I believe that video games are among the most interesting ways to tell a story, because of the inherent interactive nature it has over other forms of media. When you watch a tv show or a movie, everything is laid out for you. All you have to do is sit down and watch it. When you read a book, of course you have to turn the pages to see what happens next, simulating some form of interactivity, but with a video game there are so many different factors that come into play. Multiple genres beget multiple control styles which beget levels of difficulty which beget levels of accessibility which beget a divide between players who experience media in a way unique from one another. It's very much a double-edged sword. People who play video games have their preferences and things they're willing to put up with to experience a feeling you normally wouldn't get just by watching, reading or listening. With all that being said, what does that have to do with The Stanley Parable? Well, because this game seeks to deconstruct the very point of video games, for better or for worse.


From the moment you start, you're greeted with a British Narrator who begins to tell you a story about a man named Stanley, who, caught up in the euphoria of his mundane life, notices all of his coworkers have suddenly disappeared in his office, leaving him alone to explore the building. From there, you control Stanley as the Narrator does exactly that, narrate your actions. Truth be told, that's the extent of the entire premise. Every single thing revolves around you, the Narrator and Stanley. The narrator tells Stanley what to do and you can choose to do it or you can choose not to, and you go on trip after trip exploring the full extent of your decisions. Are you, the player, named Stanley, akin to a placeholder RPG name, or is our protagonist named Stanley, and we're to guide him on his journey? It's somehow both and neither at the same time. The Narrator will ad-lib and break the fourth wall should you choose to stray from his path, and he will refer to Stanley and the player equal amounts of times. Stanley IS a character, and YOU the player are controlling him, so you both matter in this story. Though before we get into Stanley we should get into the driving force of this game, the Narrator.

The Narrator is the voice you will hear all throughout the game for basically every action you do, so get used to it. At any moment should you choose to stray from his path like your morbid curiosity and instinctive rebellion would have you, the Narrator will get annoyed, angry, sad, and more. His vocal performance is incredibly convincing, and the more time you spend with him, his voice will be burned into your mind as you hear him go through every single emotion. Personality wise, the Narrator is haughty, self-righteous, narcissistic, a control freak, and will constantly belittle you and Stanley at any given moment for not doing what he says. It would make sense to equate him as a sort of god, as he seems to have control over this world that you're in and seems to know what will happen before it happens. Although, as your journey progresses, you start to learn, maybe the Narrator doesn't have as much control as he may lead you to believe. Maybe he's keeping you here to make you think that he's your only hope at salvation, or maybe he's trapped here with you and is making stuff up as he goes along. There's many ways to speculate but ultimately it's whatever you choose to believe. Which brings me to another section of this rant: choice.

It's probably no surprise the game has multiple "endings", or more specifically moments where it will appear your journey comes to an end, only to put you right back at the beginning. Again, the Narrator will tell you where you're "supposed" to go, and during the moments you diverge, he will insult you and demand to be taken seriously. This is his story that he worked so hard on, and you're the star of it, so surely you have to do what he says to progress it! So you play his story the way he intends you to do it, and guess what? It sucks! It's the most boring, basic and uninteresting story you could make. Some boring guy who's complacent in his monotonous work schedule finds out all of his coworkers have vanished, and stumbles across a conspiracy that he's been working in a mind control facility, and then...he leaves. The End. This raises so many questions: Where did all the coworkers go? Who was controlling the facility? What is the true purpose of the mind control in the facility? What do they actually do in this office? Why was Stanley the only one who didn't leave? Is he the only one not under mind control? Why would he go through all the trouble of investigating what was going on if he was just going to leave? All of these questions and more are never answered. The Narrator is so hellbent on you doing what he wants and you get nothing out of it except for a really shitty game. Why IS this meant to be a game? It wasn't unique to control, it wasn't told in an interesting way, it wasn't very long, it wasn't visually very appealing, it was nothing. So when you inevitably get booted back to the beginning of the game after that incredibly lame story, what's the first thing you want to do? What YOU want to do. Not what the NARRATOR wants to do, because you experienced what he wants to do and it was shitty. It’s my strong belief that video games are supposed to be at least one of two things: fun or interesting. The Narrator's excuse for a game was not fun and it was not interesting. Guess what, though? This is MY game and if I'm in control, then I can do whatever I want to. Or so it would seem.

You know that meme "The Illusion of Free Choice"? The feeling that what you do doesn't really matter because everything is predetermined to come out one specific way? That’s a big part of this game. In too many endings, the Narrator will revel in the fact you made a dumb decision and dared to question his superiority in a futile attempt to prove that you control your own path. Killing yourself, trying to find glitches in the game, even standing in a broom closet, the Narrator will have something to say about it and tell you to get it together. The breaking point for me was when the Narrator tries to trick Stanley into believing he actually has a loving wife in his home, only to smugly reveal he exists as a pawn whose fate is to listen to what everyone tells him to do. What waits for Stanley listening to the Narrator, though? A repetitive fate reliving a boring story? I'm not going to let him do that, and I certainly won't have this guy being the one in control of any of our fates. Of course I want to prove him wrong, and piss him off any way I can just to make that point, even if I have to kill myself to do it (which happens to be the focus of one of my favorite, and one of the more sadder endings). Although again, the Narrator isn't in control 24/7. There are moments where even he gets confused and stumped as to what happens next, and even moments where he just says screw it and lets Stanley do what he wants to do. It's very clear the Narrator is projecting a lot of his insecurities onto Stanley. He will repeatedly tell Stanley things like “You need me”, and in some cases, it's true. Though multiple endings imply just how much the Narrator needs Stanley to give HIM a sense of purpose in this beige limbo they've stumbled into.

