Braid

Ah dear, neglected blog, how I've missed you. Unfortunately life has gotten in the way again. It is not that I don't love you too, it's just that....well, perhaps I had less to say than I used to. Love B.

As ever, whenever I feel myself falling into a stupor of writing incompetence, it's a medium other than music which pulls me back from the brink. In this case it's the 2008 award-winning videogame Braid.

How to explain its effect on me? Well perhaps I'll try a leaf out of its book.

"And so it clicks. The melancholy irridescence that shimmers across not only the backgrounds and the domineering strings that have severed the bright and sparkling outset, but the snippets of longing and obsession that cloud this simple characters journey. Having been chased from your goal and the object of Tim's obsession snatched away by a perceived rival, you have a chance to reflect upon Braid's time-warping escapades. Only a few minutes before, time was running backwards and Tim was being eagerly helped by his princess to reach her - foiling traps and sprinting away from the evil knight who would snatch her away as well as the horrifying onset of flame, burning and destroying everything in its path. But as we draw back from that moment we get further away from the goal. Back into musing upon whatever invention Tim has been plotting - his princess - and how reversing mistakes have caused everything. #

Each world draws strength from a single mechanical concept that alters it completely from what you played before. The art direction and musical score absorbs this change and distributes it.

The ring, an object that weighs Tim down just like Frodo and Bilbo's counterpart, has an inexorable draw that slows progress of anything within its circumference. It seems that Tim's obsession draws other people into it, eagerly eating away their time. Lonely shadows who can only imitate Tim's actions until they fade away, despondent, into nothing represent the repetition of past mistakes. Their sad, shoe-gazing expression break hearts. World 4 sees Tim's every step manipulating the flow of time. Your actions affect everything around you apart from the very few. Consequences of whatever Tim is planning will inevitably have a huge impact on his world. By the time we've reached the beginning of the game - we are innocently traipsing into Tim's darkened world, his house full of memories and realising that we are able to, gloriously, rewind time so as to never have to worry about making a mistake again. Progress is unstoppable, even time - the one thing we all have - cannot prevent human folly.

And so it is that two legendary quotes from scientists resonate strongly. Ploughing through the game to its ultimate end, by collecting the hidden stars, reveals a new beginning with which to end the game, this one fatal. Tim, more determined than ever, manages to grasp the princess in her escape. A bright white explosion engulfs the screen. The atomic bomb has been dropped."

Quite apart from the incredible storytelling device of rewinding time to turn the storyline on its head, gaming convention has also been twisted. The princess did not want to be saved, she wanted to be rescued from you. The countless homages to gaming past - "The princess is in another castle", flagpoles, Jumpman - are merely utilised to ease you into a world where an innocent 2D platformer can become a strategic puzzle game whose plot is an allegory for the creation of the most deadly weapon known to man. Every little touch - the shadow that becomes your companion but whom is being used for your own benefit, the amazingly deft conclusion to the world where running forwards keeps time going in the right direction which results in a poignant comment on progress both in life and in virtual life, even down to the simple beauty of slotting the puzzle pieces together to form a picture whose image relates to the themes inherent in that world - is a delight. Every moment not spent tackling the brain-taxing methods to capture those puzzle pieces is spent pondering the philosophical questions constantly prodding at you. It's a 2D platform game, one of the oldest forms of videogaming available, that has more depth than the average technologically advanced-3D shooter, and even some RPGs. Its open-ended nature is a call to imagine, something severely lacking in film, literature and videogames today.
It's a game I don't feel guilty extolling the virtues of nor spending some time thinking about, because it's clearly art as well as a challenging game requiring lateral thinking. There's the simple pleasure of warping time into your own shape for linear ends, but its a wonderful - nay - powerful feeling. It must've felt the same once science had reached its logical conclusion and formed a doomsday weapon. Unlike that discovery though, Braid enables the player to reflect on how far videogames have come and yet how perfect they were from the very start.