This past week, I finally got around to purchasing, playing, and beating Braid, the game that asks the question “if we’ve learned from a mistake and become better for it, shouldn’t we be rewarded for the learning, rather than punished by the mistake?” I felt I did just that, or so I thought. Not only did I solve every world and beat the game, I also got something out of the lessons taught in the ending.

In the game, you can rewind time in order to correct mistakes you made. Usually Tim, controlled by the player, will revert all the moves made as will the rest of the level. There are a few exceptions based on the world you are in. For instance, if an enemy or an object glows green, they can not be controlled by time and will keep moving if that is part of their behavior. These nuances that change in every world also affect how you solve problems to collect puzzle pieces to progress to the final(and ironically first) world in Braid.

I found the problems in most of the levels to be pretty challenging. I never once cheated or looked online for walkthroughs. I even spent more than an hour trying to get the last puzzle piece I needed in the level called “Elevator Action.” I took a lunch break in-between to think about what I could with my proximity slow down power that is exclusive to that world to help me get it. The solution dawned on me eventually and I felt pretty good about getting that last piece.

So with all the worlds solved I can rescue the princess, right? Well it turns out that even though I got all the pieces and learned everything needed to save the princess, I still could not. She would still be taken away by the monster and nothing could be done about it.

Oh wait, that was a monster before and now it’s a knight rescuing her! The situation when Tim and the princess worked together to escape from the monster before is now reversed, with the princess running away from Tim and setting traps to slow him down so she can escape.

There are a couple lessons taught here. The first one is that humans with ambition can be twisted by that ambition to become the monsters they seek to destroy. The other lesson shows us that even if you learn from past mistakes, you still can’t go back and fix them. Tim seems to have the best of intentions but perhaps it is time that he forget about the princess and move on.

In the epilogue, Tim makes his way to a castle only to see a small pile of blocks. On every block is the emblem for a stage the player has completed. They are even color-coded to differentiate what world they were in. The final text that Tim reads states this: “To build a castle of appropriate size, he will need a great many stones. But what he’s got, now, feels like an acceptable start.”

The castle is not impressive to look at but it is Tim’s castle. Each block represents what Tim has learned in his journey and ordeals overcome. This is the most interesting lesson in the game for it tells us to appreciate what we have accomplished and not become engulfed in desires and ambition that can ruin us as people.

The symbolism of Tim being seen as a monster by others while he tries to do the right thing gives me time to think of how I conduct myself when my desire to succeed bursts. I know that I tend to rub some people the wrong way and make them angry because I have goals that, while important to me, they cannot understand. This has happened as recent as several weeks ago and will be sure to happen more.

It’s not that I intend to piss people off so much that I want the things that I do to turn out good. I also tend to be fixated on what something could be rather than appreciate what it is, which causes more even more chaos with some of the people in my life. The way Tim is viewed at the end of the game makes me wonder if I will be viewed as that someday, if not already.