Well finals are around the corner. I have two projects due Monday, a third due Thursday, and various final essays to turn in. Also of course I have one more blog post due. I'll take a break from making game sprites and write an article of my choice: I'm gonna talk about Braid. This won't be a review of the game, in fact I expect anyone who reads this has already played the game.

Last week in class we were discussing "art games," which boiled down to why applying labels to things, whether defining art or a game, is harmful for whatever industry. Of course when discussing art games, the Indie darling Braid is inevitably brought up. Art games of course need to be analyzed, and I mentioned in class that I didn't get it, and my teacher replied with. "Well maybe you should play it again."

I had played Braid before, and I really enjoyed it. The puzzles were challenging and creative and the graphics were artistic, overall it was a unique experience. One thing I didn't like was the "plot." If you have played Braid you'd know why plot is in quotes. The story was told in through books at the beginning of each world. From world to world the parts of the story are disjointed, but each section has a theme to it that is applied to the gameplay of each world. That I really appreciate, each level is more of an abstract metaphor rather than a direct retelling of the events that unfold (the whole wishing to undo mistakes thing in the story and the rewinding time game feature presented in the first, or second I should say, world.)
By the end of the game I thought I would understand the story, having each of the story fragments combined for a full picture, and in that regard I was disappointed.
I had heard the plot twist of the game before I beat it: you're really the bad guy and the princess is running from you, and I thought the epilogue text would go into it. Instead I got even more disjointed story elements that seemed to tell different stories: is it about a girlfriend? A mother? A candy shop? A bomb? Just a crazy guy? I remember looking online to see if there was a coherent plot, and the most that I got was "the game was vague and meant to be left up to interpretation."
I think that really turned me off of the game. Jonathan Blow just decided to be vague and said it was "up for interpretation" in order to seem artsy instead of actually coming up with an ending.
So I loaded the game up on steam and got through the game on my day off. I got to the end with the epilogue books, and once again the books didn't make sense. I remembered there were hidden books but forgot how to read them, so I looked up a walkthrough for the ending, and I saw something I didn't know about, a second ending.
Wait, what second ending? How do I get it? I got everything in the game, how do I get it? Wait, what secret stars? There's secret stars in the game?
I had no idea whatsoever. I guess once I beat the game I put it down, I didn't really feel like doing the time trials, so there was no point to keep playing. But now that I knew there was something else, I was stumped on how to find them. I didn't see any indication of their existence or where they could be.
I looked online for a walkthrough on how to get them, and saw that one could be permanently missed, as you had to arrange the puzzle pieces in one of the puzzles in a certain way, but couldn't move them once they were assembled.
Well that's a dumb mistake. I have to play the whole game again just because of a glitch? Obviously the creator wasn't thinking. So I started a new game, and followed an faq to the first star. Once I was in the right room, it told me to wait 2 hours for a cloud to float to the other side of the room.

Nevermind, not only was he thinking, but Jonathan Blow must be an evil genius.

So I played through the game, and found all but one star. The last one is in the last/first level, appearing only after you have the others. This time though, you actually have a chance of reaching the Princess, and when I did so, she exploded.

Yeah That happened.

After that, I was able to get to the Princess's room to get the last star (I now realize this sounds like one of those fake video game rumors you heard on the playground about catching Mew or unlocking Sonic in Melee.) and then I went to the epilogue room, which was exactly the same. Of course now I saw the game in a new light. What I thought was just a potential theory for the game's plot is now more concrete: the princess is a nuclear bomb. I looked online again on meanings, and this time I saw an article that linked the fragments of the story into one cohesive take of a scientist named Tim who worked on the Manhattan project and was obsessed with creating the atomic bomb. That idea was always there, but I couldn't put the pieces together (like a puzzle... I see what you did there J-Blo) and I still held onto the idea that the Princess was a person. Her blowing up did change my thinking.

So yeah, this did change my opinion of the game, but it made me think of something else. If I had never looked at an faq, I wouldn't have known about the stars or ending. But by using an faq did I rob myself of the replay value of discovering it myself? I'll continue this in part 2.