How does walking tell the story?
One central mechanic of Walking Simulators is player-driven choices and exploration. Without combat or any overt challenges, the main driver of the game’s story and progression are the actions the player chooses to take; whether they take the left path or the right path. This mechanic becomes the sole “meta-focus” of The Stanley Parable, a game that pokes fun at and highlights the common tropes of the genre. In The Stanley Parable, walking itself is the primary narrative engine alongside the body-less voice of “the Narrator”. The game takes place in a seemingly uninteresting office building, where Stanley, the player-controlled character, is offered the choice to follow the path the Narrator lays out for them. Every one of these “roads diverging in a yellow wood” changes the relationship between the player and the Narrator, with him either advancing the pre-planned story or becoming increasingly annoyed at your decision to disobey him.
In my playthrough of the game, I was one of these disobeyers. I consistently ignored the suggestions of the Narrator and walked my way through the areas of the abandoned office building that I was “not supposed” to see:
Every time I ventured off script by taking a right instead of a left or crawling through a maintenance hatch, the Narrator’s tone slowly changed from bemused chastisement to rage to existential despair as he pleaded for me to fall back into his pre-planned story, threatening consequences that extend beyond the fourth wall of the game. The story of the game primarily revolves around this relationship, either treating the Narrator as your friendly guide or as your adversary. The very act of walking, which is the only mechanic the player has access to, evolves beyond physical translation to represent free will and choice. The result is an exhilarating and deeply engaging experience, where my own, game-independant, agency and the nature of choice are examined and fought over.
Each new space, whether it be a physically impossible or infinite hallway, was not the backdrop for a new challenge for the player as most games treat them, but rather a theatrical stage where the story’s humor, philosophy, and tension were performed. By treating change in location not as a means to an end, but as the end itself, allows walking to transcend locomotion. Walking in The Stanley Parable is an act of rebellion, of conformity, narrative control, and introspection. The looping architecture and plot (if you can ascribe a single plot to the game) meant that you are oftentimes finding yourself back in a room that you have been before with new context, or entirely back at the beginning of the game in the cubicle of employee number 427. Exploration and deviation from the path laid out in front of you can force a complete reframing of the Narrator’s true intentions.
The Stanley Parable is a wonderful game that demonstrates an extreme case of how much can be built around a single game mechanic, even one as simple as walking. It does not rely on difficulty, combat, or implied high stakes in order to deliver their narrative to the player. Reducing player actions so significantly highlights how environment and pacing play just as, if not more of, important a role in a game’s experience as more common. The mirror the game held up to my own agency, actions, and notion of freedom was both illuminating and unsettling, making me consider not where I was walking, but why I walking at all.
Ethics
The Call of Duty games I give significant credit to retaining my sanity during the COVID lockdowns; they provided me with an outlet to experience adrenaline, high stakes, and competition while physically isolated. By choosing to strip away any form of violence from the mechanics of the game, The Stanley Parable is forced to rely on other factors to drive emotional interaction. Tension is instead created through the Narrators increasingly distressed tone and the looming uneasiness that you will become hopelessly lost. Walking becomes meaningful not because it may provoke an enemy or force you to react quickly to a threat, but because it may permanently alter your relationship with the only other character. The Stanley Parable demonstrates that compelling drama can be created without relying on overt violence or bloodshed.
