Michael Bunning's blog

After my last post, on the criticism of Braid at rllmuk (criticism as in literary criticism or film criticism, not as in people being disparaging of the game), I’ve been thinking about what I like about the game.

The gameplay is interesting, but to me it’s nothing all that amazing. You’ve got different worlds, all of which have similar (though subtly different) rules, and you use the different rules to solve puzzles. It’s pretty straightforward in that regard (at least until you get to the last level, where that mechanic is subverted very well). I’m not all that bowled over by the level structure either: you start in World 2 and it’s pretty clear from the beginning that the final world will be World 1.

Mainly what I like is the way in which the narrative is handled. It’s pretty crude in parts – backstory is done through reading books rather than through using the time-reversal mechanic to take the player back to Tim’s childhood, for example – but this works well because of the ephemeral nature of the backstory: the player’s never sure whether Tim is really rescuing a princess he knows and who is held captive (though the last level’s pretty clear on that point), whether he’s searching for a princess he’s never met or whether he’s searching for a lost love; whether the princess is real, an abstract concept or a metaphor for something. Or whether it’s all of the above. I think the abstraction certainly adds something to the narrative (in the way the terminal text did with Marathon), but what I’m most impressed with is the way that many of the finer ‘emotional’ points of the narrative are hinted at by the art style (World 2 has a sunny, cottage-garden feel of optimism, but as the game progresses the worlds get progressively darker and more unusual), by the paintings that the player assembles which again hint at key narrative points (which I haven’t figured out yet but have read some very enjoyable – and possibly ‘correct’ – interpretations of); the music, which works as an emotional touchstone when playing both forwards and backwards; and the way that these aspects aren’t forced on the player: the player experiences the story without recourse to MGS4-style exposition cutscenes which wreck immersion.

Most of all, I’m impressed with the way Jonathan Blow has told a story which is very interesting, but without forcing it on the player: he’s managed to tell this story in an unintrusive way, using platform game mechanics. If only people designing shooters and RPGs could figure out how to do the same!

I haven’t fully finished Braid yet. I’ve gone through all the levels and collected all of the puzzle pieces, and read all of the books, but I’m still collecting stars. I’ll post again, with a more complete response to the game (and to that rllmuk topic I keep banging on about), once I’ve got all of the stars and seen the ‘secret’ ending.