Stanley Parable is a narrative-driven, interactive storytelling game. The player plays the role of Stanley and at the same time, he does not. You can choose to follow the narrator’s suggestions, or not. The end is not the end.
As the player explores new paths to try to find a way out, they are consciously making different choices each time. Stanley Parable was made to challenge the way major games confine its users to a set of rules and a one-way path.
Contradiction follows contradiction, the rules of how games should work are broken, then broken again. This world was not made for you to understand.
When I first played this game, I followed the narrator’s directions and it led me to the freedom ending. This was all done in less than 10 minutes. Immediately after, I was sent back to the beginning. That’s when I realized that there was something more to this game and perhaps the narrator’s directions were not meant to be followed.
Not Stanley / Real Person Ending
In this ending, you see that the Narrator cannot exist without the Player and the Player cannot exist without the Narrator. When the Player watches Stanley from below, it signifies the player has been removed from the game and so with the player gone, the story does not exist or cannot advance.
The game is not here to fight you; it is inviting you to dance.