Please be aware before reading this, that none of this is my work. All credit for the creation of this post goes to IGN member lewismistreated

With that said I do wholeheartedly agree with his thesis on the matter though I don’t think I could do nearly as good a job explaining it as he did. Below you will find his post and ,I believe, the most definitive explanation around outside of Mr. Blow.

Apologies for making a new thread, but I didn’t think all of this could be spoiler boxed, and there are people in the Braid thread who might not want to read some things. But me and a friend have noticed a few things about Braid, and thought they were interesting enough to share.

Wankhat disclaimer: Braid is a game that involves climbing ladders and picking up keys. However, it also has a plot, and you could quite easily complete the game without ever really coming across half of it.

This is that half.

(All of this is the work of both myself and a guy called razedinwhite.)

Braid is a story that focuses on the development and deployment of the atomic bomb, and the irreversible impact it had on all human conflicts thereafter. At the very same time, it deals with the very human story of a relationship breaking down due to one person’s obsessive need to control this power. Finally, at certain points, the perspective of the bomb creator as a child comes through.

No, seriously.

The main source for all of this comes straight from the passages of the texts found in the epilogue screens, all of which are laid out openly below. Each screen has an alternative passage laid out, which only appears once Tim is located behind an object in the foreground. The italicised text is the alternative.

———-

QUOTE The boy called for the girl to follow him, and he took her hand. He would protect her; they would make their way through this oppressive castle, fighting off the creatures made of smoke and doubt, escaping to a life of freedom,

The boy wanted to protect the girl. He held her hand, or put his arm around her shoulders in a walking embrace, to help her feel supported and close to him amid the impersonal throngs of Manhattan. They turned and made their way toward the Canal St. subway station, and he picked a path through the jostling crowd.

His arm weighed upon her shoulders, felt constrictive around her neck. "You’re burdening me with your ridiculous need," she said. Or, she said: "You’re going the wrong way and you’re pulling me with you." In another time, another place, she said: "Stop yanking on my arm; you’re hurting me!"

—–

I’m coming back to this one in a second. For now, take note of the location (Manhattan), and the somewhat schizophrenic splitting of events hinted in the alt text. Three women are shown speaking; the first being the spurned partner, the second being that of the bomb, the third being that of the mother of a persistent child.

—-

QUOTE 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.

Ghostly, she stood in front of him and looked into his eyes. "I am here," she said. "I am here. I want to touch you." She pleaded: "Look at me! But he would not see her; he only knew hot to look at the outside of things.

Again; I want to come back after the big reveal. But the search for the ‘Princess’ is important, and the description of a man obsessed with observing, with deducing but never really knowing.

—

QUOTE 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.

The desert unarguably being that of New Mexico; the bunker, the safe observation point for one of the single most important landmarks in the pursuit of scientific knowledge.

QUOTE 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]

The above paragraph is a direct quotation (hence the footnote) from Robert Jay Lifton’s The Broken Connection, of which you can read some of right here: http://books.google.com/books?id=WPi…sult#PPA371,M1

He describes in painful detail the explosion of the nuclear bomb, the first cry of a newborn world. Robert Jay Lifton himself was a psychologist, notable for his work around the effects on war and genocide on the human condition.

QUOTE Someone near him said: "It worked."

Someone else said: "Now we are all sons of bit@hes."

The famous words of Kenneth Tompkins Bainbridge, uttered directly after the successful detonation of the first nuclear bomb, the "Trinity Test."

QUOTE She stood tall and majestic. She radiated fury. She shouted: "Who has disturbed me?" But then, anger expelled, she felt the sadness beneath; she let her breath fall softly, like a sigh, like ashes floating gently on the wind.

She couldn’t understand why he chose to flirt so closely with the death of the world.

The alternative text, written from the viewpoint of the bomb itself. The direct aftermath of the explosion, the fallout, and a failure to understand why anyone would want to bring such a thing into the world.

QUOTE The candy store. Everything he wanted was on the opposite side of that pane of glass. The store was decorated in bright colours, and the scents wafting out drove him crazy. He tried to rush for the door, or just get closer to the glass, but he couldn’t. She held him back with great strength. Why would she hold him back? How might he break free of her grasp? He considered violence.

They had been here before on their daily walks. She didn’t mind his screams and his shrieks, or the way he yanked painfully on her braid to make her stop. He was too little to know better.

