Bastion

Bastion is a hack-and-slash RPG set in an imaginary world after an uncertain apocalypse. You play as a teenager with a troubled past, guided by a reactive narrator as you work together to rebuild the world from a central hub called the Bastion. The game features unlockable weapons, weapon upgrades, practice mini-games, and optional difficulty modifiers.

Bastion is set after the Calamity, a sudden catastrophe that shattered the city of Caelondia and the surrounding world into floating fragments, disrupted the ecology, and reduced most of the population to ash. Players control the Kid, a silent protagonist who awakens on one of the few remaining pieces of the old world and heads for the Bastion—where everyone was meant to go in troubled times. There he meets Rucks, an elderly survivor and the game’s narrator, who tells him to recover the Cores that once powered Caelondia. Using the crystalline Cores, a device within the Bastion can form new landmasses and structures, and it also unlocks “skyways” that launch the Kid through the air to reach distant areas. On his journey, the Kid encounters two more survivors: Zulf, an ambassador of the Ura—an underground people once at war with Caelondia—and Zia, an Ura girl raised in Caelondia. Both return to the Bastion, but after the Kid finds and reads a journal, Zulf deliberately damages parts of the Bastion’s central device (the monument) and goes back to Ura territory. The Kid learns the journal belonged to Zia’s father, Venn, a worker for the Caelondians who helped their scientists, the “Mancers,” create a weapon meant to wipe out the Ura and prevent another war. Venn rigged the weapon to backfire, and when he was forced to activate it, the resulting Calamity destroyed most of Caelondia as well. To repair the damage Zulf caused, the Kid begins collecting Shards, a lesser form of Core. As he secures the second-to-last Shard, the Ura attack the Bastion, damage it further, and abduct Zia. Over the next seven days, the Kid fights sporadic skirmishes in Ura territory. After breaking through an Ura outpost and reuniting with Zia, she explains she left with the Ura voluntarily to learn their intentions; Rucks had told her the Bastion might have a way to fix the Calamity. The Kid then travels to the Ura homeland—once underground—to retrieve the final Shard. There, he finds Zulf under attack by his own people, who blame him for leading the Kid to their home and for the devastation the Kid has caused to Ura forces. At this point, the Kid can choose to lower his weapon and help Zulf or leave him behind. If the Kid abandons Zulf, he destroys the remaining Ura forces and escapes via a skyway. If he carries Zulf, Ura archers initially fire on them but eventually stop, silently watching as the two take the skyway back to the Bastion. After the Kid returns and recovers, Rucks presents a final choice: use the Bastion to rewind time to before the Calamity in hopes of preventing it, or use its power to evacuate the survivors and move on to safety. Rucks admits he cannot know whether rewinding time would truly prevent the Calamity from happening again, since the process was never tested. Either ending closes with images of the characters—also showing Zulf if he was rescued—either flying away or living their lives before the Calamity as the credits roll. In New Game+, unlocked after finishing the story once, it is hinted that restoring the world did not prevent the Calamity.