Calling the writing pretentious without explaining why that is, is by itself fairly pretentious.

@AbleAnderson

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah I agree. And what’s weird, this dude only has like 10K subscribers and yet he doesn’t engage with any comments in his comments section. Usually smaller channels take a peek down here occasionally. The guy who made the top comment gave honest, good-faith disagreements to the criticisms levied in the video and he didn’t engage with a single one. Good luck getting me to subscribe to a channel like that

You really don't go into enough detail with your criticisms... You say the written story is "pretentious" as if this common criticism is inherently true, but many have heard this criticism but disagree. You say the controls are imprecise, yet I see almost no examples of this; if anything it's one of the pinnacles of precise skill based controls (try getting the secret ending without getting the stars, one of the most fun and rewarding things I've ever done in a game). You say the puzzles are obtuse, but they're simply a byproduct of the mechanics themselves. You understand that and they become simple. I say this as someone who got the speedrun achievement, and completed multiple user-created levelpack mods of Braid, it has some of the most rewarding gameplay of any platformer I've ever played. You say the narrative only really comes into the gameplay near the end, but this simply isn't true. The narrative of the game is obsessed with the idea of regret for past mistakes, wishing you could turn back time, slow down time, and that even with that power, some mistakes are irreversible. This comes into play from very early on in the level "Irreversible", in the art (regal furniture sinking into swamps), the music, in the ending of course, nearly every aspect of the game is in a 1:1 accordance with that central theme. It's almost neurotic how obsessed with this theme the game is, Tim continuously comes up with new ways to try and enforce his will on reality, to fix all of his past regrets, big and small, as far back as he can conceive (I believe the ending talks about a baby wanting a lollipop, and the creation of the bomb of course, which was before he was born), hell every mistake he can think of, but all his efforts just create new complications. Basically, life isn't so simple that you could just reverse every mistake and do it "the right way."

10 YEARS? no, no no no no no WHO ARE YOU CALLING OLD? YOU'RE OLD

The first achievement I unlocked for this game was 10 years ago, I never saw it through to the end. I finished the whole game today, 10 long years after playing that "weird mario/Prince of persia game" round my friends house and downloading it on xbox arcade. In that time I've fallen out of love, lost a parent, found love again, grown as a person, lost weight, gained weight, lost tough with friends, found new ones. Its amazing what the ever growing journey of time brings us. Incredible game.

Personally, I prefer hearing someone look back on a game well after it’s prominence, opposed to listening to 100 people press the same talking points. Also, as much as we all would like to think we’re unaffected by whatever the current buzz (or lack thereof) and most pervasive narrative. But this video a good example of why I prefer retrospectives. We’re removed from the hype and separated from the ether, and someone can sit with a project and really hit areas that general reviews never touch. Great video.

I just played it and it really is a masterpiece.

Man, time flies. I don't think I got on Braid immediately, but I do remember seeing the glowing reception it got. For the most part I did like the game, too, but one of my beefs was that it did feel a little unwieldy to play at times. Still, very distinct experience, at least around the time I played it. Would almost say the whole "in spite of" thing is close to how I view games nowadays. I could list off a number of flaws in each game I give time to, but ultimately I enjoyed having gone through the experience. Anyway, good stuff as usual.

I played when it was released on xbox360 ...the shock of the ending kept with me for a week.

10 years....damn. Time really does pass you by if you don't look hard enough. But hard enough for me b/c I played this on my 360 nearly 7-8 years ago on XBLA. Crazy.

Holy shit this came out in 2008!? Anyways, great video as always!

@PostMesmeric

6 жыл бұрын

Yup! Time sure flies. Thanks!

I feel bad to say that forces outside of the game itself have somewhat soured my opinion on Braid. Just the way that Blow delivers interviews and continues to present story and the countless times I've heard "did you know the game is an allegory for the atom bomb and the princess is the bomb? It's true!" reeks of a pretentious air that kind of makes me forget about the fun little puzzle adventure with the neat twist I had eight years or so ago. So... thanks for this. Helped me remember what I really enjoyed about this project and was refreshing to see something on this game outside of the initial impact zone.