She picked him up and hugged him: "No, baby", she said. He was shaking. She followed his gaze toward the treats sitting on pillows behind the glass: the chocolate bar and the magnetic monopole, the It-From-Bit and the Ethical Calculus; and so many other things, deeper inside. "Maybe when you’re older, baby," she whispered, setting him back on his feet and leading him home, "Maybe when you’re older."

Every day thereafter, as before, she always walked him on a route that passed in front of a candy store.

John Wheeler’s It-From-Bit theory describes that "… every it–every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself- derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely–even if in some contexts indirectly–from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, _bits_."

(If we were being really analytical, Quantum theory also has things to say around (at a base level) multiple worlds existing at the same time, in alternative states.)

The Ethical Calculus "refers to any method of determining a course of action in a circumstance that is not explicitly evaluated in one’s ethical code." Not too much of a leap to state that the deployment of nuclear technology at the end of World War II was one of the biggest ethical dilemmas encountered by mankind.

The Princess is the bomb,and we are being told the story of a man so focused on the development and harnessing of an immensely destructive power that it inevitably falls out of his hands, and into the wider world. One of the pre-word books reads;

"This improvement, day by day, takes him ever-closer to finding the Princess. if she exists - she must! - she will transform him, and everyone."

It is, simultaneously, the story of a relationship so burdened by a man’s obsessive, inquisitive nature that the search for his ‘Princess’, his power is the one thing that drives them apart. More;

"Through all the nights that followed, she still loved him as though he had stayed, to comfort her and protect her, Princess be damned."

The hub, the city burst into flame at the title sequence as the brightest of lights burns in the background, could easily be seen to be Manhattan.

(IMG:http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/1…0656ha0.th.jpg)

Again, mentioned in the epilogue texts, and quite significantly, the placing of two very distinctive towers in the background of the attic screen.

(IMG:http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/2…0659ep8.th.jpg)

One of the paintings also shows a World War II era poster on the side of a building located on a busy U.S. street, as a young man stares mournfully into flame.

(IMG:http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/4…0658gj8.th.jpg)

The Princess, somehow harnessed and shackled, looms ominously in the sky, overshadowing everyone and everything with a threat, a power that can’t be taken back. Can’t be reversed.

(IMG:http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/7…0657yr0.th.jpg)

Stolen from another forum; the flags at the end of each world are nautical flags.

World 2: N
World 3: U
World 4: L
World 5: X
World 6: K

N: No
U: You are (standing into/approaching) danger
L: Stop instantly
X: Stop carrying out your intentions
K: You should stop, I have something important to communicate

The warnings directed towards a man intent on bringing an indescribable power into being.

Think about the ending. A purging wall of flame chases Tim and the princess, all the way up to the point of Tim is found lurking outside a bedroom window. At this point everything reverses; Tim is now chasing her, not following. She is now trying to trap and block Tim from ever reaching her, not aid his progression. Instead of trying to escape the hands of an aggressive knight, he is now the one figure that takes her away from Tim’s ‘ridiculous need’, his obsession with control.

And the one point that rounds all this off - in the pursuit of the eighth star, Tim finally manages to reach the upper half of the screen, and come into contact with the princess herself. What happens?

She explodes.

This claim comes from Sven Rollenhagen, founder of the non-profit youth group, Stiftelsen Ungdomsvård (The Youth Care Foundation), located south of Stockholm, Sweden. Rollenhagen founded the group in 1991, and it provides support for youths living at home, from sources such as social workers, psychologists, physical training, teachers, and doctors, as well as offering opportunities such as outdoor adventuring, internships, and mentoring. The organization's target group is adolescents and young adults who are at risk from substance abuse, criminal activity, computer game addiction, relationship issues, family problems, school difficulties, depression, burnout, or neuropsychiatric diagnoses. After perusing the organization's site using Google Translate (which is how much of the information in this paragraph was gleaned), we discovered that the group "also works with adult computer game addiction and its relatives."

The organization is accusing World of Warcraft as being so addictive, "based on the experiences of gamers and their parents who have been in contact with the group." Rollenhagen told the Swedish newspaper, Metro: "There is not a single case of game addiction that we have worked with in which World of Warcraft has not played a part." These findings are being rolled up into a report that the organization plans on publishing. It is unknown at this time, how much of these findings are based on scientific study or on anecdotal observations. It is also unknown at this point if Rollenhagen's comments are a true indication of how much the report specifically focuses on World of Warcraft, or if his comments were meant to be more attention getting, while the report actually focuses more on general games addiction, without necessarily singling out any one game title.

