:13:46that I was waiting to get out of my system.
- 00:13:49I was waiting to get, you know my desire to
- 00:13:52make a lush, beautiful, world, like, just out.
- 00:13:56- Slowly over time the idea took shape,
- 00:13:59and it took-- sort of had these really huge
- 00:14:02clarifying moments when we actually brought someone in
- 00:14:04to like, make the thing be real.
- 00:14:06- The design of The Kid, actually, so he was--
- 00:14:09I think he went through two redesigns, at least,
- 00:14:13before I even showed up, and he then
- 00:14:17received a retexture treatment and some redesigning
- 00:14:23within the constraints of us not actually being able to change his animations.
- 00:14:26So his original design had him looking a little older
- 00:14:31and a little clunkier than I thought
- 00:14:35was good for the story we were trying to tell
- 00:14:37and for the character we were trying to portray.
- 00:14:39So we ended up deleting a lot of, like,
- 00:14:41some of his extra geometry, and some armor.
- 00:14:45He used to have, like, this neck armor piece, I think,
- 00:14:47that we just got rid of.
- 00:14:49But basically, he got a little bit of plastic surgery.
- 00:14:51And the same thing happened for his weapons, which
- 00:14:55had actually already been modeled as well.
- 00:14:57A lot of that stuff had actually come online
- 00:15:00before I even showed up.
- 00:15:01I just went through and kind of
- 00:15:03fixed 'em up a bit so that they
- 00:15:06matched the world that we were heading towards
- 00:15:09a bit better.
- 00:15:11- Jen was taking whatever she was given and trying
- 00:15:13to make it work, whether it was the gameplay
- 00:15:15constraints or some of the fictional constraints
- 00:15:18that were being developed also, about what the world was like
- 00:15:20and what the background conflict was,
- 00:15:23stuff that Greg was contributing to
- 00:15:25and making, and all this type of thing.
- 00:15:26So some of the building and planning
- 00:15:28and stuff receded, but what took its place was
- 00:15:31all the narrative, voiceover, atmosphere, beautiful art,
- 00:15:37and just all the stuff that was added
- 00:15:39by the other people who joined the team.
- 00:15:41And that ended up taking a more center stage.
- 00:15:45And supporting that became a huge goal
- 00:15:47over the course of making Bastion.
- 00:15:49- Once I joined Supergiant and got, like, really
- 00:15:52very directly involved in creating the story,
- 00:15:56putting all the words into the game,
- 00:15:58both the story part and, like, menu text.
- 00:16:00All sorts of stuff like that,
- 00:16:01as well as building levels for the first time.
- 00:16:03It for sure was a learning process,
- 00:16:05but I think, like, learning to learn is
- 00:16:08probably, like the most essential skill as a game developer.
- 00:16:12I was probably good enough as a generalist
- 00:16:15to where I could add value to the team,
- 00:16:18just do whatever random things needed doing.
- 00:16:21Building levels was one of them,
- 00:16:23because Bastion's just two or three people at the beginning.
- 00:16:26So we just needed all the help we could get.
- 00:16:28For me it was great, because I'd just get to
- 00:16:30help out wherever we needed it.
- 00:16:32Even if I'm not the best level designer in the world,
- 00:16:35or something, hey, I can put one together.
- 00:16:36Just show me how. I'll do it.
- 00:16:38But what I did bring was, like,
- 00:16:40working on the story and everything, collaborating
- 00:16:42mostly with Amir. We're just on the same wavelength
- 00:16:46about creating a game where the narrative was important
- 00:16:50to the experience, and just having
- 00:16:52seeing an opportunity around that.
- 00:16:55You know, we're making an action RPG in Bastion,
- 00:16:57and we're like, it's in some ways a well-worn genre,
- 00:17:01but everyone is kind of mostly using
- 00:17:04the template of Diablo.
- 00:17:05And it's a template that we love an awful lot,
- 00:17:07but there's so much room to make a game
- 00:17:11in this genre a little bit differently.
- 00:17:13If we just kind of tried to make a very traditional
- 00:17:15action RPG, it would've been terrible,
- 00:17:16'cause we weren't going to have multiple character classes.
