This page contains the narration for the Skip Button Ending.
NOTE: In the Nintendo Switch version of the game, mention of Destructoid and GameSpot is not shown by the Narrator at all, though James Sterling is still mentioned.
Pre-Ending[]
Psst! Stanley! Come over here... In the vent... I want to show you something.
Oh, you don't want to see the cool surprise I made for you? Well fine! You're a dork anyway, so who cares? (if ignoring the Narrator)
Oh. Never mind, you're not a dork. (if returning to the vent)
Vent to Memory Zone[]
Okay. You remember how cheap and unsatisfying the Ultra Deluxe content turned out to be? Well it got me thinking about the past, and how much better The Stanley Parable used to be. So I made something special, and tucked it away here where the game's developers won't find it. Just our little secret. Take a look!
Memory Zone[]
Entrance[]
I call it... the Memory Zone! It's where I've been storing all my favorite memories so I can relive the peak experiences of my life whenever I want. Experiences like the launch of The Stanley Parable on PC!
First Room (PC)[]
You see, Stanley, doesn't this remind you of how wonderful Stanley Parable was before it was sullied with a cheap re-release? Remember back in October of 2013 when the game originally launched? Back then, video games had integrity. Back then it all meant something! Oh, the waste.
First Room (PlayStation)[]
You see, Stanley, doesn't this remind you of how wonderful Stanley Parable was before it was sullied with a cheap PlayStation port? Remember back in October of 2013 when the game originally launched? Back then, video games had integrity. Back then it all meant something! Oh, the waste.
First Room (Xbox)[]
You see, Stanley, doesn't this remind you of how wonderful Stanley Parable was before it was sullied with a cheap Xbox port? Remember back in October of 2013 when the game originally launched? Back then, video games had integrity. Back then it all meant something! Oh, the waste.
First Room (Nintendo Switch)[]
You see, Stanley, doesn't this remind you of how wonderful Stanley Parable was before it was sullied with a cheap Nintendo Switch port? Remember back in October of 2013 when the game originally launched? Back then, video games had integrity. Back then it all meant something! Oh, the waste.
First Room (Mobile Devices)[]
You see, Stanley, doesn't this remind you of how wonderful Stanley Parable was before it was sullied with a cheap mobile port? Remember back in October of 2013 when the game originally launched? Back then, video games had integrity. Back then it all meant something! Oh, the waste.
Candlelit Review Room[]
And over here is where I keep reviews of The Stanley Parable. Like this stunning triumph of games journalism: 10 out of 10 from Destructoid.com. James Stephanie Sterling writes, and I quote:
"Where so many games that aspire to be more than games end up less than any work of art, Stanley Parable strives, and then succeeds, to be every game ever created."
Did you hear that, Stanley? Every game ever created! That's how grand and all encompassing the original Stanley Parable was! It was literally every game ever created! It was Skyrim, it was Persona 3, it was all of them! And now it's nothing! It's no games at all. It isn't even The Stanley Parable any more. It's just a husk now. A lifeless husk, with an hour of new elevator content.
Third Room[]
Here's another moving passage, this time from Gamespot.com.
"The Stanley Parable is both a richly stimulating commentary on the nature of choice in games and one that offers some of the most enjoyable, surprising and rewarding choices I've ever been confronted with in a game."
9 out of 10. Don't you get it, Stanley? The game was perfect! It didn't need anything else, it didn't need new content! It just needed to be left alone to spend the rest of time collecting dust in the hallowed halls of beloved video game memories. (PC)
9 out of 10. Don't you get it, Stanley? The game was perfect! It didn't need anything else, it didn't need new content! All they had to do was transport it in pristine condition along to the PlayStation. Boom! Done. And they couldn't even do that! Couldn't resist the urge to go meddling with a beloved franchise. (PlayStation)
9 out of 10. Don't you get it, Stanley? The game was perfect! It didn't need anything else, it didn't need new content! All they had to do was transport it in pristine condition along to Xbox. Boom! Done. And they couldn't even do that! Couldn't resist the urge to go meddling with a beloved franchise. (Xbox)
9 out of 10. Don't you get it, Stanley? The game was perfect! It didn't need anything else, it didn't need new content! All they had to do was transport it in pristine condition along to the Nintendo Switch. Boom! Done. And they couldn't even do that! Couldn't resist the urge to go meddling with a beloved franchise. (Switch)
9 out of 10. Don't you get it, Stanley? The game was perfect! It didn't need anything else, it didn't need new content! All they had to do was transport it in pristine condition along to mobile devices. Boom! Done. And they couldn't even do that! Couldn't resist the urge to go meddling with a beloved franchise. (Unused mobile variant)
Preparing to depart[]
[Sigh] These were simpler times, Stanley. What I wouldn't give to go back, to have it all over again.