The group's Website offers the following signs of games addiction–not necessarily specific to World of Warcraft (the below text is from Google Translate):

1. tolerance increase ie the player plays more and "cooler" game more often
2. abstinence: the player becomes restless, irritable, depressed, etc. when the game "absence"
3. negative consequences for the school, internships / jobs: truancy, missed tests, lower grades, dismissal from jobs …
4. serious conflicts with family and friends: a fight about noon time, other responsibilities, etc.
5. focus and the admission unit on computer games, even during non-playing time reading, talking and thinking player in the game
6. the player lying about game times and other games around to calm environment
7. disturbed daily rhythm, evident in the night, sleeping on days
8. lack of interest in old hobbies and friends
9. deterioration of health and fitness due to sedentary indoor

There has been no official statement issued yet from Blizzard Entertainment, publisher of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), World of Warcraft, to address this issue–nor will there likely be one. However, with over 11.5 million gamers playing World of Warcraft, there is a large-enough pool statistically for at least some true game addicts to players. In the United States, computer game addiction is not currently recognized by the American Medical Association (AMA) or American Psychiatric Association (APA) as a formal diagnosis–although the APA did consider adding "video game addiction" into the next edition (to be published in 2012) of the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM); but the recommendation to add it was ultimately rejected, citing that more research was still needed. English-language, Swedish news site, The Local reports that "according to the Swedish National Institute of Public Health (Folkhälsoinstitutet), the problem with computer game addiction is large in Sweden although there is currently no medical diagnosis of the condition."

There have been sporadic new stories of people who either died or harmed themselves while playing World of Warcraft. Also, back in 2005, a story of an infant who died while her parents were at an Internet Café for several hours playing World of Warcraft was making the rounds on the Internet. Poking fun at World of Warcraft game, South Park devoted an entire episode ("Make Love, Not Warcraft") in 2007 to spoofing players' propensity to become truly obsessed with the game. The behavior of a number of the South Park characters in that episode exhibited more than few symptoms from the The Youth Care Foundation's list of signs of games addiction.

The "Squash" as it is known gives you:
1) WHS running on an Atom
2) Small and Quite "NAS" style box
3) 5 SATA Drive Bays (so up to 10TB with 2TB drives)
4) External eSATA Port Replicator on the back so you can attach another 5-Drive expansion unit (so another 10TB)

Ordering : I ordered on line (http://www.tranquilpc-shop.co.uk/) but did call them (+44 845 555 7788) a few times to see where my order was and to clarify the shipping details as while you get an order confirmation immediately I did hear anything till the shipping process is about to start (it took about 10 days from order till shipping). Shipping is via UPS Air and is fast, only 3-4 days by Air from the UK to my in Sydney Australia. If you need any assistance with the ordering and etc the key contact points are very helpful at Tranquil PC and they are:
- David: The boss and top sales guy who was very helpful on configs etc and
- Kate: The charming lady that organises the shipping

Installation : Everything arrived as it should minus the promised "Country Specific" power cable (I’ve added the UK one to my growing collection of Power Cables for Other Countries). After pinching one from a laptop power adapter I plugged it into a switch and as it is a preconfigured Headless unit it was up and going on my network in only a few minutes. From here you initialise the WHS for the first time from one of your PCs via a provided app and away you go.

Backing Up my PCs: The first thing I did was to load the WHS client on all my PCs (in my case they are Vista) and backed the all up to the Squash. This was particularly important for me as my HTPC OS HDD was dying. It was all incredibly simple, straight forward, fast and the unique backup method ensure that little space was taken up.

Restoring my HTPC: The next thing I did was replace an older failing HDD in my HTPC that I just use for the OS (the data is streamed over the NW). I swapped out the HDD for a newer one (a nice 2.5" WD 320GB 7200 Black), inserted the supplied PC Recovery CD and within an hour was up and going like nothing had changed.

Backing Up my Media: With the urgent task of rebuilding the HTPC - I’ve now started adding drives and backing up all my media to this box. While I could use the Squash as a media server (it even had TVersity, SqueezeCenter pre loaded - part of their AVA Media WHS Add-in where apparently you can even perform CD/DVD/Blu-ray rips on the box itself then server is back ) I’ve not used (or licensed) this software so cannot comment on how it all works. Of course you could just use the inbuilt WHS Shares and for access to your media files over your network.

Initial Impressions: I’ve only had it 24-Hours and so far I am very impressed. If you are after a well priced “plug n play” WHS box then this has to be on your short list.

For a proper review have look at the following.
http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/2008/11…h-home-server/

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