@TenshiCat

6 жыл бұрын

Yeah stuff like that is why I think it's really important to learn to mentally separate an artist from their work - it was tough to get into that mindset, but it's definitely allowed me to enjoy things more

@MetroAndroid

6 жыл бұрын

I think people who say "the game is an allegory for the atom bomb and the princess is the bomb" completely misunderstood the point (and Blow intentionally doesn't talk about it in interviews, at least as far as I remember). The whole point of the game is about regret and irreversible mistakes from the smallest individual level to the largest one conceivable. Wishing you could go back in time and undo something, but realizing you'd likely just end up making new mistakes to regret and learning to live with regret. Every aspect of the gameplay (the _Irreversible_ puzzles), art (regal furniture sinking into a swamp), & narrative (you finally find a way to "get" the princess, but you can't undo this mistake) from the beginning to end is focused on this. Atom bombs are just a subset of regret and rather small in comparison; they can be dismantled, but the archetype of regret will never expire.

@YamatoFukkatsu

6 жыл бұрын

I never really got into Braid myself because how much gaming journalism hyped it up as this "revolutionary" new thing (all the while Dorkly manages to tear it a new one). /watch?v=oc26EKhZNyM Granted, I have been meaning to give it a fair shot, even have the thing downloaded on my PS3, but I never got around to it. Nevertheless, the publicity did manage to sour my perspective of the game quite a bit, and sadly, looking back, this seems to have only been the beginning of several game journalists becoming pretentious twats trying way too hard to look like intellectuals as they act like today.

After I finished it I discovered there are hidden stars that goes to another final. SPOILER : On the final level Tim can encounter the princess and detonate the bomb. I loved this game, even if it's frustrating by moments.

Six years ago, I made an in-depth, 13-minute video about the meaning of Braid. I also love the hell out of this game. With that said, this game and its creator are super pretentious! My eyes have residual effects from the amount of rolling they did while reading/watching all the interviews with Jonathan Blow. Interview after interview had quotes from him never admitting anything about what the story meant or even the message he wanted his players to take away from Braid; everything was just "holier-than-thou". Regardless, Blow made a truly inventive platformer that really helped kick off the modern indie scene. And I really appreciate that.

You seem to be describing finding solutions the developer didn't necessarily intend as a bad thing... but that's like one of my favorite things about games like this and Portal.

Great thought. Yeah this game really got to me. Unsettling music and gameplay. I’m a fan. #unexpectedfeels.

You should’ve talked about the real ending, after you get all the secret stars. I think it makes the ending more dramatic and inspired those secret complicated easter eggs common in indie games

Man, ten years and I barely played this game.

I wonder what the best way to play PC games is on the go if you're only looking to play games that aren't very powerful you know games that should be on the switch for example if this was on switch I would have purchased it by now

Honestly i didn’t think the puzzles were extremely difficult, they were challenging, but i thought that The Witness puzzles were far harder, like ridiculously hard in some cases.

At your point around 4:20, I think a good puzzle game should keep in mind a human can only really hold so many things in working memory (~7 items?). A puzzle game shouldn't really require more than that amount for the player keep in mind to get progress. Otherwise it really isn't a puzzle as much a memory exercise. *What 7 'things' is can change throughout the game as the player gets better at recognizing patterns in puzzles.

Great video man but you need to add background music to your vids. either way +subbed

@PostMesmeric

6 жыл бұрын

Thank you. I'm pretty bad at audio mixing, so I'll try to make it a lil louder next time. Appreciate the feedback. :)

@JTMarch86

6 жыл бұрын

well, instead of using the audio/music that comes in the video clips, you could mute them and use one or 2 tracks that you choose for the entire video. This makes it easier for editing and lets you choose the mood of the video. But it is a slightly different style. So that's all up to how you want your videos to be. There are some really good royalty free music tracks online that you can use

0:31 what game is that?

@talcohen4144

4 жыл бұрын

I also would love to know. Anyone?

@talcohen4144

4 жыл бұрын

I checked and it could be the modern Alone in the Dark. But I'm not sure

@dylanja09

4 жыл бұрын

Tal Cohen you probably already know by now, but it’s The Evil Within on PS4.

Your biggest complaint is "imprecision" , yet the way the criticism itself is levied is super vague. I haven't played Braid in years, so level with me. HOW are the puzzles obtusely presented? HOW is it imprecise? An actual example would go a long way.