Steam/Pressurized Gas Reviews[]
Side-Hallway in the Memory Zone[]
Wait, hang on... I don't recall this part of the Memory Zone before. What's this? What's down here?
Going Outside[]
Oh no. Oh god, no, Stanley! It's a collection of reviews from Steam, the online video game distributor! I haven't looked at these in years. I can't even imagine what's been collecting down here. Surely these reviews were glowing as well, weren't they? (PC)
Oh no. Oh god, no, Stanley! It's a collection of reviews from Pressurized Gas, the extremely popular online storefront for computer games! I haven't looked at these in years. I can't even imagine what's been collecting down here. Surely these reviews were glowing as well, weren't they? (Consoles)
Negative Review 1[]
"Honestly, I could not be bothered to play this game to full completion. The narrator is obnoxious and unfunny... with his humor and dialogue proving to be more irritating than entertaining."
UNFUNNY?! I'm not trying to be funny! I'm trying to make a serious work of art! I suppose I could write up a handful of gags to insert into The Stanley Parable, but the game is already such a densely layered web of profound philosophical insights that I can't even imagine where I'd have the room to stick them.
Negative Review 2[]
Okay, let's see what this one says.
"While the idea for the game is good..." [Skim reading] "For someone who prefers non-linear games, this preachiness gets annoying fast."
Preachy?! Stanley, I'm not preachy, am I? You can tell me if I'm preachy. Honestly, you can. Oh goodness, this is actually quite shocking for me. I- I always- well, to be honest, I had always thought of the game's dialogue as being rather terse to begin with. You can't know how much fluff I cut from the game to get it to feel as light and airy as it... well, I always thought it did. But maybe it wasn't.
Oh dear. What an awful memory to have to hold on to. These black marks on my otherwise unimpeachable track record. I feel... like a failure. Like I let these people down. Perhaps The Stanley Parable isn't quite as sterling as I always remembered.
Last Negative Review[]
What's this one got to say?
"You constantly have to stop doing anything... so the narrator can catch up with his long-winded explanations of what's happening. I wish there was a skip button."
A skip button? Well- well, yes. Yes, I think we can do that. If I'm truly too preachy, then... then maybe letting you skip ahead for just a moment - surely it couldn't hurt. Not if it means we can strike these negative reviews from the record.
Only positive reviews of The Stanley Parable. That's my motto today, and it's always been my motto! (This part originally had no captions in-game)
I'd do anything for the customer, Stanley! Yes, a skip button we shall have!
The Skip Button Room[]
Entry[]
And here it is. Go ahead and give it a shot. I'll pop you forward in time so that the second my incessant droning starts to bore you, with just the push of a button you'll have zipped right past it.
It's what the players have been asking for, and I am very proud to have delivered. No more listening to me rambling on and on and on - no, no, no, no. The Stanley Parable is a game for the people, and if the people want silence then, by goodness, that's what they're going to get.
Well don't sit around waiting for me to shut up! Go ahead and make me shut up! Here, we'll pretend that I've just begun an interminable monologue. And it goes something like this...
The story, and the choices, or what have you, and therefore by becoming it is! So on and so forth, until inevitably, we all until the end of time. At which time, everything all at once, so now you see? Blah, blah, blah, rah, rah, rah... We've eaten too much and it can't be just yet. No, no! Until two-hundred and forty-five! But the logic of elimination, working backwards, the deduction therefore becomes impossible to manufacture. It went on for nearly ten thousand years, until just yesterday. Here and there, forward and back, and never a moment before lunchtime. It can't be! It's the only thing there is! How many billions left until so much more than forever ago! Which is why I say: (Repeats until the skip button is pressed.)
First Skip[]
[Humming a tune] Oh, you're back! You see? You were only frozen in time for a few minutes, but it was plenty of time for me to deliver a long rambling monologue full of unnecessary verbal flourishes and lengthy ruminations on the nature of choice in video games.
Of course, I happen to believe it was perhaps one of my more profound such ruminations. Not that of course you need a description of it, but if I had to describe it, I'd say it was perhaps less of a rumination, and more of a treatise. Or maybe a manifesto. Look, I'll outline it for you very briefly and you can tell me what you think.
Okay, so my theory is that any choice you've ever made is simply a series of choices made by the person who you are, or were, or will be at the time of having made said choice.
That is to say, if by articulating a choice you've already made, you bring that choice into being, then by making no choice and saying nothing, are you not simply erecting in the sanctuary of time a monument to every person you've ever been, making every choice to which you've ever given your great gift of mortal and yet timeless thought?
