[Game Review] The Stanley Parable
The Stanley Parable is a short narrative video game that first started as a mod for Half-life 2. I heard about it as a unique experience before. So I was happy when Epic Store offered it for free last month.
This Article Contains Minor #Spoilers
The Stanley Parable
You will play as Stanley, and you will not play as Stanley. You will follow a story, you will not follow a story. You will have a choice, you will have no choice. The game will end, the game will never end. -- The game's website.
This game is a walking simulator in which you control Stanley, an office worker who is happy with his boring job. One day, all the other workers in the office have vanished and starts walking around to find them.
The game is fully narrated and the Narrator is basically the main character of The Stanley Parable. As you walk around, open doors and push buttons, the narrator will talk about what you WILL do, why contradicting him by not doing such is stupid and pointless, and question the sanity of Stanley as well as the player.
No one in the meeting room?
Defiant to the End
What I liked about The Stanley Parable is how the narrator tells you what you'll do (in past tense) as soon as you get the chance to choose. You can have the freedom to defy him and do something else but, (especially at first,) the other options are usually worse. So, you'll feel it when he makes fun at you for not following what he said.
The narrator isn't trustworthy, but he's the only entity you can trust in The Stanley Parable. There's nothing else to do if you want to uncover the mystery. The deeper you think about this game, the more philosophical questions you start to ask yourself.
"There's no way Stanley to know that the code is 2845."
One section I liked is when Stanley needed to find a 4-Digit code to open the pathway. The narrator gave me the code right away! But I kept trying every combination that is not the right code. The narrator stated the code in increased frustration, and ranted about how blindly trying combinations is statiscally (im)possible. He eventually got bored and stopped talking.
Another section is when Stanley found a corridor marked "-> Escape" and the narrator was amused by how idiot the player is to go to their certain death. The corridor is long and by the time you reach the end, you're clearly making a conscious decision to go through it.
Total observation... Mind control... Oh $#!-
The game is quite short. One run takes less than 20 minutes. There's even an achievement for beating it in less than 4 minutes and half. But the multiple endings will compel you to play more, seconds after it ends. I think the developers knew that, all the endings I reached brought me back to the beginning instead of "The End" screen.
A Successful Experimentation
As an experimental game, The Stanley Parable succeeds in making the player think, it made me feel like I'm being controlled, and that felt, kind of fresh to me.
I felt like this in a stronger sense with Doki Doki Litrature Club so you might want to check it out if you like this game.
The Stanley Parable has at least 19 endings and I've reached four of them. All of the ending I have achieved were bizarre and didn't solve anything about the mystery, if they served anything, I would say it proved what isn't the solution of the puzzle.
They really worked hard on this landscape...
By the way, the developers are working on an expansion as well as a console version, which will release sometime in 2019 2020!
What do you think?
Have you played The Stanley Parable? Do you enjoy narrative driven game? How about the illusion of choice? I look forward to your comments~
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