(This entry was written for SNHU's GAM-205 class in the Fall 2017 semester.)
Today, I'm going to tell you a story. Rather, I'm going to talk about something and details in what I say will come together to imply a story. That's how embedded narrative works. It's a type of narrative structure where the story (or a story) can be found through details that are present in the narrative. I'm going to show a good example of how this can work through the classic 2009 puzzle-platformer Braid.
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| Don't cry, Don't raise your eye, It's pro'bly nuclear wasteland. |
For all of those who never played this game, here is a summary of the story. You control Tim, a man with deep red-orange hair and a nice suit and tie who is trying to rescue a Princess who has been "snatched by a horrible and evil monster." Tim has to platform his way through five worlds, making use of the ability to rewind time and special chronological gimmicks in each world in order to collect puzzle pieces. After completing all five puzzles, the final world, World 1, becomes available. Given the reverse order of stages in this world, the distorted music, and the distinction of being the "first" world, it's fitting the the chronological gimmick on display in this world is that time flows in reverse.
In 1-1, referred to as 'Braid,' we see The Princess escape a burly Knight, and Tim must then flee from an encroaching wall of fire as the Princess deactivates traps in his way. When Tim reaches the end and lands on a sparkling platform (sparkling floors generally allow Tim to not move when rewinding time,) the stage starts playing in reverse, the music no longer distorted but normal, the Princess no longer an ally but an attempted killer, the Knight no longer a kidnapper but a savior, and Tim no longer a rescuer but a stalker.
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| Not pictured: The truth. |
That ending isn't the focus of this article, however. If the player is able to collect eight stars hidden throughout the game, or is simply an extremely good speedrunner, you can reach the Princess during the playable portion of the final stage, causing a nuclear blast. What exactly does this mean? Most people suspect that it has to do with the creation of the atomic bomb. A book in the epilogue reads as follows:
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He scrutinized the fall of an apple, the twisting of metal orbs hanging from a thread. Through these clues he would find the Princess, see her face. After an especially fervent night of tinkering, he kneeled behind a bunker in the desert; he held a piece of welder's glass up to his eyes and waited.
On that moment hung eternity. Time stood still. Space contracted to a pinpoint. It was as though the earth had opened and the skies split. One felt as though he had been privileged to witness the Birth of the World...₁
Someone near him said: "It worked."
Someone else said: "Now we are all sons of bitches."
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The spoken lines have been linked to physicists J. Robert Oppenheimer and Kenneth Bainbridge when they witnessed the Trinity test. I should also note that the creator of Braid, Johnathan Blow, said a main influence for the game was the 1986 Infocom PC game Trinity. This Gamasutra article does a good job of giving valid ideas of the symbolism in the game, but here's one I distinctly remember.
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| It's missing something...maybe some leaves? |
In World 6, there is a tree in the background of one of the stages. On the trunk is what looks like a doorway with a Princess standing inside. Now, if you took a kid's drawing of a tree, what would it look like? Just imagine in scribbling in leaves to fill in the empty branches. Can you see it yet?
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| Kind of like...this? |
Braid proved to be a master class game in how it uses embedded narrative in order to tell the tale of the atomic bomb's creation. I can imagine someone seeing this game and assuming it's just a very fancy-looking Super Mario Bros. until the trope of a hero rescuing a damsel is reversed. Just like with real scientific progress, finding the true ending requires thinking outside the box and sometimes some very non-intuitive moves. May any princesses you find not secretly be atom bombs.
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