LATE TO THE GAME : Braid

I missed the whole Braid boat due to the fact that I didn't have a 360 at the time (Or even now for that Matter). I found those discussions on its storytelling interesting.
It has been hyped as THE indie game or THE 'art' game during those days and I wanted to experience what people were talking about. A demonstration of how games are becoming more mature.

And finally, the PC version of Braid was released on Steam, I bought it when it came out and beat the game in the next couple of days.

Excellent, excellent gameplay, I absolutely enjoyed every moment of it. I liked the twist at the end too. A narrative that changed depending on whether its on 'play' or 'rewind' is quite the mental feat. The art direction was very beautiful, and fit the game nicely. The audio was superb. (I don't need to go into details since all the reviews covered that bit anyways.)

And yet I'm puzzled why people made such a big deal out of its storytelling.

It was dry, disconnected, and overall unnecessary for the game. I believe the game would have given me the same satisfaction without the story. This is mainly due to the fact that it was, in fact, not connected to the game at all.  As a short story it already bored me, it was predictable, uninteresting, and overall I didn't feel sympathetic to the main character. And the fact that such writing was just laid there with no presentational value, exasperated the problems. The disaster that was described at the end, the final narrative,  was the game itself. Building this tower that, because the creator was so focused on his ideas, his ideals, he lost the essence of what made his game unique. It felt much like a gem that was beautiful on its own, but because of the greediness of its owner, became covered in dull rusty metal that just devalued its original splendor.

Its a great game to play, and I highly recommend everyone who didn't play it to buy it off of Steam or 360.  But saying its art, saying that its deep is a bit, ironically, shallow. It doesn't have any artistic value in the writing itself, or how the narrative is presented to the viewer. I find it hilarious that some sites actually discussed the game in a deep pseudo-philosophical way, it just doesn't have the content to be discussed in such manner. As gamers, we sometimes want to argue that games are becoming mature. But let's not try to idealize and raise up every game that we think has depth, it just creates openings for over-analyzation and ignorance. Let's not get full of ourselves.

(Late to the Game is a blog trying to discuss games in a different manner from reviews, because there is enough competent reviewers, why bother. It's about older games, mandatory spoilers, shoddy writing, and trying to find out why I would enjoy a game. Not what would make a game enjoyable.)

Personally, I felt the art came from parts of the game that weren't so immediately obvious. For example, right at the end of the game, there's a bunch of clouds that serve no purpose whatsoever, yet all the inquistive gamers who encountered them were determined to fid out what they were about. This coupled with the fact that the 'Stars' you can collect throughout the game (don't be surprised if you'd enver seen one, they're ridiculously hard to find) reveal a picture of the princess, a lot of people were adamant that you were able to get the princess back someway.

I played the PC demo a little time back and as far as gameplay it was mind bending, also the game had some of the best msic and sound effects ever in a game.

Great blog.  Keep this up!

I was late to Braid as well.  I liked the gameplay and I thought some of its puzzles were brilliant.  Like you, I couldn't find myself drawn into the story quite as much as others.  I don't regret purchasing it, but I wish I could have gotten a little more out of it for my dollar.

I just beat this game like a week ago or so. Or so I thought  since I had never even heard of those stars that Rinkalicous was talking about.

*minor spoiler*

The story was initially a huge draw for me at first cause its core concept, that a guy created a fantasy world to both discover and hide what a huge jerk he was, was a clever one. And I loved the end where you had to play with time to get to the truth of your character.

However it all lost me when the epilogue tried to throw in just these ridiculous notions about the manhattan project and such for no real reason. It felt like Johnathan Blow was just deliberately trying to make things more vague than they needed to be. I dont mind open ended narratives where you have to fill in the blanks. But to just throw mind hurdles at you felt like such a let down. What the hell does a princess and an asshole have to do with atomic science? All the satisfaction I got out of the last level was deflated in the final part of the game where I felt nothing added up and that was intentional.

In the end though I could be completely wrong in my interpretation and thats what makes it so I dont regret playing it at all. Its all so subjective that for some the ending is absolutely brilliant. Its always reassuring that chances like that are being taken, so that not every game just tries to play safe and be enjoyable in a wholly mass market sort of way.

Two things for me to say:

I've always read it as Baird for whatever reason :P.
You're not the only person. Hell, I'm still playing games from 07,08. And many years earlier :P.