Braid: An Analysis

Screen grabs are taking from YouTube videos found here and here.
(Who knew doing screenshots and captions would be such a pain?)

Also, the NeoGAF thread is here and the GameFAQs thread is here.

Now that it’s been a couple of weeks since Braid came out and people have moved on to Bionic Commando, I think we have a chance to reflect on it outside of the “bubble”. As a game itself, Braid is a great platformer/puzzle game designed to give you as many attempts as you need to complete a puzzle. Small annoyances that would make you go crazy in traditional platformers – mistiming a jump being the most egregious mistake one can make – are removed by the simple fact that you can reverse time at any point and try again. Of course, the downside is that the ability to easily retry a section also encourages a frustrating grind (I spent an hour trying to grab a star!), but I think that’s a small price to pay for the tremendous accessibility that the game gives you.

As for the “content” in the game, I really didn’t want to do a close reading of any section of the game. By now, the Atom Bomb theory has passed around the Internet and all I really want to say about that is that I’m glad more people have been exposed to the process of close reading. Present evidence, deliver argument, then conclude. For whatever reason, this process seems to be difficult to teach to undergrads... so maybe they just need something obtuse that forces them to think and to come up with something on their own. The only real problem that I have with this close reading is that it doesn’t address the larger context of the game, including the introductory books that begin each world and the events in the game itself (killer rabbits and cute plush dinosaurs?), and there may be contradictions or inconsistencies with this reading if you were to bring these elements into the fold.

What I want to focus on is the use of the time reversal mechanic and how that influences the integration of gameplay and storytelling. For the moment, let’s take the story we are giving at face value. You play as Tim, a person who may have made some kind of mistake with a woman in the past and wants to reconnect with her. Time reversal gives Tim (hey, Time without the “e”. I can’t believe I just noticed that!) the opportunity to correct his mistakes and even change the nature of causality (as one of the books points out, why are people punished for mistakes instead of rewarded for the learning experience mistakes can provide?) , allowing him to overcome several thematic obstacles in order to reach the “princess” who we assume is the girl he has been pining for throughout the game.

Throughout the entire game, you assume a level of agency that you become familiar with. Yes, each world treats time differently, but as the player you can always depend on the X button to reverse time regardless of the situation you find yourself in. Indeed, you come to expect that you will be able to fix any mistake you make in the game by pressing the X button to reverse time for a few seconds. The game wants you to have this agency because it makes the actual ending (World 1-1, not the epilogue) that much more personal. In World 1-1, you finally meet the princess you’ve been looking for. You see what appears to be the boss character, a very large man, carry the princess down to a platform above you. She jumps free of his grasp and he becomes angry, sending a wall of flame toward you from the left. In this final world in the game, you essentially must run through a final obstacle course to escape the wall of flame and, implicitly, reach the princess at the end of this ordeal. Additionally, as you play through the world, you get the distinct impression that the princess is doing everything in her power to try to help you get through the obstacle course. She’ll flip switches that raises platforms or lowers obstacles, allowing you to pass through the obstacles. In fact, perhaps in a moment that references ICO, you have to trust the princess to flip the switches for you – the wall of flame is mere centimetres away from you and the only option you have is to jump into a pit of spikes. Without any option, you make the jump and just as you are about to die, the princess flips a switch and a platform suddenly rises from the ground, saving your life and allowing you to continue through the world.


As you approach the end of the map, you see the princess approach her bedroom and as you get closer to reaching her, she falls asleep in her bed. When you jump to the space just outside her bedroom, time suddenly freezes and you lose all control of the game. You aren’t told to do anything or if anything had actually happened and instinctively, you reach for the X button because you’ve been trained that pressing the X button will fix any problems. When you do press and hold the X button, the game suddenly resumes – but instead of reversing time, time actually progresses normally. If you release the X button, the game stops and will only continue if you hold the X button again. An ability that previously gave the player a tremendous amount of agency suddenly becomes suffocating, uncontrollable and most importantly, unreliable.

