Stanley’s (walking) Parable
The Stanley Parable is a bizarre and frankly astonishing game. What started as a mod for another game was turned into its own product, and boy does it stand out.
The walking is, of course, the only mechanic (aside from stuff like not walking, pushing a button, or opening a door, all simple actions). More accurately, the choice of where to walk or even to walk at all is the main way the players interact with the story. Much of the contents of the game revolve around the concept of free will and volition. Stanley is a character in a game, and you are Stanley, and the narrator says what you do. Or don’t. You can listen to his voice, fallow what he says you are actually doing, or flaunt him completely and struggle against his vain (or not) attempts to get you, and the story, back ‘on track.’
Perhaps my favorite illustration of this is the broom closet. After one of the first choices in the game (two doors, the narrator says you go through one of them, you don’t have to), the hallway has a broom closet. If you enter the broom closet, he says you promptly leave it. If you persist, he gets increasingly desperate to narrate you out of the broom closet and back into the hallway. You don’t have to. You can perfectly well never leave the broom closet, close the game, and never log back in, utterly confounding the narrator, as well as earning the achievement ‘Go Outside,’ which is earned by not playing the game for five straight years
There are a number of endings, and which one you end up with is largely determined by where you walk (and the order in which you do so). You can restart the game in order to explore a different path, opening up new narrator dialogue. The narrator sometimes will restart the game for you, inserting a painted yellow line to keep you (perhaps vainly) on track with what he says you’re doing. The game is horrifically meta in this way (plus the achievements).
The game isn’t just about volition. It is also about being a game. Or about stories. Or about making a game. Or about something else, its a petty dense piece. There’s sections about predestination, there’s a section where the narrator describes himself as the developer of the game, there’s a section where, about to die, a second narrator freezes the game and describes the relationship between Stanley (you) and the narrator. She also shows you an in-game museum about the development of the game. There’s a section where the story breaks down and fails and both you and the narrator are confused and trying to find it again. All based on which direction you walk.
Overall, the walking is the game, and the story it tells is literally dependent on where you walk. Or don’t. The choice is yours to make (or not to make).
