Over on Giantbomb.com, where every single game has its own individual forum, I've been spending a lot of time in the Braid forum, inevitably talking about the greater meaning behind the game, as well as debating the nature of the medium as an art form. Discussion their has been absolutely fascinating, with users constantly building and expanding their opinions with each new post. Here are some of the more convoluted thoughts I've had in the forum, re-posted in nonsensical, rank boosting glory.
Obvious Spoiler Warning. Here there be monsters.

Vaxadrin, over in the Braid forum, said:

"I hate to jump on the "games are art" bandwagon, because I feel that ever since there's been pixel sprites in NES games they have been "art", but this is something on a different level entirely, and I wholeheartedly embrace it."

Droll again:

Despite how much I want to embrace gaming as a legitimate art form(if only to prove the medium had some intellectual value to my parents), I'd come to think that almost all games aspire to be entertainment and nothing else. Rarely does this medium offer anything up simply for edification, instead hoping to bedazzle us with sights and sounds before walking away. The reason so few games strive to be something greater than entertainment isn't, as one might think, because of the very early corporatization of the industry (though that obviously plays a factor). Rather, I think that creating a working, relatively bug-free game is such a technical challenge that even getting a program running requires a team of genius programmers to make it go. To finish a game, you need the technical people first and foremost, so very few games ever have the opportunity to aspire to more.

The few other "Art" games over the past 10 years always succeed by putting an increased focus on unique art design, or unconventional mechanics and a great aesthetic, but those almost always comes at the expense of some technical facet of the game design. Rez is an amazing experience that makes your heart swell the second you realize what’s going on, but, from the gameplay perspective, it’s a on-rails shooter in the vein of Panzer Dragoon, Bland at best and boring at worst. It's amazing, but players have to look past the gameplay to enjoy it, which, depending on your tendencies as a player, defeat the purpose of the game as a game.



Same goes for Shadow of the Colossus: few people would deny that game's incredible scope, wonderful design, and dark ending rank among the finest the medium has produced. Again, however, that increased creativity caused other aspects of the game to suffer: the framerate is atrocious throughout, rarely above 20 FPS and in a constant state of flux. The gameplay mechanics are interesting and different from any other "platformer" or any game to feature climbing period. But the controls are wonky, awkward to adjust to, and are even more difficult to manage thanks to the game's unhelpful camera. Its one of the greatest game's of all time....but, really, that could very well occur once you stop playing it.



That’s what makes Braid so remarkable: no one aspect of the game in anyway intrudes or detracts from any other aspect. The luscious art design in Braid doesn't in any way hurt the gameplay: on the contrary, it enhances it, makes the player enjoy exploring each individual environment in the game while never fooling them into thinking that some part of the background is important to solving a puzzle. The gameplay is wonderful, starting with rock-solid platforming mechanics and the time control ability, but slowly evolves and meditates on the gameplay over time, so it never becomes stale. The music is almost too wonderful sometimes, always enhancing the levels while never distracting the player too much. And the story is dark, hallucinatory, laden with more metaphor in a single paragraph than most games dare have in the entirety of the product, leaving the player with masterful, iconic imagery that can, pretty easily, connect to their own lives and play styles. But the story never "interferes" with the gameplay, never gets in the way of solving the puzzle and, indeed, helps the player to understand why the time mechanic changes from level to level.



And, of course, there's that ending, that moment when the world seems to stop, just for an instant, and, in one brilliant flash, the story becomes perfectly clear. But it doesn't become perfectly clear: we know what the ending is, but the player is still left to guess what it means, to try and find some nugget of wisdom, some truth to take with them.

That perfect moment begins when you actually hit a button, when the player tries to exert control over the game's final world. Gameplay and experience combine into a single, mind-melting moment of interactive perfection. This is the ideal, not just of "art games" but of all games: when gameplay and experience come together and enhance each other, rather than one of the two elements trying to "cover up" for the weaknesses of the other.

That is, perhaps, the reason why Braid is the definitive "art game". It sacrifices nothing, and achieves everything. It's more of a game than those "art games" to come before it, and it has a deep resonance that outstrips most game's so-called "technical/gameplay achievements."

Braid doesn't pander to the audience. It trusts players, trusts them to complete the puzzles, to listen to the soundtrack, to enjoy the visuals, to find the deeper meaning in the game. A legion of 360 users, writing the game off as a "bad Mario clone" to go play more Soul Calibur, will never understand that final irony. How quickly they leave a worth wild opportunity, a monumental achievement in the medium, to go play something that doesn't have a shred of intellectual depth, for fear of "insulting" the player.

Droll is not actually trying to boost his Destructoid rank. He's perfectly content being the top wiki points poster on Giant Bomb.