- 00:17:19We weren't going to have online multiplayer.
- 00:17:21We weren't going to have 10 million weapons.
- 00:17:23We weren't going to have 200 hours of gameplay.
- 00:17:25So the narrative is the key to contextualizing
- 00:17:30all of the specific design choices
- 00:17:33and design limitations.
- 00:17:35[MUSIC PLAYING]
- 00:17:38So, I mean, I got to work on key moments of that game.
- 00:17:42There's the level called Prosper Bluff,
- 00:17:45where you meet the singer, Zia, for the first time,
- 00:17:47where we knew we wanted to have this moment
- 00:17:49where all the narration you've been hearing,
- 00:17:51suddenly you'd break from it and hear this very beautiful song
- 00:17:55in the distance, and get closer and closer to it.
- 00:17:57And it was a synthesis of design and narrative,
- 00:17:59the idea that you would just kind of try to
- 00:18:01navigate your way closer to this distant song
- 00:18:04until you finally found its source.
- 00:18:06Literally the first level I worked on
- 00:18:08for Bastion is a level called
- 00:18:10The Hanging Gardens, where you first meet Zulf.
- 00:18:13I'm someone who is very interested in how to
- 00:18:17create atmosphere effectively in games,
- 00:18:19and looking back on The Hanging Gardens,
- 00:18:22I think we succeeded in making that level
- 00:18:25quite atmospheric and very moody.
- 00:18:26So I'm pleased with how that one came together.
- 00:18:30And we did these, like little narrative tricks.
- 00:18:33We have, like essentially, these ashen
- 00:18:36statues of people who've been annihilated
- 00:18:38in this calamity, and you touch them,
- 00:18:40and they just turn to dust.
- 00:18:42If you look closely, there's only
- 00:18:44four or five different statues,
- 00:18:46but they're kind of, like, scaled differently
- 00:18:48flipped horizontally, and so on
- 00:18:50to create the impression that it was like a big
- 00:18:52group of people, that almost in
- 00:18:54Pompeii style slice of life suddenly just destroyed like that.
- 00:18:59And a little narrative trick we did was we just gave
- 00:19:02'em all names as you, like ran into all of them
- 00:19:04and, you know, blew them up.
- 00:19:07RUCKS (VOICEOVER): The Thunder Brothers didn't make it
- 00:19:09They never saw what it was like beyond the walls.
- 00:19:13- With narration, it came about as a solution
- 00:19:16that Amir decided to try at one point,
- 00:19:19because the team was really struggling with
- 00:19:21how to reconcile having an action RPG with
- 00:19:24with strong narrative component. It's actually really cumbersome
- 00:19:27to constantly be stopped by the narrative.
- 00:19:30At the time that Amir asked me
- 00:19:33to work on Bastion Logan and I were roommates
- 00:19:36in Brooklyn, and when we were working on Bastion,
- 00:19:40we were looking for a way to include
- 00:19:43narrative in the game without interrupting the gameplay.
- 00:19:47And we thought about narration as an option.
- 00:19:51- The narration definitely wasn't there from the start.
- 00:19:53It was not even sort of conceived of
- 00:19:56as one of the original parts of the game,
- 00:19:58which people are surprised to hear sometimes.
- 00:20:01- And, hey, Logan's a talented actor,
- 00:20:04and he lives, you know, ten feet from me.
- 00:20:07Let's call him into my room
- 00:20:09to record some VO and see what happens.
- 00:20:11- So all I really knew is my friend Amir
- 00:20:13was making a video game
- 00:20:16and wanted to try something with
- 00:20:18a voiceover narration
- 00:20:20So now he needed an actor.
- 00:20:22I'd never known anyone who was in game development.
- 00:20:24So it was all just kind of like
- 00:20:26a miracle to me, like what do you mean you made this?
- 00:20:29How is that possible?
- 00:20:31It sounds weird, but the way I always put it is
- 00:20:33I never really decided to be an actor.
- 00:20:35I seem to be one anyway.
- 00:20:37Because I was just always doing weird voices,
- 00:20:42and making stuff up when I was a kid.
- 00:20:45So I would just be an actor as a favor to friends.
