A friend told me he’d been playing this little game named ‘Braid’ and that I really should get hold of it; he said it’s right up my street.
For a tenner on Steam, I downloaded Braid and set about discovering the most challenging platform game I’ve come across so far. Despite no puzzle piece eluding me for more than a few hours, I call it the most challenging because, not only is the process of completing it a good challenge, but the story itself is mostly abstract. Until we reach what seems to be the end, at least. That feeling of revelation is rare – I’d recommend it to anyone. I resisted the urge to look up the solutions to both the gameplay puzzles and the storyline until the end, at which point I considered what Braid was actually all about before looking up what anyone else was saying.
The Beginning
The guy we play is named Tim and he starts out as a shadow against the backdrop of a gently burning city. We learn he is on a quest to save ‘The Princess’ because ‘she has been snatched by a horrible and evil monster.’ We’re also told ‘this happened because Tim made a mistake.’ The storyline is unveiled through storybooks you open by running in front of them, their giant paragraphs floating above your head.
If you don’t take the time to bother with the piece-meal storytelling you will miss about 80% of what Braid actually has to offer you.
The Gameplay
The gameplay takes place over six different ‘worlds’. The game actually starts you in World 2. It appears to be a straight forward platform adventure until you discover upon your first death that you are in complete control of time, able to run it in either direction. Rather than be punished for your mistakes, you are given the power to learn from them, undo them, and become all the wiser for them. Already the philosophies of Braid begins to emerge.
Apart from collecting the essential key to unlock that door blocking you from the exit, each level in each world gives you the chance to collect puzzle pieces, putting them together to form imagery based on what you read about Tim’s quest. All of this requires messing about with the flow of time in some clever ways, and each world introduces its own laws and mechanics that help to build the complexity of each level’s solution.
The Story
There’s an actual literal story hidden until the final part of the game, but from this story the ideas presented in the clouds preceding each level build a cautionary philosophical tale, which I’m focussing on.
As the gameplay mechanics of each world build on all those previous, demanding more complex thinking in several dimensions, so does Braid’s story, and this is one of the reasons I can say that Braid can be held aloft as a champion of the ‘Games as an Artform’ concept. Some levels require us to create parallel possibilities running simultaneously to our own, interacting with eachother to achieve progress, and wonderfully enough the storyline is doing pretty much the same. The game we play, and what we can read in the books before each world, is a big metaphor for the storyline – while the events of Super Mario’s adventure to save the Princess is taken as literal, we play a reflection of the layers of thought-provoking messages in Braid. This simple cartoonish concept (rescue the Princess) overlays a reality we discover as we go on.
As I progressed into World 5 I noticed the Ouroborus theme emerge and I began to actually gain a meaningful interpretation of what I was reading.
As I said earlier, we begin at World 2 and we’re told he’s on a quest to reach the Princess. The backdrops to the game’s levels are Summer-like and blissful. We’re reminded from then on that he is looking for the Princess, at all costs. We’re told that some years ago, he and the Princess enjoyed a relationship that looked sweet and idyllic but disquieting notions murmered into his ear. One night he picked up his travel bag and, giving one last kiss, left her. At the beginning of World 5 (I think), we read that there was a girl in his life who he left in search of the Princess. We’re told he didn’t even have to tell her what he was about to do, like it was mutually understood – he just picked up his travel case, gave her a kiss, and left. During an unspecified time after Tim leaves her, she still imagines he is there each night to comfort her. This storytelling takes place before the world in which the key gameplay mechanic is creating concurrently running parallel possibilities – what is and what isn’t, but could be. His mistaken departure from the Princess ‘years ago’ and the departure from his sweetheart to find the Princess is exactly the same.
Ouroborus: We start the game with the city backdrop burning orange. At about World 6, we’re told that Tim is at odds with everyone around him and he seeks that perfect moment when he is reunited with the Princess and the world shines brightly, the sweetest perfection. And yet the point of view of the rest of the world on this event is fleeting in its optimism, giving way to the dark metaphor that it would be akin to setting your childhood home on fire, destroying all security. This is actually of particularly sad significance to the reality in Braid’s story. Funnily enough, I’m pretty sure the last puzzle picture is of Tim near the beginnings of a fire, and while World 2’s level backdrop was summery and blissful, World 6’s backdrop is of a gently burning city.
