5.8 KiB
[D][Spoilers] The ending choices of Bastion (2011 Video Game)
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Author: u/AmeteurOpinions Finally, everyone was working together.*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/1zotw1/dspoilers_the_ending_choices_of_bastion_2011/
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Score: 7
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Created: 2014-03-06T03:40:30
Post:
THIS POST AND ITS COMMENT THREAD WILL CONTAIN FULL SPOILERS FOR THE GAME BASTION. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
So, at the end of that epic and excellent tales, Bastion gives you two choices. This sort of binary ending isn't all that rare in fiction, but there's something interesting about the Revert ending that I want to discuss.
Quick refresher:
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Restore - Use the power of the Bastion to revert time to before the Calamity, undoing the apocalypse. However, this will also undo all your efforts, and erase any trace of recent events, meaning that the Calamity could very well happen in the new timeline all over again.
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Evacuate - Use the power of the Bastion to leave the ruins of Caelondia behind and begin life anew elsewhere. This ending leaves the events intact, including the deaths of millions of innocent people.
On my first playthrough (the honest playthrough), I chose Evacuation. I did not think it was possible that you could clock back the universe and still prevent the calamity from happening. I believed that restoring the universe would only allow the Calamity to happen again and again, exactly as it did before.
But here's the question: is it ethical to allow millions of people to stay dead, or should you risk the possibility of them dying in an unknown timeline? The work of the Mancer's was imperfect; the fact the Calamity happened in the first place is proof of that. It seems reasonable to suggest their time manipulation could cause slight divergences in the new timeline.
Undo the past, or enter the future?
Comments:
u/None [+7] (7 hours later)
The work of the Mancer's was imperfect; the fact the Calamity happened in the first place is proof of that. It seems reasonable to suggest their time manipulation could cause slight divergences in the new timeline.
You have a tool that will rearrange all matter and energy within thousands of miles, and you don't trust it to function properly, so you are going to press the big red button and hope that it's broken in a way that is useful to you. As opposed to a way that will cause you and everyone else to experience their own horribly painful deaths again and again, for instance. Or destroy everything that's still alive.
u/rationalidurr [+2] If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight! (2 hours later)
If you could keep your memories in the rewound timeline then
Restore
If not then
Evacuate
u/FeepingCreature [+2] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (2 hours later)
But keeping your memories is the only way you could figure out that Restore doesn't go back far enough!
Anyway, I'm pretty sure all you can keep are isolated fragments of memories.
u/None [+2] (2 hours later)
Maybe the Restore takes you back to where the game began. Which is why you can hear the narrator before ever meeting him: it's all happened before.
u/FeepingCreature [+3] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (4 hours later)
Yes, this is implied.
u/None [+2] (19 hours later)
I actually took the restore option, but immediately regretted doing so. I then started to go back through the game to pick the other option, but it kept crashing.
The reason I found that restoring wasn't a good idea was that, well, it doesn't actually change anything. Maybe there's a small chance it does change anything, but the game doesn't show that.
I think the real question is whether or not it's moral to keep killing the same people over and over again until you get it maybe right.
u/AmeteurOpinions [+1] Finally, everyone was working together. (20 hours later)
What's worse, if you Restore and the device works as intended, the Caelondians wipe out the Ura. I think that's a far cry from a "good ending".
u/ExiledQuixoticMage [+2] (a day later)
I have played through the game several times and I can never bring myself to choose the Restore option. The way I see it if the device works perfectly then the calamity will happen again and each successive version of you will also choose Restore, creating an apocalyptic time-loop. If the device, which is powerful enough to turn back time and reverse thousands of deaths, does not function properly then there is no reason to think it will provide a better outcome.
The only safe option is to evacuate. At least that way there is hope for the future.
u/RMcD94 [+2] (a day later)
If you choose restore with determinism then you'll choose it again and again forever
u/None [+2] (4 days later)
I went Restore then Evacuate, and if the Narrator's deja vu is "reliable" then that's also how the canon timeline worked. As for why exactly Rucks is the only one who seems to display any sort of change between timelines, I've got no idea other than the fact that he's the only one we hear for the majority of the game.
If you recall, the way the Restoration works is by using the memories of the Windbags living in the Cores, but the only way for anything to change between Restorations is if the memories were imperfect, either initially or through some side effect of the Restoration itself. It's possible that after an arbitrarily large number of Restorations the feedback loop of imperfect memories will somehow result in the prevention of the Calamity, but I think that the differences the Kid would experience force him to choose Evacuation before any meaningful changes appear in any of the Mancers pre-Calamity.