- 00:20:47And that continued on after college.
- 00:20:49And just one of those instances was Bastion.
- 00:20:52I play the character named Rucks
- 00:20:55in Bastion, who's the narrator.
- 00:20:57when The Kid eventually arrives at the bastion,
- 00:21:00at the end of that sort of first level,
- 00:21:03that's where you meet him, and he's just been there
- 00:21:05sort of, waiting for you.
- 00:21:06No, yeah, he imparts to you this plan that he has
- 00:21:11to restore the world, basically.
- 00:21:14And that's your mission.
- 00:21:16Logan certainly had a magicial effect
- 00:21:20on Bastion. As soon as his voice was in the game,
- 00:21:24suddenly the atmosphere, the world of the game,
- 00:21:27started coming to life in a way that was just not happening
- 00:21:31basically at all prior to that.
- 00:21:33RUCKS (voiceover): The cauldron boiled over some
- 00:21:35300 years ago. They say it filled the
- 00:21:38skies with ash and the lakes with molten rock.
- 00:21:41- So even when the game was lacking in
- 00:21:44any kind of, like real art assets
- 00:21:46or any kind of identity, suddenly this voice
- 00:21:49was bringing it some amount of life.
- 00:21:51We knew the sort of setting, or the tone of the game,
- 00:21:56was already set in place, largely through Darren's score.
- 00:21:59So we knew that he was going to have, like,
- 00:22:02a bit of a southern flair. The sound was there early on.
- 00:22:05But yeah, just trial and error.
- 00:22:07because we'd just record some stuff, and then they
- 00:22:10have to plug in into the game and play
- 00:22:12with it a bunch and see if it works.
- 00:22:14There's like three different inspirations behind the character,
- 00:22:18and behind the voice specifically. And one of them
- 00:22:20is Ian McShane in Deadwood,
- 00:22:22which I had just discovered.
- 00:22:24A friend of mine turned me onto the show.
- 00:22:26The other two influences were Sam Elliott
- 00:22:29as The Stranger in The Big Lebowski
- 00:22:31and then Daniel Day Lewis' Bill the Butcher
- 00:22:33in Gangs of New York.
- 00:22:35- I think typically, someone in my position would be
- 00:22:39heavily involved in the actual recording,
- 00:22:41like working with the actor, you know, directly.
- 00:22:44You know, here's the subtext
- 00:22:46of this line, and all that sort of stuff.
- 00:22:48But basically, since Darren and Logan
- 00:22:50have know n each other most of their whole lives,
- 00:22:54they have such a rapport that they just
- 00:22:57really connect, and Logan's instincts
- 00:23:01on my work have just basically always
- 00:23:03been dead on, and it would just--
- 00:23:05I would joke that I could
- 00:23:07write that worst trash, and Logan can
- 00:23:10make it sound incredible.
- 00:23:12The hardest stuff, I think, on Bastion
- 00:23:16was like us exceeding our own nature.
- 00:23:21We worked a lot on Bastion.
- 00:23:23And we were living in a house, and working in a house,
- 00:23:26and Jen was commuting to a house,
- 00:23:27and working out of a living room.
- 00:23:29And Greg would commute, and sometimes stay
- 00:23:31for a night or multiple nights,
- 00:23:32and then go home and work.
- 00:23:33And Andrew was flying from LA and working
- 00:23:36in his Call of Duty pajamas,
- 00:23:38in a server room in a closet
- 00:23:40just trying to get the game to 60 frames per second
- 00:23:42like, on an Xbox.
- 00:23:44- The majority of the time, I actually ended up
- 00:23:46getting it working on the Xbox.
- 00:23:49And so that was cool, because I think
- 00:23:52when I was working on the AAA games and stuff,
- 00:23:54a whole bunch of smart people had already
- 00:23:57gotten the game optimized and working really well
- 00:23:59on the different pieces of hardware that we shipped on.
- 00:24:01And so this is my first real experience
- 00:24:03getting in there and getting to know
- 00:24:05a console really well.
