Braid's an interesting topic, though an old one, in the fast-changing world of video games.
Many have considered that it might be the field's first real instance of high-art (that which leaves itself open to interpretation, has multiple layers, has a deep subtext that goes beyond the surface story). Braid exhibits traits that make it strange, unique in a sense. But that backstory - what is that? Has anyone really figured it out yet? I have, more-or-less, figured out some aspects of it, building on the work of others along with my own research. I've come up with some fairly convincing (or at least, entertaining) explanations of the intention and artifice behind Braid.
So, if you've done a little reading around, you might know that 'teh princess is a nuclear bomb and also Andromeda lololol' etc. What you might not have grasped is the significance of the second half of that, the Greek mythology. Yes, Andromeda is the 'chained maiden' (get it? Chained? Hahaha like chain-reaction amirite? WOOO!) in Greek mythology, who (if you collect all the hidden stars in the game) shows up in her own constellation in the beginning section of the game. And in fact the chain around her waist morphs into a braid. And yes, Jonathan Blow (the author of Braid) has said one of his influences was a game called 'Trinity', about the first atomic explosions, which used Greek god names for the different sections. But is there else something underlying this?
There's a reason the game apes Super Mario (and occasionally other early hero-and-princess games like Donkey Kong) memes - it's the last in a long line of hero myths, stemming back to the proto-myths of Andromeda and Perseus - one of the first known myths of a princess getting rescued by a hero-prince from a 'horrible monster'. That myth has a lineage that runs into the King Arthur myths (Sir Lancelot etc), and eventually runs into Super Mario Brothers.
I'm sorry, your princess is in another castle. Who is Bowser?
But at a deeper level it shows the persistence of the hero myth - the idea that a man can, with strength of will and courage, right wrongs, make the world a better place and (as a result) rescue the princess as his reward. This myth is prevalent in video games in one form or another, moreso than most media. Whether it's a feisty vixen rather than a princess, or an arrogant loner rather than a prince, the same 'make the day, get the girl' mentality really infests things here. Is Blow making a comment on the validity of that myth? Let's consider.
The game is structured like a dream - the logic, the cross-pollination and crossing-over of the character's female relationships (mother, lover, mistress, physics-symbolised-as-a-princess), the non-linear nature of time-and-place- all of these reference the dreamworld - where you can comfortably accept that your best friend has just turned into your housecat, because a reality-checking aspect of your brain is switched to off-position. Leedzie has a very good breakdown of the dream/relationship angle, including many amazing things missed in this article, here.
The hint is given in fact, in the final level of the game, where you chase the princess back to her house - the mailbox number, as many have noted, is the same as the house in the film Mulholland Drive - a film Blow is a big fan of. The director of Mulholland refuses to give any specific interpretation of the film, says there is a particular interpretation that he meant when making it, but that he is more than happy for people to draw their own responses from it - now why does that sound familiar?
Moreover, the conclusion that most have come to on Mulholland drive is that it's a largely a sequence of dreams which the lead protagonist is having (see here for more details). This could be a subtle hint by Blow. But regardless, the rest of the scheme fits.
As the game has no linear time-angle, but says at the start that the protagonist is 'going back to make things right', and the final level you play is level 1, there's a suggestion that you are traveling (in your own mind) back through your past to find something, that your subconscious does not want you to find out, because it will threaten the (dream)world. And when you do complete the final level, the epilogue shows a world completely disrupted, with elements from the previous levels floating or jutting out haphazardly with no real structure. But what exactly did the protagonist realize?
The game was released on August 6th, the anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. At the end of World War 2, there was an arms race to try and develop the world's first nuclear bomb before the Germans did - but in fact, the Germans had given up their nuclear weapons research many years earlier. However, lacking that knowledge, the Los Alamos team put all of their effort into developing the atomic bomb, naming the first test site 'Trinity' (get it? Trinity - three - Braids are made of, you guessed it, three strands of hair. WOOO! Yeah). There was a genuine feeling of urgency and danger, as they knew how dangerous the first bomb would be, how decisive it could be in a war. However, when they were finally able to deploy the nuclear weapon, largely unknown to the scientists, the war was already won - the Germans were defeated and the Japanese were only days away from surrender (in peace talks with the Russians and being destroyed by aerial fire-bombing from the Americans). In essence the bomb was dropped on an already-defeated enemy, and the scientists at Los Alamos, while initially jubilant, eventually came to realize they'd been involved in something horrific and unnecessary.
