A few thoughts on Braid

[chocorisu]

Jonathan Blow's Braid, if you don't follow video games, is the current darling of the press. Superficially Mario-derivative, it references the iconic games as a metaphor for a failing relationship. Every world treats the flow of time differently--without spoiling too much--as a metaphor for the protagonists' desperate desire to rewind time and undo

Comments

[prog]

I think that the Mario-ness was actually meant to be taken more literally, if that makes any sense ( see my plot analysis).

I agreed with you while playing that the apparent gap between the text-based story and the gameplay felt a little wide. After I thought about the ending, they retroactively synthesized much closer together. But that doesn't undo (doh!) the fact I was like "er, ok" about it while actually poking through the levels.

[chocorisu]

You're probably right about Mario literally meaning Mario. I'm not sure why it bothers me so much... it just seems, I dunno, lazy. Like drawing a tortured artist in a parody of Edvard Munch's "Scream". Kitschy. Mario is ALREADY a tongue-in-cheek reference to fairy-tales.

It's like the writing: in portraying a weak-willed and self-absorbed man, it makes the GAME seem lazy and pretentious.

Come to think of it, I got the exact same feeling about I Heart Huckabees: presumably the intended the characters to be incompetent but I just felt like the director was incompetent instead. Maybe it is just me!