- 00:24:07And so we spent a lot time,
- 00:24:09or I spent a lot of time optimizing and trying to
- 00:24:12get Bastion, which was running beautifully on a PC,
- 00:24:15and then the first time we tried to run it on
- 00:24:17the Xbox 360, the load time was
- 00:24:2020 minutes or something to just get into the game
- 00:24:23and then it was crawling around at--
- 00:24:26yeah, it was crawling around at like five frames a second
- 00:24:29with these massive hitches, and we were just like,
- 00:24:31oh, what is going on here?
- 00:24:33And so that was really fun and interesting
- 00:24:35challenge to sort of dive into.
- 00:24:37It was just a completely different set of techniques.
- 00:24:39for getting it to run quickly.
- 00:24:41And I guess luckily, what runs well on 360
- 00:24:44will run well on the PC because it's so much more powerful.
- 00:24:46So then kind of going in that direction
- 00:24:49and really optimizing specifically for that hardware
- 00:24:55was really the task there.
- 00:24:57One of the reasons for all the hitches and that sort of thing
- 00:25:00on a PC or something, we got away with
- 00:25:03just sort of like, oh when you need an enemy
- 00:25:05we can just allocate and spawn it
- 00:25:07and all that stuff, and do a bunch of
- 00:25:09pretty expensive things that will be
- 00:25:12invisible to the user on a PC,
- 00:25:14but on the 360 or something like that,
- 00:25:16it would show up. And so we kind of had to
- 00:25:18say, OK, we can't have infinite units.
- 00:25:21We have to say up front we're going to have
- 00:25:23100 enemies, and we can
- 00:25:26pre-allocate them, hidden during the load time
- 00:25:29or the black screen or something.
- 00:25:31And then when they're ready to go,
- 00:25:32we just grab one and pop it in there.
- 00:25:34And so it's a lot of reorganization of the data
- 00:25:37and tailoring it to the things that
- 00:25:39the Xbox was good at. And on the flip side,
- 00:25:41the Xbox 360 had a really pretty good graphics card.
- 00:25:44And so we could take advantage of some of that.
- 00:25:46That worked pretty well. Yeah, and we were able
- 00:25:48to get it up to 60.
- 00:25:50[SIGH] it was just-- We just did
- 00:25:53so much work that I think we
- 00:25:57like, physically, a lot.
- 00:25:59And, you know, there wasn't any individual
- 00:26:02who was like, we all must do this!
- 00:26:03We just kind of did it and fed off each other's energy.
- 00:26:05And we did it, and worked like we would
- 00:26:07never be able to make another game again.
- 00:26:09Because I think at some level,
- 00:26:11we thought it's possible that we would not be able to make
- 00:26:13another game again under these circumstances.
- 00:26:15Certainly not in the living room of my dad's house.
- 00:26:18We put a lot of stuff into that game,
- 00:26:21and we put a lot of ourselves into that game,
- 00:26:23and we put a lot of time into that game.
- 00:26:25We tried to get a lot of the details right
- 00:26:27the first time, and we definitely pushed ourselves,
- 00:26:30like, to the extreme limit.
- 00:26:32- We had a game, and we built it.
- 00:26:35And we were kind of having fun with it.
- 00:26:37But we didn't really know if the game was
- 00:26:39any good at all, or if anyone would be
- 00:26:40interested in it or anything.
- 00:26:42And so figuring out how to get other people
- 00:26:45to play it, which we ended up being able to do
- 00:26:47at PAX. And initially, just kind of, like,
- 00:26:51things started snowballing from there, and we contibued to
- 00:26:54figure everything out as we went along.
- 00:26:58In ye old times, if you wanted to be on Xbox Live Arcade,
- 00:27:00you had to have a publisher, and what the meant was
- 00:27:03finding a publishing partner. When we showed the game at PAX
- 00:27:06the first time, part of what we were hoping for was
- 00:27:08we would find someone who would help us get the game
- 00:27:10on Xbox Live Arcade, because we knew we
- 00:27:12couldn't do that ourselves.
- 00:27:13Mike Leon from Warner Brothers, he played it.
- 00:27:15And he took me aside
- 00:27:20after playing it. And he played with no expression.
- 00:27:23And he just said, "you have no idea how much
- 00:27:26shit I play, and how little of it I like."
