do i think davey wreden included new beginner’s guide refrences/easter eggs in the stanley parable: ultra deluxe? probably not. it feels like it would go against the personal nature of that game and its message/themes to throw in some cheeky easter egg. maybe a subtle visual callback, but not anything more.
that being said. i can so easily imagine these words coming out of a frustrated Narrator’s mouth in the middle of a breakdown, speaking to us:
“You want something and I cannot give it to you. I literally do not have it.”
[DO NOT reblog or comment on this post with anything spoiler-y!!! I have not played the game yet!!!]
The inevitable Employee 432 / Settings Person and Narrator comparison analysis post
Or, a rumination on stagnation versus “progression” and what counts as an ending,feat. a detour to discuss [REDACTED]
Of all the games to include actual, genuine lore, I honestly did not expect TSP: Ultra Deluxe to be one of them. After all, part of the point of the original game is that everything’s a contradiction.
But then Ultra Deluxe took Employee 432, a background gag character, and made them a god.
Employee 432’s one job in the company was to sharpen pencils. But they never had any pencils to sharpen. No one would give them any if they asked. They had nothing else on their desk, nothing to their name. Just a single, straightforward goal that the world refused to provide them the means to fulfill.
And all the while, they were being observed, studied, their coworkers writing a room’s worth of peer reviews on them. It was all just one big experiment.
It’s good to collect data.
Over 3,000 days (nearly 9 years) of this, of this surveillance, of not being able to fulfill their purpose, eventually drove 432 “so psychologically mad that they become the fabric of the universe”, with their new purpose being “setting things for you”.
Now. There’s a lot that could be said about. All That.
I want to focus on the character’s perspective and ideology re: The Stanley Parable itself.
432, despite everything they’ve been through, despite what the Office did to them, does not want to end the story, or to destroy it in some spectacular fashion. No, they want to destroy it another way: by endlessly recycling the game into its own sequels, only changing the title screen.
The Stanley Parable is not sacred, we do not need to protect it. Screw the legacy! Let’s keep making Stanley Parable games until the sun explodes! Let’s run this franchise into the ground, let’s drag it through the mud and back.
How did 432 come to this conclusion? Well, in one of the logs on them new to Ultra Deluxe, we see that, eventually, they started repeating a certain phrase:
I must keep the wheel turning.
Settings Person says the same in the Epilogue, right after saying:
The Stanley Parable cannot end. It can only spiral in on itself, forever.
This wheel and spiral imagery is typical for discussing cycles, yes, but I also think it ties specifically to 432’s former job: using the pencil sharpener. Over time, without being able to actually do their job, they became obsessed with the fantasy of it, the idea of sticking a pencil in there and having the machine rotate it (sharpening it). So obsessed that they took it to this more abstract, all-encompassing level, as a fundamental law of the universe (the same as happened to their very being).
The machine must run. The wheel must turn.
But, in this obsession, they forgot the purpose of the pencil sharpener. You’re only supposed to sharpen a pencil up to a point. Otherwise, it breaks, or you wear it out until there’s nothing left.
And then, how will you be able to say anything at all?
II. The analysis of the Narrator an anon asked me for days ago
By virtue of 432’s newfound position as a “god” of the narrative, there is an inevitable comparison to be drawn between them and the Narrator. 432, in fact, draws it themself.
And if people hate it? Who cares! You see, that was the Narrator’s problem. He was so obsessed with what people thought of his work. Don’t make his mistake. Don’t cling to the legacy. Let it burn.
This obsession is a large part of the Narrator’s characterization. After all, the Skip Ending happens because he gets so hurt by the negative reviews that he implements a feature they suggested without realizing it goes against everything the Parable is made for, against his very existence.
But it’s important to acknowledge that what the Narrator counts as “his work” has changed from the original to Ultra Deluxe. It’s not just about his one intended path anymore, with every diversion seen as a backup at best and an entirely unintended blemish at worst. If that were the case, then why would the Memory Zone contain fond memories of any ending other than the Freedom Ending, his original story? No, over time, the Narrator seems to have accepted those other games as being part of the Parable, to have come to an understanding that they are what make the game what it is. They are a part of its legacy. And he’s become nostalgic for the whole thing.
The Narrator in Ultra Deluxe is defined by nostalgia and legacy. He only goes about making The Stanley Parable 2 because UD’s “new content” is disappointing, just a gimmick tacked on to the original, and he feels compelled to save the game’s legacy. And yet, all his attempts to make something new “from the ground up” that genuinely expand on the game end up being just that: little add-ons that are either totally divorced from or actively get in the way of the original content. Is this because the Narrator genuinely doesn’t have any other ideas for stories? Or is it because he’s too stuck in The Stanley Parable - too afraid of ruining to make any major additions (like a third door that actually leads to new paths), or just creatively burned out by working within the confines of the world of the office for so long?
