'Braid' Game End Unravels
Updated on Wednesday, September 3, 2008 at 5:58PM by
Dustin Anglin
Don't get me wrong, Braid is good game. Heck, it's a great game, probably one of the most original I've played in a long time. But you've already heard that from every other game reviewer on the interwebs. And while I could spend hours praising its unique use of time (or maybe I should say successful use of time...Blinx, I'm looking at you), challenging but fulfilling puzzles, refreshing art style, and imaginative twist of an ending, I'd like to spend some time on some fair criticism of the game, namely its epilogue.
I consider myself a reasonably well read person. I've studied literature, analyzed tone, performed critical analyses and "dug deeper" to find hidden context and symbolism, and I still had no idea what the heck was going on by the end of Braid. I can appreciate attempting to raise the story of video game beyond the likes of space marines and magic fairies, but the epilogue's attempt to cram even more thinly veiled subtext into the game seems out of place and unnecessarily obfuscatory (see Jonathan Blow, I've read books, too).