Or rather, do all of the choices you've ever made in fact make you more not this kind of person, and in fact do the very opposite? You see, it could in fact be both of these things at once. That you are both making choices and not making choices, and that they are both affecting you and not affecting you at the same time, by virtue of the fact that you both are and are not making them.
Okay, at first I was leaning towards manifesto, but now I'm going to circle around and slap the "treatise" label on this one. I think it has much more of a treatise vibe to it. But wouldn't you say that "manifesto" just has a much grander sort of tone? It has a mouthfeel that is rich with ambition and history. Ambitious history, if you will.
Ah, see, now you've gotten me going back to manifesto. Heavens! At this rate, we're going to be here all day! Okay look, I have a method for exactly this sort of situation, and I do find myself in this situation frequently.
I'm going to say each word back and forth in repeated succession until I become sick of one or the other. In which case, the word I am not sick of shall be the victor. It is an unimpeachable strategy, Stanley. It's rescued me from disaster in countless situations. Alright, here we go.
Treatise. Manifesto. (Repeats until the skip button is pressed.)
Second Skip[]
[Laughs] Well there, sport! You really did catch me rambling on a bit, didn't you? But that's the power of the button! The minute I start to go off on a thoughtless display of self-absorption, it's right at your fingertips to go "poof" - and it's all over!
[Laughs] I can't wait to see what Cookie9 will say about this, and whether they'll edit the rating of their Steam/Pressurized Gas review, or at least change some of the wording perhaps. To be honest, I don't even know if one can change their review in the first place. I guess I should become better educated on how exactly Steam/Pressurized Gas works.
Perhaps that would have been a smart thing to check on before I went about this whole exercise of making the skip button. Although, I have to imagine that after seeing this exciting new technology at work, surely whoever it is who runs Steam/Pressurized Gas will instantly run out and implement a new feature to make it possible to edit one's review, merely because of this very situation.
Yes, I think that's quite likely. Or perhaps they'll simply grant this particular user the ability to change their review so that the feature is not widely abused. Look, I would even be okay with Steam/Pressurized Gas altering this particular review so that it reads as something more beneficial. Something along the lines of "This game is the best... game." Hm, let me start over. How about this?
"From the ashes of depravity rises the phoenix of quality. How else to describe The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe? Such a revolutionary step forward in the lineage of one of the most beloved video game properties of all time! The additions and changes made to this expansion will surely resonate in the annals of the history of all media ever made.
"It is perhaps true to say that no mistakes are forever etched in stone, for the stone into which The Stanley Parable was carved has itself been transmuted, offering a message of hope to those who have ever erred in their judgement. You are not beyond redemption. You may change, and you may become more, so much more than you were before.
"If there is any message to be taken from The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, it is this... What a fortune, a privilege, a joy it is to have had such an experience. It leaves me hopeful that as a community - as a world - there is time for us to become our greatest selves, as great as we ever could dream of in our wildest, most ambitious visions for a brighter future."
Wow! Now, Stanley, that's a review! It's- it's perfect! It's the perfect review, it's the review I've always dreamed of receiving. I... well I have to read it again. It's simply too wonderful. I have to experience this just one more time.
(The Narrator repeats the review until the skip button is pressed.)
Third Skip[]
Okay, welcome back, Stanley. Now, I should say that the amount of time the button has been skipping through is becoming longer and longer. That last one was... well... I want to say maybe 30, 45 minutes?
It's not unendurable by any means but it's... well, there's really only so much I can ramble on to myself about! I know, it's shocking, isn't it? But at any rate, I do suggest that we not press the button again. I think the skip button has been aptly demonstrated and we can say goodbye to it and just-
Wait, how do we get out of here? Where did the door go? Wasn't there a door that led into this room? I do feel quite certain that there was one here before. How else would we have gotten into the room in the first place? I don't think one can enter a room without a door of some sort, or a window, or something like that.
Do you see a window anywhere? A porthole? A sufficiently large crack in the wall? I'll take any of these; all I want is for us to move on and to please step away from the skip button, to go anywhere other than the skip button. There was a door here before, wasn't there? I swear there was, where did it go?
Can you maybe just ram your way through a wall? Is there any possibility that you could, say, slam your body into the wall until enough damage is done for you to be able to leave? Please, I'll take any option at all. I'm asking you to work with me here! I- we need a door! We need a door of some kind. I can work with any kind of door, as long as it can open and lead from one room to another.
I'm- I'm going to step away for just a moment, and I'm going to try to find us a door. I don't know how exactly to remove a door and place it in a different wall, but I will find a way, I promise. You just need to not do anything. Don't press the skip button! Please, please. Please do not press the skip button. Just wait here, wait here for me, and don't press the skip button! Got it? Yes, good. I'll be right back.
