The Stanly Parable
The Stanley Parable is a dadaesque deconstruction of first-person videogames. You start as the title character, a dull office drone at their CG desk, the constructed world opening evoking repurposed shooter game assets (which was the case in the original version of the game, built as a mod of Half-Life 2.) But as you stand up and look around, everyone seems to have gone missing. As you wander through the increasingly fractured and artificially rendered space of the office, your every move is narrated by an eloquent baritone from seemingly nowhere. There are innumerable paths through the space and a proliferation of endings. Many endings are hidden or obtuse, but all evolve into darkly comic meditations on choice, agency, and the role of the player in video games. These different paths are particularly rich when experienced in relation to each other, a loop of revelations, deaths, and anti-heroism looping back to sitting at the ill-lit desk after every iteration, all narrated with absurdly granular detail. This is particularly effective because of the incredible diligence to anticipate the player's actions and inactions and weave them together to lead us to question our subconscious expectations for making meaning from video games. By remixing and subverting the tropes of first-person videogames and fusing it to a highly dynamic and self-aware commentary, The Stanley Parable stands as one of the most singular statements about the slipperiness of assigning value and authorial will to our virtual experiences.
Creators: Davey Wreden and William Pugh
Link: https://www.stanleyparable.com/
Connections:
Maria Bamford - The Special Special Special