we can’t go back, we can only go forward
in bastion, all that remains of the world after the event known only as the calamity are little floating scraps of earth and rock. as you journy amongst these broken steps, the path you’ve taken is always visible behind you. the ground in front of you doesn’t appear until you’re nearly on top of it. so you’re always sure of where you’ve come from, but one misstep can send you plummeting off the edge of the world into oblivion. should this happen, you reappear at the edge again. you’re free to run off again, making the same mistake over and over, or you can go in an unknown direction, opening up a new path.
so it’s fitting that one of the big choices the game offers at the end is to go back in time to replay history - knowing full well that there’s nothing to prevent the calamity from happening again. or, you can continue to forge ahead in this new, post-calamity world. the game doesn’t suggest one over the other, but if you’ve been paying attention at all throughout the game, it seems almost criminal to damn history to repeating itself.