By this point, you realize this isn’t your average game with an objective to achieve, but rather a series of “games” strung together with a narrative. It represents the eternal purgatory between Stanley and the Narrator, two beings trapped with only each other, forced to relive the same collection of experiences and forgetting each one of them every time. That makes for a fine story, but how does it make for a GAME? This story justifies being a game BECAUSE it's interactive. You couldn't get this experience just watching it like a movie, even just watching gameplay of it wouldn't be YOUR experience, it'd be someone else's. A choose your own adventure book would be the most appropriate comparison, but even then, a book can't change its words when you stay on one page, or add new paragraphs when you read it backwards. A video game IS the only true way The Stanley Parable can properly explore the topics of choice, free will, and the nature of storytelling and gaming. Although, there is still a biting issue. Remember before I said games should either be fun or interesting? I still heavily believe that, and I believe The Stanley Parable is indeed interesting, but fun? That's harder to decide. Fun is subjective of course, as is interesting. Do I need a game to have insane weapon-based combat or high-speed platforming to be fun or interesting? Of course not (though I do favor it); But I'm not going to sit here and pretend like walking through doors in a beige office building while a British man talks down to you is super exhilarating. Visually, the game's continued reused assets and dull color scheme perfectly capture the mind-numbing monotony of the antics between Stanley and the Narrator. It works a little too well in that regard though, because eventually you'll get sick of having to go through the same doors each time just to possibly find something new. Maybe there’ll be a surprise location a few times, but of course afterwards, you’re sent back to the office. Music is only relegated to certain specific events, as you’ll mostly be traversing in silence (or as much silence as the Narrator will allow you to have through all of his diatribes). It’s a few levels shy of sensory deprivation. So why play it, then? Well, because it doesn’t ask much of you to play it. It doesn’t require you to learn attacks or how to use weapons. Hell, the game doesn't even require you to jump. It doesn’t require you to solve puzzles, or tame creatures, or maintain a kingdom, or compete against other players, or anything of that nature akin to other games. All the game asks of you is your time and willingness to play it. To some, that might just be asking a lot, as we value our time playing video games. The way I see it though, I didn’t lose anything playing this game (except maybe a couple of brain cells), and what I gained from playing was an interesting story. I’d like to believe that’s a fair tradeoff.

So you play the game. You get all the endings. You find all the funny Easter eggs. You exhaust the game of everything it has, all of its content. You start realizing you're getting the same endings again. Which ending is the true ending? IS there a true ending? There IS a moment where the credits will roll, ending on a well-written melancholy note that I do appreciate. Though of course, it’s followed up with Stanley, and you by proxy, being booted back to the beginning of the game. The game only truly ends when you stop playing. It might seem obvious or corny, but the fact is: So long as you let Stanley and the Narrator continue to live out these repeated events, it will never end for them. You as the player are the motivation for the plot. You want to see what will happen, but now you’ve seen all that’s happened. The game stops being fun once you learn all the surprises, it has no replay value because the gameplay itself is so uninteresting, and the events themselves are the fun part. That’s what this life is like for Stanley and the Narrator. They’ve lived through this countless times with no end in sight. The only way to end it is to free them, and yourself, from the monotony. Imprisonment in a continuous loop of deja vu, where the only true “freedom” is the freedom to make it stop by any means. That, to me, is the true ending of The Stanley Parable.

That is, until The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe came out.

8 years after the release of the original Stanley Parable comes an expanded release of the game, The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe. This boasts loads of new features and content, enough content to delay the new game’s release 3 years after its original proposed date. This game works as a continuation of sorts, as the Narrator and Stanley are experiencing this new content together, with the former being incredibly excited to see said new content. Though after an intensely disappointing reveal of a jump button limited to 36 uses in one contained circle, the Narrator decides to take matters into his own hands and create new content himself.

This deluxe edition is even MORE meta than the base game, as it refers not only to the game itself but everything surrounding it. It comments on the dangers of nostalgia, the inability to move on from the past, and even the nature of pandering to an audience vs artist integrity. Once again we delve into the Narrator’s intense insecurities, primarily in another one of my favorite endings centered around a new ”Skip” button feature, as it’s a commentary on losing yourself to criticism and sacrificing your own principles to please someone else. Yet, I feel like this time around there was a heavier focus on comedy, especially with the new “”character”” introduced. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though, and I did find a lot of the new content funny. Ultra Deluxe isn’t as impactful as the original game, and it knows that. It isn’t trying to be. It’s simply delivering on the promise of more content, and that content is well worth it, with just as many routes and endings as the original game, if not more.

I honestly don’t know if I can recommend The Stanley Parable. Hell, if you’re reading this you’ve either already played it or don’t really care about spoilers. I went into the game after playing the demo back in 2013, forgetting about it and then being told to play it by a friend after the Ultra Deluxe came out in 2022. That’s pretty much going in blind, which is definitely the way you should experience the game. I don’t want to call it a “masterpiece” or “genius”, but I will not discredit it. It’s incredibly well thought out and well written, and it knows what it’s doing the entire time. It’s not for everyone though, and I can definitely understand how people would find it’s demeanor pretentious and be turned off by it. Do you want an interesting deconstruction about the nature of decision making and narrative storytelling, portrayed through the tragedy of two beings in an eternal stalemate? Do you want to play a game where a British man whines and berates you as you walk through empty office building rooms that mostly look the same? Those are the factors I take into account. If that sounds like a good time to you, then give it a play. If not, then don’t.

It’s your choice, after all.