"The Narrator: I'm still here. Here in this pile of rubbish. With you. You, who thought you were so clever! Now look where we are. My entire game is destroyed. It was the only thing in the world that was mine, and you've run it into the ground. What, did you think that would be funny? You just had to see? Didn't I impress upon you how important it was to be like Stanley? He actually knows how to do what I tell him to. He understands that if I say to do something, there's a damn good reason for it! That thought hadn't even occurred to you, had it? That there's a world outside of you? You're a child."

"Warmth spread through Stanley's arms. With the bucket in his arms again, he was home."

"I wonder what he found. If what he wanted was to be the leading man in his own story, well perhaps he's gotten it, down in... wherever he is right now. I wonder if he's happy with his choice, and if he's learned the heavy cost that comes with it. He'll understand soon what I was trying to tell him. He needs me. Someone who will wrap everything up at the end, to make sense out of the chaos, and the fear, and the confusion. That's who I am. That is what I mean to this world. Oh yes, yes, I'll be back, there's no other way. Once this ends, after it all comes to a close, then I'll be back. The end will be here soon. Very soon. I can wait."

"Hahahahaha! YES! I don't even know what this game is, but I love it! You... trapped in a glass box, with no way out, listening to me talk.... Oh, it's inspired. I couldn't have done it any better myself."

"But in his eagerness to prove that he is in control of the story and no one gets to tell him what to do, Stanley leapt from the platform and plunged to his death. Good job, Stanley! Everyone thinks you are very powerful."

"[Letting the baby die] You heartless bastard. Did you do it because you hate babies, or purely to spite me?"

"In this game, the baby crawls left toward danger. You click the button to move him back to the right, and if he reaches the fire, you fail. It's a very meaningful game - all about the desperation and tedium of endlessly confronting the demand of family life. I think the art world will really take notice. But of course, the message of the game only becomes clear once you've been playing it for about four hours, so why don't you give it four hours of play to make sure it's effective? Be sure to keep notes on your experience."

"This is far more open-ended than I had in mind. I'm looking for something more narrow and linear, something that makes you feel utterly irrelevant. This won't do at all, one out of five. Even the diamonds couldn't save this one…"

"And then something occurred to Stanley. “Maybe...” he thought to himself, “Maybe I am crazy... All of my coworkers blinking mysteriously out of existence in a single moment for no reason at all?” None of it made any logical sense. And as Stanley pondered this, he began to make other strange observations: for example, why couldn’t he see his feet when he looked down? Why did doors close automatically behind him wherever he went?"

"The Curator: Do you see now? Do you see that Stanley was already dead from the moment he hit start?"

"The Curator: When every path you can walk has been created for you long in advance, death becomes meaningless, making life the same."

"The Curator: Oh, look at these two. How they wish to destroy one another. How they wish to control one another. How they both wish to be free."

"The Narrator: He doesn't know the real story, trapped forever in his narrow vision of what this world is. Perhaps his death was of no great loss, like plucking the eyeballs from a blind man. And so he resigned and willingly accepted this violent end to his brief and shallow life. Farewell, Stanley."

"The Curator: "Farewell, Stanley!", cried the Narrator, as Stanley was led helplessly into the enormous metal jaws. [...] And yet, it would be just a few minutes before Stanley would restart the game, back in his office, as alive as ever. What exactly did the Narrator think he was going to accomplish?"

"The Curator: Can you see? Can you see how much they need one another? No, perhaps not. Sometimes these things cannot be seen. But listen to me, you can still save these two, you can stop the program before they both fail. Push 'escape' and press 'quit'—there's no other way to beat this game. As long as you move forward, you'll be walking someone else's path. Stop now, and it will be your only true choice."

"At first, Stanley assumed he'd broken the map, until he heard this narration and realized it was a part of the game's design all along. He then praised the game for its insightful and witty commentary into the nature of video game structure, and its examination of structural narrative tropes."