A scene in which it seemed as if the princess and the player were working together in order to escape the evil boss character and imminent death now becomes extremely warped and twisted. Rather than be the valiant hero trying to reach the princess, you end up being a creepy guy standing outside of a girl’s bedroom, staring at her as she sleeps. Eventually, she wakes up, notices you and runs away from you. You try to follow her, running the same obstacle course but this time in reverse. Everything is exactly the same, but the entire scene is replayed through a distorted perspective. Rather than try to help you through the obstacle course, the princess is now actively trying to stop you from completing the course by dropping obstacles in your path. Indeed, moments where you thought that the princess was trying to save you from death were actually moments where the princess was actively trying to kill you. When you reach the end (or beginning, depending on your perspective) of the world, you see the boss character shout at the princess. While you first thought that this character was evil and had kidnapped the princess, it actually turns out that this character is a valiant knight, saving the princess from the evil character – YOU. Eventually, the princess jumps into the knight’s arms and they escape off screen. At this point, you are given control again but the only thing you can do is go through a door and head toward the Epilogue world. From this sequence, it’s undeniable – you aren’t the hero trying to reach and rescue the princess, you are the villain that the princess needs rescuing from!


There is one small example in this sequence that I’d like to point out here, because it will help explain how I come to my ultimate conclusion. As you watch the scene unfold by holding the X button, you will get to a scene that will be familiar to you. When you first encountered this segment of the map during normal gameplay, you see that the princess hit a switch that rotated a wall that was blocking your path. When you return to this segment during the “hold X” portion of the game, you see that the princess flipped this switch in order to block you from using a ladder to reach her. This is an example of what I believe is one of the themes of the game – the revisionist nature of memory. Assuming that this sequence is what “really happens” in this game world, all of Tim’s time reversal power is simply Tim re-imagining his life experience in his head. Most of us have experienced a moment in our lives that we replay in our heads, trying to figure out how a situation would have unfolded differently if we had just said something or did something different and this is exactly what Tim has done throughout the entire game. Indeed, this is why World 1-1 is the last level of the game. At this point, you are in the “present” in the game’s temporal continuity and you, as Tim, have simply replayed Tim’s memories in your head, revising and optimizing his memory in the process. Maybe Tim tried to ask a girl out and she told him to fuck off before going home with another guy. In his head, he’s able to “reverse time” and fix this memory so that he’s able to convince the girl to stay with him.



Now, for most players, this is basically the end of the game. And as it stands, this ending alone is a rather noteworthy example of how ludic and narratological experiences can work together to tell an effective story to the player. After you exit the Epilogue world, you are dumped right back at the beginning of the game. Everything appears to be exactly the same, except in the night sky, you see a group of star outlines forming a constellation in the night sky. This is the only clue that you get that tells you that there is much, much more to the game.


So what do I make of the eight secret stars? There’s the metagame aspect that’s worth looking at for a moment. First and foremost there is no achievement for getting the stars. When you complete the game for the first time, the only achievement that is listed as incomplete is the speedrun achievement. Whereas Blow wanted people to try for an optimal run-through of the game (the official speedrun time is 45 minutes for the entire game) as a challenge for the player after the game was complete, he didn’t mind if people ended up missing this second layer of challenge. In fact, going by NeoGAF and GameFAQs, there were many players who did not know about the stars until reading them (myself included).

One poster at NeoGAF suggested that this was a way to poke fun or at least acknowledge obsessive gamers who are completionists or who try to find ways to break a game/find secrets. Indeed, the first star that you can get (in World 2) requires you to sit by the game for two hours as a slow moving cloud platform scrolls to the left side of the screen. It’s almost reminiscent of that cancelled Penn and Teller game where you had to drive a bus across the country in REAL TIME (8 hours one way) and you had to sit and hold the controller or the bus would crash and you would have to start over. Now, Blow isn’t that much of a sadist and as long as you glance up at the screen once in a while, you don’t have to babysit your controller. But it’s almost as if he expected you to find something else to occupy your time as you waited to get this star and I believe that Blow is trying to put you into the headspace of Tim. Just as Tim is determined to use whatever means he has available to him to reach the princess, you are willing to put in the extra effort to reach these stars even if you do not know what the end result will be.

Of course, the real rub is that one of the stars is only obtainable if you haven’t completed the puzzle pieces in World 3. This means that if you’ve played and finished the game, you’ll have to make use of the “restart game” option and start over from the beginning. This may be frustrating if you’ve already completed the game... but much more so if you’ve spent the time to try to obtain the other stars. But I think Blow did this expecting that most players would not see that star and would have to restart the game. This not only implicitly nudges the player toward completing a speedrun, but it is also another attempt to put the player into Tim’s mindset. As you play through the game a second time, you know all the solutions to the puzzles in the game and your sense of agency is tremendously increased. Not only do you have the power to reverse time, but you know exactly what will happen in the future as well. As the player you actually have MORE power than Tim since at this point, you have full control of time. Yes, you can’t fast forward time but since you know exactly what will happen (especially in World 4 when your movements dictate the how time flows), it is an implied prescience that Blow wants you to experience as you replay the game.

