Braid's message has a problem. As soon as one realizes that Tim is the bad guy in the game (which can be inferred from the very first books), the ethical/progressive/feminist/right thing to do is not let Tim chase and harass the "princess." The only way a player can do so is to put the game down and leave Tim to never move through the worlds towards the "princess." This is a problem as, presumably, one has purchased this game in order to play the video game. To enjoy the puzzles, to take in the art design, to appreciate the soundtrack.
Braid is not the only game to treat quitting as a game mechanic with specific story implications. The most immediate example that comes to mind is the Dark Souls franchise where when you put the game down for good, your character doesn't stop existing, but instead has effectively given up and gone hollow (basically become a mindless zombie). The core difference here is that this is a negative outcome. Even if you beat the game and put it down never to return, going hollow is a distinctly negative thing that the game reinforces repeatedly, from start to finish.
By having this implication, or more accurately by not playing its cards close enough to its chest, Braid distorts its critique of the "masculine" drive to charge forward and beat the video game. Outside of chronics backlogs, when anyone buys a game, presumably they purchase it to play it. When we additionally factor in the fact that this is a platformer and a puzzle game, two genres that are if not identified as stereotypically "masculine," then at least not as hypermasculine as Modern Military or Ultraviolent shooter (Call of Duty and DOOM, respectively are good examples). Because of this broader appeal, more people who are intune to these sorts of cues are likely to play the game. As a result, what is there answer to this problem? If one doesn't need to be beaten over the head with the explicit revelation in World 1, then are they supposed to just not play their puzzle platformer? The distortion creates a tension between wanting to challenge oneself with more puzzles and not wanting to be a stalker.
Not to defend toxic masculinity or to glorify the protagonist Tim's tormenting of his "princess", but I'd like to rather think of Tim as deeply flawed protagonist then the game's hidden antagonist. I would go so far as to call his fatal flaw the very central mechanic of the game, which I argue would be abused by any character that possessed it, regardless of gender. If given the power to manipulate time in any which way, I can think of few people that would first think of heroic applications of said power. Rather, they would most likely use it however which way they pleased to find the best possible outcome in any situation surrounding daily life. I rather liked completin…
I think this post raises an interesting question surrounding the ethics of in-game decision making. While progressing in Braid is revealed to advance Tim's plan of questionable morality, it is perhaps this forced progress, coupled with the somewhat-childlike/nostalgia-filled narrative that fuels Braid's message and meaning. In contrast to games like those in the GTA series, where one is left to wreck havoc yet not learn or interpret much from the experience due to the sandbox nature of the game and progression is secondary to personal exploration, Braid presents an Everyman character (who at the very least attempts to be a lowest common denominator or a stand-in for a popular Mario-like figure ubiquitous in modern culture) who forces the player through…
To me this seems like a Schrödinger's cat situation in which if you don't proceed and play the game, you wont get to the reversal point at the end, and he wont become the "bad guy," leaving you with the decision to go through and get to this point or leave it as is.
I agree with klu3. Tim does not see himself as a bad guy, and I do not see anything wrong with playing as him.
I'm skeptical of the common interpretation that Tim IS the "bad guy." The idea of the "bad guy" is that of moral condemnation--implicit in the idea of a "bad guy" is the revulsion towards being one. Maybe instead it is about a dynamic between a terrorizing past history, focused desire, and the persistence of such a person as a clueless agent.