- 00:27:28Which was, like, it was an amazing compliment
- 00:27:31to me, because I don't know how much shit he had played.
- 00:27:34And I didn't really know where his bar was.
- 00:27:37But it sounded like he was saying, I really like your game.
- 00:27:39And he was saying that.
- 00:27:40And we had an amazing partnership with Warner.
- 00:27:42We self-funded and developed the game.
- 00:27:45Warner helps us do a lot of stuff we couldn't do,
- 00:27:47like publish on Xbox Live Arcade,
- 00:27:49bring the game to PAX, help support it with
- 00:27:52build awareness and marketing at E3 and stuff like that.
- 00:27:55The industry kind of evolved
- 00:27:57to have more self-publishing options on
- 00:27:59every place under the sun.
- 00:28:01So we opted to self-publish our games
- 00:28:04moving forward from Transistor, but at the time,
- 00:28:07we needed a partner, and Warner was that partner.
- 00:28:09And they really, really supported the game through and through.
- 00:28:13After Bastion shipped, we had worked so much
- 00:28:16that I actually remember my first feeling
- 00:28:18after we uploaded the game was like,
- 00:28:20oh my god, I can't work on this anymore.
- 00:28:22Like, I actually felt really sad
- 00:28:26because I had spent so much time on it,
- 00:28:29and so much of my life was wrapped up
- 00:28:32in just the labor of making that game.
- 00:28:34I almost didn't even think about the fact
- 00:28:36that someday, it would be, like, released.
- 00:28:38That when that happened, it was a profoundly
- 00:28:43sad time. It was also a time where I had to reckon with
- 00:28:46some of the trade-offs I had made in my life
- 00:28:48by working so much. I remember
- 00:28:50talking to Darren about this,
- 00:28:52and he said, "I wish you could
- 00:28:54feel how good it is that we finished this game.
- 00:28:57Because, like, it's objectively awesome."
- 00:28:59I think about that a lot, because it didn't
- 00:29:02feel like it was awesome when it was done.
- 00:29:05And there was a long gap.
- 00:29:06We started in May, came out as
- 00:29:08the first game of Summer Arcade in Xbox Live Arcade
- 00:29:10on July 20, 2011. And it did...
- 00:29:16fine. It did OK.
- 00:29:18I think we sort of thought, oh, wow,
- 00:29:20OK, this did OK.
- 00:29:22Like the sales were OK,
- 00:29:23But then what really started to happen is
- 00:29:25Bastion really grew over time.
- 00:29:28So that summer was a little bit like,
- 00:29:30OK, we did well enough that we're going to be able
- 00:29:35to leave my Dad's house, and move to
- 00:29:38San Francisco and start a studio.
- 00:29:40We didn't realize what we had on our hand
- 00:29:42until the winter.
- 00:29:43In the winter of that year,
- 00:29:45The game continued to sell.
- 00:29:47It had come out on Steam shortly after
- 00:29:49Summer Arcade Launch, and it built and build and built
- 00:29:51and grew and grew and grew, and we started
- 00:29:53getting nominated for all of these awards.
- 00:29:55And we started going to award shows,
- 00:29:57started collecting awards, and we realized
- 00:30:00people really like this game.
- 00:30:02And it's actually a verifiable hit.
- 00:30:04It's just a hit that kind of grew over time.
- 00:30:06- You know, I'd done stuff that
- 00:30:10I thought was cool before that point,
- 00:30:12that nobody, you know, that no one--
- 00:30:13That didn't make any sort of impact on anybody else.
- 00:30:16So I felt similarly about Bastion.
- 00:30:19I thought, this is-- oh, I like this.
- 00:30:21This is cool. You know?
- 00:30:23But I'd also felt that way about a bunch of other stuff.
- 00:30:26So when it did, in fact, hit,
- 00:30:28and it was so well received
- 00:30:30It won awards and stuff like that.
- 00:30:32People talked about it. It was really crazy for me,
- 00:30:35and I still dont, I am still sort of
- 00:30:41surprised, and shocked, and flattered,
- 00:30:43whenever it happens with any of the music
- 00:30:45that I made since.