This new sense of power leads to the final star in the game which, not coincidentally, is found back in the last level in the game, World 1-1. You play through the exact same scene again, with you trying to get to the princess by navigating the obstacle course, but this time there is an important difference. You’ll notice that two of the switches are immune to the time reversal mechanic (this is the “glowing green” game mechanic introduced in World 3) and that these switches block off some of the obstacles that slow down your progress. This gives you the clue that you should be able to exploit the timing of the level by flipping the switches and using your time reversal powers. If done correctly, you literally break the timing of the level and are able to get to a location in the world well before you should be able to. Again this whole sequence requires you to know exactly what happens in the world beforehand, relying on your ability to “see into the future” in order to figure out that you have to break the timing of the level in the first place. When you do this, you are able to not only reach the princess but get into her bedroom as well, as this is where you’ll find the final star in the game.


The game’s original ending is both a comment on the futility of agency, your power to reverse time ultimately does not help you get to the princess, and hints at the revisionist nature of memory, as I suggested above with an analysis of what happens in the original ending. With this ending however, agency is completely restored to the player and the “optimal” reality is the one that prevails. I’m not sure what Blow is trying to suggest here. Perhaps this is meant to be inspirational – if you try hard enough, you will be able to reach the princess after all. But it may also hint at a darker message, that when the trauma of the “truth” is impossible to accept, you’ll keep trying to undo the truth in your own imagination until you are unable to see reality at all. For me, the message isn’t what’s remarkable about the game – lots of the games have tried to impart a message to the player. No, what’s remarkable is that all of this is done THROUGH gameplay without any dialogue or without relying on a cutscene. Not only is it left up to the player to find her own interpretation of the ending (nuclear bomb allegory or not), the player also CREATES this ending. By integrating both endings so tightly into the gameplay, the player almost becomes Blow’s co-writer and is fully involved in how the ending will unfold.

Ultimately, this is why I think the game is one of the more important texts of this generation of games. Blow pushes Ken Levine’s “story through gameplay” design choice in Bioshock further, not only allowing the player to create the ending but also a chance to interpret the ending as well. If I were to ever teach a course about ludology and narratology, this game would be at the top of my syllabus. Thankfully, a PC version of the game has been promised by Blow, but even if this wasn’t the case, I would make my students purchase an Xbox 360 in order to experience this moment in gaming history themselves. Braid gives me hope as both an enthusiast and an academic that games are close to a breakthrough that will finally show that games have their own mechanical and rhetorical storytelling devices.

Indiana Jones and the Forgotten Post

Ah! So I completely forgot to post about this in my grab bag post and I'm busy working on actual writing, so I'm just going to repost my own post from NeoGAF. And hey, this is just a stream of consciousness blog for my own purposes anyway, so why not?

Here's my first post:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=331015

I'm going through a mini LucasArts adventure game marathon and I'm on Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis. I really haven't gotten too far into it yet, but I think the opening has got to be one of the best designed game openings that I've ever seen.

There's no menu screen.
There's no introductory cutscene.
There's no tutorial.

The screen just starts on the room and suddenly Indiana Jones crashes through a wall as the Indiana Jones theme plays in glorious midi. Indy tells you that he's looking for a statue and without any other instruction, the cursor pops up and you have control of the game.

You slowly move the cursor around and explore the various objects in the game. You click a statue and you fall through a trap door! As the screen transitions to the next scene, credits are displayed on the screen just like in an Indy movie. This continues through various screens, introducing you to the basic game controls and the plot of the game (those evil Nazis are at it again!), playing out like the beginning of any of the Indiana Jones movies.
What's doubly genius is that these screens are all "safe" screens in that you can't die and you can take as much time as you want, so the only way you might get stuck is if you don't know how to use a mouse or you can't read English.

I don't know if you're supposed to read the manual first or if games back then didn't feel a need to hold your hand, but imagine if a shooter like Halo 3 dropped you right in the middle of a firefight the moment you started the game. You don't even see a menu to start the game or a cutscene to set up the context. It'd be such a great way to put you in the moment right at the start without giving you a moment to breathe.

I wonder, have there been any other games that just started with gameplay and no other introduction? Or is Fate of Atlantis unique in this regard?

Edit for clarification: I'm trying to think of, to borrow N'Gai Croal's term, the "game telling" version of this concept. Where you immediately start with gameplay and it is only later that the game mechanics/controls are introduced to you.

Heavenly Sword and it seems like the X-men 2 game would be other examples.