Blow addressed this slightly in an interview once, saying that people had mistaken the game text of [the princess has been] snatched by a horrible and evil monster for bad writing, in that the use of two similar words was superfluous his point was, that something can be horrible, but not evil, and vice-versa. This is the question historians are often faced with: using the bomb on Japan Was horrible, without a doubt - but was it evil? Did it save more lives than the alternatives? And this is also the question that the researchers at Los Alamos had to live with for the rest of their lives.
In the last active level of the game there is a feeling of encroaching danger, of urgency as represented by the great wall of fire behind you - and it looks like the princess is helping you - but of course, if you complete the level, time reverses (to go forward instead of backward) and you realize that the princess was trying to escape from you - and that you, in fact, were the 'horrible and evil monster', not the hero. This is what disrupts the dreamworld and resolves the drama inherent in the games premise. You find out what your subconscious was trying to prevent you from realizing, by completing a series of tasks, fighting against the wards within your own head.
And of course, we know from the epilogue text (which references multiple statements made at the trinity test site after the bomb was successful) - and from the fact that the princess is depicted in rainbow colours (light spectra) - and by the fact that she explodes massively if you manage to touch her (after you collect the 8 hidden stars and do certain things) - that the princess is an encoded reference to the atomic bomb.
So now we know there's an atomic angle. Who is Tim?
There's one Greek god asides than Andromeda who was chained to a rock, and that is Prometheus - chained by Zeus after attempting to steal fire from the gods (and forced to have his intestine picked out by crows for all eternity). Prometheus was referenced a Lot during the Los Alamos days, having even named an element of the periodic table after him (Promethium), as they were very conscious of their 'stealing fire', and of the potential punishment for doing so - the dangers it would harbour. However, one man came to be associated with the name so clearly, that in 2006 (the same year Blow started work on Braid, incidentally) a book was published about him - 'American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer'. It became a very well-known book and won a Pulitzer prize for its work, and it is unlikely that Blow did Not read it, as some of the in-game symbolism is reflected in it.
Man, you just making this all too Obvious.
Interestingly, the game also uses the hindu image of the lotus flower opening (or closing, depending on your time-perspective) repeatedly. In Hinduism (which the Bhagavad Vita is from) the opening of a lotus is meant to symbolize enlightenment.
So, Tim isn't Oppenheimer, he's a fictional character. Although the in-game depiction of Tim vaguely resembles a childlike version of Oppenheimer (the hollow cheeks, the thin face and nose) the paintings show him as many different boys with different coloured hair. And though the text almost explicitly calls on symbolism from Oppenheimer's life, it also deliberately calls in aspects which at the very least, cannot be verifiably tied to him. One of these is the fact that the Princess's bedroom at the end of the last active level contains soft-toy versions of the various creatures you meet in the game, in a suggestion that the protagonist's mind has unconsciously created rivals out of these objects of affection, perhaps from real-life memories of a girlfriend's bedroom.
It's as if the author wants to create a character who could've been anyone on the Los Alamos (Manhattan) project. Certainly, there would be some scientists who would match similar descriptions to Oppenheimer, in terms of his way of thinking and his background - Oppenheimer is simply the one we know the most about, who has been the most heavily documented, for various reasons. But I can say with some certainty that that character is heavily based upon Oppenheimer, his personality, his life, his relationships, triumphs and failings. Here are some examples of the things that match between Oppenheimer and Tim.
Jean Tatlock was Oppenheimer's first true love, but the relationship failed, with Jean leaving in anger. Later he married Kitty Puening, only to cheat on her occasionally with Jean, for whom he still had much affection. However, during the Manhattan project, with his whole family prevented from going outside of Los Alamos due to security concerns, he had to leave Jean alone and she grew depressed. Eventually she committed suicide, two months before the naming of the Trinity test site, which was named after one of John Donne's poems, which Jean had introduced him to.
In the game, the princess is a blend of female archetypes, but predominantly refers to physics or the atomic bomb. In Oppenheimer's life, it was not much different.
The humanitarian issues raised by their development were almost wholy overshadowed by the inward-focussed technical, external questions raised in its inception.
˜"He worked his ruler and his compass. He inferred. He deduced. He scrutinized the fall of an apple, the twisting of metal orbs hanging from a thread. He was searching for the Princess, and he would not stop until he found her, for he was hungry. He cut rats into pieces to examine their brains, implanted tungsten posts into the skulls of water-starved monkeys.
Here, the female archetype appears to be that of ones sense of humanity. Perhaps Blow is pointing out that a real utopia cannot be created out of atoms, but out of a sense of one's own compassion and humanity that it is there, should you chose to look.
