When speaking with Greg Kasavin, one gets the feeling that he doesn't want the attention he's been receiving since Bastion was revealed to the public last year. Kasavin, who most gamers know from his work as Editor-in-Chief at GameSpot, is the Writer on Supergiant Games' debut project; an eye catching, action RPG that will be kicking off XBLA's Summer of Arcade on July 20^th. "We are all about Bastion right now," He explains as if to divert my questions from anything that's not related to the game.

Kasavin always speaks about Bastion from the plural perspective. He calls it "our dream project" and "our baby". Supergiant Games, co-founded by Amir Rao and Gavin Simon (and not Kasavin, as he points out) is more akin to a rock band than a game developer. They are smaller in number than Arcade Fire, and they seem to have formed in the same garage style that most band's do. Much of the team met in Los Angeles as part of EA LA while working on Command and Conquer 3. They brought in Andrew Wang an engineer from the ruins of Infinity Ward, the talented artist Jen Zee, and enlisted the musical stylings of Rao's friend Darren Korb. That deep, baritone voice you hear narrating your every movement in the game is Rao's childhood friend Logan Cunningham. That's the entire team, full stop.

They might be Supergiants (from left): Amir Rao, Gavin Simon, Jen Zee, Greg Kasavin, Darren Korb

It is a far cry from the hundred person team Kasavin was working on at EA LA. "We wanted to make games our own way," says Kasavin. "We were playing these games like Plants vs. Zombies and Braid and Castle Crashers and we felt envious of these games because they were so good and we were working with a hundred people making something that we weren't..." He stops himself as if to avoid saying anything rude, and simply concludes, "It felt really different."

Kasavin sounds like a man who has been working his whole life to get to where he is now. Though he spent ten years in journalism, he has always had the desire to make games. "When I was eight years old, I was playing Ultima 4 and I was filled with this feeling of, 'I don't know how this was done but it's what I want to do.' It's a very vivid memory for me."  He explains his departure from GameSpot, "Getting into game development, it was like, 'If I don't hurry up and do this I may run out of time'".

Kasavin cites Cormac McCarthy's novels as a large influence on Bastion's story

However, he didn't take the job at Supergiant Games the first time it was offered to him. "Amir and Gavin quit their jobs, moved into a house and started working on Bastion in September of 2009. I couldn't make the same sacrifices as them. I took a job at 2K Games full time." He explains, "But when the opportunity presented itself again, I thought 'if I don't do this now, I may never have another shot at it.'"

Game development can be a treacherous career. Developers work long hours, and are often subject to wide spread layoffs after one failed venture. The team at Supergiant knows this fact all too well as EA LA was coincidentally the subject of the infamous EA Spouse Blog, which decried the working conditions at the developer. Kasavin himself had to convince his family that Supergiant Games was a smart gamble. "We only had savings to go off of. It's a scary thing to undertake but as soon as we announced Bastion the response was really good."

Bastion is reminiscent of classic SNES era action-RPG's

There is still a sense of anxiety to Kasavin as the release date approaches. However, the positive response to Bastion has helped calm his nerves. At E3, Bastion garnered some of the best buzz of the show, despite not being mentioned in Microsoft's press conference. At a show floor filled with big budget titles like Battlefield 3, Uncharted 3, and Bioshock Infinite, it's surprising that a game such as Bastion could garner as much excitement as it did. This is a trend that would not have existed just a few years ago. Says Kasavin, "I think digital distribution is the best thing to happen during this generation. On the one hand development costs are ballooning out of control but on the other hand you have these small teams that can make these personal and high quality games relatively affordably."

Downloadable games often use humor or a unique art style to help them stand out in a crowded online marketplace. While Bastion has both, its most immediately striking feature is the Narrator; a raspy, Sam Elliot type voice that narrates every move the protagonist makes. Kasavin explains how the Narrator became part of the game, "We wanted a game that had emotional weight to it but we didn't want to interrupt the play experience for the sake of the story either. We weren't going to have a Pixar animation like the first twenty minutes of Wall-E where not a word is said and it's great storytelling. We knew that we couldn't execute on something like that but we still wanted there to be that kind of emotion to it."

The Bastion launch trailer

That sentiment is something that is hard to find in video games. Many point to the downloadable market as the leader on unique, emotional experiences this generation. Games such as Braid, Limbo and Flower seem to be in a different league than the big blockbuster sequels that rule the shelves. Like independent films and music before them, the roles have reversed for the games industry and games like Bastion are now at the forefront of innovation. It would seem that if you ask Kasavin or anyone else at Supergiant Games, they wouldn't have it any other way.

This article is largely based on a conversation I had with Greg Kasavin on June 30th. I will be posting more about that conversation soon. Thank you to Greg for taking the time to speak with me. You can follow Greg on twitter at @kasavin and Supergiant Games at @SupergiantGames. You can find me at @indiejones84. Thanks for reading.