What are you thoughts on that one, lads?
I find it to be an amazing game... or interactive story? I don't even know at this point. Everyone nowadays keeps trying to define gameplay and video games through it and everyone fails in a completely unique way, so now people either just shout verbal abuse at each other and vent on Metacritic userscore with rape threats in their reviews or praise 'games' where all you can do is pushing the 'W' button as true art. Meanwhile Stanley Parable just gets the whole meta-narrative narrative on free will, as partly seen in Bioshock or Portal, runs with it to the nearest copy machine and throws it out of the window before fading to black. And that's all because you didn't fucking listen. And despite there not being any real puzzles or real endings or even failed state scenarios, no one seems to care - everyone loves it. So do I. I'm overwhelmed by this experience. After 3 or so hours I'm not sure how much is there left to explore, but every minute of those three hours was unique, subtle and witty. Even after the big reveal there's a whole lot of things I'm eager to try tomorrow.
Brilliant. Pure genius.
It, and 'games' of a similar vain, are akin to something like a virtual 'choose your own adventure' book. I think the disagreements and hostility boil down to the very human insatiable urge to categorise EVERYTHING.
I don't really care what it is or what it isn't. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and that's all that really matters.
I've played the demo and I'm looking forward to pay day when I can afford to buy it. It managed to keep my interest a lot longer than Dear Esther did, which apart from looking pretty is incredibly dull.
Played it when it was a standalone mod thing, thought it was fucking brilliant. I was so impressed with the voice acting of the narrator that I sent him an email thanking him (amusingly, he had a warning on his page saying that if you sent him spam he'd fine you £5k or something like that, which was a bit of an "ok, grandad..." moment, but he was friendly in his response). He really completed the experience for me, anyway.
>>17119 Alright, just watched a playthrough of the original mod. HD Remake is much longer and simply more polished.
>>17133 The demo turned out to be quite enjoyable even after playing the game, too. All in all, I hope the lad behind The Stanley Parable has another game in mind already.
>>17144 I did, yes, thank you. Now, if only you could help me find it... I swear I could have made- ah, here it is.
>>17134 In one of the endings you get to a museum/gallery which basically has several 'installations' showcasing different parts from the development process. IIRC, in one of the rooms there is a projector, projecting emails onto the wall. They are emails sent to the narrator by fans. .
Tycho from Penny Arcade (I know, I know) described it like this:
>It’s a game that knows it's a game for players who know they are playing one.
Which is quite a nice summary.
I just finished the demo, onwards to the full thing.
>>17143 The readme for the original said the creator emailed him a copy of the script and asked for a quote on a voiceover, and his reply was a recording of the whole thing.
>>17119 >Huge changes, it's a new game in the spirit.
Having just about wrapped up all the endings I think saying that there are "huge changes", that it's a "new game", these are both pretty far off the mark. It seemed like the same game, tarted up, with a few more endings. At least that's what it felt like to me (admittedly I haven't played the original since it came out, which was a couple of years ago now).
>>17176 Well, there were six endings in the original and it's trice as much here. All the textures are new, some narration is changed... While the first game could have been fully completed in less than an hour this one requires at least three hours. So, yes, huge changes. New game? I guess not.
>>17177 I don't think you mean trice. Anyway I just wanted to get it out there as having read that comment I was expecting a new experience and instead got a polished old one. Still great, though - this is not a criticism.
Firstly, if you found Stanley self-indulgent and pretentious then you can just sack this one off altogether.
If you are going to play it, don't go in expecting anything similar. It is presented as a slow-moving, deeply personal story, nothing like the moment-to-moment meta silliness of Stanley. I had to drag myself through the first 30-45 minutes, but it was worth it. It's about an hour and a half long.
Spoiler as to why I'm bumping this thread (don't read unless you've finished it): in a lecture I saw given by the developer, Davey Wreden, he talks about the bipolar depression he went through after Stanley came out and how he couldn't deal with all the attention. A lot of the Coda character seems to have been drawn from that experience. There's a line in the game which hit me hard, "being in the same room as you makes me feel physically ill"; in the lecture he says this is something his best friend, flatmate and co-developer of Stanley said to him during the period after Stanley blew up in the press, when he was mentally at his lowest ebb and lashing out at everyone around him. So maybe it's a game about how even praise and positive interaction can be overwhelming - the narrator isn't Wreden, it's us. We conjure up ideas about developers' intent, obsess over design minutiae, feel entitled to more of their work, and don't leave them alone - and this can kill their creative spark. Part of me has a knee-jerk boo fucking hoo it must be so hard to have your brilliance recognised reaction to this, and anyway maybe this is nonsense and just over-thinking the whole thing. Whatever way you choose to interpret the game, though, it's a thought-provoking and fascinatingly personal tale, in my opinion.
I finally played this game and am now bumping the shit out of this thread.
The bit when the narrator offers you a 3rd choice and displays a leader board got me hard. I am Stanley.
Quite soon into the game I realised it's tellintg me to get out, to live. It made it hard to continue playing, but thats the point, right? Now I have to decide if I wantb to go out and build a life or continue this. I wish it wasn't so .. but resisting gets me nowhere.
I don't think I've learned the lesson intended. I'm still pushing buttons. Though, part of me thinks it's impossible not to. Maybe that's the point? I'll have to play it some more if I want to understand but I feel like I shouldn't; like it doesn't want to be played.
Fuck, the other day I was offered an opportunity I've been asking for for a long time and my reaction was to resist in fear. I didn't engage with what may have made me happy. It's stuff like this that really gets me; refusing that opportunity then days later this game addresses that. I know this is self fulfilling prophecy, that the meaning is applied, but I still feel it.
>>22220 It's the closest thing I have as supplement to my text. I could have gone with other irrelevant but more pleasing images but this is the first I actually considered.
>>22220 I quite like the picture. I find most 'internet culture' to just be sycophantic pandering to people's insecure narcissism, that makes me vomit, sigh, and dispair on a continuous loop. So I agree with the message. But then I obviously hate people and think I know better than them what is best for them. So I might be a bit of a nob.
