Braid, Anniversary Edition is the latest, and most thorough, example yet of a trend I can’t get enough of. It&rsqu෴o;s a remaster of the seminal ♚indie game, but it’s also an exhaustive interactive documentary on how that game was made.
Documenting The Creation Of Classic Games
The past year or so has been a great time for sickos like me who are as interested in the behind-the-scenes work that goes into making a video game as we are in the video game itself. Noclip continues to chug along, regularly releasing documentaries on the work that goes into popular games. As I write this, I’ve got a tab open to “,” and am having a great time hearing Danny O’Dwyer unearth unexpected tidbits from the team at Obsidian.
Apparently, people in Medieval times walked differently than we do now, favoring the balls of their feet rather than their heels. Their shoes were made of much thinner leather, and stepping on a nail or other sharp object could cause serious injury. So they tested wi꧅th the front of their foot first, before placing their full weight on the ground.
Video game companies are increasingly getting in the business of documentary presentation. At the end of last year, Valve released a (which Noclip was also involved with) on the making of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Half-Life, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Naughty Dog brought back for a thorough look at 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us Part 2.
As much as I enjoy these filmed documentarie🐼s, I especially love when they come in the form of video games, too. French New Wave icon Jean-Luc Godard famously said that, “The way to criticize a film is to make another film,” and I tend to feel that the same sentiment applies to games. That might mean mౠaking a game that shows a better way to use a mechanic or tell a story, but recently it has also meant actually making video games that incorporate the functions of interactivity to analyze a game and document its history.
The Dawn Of Interactive Documentaries
I wrote about one cool example earlier this year: 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Making of Karateka. The game in question, Karateka, was not on my radar at all before this interactive documentary came out. I knew 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Prince of Persia, and its creator, Jord𝐆an Mechner, but had never heard of the martial arts game he made before his iconic platformer. The Making of Karateka is a fantastic way to explore the creation of the game, combining video interviews, podcasts, legal documents and correspondence from the time, journal entries, and most importantly, several builds of the game to tell the story with all the mediums possible. It’s arranged on a timeline, giving you a thorough look at the game from the initial ideation phase through its publication.
The Making of Karateka was made with the involvement of Jordan Mechner, who is interviewed th𒁏roughout along with his father, Francis, who composed the game’s soundtrack. While Mechner contributed to the rerelease, he didn’t develop it. Braid, Anniversary Edition marks the first time that I’ve seen a developer head up this kind of preservation of their own work. Anniversary Edition was developed and published by Thekla, Inc., creator Jonathan Blow’s company. That degree of involvement makes Braid, Anniversary Edition robust in a way that other similar rereleases just can’t be.
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There are the obvious ways, like the fact that Anniverꦺsary Edition includes 15 hours of commentary, with Blow and other developers offering behind-the-scenes insight on every aspect of the game. But ga꧂me commentaries aren’t new, even if they are much rarer than I’d hope. No, what feels innovative in Braid, Anniversary Edition is the inclusion of new playable bits and pieces that highlight how the game changed over its development and how Blow’s own approach to design has evolved since Braid’s release.
In one instance, Blow is discussing the various phasesꩲ a puzzle went through as he refined it, and a portal appears on screen. Once that bit of commentary was finished playing, I walked through the portal and into a level that housed the three versions of the puzzle — all the major steps along the iterative path to the final design. A different portal took me from the version of a level that appeared in game to a newly made version that shows how Blow would tweak💟 it today.
It’s really cool stuff, and I hope it catches on. Most companies are content to put out barebones versions of their old games — Rockstar finally brought 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Red Dead Redemption to modern consoles last year and it was just a simple♎ port — but there’s room for so much more. Braid, Anniversary Edition shows that the pursuit of innovation doesn’t need to be limited to games; it should also guide the way games are preserved.
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