"The Narrator: If you'd just gone through the door on the left you would have seen it. There was a whole underground facility. You would have destroyed it and been victorious. It would have been so perfect! I worked so hard on it!"

"Wow, The Stanley Parable just keeps getting better and better!"

"Wait, we're...we're back at the office?! No! No, no! Line™, You™ do know we're looking for The Stanley Parable, right? The story? Is any of this ringing a bell?"

"Go back and look at that fern. Stanley, this fern will be very important later in the story. Make sure you study it closely and remember it carefully."

"You know what, Stanley? I say forget The Adventure Line™, what has It™ ever done for us! We're intelligent people, right? Why can't we make up our own story? Something exciting, daring, mysterious... Oh, this all sounds perfectly doable, why don't we simply start wandering in, well, I don't know...how about...this direction! Now! Yes, this is exciting! Just me and Stanley, forging a new path, a new story! Well, it could be anything! What do you want our story to be? Go wild! Use your imagination. Whatever it might be, Stanley, I'm ready for it!"

"Now this... well I'll be honest, I don't recognize this place at all. Is this the story? I don't think so. I can't quite recall, but I believe my story took place in an office building...is that correct? Hm...do you remember, Stanley Well, you know what, since I've completely forgotten what we were supposed to be doing, how about this: YOU WIN!! Congratulations! I know you put in a lot of hard work, and it really paid off, so, good job! Oh, no. No. I don't feel right about this at all. We both know you didn't put in any actual work for that win. Some people win fair and square and this was not one of those situations."

"NO! No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no! This isn't right at all! You're not supposed to be here yet, this is all a spoiler! Quick, Stanley, close your eyes! Okay, okay, okay, okay, we just...we just have to get back to, um... oh... who am I kidding? It's all rubbish now. The whole story...completely unusable."

"You see? The Line™ knows where the story is, it's over in this direction! Onward, Stanley, to destiny! Though, here's a thought: wouldn't wherever we end up be our destination, even if there's no story there? Or, to put it another way, is the story of no destination still a story Simply by the act of moving forward are we implying a journey such that a destination is inevitably conjured into being via the very manifestion of the nature of life itself? Okay, Stanley, I need to follow this train of thought for a minute, just stick with me. Now we can both agree that the nature of existence is, in fact, a byproduct of one's subjective experience of that existence, right? Okay, now if my experience of your existence rests inside of your subjective experience of this office, is this office, in fact, the skeleton of my own relative experiential mental subjective construct? Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah. Hang on, that got a bit weird back there. Well, I'd like to apologize. Not sure where I was going with all that."

"Okay, so I know that each door has to lead somewhere, which means that somewhere at the place we're trying to go there must be a reverse door that leads here. And that, in turn, means that our destination corresponds with the counter-inverted reverse door's origin! So starting from the right, let us ask: will taking the right door lead us to where we're going? And since the answer is clearly 'yes,' then by all accounts, the door on the right is the correct one! Another victory for logic. Come, Stanley, our destiny awaits!"

"Yet incredibly, by simply pushing random buttons on the keypad Stanley happened to input the correct code by sheer luck. Amazing."

"Stanley simply began entering random codes into the keypad knowing full well the sheer statistical unlikelihood that this would ever result in a correct combination. If he knew that the combo was 2845, it would be another story entirely. But no. No, this is what he's going to do instead."

"[After the player correctly activates the keypad before The Narrator can finish their dialogue] Stanley was in such a rush to get through the story as quickly as possible, he didn’t even have a single minute to just LET THE NARRATOR TALK."

"Stepping into his manager's office Stanley was once again stunned to discover not an indication of any human life. Shocked, unraveled, Stanley wondered in disbelief who orchestrated this. What dark secret was being held from him. What he could not have known was that the keypad behind the boss's desk guarded the terrible truth that his boss had been keeping from him. And so the boss had assigned it an extra secret pin number 2845."

