Problem: there are too many video games and not enough time. Solution: the recession.
One slightly less god-awful but slightly more quantum way out is by somehow creating more time. That bit of nonsense segues handily into an XBLA game about time that I’ve just got round to playing. No, it wasn’t Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time. Anyway, that’s not an XBLA title, the original TMNT is. Why did you even bring it up? I was of course referring to Braid. True, Braid doesn’t actually feature time creation, but it is all about time manipulation, otherwise known as chronomancy. That’s right, Tim is in fact a chronomancer. How badass a thing to be is that?
HOT GIRL: So Tim, what do you do for a living?
TIM: Well, I chronomance from time to time – get it?
HOT GIRL: Haha, wow, that’s amazing. I’ve never met a chronomancer before!
TIM: Actually, that’s not really what I do for a living. I’m searching for The Princess; have you seen her?
HOT GIRL: Oh, I see... I bet she’s the f***ing bomb, right?
TIM: Hey-O!
If Braid was actually called Tim the Chronomancer then it would have been roughly 5% more awesome, which would be pretty damn awesome. So, as you’ve probably guessed, I did work out what Braid’s roughly about. When I say ‘worked out’ I mean that I completed the game, suffered an immediate headache from thinking too hard before stumbling onto the Internets to ascertain what the heck I’d just witnessed. Yeah, I needed to look it up and I’m not proud of it either. I can almost see my professor now, sipping his morning brandy with his arm resting on his gnarled cane, waggling a tremorous finger at me and cackling, “Bet you wish you’d taken History GCSE now, eh, you dopey prat?” Well, Mr Land, the answer is of course still no, but I’ll admit the whole ordeal made me feel pretty damn dense, you old git.
The one ray of light in this, the umpteenth confirmation of my stupidity, was discovering the source of the information. That would be this thread over at RLLMUK, a British gaming forum thank you very much. I’m sure readers will correct me, but it appears this thread was the big bang from which the discussions on NeoGAF and a million blogs (including Shawn Elliot’s) expanded. A bit of further research revealed a poster on the Giant Bomb forums writing something similar the day before. Nonetheless, history will remember this RLLMUK thread as the the victor in the fight to solve one of the most confusing video game stories ever devised (because I said so). I don’t see anyone from Giant Bomb claiming ownership and as Eddie Izzard would say, “do you have a flag?”. Well do you, Giant Bomb?
TGR Stuff
Jonathon Blow has said himself that Braid isn’t about the atomic bomb. That’s part of it, but only a small piece of the epilogue and nothing more.
I think the game is about regret. The creation of the atomic bomb is a symbol for that, but so is losing a loved one, leaving home, and remembering a childhood that you can never relive. These are all things that pop up throughout the game. Narrowing it down to just one thing seems very narrow-minded to me. So in essence, no one has "solved" Braid yet. I think it’s open to too much interpretation to really be "solved," per se.