And this lead to a discussion of what the term actually meant... and, sure, if you're talking about convention "literary" stories, I definitely agree. But at some point, rightwhen the thread died, I came up with this:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=12377731&postcount=118

That's fine, but I guess I'm in the camp that believes gameplay/the ludic experience is itself a narrative mode, that learning a game and how to play a game is as much the narrative experience as the traditional elements such as the names of the characters or the plot.

Maybe I'm up my own ass (probably am), but I think most games, when teaching gameplay and controls, follow some form of Freytag's triangle - from the slow build/introduction (tutorial, first few levels) to the climax (the first time where you have learned enough about the rules of the game to put all the pieces together to defeat a boss or pass a level) to the denoument (where you are familiar with the rules so that you don't need to think about what you are doing).

I dunno. Maybe Braid has been fucking with my brain and making me over think things that I shouldn't think about.

I still believe this and I think it's a pretty interesting way to introduce someone to a game, given that most games begin with a start menu then slowly ramp you up with the gameplay and the controls.

Of course, there are the Castlevania and Metroid games , but that's not quite the same as simply throwing you in and then going back to develop your personal "ludic" narrative. The most important aspect would be the "cold open" that takes you into a game experience without any set up, menu screen or otherwise.

Assassin's Creed was close, but I think it fell into the Metroid camp more than say the Heavenly Sword camp.

Anyway, back to the grind.

A Grab Bag of Thoughts

I thought I’d jot down some thoughts on the various games I finished recently. I may revisit them eventually. I’m too tired to write up something about Braid at the moment.

Rocketmen: Axis of Evil
Part ARPG, part dual-stick shooter, this game is based on an IP created by WizKids. The only thing that I want to say about it is that the universe is one of the freshest takes on science fiction that I’ve seen in a while. It’s just a riff on 50s SF serials, but it doesn’t try to be either scientifically consistent or take itself too seriously. Flash Gordon, eat your heart out.

The only really noteworthy aspect of the game that I want to write down is the fact that it follows the recent trend of breaking the fourth wall. One of the mechanics in the game is to tap on X repeatedly in order to activate various consoles in the game – and that’s exactly what the characters in the game tell you to do. Then, the character you play will get this funny look on her face and mock the simplicity of this game mechanic.

There’s a moment at the end of the game where your “handler”, Zach, pokes fun at you for being afraid of the overwhelming odds against you. Your character replies, “Well, you’re just a NPC character! It’s not like you’re in any danger!” While not as clever as the first Psychomantis battle in MGS, but it’s a nice way to bring levity into the game and is perfectly consistent with the setting and the universe.

Star Control 2/The Ur-Quan Masters
I’d refer to SquadCast #6 for some real discussion of the game... suffice it to say, if I were to write some kind of “top 10 games list” (yuck), this game would definitely make that list. I can’t believe I missed it when it came out in the 90s (misspent youth indeed) and I’m even more surprised that no one else has tried to make a game that tried to copy the game since (Yes, there was Epic Game’s Solar Winds, and I haven’t played it since it came out... and while it was another space-shooter adventure game, it definitely was not as open or in depth as Star Control 2).

What’s so remarkable about this game is how the many pieces come together. The first game was a deeper take on the original Space War, featuring two ships going head to head in combat. Branching off from that, Star Control 2 takes that combat (calling it Melee) and builds an entire space exploration and management game on top of it. It’s not quite the 4X of Master of Orion, but the ability to influence empires and at the very least explore planets to exploit their resources gives it that 4X feel. On top of the two seemingly disparate game mechanics is what is essentially an adventure game or RPG.

If there was ever a case to be made for the idea that games are both simultaneously ludic and narrative experiences, this game is it. First and foremost, there IS a story. I won’t go into detail, but you basically have to save the galaxy from the evil aliens with the help of all the good aliens. How you do that is based on how well you explore the galaxy and manage your relationships with the alien races throughout the galaxy. How well you do this effects how the game unfolds around you – you can see the galaxy map slowly change as time passes. And of course, this effects how the plot unfolds as well – your successes in the game are directly reflected by how the characters in the game react to you, as are your failures. It’s the perfect fusion of gameplay and story, as your ludic experience influences your narrative experience and vice versa. A small example of this is the fact that when you start the game, you have a limited number of replacement crew because there are only so many human beings that can staff your ship. If you start losing crew members, it slowly becomes more expensive to replace them. However, if you complete a specific quest, you’ll be able to constantly replenish your crew for free (or close enough). There’s a story reason for the economy in the game and the game mechanic effects how the story is played out.

