Raphael is the name of a real life person who left an extensive and critical email to the Narrator (askthenarrator@galactic-cafe.com) regarding his opinions of The Stanley Parable (2011) which was later read in a YouTube video titled, "The Stanley Parable "Raphael Trailer"".[1]
After reading Raphael's email, the Narrator decides to discard The Stanley Parable and instead create The Raphael Parable (Alternative title: "The Stanley Parable by Raphael", despite being created by the Narrator), an improved version of the former, intended to "cater" to Raphael's higher-than-average logical and emotional standards.
The Narrator spends the entirety of the video making fun of Raphael, making snarky comments about heralding him as a mentor, an emotional beacon, and messiah for narrative progress. Especially at the end of the video where he starts repeatedly saying Stanley's name to piss Raphael off, based on a section written in his email.
Email[]
The following text is the contents of the email sent from Raphael to the Narrator:
- I just played your game and I’d like to say it was the most annoying thing I ever played. It had its cool moments but overall the experience was only of annoyance. The problem is that it does not touch the heart of people. It’s a very emotionless game.
- Did you ask any girls to try out your game? I ask because they are blissfully less logical than us guys. I am very logical myself, but also very emotional, so it was easy for me to find the game annoying.
- What happened is that your game frustrated me. I felt like I was being taken into someone else’s hallways, doors and plans, to deliver me an experience that didn’t touch me.
- AND WORST OF ALL I had absolutely no free will in the game, no way to change anything, no impact, no power, I accomplished nothing. People play games because of what they can do inside them, and your game is very good at letting them know THEY CAN’T DO ANYTHING. Other things I didn’t like were the amount of narrator dialogue too much, and that 'Stanley' is repeated all the time by the narrator.
- Overall... Your game is on a good path! I think. Good luck with it and best regards,
- -Raphael
The Raphael Parable[]
In this new version you play the ghost of a dream of a memory of a cyborg warrior trying to find his dead wife inside a poem.
The Narrator
The Narrator goes ahead by showing different sections and features of The Raphael Parable, taking the player on a demo walkthrough.
Emotion Booths serve as the central feature of The Raphael Parable, that once stepped into will cause the player to actually feel the labelled emotion. The following list of emotions below are stated in the video but the Narrator claims that the full game contains "hundreds of thousands of emotions".
There are emotion booths that appear in the video that are labelled with the following emotions but do not appear on the given list: Anger, Disgust, Empathy, Happy, Jury Given Guilty Verdict, Sadness.
Additionally, as a response to Raphael's claim that the player cannot do anything in The Stanley Parable, in this version of the game, the player can do "LITERALLY. ANYTHING." An example of this feature is of the player infusing a bicycle with the soul of his great-great-great uncle, Hermophrades. The Narrator hypothesizes that the player will use Hermophrades's ethereal presence to detect nearby mineral deposits or perhaps train the bicycle in the art of undoing temporal paradoxes. In turn, the player actually decides to use the now-haunted bicycle to prepare a snake oil salesman routine.
Settings[]
The options menu in The Raphael Parable is displayed for a short while, simply labeled with the large header of "RAPHAEL", with the Narrator advertising the ability to change the LOGIC and EMOTION present in the game on individual sliders. Bringing the two sliders to their maximum setting activates Raphael Mode, which is defined as "HARDCORE!!" and is recommended by the Narrator for players who are looking for a real challenge.
Some additional settings that are present include Poetry Configuration (Known option: Robert Browning), Irony Quality (Known option: High), Dynamic Logical Feelings (Known option: Disabled), "Your motivation?" (Known option: None), Enable Heart Touching (Known options: Disabled, Emotion Booth Settings, Heart Touching), Push To Talk Key (Known option: C), and SETUP EMOTION BOOTHS.
Reviews[]
The Narrator claims that "rave reviews" for the game has been pouring in since the beginning of the video, proceeding to display some of them for the viewer to see.
- "I’ve played thousands of hours and had my heart touched 176 times so far. It really hurts. How do you turn that off?" - John Gamerson
- "This place has shoes! I love shoes! Oh. My. God. Shopping! Shopping! Shopping! Shopping! Shopping!" - A woman
Anti-Piracy Measures[]
The Narrator attempts to display more of The Raphael Parable but is stopped by the game's anti-piracy measure which leaves the screen as nothing but static. This occurs at random then proceeds to crash the player's computer and begin to delete their files, just in case the game was downloaded illegally.
Trivia[]
- The Stanley Parable (2013) credits includes Raphael in the "A Special Thank You To" section.
- The bicycle makes an appearance in the Museum in the Warzone section and in the Memory Zone in a framed picture and in physical form.
- Multiple mods for The Stanley Parable have been been created because of this individual: The Raphael Parable and The Raphael Parable: WHY Edition.
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ According to the video decription of The Stanley Parable "Raphael Trailer", it is stated that Raphael is a real person: "This is an actual email that the team received a few weeks ago."
| v • e People | |
|---|---|
| Game Staff | Davey Wreden • William Pugh • Dominik Johann • Jesús Higueras |
| Voice Actors | Kevan Brighting • Aviva Pinchas • Jenny Kuglin • Kim Hoffmeister • Lesley Staples • Alex Hirsch • Joe Finegold |
| Composers | The Blake Robinson Synthetic Orchestra • Yiannis Ioannides • Christiaan Bakker • Siddhartha Barnhoorn |
| Misc. Staff | Kosmos |
| Users | Raphael • Neonjays |