Braid

If you've not finished Braid, stop reading here, drop your $15 / 1200 points and go play the game already. What follows will ruin the game for you so stop reading. The discovery of the levels and story is half of the fun.

*** SPOILERS *** Some things can be not undone or unseen.

Both the story and game play seemed strait forward after playing the "first level". Level 2. Upon playing the last level I'm not as sure. I'm not really that sure that the bits of the story between 2 and 1 matter all that much, other than to hint at Tim playing his life in reverse, starting with a happy moment with his princess, or perhaps a happy moment with another.

Playing through the game you're confronted with a melancholy vibe yet some how in Tim's perseverance there's a hint that all might not be for naught and that there's a happy ending waiting in another castle. I did cheat a little before finishing the game tonight, I read the names of the achievements. The last one, "closure" kind of prepped me for what was in fast the last level, level 1.

Taken without the epilog it would seem that in the end, or at least parts of it, Tim's quest was not to reunite with his princess but rather to remember and understand why they are no longer together. It would seem that Tim had made a decision to leave at the same time she did. Through their journey apart they attempted to thwart each other's progress and block each other's path until his princess found her night in shinning armor. In the end, the monster that had captured the princess was Tim. Closure is the right word to describe the feeling in the end.

The text at the start of each chapter seems to confirm Tim's walk through his life's memories, remembering all the unhappy times, and stumbling blocks along the way. It does seem to lead him to the realization that in the end closure is the real thing he seeks.

The bulk of the epilog leaves me confused however. It seems to reference the story playing on two levels. One as the seeking, loss and coping of a couple who's relationship has disintegrated and on another it seems to serve as an allegory for man's quest for peace and how in the end it has ultimately lost hope for the peace he sought because of what he had found. It implies. some what directly that man had made a mistake that could not be undone, when we learned how to create the atomic bomb. The one set of quotes in the epilog directly relates to the famous quote by J. Robert Oppenheimer, although the phrasing and word choice is some what different.

I really hope Jonathan Blow eventually puts into writing, either on his own blog or by way of an interview, what he really meant to tell in the story. Discussing what it might mean is great fun and all, but now that I've finished the game I want the sense of closure that knowing what the artist intended would bring.

In either case, the story leaves me feeling sad in a way. There was no happy ending for Tim, only a melancholy acceptance of what has been and a determined hope for a new beginning. In the end though, the fact that the game leaves me feeling is probably the greatest testament to it's quality.