As Bastion celebrates its 15-year anniversary, a re-evaluation suggests the game's nuanced portrayal of temperamental gods and human faith surpasses that of its celebrated successor, Hades. While both Supergiant Games titles explore relationships with divinity, Bastion is argued to delve into devotion and belief with greater depth and complexity.
Bastion's narrative touches upon religious cultures through implications, such as the Ura, an outsider group with shared religious traditions trivialized by their society. While the game dedicates a level to the bull god Pyth and briefly mentions others, its religious world is largely defined by texture and implication, allowing for a more profound thematic exploration of faith. In contrast, Hades and its sequel, while revisiting these religious ideas more explicitly, are seen to do so with less thematic depth. Bastion, in this view, more directly captures real devotion and its complexities.
Mechanically, Bastion shares foundational elements with Hades. Both games feature a central hub that is upgraded using resources gathered from hostile environments. They also offer unique weapons with upgrade paths, spirits that function similarly to Hades' trinkets, and a fast-paced action-RPG combat system. However, as an action game, Bastion is considered by some to be inferior to Hades, which is lauded as a masterclass in player affect and a fully realized power fantasy.
The patronage of gods is a central concept in both games, but their implementation differs significantly. In Bastion, a shrine allows players to select gods, increasing game difficulty in ways that reflect their domains while rewarding players with more experience and money. For instance, Pyth's patronage might make enemies faster, while Yudrig's could allow enemies to harm on touch. This represents a direct, often hostile, exchange: divine aid comes at a tangible cost, forcing players to make difficult choices about prioritization.
Hades retains a similar mechanic, but it is largely relegated to post-game content and stripped of its narrative association with the gods. Throughout the main game, the gods' patronage is a structuring element, with their powers often freely given to Zagreus. While a god might spitefully empower foes if another is chosen, they typically grant their power regardless. The gods are also integrated into Hades' relationship mechanics, allowing players to court their friendship or romance. This contrasts with Bastion, where relationships with gods are textually fraught, and the possibility of war between Hades and Mount Olympus looms. In Hades, Zagreus never faces a true dilemma in prioritizing gods or their boons, lacking the real sacrifice and consequence present in Bastion.
Bastion's approach to divine favor is framed as a reciprocal, yet often hostile, relationship. The narrator notes, "The gods never liked competing for people's affections," and attempting to appease all of them simultaneously can turn the game into a "madhouse," implying the benefit of selectivity. A song warns, "Gods ain't gonna help you, son. You'll be sorry for what you done." This highlights a core difference: Bastion's Kid is an everyman hero shaped by fate, while Hades' Zagreus is a demigod, implying a fundamentally different and more accommodating relationship with the pantheon.
Bastion's mechanics are also more simplistic, with divine patronage effects reduced to mere percentages. This is described as clean, akin to a business deal, lacking the ambiguity of cults and rituals. Ironically, this approach is argued to capture more accurately what religious practice might have felt like in ancient Greece, involving rituals and sacrifices with the expectation of explicit reward. Bastion's depiction of relationships with gods, with their inherent costs and hopes for a better world, is seen as a more realistic portrayal of faith and sacrifice than Hades, which offers power more freely and with less consequence. The game's conclusion, presenting the Kid with a choice about the future of the world, is framed as a "divine question," emphasizing the game's engagement with profound themes of belief and action in the face of insurmountable forces.