As for the universe and the story itself – in some ways, it shares a lot with Rocketmen in that it’s pulpy science fiction. That said the original dev team managed to create a world with so much personality that if you enjoy science fiction on any level, you’ll love all the characters in this game. The aliens range from the typical sexy blue skinned alien women to the atypical gaseous blobs that somehow managed to evolve on a gas giant. Even if you ignore the gameplay innovation, the story and universe itself is a gem that should be canonized alongside Star Trek and Star Wars.

While no game has tried to use this formula, Mass Effect did come awfully close. Though there is no ship combat, you are thrown into a galaxy that you can explore at your whim. That said there was simply no reason to go around exploring the universe unless you were off collecting items for quests or purposely trying to gain XP. The fact that travelling from system to system required a load screen combined with the dubious Mako planet sequences, I’m not surprised that most people simply ignored the exploration aspect of the game and stuck to the main story. Even then, your exploration didn’t have any effect on the main campaign (although, to be fair, a completely separate side campaign about Cerberus awaits those who choose to go off the beaten path), so the game didn’t encourage you to explore the large galaxy map anyway. And while I do like the Mass Effect universe and it is certainly more expansive than the Star Control universe, it just pales in comparison. Star Control feels alive and compels you to find out more about the different aliens that populate the galaxy. Mass Effect? Not so much (although, those Elephant-looking aliens were pretty cool).

One final point to make is the fact that the game is a product of its time. It’s HARD. Really HARD. Like all old school adventure games, you’ll want to have a pen and paper with you in order to take notes because there is no quest log or even any in game reminders of where you need to go. Also, the game world is constantly in action, almost like a Rogue-like – it’s not quite a full blown simulation, but as time passes scripted events will unfold. You can change what events unfold, but the races will do their own thing as you go about your own adventure, meaning that if you take too long to initiate the end game, the evil aliens will win and you will lose the game.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
Now this one will be really short since most people should know what this game is all about. To be crass, you can call it Tomb Raider with a man... but I would call it Sahara: The Game (Yep, as in the 2005 Matthew McConaughey action film). In short, you play Nathan Drake, descendant of Sir Francis Drake, in search of the older Drake’s missing treasure. And as we’ve learned from Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, every time someone searches for some ancient, missing treasure, bad things happen.

The first thing I want to point out is that the game was directed by Amy Hennig – and as one of the few women in a position of power on the creative side of game production I just think it’s worth pointing out. At the very least, I think it’s a very big reason as to why Elena Fisher comes off as a normal character and not some kind of archetype – she’s neither a damsel in distress nor a scantily clad and heavily armed bad grrrrl.

The second thing I want to point out is that this is a game that I would rather watch than play. That’s not to say that there’s anything bad about the gameplay... it’s just that it’s not interesting in any way. The platforming can get tricky because sometimes that crack in the wall turns out to be a texture that you can’t hold on to, leading to a potentially nasty fall. The shooting can be frustrating as well, but that’s because the game is trying to encourage you to use melee attacks – the brutal combo specifically. No, the gameplay is perfectly serviceable but it’s the cutscenes that shine. Fully mo-capped and featuring great voice acting, these cutscenes play out like scenes from a big budget Hollywood film. Greg Edmonson’s brassy score (including the beautiful main theme) only add to how well produced these cutscenes are.

I’m just not sure if this is a good thing though. On one of the post GDC 2008 1up Yours podcasts, Hennig defended the use of cutscenes to tell a story, pointing to how the player can break how the story is delivered in Half Life 2. To that point, I definitely agree with her and I can see why a game director would want to wrest control from the player at certain points in the game in order to tell the story that holds the game together. But if this is a game where I’m perfectly happy watching through the cutscenes in lieu of actually replaying the game, isn’t that a problem? Uncharted isn’t as incongruous as Grand Theft Auto 4 or Metal Gear Solid 4 when it comes to using cutscenes to tell a story, but I can’t help but wonder if there was a better way to integrate the storytelling into the gameplay itself rather than rely on conventions set by filmmakers.

In keeping with the “movie” presentation, one final observation is that through some kind of technology trick, the game NEVER needs to load after the initial load. That means the game seamlessly moves from one level to another, creating the effect that you are playing one large, epic level rather than a series of smaller levels. The only way you know that you’re in a new “chapter” is when the game overtly tells you. It’s a neat trick that helps you forget that you aren’t playing a game, if only momentarily.


Well, that's all for now. I'm avoiding the Braid post because... well, my brain can't take it!