The Stanley Parable is a game of choices: left door or right door; up or down the stairs; follow The Narrator’s directions or ignore them. However, your choices mean more than just the direction in which you move. If you follow the directions of The Narrator, you are guaranteed a happy ending. If you ignore them, you are almost certain to meet an unfortunate fate. The game The Stanley Parable, at its core, is asking whether you would rather be in control of your actions or have a happy ending.
Nearly every ending achieved by disobeying The Narrator at any point is undesirable for Stanley. Most of the endings involve Stanley’s death, and several include him going insane. Even the Heaven Ending, which at its surface appears positive, has a more sinister meaning. The game ends with Stanley surrounded by a circling rings of colorful buttons that he can press for all of eternity. After a certain period of time, they all reset so you truly could spend the rest of your life pressing buttons in “Heaven.” Supposedly, this should make Stanley happy. He loved his job pressing buttons. This ending romanticizes the loss of Stanley’s agency. The whole point of The Stanley Parable is that Stanley breaks free from his mundane job to explore what else life may have to offer. Instead, now he must complete the same repetitive task for the rest of eternity.
Unfortunately, even if you do follow all of The Narrator’s instructions, it’s still not enough to ensure Stanley’s happiness. One of the few happy endings you can achieve in The Stanley Parable is the Freedom Ending. If you obey everything The Narrator tells you to do, Stanley will destroy the “Mind Control Facility” and exit the building to a green field. As Stanley savors his newfound freedom, The Narrator speaks about how Stanley is finally free and able to do whatever he wants, going on and on about how he can finally live his own life: Stanley’s life. And then it abruptly cuts to Stanley’s office once more as the game begins again. There is no escape from Stanley’s life. He is doomed to spend the rest of eternity cycling through his office, dying horrible deaths, and occasionally making it to freedom before being thrust into the endless loop once more.
There is no true agency in The Stanley Parable. You can choose which path you take to finish a run of the game, but in the end, there is nothing you can do to truly achieve Stanley’s freedom.
I appreciate your discussion on the question of the Agency in the Stanley Parable. I agree that there is no agency in this game because no matter what Stanley chose to do, he can never really achieve true freedom. I think it is interesting to think about Agency in all games: does agency exist in any games? I guess the answer is mostly no: for most of the games the plot is set and for games with unpredictability like Mountain the player has zero control. I believe agency only exists in games that involve strategies, such as MOBA, FPS, or a pure turn-based strategy game like Civilization.