The figurines are probably the best implemented of the new features in terms of encouraging exploration of the game’s content and providing a new goal to work towards without being obtrusive, which may be why the Narrator grows such a fondness for them. The ending you get from collecting them all really drives home the Narrator’s nostalgia, and how it’s his downfall. The Narrator gives what sounds like genuine lore/backstory about why he created the Parable, or at least Stanley, in the first place, and then resolves that, as much fun as he’s had telling the story, it’s time for him to shelve it, to take control of his life again, to tell new stories…
After one more go.
So you play again, thinking (if you’re me) that this might just be your last run, and you get an ending. And then another. And another.
And you realize that the Narrator, in deciding to give it one more go, has unknowingly passed up the one opportunity he had to move on. Because he doesn’t remember as much/well as he thinks he does. He’s been at this so long that it all blurs together. There is no “one last time”. Or, rather, he doesn’t get to be the one who determines that. He’ll never get to go out on his own terms.
the end is never the end is never the end is never
So, there’s an obvious contrast between the Narrator and 432. The Narrator holds The Stanley Parable as something sacred, as having a legacy worth preserving, whereas 432 wants to tear it down from that high place, to burn the legacy. You could say the moral takeaway is the synthesis of their thesis and antithesis: you should hold some respect for the past, enough to recognize what things from it are worth keeping and learning from, but you also can’t hold on to it too tightly or you’ll be stuck in it.
However, if you look at it from the right angle, you’ll see their positions are remarkably similar:
They are both stuck in stagnation, in a form that’s dressed up as progress.
432 is self-aware about this. They are, with our help, creating “sequels” without any actual new content, just slapping a new label on things.
The Narrator is not. He tries to make The Stanley Parable 2, but ends up making The Stanley Parable With A Bucket, Collectibles With No Associated Reward, And A Fancy New Title Screen, which is just + 1 bucket and 6 collectibles from being what 432 does. He can’t make anything truly new as long as he’s stuck within the framework of The Stanley Parable, as long as he clings to the legacy.
Either way, the game ends up “spiral[ing] in on itself, forever”, digging itself an infinitely deep grave.
It only ends when you stop playing. The “canon ending”, the end of the story, is wherever you stopped, whether that be after the Freedom ending, or the “Not Stanley” / “Real Person” / “Incorrect” ending, or the Broom Closet “ending”, or the Epilogue, or the 8 room.
That’s what the Curator was going on about, isn’t it? That turning the thing off is the only way to set them both free?
But, of course, neither 432 nor the Narrator want you to stop playing, because… well, they’re video game characters, who were created specifically for you. To set the game to your specifications. To tell you a story.
432 seems a bit less needy in this regard, or at least better capable of hiding it. They’re fine!
ALT
They’re fine.
Narrator, on the other hand?
It was the vessel [someone listening] I needed, Stanley. Not the outcomes, not the story, none of that matters anymore. I’ll give it all up, I’ll give up every branching path, I’ll burn my story to the ground!
(i wonder if i bolded that bit because it parallels a line from 432 that i previously bolded. hmm.)
Oh, Narrator. Just listen to him:
If I knew that my life depended on finding something to be driven by other than validation… What would that even be? Heh, it’s strange, but the thought of not being driven by external validation is unthinkable. Like, I actually cannot conceive of what that would be like!
…wait, isn’t that from-
III. This post is about The Beginner’s Guide now
Why? Because why not. I mean, take it from Wreden:
ALT
But, more specifically, The Beginner’s Guide also features a conflict between stagnation and progression represented by a pair of game makers / storytellers, one who speaks to us and one who we only hear from via text.
Here is where I say, to those who haven’t played or watched a playthrough of The Beginner’s Guide, that the rest of this post will spoil shit, and this is one of those experiences that you really should go into blind if you can (especially since it’s relatively short). I’d put a second “read more”, but I don’t think tumblr allows that, so, read on at your own risk.
We good? Good. (also, a note: I will be using they/them for Coda because there’s some Gender Stuff in the background of TBG that makes their gender not 100% clear.)
Where the Narrator and 432 both represented a combination of stagnation and progress, the dichotomy with Davey and Coda is, at least at first glance, much more clear cut.
Davey is all about progress, specifically toward a destination. He skips you past the maze on the ship, the slow stairs, the multi-hour wait in the prison, and the obstacles of the tower, to get to the bits that he thinks have meaning. He cuts off the cleaning game, because
“You can’t stay in the dark space for too long, you just can’t, you have to keep moving, it’s how you stay alive.”
He adds lampposts to mark the endpoint of each of Coda’s games (after Down / The Streetwise Fool), making his reasoning very explicit (though he attributes it to Coda):
I think up to this point he’s been making really strange and abstract games with no clear purpose, and maybe you can only float around in that headspace for so long. Because now he wants something to hold onto. He wants a reference point, he wants the work to be leading to something. He wants a destination!
Coda, by contrast, seems happy to sit with an idea and not have it lead to anything. They made the cleaning game to be endless, and Davey admits this was a time where they were very happy. “Grossly happy” in his opinion, but still.