- 00:30:46- Bastion is probablly the most
- 00:30:48most fulfilling thing that I have had a chace to work on,
- 00:30:54with all due respect to our subsequent games
- 00:30:57that were also very important to me.
- 00:30:59It's just since Bastion was my first,
- 00:31:01it has a special place in my heart
- 00:31:03for that reason. As a team,
- 00:31:05we've always really valued our games
- 00:31:08having a sense of completeness to them
- 00:31:10where all the pieces feel like they fit.
- 00:31:14All the details feel like they make sense.
- 00:31:17So it's just like, hey if we're going to
- 00:31:19put something into this game,
- 00:31:21let's make sure that it's connected
- 00:31:24to everything and feels like a thoughtful
- 00:31:26inclusion that makes sense
- 00:31:28based on everything else that we're doing.
- 00:31:30So much of a game's atmosphere and world-building
- 00:31:34happens from the small stuff.
- 00:31:36It doesn't happen in the lavish cut scene.
- 00:31:38It happens in the little details.
- 00:31:40The other aspect of Bastion
- 00:31:42that was really, really important to me
- 00:31:44and I'm very glad panned out
- 00:31:46was at the very end, and the scene
- 00:31:49where you find Zulf, having been
- 00:31:52left for dead by his own
- 00:31:55people after the disastrous interactions
- 00:31:57he'd had with them. And you have a choice
- 00:31:59to take him with you or to leave him there for dead.
- 00:32:03Zulf has become, arguably, your enemy
- 00:32:06at this point in the story.
- 00:32:08Whether he deserves your forgiveness is for the player
- 00:32:12to decide, quite literally, in that moment.
- 00:32:15And the subsequent scene where you carry him
- 00:32:17out of the dangerous environment under like a hail
- 00:32:21of basically crossbow bolts, as his people are trying to kill you.
- 00:32:24But slowly they stop after seeing what you're doing.
- 00:32:29I think it was literally the last
- 00:32:31part of the game I worked on.
- 00:32:33We were under the gun, like about to
- 00:32:35just running out of time. Amir was working on it before me.
- 00:32:39I'm like, please, like let me take a shot at this.
- 00:32:42This is like a key part of the story.
- 00:32:44At the time it was like, dude no one's going to--
- 00:32:46Why are you spending all this time on this?
- 00:32:48No one's going to notice that after they cease fire,
- 00:32:50one of the guys opens fire again,
- 00:32:52only to be cut down by his commanding officer
- 00:32:55for disobeying orders and stuff like that.
- 00:32:56But I notice when I play games
- 00:32:58when they do small stuff that shouldn't be noticed.
- 00:33:01I knew other players would, too.
- 00:33:03And that was one of those sequences where
- 00:33:05once the game got out into the wild,
- 00:33:07It seemed to impact players quite a bit,
- 00:33:11despite like the crude tools at our disposal, right?
- 00:33:14We didn't have cut scenes.
- 00:33:15These character had, like, very little in the way of animation.
- 00:33:18We just had to frame the scene a certain way,
- 00:33:20and script it a certain way, and then let the
- 00:33:22narration literally kind of do the talking
- 00:33:25fill in the blanks. So these characters that we
- 00:33:28create together, they do take on a life
- 00:33:30of their own, and it becomes about
- 00:33:32What would the character say? What would the character do?
- 00:33:34And we're just kind of the--
- 00:33:36It almost feels archaeological to me.
- 00:33:38It's like I'm just transcribing an interview
- 00:33:42or something like that. Like this is just
- 00:33:44how this character would act in this situation.
- 00:33:46And this is what they would say.
- 00:33:48Some of what I'm saying suggests that we do
- 00:33:50everything, like, super deliberately.
- 00:33:52The truth is, we also just
- 00:33:54jam a bunch of stuff into the build.
- 00:33:58In the early going of a project,
- 00:33:59sometimes at random. Everybody is just
- 00:34:01doing their own thing throw it all in,
- 00:34:04and we'll see what sticks.
- 00:34:06- It was definitely scary and fun.
- 00:34:08[LAUGHING] In combination.