@PostMesmeric

6 жыл бұрын

It's hard to describe, because a majority of this comes from control and its feedback, which is admittedly difficult to explain. In my experience with the game, stages like the one at 5:46 and 5:23, along with 11:29, were situations where I felt like I stumbled into a solution instead of constructing a sort of procedure to solve a puzzle. Didn't help that the collision detection in this game really felt loose and didn't mesh with the physics in the best possible way. Basically, it wasn't entirely clear what had to be done to solve the puzzle, and that could very well have been my own fault. That's what I mean, I suppose, so hopefully that cleared some of this up. Good comment.

Good vid, but unless I missed something, you didn't address the stars and the true ending.

@PostMesmeric

6 жыл бұрын

deathbysloth Yeah, I didn't. I believe that would deserve its own video.

@deathbysloth

6 жыл бұрын

Interesting. I wouldn't have thought there'd be enough material for that.

@PostMesmeric

6 жыл бұрын

deathbysloth It'll depend on how it comes together when I'm writing that script. I just thought that it was deep enough to constitute separation from a general retrospective like this.

@deathbysloth

6 жыл бұрын

Right on. Look forward to that, then.

Playedthis game twice amd I can safely say... I don't get it

I'm a bit shocked by the claim that the level design was imprecise or that you stumbled into solutions without understanding them. More than any game prior, Braid was meticulous about creating puzzles resistant to brute force attempts. Even if you came up with part of the solution accidentally, there would usually be a second step to test your mastery of the first idea. Perhaps you mean that you experimented, discovered unexpected interactions between the mechanics, and then used those to solve the levels. And perhaps you mistook those unexpected interactions for unintended interactions. But almost nothing is unintended, even speed-runners haven't been able to break the game that much (a few times yes, but I seriously doubt anyone could come up with those ideas before getting the intended solutions). Everything in game is an emergent property of the basic rules established.

You talk about this game’s surface without finishing playing it... even after ten years you still don’t know how much Johnathan Blow put in it, and how deep they are hidden. You are right about it’s flaws but you are wrong about why braid is awesome.

@gamerpro021

11 ай бұрын

Nah johnathon is a hack that makes game me for people to feel pseudo intellectual. The witness was boring even for a puzzle game if I wanted to play those puzzles I would mess with the pattern lock-screen on my phone

Couldn't stand playing this game to see it to the end but I can see why people think it's a good game despite it's annoying controls.

Yeah, I tried this one briefly and it wasn't for me. Just eh.

Amm... I don't know how to say this, but I would also sound very arrogant. Please hear me, and I don't carry any ill-will with this. On your point on narrative, you said the written story gives off an air of pretentiousness. But as someone watching, this line of argument tells me nothing other than "I didn't like this kind of storytelling, and it is bad". This holllow word, "pretentious", is utterly meaningless and even harmful in any discussion. It kills off the point at the argument, the art work and (if death of the author is not applied) the author. And the person using this term feels like he/she is not willing to adhere to that art, because he/she could either be incapable of doing that, or has some grudge against the art or the artist. Please understand that by no means I want to belittle you, just that this line of argument ruins critical conversation. Blow's other game, The Witness, is what I would describe is Braid's "pretentiousness" taken to it's limits. And almost none of the reviews or analysis seemed to understand what it was trying to do. Except for ElectronDance's video on it. Highly recommend checking that, one of the best analysis video I've ever seen.

@notrealnamenotatall2476

6 жыл бұрын

The problem is not that calling something 'pretentious' is bad or that art is untouchable because the artist created their work in a specific way- if that was the case, then nobody would be allowed to criticize anything. The problem is that the word pretentious is usually used out of context. Too many people use it to stand for too many big ideas that they can't understand, when really it is something that builds itself up to more than it really is. Like when an artist says a painting of a dot signals the constant struggle one faces to make a difference on the world. That can be seen as pretentious. The story in this game is a bit pretentious, but not the main story itself. It's that hidden lore, the secret hints to the atom bomb, and the insistence that the basic story isn't good enough without the hidden hints behind it.

@Chris-yq3kp

5 жыл бұрын

Your response is pretentious and your a douche

Dude, try to remove that grunge low voice. I think you would sound a lot better and more clear without it.

This video is as pretentious as you can get. Unnecessary qualifiers and attempting to cover up vacuousness with equivication.

Great video man

@shaykhriyadh

4 жыл бұрын

Jaisox no its not