The Stanley Parable (Spoilers only in Spoiler Boxes)

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't want to spoil anything. But it's great.

There is a demo, that uses nothing from the game itself, and might get you a feeling what kind of game it is. Or not. I have yet to play the demo, but after having played the game and knowing the demo is bascially seperate content, I want to play the demo. Just haven't gotten around to it.

Disclaimers/Minor Spoilers
- Not great in the sense of long. (but it's not a full price title. And the theme doesn't really lend itself to it. But I'd say it doesn't have any filler stuff, like typical games where you have to run through a map to kill 200 enemies for half an hour before the next story development happens.)
- Not your typical game
- Might be thought provoking.
[sblock]
- People expecting Call of Duty or Half Life or even Portal might consider it dull and pointless. But that is basically its point. Or at least it can be one of them, if that's what you take from it.
- It has a great narrator
- It's meta.
[/sblock]

 

[Morrus]

So, to summarize, it's a short game that isn't CoD, HL or Portal?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

So, to summarize, it's a short game that isn't CoD, HL or Portal?

One could also say it has less squad mates than Mass effect 3, but more endings, and they are really different endings. But theendisnevertheendisnevertheend

 

[Morrus]

One could also say it has less squad mates than Mass effect 3, but more endings, and they are really different endings. But theendisnevertheendisnevertheend

Ah, you misunderstand my poor attempt at humour! It was based on the fact that I've never heard of the game, and having it described to me as a short game that isn't CoD, HL or Portal but more endings than ME3 is.... ah, never mind. it wasn't a good joke in the first place, and explaining it makes it even worse!

So it's a city-building game, right?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Ah, you misunderstand my poor attempt at humour! It was based on the fact that I've never heard of the game, and having it described to me as a short game that isn't CoD, HL or Portal but more endings than ME3 is.... ah, never mind. it wasn't a good joke in the first place, and explaining it makes it even worse!

So it's a city-building game, right?

Maybe this review helps:
http://www.destructoid.com/review-the-stanley-parable-263731.phtml

Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBtX0S2J32Y

Making Of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DsMuHIjCMU

The problem with the game is that figuring out what is is part of the fun. It's an exploration game, so to speak.

But if you need to know:
You're playing Stanley. As the narrator explains, you are an office worker with a particular tedious job that Stanley seems to enjoy anyway. The job is to listen to the commands on the computer screen and follow them, which usually means to press buttons.

That's not the game.

Spoiler

(Or is it?)

The game starts when Stanley realizes that every one of his co-workers is suddenly gone. And he tries to figure out what's up.
As the narrator (Kevan Brighting) explains, maybe he just missed a memo, and you start wandering.

Spoiler

Or you don't, if you feel that's the safer thing to do.

Minor Spoiler:

Spoiler

At some point you come to the option to take either the door on the left or the right, and this majorly affects the outcome of the game. And more such choices follow.

Bigger Spoiler:

Spoiler

The narrator describes Stanleys choice - before you took it. But you don't have to follow his narration, and then things can get really weird. Though following the narration also ends with a weird result, but with a "normal-story-weird"...

[sblock]
The game is a parable about games, and decision making in games.
For example: Stanley is just following some instructions on his screen. A mind-numbing tedious job, obviously. Yet, if you think about if, you play the game, you're just pressing some buttons, based on what the screen is telling you.
Another Example: You can follow the narrators narration, or you can choose to ignore him - But is ignoring him a choice, considering that the narrator reacts to what you do? Your behavior is anticipated, you are still limited by whatever the game designer has planned.
[/sblock]

 

[CarlZog]

I hate doing sblocks, but there's no way to talk about much of anything related to this game without spoiling it.

[sblock]
The game is a parable about games, and decision making in games.
For example: Stanley is just following some instructions on his screen. A mind-numbing tedious job, obviously. Yet, if you think about if, you play the game, you're just pressing some buttons, based on what the screen is telling you.
Another Example: You can follow the narrators narration, or you can choose to ignore him - But is ignoring him a choice, considering that the narrator reacts to what you do? Your behavior is anticipated, you are still limited by whatever the game designer has planned.
[/sblock]

[sblock]And every choice was not a choice because inevitably it just ends, and you start over again.[/sblock]

There were a few elements I particularly loved, and I want to go back because I still think I may have missed stuff: [sblock] The broom closet had me laughing out loud. I didn't want to leave, because the narration just kept getting better and better. I gave up after about five minutes or so, so I don't even know how long it went on. When I got crushed by the big steel plates, it went to black with nothing, and I restarted after just a couple minutes, but I still wonder if blackness truly is all there was. [/sblock]

 

[CarlZog]

Gameplay videos are starting to show up on youtube. Some of them are almost as funny as the sneak peek video.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

There are many things to like, IMO.

And a few things one should consider re-using for other games, whether it was intended as such or not.

For example...
[sblock]
Someone else noticed that - each ending is not merely a different ending (and not an ending). It's also a different background. The narrator in the confusion ending is hardly the same narrator that revels at the thought of your unavoidable death or the same narrator that worries about Stanley's demise in the escape route.

So your own decisions do not just affect the future - they also affect the past (in this case, who the narrator actually is.)

That might be a very interesting thing to explore in a different game.
It could be something intentionally weird, like a Portal game with time jumps or something like that.
Or it could be something designed into a "normal" game.
Take Mass Effect (I pick it because it was so controversial, including to me) - imagine at the end of the game, your responses in the final confrontation with the Illusive Man actually determine the true reason for the Reaper's existence and the true purpose of the Crucible. They could be completely different things.
Of course, in the latter case, it might be hard to swallow for some fans, but then... so does the current ending. Though in the case of ME, the game actually does that - if you haven't reloaded a previous Shepard, at the start of the game you can set the choices Shepard did in the past games, at least some of them.

You could use the concept multiple times over the course of a game to get people accustomed to the concept.

Of course, to some extent, this is the same thing that the authors of Stanley's Parable reflect on - Are your choices still meaningful if every possible choice you could make was anticipated and programmed into the game? But you can't make a game where choices aren't already programmed into? So does something like this shatter the illusion of the choice and reduce the fun of the game? Or can they instead be a powerful narrative tool?
[/sblock]