« Monday Meme: Video Game Perspective | Home | You Suck: The (Not So) Gentle Art of Critique »
Braid Conversation–The Nosy Guy at the Next Table
By Corvus | August 18, 2008
I’m that guy in the theater who will start talking to people before the movie starts about their favorite musical artists, video games, whatever. It is not uncommon for me to lean over to a private conversation in a book store and correct some minor factual error I overhear, or chime in with a resounding, “Me too!” when a passionate argument for something or the other is presented. At the local video store, I find myself quickly engaged in conversation about politics and how capitalism has transformed over the last 60 years. In the grocery store… well, you don’t want to know the extent of my nosy behavior in the grocery store. Something about the buzzing neon lights removes all shame.
So when Iroquois Pliskin and Michael Abbott started having a really interesting conversation about Braid, I had little trouble leaning over, clearing my throat and wading into the conversational fray. Fortunately, these aren’t the sort of people that recoil in discomfort, or stare at me blankly, wondering how the old guy with the moustache could even hear a conversation happening that far away.
Hey guys, I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation about Braid. Hope I’m not stepping on any toes by sticking my nose in and adding a few thoughts of my own. I’m going to try and remain objective, because it’s not enough for me to simply say, “I hated it.” Instead, I want to get at why we might have found it unsatisfying and why, perhaps, so many others didn’t.
Braid promises a lot. Some of those promises appear to have been made by Jonathan Blow himself. His excellent talks over the last two years, his advocacy for independent games and games as narrative have been a shining point in an industry that often seems overly focused on polygons and profit margins. The other promises are less explicit and consist of the game’s lovely artwork and music. Thanks to these combined elements, I expected a thoughtful and moving game experience.
What we got instead, however, was a brittle platformer with dreams of being much more. Dreams, I feel, that have gone mostly unrealized. Now, I must confess that I’ve never been a big fan of the platformer. In fact, I have yet to really enjoy a Mario game. I find them to be a futile exercise in frustration. What Braid does do is remove the futility–you’re playing to uncover a story, you’re exploring the psyche of the main character. What Braid does not do is remove the frustration. In fact, it seems to increase it dramatically. There are a great many levels in the game that require you to perform in precisely the manner intended by the designer. If you do not somehow intuit his intent, the level breaks. This is what I mean by brittle. If you don’t play Braid “correctly” your experience, your potential enjoyment, is shattered. So, rather than presenting a compelling storyscape to experience, the game becomes a “learn how the designer thinks” style of game. Hardly the meditative experience promised by the opening hub level. I didn’t like that approach to game design when I played Hitman, I don’t like it here.
Michael, I know you and I share a similar expectation of video games as a storytelling medium. This is likely due to our common theatrical background and understanding of the importance of an audience. What brought me to video games as a medium (I’m not adverse to that term, by the way. It’s one commonly understood by a great many people and clearly communicates a lot of information) is the power of storytelling experience where the audience has quite a lot of agency. Braid takes this agency and uses it in a punative fashion–explore outside the exact path intended by the narrative and you’re “doing it wrong.” To my mind, this dramatically reduces the power of a video game’s storytelling potential.
When I cannot finish a novel, I do not read the Cliff’s Notes, or go to the internet to learn the ending. Usually, if I care about the ending enough, I wade through the impenetrable text. The strongest literary correlation to Braid I can think of at the moment was Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled. It was difficult to read, difficult to process, and difficult to discuss. But it’s a book that contains passages that still haunt me to this day, some five years after reading it. It’s also a book I still struggle to untangle in my mind. That is an extremely flattering comparison, even though I feel Braid fell far, far short of Ishiguro’s mark. Why does it fall far short? Primarily because The Unconsoled does not require you to unlock the author’s exact intent in order to draw meaning from it, while Braid most certainly does.
The point of mentioning this is that I will not rely on walkthroughs to finish Braid. I will continue to load the game every few days and try my hand at one of the levels I’ve not finished. I managed to grab several extra pieces this weekend relatively easily after taking a bit of a break. At some point, I will eventually have either finished the game or, unlike The Unconsoled, Braid will have lost what small measure of interest it still holds for me. I’m not sure if I’m honoring Jonathan Blow’s wishes by this bit of stubbornness, or throwing his failure to reach me back in his face. Perhaps the true reason contains a bit of both attitudes.