The cross-pollination of mother/mistress/lover/atom-bomb archetypes is a curious one, and I suspect also has a lot to do with the hunt for utopia - the concept of probably extends from - in some Freudian and primordial way - the absolute security of early (parental) relationships, which people then seek to recreate in their later lives, with lovers, or in the world at large.
But to be wedded to the idea of a utopia - or a utopic perception of a given individual - is a terrible thing - if not for you, then for the external person/reality.
"It was as if he had been called upon to act out a stage role, one to which he was truly not suited. Scientists are not meant to be conquering Generals. And yet, he was only human and so must have felt the thrill of pure success; he had grabbed a metaphorical gold ring and he was happily waving it aloft. Besides, the audience expected him to appear flushed and triumphant. But the moment was short-lived." - American Prometheus, pg 316, depicting Oppenheimer's addressing of Los Alamos scientists after the successful bombing of Hiroshima.
The ring can represent, as detailed above, being wedded to an ideal - an ideal of a person, or in the case of Oppenheimer and the game, the idea of having won. The idea having of creating a better, safer world.
In reality, there is no such thing as 'winning', in an objective long-term sense, which both Tim and Oppenheimer seem to eventually realize. In the game this deluded commitment to a nuclear-protected future is depicted, secretly but explicitly, in the game painting for that same world (World 6, "Resistance").
Here we can see, not only the ring in the picture, but that looked at correctly, at the angle of the bin below it, the ring also appears as the fiery ring of a nuclear mushroom cloud in the midst of a rocky mountain-scape. So Blow is - perhaps - using the ring as a crossed metaphor for a (flawed) commitment to the ideal of an atomic-caused utopia, and commitment to the ideal of the ideal individual (the princess, who has her own crossed metaphor as described above). Just to jump back a bit, we can see how this crossing over of metaphors fits well within the circumference of a dream, where this sort of blending of related concepts occurs naturally and without thought.
So, perhaps with this culmination of knowledge, the 'ring' is forged in World 6, replete with the implications of atomic knowledge (that time slows down infinitely as objects reach the speed of light). Either way there seems to be a progression of the accumulation of knowledge in World 4, and we see it's consequences later.
It's up to you, New York, New Yoooooooork!
That damn astronaut's no good under pressure - he's lost his head!
On the same level, all of the backgrounds are dotted with the hats and uniforms of cowboys, indians, firemen, astronauts - the calling cards of hero roles. All of the hats and uniforms are empty. At the end of the level, there is a building with a statue of a small child looking out in wonder at all of this, suggesting the early imprinting of the idea of the heroics invested in these activities, whilst not truly comprehending their inherent emptiness.
Likewise, the princess is depicted in a wedding dress (keeping in sync with the 'ring' theme of the world) but, likewise, her head is hidden and dark. Above her and around her an artful depiction of the atomic bomb exploding/tree-in-a-pot is shown, stemming from her, as snowflakes fall.
So, Braid is a game about - a dream - which is being had by - Tim, a fictional character heavily based upon the life of J Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb - about his past, which he spent in the pursuit of ideals - be that the ideal relationship, or the ideal of a utopic world. The game, via its text and logic, critiques this pursuit, and the hero-princess roles that accompany it - depicting them both as empty, lacking in substance, and ultimately dangerous - or futile? - to pursue. The only happiness or positive end-result is a complete dismantling of the hero's conception of himself, of heroes, of princesses, leaving him to build his own conception of his life and identity, free of the misconceptions of his past. Blow secretly invites us to do the same.
Is it an anti-game? If it were, Jonathan Blow wouldn't be making more games - clearly he believes us, the games audience, as capable of the kind of thought, substance, and wit that other games designers believe are non-existent. He may've been overreaching though. He initially expressed disappointment at the lack of understanding of Braid by both games journalists and the public at large, while later acknowledging that it is a very interpretable game. Was his goal worth it?
And it is an interpretable game. If anyone has a firm, concrete critique of my exam here, and has objective evidence to back it up, feel free to contact me.
But I feel the point of the game is not so much what Braid is meant to be objectively, it's what it is subjectively to the individual. I had my own deep, emotive response to the game, that had nothing in particular to do with the content - this is the advantage of spanning your metaphors so vast that they can envelope entire subjects - like lyrics, they can end up meaning something personal to each and every individual that hears them. What's your interpretation? And is that really as important as what your unconscious emotional response to the game was? That's the beauty of high art. And that's what Braid is.