Tom is a UK-based word spewer with a taste for everything weird and wonderful about games kick-started by a transformative play-through of Metal Gear Solid many moons ago. Adores Hollow Knight, probably a bit too much.
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Announced during yesterday’s PlayStation State of Play, a new anniversary edition of Jonathan Blow’s seminal time-bending indie gem Braid lands early 2021.
Braid is widely regarded as the spark that ignited the indie development surge of the late 2000s that persists to some extent to this day. With the remaster treatment, players will be able to experience the game with a slew of improvements suited to modern machines and consoles.
In a statement accompanying the announcement, Blow explains;
”Back when I was originally working on Braid, even when it was a simple project with ugly programmer art and looked nothing like a respectable game, I knew that one of the primary goals of the project was to treat video games as a medium with serious artistic potential. That potential involves longevity: many great works of painting, sculpture, and architecture have lasted for centuries and inspired generations of people. Video games weren’t like that back then (and still mostly aren’t today), and I knew I couldn’t predict what would be necessary to keep the game alive and available many decades into the future; but I knew it was part of the project, and that I would try my best.”
Among the new additions, Blow is upgrading the Braid experience with a ground-up repainting by artist David Hellman that includes re-imagined areas, brand new animations for a more responsive and fluid feel, and revamped audio and music worked on by Martin Stig Andersen of Control, Inside, and Limbo fame, and Hans Christian Kock for a ‘richer and more-detailed’ experience.
For those worried the remaster treatment may detract from Braid’s unique experience, Blow reassured fans that they have approached the project with care. There’s even an ‘original’ mode that reverts to the 2008 original’s graphics, sounds, and music for the purists out there.
”In fact, the whole time, one of the guiding principles has been that we must not _Star Wars Special Edition_ the game. Greedo doesn’t shoot first, we don’t add a bunch of CGI that sticks out like a sore thumb and ruins the mood, and so forth. So whenever we add a graphical enhancement, we’re careful to respect the original game, and to ensure the new thing fits well. Sometimes this is very difficult! But it’s important that we don’t change the fundamentals of the game in the process of upgrading it.”
Wrapping up the features found in Braid Anniversary Edition is what Blow describes as ‘craziest, most-in-depth commentary ever put in a video game.’ The commentary touches on programming, art, design, video game history, and more in great detail. As Blow explains:
”I want to go much deeper into the subject matter than developers usually do; I want to say stuff that really gets to the heart of why things are the way they are, rather than just saying some surface stuff for the sake of doing commentary, as often happens. If you want a high-level, short explanation, you can get that, but if you want a 20-minute-long explanation of why a particular puzzle is the way it is, you can get that too.”
As it stands, Blow aims to launch Braid Anniversary Edition simultaneously on as many platforms as possible, including on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch, Mac, and Linux in the first quarter of 2021.