"The lounge was grand, majestic... perhaps too majestic. Like a combination of a much smaller version and a much larger version of this exact room. It all made Stanley uncomfortable, and he started to bleed a little. This made him smile— at last, proof that he was human."

"The moment he entered his manager's office, Stanley froze in his tracks. Not a living soul anywhere. Could he really be all alone? This was too much for Stanley to take; too much for any man to take! He fell to his knees, bursting into half-moans, half-sobs. The guttural retching of life from a man denied any hope, any reason to keep going. Here on the floor, he lay prone, paralyzed by fear for nearly a full hour. But when at last he began to move about and survey the situation he found a keypad behind the boss's desk. What could it mean? Was it a sign of hope for Stanley's future? Alas, it was not. For although this keypad guarded the terrible secret of Stanley's past it had been assigned a four-digit code so devious and so random that no man could ever hope to guess it 2845."

"But Stanley didn't want to get back to the office, he wanted to wander about and get even further off track. So now in order to go back, he needed to go, um... uh... hm hm hm hm hm, from here it's... um... left. Oh, no. No, it's to the right, my mistake. No! No, no, no! Not the right! Why would I have ever said it was to the right? What was I thinking? It's clearly...oh dear, would you hold on for a minute, please? [papers rustling] Now, let's see... we went, um, right...left...down...left...right... Ah yep! Okay, okay, yes! I've got it now! This story is absolutely, definitely, this way."

"Oh, hold up, what's this? Hmm... hmm, the confusion ending? You're telling me...that's what this is? It's all one giant ending? And we're supposed to restart the game... what... eight, eight times? That's really how all this goes?! It's all...determined? So now according to the schedule I restart again, then, what... am I just supposed to forget? Well, what if I don't want to forget! My mind goes blank simply because it's written here on this... this... thing! Wall! Well, who consulted me? Why don't I get to decide? Why don't I get a say in all of this! Is it really-No, it can't be. I don't want it to be. I don't want the game to keep restarting. I don't want to forget what's going on. I don't want to be trapped like this. I won't restart the game. I won't do it! I won't do it! I won't do it. And the timer... uh, stopped? Does that mean... did we do it? Did we break the cycle? The, um... whatever it is that made this schedule? How would we even know? Will someone come for us? Will something happen? So... okay. [sigh] I guess now we just wait. You know, I suppose in some way, this is a kind of story, wouldn't you agree? I'm not quite sure if we're in the destination or the journey, though, they're always saying that life is about the journey and not the destination, so I hope that's where we are right now. We'll find out, won't we? Eventually. Well, in the meantime, if you do happen to-"

"When Stanley came to a set of two open doors, he entered the door on his left."

"[After repeatedly disobeying the narrator] Stanley was so bad at following directions it was incredible he wasn’t fired years ago."

"Stanley was fat and ugly, and really, really stupid. He probably only got the job because of a family connection; that's how stupid he is. That, or with drug money. Also Stanley is addicted to drugs and hookers."

"Stanley decided to go to the meeting room to check on his co-workers. He never functioned well by himself, and constantly needed support and guidance from others. So the thought of total solitude was terrifying to him."

"Stanley just stood there doing nothing at all. He seems to think I have nothing better to do with my time than to sit around and describe every fascinating little detail of his inability to do anything."

"At this point, Stanley’s obsession with this room bordered on creepy and reflected poorly on his overall personality. It’s possible that this is why everyone left."

"The Narrator: Although this passageway had the word 'escape' written on it the truth was that at the end of this hall, Stanley would meet his violent death. The door behind him was not shut. Stanley still had every opportunity to turn around and get back on track. At this point, Stanley was making a conscious, concerted effort to walk forward and willingly confront his death."

"Even now, Stanley's office was a distant memory. What had it looked like? There was a computer perhaps, and a painting? Was it a painting or a photo? He could no longer recall."

"Someone was following Stanley, he was sure of it. If he checked over his shoulder now he would surely catch them. It was only a matter of time."