- 00:34:11I think I enjoy, generally, I would say,
- 00:34:16a sort sink or swim, kind of high pressure scenario.
- 00:34:21That seems to work for me and force me to
- 00:34:25you know, really get down to business
- 00:34:28do my best work, I think in some of those scenarios.
- 00:34:32I think as a whole, I'm really proud
- 00:34:36that it exists. I'm really proud that Bastion
- 00:34:41happened and that it was well received enough
- 00:34:45by people that we could keep making games
- 00:34:47and are still doing it.
- 00:34:49GREG: The most important thing about Bastion, I think,
- 00:34:51is that it was designed, above all, to be complete.
- 00:34:55For all the pieces to fit together.
- 00:34:57And looking back on it, I think we did that quite well.
- 00:35:00I think the focus on that aspect was really worth it
- 00:35:03and resulted in this game that just kind of
- 00:35:06worked on people on a lot of different levels.
- 00:35:09The music, the art, the tone,
- 00:35:12and of course the gameplay itself.
- 00:35:14- The thing I'm most proud of about Bastion
- 00:35:16is everybody else's incredible work on that game.
- 00:35:19I'd see the quality of Jen's art coming in,
- 00:35:23and I would read Greg's writing,
- 00:35:25hear Logan's acting, and see the design
- 00:35:27coming together and all that stuff.
- 00:35:29And I'd be like, oh, dang I better do a good job.
- 00:35:31[LAUGHING] You know, like, holy crap.
- 00:35:33This is good. So you know.
- 00:35:35I think sort of just the general level of
- 00:35:39quality of humans that I was involved
- 00:35:42with-- Am involved in working with--
- 00:35:44really forced me to do my best
- 00:35:48possible effort that I could.
- 00:35:51GREG: That was like, the kind of game
- 00:35:54we dreamed of making, and one day we
- 00:35:56looked back, and it's like, oh, oh dang.
- 00:35:58I guess we kind of made one of those after all,
- 00:36:01and people liked it. So that was, yeah
- 00:36:04obviously very reassuring in addition to allowing us
- 00:36:08to stay in business and proceed
- 00:36:10to make more games together.
- 00:36:12AMIR: My favorite parts of Bastion
- 00:36:14are the parts that everyone else worked on.
- 00:36:16[LAUGHING] so I love listening to the voiceover and the music,
- 00:36:21and the world of Bastion that Greg wrote
- 00:36:23And Greg also designed half the levels.
- 00:36:26I, like, much more enjoy playing his levels
- 00:36:28than the levels I worked on.
- 00:36:30You know, just knowing what Gavin and Andrew
- 00:36:33were able to build in terms of an engine,
- 00:36:35the technology that's the basis for everyhing we do today
- 00:36:37over the course of such a short period of time.
- 00:36:40Yeah, Jen's art, obviously. the people who
- 00:36:43chipped in a little bit of help here and there along the way.
- 00:36:46I think about the relationships on that game,
- 00:36:48and I feel really good because I still got 'em.
- 00:36:51Still working with these people.
- 00:36:53So it's a really, really, really, really nice thing
- 00:36:55about Bastion, because I think about the people who made it.
- 00:36:58And I think about their work, and I feel really
- 00:37:04good that we're still working together.
- 00:37:08[MUSIC - DARREN KORB, "BUILD THAT WALL (ZIA'S THEME)"]
- 00:37:32ZIA (SINGING): I dig my hole,
- 00:37:34you build a wall.
- 00:37:41I dig my hole, you build a wall.
- 00:37:50One day that wall is gonna fall.
- 00:37:57Gon' build that city on a hill.
- 00:38:05Gon' build that city on a hill.
- 00:38:14Someday those tears are gonna spill.
- 00:38:22So build that wall, and build it strong.
- 00:38:30'Cause we'll be there before too long.
- 00:38:41Gon' build that wall up to the sky.
- 00:38:50Gon' build that wall up to the sky.
- 00:38:59Someday your bird is gonna fly.
- Supergiant Games
- Bastion
- Indie Game Development
- Video Game Design
- Team Collaboration
- Game Music
- Narrative Design
- Artistic Direction
- Technical Challenges
- Publishing