[4] He was included as one of the final twenty designs to be featured on the main pitch image for a game codenamed Prometheus, which once approved, later materialized as Overwatch.

[3] Conceived as a robot able to transform into the turret itself, artist Arnold Tsang created many designs for Bastion, but the development team felt they were often too impersonal.

Subsequent designs added "Ganymede", a bird somewhat resembling a yellow Northern cardinal, and they felt it immediately brought out a "whimsical" side of the character.

[2] For cinematics, they took a different approach to community his character, relying heavily on body language to convey emotion such as constantly shaking when absorbing new information, or still when on the attack.

They tackle the problem, they used the released LEGO Bastion toy for reference, resizing some of the pieces accordingly to help maintain the character's in-game proportions.

Bastion was severely damaged in the field near the German village of Eichenwalde in the Black Forest during the final days of the war, and was left dormant and exposed to the elements.

His ultimate ability was "Configuration: Tank", which allowed him to roll on treads and fire explosive rounds from a smooth-bore cannon for a short period of time.

Bastion underwent a major rework for Overwatch 2, losing the Tank reconfiguration in favor of an artillery form that can bomb three locations on the current map.

[24][25][26] Disdain for the character remained even his gameplay was adjusted to a point he was considered unviable for competitive play, with Alena Alambiegi of Mashable describing him as "uniquely hated" and seen as a "running joke" in the game.

Ethan Gach in an article for Kill Screen stated that due to the character within the scope of Overwatch the "mantra of 'aim better, click harder' actually does produce results", encouraging players to instead of charging forth plan and accept that some fights were unwinnable.

[26] Kotaku's Luke Plunkett meanwhile appreciated how different Bastion was as a character in the first-person shooter genre, noting that while he had options similar to others, his gameplay was rooted more in knowing the layout of the game's loaded arena and best location to deploy his gatling gun, comparing it to gameplay found in the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) genre of gaming.

"[29] Kris Ligman of Fanbyte stated that while the Overwatch story had "toyed with its 'post-war, reignited conflict' narrative setting in a few ways", Bastion's portrayal in the short could be interpreted as having post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

While he admitted the comic was likely not intentionally bringing up these philosophical questions, it illustrated how the Overwatch universe was less about clear good versus evil and instead how humanity reacts when technology achieves consciousness.