+2
I'll post my thoughts on The Stanley Parable here, as per the Movie Things Most People Like But You Don't thread. Here's something I wrote on it on Discord some time ago.
Regarding my statements on The Stanley Parable the other night, I've been thinking about it and I honestly don't think it does a good job making its point. I kind of hated it this time around, and I'm looking forward to discussing it with someone here. The visual humor is pretty funny and the dark undertones are effective, like how the narration and design of the office sometimes changes. It also has a unique concept, so I'm not willing to write it off. The rest of the game though was really misguided. The story of the Freedom ending is a metaphor for the point of the game. You're under control of your boss, who dictates everything you do, but you eventually break free of his control and, as a result, this opens up multiple new paths (endings). Essentially, Wreden is criticizing how, in many games, you have no choice but to obey whatever is guiding you along in the game, whether it be a narrator, a set of goals, or a linear path which offers you no choice but to push forward. The final scene of the Freedom ending seems to be encouraging you to divert from the narrator's path as it will open up, as the narrator describes, an "immense possibility of the new path" before you.
After I got past this ending, I started playing through the other endings. While going through them, however, I got an overwhelming sense throughout most, if not all of them that I was being discouraged from playing through them. The narrator often looked down upon and resented me for going down these paths whilst many other endings evoked a strong sense of meaningless, as if I would've been better off obeying him. This heavily undermined the thesis of the Freedom ending. Having the game criticize me for doing what it encouraged me to do was really uninteresting and it grew quite exhausting. I really disliked the game this playthrough. There is a way for this thesis to work, as the game would have to give a sense that it was worth going down these paths. For instance, have the narrator stop looking down upon you for disobeying him, give you various tasks to do in those endings, and give a sense that it was worth diverting from the path of the main storyline. I rarely, if ever, got the sense that the game provided this. I remember disliking a couple endings in my past playthroughs for this reason, but this time around, I mostly hated all of them.
Reply to Topic