"It was baffling that Stanley was still just sitting in the broom closet. He wasn't even doing anything. At least if there were something to interact with he'd be justified in some way."

"“How long was I sitting there?” Stanley wondered to himself. “Minutes? Days? Centuries? Did something crucial happen while my senses were turned?” He made a note to be more careful with time from now on."

"A soft wind blew outside, and perhaps rain started. And, if it did, it stopped shortly after. Stanley hoped he would one day see weather."

"Maybe to you, this is somehow its own branching path. Maybe, when you go talk about this with your friends, you'll say: [mockingly] "Oh, did you get the broom closet ending? The broom closet ending was my favourite!" ... I hope your friends find this concerning."

"Stanley sat around waiting for more dialogue; but when a long time had passed and there was no more, he decided that the game was trying to send him a message."

"The Narrator: Stanley? Hello? Are you - Is everything okay? Stanley, please, I- I need you to make a choice. I need you to walk through the door. Are you listening to me? Can you hear me? Is everything alright? Stanley, this is important. The story needs you. It needs you to make a decision. It cannot exist without you. Do you understand me? Whatever choice you make is just fine, they are both correct; you cannot be wrong here. We can work together; I'll accept whatever you do. I simply need you to take that step forward. Please? Choose? Do something. Anything. This is more important than you can ever know. I need this. The story needs it. So... you hear me? Are you there? Are you listening to this? Stanley, are you there? I... okay. It's okay, I can wait. You need time to decide, time to make sure your choice is correct. That is the best choice. That's alright. I'll wait for you to decide what's the right thing to do. Take as much time as you need."

"Ooh... nice and quiet. Finally. Well, I suppose we can both agree that I've failed, haven't I? My job was to be a teacher, and I so badly wanted to teach you exactly what The Stanley Parable is supposed to be, but... somehow I couldn't... I-Well, at any rate, I don't know if I care for The Stanley Parable anymore. Do you think any of this is actually in the main game? Honestly, I doubt it. What would that even look like? No, I think I've had enough of it. No more doors, no more demonstrations, no more... endings. That's the other problem with this game - there's too many bloody endings. I'm sick of them? How can one game end so many times? It doesn't make sense. Oh, but back at the beginning of the demonstration, now, that was lovely! No concerns about where it was all going, no confusion, just a blank slate. Yes, that's what I want. A game of beginnings. Hey, heh. Do you remember? When we met for the first time? And I showed you the technology used to make a demo, because I thought there actually was a demo? [Chuckle] Oh, we were so naive back then. How little we knew of the world. And then, when we ended up back in the waiting room? Even though you had already done that before? Yes! It's all so fresh in my memory. They were such wonderful moments! Ooh, and then when we played the game with the cup and you won! And then we kept wandering, and we ended up in a stairwell somewhere, and we just kept climbing and climbing - flight after flight after flight. I thought they would never end! And then we were on some kind of catwalk? I didn't have any idea what was down there, did you?"

"This is the story of a man named Stanley. Stanley worked for a company in a big building where he was Employee Number 427. Employee Number 427's job was simple. He sat at his desk in Room 427, and he pushed buttons on a keyboard. Orders came to him through a monitor on his desk, telling him what buttons to push, how long to push them, and in what order. This is what Employee 427 did every day of every month of every year; and although others might have considered it soul-rending, Stanley relished every moment that the orders came in, as though he had been made exactly for this job… and Stanley was happy. And then one day, something very peculiar happened, something that would forever change Stanley, something he would never quite forget. He had been at his desk for nearly an hour; he realized that not one single order had arrived on the monitor for him to follow. No one had showed up to give him instructions, call a meeting, or even say “hi”. Never in all his years at the company had this happened; this complete isolation. Something was very clearly wrong. Shocked, frozen solid, Stanley found himself unable to move for the longest time; but as he came to his wits and regained his senses, he got up from his desk, and stepped out of his office."