Korax

The Stanley Parable

Recommended Posts

This came out a few weeks ago, and I've seen it mentioned on a couple of sites, but I think it definitely needs more attention.

It's a mod for Source (free, of course, but requires Source SDK 2007) that explores the idea of freedom in games. I don't want to say too much, but I will say that it needs to be played through multiple times.

Link:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-stanley-parable

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I have downloaded this, but have yet to try it. I'll post thoughts once I've had a chance to play it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It's not much of a game as much as a narrative. However the dialogue and outcomes are fun/interesting. It reminds me of a choose-your-own-adventure book, except the places it takes you are wildly different.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Was it just me or did it feel like this was missing Will Ferrell talking to his toothbrush?

Yeah I really got that feeling too, played it once, kind of felt insulted by the narration and didn't try another play through, though I can probably take a unsurprising wild guess as to what happens if I did things differently.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Yeah I really got that feeling too, played it once, kind of felt insulted by the narration and didn't try another play through, though I can probably take a unsurprising wild guess as to what happens if I did things differently.

The outcomes are actually vastly different from each other.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Ill give it another few shots when Im not so grumpy, I just have an irritation to narration, especially when they sound like they are talking down to a child(which may or may not be the case here, I just dont like narrators, lol)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

They are indeed different, but I honestly wouldn't warrant them worthy of any extra playtime. While I did spend the time to at least find 4 of the endings, I found them rather boring, confusing, and unfinished. The stories left little in the way of anything but a feeling of regret for spending the time to find them. If you want a fully fleshed out 3rd person narrative story, go watch Stranger Than Fiction. If you need to tickle the interactive aspect of it, open up the source SDK and walk around an empty map while watching.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Ill give it another few shots when Im not so grumpy, I just have an irritation to narration, especially when they sound like they are talking down to a child(which may or may not be the case here, I just dont like narrators, lol)

I'd say that's definitely the case. The narrator seems to be intentionally written with the attitude that the designer knows best and the player should shut up and do what he's told. He gets downright abusive if you just keep defying him.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
They are indeed different, but I honestly wouldn't warrant them worthy of any extra playtime. While I did spend the time to at least find 4 of the endings, I found them rather boring, confusing, and unfinished. The stories left little in the way of anything but a feeling of regret for spending the time to find them. If you want a fully fleshed out 3rd person narrative story, go watch Stranger Than Fiction. If you need to tickle the interactive aspect of it, open up the source SDK and walk around an empty map while watching.

I respectfully disagree. The choice points were mostly all well indicated, it didn't take much time to replay the game and find them, and they all enhanced the theme in quite different ways.

If what you wanted was to find out what happened to Stanley and his workplace, yeah, the endings are disappointing. But telling that story isn't the point of the game. Instead, it examines the notion of

authorial intent limiting choices in an interactive game, broadening it to greater notions of agency and free will.

Kind of armchair psych, and it's been done before (hell, it's been done by me, although nowhere near as well done), but it's all well written and acted that I enjoyed the time I spent on it.

I take some issue with its seeming assertion that

exploring possibliity spaces in predetermined narrative framework

is inherently uninteresting, but I found the game's argument to be well told.

Edited by Noyb

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I quite enjoyed that. I liked the narrator - reminded me of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - and each of the five endings I found had something different to say about games, narrative and player agency. Each one also said its piece in a slightly different way each time (sometimes with irony, sometimes with insight, sometimes with cruelty, and so on).

Anyone going into this expecting a game might be disappointed; it's actually a treatise that uses its subject as its medium, much like McCloud's Understanding Comics.

And yes, you can find out what happened to the other workers.

Also great video above :tup:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So the demo for the remake is out and is pretty great (doesn't duplicate content from the game, so no spoiler worries):

http://store.steampowered.com/app/221910/?snr=1_7_7_151_150_1

 

also he did some customized versions of the demo for various games press people which is a pretty clever marketing move:

 

(the customized bit comes at around 7 minutes in)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I enjoyed playing the demo at PAX. Not sure if it's exactly the same since there was some PAX-specific dialog in that demo.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

:tup: to the demo, it's the Hitchhikers Guide of the Galaxy of video games

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I immediately started trying to work out what this says about what's been changed in the full game, given I played and enjoyed the original. I noticed the 'pick up can, put in bin, get achievement' being presented as a game, which is in line with the subject matter of the original, but I also noticed how little control the Narrator had over the content - not just what players did.

 

The HD Remix is, apparently, attempting to incorporate a lot of the responses to the original, and the biggest one is that games are just really hard to make and some of the expectations the original had were unreasonable. So maybe the Narrator not being able to wrangle everything in place to tell the singular, shining story he wants to tell is part of the parable now? That the impulse to give the events in the game meaning and relevance, rather than just walking in pointless corridors, leads to some kind of daft dilemma where you're either forcing the player to look at this wonderful thing you made for them or having the game immediately undercut its own meaning with some stupid confluence of events (for instance, many of the stories Idle Thumbs love).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The demo was quite fun. I almost felt like they were going to reveal that the demonstration was the game. It felt like a lot of content.

 

The most interesting thing to me was the use of 30 Flights of Loving style quick cuts at the end, as I haven't seen them in any other games, really.

 

There's something really awesome about source games, I dunno what it is, but they feel so nice.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I love how often I see people say the game has a British sensibility to it given that the writer's an American and the only real British aspect to it is the Narrator's voice actor. I could draw a long bow and go 'American absurdist satire is like this while British absurdist satire is like that' but I won't.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Saw the video of this when Patrick Klepek played it on Worth Playing. There were significant portions near the end of the demo that were different at PAX, so that's cool that we got to see a little exclusive content. I keep going back and forth on this one.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've been playing this most of the afternoon, or at least 2 or 3 hours or something. I think I've explored almost all branching points. I have no idea how many changing elements I've missed. In the cubicle segment alone there are quite some elements which change a lot (computers, telephones, etc.).

Anyway... this game is awesome! At some point I was disappointed the branching didn't go on.

It does not matter much on how you rate the "game changes". There is a different remark from the narrator, but you still continue to the baby game.

I need to revisit this game when I get back home, need to see what else there is.

 

For those who've played the demo and want to know what the full game is like.... the gameplay is the same, the content is different.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've found a few things that are easy to miss - there are special endings if you

climb up on one of the desks in the first room and climb out the window, quickly step out of the bosses' office before the doors close on you, or unplug the phone.

 

The only thing I found a little disappointing was

the new version of the Freedom ending, now the baby game. I liked the idea present in the original that there's value in stories with some kind of meaning, which is why developers keep trying them even when they're so fragile and usually vapid. When you're dropped into Minecraft, I was hoping for an expansion on this idea, that this world has been generated just for you but what you are going to do in it is go down in a hole and either die or come up with diamonds, and in that limitless freedom what you'll find is only what you bring to it. It can't do what a story can, it can't make you see the world in a different way or put you into someone else's shoes. Instead, the Narrator gets bored because it's too open-ended to be a punishment and drops me into Portal. It took what was one of the most compelling endings, and muddled it into something far less comprehensible.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now