The artistic style and strategic combat creates a fun and visually
appealing game but Bastions greatest innovation is a reactive real
time narrator. As the player acts the narrator recounts the current
events. When described the system sounds like it could be annoying
but Supergiant games handles it perfectly. The voice actor for the
narrator is perfect in every scene. He portrays the narrator as a
gruff yet soothing character so that for the eight to ten hours,
a person plays, the narrator is always fun to hear. In some ways
the narrator makes the game. His humor delivered in such a deadpan
makes normal events much more interesting. For example, if the
player were to accidentally fall of a ledge, the narrator simple
states, “And the Kid fell to his death.” the player re-spawns,
“Just kidding.” But because of the games design, if the player were
to fall of the edge again, the narrator would either say something
different or nothing at all. According to the developers, they
recorded over 3000 lines of dialogue for the narrator. So even in
one play through, the player will only hear about half of what the
narrator as to say. In some ways, the main character is not the Kid,
but instead the narrator and his tale to fix the world around him.
Bastion Blog 5