The Stanley Parable
Signed-off-by: Xe <me@christine.website>
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title: "The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe Review"
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date: 2022-07-25
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series: reviews
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---
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Every so often a game comes around that is genuinely hard to review. Especially
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when you are trying to avoid spoiling the magic of the game in that review. This
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is a game that is even harder to review than normal because it's an absolute
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philosophical document. This game absolutely riffs at the games industry super
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hard and it really shows. I'm going to try to avoid spoilers in this article,
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except for a few I made up.
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<xeblog-conv name="Cadey" mood="coffee">I was going to include screenshots in
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this article, but it's difficult for me to get them without spoiling the subtle
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comedy at hand, so I'm going to leave this as a text-only review.</xeblog-conv>
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The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is either the second or third game in the
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series. At first this game was a Half Life 2 mod that came out of nowhere and
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was one of the most beloved mods ever released. Then they made it a proper game
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on the Source engine and expanded it a bit. After a while they wanted to
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continue the parable and expand it even more, but they weren't able to get it on
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consoles with it still being a Source engine game. So they ported it to Unity
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and the end result is The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe. It is one of my
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favorite games of all time.
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It is a deeply limited game, you only can move around and interact with things.
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The story is about an office drone named Stanley that pushes buttons based on
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instructions from his computer. The big thing that this game does though is make
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you realize the inherent paradoxes in its own design.
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<xeblog-conv name="Mara" mood="happy">Being limited like this is not actually a
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bad thing like the phrasing would imply. It just means that the main focus of
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the game is not on the micro actions the player can take. In this case the main
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focus is on what the player can do with the story and not what the player can do
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with their controller.</xeblog-conv>
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Endings that make you look like you had exercised your free will actually boil
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down to your actions being controlled by following the narrator's voices. This
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is absolutely taking the piss out of how most modern AAA game design works,
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guiding you with an invisible hand and making it _seem_ like you had the free
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will to choose what was going on when in fact you were really just following the
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invisible guidance the whole time.
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However I think one of the best examples of how The Stanley Parable riffs at
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mainstream game design is via the Adventure Line™️ that shows up in one branch of
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the game. The Line™️ is an obvious riff on games like Dead Space where you can
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summon a line to tell you where to go at any time. It shows how _boring_ modern
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game design is by making you _see_ the consequences of it. If you follow the
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narrator's voice, you get boring endings.
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In many modern AAA games, you have the free will to choose to follow the main
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story and finish all the quests or whatever, but not much else. Consider Call of
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Duty or Battlefield. You are John America and you have to kill the enemies to
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death before they kill you to death by throwing bullets at you. You get to the
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end of the level and blow up the brown people some more or something and then
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it's suddenly a victory for America. But what did you really accomplish? You
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just followed the line. Walk outside of the intended playable area? 10 second
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timer until the game kills you. Shoot a person with the wrong skin color? The
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game kills you.
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<xeblog-conv name="Numa" mood="delet">I used to be an adventurer like you until
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I took an arrow to the knee! Get it? It's because "taking an arrow to the knee"
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meant "getting married" because being married in Norse times (because Skyrim's
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Nord are basically LARP vikings) really handicapped your ability to move around
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freely, and in those times an arrow injury was basically guaranteed to be fatal
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so it can't be literal (if only because there's so many guards with knee
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injuries walking around effortlessly which is...unlikely at best).</xeblog-conv>
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However in The Stanley Parable you can defy the narrator and that's where the
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game really opens up. It's great to get in the area where the game is unfinished
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and then have the narrator complain about deadlines, scheduling delays, investor
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funding and them wanting to avoid having to stuff it to the gills with
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microtransactions. You can legitimately glitch your way out of bounds and then
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the game will reward you with a new ending you didn't know was possible. The
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game takes the concept of the illusion of free will and plays with it.
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The game makes you think about what games _can_ be. It makes you wonder if the
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potted plant soliloquy after the broom closet ending speaks to the mental state
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of the author more than anything. Of all of the artistic endeavors that games as
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a medium _can_ have, we end up seeing very few or none of them in mainstream
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gaming. Sure you get your occasional 4k120fps robot killer waifu with a bow and
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a whacky stick, but none of it really _revolutionizes_ video games as an art
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form. It's all just derivative of the generic "unalive bad guy and save earth"
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trope.
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<xeblog-conv name="Mara" mood="hacker">If you want some games that really
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revolutionize what games can be, check out
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[Celeste](https://mattmakesgames.itch.io/celeste), [Secret Little
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Haven](https://ristar.itch.io/secret-little-haven), [Baba Is
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You](https://hempuli.itch.io/baba), and [Glittermitten
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Grove](https://twinbeard.itch.io/glittermitten-grove). All of these games really
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challenge what games can be and experiment with radically different kinds of
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art. You never will see mainstream games be as risk-taking as this because art
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is fundamentally risky and capitalism wants line to go up, so they go out of
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their way to make sure that mainstream games are as safe and likely to sell many
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copies as possible.</xeblog-conv>
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I made up the thing about the potted plant, but if you had played the game then
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you'd probably have started the game up to look for it just to see what was
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there. I wonder if I made someone stand at that potted plant for like 5 minutes
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or something. This game sparks creativity in ways that other mainstream games
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just fundamentally don't. If you've been looking for something different in your
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video game diet, I really suggest you give it a try. Go in as blind as possible.
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I'm not paid in any way to say this, I genuinely think this is really good.
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