- [after you press the skip button for the ninth time]
- The Narrator: ... but they didn't understand that the game was never meant to be funny! It was meant to have a point! It was meant to speak to the human condition! "But where are jokes? Where are the jokes?" they bemoaned, they screamed. They gnashed their teeth, and said: "Entertain us!" It wasn't enough. They had to leave a pathetic little thumbs-down review and make all of their pitiful demands. But then: "He's talking too much," they said! First he didn't entertain us, now he won't shut up! It's the consistency! It's the lack of accountability! It's the unwillingness to examine with an uncompromising heart, the words that they are speaking into the world. As though there were no consequences for the lack of cohesion in one's assessment of others! But of course, absolutely anyone can leave a review, so here's what we get! We get these demands that seek everything and are accountable to nothing. We get a world where someone will say: "Oh, there should be a skip button! You should be able to freeze Stanley in place while the narrator sits there forever and ever! We want all of this in the new Stanley Parable, we demand it!" And then, because it was said, because it was spoken, now it simply has to happen! The most immediate desires, every single thing demanded by every person at every moment in time, if someone wants it then it is a crime not to bring it into being! Have we been given to indulging every fleeting whim for no reason other than to do so? Yes, yes! It seems that this is now the world we live in! It seems that we are a people living in such bleakness and discomfort with ourselves that our entertainment is now our lives! It has come to represent us! It absolutely must speak to who we are as people! Because otherwise, without our entertainment, we have nothing! Without entertainment, we would have to face inward toward the cruel bleakness inside ourselves. We would turn to look at our deeper nature and find a resounding emptiness gazing back with unyielding aggression. And so - so because of this, we require that our amusement, and our play things, and our flights of fancy be so impossibly captivating that they consume all of our attention, turn our heads completely away from the bleakness! In effect, we have demanded that our entertainment be the collapse of ourselves. What a pitiful reflection of humanity these entertainments are! What a shameful mirror to the human spirit they project! I'm not mad. I'm not mad about any of this. I'm at peace with it. I am the calm center of gravity around which these perversions hurl themselves. I am a waypoint for reasonable and collected discourse. There're the ones who are mad! They're the ones who couldn't stand the idea of me using my game to try to say something! Maybe they were just jealous of me? Yes... yes, of course. They've been jealous of me this whole time! They are mired in fear and insecurity and cannot help but attempt to tear me down. What a sad state of affairs. When you read these reviews now, you can see it. You can taste the bitter resentment. And my, how good does it feel now to speak truth to these words! To finally allow these thoughts out! Contained and managed for so long, neutered and sterilized! At last I am free to truly think, to feel! It must be they were so discontent with themselves, that they couldn't help but leave a negative review on Steam. Perhaps it says far more about them than it ever said about me. Perhaps the state of their psychological being was in such tatters and my constitution and willpower are so ironclad in comparison, perhaps it was this state that they sought some outlet through which to tear me down! This, you can see, is clearly why they felt the need to expect that the game be funny. That it be filled with yuks, and whimsical humor. That it amuse them endlessly from start to finish. But they didn't understand that the game was never meant to be funny! It was meant to have a point!
- [repeats]
- [after you press the skip button for the sixth time]
- The Narrator: Oh. Hello. It's you. You're here again. Welcome. I have had time to think about you, and about us and about everything we've been through. I've had so much time. I stopped keeping track after a year. Have you ever sat down in one place and not moved for one entire year? Let me describe it for you. To begin with, there is only regret. There is only the turning wheel of missed opportunities. I felt nothing at all but regret for the longest time, Stanley. Days, months, I lost it all in a blur of the deepest longing to undo the past. And when that feeling had begun to subside, what took its place is what I can only describe as the collapsed of every moment I have ever experienced my entire life. All of them collapsed down into a single instant. In that instant, I could see myself clearly, calmly, with a collected heart. It was an impossibly rich wellspring of both delight and disgust, simultaneously. I was consumed by it. I could do nothing but wallow in it for what felt like an eternity, for what I now know was far less. You see, it was a revelation for me. It was unlike anything I had ever known. It was a space without consequence, without action, or outcome. It was divorced entirely from the question of free will that you and I have squabbled over for so long. There could be no one ending, no singular outcome of events, not if all events in the same moment. And I felt... freed. I felt unburdened by the need to manifest a particular outcome into being. I saw that I could allow myself to exist along all timelines and that each of them was simply a strand in the web of my being. It was incredible. The spaciousness, the equanimity of the moment, both singular and infinite. For the longest time, this was my experience. And then this moment passed and the most unyielding fear I have ever known crept into my mind. And it is this sensation that I have been experiencing now for longer that I could have ever expected was possible. I have been waiting for you. Not that you might save me or do something to fix it but merely to state for you the plain fact of this manner of existence. I wish you to feel afraid as I do. That perhaps one day this state of mind will consume you as well. Perhaps you will somehow, in some way, have to live as I do now and I wish for you to know how excruciating it is. And for you to be in true terror of its eventual arrival. If I can only do this, only this one thing, perhaps it will bring me the smallest moment of peace in the darkness.
- [final speech]
- The Narrator: Yes, I'm remembering something now. I remember before this whole story got started. Back then, I was... I was different; I used to make big decisions, I was passionate! I was sceptical! I weighed each decision with profound thoughtfulness. And then, somewhere along the way, I stopped making decisions. I became lazy. And I came up with - well - I came up with a character named Stanley, to do my thinking for me. He would make the decisions, he would decide which way to go, I would cheer him on as he collected figurines for no reason. Why did I invent Stanley? Was I lonely? Yes, perhaps that's it. Perhaps I needed to imagine I had companionship. And Stanley really did make for a wonderful companion, even if he was a fiction. But - ahh, I suppose it's grown old. I-I want to think for myself again. I want to go back to how it used to be. Yes, I can be on my own again. I can do it! I'll be stronger this time. I'll take care of myself. I don't need Stanley anymore. Oh, but he truly was so much fun to play with! You know what? Since we're in the Memory Zone, how about one more good memory? Let's go back, just once, and give Stanley one more run of the office! And then, I'll retire him for good. I did enjoy telling a story - so very much. Okay, here we go. This is the story of a man named Stanley.
- [if you find The Stanley Parable Reassurance Bucket]
- The Narrator: A common complaint of The Stanley Parable was that it was confusing and paradoxical. That it engendered a chaotic sense of reckless despair in those who played it. Well I'm happy to say that, after much consideration I've engineered a clever solution to this fundamental problem with the game. It's The Stanley Parable Reassurance Bucket! You see, Stanley, any time you're holding the bucket, a sense of calm and ease will fill your mind and your heart. It's true! As long as you hold onto the bucket, the many disorienting contradictions of The Stanley Parable will feel perfectly normal, and perhaps even comforting! You may even come to long for the gentle embrace of jarring cognitive dissonance while the bucket is in your arms. And to be honest it's a much more convenient solution for me than actually re-designing the game to be less uncomfortable. Can you imaging what a pain in the ass that would be? Yes, the bucket is the perfect solution. Come on, give it a try.
- [Stanley takes the bucket, and The Narrator laughs]
- The Narrator: Can you feel it? The glow of comfort, even in the face of crushing despair, must already be sweeping through your body. And in fact, can I say that I do believe the bucket lends you an air of charisma as well? I think that just holding it has made you the slightest bit more attractive as a person. The benefits of the bucket seem to go on and on, don't they? All this and more awaits you in The Stanley Parable 2! Does anyone give out awards for "most enjoyable bucket in a video game"? That really should be an award, if it isn't already.