Ouroborus: And in the final level of the final world, we actually see the princess whose existance by now is seriously doubted. The whole level is running backwards in time, including the soundtrack and every sound effect, even while we are running forwards – but which is actually running backwards in time: the world or Tim? She’s running from the ‘evil monster’ above us, who has also initiated a wave of destructive fire rushing upon us while we’re running to keep up with her. The two of you pull levers that open doors in eachother’s half of the level, essential teamwork for both the Princess and us to escape. We reach the end, we’re in arms reach of the Princess… and then we have to run time backwards to progress, but Tim himself is now running in the direction of time akin to the rest of the world – a corrected perspective. The princess and he run back towards the beginning of the level, and now it looks like she’s trying to trap Tim, close open doors rather than open the way for him. I thought this was most clear (and was the first moment I realised what was actually happening) when what before was her covering a pit for me to cross now looked like a pit she was opening for me to fall into, but failing. She runs leaping into the arms of the what we thought was the ‘evil monster’. Turns out Tim is no hero after all. Tim goes through the door back at the start of the level, and he emerges in front of a gently burning city. Not only does this make clear that Braid has been running backwards in time (something I didn’t pick up on as fast as some others, it seems), but the endless loop theme is also made stark.
It makes absolute sense that the key gameplay tool of Braid is the reversal of time, because I believe Braid gives us warnings about incorrect perceptions of our own personal timelines – warnings about dissatisfaction. We’re told that, during Tim’s quest, he revisits memories of his time with his parents in his childhood, memories of his awkwardness in higher education. Almost his entire story involves his memories, revisiting past events as if physically re-experiencing them, using his memories as a protection against his present; never forgetting his impossible quest for his perfect prize – the Princess. For you and me, she represents the perfect ideal. Whether it’s the perfect relationship, the perfect job, the perfect life, it doesn’t matter. Tim has always wanted what he cannot have – one of the last stories we are told about him (funnily enough, one of the earliest events in his life) is from when he a very young child, wailing for his mother to buy him some sweet-looking confection behind the glass of a shop window, only to be told "No Baby, maybe when you’re older."
I believe Tim is absorbed by doubt and discontentment fueled by this desire. The fact he leaves the girl who loves him to find the Princess, and remembers leaving the Princess in exactly the same way, and that he is living in an endless loop, tells me this could actually be the same event. At the end of the game we’ve discovered that what he believed was a
noble quest was actually an obsession, stalking something he can, or
should, never have. In his obsession for the perfect ideal, he finds uncertainty in what he already has in life – a wonderful relationship with a girl who understands him – and destroys it. Perhaps a lost chance at happiness that he is endlessly trying to restore.
Epilogue
Turns out, there’s a story after all. It takes a little work to discover it all in the Epilogue, but in doing so we realise the sombre truth. One of the pieces of the epilogue story contains what appeared to be a few quotes from other sources, which I Googled – and in so doing confirmed the theory that this was a story about the quest to make, and the ramifications of, the atomic bomb. There may be naysayers of this idea but it’s very clear once you read all the text available in the Epilogue level. That great wall of fire in the final level probably has some significance! If you want to find out more about this and read more specific interpretations of each world, check out this further reading:
This well produced article: The Story of Braid by XG3
There’s also this well constructed forum post at rllmukforum.
So what do I reckon Braid is telling us on a personal level?
Blinded by a conviction that there is something greater to be had, something better in store, we risk losing far more. More often than not, when we can actually reach that unreachable star that we think is the key to happiness, the opposite is true and the sacrifices we made to reach it are made unavoidably clear. By then, it’s too late. I think Braid’s message is to put away the childlike obsession with that which we don’t have and to recognise what we have right now – learning contentment with what is, rather than putting all our efforts into what could be. Else, we risk trapping ourselves in the endless cycle of trying to reach the unreachable, over and over and over, and never being happy as a direct consequence.
In short, Braid is the longest depiction of the phrase ‘The grass is always greener on the other side’ that I’ve experienced to date!
Recurring in spaaaaaace 