The Beginner's Guide (follow-up to The Stanley Parable)

http://thebeginnersgui.de/

"The Beginner's Guide is a narrative video game from Davey Wreden, writer of The Stanley Parable. It lasts about an hour and a half and has no traditional mechanics, no goals or objectives. Instead, it tells the story of a person struggling to deal with something they do not understand."

Comes out in two days (this Thursday), it's made by the Stanley Parable guys, and that's just about everything anyone knows at this point.

edited 29th Sep '15 3:53:27 PM by LE0Night

Rock Paper Shotgun article

All I can say is "ermwhat?"

Stanley Parable was by most accounts a Mind Screw in a good way so starting by accepting that expectation is probably a safe bet.

...So does that mean we should expect this game to be just as mind screwey as The Stanley Parable, if not even more than The Stanley Parable?

I'm just praying it's another branching paths/multiple endings kind of deal.

Calling it "a narrative video game" makes me think it'll be another deconstruction with an Interactive Narrator.

Davey Wreden told me that the video is unlisted for a reason, guys.

So, it's been October 1st for quite some time now and I haven't really seen anything anywhere?

"Stanley was getting impatient. He had been combing the internet for ten whole minutes and nothing had turned up. Was he supposed to wait? Could it be that this was one of these fancy "ARG's" he'd heard so much about? Was any of it even real?"

edited 1st Oct '15 7:52:02 AM by LE0Night

Up on Steam! For a pretty cheap buck to boot.

also

Get hyped

edited 1st Oct '15 10:15:32 AM by LE0Night

Up to $7.99 (20% discount) now.

Woah, Eurogamer gives the game the Essential badge? Holy shit I gotta buy that!

edited 1st Oct '15 10:15:15 AM by YoKab

The Steam listing and the reviews popped up pretty much within the same second so it's safe to say this has been a well kept secret for a while.

edit: For this kind of game I guess a plot description pretty much equals a spoiler but the reviews seem to suggest it's a meta-narrative about game-development.

edited 1st Oct '15 10:25:32 AM by LE0Night

Well I've played it now.

It's a real trip.

Best I can say is it's more like an interactive story. very linear and definitely sticking to a core point throughout the piece. Unfortunately for a lot of people. It's going to be one of those Pretentious Walking Simulators that has little point. The point it's making is very. VERY specific and there will probably be a few refunds on that issue.

edited 2nd Oct '15 1:32:28 PM by stevebat

It's the wrong hour of the night to be buying video games, but maybe I'll buy this in the morning. Read the Jim Sterling review. Sounds like a trip indeed.

edited 2nd Oct '15 11:27:27 PM by MetaSkipper

Huh. Feelings. I did not expect there to be feelings.

It was quite the moment when I remembered that the thought I'd had when the narrator first started waffling on about the "space between the doors" literally was "This guy might be reading a little bit too much into things here". And then.

I expected something philosophically educational, like a gaming equivalent of Sophies World. House Of Leaves turned out to be closer. "This is not for you".

edited 3rd Oct '15 8:47:14 PM by LE0Night

"Played" it yesterday. Only thing I can say is... huh. I don't know if I liked it or not. The idea behind it is very good, in my opinion, but the pacing might be a little too slow if you don't like these first few "games". On the other hand, the story needs those to set up what happens later.

Despite me being slightly bored by the slowness of the "games" and sort of expecting it, the climax still managed to emotionally shock me. Especially when you think back to all these games and realize that the message was not really "I can't stand myself anymore", but "I can't stand you anymore".

I was kind of expecting a commentary on the tropes of games and how they are made. and it start's out as much. Quite enjoyed that part. but after the first half...

I didn't enjoy the twists at all. The Tower is particularly nasty considering what has happened to me before. This is a good reminder to seek the solution to the problem, not just state that the problem is there.

I guess the moral might be that other people aren't problems to be solved? Or something like that?

Still, some parts of the climax hit me pretty hard too. I've... not really been there, thankfully, but I've been close enough and it was very unconfortable.

edited 6th Oct '15 12:59:14 AM by Cozzer

I'm in a bit of a weird position on this. For most of the second half of the game, it struck home and resonated with me perhaps more than any piece of media ever has. The climax, while intellectually interesting, sort of took away from what was drawing me in to begin with. So I'm not really in a position to judge it objectively.

The twist at the end was wonderfully well-done.

edited 8th Oct '15 9:59:10 PM by PushoverMediaCritic

Oooh... this looks interesting. And The Stanley Parable guys do get an A+ in game presentation and looking at the status quo sideways... totally buying it soon.

This is probably rather vital context for The Beginner's Guide

Poor guy.

edited 9th Oct '15 11:57:34 AM by LE0Night

So I saw a walkthrough of the game.

And read the link above.

Ok, I really really really don't want to come off as a butthole, but let me see what's happening. After The Stanley Parable came out and people started gushing about its Off the Rails nature and Game of the Year status and everything, Davey got depressed from the attention?

Really, I want to feel for this guy, I want to say "Hey, man, You Are Better Than You Think You Are", but...I...can't...really see what's there to be sad about. Again, not trying to be a butthole. But hey, surely there are people who have it worse, right? Like Phil Fish? I mean, how about Davey just take a break from games and media in general? Maybe go on a journey to find oneself? Or if he's feeling lonely, how about getting a dog? Corgis are super-sweet.

And as you can see, I have no idea if I'm getting it right or I'm missing the point or I'm overthinking things.

edited 9th Oct '15 2:38:52 PM by TargetmasterJoe

You don't have to understand his pain to acknowledge that it exists.

I get it.

Part of why I deliberately make a choice to not care about people's opinion of my artwork is to prevent myself from needing their approval to think that I'm a good artist. I like doing art for the sake of doing art, not so that people think I'm a good person and I want it to stay that way.

I think from that blog post and The Beginner's Guide, the source of the depression isn't so much getting other people's attention, it's from the realization that now that he has people's attention, he'll feel less validated as a person if he looses that attention or doesn't keep getting it. The entire game seems to be the narrator finding this out about himself and trying to get over that so that the possibility of him loosing people's attention won't bother him anymore.

Part of what really made the game work for me was that Coda's games really reflected my own experience in learning a new artform. He started out modifying existing artwork and techniques and then branched out to his own ideas while playing with different concepts on the way. I got the feeling that these weren't so much games to him as they were him practicing different game concepts/meathods. I particularly got this feeling with the Prison games as it reminded me alot of when I was new at fractal art and was figuring out what all the different options did. It's not until the Tower that Coda actually makes something that's not an exercise for himself, but a game with a message for someone else and that level is different from all the others.

edited 9th Oct '15 4:10:10 PM by ObsidianFire