If Bastion had been made by hundreds of people instead of just a handful, it would have started with a big-huge bang. The city of Caelondia would go from an everyday murmur to a cacophony of toppling buildings and panicked, immolated citizens while a tutorial told you to quickly crouch here, jump there and look at all this stuff we spent 10 million dollars on. The land would shake itself to rubble, the screen would blur and black out, and the logo would appear alongside a crass, Hans Zimmer honk.

BASTION

This version starts with you getting out of bed. All you know is that a calamity has wrecked the world -- and that you must be a heavy sleeper. A warm, attentive narrator identifies you as "The Kid," a character so central to the story that the world literally reforms beneath his feet, step-by-step. For reasons that I'll leave you to discover for yourself, The Kid and a handful of other apocalypse survivors are drawn to The Bastion, a floating island that may offer safety, answers, and perhaps a roll of duct tape large enough to put the world back together.