Braid's Time Travel Is Contradiction-Free, and That's a Win for Fiction
Time Travel in Braid (2015)
Braid's six worlds each introduce a distinct time-manipulation mechanic, and unlike most time-travel fiction, the game's rules are implemented consistently—no hard-coded exceptions or crashes. The author, a longtime time-travel nerd, argues that this internal consistency makes Braid a notable case study, even if its story remains deliberately ambiguous and its model can't be transplanted into the real world.
To the extent that there is time travel in Braid, and to the extent that the game doesn't just crash when something weird happens, and to the extent that the game isn't loaded with hard-coded one-time special-case exceptions, time travel in Braid is consistent; contradiction-free. This is a good win for time travel fiction!
- zabriel_goss
The Humble Indie Bundle in 2012 included an all-star lineup: Bastion, Psychonauts, Super Meat Boy, Limbo. And even so, Braid was a standout inclusion. Reminded me of playing Portal for the first time in the way it made me rethink an entirely unconventional mechanic. Then, for the time mechanics to later be revealed as a major twist for the plot. Remarkable title!
- xoxxala
The newest puzzle game from Braid's designer Jonathan Blow releases today:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/499170/Order_of_the_Sinki...
- dejected_frog
I adore Braid. I had a particular interpretation of this game, considering the game mechanics on each world Tim ventured in: the princess is not a woman, and the castle is not a place.
The game mechanics always spin around the notion of regret. Tim must undo his actions in order to overcome his challenges. In every stage this deals with the irreversibility of actions, so instead of fixing things, Tim strives to undo them.
In a few puzzles the solution involves killing yourself before fiddling with time. Perhaps Tim, at some point, contemplated suicide as a solution to his problems. This is rather dark, but what was he chasing after all? What is this princess he is obsessed with?
The princess in my view was the personification of an ideal of perfection. Tim was chasing a situation where he would be free of shame and regret, unburdened by responsibility. He looked for it in a variety of places: in a girlfriend, in marriage, in work, in his own past. But the princess is nowhere to be found. Whenever he reaches a castle, the princess is elsewhere.
The more he pursues this ideal, the more it eludes him. Like the girlfriend he wanted to protect, but she took his actions as suffocating - "you're going the wrong way and you're pulling me with you". Like the engineers who worked in the first atomic bomb, brilliant men that did their best, but in the end, they were all sons of bitches.
What Tim was chasing doesn't exist, like princesses in fairy tales. In his view, there's a knight in […]
- zetanor
>It's old, I guess, which means either you've played it already or you haven't and never intend to.
Strange sentiment, which is well past the massification and gamesjournalismification of video games. By then, cover shooters were just a bad memory and most serious hobbyists had for a long time embraced both indies (Braid, in 2009) and older titles (Braid, in 2015, when the article was published).
- spike021
I always wish more games were clever when using time travel as a mechanic. Prince of Persia did a pretty good job and I enjoyed one particular mission in Titanfall 2 that incorporated it.