Start Your Summer of Arcade with Bastion

29 Jun, 2011

Perhaps you’ve already heard the murmurings of how this little title, which won Best Downloadable Game of E3 2011, will blow your mind, but be prepared to see it in all its glorious action soon. Kicking off the 4th Annual Xbox Live Summer of Arcade, Bastion, the action RPG from Supergiant Games, will be hitting Xbox Live on July 20th. It’s just a little less than a month away, so don’t be shy about saving up for the 1200 Microsoft Points that’s required to buy it.

You saw that right. Microsoft is asking for a big 1200 on this title. But rest assured, it will be well worth your money according to the indie studio based in San Jose, California. “Bastion is an original action role-playing game featuring a reactive narrator who marks your every move, lush hand-painted 2D artwork, and tight responsive gameplay that rewards playing with finesse,” said Supergiant in describing Bastion on their website. “The game is designed to be simple to pick up and start playing, while offering a lot of rich choices around character customization as well as a deep story and gameworld you can lose yourself in.”

By now you’re already wondering why it’s not being released on any other platform. Not to worry; the only reason why it’s coming out one platform at a time is because of quality. “…the quality of our game is our primary concern, and that means having to focus on developing for one platform at a time,” said Supergiant Games. “Our secondary goal is to make Bastion available on as many platforms as makes sense – where there exists a sufficient demand and where we can offer the game without compromising on its quality.”

So what exactly is Bastion all about? You’re tossed into the world as a young man, and you’re trying to find your way to a place called Bastion. Your world has just been turned to shreds by something called the Calamity, and the Bastion serves as your people’s meeting place in the case of a severe emergency. We should hope that having your world get broken into pieces like a broken glass is a severe emergency.

Once at the Bastion, you find an old man, and like every mysterious old man, he claims that he can fix everything. But of course, he can’t do it by himself, so you have to help him. It’s always gotta be about helping the oldest guy in the room out, right? The quirky story will be narrated real-time as you navigate your way through the world. Whether it will serve as sarcastic commentary or sobering reminders of what exactly you’re doing, we don’t know. However, a demo will be offered of the prologue for the game so the wary players can give it a quick ride before making the buy.

It’s not going to be your typical open-ended game with puzzles. As a matter of fact, Supergiant said that puzzles didn’t fit in at all with the play style they had in mind. Your job is to simply wander through the world and enjoy what you can.

Sounding convinced? Check out the newest screenshots of this little gem, released earlier today: