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00:00:01
S2 Ep84: Braid
70 Plays6 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they go forward in time and then back in time and then Jonathan Blow's mind in this week's episode!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
00:00:04
Speaker
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Introduction & Pre-Podcast Rituals
00:00:41
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-hosts. As always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going swell. How about yourself? Pretty, pretty good. Pretty good. We had like a relatively lengthy therapy session prior to this where we talked about important matters. Oh, I thought you were talking about the therapy session of tacos. Oh, yeah. That's physical therapy is what that is. We had some physical therapy and then we had some emotional therapy talking about life and politics and
00:01:11
Speaker
feel like we hit everything pretty much social issues you know relationships we didn't go we didn't get to my sex life yeah how's your sex life i immediately thought of the room uh while we were going you have to jump to the room for that yeah how's your job how's your sex life bro we're getting coffee what's
00:01:31
Speaker
You're like talking to the actual barista at Starbucks. How's your job? How's your sex life? Well, hi, doggy. Other things not okay to say.
Passion for Video Games
00:01:44
Speaker
What is okay to say, though, is we talk about video games here. We're very serious about it.
00:01:52
Speaker
I see that dry grin, which means it's a lie. Yeah. We're not serious. Not that serious. We do care about video games. We're serious about that. I feel like it is our passion. I feel it falls under that, but it's the main way that we ingest media. Much like graphic design is my passion.
00:02:12
Speaker
It's a meme, sorry, go ahead. I was like, Jake, I didn't know about that. I was like, your wife? More so. Right. No, that's fair. Yeah, no. We definitely put the time into it. So if it's not something we cared about, then we're really making, we're wasting just a huge portion of our lives playing and talking about video games. If nothing else, it's a manufactured interest at this point.
00:02:38
Speaker
I love the idea that we don't actually like video games, but we just make a podcast for, you know, all that, all that revenue. Right. Yeah. That's, that's not a thing. Although a lot of modern corporations don't actually really make money. Businesses don't make money until they're like, Hey, someday we'll make money. Uh, until that day, we'll just be operating at a loss and we'll get investors through hype.
Diving into Braid's Story & Mechanics
00:03:04
Speaker
Yeah, but we'll save that for the business podcast and this one we're gonna talk about a particular video game the name of which is braid I Didn't know why it was called braid until I reread that first part of the entry. I'm like, oh Yeah, it's cuz it's probably not the best titled in my opinion. It's what whiplashed by the book the braid of a girl. Yeah
00:03:29
Speaker
T being Tim, the protagonist of the game Raid, which is a 2D platformer. Yeah, he's like a better Mario.
00:03:41
Speaker
Jumpman Tim, but his jump sucks in comparison. It is pretty bad. Here's a white boy with literally no ups. Yeah He's got like a tie and like a little prep suit essentially like he's going to a school. Yeah. Yeah Everybody's also kind of got like vertical compression in this game Tim and the the enemies all the characters that are like relatively short
00:04:04
Speaker
What does that say about the game? I don't know, but this is a Jonathan Blow game. So like every detail could mean something probably means nothing. He's made other games that are equally obtuse. Yes. And I don't use that word in sentences other than describing Jonathan Blow games. Yeah.
00:04:29
Speaker
They're like full of tooths, honestly. All over the place. Tucson the walls. Yeah, tooths everywhere, really. But anyone who's played The Witness, I think, really understands where I'm coming from. It's a kind of game where we're coming from here. It's a kind of game where it has a story, and you'll learn about the story while playing the game, but it will purposefully kind of leave some blanks or allow you to come to your own conclusions.
00:05:00
Speaker
Which personally I'm not a fan of Because you're the artist you should have conclusions. Let me know what you think Yeah, there are times where you can like leave certain things Open that might have two meetings. Yeah, I could see that but like you need to walk people there and
00:05:23
Speaker
Get there. Yeah, if you have the whole thing is kind of like loosely vague a I'm not enveloped in your story because I don't know what the fuck you're trying to say Yeah, so I'm gonna stop listening This is what our listeners actually feel like all the time. They're like, what are you trying to say? I'm not enveloped. I'm gonna stop listening Yeah, I was gonna probably circle back talk about the story a little bit more once we've provided a lot of context but I
00:05:53
Speaker
Okay, i'll leave i'll leave it bullet a yeah bullet point a Um, but mechanically as I said 2d platformer, it is like a puzzle game Largely that's that's that's the content you're coming here for How do you how you solve these puzzles involving? I would say time Probably time
00:06:14
Speaker
Yes, but initially, like any type of puzzle game, the mechanics build over time. But when it starts out, I don't think you even know that you can manipulate time. You're just going through and you're stomping on these hairy goombas. They look too humanoid. They're like goombas with faces, like more human-like face. Yeah, it's uncanny.
00:06:39
Speaker
Um, but as you're going through, it's really just basic platforming. You maybe grab a key to open a door and you go through that. And then at a point, I'm not sure if it's like a forced death. I don't know. I don't even think there was a forced death, but the first time you do die, you do get your prompt.
00:06:58
Speaker
Yeah, where you can essentially just hold the shift button to rewind time and then you're like, oh I can do this at any point as far as like it's implemented. It's actually It's actually pretty cool Because the music track whatever you're listening to it will play backwards as you rewind which is cool. I like that and it happens really seamlessly it's um, you can like tap release the rewind time like option and the
00:07:26
Speaker
Engine handles it like very quickly. There's no transition fade anything like that. It's just go backwards and forward in times as you wish And you actually can like if you hold the rewind button you can like push up or I guess jump whatever your jump key would be To move forward again, so you can kind of like find a place in time on your route through the level and be like here Here is where I shall resume And go through there, which is which is pretty cool
Time Manipulation in Braid
00:07:54
Speaker
Yeah, there's some sections where you're falling and you might be like, oh, I landed on some spikes and see where those were. Um, you rewind a little bit and you hold a directional arrow. Yeah. So you, you narrowly avoid that rather than landing directly on top of it. And also you can speed up how fast you're rewinding and fast forwarding. Exactly. Yeah. Like times eight multiplier, which is crazy.
00:08:18
Speaker
Because there are some puzzles later on once you realize the time manipulation tool, and you actually need to use it. Where you're like, hey, I need to go do this thing over here, but I need to get back to the other side really quickly. Yeah. So you're like, action. Mash the fuck out of everyone. And we're there. Yeah, there's a lot of cool mechanics. So I'm not usually, Braid is kind of an exception for me, because I'm not usually a huge fan of platformers. Yeah, and puzzle games, both of those. You don't like any platformers?
00:08:47
Speaker
I'm not a huge fan of platformers. There's some I enjoy, but it takes me a while to get engaged all the time, and I'm a filthy casual.
00:09:03
Speaker
A really, really freaking good game. Bro. That I have struggled to engage with. Ian was bugging me to play it again. And I've definitely gotten back into it more. I haven't played in like a week. Yeah. Um, cause I'm stuck at like this asshole boss. I'm sure it's not even boss. There's like a mid boss. I'm just, there's an enemy, the first enemy. It's just guys looking at me. He, he throws pillows at me and I explode. Yeah. Um, but it is super solid.
00:09:31
Speaker
Yeah. And so if like, it takes me a while to break into a game like Hollow Knight, which is universally acclaimed. To be fair, it's also a steeper.
00:09:40
Speaker
difficulty Right, like it's not the most forgiving game by any means especially as you get further like hey these mechanics You're good though, right? Yeah, and you're like what bye if there's anything I need it's forgiveness So if the game doesn't provide that for me, what kind of a brain does right get some? Absolution in the end perhaps
00:10:01
Speaker
The thing about Brave though that I enjoy where I don't really like platformers and I don't usually like puzzle games as much is how quickly mistakes can be undone. So another, I think we talked about it recently, like I like Super Meat Boy.
00:10:17
Speaker
I come back to it a lot, actually, for some reason. And part of it is just because resets are so fast. They're like, oh, I made a mistake, but I can instantly go back to executing the route to figuring it out. Hotline Miami, recent episode. You fuck up. You start over immediately. Immediately. I can fix that mistake. I can do it now.
00:10:38
Speaker
It's not the Dark Souls like, hey, you die. Thanks Obama. Yeah, you don't have to go through like a loading screen. You don't have to do anything like that. Anything that takes you out of the experience, you can immediately resolve your mistake.
00:10:54
Speaker
And Braid is absolutely perfect for that because, much like Prince of Persia or something, it's like, hey, you fell on the spike? What if you didn't? You can rewind yourself. It's like having infinite sand for those familiar with the Prince of Persia series. You can always go back in time to wherever you want in Braid and be like, no, I didn't hit that enemy. I jumped on his head. You can make those little corrections.
00:11:17
Speaker
Yeah, this goes back to like the holding in the arrow key or maybe because like everything else in the level is pretty much fixed besides you. Yeah. So sometimes like these little Goomba enemies will be shot out of cannons. Yeah. And maybe you got to adjust your timing because you want to jump on a Goomba. It's being shot out of a cannon because when you hit the Goomba, it kind of gives you like an extra jump.
00:11:38
Speaker
Yeah, so maybe you're trying to get up to a platform you weren't able to reach previously Um, and maybe you're like mid-jump and you don't want to go start it over again. Wait for the can the fire You're just like let's rewind and try again. Right rewind try again. We went there it is. Yeah There's like you you don't have to do infinite retries. You just make the correction exactly at the divergent point where you made your mistake
00:12:00
Speaker
I appreciate that because that means as soon as you know We've talked about this in relation to other puzzle games I think as soon as you know the puzzle solution You should be able to implement it. Just be like that's your run. No wasted time solve it and we're good And braid is much like that in most cases. There's a couple times where there's more elaborate solutions that aren't just the answer is you're done you have to implement something but
00:12:27
Speaker
We can kind of get to that as we introduce mechanics, I think. Yeah. So like one of the first mechanics that they introduce is green magic, which can affect items. There's like keys that open doors. There's the enemies, the Goombas. Basically, these things that have this green enchantment on them are like you actually not not even like you. Yeah. They are not affected by rewind at all. They're time immune.
00:12:55
Speaker
So if you're trying to rewind, that goomba is still going to be walking around. Um, that door is going to be in whatever state it was in, et cetera. Yeah.
00:13:03
Speaker
And the game uses this to some really cool and I think rewarding initial solutions. The one that I really appreciate from just a conceptual standpoint is a combination of, there'll be like a set of doors. And usually anytime you use a key, it like breaks when you open the door. You can't use it again, unless you rewind time.
00:13:27
Speaker
If you have a door that's green, it's got the green magic on it. It means it's unaffected by time. Like we know that by just the principle of green magic. So if you have a standard key and you open that door, you can actually rewind time. Get the key back. Exactly. You get the key back and now the door is still open because it's unaffected by time and you can open the next door. And like when I figured that out initially, I was like, oh, snap.
00:13:53
Speaker
This is the Zawardo time control I got it I Think like moments like that and puzzle solving feel really good and brave Yeah, it's like all puzzle games. It's about the aha moment of discovering Initially, here's the challenge. I need to meet here the mechanics. I have at my disposal I
00:14:18
Speaker
Oh, I didn't know I could do that. Yeah. And a lot of Jonathan's blows games in general while being obtuse. Occasionally I do appreciate when it's like, Hey, you're looking at this in a slightly different angle. Yeah. Perspective shift. Yeah. Literally the witness. Um, and obviously also, also braid seeing the solution. But like.
00:14:41
Speaker
I've never fully completed braid very so often. I'll make attempts and then I'll watch like a play through. Right. And then I'll see how they do certain challenges. I'm like, Oh my God. Yeah. Cause there's also like a special unlocks for your actual progression. You're getting these little puzzle pieces throughout the areas. And then you build a picture and the picture is done. It's just a jigsaw puzzles. Yeah. The picture is done. You can ascend another rung in the ladder to get to the last level.
00:15:12
Speaker
But there's also like these other optional things you can get with your stars. Right. I collected exactly zero in my playthrough. I know of one that exists, but I refuse to do it. Yeah. Because you have to go stand on the cloud for an hour and 20 minutes. Actually an hour. Actual in-game time is an hour and 20 minutes. That is a Jonathan Blow entirely. And I refuse to do that. I'll spoil what the stars do at the end of the episode. So you guys don't have to stand on the cloud for an hour and 20 minutes.
00:15:42
Speaker
It just felt so eh for me. That's a mechanic you should always skip and shame on Jonathan Blow for putting it in the game. Don't put time sinks in for time sink's sake. Yeah. It's a fuck pain in the ass. The rest of the game basically respects your time. So why introduce a mechanic that absolutely does not. The thing is he obviously didn't learn his lesson in Braid because I know absolutely this exists in The Witness as well.
00:16:10
Speaker
We have to watch that video for 40 minutes Yeah, you have to sit there and you have to wait and at a specific point in a video and the witness move the cursor Like it's either into the video. It's out of the video onto a wall, but it happens like 40 minutes into the video So if you miss that point in the video, you have to rewatch the whole thing There's no time mechanic to rewind that
00:16:34
Speaker
And I wish somebody would just tell me that so I just wouldn't have played that game at all. Yeah. Because that's the type of shit I'm like. It's like true ending nonsense. So like you can beat the game and not do it. Same with Brave. Like you can get the ending and you don't have to stand on a cloud for an hour. Yeah. But if you want to experience everything, he tends to put really stupid time gates in there.
00:16:59
Speaker
But yeah, most of the rest of the mechanics, like I said, you figure it out and you're good. The green magic plate stays pretty constant. There's also a kind of shadow mechanic. So this one's really cool because it's things with purple magic, I think, leave time shadows, essentially.
00:17:22
Speaker
So, um, if you do something, you like jump on an enemy or you run and you open a door or whatever, and then you rewind and release, rewind your shadow and the creature's shadow, whatever plays back out everything. Yeah, it plays, plays out. Um, uh, which is really cool because it allows you to do like double time actions.
00:17:45
Speaker
Yeah. It's like, Hey, I need to go pull this lever. This lever opens the store. The lever's not next to the door. If I let go of the lever, the door falls. Yeah. So you go open the lever, go back to the door. Um, let it rewind and let it play out again. You stand by the door. You're like, thanks me.
00:18:04
Speaker
Yeah, it leads to some kind of hilarious, um, hilarious outcomes where you can actually, one of the, one of the puzzles that took me a while to solve is you can basically goomba stomp the goombas to get a jump. Right. And one of the puzzles requires that you actually have the goomba hit your head for a bonus jump. And then you jump on it afterwards for a super jump.
00:18:27
Speaker
Yep, so it's gonna jump on your like shadow and then you jump on its head and get the the puzzle piece or whatever It took me forever because tactical suicide didn't enter my mind when I was playing braid That's one of the ones that whenever you watch like yeah, like I wouldn't have jumped to it But I love that it exists as a thing. Mm-hmm again slightly up to us but it leaves me more the feeling of
00:18:57
Speaker
Oh yeah, rather than fucking kidding me. Right. It's like, Oh, I understand. Like this is the interaction of mechanics. I put it together. This makes sense now, but now I know that that is a tool that I could theoretically utilize to solve other puzzles in the future.
00:19:12
Speaker
Yeah. And there's some cool ones. I like two other examples of that mechanic. One of them is you have to, there's like a gap with spikes. Is the shadow mechanic you're talking about? Shadow mechanic, yeah. And you can grab a key and then almost clear the gap. You need to get the key to the other side. But you won't quite make it.
00:19:33
Speaker
So you make the attempt, and then you rewind, and you with your real self, your present self, run down to the other side of the gap, and your shadow makes the jump with the key because it's replaying time, like falls on the spikes and dies, but you're right there next to the key and can grab it out of the air before it falls.
00:19:51
Speaker
So it's like, again, kind of tactical suicide, but I don't know. That mechanic just feels really cool when you're playing double time. It's like prestige. Exactly. Yeah. Or like lure a bunny away because they're killers in this game. It's like they're from Monty Python, I think. And like sneak up behind it, climb a ladder and get a puzzle piece while your shadow is keeping it busy. It's just, it's fun. It's fun stuff.
00:20:17
Speaker
Yeah, that's definitely one of one of my favorite kind of mechanics And they'll they'll continue they do a pretty good job So one gripe I had with a couple puzzle games is we'll introduce a new mechanic, but they'll like deprecate They'll remove old mechanics. They don't incorporate them into the solutions kind of going forward. Yeah, they don't typically full stack. Yeah, and I think like
00:20:44
Speaker
Um, uh, Talos principle had like a couple steps where like it was focused largely on the new mechanic, but it was a pretty good job of building on old, uh, knowledge. Um, and braid does the same thing. Eventually you'll be dealing with like several time mechanics at the same time after they've gotten you kind of, um, acclimated, acclimated exactly.
00:21:08
Speaker
So, um, one way that they kind of introduce that is there'll be like a recurring boss, which is basically like a King Goomba. And the fight is actually always, it's kind of funny because the solution is always the same. You have to drop chandeliers on his head.
00:21:23
Speaker
But they'll use different mechanics different colors of magic basically throughout the game to change how the fight should work So in one of them He's the first encounter. He has green magic on him, which means he's unaffected by time So you can drop the chandeliers above they'll hit him in the head. He'll take damage and
00:21:43
Speaker
you can rewind, reload your chandeliers and he's still at less than full health. Exactly. So you're actually making progress in the fight. You're just giving yourself ammo. Yeah. Otherwise it would be like a zero sum game where you would hit him with two chandeliers and then you'd be like,
00:22:03
Speaker
Well, amount of options. Yeah. Yeah. He like takes four hits to finish, I think so. Five. Five's off. I was corrected by one of our aides. Thanks for that, dude. Thanks, Tim the PA. Yeah. In a later encounter, he actually doesn't have green magic anymore. So Rewind affects him.
00:22:26
Speaker
But the time shadow mechanic is in effect. So the chandeliers have purple magic and You this was actually takes me a while to beat. Yeah, so You can drop the chandeliers Rewind time and then shadow chandeliers will fall Which can hurt him? They both hurt him, but the shadow chandeliers don't take ammo because the real chandeliers still up there It's weird to track mentally but
00:22:54
Speaker
You guys get what we're saying. You're basically just setting up what you're going to do and then playing it out rather than physically doing it yourself and then rewinding. Yeah. It still happens the same way though. It's like payday two pre-planning.
00:23:08
Speaker
That's a reference for like one listener maybe and it's it's probably it's probably me But that's that's something I think that is It's a emblematic of good game design where you can literally just reuse an encounter and change one mechanic but it fundamentally Like changes the encounter
00:23:33
Speaker
I think that's actually really cool. It's also risky because there's like, it could be laziness, right? Like you could make an argument, same boss, literally just changed, you know, the way you're attacking him with chandeliers. That's dumb. Why didn't you put more effort in?
00:23:52
Speaker
it depends on what it is like if it was let's say a boss in doom yeah and you went from like guns to a melee weapon in doom would probably be some badass variation
00:24:07
Speaker
But yeah, it doesn't feel great, but in the sense of like final fantasy, let's say FFX. Yeah. One of the few that I played. So one of my favorites, also really good music. Uh, you keep fighting Seymour. Yeah. But every time you fight Seymour, it is an entirely different fight. The character's the same. Right. So maybe certain things about the fight persist, but every single time it's a different fight. Yeah. Which I like.
00:24:34
Speaker
Yeah. It's like a, it's like a Pokemon rival thing. You're seeing progress. You're seeing progress. That's the thing. There's actually progress in it. Yeah. And then you get to flex when you revisit the fight at the end of the game and you're like, you're trash. I'm farmed. Let's do this. That's how you know, you're, you're, uh, you're, you're a boss at the end of it. I just felt good to fight him and then use his summon against him because I went and found his summon. Cause I went on Google. Thanks Google.
00:25:02
Speaker
Yeah, that is one thing I really like about Dark Souls is killing invaders, then resumming them for fights later. It's like, yeah, you're on my squad now. It's like, I'll beat you into respecting me. Yeah, exactly. Another really cool mechanic that they have in this is
Advanced Mechanics & Time Play
00:25:23
Speaker
I now can't think of anything besides the super hot mechanic. This is what you said to me, uh, off audio, but it's essentially just whenever you move, everything else moves as well. Yeah. So the game level is on the script. If you just go from left to right, it will play out normally. Um, but you might need to interact with it to do things as you would for any fucking level.
00:25:47
Speaker
Right. Um, so the one thing I specifically remember, one of the early parts, a cannon is shooting a Goomba somewhere. Yeah. Goomba falls out of the sky, lands on the ground, continues to walk. Yeah. You can step on Goombas. Um, and if you jump on it from left to right, you will jump up. The Goomba dies because as you go to the right time plays forward. Yeah. But if you jump on it,
00:26:12
Speaker
To the left, it doesn't die because time is not progressed. It is frozen or, or going backwards at that point. So you can continue to jump on the. So you can actually like ladder vertically if you do it right. Cause if you bounce twice in something, it is more of a super jump thing.
00:26:32
Speaker
And that to me, I was like, shit's getting real weird. Yeah, you can kind of just walk, like, repeat a jump up, like it stares essentially till the firing arc ends. I remember, like, one of the first levels for this. This was another instance of the game reusing the same mechanic, but it's basically kill all the enemies in this area.
00:26:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's like one of the first ones that you use time moves forward when you move forward time moves back when you move back and you have to Not kill any of the enemies or it doesn't really matter. I guess
00:27:04
Speaker
Well, the first time you go through it when there's no mechanics, you just stomp the goombas. You're like, I got it. Cool. Yeah. When you come back, it's like stomp the goombas. You're like, yeah, I've done this before. And then you kill a goomba and then you go to kill another goomba. And then you've actually gone left, rewound time and brought the goomba back to life. And you're like, oh, we got to plan this. Yeah. So you have to kill them essentially left to right. Exactly. Or in a way that you will end up on the rightmost side.
00:27:31
Speaker
And you got to be careful because like moving too far to the left undoes their death and then they're like, I'm just content to walk around now. Which the game loves to throw at you later too. It's like the one that's I feel like really infamous. I actually remember this. So it's been years since I played this and I'm playing in preparation for this. I got to the area with the key.
00:27:53
Speaker
and was like, crap, I know exactly what's gonna happen here. But there's a locked door above you that requires you to go to the left. And the problem is the key that you have to carry there tracks where you were as you moved left to right.
00:28:15
Speaker
So say like you run across a bottom track and then you climb a ladder and you run back to the left on an upper track The key will go back down to the bottom track and run back like it's running back to the VNA level Because it's rewinding in time. You'll let you you can't hold on to it
00:28:32
Speaker
Yeah, it only knows of time linearly. It doesn't know about verticality at all. Exactly. So it kind of just floats in the air like, see. And the kind of sneaky mechanic to that is play around with time and a platform and get an enemy who has green magic. So he's unaffected by time.
00:28:54
Speaker
to pick up the key and then just walk it back like some sort of time lord back to the bottom of the ladder so you can climb up and actually unlock the door it's pretty hilarious just escorting like this trash mob essentially like there's nobody who's more capable of dealing with time right now than you are to the beginning your feeble body was blessed with magics beyond your comprehension carry this array please it's pretty freaking great
00:29:23
Speaker
There's a part later on, um, as this, you know, is a Mario clone, they didn't have these pipes, uh, from which I want to say like, they're kind of like Venus fly traps. Yeah. They're the same thing as piranha plant. They really are. Creepier for some reason. They are. Um, so they kind of go up and bite and then they go down. Yeah. But throughout the game, um, more of them become time immutable. There's kind of a fixed thing. Um,
00:29:53
Speaker
But the example I'm thinking of, they are time mutable, but the goombas being shot across are not. So essentially you have to move left to right to have these piranha plants go up and down to clear a path for these goombas to go across. That takes me for fucking ever. It was kind of bad.
00:30:15
Speaker
Sometimes you start to use rewind to move to a position more quickly. You essentially need to move two goombas over so you can jump on one's head and then the other head for the super boost to get up to the puzzle piece. And then you're like, that was all for one puzzle piece. The obnoxious part about this is it kind of invalidates. I understand the puzzle. I solved it ultimately. But the thing that made it less frustrating for me, I described earlier, to be able to undo your mistakes.
00:30:43
Speaker
That doesn't apply if certain pieces of the puzzle have time immunity. Yep. Like if you screw up your jump you have to get another two Goombas for that puzzle. I found that really frustrating actually when I played. Part of that's because I'm bad and the other part is because the rest of the game spoils you by letting you know like when you have the solution that's all you need.
00:31:04
Speaker
You don't like it doesn't matter that the platforming might be imprecise a little bit Because you can just undo your mistakes, but when that's no longer the case you feel More constrained. I think yeah, and also you just keep getting these death sound effects of Things what? The emulation when he gets it was like a fireball There's also a fireball which is specifically for Just don't get hit by them. Yeah
00:31:33
Speaker
One thing I forgot to mention, which is one of the things I really appreciated early on in Braid and my initial play through many, many moons ago, years even. Yeah.
00:31:44
Speaker
Uh, as you're, uh, making these pictures out of the jigsaw puzzle pieces, towards like the last, I think it's the last level in that area. You actually have like a picture frame and you can kind of assemble the pieces you have. Um, and you can also do it in the hub world as well. And that's overall where it matters, but they, they mirror each other, but there's a piece where.
00:32:10
Speaker
In the picture, it looks like a ledge. Yep. And you actually can jump on that ledge. Yeah. So one of the solutions to get to one of the puzzle pieces in the top right corner is you jump over and then interact with the picture frame to move this jigsaw puzzle. And then you jump again, you do it again.
00:32:30
Speaker
Yeah. So I think this time around, I started from the bottom and every time I jumped, I would, uh, go to manipulate the picture, slide up the jigsaw under me and made it Jacob's ladder to heaven.
00:32:45
Speaker
It's like my ladder basically. Yeah. Good craftsmanship. The thing I like about that is it's like, it's the first, uh, jigsaw puzzle for world world. It's not world one because you actually start at world two. Yeah. You start at world two plot reasons.
00:33:04
Speaker
And you have to use that to get two pieces. The first one's just jumping on the platform. So you're like, great, done with it. But no, the game is insidious. And the other way you have to use it is to place it so that the Goomba will walk off of the adjacent platform onto it. So you can get them off of it down below you so you can jump on them and get a piece that's kind of floating off near the exit. It's sneaky like that.
00:33:28
Speaker
Yeah, it's good though. Like those are the ones I appreciate early on. How'd you feel about like the last mechanic that they, the major mechanic that they introduced?
00:33:40
Speaker
I like it in certain levels. And I will provide an example thusly. And then another one where I fucking hate it. So the last mechanic is like a ring you can drop. It's like a fixed position thing, but it dilates time. So the closer you are to it, the more time is slowed.
00:34:02
Speaker
So you can use this to For one of the hunt levels or like moving a key to a door you can essentially have it block a Sliding piece that's going down to block your progression. Yeah, it's like a time to exit basically. Yeah And you can move so much more quickly than it which is right next to the time dilation And you pick it up and go through on your merry way. Awesome. Mm-hmm
00:34:26
Speaker
The one I really liked the solution for is you have to go up some ladders, corridors, and there's a series of cannons. Yeah. And when you go up, you're always running away from the cannons or the cannonballs. So you have just enough time to guess the next ladder. Exactly. Meanwhile, in the back of your head, you're thinking,
00:34:43
Speaker
This is gonna be a bitch the other way cuz I know I have to come back. Yeah, and you have this elevator To get you back up so you can make the cannon run. Yeah, and you move your time dilation of a couple things You're like, I've got this new mechanic. I know I have to use it. Yeah, how the fuck do I? And then you put the time dilation on the elevator. Yeah, you send the elevator down and then you haul ass and
00:35:05
Speaker
So the elevator is slowly going down because it's affected by time dilation, but it goes by each cannon to slow their shots. So you have just enough of a time window to run back left into the cannon fire before it fires again. It's actually one of my favorite implemented puzzles in the game.
00:35:23
Speaker
like just for how the mechanics interact because Uh, it just feels really smart. It feels really smart how they set it up It's kind of like, you know how people make really complicated mario maker puzzles or some elaborate rube goldberg of events And it's like you get to uh, really take get the payoff there Uh for figuring it out, which I appreciate Um, you said you really liked that mechanic for that level. That was cool design
00:35:50
Speaker
What was the one that you really disliked? Every other level, yeah. I'm trying to think of a very explicit example. I can think of, I think I think I wouldn't mind if you have any though. Yeah, so one that I didn't mind too much was using it to... How very polite of you to say. Right, yeah. Well, actually, I thought this one was okay. You basically have a cloud gun that's firing clouds out underneath you.
00:36:19
Speaker
Cloudgun shoot clouds which act as platforms. Yes, they're also platforms you can stand on them important fact And it's firing them at a rate that you can't jump between the clouds But if you drop your ring it slows the one you're on and so it messes up the pattern you can jump to the next one
00:36:35
Speaker
I thought that was relatively smart, kind of witty. I agree. But later the problem kind of becomes that you're like, what piece of this puzzle needs some amount of dilation to be the answer? Yeah. And that's when it kind of becomes a guess sort of.
00:36:54
Speaker
There's one I really liked where a key drops into like a pet of spikes. Yep. And you have to drop your ring next to it so that the platform that comes out below the key causing it to drop comes more slowly and the key will slowly drop and you can do a little run from where you flip to switch to get back and grab the key out of the air. I thought that was pretty cool.
00:37:22
Speaker
I got stumped by that one though. Yeah, and I had to end up watching it because I Forgot that I had to do that in conjunction with the rewinding of time Oh, yeah to go back so that the ring would be at that place at that point in time
00:37:38
Speaker
Yeah, I get a little bit fuzzy on when those mechanics actually mesh up And interact versus when they kind of fizzle out. Yeah, so like in this case there's another mechanic at play there's like white platforms magic platforms where basically if you're standing on the platform tim is time immune if you rewind everything else will rewind but he doesn't move um
00:38:02
Speaker
So you need to use that in this solution for this particular puzzle. Wait, what? Yeah, did you not? So for that puzzle. There's time immune platforms? Yeah. When was this introduced? So those are used like three times in the game that I can remember.
00:38:19
Speaker
One of them was for an early jigsaw puzzle where, um, a door is being blocked off and it's literally impossible to reach it. Um, before, um, the doors blocked off, you run past it, you ignore it. You're just like, all right, I give up on that puzzle piece and you can flip kind of a semi-hidden switch to raise a time immune platform, stand on it, rewind to chronologically the beginning of the level. But Tim's just standing here just being like, I'm immune to time.
00:38:48
Speaker
Oh my god. And then you can run back over and grab the piece before the door closes. So I did see that in the playthrough. I didn't do it myself for the same reasons. Yeah. I did not know that that was a thing though, like an actual mechanic until just now. Yeah. It makes it a lot easier because in the puzzle we were talking about where the key falls, you can just drop your ring. You actually do like, again, pre-planning where like my ring is going to sit here for like 15 seconds.
00:39:15
Speaker
Then I'm just gonna pick it back up. I'll run off and go somewhere else. Stand on time immunity and rewind time back to when your ring is down there on its own.
00:39:24
Speaker
That's why if I'm ever like walking somewhere and I lean up against the wall, I'm texting for 10 minutes, I'm actually just planning for my rewind play through. Exactly. I needed myself to be there at that point in time. It is kind of. Basically for an alibi. That's where I'm going with this. It's kind of hilarious from a, um, a strict gameplay standpoint that part of the gameplay is I will stand here for 15 seconds so that when I rewind time, something is here for 15 seconds. You know, it's.
00:39:54
Speaker
It's it's kind of like non-game play for a later payoff. It's It's weird because I I definitely did it in talus principle too because you have to but As you're like the recorder right think through yeah, I just want to like play that out again I'll just like count like how much time do I need to open this door? Yeah, let's give myself an extra five seconds because we'll get distracted and fuck something up. Yeah, um
00:40:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's definitely a weird Shift, but it's a good layer to add on to puzzle mechanics. Mm-hmm cuz like hey here mechanics, you know What if you weren't doing them? Yeah, exactly thankfully that was like The white like magic proof platforms are kind of or time proof platforms are kind of rare because I think they would have made other puzzles too complicated if they
00:40:44
Speaker
We're like, anything about the stage can change, but Tim could be right here, you know, rewinding time. It makes it harder to think about linearly what's occurring, but we're talking in like time terms, which makes this harder for listeners to understand. I get that. So thank you for sticking with us. Um, but those are, those are basically the mechanics. Is there anything else that they really introduce mechanic wise? I can't think of anything.
00:41:12
Speaker
No, not really. And the level stuff is fairly simple as far as platforms, ladders, doors, maybe like a sliding platform. Yeah. And they actually don't have too many complicated moving pieces, which is another reason I sort of appreciate it. It's not hard to get into. Yeah.
00:41:34
Speaker
You're like I can run and jump I can press shift in games I don't even know if I can jump or run not anymore not in this economy
00:41:49
Speaker
I kind of like that the mechanics don't get too complicated in that aspect though because something I started to feel like our 30 of Talos principle or however long that game is as it's just like here's six things I'm like alright but my brain has capacity for three things I'm gonna start I've lost the ability to eat we're gonna drop that now I know how to use a recorder and prisms at the same time or whatever
00:42:19
Speaker
I get that. But for me, Talos Principle kept me more invested because it had such great theming and other shit going on. Oh, yeah. Because it was like, hey, you're talking to this computer. This computer knows about this world and doesn't trust your all father who's dictating you commands. What else is going on here? And you explore a little bit more and you're curious about the world and what's going on.
00:42:41
Speaker
Whereas here your only exposition really is When you start a new area before you get into like the level doors, there's like five books each thing has like a Paragraph or a blurb. Yeah about a story in his life. Yeah, it's written in prose
00:42:58
Speaker
but it's not super informative. Like you can get like a loose idea and start to guess what, but it's, again, it's like reading a high school kid's edgy poem. I feel is the plot of this whole game. Yeah. It's kind of interesting. There is, there is some subversion for the traditional trope. So.
00:43:18
Speaker
It's obvious kind of by the end that you are in a Mario clone. Literally at the end of each level, there's a flag. A little dinosaur comes out. It's like, what are you doing here? There's no princess here. Go home. You're drunk. And actually, Tim has a lot of the jigsaw puzzles are him drinking it. But it's clearly like inspired by like it says at the beginning, Tim made a mistake. And because of this, he lost the princess.
00:43:48
Speaker
basically. So he's going trying to find the princess. Now a lot of this is left vague so people can draw their own conclusions but ultimately it culminates in the sequence
Story Twist & Protagonist's Journey
00:44:04
Speaker
that kind of causes Tim to go off and do whatever he's doing to try to reclaim the princess.
00:44:13
Speaker
Which is really cool from a game design perspective. Are we talking about the the actual chase? Yes. Yeah. Slash helping the princess escape from this armored knight who's trying to catch her. Yeah. This is probably the coolest part of the game. Yeah. It's kind of like when Bastion ends and you hear the two songs play together. You're like, oh, yeah. Oh.
00:44:37
Speaker
So basically like there's like a firewall coming left to right, you know platforming the rules on death But there's like this large night above who's yelling at the princess like come down here and she's like
00:44:50
Speaker
And then she starts booking it right. You start booking it right, but she's on a track above you. Uh, so sometimes you need her to interact with something to open up stuff for you. Sometimes you need to interact with something to open up stuff for her. Yeah, exactly. You're both trying to go in parallel to the right. Yeah. It's a co-op experience with this princess AI. Yeah.
00:45:12
Speaker
So when you finally get over to the right, uh, she gets home. It's kind of like one of those modern, like full window houses, which I'm not one to throw rocks, but I'm occasionally the one to browse the internet. So would not be. Um, and you're there, you're there on the other side of the window and you're just kind of watching her like a normal person. You know how you do. All right. So I'm not sure if you're prompted at this point.
00:45:40
Speaker
Time stops. Yeah. Okay. Yeah time stops. And so you can't do anything so instinctively like well Rewind I guess. Mm-hmm. So as you rewind The whole sequence that you just did of like helping each other get from left to right Plays out in reverse. Yeah But as you watch it
00:46:02
Speaker
You see they're like tim is Able to get from right to left without much issue. Mm-hmm, but every action that she's doing Which was opening up a path for you before is actually Blocking you off from getting to her. Yeah, and it becomes really fucking apparent Mm-hmm, and then when you get to the left most and you're back with the angry arbor knight. Mm-hmm
00:46:27
Speaker
She's saying help and he says, like, come down here. Um, and he, he means in a helpful way. And then he carries her off into the distance because he's saving her from you. Yeah. That's like, Oh shit.
00:46:46
Speaker
This is the Goosebumps moment of the game for me, because I was like, snap. If you ripped out everything else from the game, this piece right here is art. This is the part that's actually really cool. And also kind of impressive from a design standpoint, because...
00:47:01
Speaker
They do a few points of cheating Like there's no firewall in reverse And something you didn't see the first time when you were technically chasing her And you were helping each other through is there's ladders that Tim Has access to and you only see the ladders in reverse. Well, I thought you saw the ladder the
00:47:26
Speaker
first time they didn't they didn't show up for me i watched it i watched it later i don't think they show up at least i could be wrong but um when you were playing through in reverse which is actually forward order you see there's plenty of ladders where tim like can almost reach it like climbed up yeah climb up and get her but
00:47:45
Speaker
Like she blocks off all of them and multiple times multiple attempts on his life My favorite is where a platform you have to jump over a pit of spikes and At the last moment like she flips a switch to raise a platform so the spikes don't kill you
00:48:00
Speaker
And then when you play in reverse, which is true order, you're running over a platform, completely safe, and she flips the switch so that it drops and you almost die on the spike. And it's just like, yeah, that's pretty good. But it's a really cool sequence.
00:48:21
Speaker
That is probably the most Kind of edgy, you know sort of like oh, you know, he's trying to get the princess but the princess actually doesn't want him like and the way he is So it's a it's it's a subversion of the save the princess tale definitely So that's just some creepy guy, yeah, he's just some creepy guy but this so it's worth pointing out mm-hmm the knight character is like a very
00:48:53
Speaker
brunette slash gingery, very fuzzy guy, bigger guy and armored. When you fight the mega goomba, which is the boss fight, it looks oddly like a larger, crazier version of the night. I didn't realize that. So it's actually like a mental projection of.
00:49:15
Speaker
his deranged view of this other guy that you're trying to fight pretty much. I didn't realize that, but that's actually really cool. After you complete that, there's like a prologue segment, which is basically just exposition, a bunch of books.
00:49:33
Speaker
Uh, yes, sorry. It could be a prologue. You start at chapter two. You do start at chapter two. You end on chapter one, but because the game's going in reverse, playing with time or whatever, right? Um, but, uh, the, the, the game mechanic, essentially you could run through and get everything from Tim's perspective. Um, but if you, uh, instead find these kinds of like hidden areas where they're obstructed by rocks or something, um, it'll show you something from the princess's perspective.
00:50:03
Speaker
where you see kind of the reality of their relationship more and how like kind of like self deceiving Tim is about how healthy their relationship is and stuff. But it's still, it's all like,
00:50:18
Speaker
It's kind of in vagaries. And then here's the thing I don't like in the story is I feel like they should have left it a personal tale, but they had to Jonathan blow it up. And by that, I mean, put in a reference to, um, the Adam, the creation of the atom bomb.
00:50:39
Speaker
There's a quotes like we're all sons of female dog heat now, which is the Which was said at the creation of the atom bomb. Yeah, I'm like it when I when I saw that the first time in the game I was like, oh Oh, you're gonna try to pull a bunch of real-life symbolism into this aren't you? I don't think it's needed. It absolutely wasn't I
00:51:02
Speaker
And it kind of reduced the point. Did your opinion change the second time through? No. I still think that should have been like when the first time I played, I was like, oh, it's going to lead me to the second time I played. Yeah. I mean, I was just as upset with it the second time because it had the potential to be a cool interpersonal story about realizing how unhealthy for like each other people are.
00:51:24
Speaker
Like lack of self-awareness in a relationship. Yeah, like putting your own needs above someone else's all of those are good tape like great takeaways this game could have had and then they're like atom bomb symbolism Like I don't need it Yeah, like micro is okay. Sometimes also another Symbology thing throughout the game. So the ring that you use that does like the time dilation. Yeah is actually like a ring she gave him or like
00:51:55
Speaker
It might be a wedding ring. I'm not sure. I don't know. It's connected to her in some way, but he never felt good with it out of his pocket, meaning he was still very deeply attached to her. And also, I'm going to make a guess here in some interpretation, when you actually have the ring dilating time,
00:52:18
Speaker
It seems like you're kind of prolonged on that moment. Yeah. And you can, it's like an escapism in a sense where everything else kind of slows down because like, this is the one thing that matters. Anything else kind of just isn't material. I don't know. There is actually a line in the game for that. Like at the, when you get the mechanic to drop the ring, as it says, like he carries the ring with him everywhere. He would try to leave it, but, um, without it, he feels like he's suffocating. It's like.
00:52:46
Speaker
But to be fair, when he's like very far away from it, he's fucking bucking it. Right, that's his key. That's the key. The real trick to escape the goombas in his life is to leave the ring behind. If you ever have a breakup, cardio. Works for Tim.
00:53:03
Speaker
But yeah the to kind of wrap out the story because that's largely what it's about. There's a lot of text in there You can read it all on the wiki Or play the game game. Yeah, it's super cheap and it's always on big steam show or something Yeah, it's it's it's pretty cheap at this. How old is it now? By the way, probably three four years something like that. It's been a while No, I'm gonna tell you it's at least seven at least seven, right?
00:53:27
Speaker
No, it actually has been a while. That's right. Yeah, it has. It has definitely been a while while you look that up. I mean, to tell people about the, uh, the other things there is, you can catch the princess actually. Um, it's the way you get like the final star and it requires some observance that like the switches that you're flipping, um, are time immune when you're escaping the firewall.
00:53:54
Speaker
So if you're paying attention to that, which I never was until this was pointed out to me, you can rewind time and actually catch the princess by making it to the chandelier. She drops, it rises up and you can catch her. And then she explodes because like she's a bomb, an atom bomb or something.
00:54:10
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. Again. Jonathan, blow fuck yourself. Yeah, that's not the symbolism I cared for in the game at all. And then you can get the final star. And then once you make it all the way back out out of all of the worlds to kind of like the hub world overworld where the city's on fire, doesn't mean anything. I think you can see the stars in the sky. And if you have all of them, it makes a constellation. It's the chained maiden.
00:54:34
Speaker
Which basically represents presumably the fact that while she's with him. She's not really free in my headcanon The game doesn't tell you because Jonathan Blow Probably I think the moral is that Tim is not
00:54:55
Speaker
I was gonna say a healthy lover But more so that he's like a he's toxic in a relationship. Yeah rather than Having both parties benefit. Yeah, and he was just blind to it But as the story unravels, I think you and Tim realize the truth of situation. Yeah, hopefully. Yeah, it's like I
00:55:16
Speaker
I don't know, Tim. We'll see in Braid 2. Yeah, I'd probably not. It's been a while. Also the fact that the star payoff requires you to sit through the full cloud rising, like getting all of the stars. It's also symbolic to his obsession, like chasing after the princess through the entire game.
00:55:36
Speaker
You get to the end and you're like, Oh, the payoff is that it's just like a princess is just made in and change. Like it is captivity in your own obsession. Like there is no grand like revelation or freedom or something like that. The obsession itself is captivity. Um, I like that.
00:56:00
Speaker
Right, which probably means that's not what Jonathan Blow intended and he'll never tell us. So we can just fill it in with whatever our brains come up with.
00:56:10
Speaker
I think it's all a precursor to an anime. That's what might take away from it. Yeah, it could be as correct as anything else. If we're wrong, right into the show,
Engagement & Interaction Info
00:56:20
Speaker
Jonathan Blow at Soapstone Podcast at gmail.com or you can join the discussion. Facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. We're always happy to smack that like button whenever people post things.
00:56:41
Speaker
It's a modicum of discussion, right? That's how you react to things. I like that you're interacting in our community. Yeah, otherwise it would just be me doing a self-like, but it will show as the podcast liking the podcast. I've tried it. Yeah. Yeah, it's not great. It looks bad.
00:56:59
Speaker
Also, if you're still listening at this point, I'll probably post a picture at a point, but I made a soapstone logo out of perler beads and it looks super derpy. It does.
00:57:13
Speaker
Maybe I'll try and sell that for free to somebody. And we actually have, uh, something planned. That's not an audio episode, uh, coming up in the future. Right. I do a little, I'm overdue for a dump video. So hopefully you want to be coming out in the next month or so. Yeah, that'd be nice. And look forward to our end of the year episode.
00:57:39
Speaker
Which coming up when? At the end of the year. Oh, hey, how convenient. Yeah, should be good. Well, thank you guys for listening to this. And as always, we'll see you in the next one.
00:58:30
Speaker
Music Playing
00:58:59
Speaker
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