Right before that one, they made nearly a dozen prison games back to back, a process Davey describes as “awful to watch, to see a person basically unraveling through their work”. He even admits later that this was where he first started suspecting Coda was depressed, but… maybe they just liked making prisons. And though Davey says Coda “doesn’t have that voice telling you to stop, that particular mechanism of defense against yourself”, they do, eventually. Unlike 432, they find the point, and they stop the machine.
Also, if you actually read the dialogue from the two trios of cubeheads in the Down game, right before finding the first of the lamposts, then… I’ll let you read it for yourself.
Coda also parallels 432 in how they don’t seem to have any nostalgia for their own games, reportedly throwing them all into their computer’s trash bin as soon as they’re completed. In fact, you might be able to argue that Coda is afraid of having a legacy. When you’re destroying their games in The Machine, you have the option to say either that Coda’s work dies here, or that “I’ll make sure you are known forever!”, which positions the two thoughts as equivalent. Allowing Coda’s games to be seen and gain notoriety would, to Coda, kill the games.
An attempt to secure legacy only destroying the integrity of what came before… now where I have heard that fear recently?
So, Davey is progress, and Coda is stagnation. Neither mentality is totally healthy on its own. Coda admits to having had frustrating moments of getting stuck while trying to come up with new ideas (even if that didn’t mean they were depressed), and there are certainly games of theirs that feel like they build to a certain Point. Meanwhile, Davey’s stubborn obsession keeps him from recognizing why Coda actually liked their games, what they got out of game making, and thus all his attempts at analyzing Coda’s authorial intent end up twisting the games into something else.
And so then, in Ultra Deluxe, we take this simple dynamic and complicate it by having the Narrator and 432 both represent a kind of stagnation masquerading as progress.
…except, it’s not so "simple” in The Beginner’s Guide, either. Let me just copy-paste this paragraph from my beginner’s guide video script doc* real quick:
Davey derries Coda’s prison games and the cleaning game for being stuck on one idea, being content to repeat the same cycles, instead of progressing. He highly values moving forward, working towards a goal. And yet, Davey’s so hung up on this one goal of fixing (his relationship with) Coda that he’s found himself trapped in such a loop, one that’s actually destructive. He doesn’t let himself really interrogate his feelings, he just replays Coda’s games, repeats the same ideas he’s always had about them. He appears to be moving, but he’s really stagnant.
*No I have not made the video yet. Do you think I’d feel the need to go on this whole diatribe if I had?
In order for Davey to move on, to actually make progress, he has to let go of his relationship with Coda. Of Coda’s games. At least for long enough that he can come back to them with a truly open mind.
Coda, meanwhile, has (hopefully) already moved on. Davey says they stopped making games, but remember that a) Coda has cut off contact with Davey, and b) Coda never shared their games with anyone else. So how would Davey know? It’s only the end of Coda’s game making career from his perspective.
Endings are all a matter of perspective.
All Stanley could think about, all he could talk about, was going back, doing it over again. […] “This isn’t an ending! This is just a hole in the ground!” The bucket sighed. True, it wasn’t an ending, but it’s where we happened to be. And maybe, possibly, if we accept the reality of things, maybe this will become an ending eventually. It’s what the bucket was counting on.
IV. A Kind of Conclusion
There’s a lot more I could say here - especially if I went back to Employee 432, aka Settings Person, aka the Time Keeper. I could start rambling about their whole “what is time, anyway?” mentality ties back into the idea of there not being any definitive endings. I could talk more about how tragic it is that they, in their “escape” from the office, have come to perpetuate the very cycle that broke them, and that the best we can do for them is to indulge them in their vengeance, keeping Stanley and the Narrator and everyone else trapped. I could speculate about what their transition from regular office worker to entity above the story could mean for the Narrator’s backstory.
I could also say more about the Narrator. About how his perspective, his relationship to us, to Stanley, has changed from the original to Ultra Deluxe. About how fucking sad the Skip Ending is, my god.
I could say a hell of a lot more about The Beginner’s Guide, but I’ll save that for the theoretical video.
I think it’s about time this post came to an end. Thanks to everyone who decided not to nope out of this beast early. I hope you got something from it :)
P.S. - If you guys really wanna feel something, go read the text for Interview, the part of The Beginner’s Guide that The Machine would later replace. It’s. Something, all right.
do i think davey wreden included new beginner’s guide refrences/easter eggs in the stanley parable: ultra deluxe? probably not. it feels like it would go against the personal nature of that game and its message/themes to throw in some cheeky easter egg. maybe a subtle visual callback, but not anything more.
that being said. i can so easily imagine these words coming out of a frustrated Narrator’s mouth in the middle of a breakdown, speaking to us:
“You want something and I cannot give it to you. I literally do not have it.”
[DO NOT reblog or comment on this post with anything spoiler-y!!! I have not played the game yet!!!]
“maybe a subtle visual callback”
ALT
and yeah, it isn’t exactly the same font (the lowercase r is different), but…
ALT
also, while i’m here, allow me to inflict this on you so you may share in my psychic damage:
ALT
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