Note: There are minor spoilers in the post. If you have not played The Stanley Parable, it's best to go in clean. If you're not intending to play The Stanley Parable feel free to read, but don't say I didn't warn you.

When I was a boy I would spend hours replaying sections of video games trying to find ways to break them. The games tended to reward this either with actual rewards or with amusing glitches. Super Mario World had levels where you would be unable to advance to the next level unless you found the secret entrance. Zelda always encouraged exploration to find additional health pick ups. Metroid practically raised sequence breaking to an art. This video culture supported rumors about how to use the trees as fatalities in Mortal Kombat and how to obtain the Triforce in Ocarina of Time. But as games became more and more narrative focus the secrets and the rumors and the glitches went out of favor. When Zelda asked if would heed the call to become the Hero of Time refusing simply resulted in her asking again and again and again.

The Stanley Parable realizes this. The Stanley Parable encourages you to try to find ways of breaking the narrative. Some of these are obvious. The narrator will try to railroad the player on to his story providing clear opportunities to destroy his carefully crafted narrative by performing the opposite choice. Other opportunities allow the player to manipulate the game on their initiative, letting the player break the game by not surfacing the choice in front of you. These options are a brilliant way of getting the player to seek out and engage with the exploration of the game, an even better trick than Portal’s solve this simple puzzle to get a bit of funny dialogue.

The Stanley Parable is not without faults. For all its intelligence at surfacing and submerging the narrative choices the player is still at the mercy of the game and its narrative. The two games it references shouldn’t be a surprise. It is not Minecraft with its wide open plains and vistas and seemingly endless freedom to play as you choose (Which the game slyly nods to by effectively only allowing you to go where it chooses its Minecraft world). Neither is it Portal, the driven experience wherein playing the game rewards you with narrative (In The Stanley Parable, playing the narrative rewards you with a game). The Stanley Parable is an uncomfortable juxtaposition of the two, contained but open. Worth exploring, but with limits placed on what the player can do.

I can’t imagine we’ll ever see another game like the Stanley Parable. The amount of VO necessary for a big budget game would be staggering and suits would shy away from building content that a minority of player would see. It wouldn’t work unless it was steeped in the video game culture that created it where we will stretch and tear at the story of the game until it lies in tatters at our feet and bristle when the game takes back the narrative control. Lucky for us it does work. The game is joyful and smart and should be played by everybody.

P.S. The Stanley Parable Adventure Line is my favorite character from any video game I've played this year.