When I first saw The Stanley Parable in the course syllabus, I was more than excited to get a chance at playing the game (I must say that I thought it was the first release of the game). I had first encountered the original release of the game during middle school through Markiplier’s playthrough of it. Obviously, I had not taken any courses on video game analysis at the time, so I just played the game for entertainment. However, this time around, I was able to notice different elements of the game and how it actually forces the player to do exactly what it wants them to do.
When playing The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, I decided to focus on the narrator’s tone and word choice. What I realized was that, beyond adding entertainment to the game, the narrator was leading me in the direction in which he wanted me to go. One of the first lines in the game helps illustrate what I mean. The way the narrator says “Stanley decided to go to the meeting room; perhaps he had simply missed a memo” is quite friendly but in a way quite enforcing. The word “decide” in the first line subtly gives the player an instruction to go to the meeting room, but adds the word “perhaps” to make it feel less enforcing. It makes it seem like more of a suggestion rather than an order. The same applies to the other lines the narrator says as the player explores the office. For example, take a look at the following two quotes: “No matter how hard Stanley looked, he couldn’t find a trace of his co-workers” and “Stanley went around touching every little thing in the office. But it didn’t make a single difference, nor did it advance the story in any way.” These lines were just entertaining to me in middle school, but it seems to me now that the narrator is showing some frustration. The narrator’s tone insinuates this as well. Here is where the dilemma occurs. My instincts tell me to explore the office and potentially find easter eggs that could make the game more fun, but the narrator just wants me to go straight to the meeting room. So, what do I do? I explore the office regardless.
To explore other possible elements in the narrator’s lines, I recently watched Markiplier’s playthrough of The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe. In his playthrough Markiplier stayed inside the storage room for minutes to see how the narrator would react. And, as expected, the narrator continued to say things that encouraged the player to leave the room and head to the meeting room.
This relates back to someone’s blog post on the idea of choice, or more so the lack of it in the game. I agree that the player or Stanley does not have a choice on what to do in the end. However, the player does have the choice and ability to explore different parts of the game on the journey towards doing what the narrator tells them to do.
Your post reminded me of one of the endings I stumbled upon, the Museum Ending, where SPOILERS the player gets to explore a museum exhibiting many of the different endings and their “behind-the-scenes.” The accompanying narration, voiced by a new narrator, in fact, goes so far as to tell the player to exit the game in order to escape the cycle of resurrection and failure. Though, in my opinion, The Stanley Parable is spectacular in the number of pathways the player can traverse (often based on trivial changes between each run), this particular ending reminded me that, as you say, choice is ultimately limited, even in this choice-based game. But what if the game designers just expanded those limits endlessly? What if they added more and more endings, more and more interactions and dialogue? At what point would the game become a satisfactory simulacrum of the “free will” of real-life? It would be pretty interesting, but completely implausible, if everyone who played The Stanley Parable could only do so once, with no resets or replays!