How Braid Upbraids Completionists – or Does It?

Completionist: (in a video game) a player who attempts to complete every challenge and earn every achievement or trophy. (Dictionary.com)

I have started Braid last Saturday and was able to complete the game in less than five hours. Over my playthrough I have found that the game is generally not too friendly to completionists.

Examples might include firstly the precipice in World 2, which Tim would jump down without knowing what lies waiting for him midair. Players without previous experience with the game (both in terms of playing it and watching it), such as I, would not think much before jumping down around the middle. And we would soon find that hot spikes are on the route and are forced to rewind time back before the jump. The second time we would have learned better and jumped farther to the side, for the monster-popper cannon just below us suggested danger. This time we would be safe and reach the bottom, only to find that had we positioned Tim closer to the cliff, we would have gotten a puzzle piece.

I calculated that it was within my ability and patience limit to get the piece, so I, like most would, rewound time again. But this time I forgot the cannon below me and (in some sense extremely luckily) got intercepted by a monster. And so, I came back to the top a third time, timed my jump just after the cannon shot a monster, stayed close to the side, landed on the platform, got the piece, and jumped off to the far side –– at least I was able to remember that there was another spike on the close side.

As I advanced with mild frustration, I came upon another puzzle piece in world 3, which, after certain experiments and the reconstruction I made in my mind, I was 1000% certain, could be reached through going from the start, getting to a certain position, going back to hit a switch, then immediately rewinding time at a rate much faster than 1x while the platform that wasn't affected moves. I did not bother with that. For the rest of the game I did not even try to get a single puzzle piece that was not right along the way of proceeding to the next level.

Apart from these personally annoying puzzle pieces, there is the other collection element –– the stars. They are usually hidden extremely well, which means it takes time to realize their presence, and even more time to reach them. I don't think I need to mention the infamous one where you need to wait for an extended period of time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSCDD3ygYrQ.

Aside from collectibles, which, I imagine, are a very important part of the completionist's gaming experience, there is also the ending. Many I know that have claimed to have tried their best in finding puzzles stars have told me that they were extremely disappointed by how the game concludes. They have wanted a classic chivalric ending, where Tim finds and/or saves the princess. They believed that they have worked hard for it because of their completionist attitude, and hence they deserve it. And they were not satisfied. Some realized that the princess symbolized the most dangerous weapon human has invented, and was surprised that thatwas the fruit their endeavor. Some others even deleted the game outright without entering the epilogue.

I feel sad for those people. For one, they did not get what they want, and they were frustrated -- I am able to empathize with that. But I also feel that it was a shame for them not to enter the epilogue, a shame for them to not to get something out of this game except from their rage, a shame for them to be controlled by their completionist attitude and expectations. Perhaps that is part of what Jonathan Blow wanted to teach us, perhaps not. But at least, there is meaning there, waiting to be realized.

On first thought, if a non-completionist like me finds this game opposing the attitude, a completionist should be able to get the same experience much more readily than I did.

But then I quickly realized that this might not be true. From the perspective of a non-completionist, I have read the game from the angle of both its mechanics and people's experience on it, and reached the conclusion that the game is not friendly for completionists. But I project that a true completionist would look at the same things that I have done and be more inspired to complete Braid fully. Driven by his spirit, he might find in the obstacles and frustrations the very reasons that he should continue on his path, for a completionist should be a completionist no matter what. He would also read the experiences of my friends and say that they are not true completionists, for that would mean that they should work their minds over to accept the game's ending as a reward.

– and so some questions might be: can true completionists really be stopped? If yes, how? If not, what made them unstoppable?

Moreover, what does that say about the society of gamers? And further, what might that say about the life of our gamers outside of their games?

And I even wonder if those are the right questions to ask.

Citations:

"completionist." Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, LLC, https://www.dictionary.com/browse/completionist.