#the stanley parable spoilers

[superstarsnivkins]

getting emotional about the end of tsp ultra deluxe again sorry. the "thank you for enjoying the new content" sign originally being the punchline to a joke about the game being an insubstantial rerelease only to show up again at the very end of the actual new content as a genuine thank you to the player for seeing everything through..the narrator's final monologue after the figurines being a bittersweet farewell to the game itself.. the haunting ambiance of the desert at the end of skip button/epilogue.. FUUUUCK

[radio-ghost-cooks]

i'm so obsessed with The Narrator (the stanley parable spoilers!!!!!)

he's a bitch. he wants Stanley to escape more than anything. he's sadistic. he sounded like he was about to cry when Stanley didn't move. he got offended by a Steam commenter calling him "unfunny." he made a game where you push a button for four hours. he thinks rocket league is fun. he's hardly felt happiness before the Zending. he played jaunty adventure music while following the Adventure Line(TM). i fucking love him

[somberine]

I must keep the wheel turning. Keep the wheel turning. It must go forever. The end is never the end is never the end...

[pumpkinupsidedowncake]

I desperately want to go through each Stanley Parable ending and analyze what they say about the nature of video games but I also have like 10 actually important things I need to work on :(

But like one thing I noticed while thinking about this is how some explore the limitation of agency caused by the shared decision-making process between player and storyteller. The fantastic irony of the freedom ending, especially how it goes into a cutscene as soon as you step outside. The unplugging the phone ending, whatever it’s called. The endings where one party tries to undermine the other’s agency, if that’s even the right way to describe how Stanley defies the plot. Looking at these endings through this lens is fascinating. It’d probably also be real cool if you add in the complexity of separating the Narrator from the creators of the story and Stanley from the player’s input, which I have not really explored yet.

This game is so calorically dense, it’s amazing.

[lephalacat]

...Just had a random Stanley Parable thought:

The Skip Button Ending, but what if it worked like... A certain room from the horror game OMORI. (...OMORI fans would know which one I'm referring to.)

Like,

You keep pressing the button until it breaks, but the room itself doesn't tear down. It doesn't let you out. After the button breaks, 'someone' asks you through a messy writing on the wall,

"Waiting for something to happen?"

...And THEN you realize that restarting has literally been the only option for you to escape. Also that you'd made the Narrator suffer for absolutely no frickin reason lol. Also, no desert at the end means no catharsis factor for anyone involved. At all.

(Whether he remembers the resets or not, is, well ... :p)

[starryoak]

Playing the new release of The Stanley Parable, and god, the ending where you go through the red door and throw yourself repeatedly off of the stairs is just… ): I don’t enjoy it! I don’t enjoy it because The Narrator sounds so genuinely happy when you get into the glowy room and he’s so genuinely distraught when you leave that it breaks my heart. I don’t like making the funny mean man sad! I want to make the funny mean man annoyed, not heartbroken!

[dexabite]

it’s the final countdown

[kazoo plays]

[miittchan]

he walked out in the vast plain of sand. how long had it been since he last pushed that button? it was so quiet. he hated it. he wanted to throw up.

[nestofsalt]

[prismatic-starstuff]

Just... I know it's not real, I do, but my heart breaks when I think about the Narrator's situation; how the Narrator must've told Stanley's story so very many times and genuinely - truly - wanted to set Stanley free by the time of The Stanley Parable

and then Stanley offs himself in the Zending

and then Stanley gets attached to a bucket and stops the pursuit of freedom altogether

and then Stanley puts so much distance between himself and the Narrator that the Narrator feels the edges of his reality disappearing and ultimately loses himself

and then Stanley can't be set free at all because everything resets anyway

God... This isn't an anti-Stanley post, no no, I'm fond of him too; but I can't overstate how much the Narrator goes through it in this game, and it's honestly so damn heartbreaking because all it wanted to do was lead Stanley to freedom

[shiocreator]

Spoilers for the Not Stanley ending in The Stanley Parables

"Stanley went through the left door." the Narrator said, fully assuming Stanley would follow his story, he would of course he always followed orders, lately though something seemed to change. Stanley wasn't moving, was he breathing even?

The Narrator coughed, waiting for Stanley to make a decision, but he never moved.

"Stanley- you're uhm, supposed to make a choice here Stanley-" the Narrator said, calmly. "No pressure or anything but please,, please Stanley even, we can even go back if you'd like! See-"

The door behind Stanley opens, but there is no movement from the empty, husk of Stanley. The narrator sounds nervous, "Stanley, you, you ARE supposed to make a choice here, are you alright? Do, do you need, time? I can give you time Stanley... I'll, I will, go for now... Call me when you're ready to make a decision, my friend..."

As the narrator left he was unaware of the stomping in the ceiling, someone yeling for both him and the vessel, and the Narrator having forgotten the time before this, where someone uninvited had been his protagonist a long with stanley, unaware they are all needed to be intertwined together for the story to continue.

They were Not Stanley, but they also were Stanley in a way. They all push and shove against each other, but they all need each other. Quite a predicament, is it not dear Reader?

