LIMBO?

So I finished LIMBO today and it got me to thinking about story, and how some games approach it in unique ways.

See here's LIMBO, a brilliantly artistic game with a definite sense of moody atmosphere, but the story is essentially whatever you want to make of it. Is the kid running from something? Is he trying to get somewhere? Is he trapped in some eternal death machine? Any one of these could be correct, or none of them.

There's nothing in the game that gives you a sense of what's going on, and really maybe it doesn't really matter. As a challenging, and sometimes rewarding, moody platform puzzler LIMBO succeeds. Even without dialogue, or context, it kept me playing. Maybe I just wanted to see the next new and unique way the developers had devised to kill that kid. God knows I had to have killed that kid hundreds of times. Electrocuted, stabbed by giant spiders, torn to bits by saw blades, and jumped to his death, again, again, and again. Maybe that's part of the fun in LIMBO, maybe the whole point of it is to die, get back up, and try again.

Was I satisfied? I thought the game did a great job artistically, and there were some moments where it made a wry smile creep up onto my face. LIMBO definitely pleased me, but it left me wondering.

What exactly did I just play for the last 3 hours?

Bastion: The Value of Details

Notably I'm a little late to the Bastion party. I've been hearing nothing but good things about it, and all my friends have already finished the game. So when it was available through the Humble Indie Bundle 5 I had no choice but to buy it. Given the quality of Bastion I would've gladly paid full price, but getting it for such a deal is equally spectacular.


I think the best way to describe Bastion was something my girlfriend said. I booted up the game, started my first playthrough, and from across the room it was simply:

"What is that? It looks amazing!"

She doesn't even play computer games. At most you could find her deeply involved in a round of Words With Friends, but that would be about the extent of her "gaming." So for a game to gain her interest to that degree is something worth a great deal of praise. The art direction is just that good. Vibrant colors, and crisply drawn environments are painterly. The use of colors perfectly conveys the appropriate feeling for the story at that moment, and all of the areas have their own unique flavors. You want to keep exploring it to find out what's just around the bend. Put together with simple controls and yet an extremely complex combat system makes for a unique taste of action RPG adventure.

The way the game world builds itself up around you as you walk through it is not only a plot device, but an exceptionally amazing way to grab your attention from the first moment you step into Bastion. Combined with the subtle narrator voice dictating your story to you as you perform it makes this more than just an RPG. It grabs you and says, "Hey you. Take notice. Bastion is something you'll want to discover." The story involves you in a way that few games can achieve because of all the little details. The narration makes the story more personal, there's no gigantic walls of text to read and since everything is being told to you during your adventure you gain a connection between the narrator and your actions.

He's telling you what you need to know, and he's telling you about yourself. It's all canned recordings, but the manner in which this information is presented to you makes it feel natural, fluid almost. It feels like your personal story, not some list pre-recorded plot highlights.

Bastion is the game you want to keep playing and it's the little details that make it succeed so well.

GW2 What is your story?

ArenaNet recently posted an amazing story about the real world inspiration for Ameranth, a Sylvari NPC who's decided to venture every corner of Tyria. They mention that you can find her outside of The Black Citadel, which is definitely true. I stumbled across this particular Sylvari during the beta and was definitely curious why she was standing there on the steps of the Charr fortress. Not only was she completely across the continent, the towering structures of iron and flame were a massive contrast to the Sylvari standing at their steps. The designers have definitely put quite some time into polishing the GW2 world and living up to their claim to create a living and breathing Tyria.

To think that it's entirely possible that there could be any number of other characters in GW2 who have been inspired by such stores is great. We already know that the ArenaNet team is going to great lengths to build community for GW2, and given that they've said that they will be making sure to add post-launch content there's no question that any other stories or events worthy of praise could get included into the game with ease. They even go on to add that anyone could go out and have a similarly epic real life quest. You don't have to be superman, you just need to get up and walk out the door. ArenaNet keeps asking in GW2 "What is your story?" maybe now is the time to find out. After all, you could be next to be immortalized into Tyria, forever standing as a hero against the Elder Dragons.