I want to conclude by making another favorable, and perhaps more familiar, comparison. Like Tim Schafer’s Psychonauts, Braid seeks to elevate the experience of a traditional video game genre into something more powerful, something with depth and meaning, something worth being passionate over, something worth talking about, worth arguing about, worth being angry about. And that, regardless of how you feel about the game itself, is to be respected and supported.
While I do not care for Braid in the least, I find that I must congratulate its creator. Not just because the game is doing well on Live Arcade, or that it’s raising awareness of indie game development, or inspiring such in-depth conversation across the web, but because the game itself has challenged me to question my own assumptions about video games as a storytelling medium.
So well done, Mr. Blow (I see you at the next table, listening in). I must say that I look forward to seeing the next game you put your hand to. Who knows? By the time it’s done, I may have even finished your first.
Tagged:braid, conversation. | 7 Comments »
August 18th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Well… as someone who doesn’t like platformer games, I can see why you disliked Braid. I don’t do well at platformers myself and tend to re-try certain areas a lot in attempt to complete them.
However, the little I’ve had the chance to play of Braid confirmed my expectations going in that it is a Puzzle Game that uses platform mechanics. The levels have less to do with jump-dodge-avoid-powerup than they do with solving the insidious little puzzles that protect the puzzle pieces. Or at least that is where the game shines the most for me. There are platforming sections, but they are merely landscape between puzzle challenges. And with that in mind, having only one solution makes sense sometimes. How many puzzles can you complete more than one way? That is the crux of the conversation between the puzzle maker and the puzzle solver.
I have more to write, but I unfortunately have only played Worlds 2 and 3 and, not owning an X360 myself, will probably not get to play the rest for some time.
August 18th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
I never cared much for Sokoban & its endless derivitives either.
I feel I should clarify that my issues with Braid do not lie with its difficulty per se, but with its approach to narrative and Blow’s interpretation of “game mechanic as narrative.” I suspect I’ll have follow up post(s) later this week.
August 18th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
See, I had a different problem, which is I just hate platformers and thus played Braid just long enough to confirm that there was nothing different enough about it to justify an actual purchase.
I really wish people like Tim Schafer or Jonathan Braid would find a different genre if they really want to tell stories. I’ve played plenty of independent games that weren’t platformers, but the platformer seems to be the old solid stand-by for indie game developers. I suppose it is a relatively easy game mechanic, but I don’t care enough about your narrative to deal with a gameplay style that I grew tired of years ago.
August 18th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
My comment here spilled out into a full blog post: http://blog.worldmaker.net/2008/aug/18/braid-failed-experiment/
August 18th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Just wondering, but what section did you have trouble with Corvus? From other message boards a lot of people had trouble with Fickle Companion. I must have been lucky or perhaps I’m crazy enough that all the puzzles were easy for me
. I thought Braid was a good case for gameplay as an art form, from how the text at the beginning of each world elude to how time would be altered.
August 18th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Again, it’s irrelevant what I did or did not have trouble with. I’ll clarify my thoughts better in a post later this week.
August 19th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
“If you don’t play Braid “correctly” your experience, your potential enjoyment, is shattered. So, rather than presenting a compelling storyscape to experience, the game becomes a “learn how the designer thinks” style of game.”
Frankly, this makes little to no sense having played the game. Your critique is that this game…isn’t like another game that you want, or expected? I guess? I don’t know.
These are puzzles. They require logic and thought and patience. You do not appear to have the proper amount of these. Or perhaps you simply don’t like the frustration and resulting satisfaction of solving puzzles. Or maybe you haven’t articulated your thoughts in a way that I find very persuasive.
This isn’t really a platformer either, another point in your complaint. Yes, you run and jump on platforms, but Mario Bros. require far more skill than Braid. And this has been remarked in reviews, if you’re trying to do some crazy jump and not making it, you’re doing it wrong. If that cloud is just too far away for you to jump to, then there’s something you haven’t figured out yet.
Though not every puzzle is superbly designed, they absolutely do not require you crawl into the designers brain. The puzzles are simple and genius and immensely satisfying. There are frequently multiple ways to solve a puzzle as well, something you may not have picked up. And we haven’t even discussed the story, particularly the ending, which was devastatingly awesome.
And we haven’t quite got to the story, which you seem to dislike because it’s not as integrated into the gameplay as you want I think? I can’t tell if your overthinking Braid or not thinking about it enough. I look forward to a clarifying post.