City 16

! – SPOILER WARNING: I’ll be going into some detail about the ending of Braid. If you’ve not completed it yet then don’t read. If you’ve not bought it yet then why not go do that instead? – !

This guy missed the point of Braid:

There’s plenty of discussion that can be had around the numerous interpretations of Braid’s main story. Let’s not have that discussion; it’s been done a million times and ultimately, with the exception of the stunning World 1-1, it just didn’t interest me. What did interest me was, what I at least, perceived as the meta-narrative. Braid breaks through the fourth wall, or monitor as PC users might call it, to speak to the player directly. It has a message to impart and, unlike the bulk of the story, it chooses to impart it through gameplay elements instead of text. The game builds obsession, then presents sacrifice and finally leaves the player to choose their path.

Whatever the literal meaning behind Braid’s story it is essentially about obsession. Tim’s obsession with finding the princess is the driving factor that propels the game forward. The game wants to build a sense of obsession within the player as well. From a gameplay perspective this is done rather simply: the player must find every puzzle piece if they want to progress to the final world. Also, and less simply achieved, the game is really fucking good.

Then there’s the theme of sacrifice. At the end of the game Tim is shown to sacrifice parts of his life in order to chase ‘the Princess’. This is not shown to be a noble or, in any way, a good thing. Braid has a much more convoluted way of presenting a sacrificial choice to the player. In the first world of the game (actually called World 2) there is a puzzle piece that can only be obtained through a bizarre puzzle mechanic that is never hinted at before and never used again.

It involves the puzzle board that is used to assemble the puzzle pieces on. Assemble the right pieces and you create an extra platform that can be used to get up to the piece. It appears to be bad puzzle design… To be honest it is bad puzzle design. As far as I remember it is the only piece that can’t be reached when you first come across it and it could have been implemented in a much more intuitive way. It is a necessary addition though, after all you have to collect the pieces to progress to the final world. It plants the idea that constructing the puzzles may lead to rewards. On top of this there’s an achievement for completing each world’s puzzle. I’d be amazed if the majority of people didn’t get to World 1 without having constructed all five jigsaws.

So you’ve completed the game and you’ve heard that their are 8 stars that can be collected, probably through looking at discussions of the game on some forum or other. The sacrifice? Well that comes in at the 3:20 mark of the video above. If you’ve constructed the puzzle of World 3 you cannot get that star unless you delete your save and start again. The game is asking those who were caught up in their very gamer-centric obsession of collecting and seeing everything possible in a particular game to choose whether or not they are prepared to sacrifice their progress to continue their obsession. Whether or not they want to sacrifice parts of their life to chase ‘the Princess’.

As one commenter to the above post put it:

Today I found out that I had to start over. I like the game, but I JUST solved all of the puzzles, and now you want me to do it all again, Braid, just because of one stupid game mechanic?

No, Braid does not want you to do this. The video above shows you how to get half of the 8 stars and each method is clearly ridiculous. Some will take one look and decide it’s not worth the effort.

Others will miss the point of Braid.