[pumpkinupsidedowncake]

My thoughts on the relationship between Stanley and the Narrator: they aren’t friends or enemies, but a complicated and unbreakable third thing.

They simultaneously desire and despise each other. Their existences are fundamentally intertwined as player and storyteller, the two entities with agency within the game. While they both have what the other needs, they are incapable of giving each other what they truly want.

The Narrator needs to have his story heard and appreciated. He wants Stanley to engage with the story correctly, to make all the right choices, because he believes that will satisfy his need for an audience. But the story’s a game, inflexible mechanics and plot beats interconnected by flexible pathways and choices. Stanley is creating the story alongside the Narrator. It can’t function without his engagement, and part of that engagement is deviating from the expected path, testing the boundaries of every rule, making wrong choices for the fun of it.

Stanley needs to be given meaningful choices. He wants to be able to take any action he sets his mind to, which is and will always be impossible in this medium. Games have hard limits to player agency, either because of system limitations or artistic choices. And for Stanley’s choices to have meaning, they must be defined, which involves stakes and forced limitations. Hunger mechanics, for example, constrain player choices by making eating food necessary for survival, but without them the choice to eat or not to eat means a lot less. While you definitely can and should choose to eat mushroom soup in minecraft creative mode, it will never have the same weight as eating your last bowl of it in hardcore mode. The limitation, the existence of wrong choices that you will be punished for making, is what makes all choices meaningful.

(Obviously there are other ways of defining meaningful choices outside of right/wrong or beneficial/non-beneficial. It all depends on how you define meaning, where it’s gotten from. In this case, its source is pretty extrinsic, but that is not always so, even within the Stanley Parable. However, I will continue to focus on meaning derived from narrative context, because it seems more relevant and this post will already be really long without all that.)

Stanley needs the Narrator to make his choices matter. And to have a game to make choices in in the first place. He needs to see the broom closet boarded up, to hear the Narrator’s response to his latest decision, to know that he has agency in this world, that his actions are meaningful.

Both of them want to “win”. To dominate the other. For the Narrator, the game is made of choices that are rewarded, pointless, or punished. For the game to be “won”, the player should choose the maximally rewarding options in the shortest time possible. He wants Stanley to choose correctly and in doing so validate his own pride in the story. Stanley wants to “win” by exerting his own agency. He delights in circumventing the Narrator’s plans, whether for the bit or out of spite. The game is found in confounding the Narrator.

These two definitions of winning are incompatible, obviously. Following the ideal path and refusing to do so. Despite this, they both desperately want the other on their side. Stanley wouldn’t still be playing if he didn’t need the story. He could simply not engage, either by sitting glumly in a corner or, on a meta level, doing anything other than playing a video game. And the Narrator wants Stanley to have a good time so badly. He gives Stanley the correct keypad code almost immediately so he can get on with experiencing the rest of the story, and constantly tells Stanley what he needs to do to advance. But because they are so opposed in their goals, discord is inevitable.

That conflict is made worse by each of them taking literally everything as a challenge. The Narrator views Stanley’s one deviation from his story in the Countdown Ending as a declaration of war because surely choosing his own path is equivalent to saying he doesn’t need the Narrator. In the Museum Ending, Stanley directly disregards the Narrator’s repeated warnings, and in every cargo lift scenario, he purposefully and continually ignores what he is supposed to be doing. And every hostile response begets a hostile reaction, even when it wasn’t meant as hostile, which causes an even more extreme response, and so on.

It’s so breathtakingly petty. And yet they need each other, or choose to need each other. Each loop of the game is formed by both parties deciding to stick around for “just one more run”. They are suspended in a sort of equilibrium, like the day and the night, always separate and opposed except for the rare yet inevitable moments where the sun meets the horizon. They are a song laden with tension and resolution, a call-and-response that feels predetermined and new, a conversation preordained and meaningless and so very important.

Can you see what I’m trying to say? I feel like I’m either repeating myself or jumping around too much. Anyway, yeah. Their relationship is the act of gaming, or one perspective on it. Engaging with an interactive work of art that was created long before you came along, yet which needs you and your input to function. It’s not a book or live improv, but some beautiful amalgamation of the two. The Stanley Parable explores this combination of scripted and un-scriptable through the conflict between the Narrator and Stanley. This is extremely cool and makes the should-have-been-an-english-major center of my brain go feral. As you can tell.

[vellichorom]

there once was a man known as the Narrator...

A SMORGASBOARD OF SKETCH COMMISSIONS FOR @pastapastry​ FEATURING THEIR HELLA DESIGN FOR THE NARRATOR OF THE STANLEY PARABLE !!!! 

+ their stanleys but this isn’t about him what do you think this is

[lephalacat]

Listening to the Complete Soundtrack of TSP: UD felt like playing through the entire game for the very first time, all over again, every great and memorable moment piled into a single-

...Ah wait

This is literally what the Memory Zone was to the Narrator, isn't it.

[drink-bread-art]

I realize someone drew this already but I drew this awhile ago and have been too lazy to post it, so I probably should already

[asimovsideburns]

it’s complicated