If Tim can rewind time and says early on that he is atoning for a mistake, why doesn't he rewind to before he made the mistake?
He can't rewind time. He is merely thinking about what things would be like if he could. There's also the possibility that he doesn't understand what he has done wrong and would therefore make the same mistake again.
Or, alternatively (considering the game mechanics), he can only rewind time up to a certain point.
That certain point being when he got his time-reversal powers, which we can assume he obtained after he made his fatal mistake.
One of the game's messages appears to be that not everything can be fixed by rewinding time. The mechanics of many of the puzzles would suggest this.
He does attempt to rewind time to fix his mistake. However, he doesn't have the empathy to actually figure out what he did wrong, so he attempts to intercept the Princess as she's fleeing. The results are bad.
As I saw it, the fact that he kept rewinding everything to try and make it perfect WAS the mistake.
I realize it's pointless to ask this now with the guides, but how in the HELL did anyone figure out the two hour star in the first place? Seriously, who has that kind of TIME on their hands?! And while we're at it, why would there be a star that requires you to NOT solve the World 3 Puzzle first in order to get it?
Presumably someone noticed the cloud hanging there, tried to futz with it for a while then realized it was moving, albeit veeeeeeeeeeery slowly. Cue denial, bargaining, rage, depression, acceptance.
Actually, at the end of the credits, there are four lines that hint to the possibilty of that cloud moving, as well as that cloud in the last room of the Epilouge. The verse is stronger though, and Jonathan says it was placed as the main hint. (along with the stars outside the house)
Why is Tim's city on fire?
You mean the sunset?
The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire.
Atomic bomb.
"The light would be intense and warm at the beginning, but then flicker down to nothing, taking the castle with it; it would be like burning down the place we've always called home, where we played so innocently as children. Destroying all hope of safety, forever."
To me it symbolizes, coinciding with the idea of the atomic bomb, that the damage to Tim's life has already been done, and is now wholly irreversible. We enter into the game surveying the wreck that has become the present, or the effects of the atomic bomb. Waltzing with the greater knowledge, Tim has accidentally destroyed the world. But this is turning into a Wild Mass Guess now.
Why putting those doors that neither open nor let you get your key back there without even a way to tell one kind of door from the other? The only sort of hint you can have is that usually the door that's easiest to reach is the wrong one, but isn't it Braid's thing that the puzzles are hard to figure out but actually pretty simple?
I'm not really defending the inclusion of those doors (they're sadistic and don't need to be there), but it actually is possible to tell which one you should open— if the right logic occurs to you. It happens when you approach a door from its right side in world 4. Doors are impossible to open from that direction in world 4 because you're moving backwards in time (left)— and therefore, the moment you unlock a door, you move into the moment before you unlocked it, re-locking it. You can see this happen when you move to the left past a door you have unlocked successfully. It's dumb and un-user-friendly, but it makes sense.
Jump left towards the door, turning right just before you'd unlock it. Once you land, jump to the right but turn left right after you jump. You'll unlock the door, whilst moving right and allowing it to open. Sure, you can't get through the ruddy thing, but it proves that it's just a normal door!
Why the hell do those Killer Rabbits meow? What were they thinking?
But them coming out of the ground with flowers on their heads is perfectly normal? Anyway, it's possibly a fantasy world the player is creating in his delusional little mind so things got mixed up. Obviously killer bunnies were necessary and he felt the meows were more scary. Or they're alien creatures from where the lion/hedgehog things come from.
I just thought they were Nidorans.
Rabbits don't really make sounds or at least loud sounds. The meow is just a game mechanic that shows the creature is dangerous and is an indicator of when it's going to strike.
The fact that the bunnies are hiding under some "pretty" flowers, may signify that beauty can be dangerous, like the conclusion of touching the princess.
Moving right moves time forward, moving left pushes time back... How?! Which way is right and which way is left. We can't even tell where the center of the universe and going ANY direction on the surface of the planet you are following a curve. Don't say that it's because it's a 2D platformer. There are clearly buildings in the opening screen in the background that are on fire.
None of this time stuff is really happening, at least not literally as you see it. See the first entry on this page.
It's a metaphor. Read the books at the beginning of the level. From Tim's perspective, moving to the "right" is moving forward. This should be the case for the player as well, since it's almost always the case that "right" is forward in 2D platformers. The buildings in the background don't make the game not a 2D platformer. Plenty of 2D platformers have objects in the background.
If we subscribe to the Manhattan Project theory, that Tim is a physicist or engineer, then the "moving from left to right means time is advancing" is consistent with the Feynman diagram depiction of subatomic particles interacting in space and time.
Also, from Tim's point of view, he starts every stage facing right, so for him "forward" is from our point of view going right, "backwards" is going left.
depiction of subatomic particles interacting in space and time.