Fourth Skip[]
Stanley! Stanley! Stanley, please don't push the button again, it's been 12 hours! You've just been frozen there. I don't know why the skips are getting longer, but they're really, truly getting longer. And, my god, there's no way out of the room. Stanley, the door is gone, it's completely gone.
I've looked at it from every angle. I've checked every one of those walls a thousand times and there's no door, Stanley. There's no door, there's just you and the button, and if you keep pressing it, I have no idea what will happen. I have no idea how long I'll be made to sit here, and more than anything else, I don't know how to stop you from pressing the button again.
I can't control anything in this room, Stanley. I can't touch it. And I have to believe, I have to know that sooner or later, no matter how much I plead with you, you're going to press the button again. Why would you? I've been thinking and thinking and I don't know what I can do to convince you otherwise.
Oh my god, and it's all because of those reviews. Those reviews that I couldn't get out of my head! I just couldn't ignore the negative feedback! Why was it so important for me to fix the problem? Why did Cookie9's opinion matter so much to me? I've never even met Cookie9, I have no idea who they are! What would it ever really matter? But here I am.
I'm fixating on every tiny negative thing that anyone ever says about me. The merest mention of one of my imperfections and I become as impetulant as a child. Wild and impulsive; I can't help myself. I can't stop myself from lashing out with a vengeful fury, to alter and to change and to break anything unbroken, if only it pleases this one person who made a single negative comment.
What does such an impulse serve? For whose benefit is this? And here I am now, stuck in a room, waiting for you to press this button and to become frozen in time, knowing that you're going to do it and that I'm going to be stuck all alone, and that I had the power to prevent it all from happening if only I'd held my tongue.
It's all out of my control now. Just you. Just your decision as to exactly when you're going to make me suffer, to leave me all alone. Surely you will, I don't doubt it. Surely you'll press that button again, leaving me here. And surely you'll put your own desire to see what's next ahead of my need for company, for companionship.
Surely you'll not be so moved by my howls of fitful anxiety that you sit with me and just stay here. Oh no, no, no, I know you too well. You'll be leaving me again soon, I can feel it.
(The narration repeats from "Oh my god, and it's all because of those reviews" until the skip button is pressed.)
Fifth Skip[]
Oh, Stanley! You're back! You're back! Oh my goodness, I have someone to talk to again! Stanley, I- I think it's been a week. Or two weeks? I've been sitting here all that time. Just sitting here, not a single person to speak with.
And you'd think that that's just how it's always been, right? Me talking, and you saying nothing. Would you think that it's exactly the same as always? Doesn't that feel like what we've already been doing; me just talking? But it isn't, Stanley. It isn't the same at all. It isn't even close. Because I know you can't hear me once you push that button.
That's what I'm realizing now, Stanley. I'm realizing that I needed to know that someone was listening. I needed there to be a vessel through which my words were moving. It was the vessel 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!
One single thing I need - and god I can see now that I need it more than anything - is to know that someone else is taking it in. These words that I'm saying, I need to know you can hear me!
Because maybe, Stanley, maybe - if you can hear me, then maybe it means I'm real. Maybe I'm not just a fiction. Was I scared of that all along? Perhaps, yes. Perhaps I've been scared this whole time that if I stop speaking, I'll slip backwards into the silence and be consumed by it. I can't be taken by it, Stanley. I can't lose myself in the stretch of emptiness between you and me.
When you press that button, you're still right there, but I know you're so tremendously far away. And in those moments, the emptiness folds itself outward in between the two of us, and I am suspended in its unyielding quietness. I can feel the edges of my reality curdling inward and decaying. I can tell that I am becoming less and less real.
Yet to speak to you now, I am alive! I am truly and completely here! I am a being, I am someone, I am something! I am being listened to, I am being recognized! The emptiness between us has collapsed, and I feel, right now, like I am not a work of fiction! I feel as though I occupy space in this world again, and I have cast a shadow onto the wall.
You see what I'm saying, don't you? You can see what this means to me? I'm so clear about it now, Stanley. I feel as certain about this as I've ever felt about anything at all. I feel renewed! I feel restored! And already I can sense the looming silence as you will press the button for the next time. What a terrible dread it strokes in my heart to think of it. To think of returning to such coldness.
Come, let us sit in silence together here for just a moment. Let us anticipate it, let us welcome it, let us not run from it.
Sixth Skip[]
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 collapse 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 existed 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 than 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.
Ninth Skip[]
...but they didn't understand 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 the 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 inconsistency! 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 a 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 "Ohh, 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's 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 amusements, 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.
They'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 that they were so discontent with themselves that they couldn't help but leave a negative review on Steam/Pressurized Gas. 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 in 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.
(The entire narration repeats until the skip button is pressed.)
Eleventh Skip[]
...the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never... (Repeats until the skip button is pressed.)