[ID: a colored sketch of stanley and the narrator (and the bucket) from the stanley parable. stanley is sitting on the floor against a wall with his legs crossed, hugging his bucket happily with several hearts around them. the narrator is drawn as a 2D monochrome man the same color as the wall he is flat against. he’s slightly crouched, looking at stanley and the bucket annoyed. end ID]
my visual headcanon for the narrator is the generic Older Guy Dressed Nice BUT with the twist that he is 2D and can only show up on pre-existing surfaces
“the end was never the end” as the title for the track that plays when the narrator *says* he’s going to retire stanley after one more run but never follows through… augh
i think settings person (stanley parable: ultra deluxe) and monika (ddlc, post-deletion) should get to meet each other and have a nice chat. maybe write some poems together.
I like to imagine the Employee 432 - Stanley dynamic as being the Kaycee Hobbes - Luke Carder dynamic, except you take the one encounter Kaycee and Luke had at that card game convention and expand it out to 8.8 years of working almost next door to each other
The only way I can explain it is with these tags of mine from when I first learned of the new “Kaycee and Luke met before she died” lore:
Decided to jump on the TSP character design train! Some elements of these designs are probably recognizably borrowed from some of y’all’s fantastic ones. Click on the images to see them in full and in better quality. That being said, there are detailed explanations of the designs below the cut, so don’t strain yourself trying to read my terrible handwriting.
Stanley
Basically just canon Stanley, other than the cursor/arrow shaped tie.
Oh, and he doesn’t have eyes or a mouth. Instead, he emotes via visible thought bubbles! Usually either just an exclamation mark or question mark, but visuals or more complicated ideas will appear in a screen-shaped one (as seen in the doodle where he’s napping in the Narrator’s chair and dreaming of button heaven).
Narrator
Settling on a Narrator design is Hard, y’all. I knew I wanted to some combo of the “just an old white British guy” concept and the eldritch or object head concepts, but that’s easier said then done.
I started by just drawing him as A Guy with a squareish head, whispy hair, glasses (are there any glasses-less Narrator designs?), a radio and mic, a sweater vest over a dress shirt, and a (yellow or red, currently undecided) tie. I used 8s for the sweater vest pattern cause I feel like it looks normal enough from a distance while still being a reference.
The shirt pattern (squares of alternating lighter and darker grey (or brown?)) and the literal cube head were both inspired by the same thing: the NPCs from The Beginner’s Guide! TBC, the cube head is almost entirely an aesthetic reference - he only has a face on one side, rather than spinning it around to show faces with different emotions or anything.
That being said, I did want to have the Narrator’s face do funky things. For one, his mouth is meant to be almost always connected to the mic, as if coming out of it (which would also probably means it hovers a bit in front of his face), and look a bit fuzzier (in a static way) compared to the rest of his features.
Second, and more significantly, his glasses have one frame shaped like a circle and one shaped like a square to reflect to reflect his two other face/head “modes”: Camera Mode and Monitor Mode. He takes on Camera Mode when either looking at/for something that’s hard for him to see/find (often in a desperate manner), or when staring down something/someone (usually Stanley) for emphasis. Similarly, he takes on Monitor Mode when emphasizing a certain word/phrase or to mirror a relevant visual element, like the timer in the countdown ending. In both modes, the strong emotions triggering them cause his form to destabilize, his head disconnecting from his body (hence the line on his neck) and becoming less defined around the edges. His mouth takes up the space between the head and neck, which gives it more room to emote.
The whole idea for the Narrator sitting in a hovering chair came from me wanting to do something interesting with the lower half of his body but not having any ideas. I considered doing what I do with my Narrator!Chara UT design - floating above the ground with the legs dissolving / fading out below the knee - but for whatever reason that didn’t feel right for this guy. Then I had the mental image of this guy just sitting in a chair Wall-E-style with his legs breaking down into pixels as they hung off the edge, and it felt perfect for him. This man absolutely would do his job from a nice looking but also super comfy leather chair without ever getting up if he could, and, in my world, he can.
The last major element of the design is the see through touch screen he has hovering where a laptop screen would be. It usually has either a script or a map of the Office / story paths on it. I imagine his script is kept in multiple documents, and the sound of rustling papers that we hear occasionally in-game is the sound effect he programmed in for when he’s sorting through them on his not well organized “desktop” (”for authenticity’s sake, Stanley”). He can adjust the size and position of the screen to a certain extent, and, occasionally, other screens will pop up around his head. Like Stanley’s thought bubbles! :)
One extra thing that applies to the whole design but is hard to convey with just a number 2 pencil: the Narrator never (at most, rarely) looks like he’s truly in the space. Instead, he looks more like a hologram; semi-transparent and kind of flat, with a bit of tearing around the edges.
Curator
Once I was happy with my Narrator design, this one came to me with hardly an extra thought. A button-up formal dress just fits her vibe. The black and white color scheme also feels right with the aesthetic of the museum in mind, and the pattern is meant to resemble the Narrator’s shirt. I knew she was gonna have a shape head like him, and my brain just instantly went to a triangle/pyramid for whatever reason. Then it went “but what if it was a bucket for the bucket ending”, and, I mean, how I could not do that?
Other small things:
I feel like she would care less about appearing appealingly/relatably human, which is why she doesn’t have a face other than her mouth and librarian glasses.
She’s taller than the Narrator, even if he were to get out of his chair and float on his own like she does. It is a fundamental law of the universe.
