The Stanley Parable Essay

The Stanley Parable is a game in which takes control of the titular character as an unseen narrator instructs the player around an office building. It is up to the player to obey or disobey the narrator, which leads to a variety of ways the game ends. My first time playing the game, I was introduced to it by a friend who told me to sit down and play it with no explanation of what the game was. Because of this, I simply did exactly what the narrator said, with no thought about directly going against the narrator’s instructions. Then my friend explained to me that the whole point of the game was to sometimes go against the narrator. Finally understanding, I decided to go to the other extreme and do the opposite of what the narrator said. I was …show more content…
After the game restarts the first time, the narrator asks the player: “Stanley, did you change anything when we were back in that room with all the monitors? Did you move the story somewhere, or...Hold on, why am I asking you? I'm the one who wrote the story. It was right here a minute ago. I know for sure that it's here somewhere.” (The Stanley Parable). This implies that the narrator has a specific narrative arc he wrote for the player, and that all of the other endings are unscripted. Later in the same story arc, The Stanley Parable Adventure Line is supposed to help the narrator and Stanley find the story. This means that the narrator’s story isn’t just a physical script the narrator possesses, but is embedded somewhere within the …show more content…
Instead of giving Stanley a job that can be found in most office environments, the creators of the game chose to have his job be overly boring and repetitive, pushing buttons on a keyboard as they appear on his computer screen. This has the advantage of not alienating a specific profession, and allows players to project the average office 9-to-5 job onto Stanley’s profession even though it is not an accurate representation of such