Unraveling Braid
Form and content cooperate in Memento. The movie tells its tale of an anterograde amnesiac (who cannot recall events experienced after an accident) in reverse order. As a result, the audience must struggle to unscramble the plot in a manner echoing the confusion of Leonard Shelby's memory-less condition.
Readers of Milorad Pavic's Dictionary of the Khazars are active participants deciphering a puzzle. The non-linear novel comes to us as three encyclopedias (form), written from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim perspectives, about the mass religious conversion of a mythical people (content). The book lacks both the assumption of authority and chronological reconstruction work associated with written history. Rather, its readers have to play the historian's part, cross-referencing sometimes conflicting entries and, in the process, reflecting on epistemology (i.e. the nature of knowledge).
Similarly, indy dev Jonathan Blow is interested in intertwining form and content, and thus Braid's time-reversing gameplay is a tenuous metaphor for longing and loss in a love story of the “if only” variety. Of course that connection isn't so tenuous for the many critics who Braid moved emotionally. I don't doubt their sincerity, but I also ask anyone who insists that only the most heartless of curmudgeons could disagree to consider that accusation.
I'm an analogical thinker to a fault. I find metaphoric meaning in almost anything. However, as I rewind and rethink orders of operation in Braid's watchmaker world I feel as though I am taking (and often failing) an IQ test. This intricate timing and calculation -- these ingenious and remarkable mechanisms -- speak to the mind, not the soul. Perhaps that's the point: Passion is not a solvable puzzle. It's a princess in another castle. Whether or not it stirs sentiment, this interpretation in which story and gameplay meanings collaborate allows Blow to braid a second strand.
Blow believes that interaction itself has meanings and, moreover, that these implicit points are often at odds with the messages explicit in games' official stories, such as those told through cutscenes or on-screen text. In a recent -- and recommended -- lecture at the Develop Conference in Brighton, England he studied instances of such conflict in Half-Life 2, BioShock, and Grand Theft Auto IV. (I apologize for not paraphrasing specifics here.) For simple games such as Asteroids or Super Mario Bros. dramatic dissonance isn't an issue -- they either have no narrative to speak of or their stories are so perfunctory that they cannot cross purposes with meanings produced through play. In other words, Super Mario Bros. is not just about rescuing a princess; all potential player actions in the game -- including coin collecting -- pursue that same goal. With Braid, Blow significantly complicates that story and yet intends to maintain the tight coupling of form and content.
Taken in this sense -- as a revision of design in the tradition of Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong -- Braid is intellectually inspiring. Iterative reasoning allows both Tim the character and Braid the game to test outcomes and tap unfulfilled potential. He creates doppelgangers by moving backwards in time; Braid itself is a doppelganger, a thing from an alternate time-line in which videogames try to tackle life instead of looking like it, and attempt to take their place beside other artistic mediums rather than tagging along. What Eurogamer.com's Dan Whitehead writes regarding Braid's gameplay also functions as the game's credo: “You must look back to go forwards.”
ProTip: Rewinding the game for ten minutes in World Two regresses Braid into a prototype. Rewinding for ten more minutes produces the game's original design document.