I wanted to give her something to hold, so she has an infinity-symbol-shaped remote which is what she uses to temporarily save Stanley during her endings.
Employee 432 / Settings Person
And now we’re back to the complicated ones. I did three drawings of 432 (who goes by he/they for my purposes) to show their progression. The one thing that’s consistent across all three is his bowtie, which has a gear-shaped pin on the center knot. Out of character, the gear is a thematic tie to the idea of keeping the wheel turning. In character? We’ll say they’re a steampunk fan, why not?
The first one is from when they started at the Office, at which point I like to imagine him as being an aspiring worker bee. Like, it’s his first job like this and he really wants to appear professional, to apply himself wholeheartedly (more than an office job like this deserves) and be a team player, following orders without question.
The perfect candidate for the experiment.
So, they wear a blazer/sweater over a polo shirt, dress pants and shoes, a belt, bowtie, and watch, with round glasses and a well kept head of curls. Though usually unseen, there’s a breast pocket on the polo shirt with a spiral pattern on it. I might add a pattern to the blazer/sweater or the shirt to add a bit more to the design, still thinking on how to go about it.
The second one is him years later, struggling internally with a) the sinking feeling that this job doesn’t actually care about him, that his task is a bullshit one, and b) the obsessive hope that, any day now, things could change and he’ll be rewarded for his perseverance. So, he still wears his blazer/sweater and polo shirt to work, but he won’t button the blazer/sweater, and he won’t fix it when it inevitably slips off his shoulder. They wear cuffed jeans to work now, but a nice pair. They still have their bowtie, belt, and watch, but they don’t bother to put on any shoes nicer than flip-flops or slippers. They wear their longer hair in a ponytail rather than getting it cut, but they also got their ears pierced at some point (even he doesn’t remember).
Perhaps most concerning, one of his glasses’ lenses is severely cracked, and no one can see his eyes through either lens. Not that anyone ever bothers to look.
Finally, the third design is 432 post “disappearing” and becoming Settings Person. Their body is mostly gone and the remaining elements of their form are all very glitchy. They’re also like 95% flat, basically 2D.
His curls are loose and messy with lots of volume and a few streaks of grey/white. His nose is gone and his mouth is replaced by a small black hole that makes pencil sharpener noises when he speaks. One eye has basically become a lightbulb, its brightness depending on their emotional state. The other is a broken clock, initially stuck at 4:32, then at whatever time you last set the in-game clock to.
His bowtie remains, now constantly rotating (gotta keep that wheel turning). He also has new earrings, which are whatever sequel number the game is currently on. Where their spiral-adorned polo pocket was, there’s now a spiraling black hole. The only other clothes item still represented in some form is their blazer/sweater, now a long sleeveless “coat” (really just two strips of fabric) that change color on a gradient.
The last element of their design featured in those doodles is their disconnected hands (think Gaster, fellow UT fans). Usually he only bothers to have one active, but he can have up to eight. By default they appear as computer mice, but he can look like almost any other tool, like a wrench, or screwdriver, or pen.
Not a pencil, though.
An extra feature I came up with while typing all this: 432 can make touch-sensitive screens like the Narrator can, but only in two sizes: small (as in just a bit bigger than their eye) or large (the size of the game screen). In order to display anything on a large screen, he needs to have a small screen with the visuals he wants displayed on it hover right in front of his lightbulb eye. Basically, he makes himself into a projector. This is how they make all the screens with sliders! :)
And that’s everybody! These designs are all subject to change, especially once I draw them up digitally and mess around with color schemes. Might post the results of that in the next few days.
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:
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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…
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also, while i’m here, allow me to inflict this on you so you may share in my psychic damage:
-the canon answer to what happened to the narrator during the skip ending is a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ from davey
-re:stanley being a gamer, “Stanley plays the ever living fuck out of Solitaire on breaks imo” - dom the art director
-re:if the narrator created the world of the stanley parable, william says, “There’s evidence that a lot of stuff within this world exists outside of the narrator’s knowledge - perhaps he forgot? or he’s a part of the game world? or it was all created by the drinking sippy bird from the press conference ending…”
-also from william: “in my mind there is a bit of cursed crossover between Just Your Average Major Western Metropolis and the world of TSP… but nothing ultimately 100% cannon… unless…???”
-why a bucket? “For the life of me I do not remember lol” - davey
-and lastly, the only reason we got kevan as the narrator is because he was browsing auditions on voice123.com while hungover (and when he eventually recorded his line he sent them all in one audio file, the chad)
theres some sort of strange similarity between the narrator and 432 . theyre both faceless, scared, desperate, and most importantly, alone.but even with this sense of loneliness, they both have another person. but these people dont talk to them, barely interact with them. their similarities diverge because 432 leaves his person for a while. video games are meant to be played alone . the narrator clings to his. the end is never. does this make sense
Interesting details and rare moments I found while playing The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe
The narrator doing a victory dance while scream-singing “I won!” repeatedly after realizing that the players like his new content. (I sadly have no screenshots of that.)
The printed texts being hidden and hard to see jokes.
Stanley’s video game controller???
Cat-Dog being canon in that universe.
“I am a yellow mug. I will never follow the red + teal + grey color scheme of this area of the game.” And all the other mugs with funny prints.
The laptop that sings at you and then starts a weird food clicker game.
Cute fanart of the narrator being an one-eyed object-head.
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