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The Wait For It Podcast
Hosted by MrEricAlmighty and PhilTheFilipino, the guys discuss all things in Pop Culture from movies, gaming, anime and anything in between. New episodes every Wednesday, all you have to do is...WAIT FOR IT!
The Wait For It Podcast
The Game Room Where It Happens - The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe
We dive into The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe, a meta-commentary game that challenges what a video game can be while providing a compelling experience about choice, predestination, and the relationship between player and creator.
• Plays like an interactive choose-your-own-adventure book with countless branching paths and endings
• Features a narrator who responds to player choices, creating a dynamic relationship between game and player
• Raises philosophical questions about whether player choices in games truly matter
• Compares to shows like Severance with its empty office aesthetic and themes
• Contains numerous Easter eggs, achievements, and meta-humor about the gaming industry
• Challenges traditional definitions of what constitutes a video game
• Both hosts agree the game perfectly accomplishes what it sets out to do
• Works best as a video game despite minimal mechanics, wouldn't translate as well to other mediums
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Speaker 2:PLUS ULTRA.
Speaker 1:Mr Eric Almighty and Phil the Filipino. Yeah, they've got you covered, and all you gotta do is wait for it.
Speaker 2:This is the Wait For it Podcast. Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Wait For it Podcast. I'm your co-host, phil Barrera, aka Phil the Filipino.
Speaker 1:And I'm your other co-host, mr Eric Almighty, and for this edition of the Game Room when it Happens. This is the first time that we have decided to go into a very much first-person exploration video game. That's somewhat meta and is perfect timing, considering that one of our favorite shows is Severance and this game absolutely is an influence to that popular show.
Speaker 2:The game we are covering is the stanley parabel ultra deluxe yeah, and this is a game that has popped up a lot on my feed in terms of like when I go down to youtube rabbit hole, a lot of people will talk about this. As far as influential games or games that are a lot you know are different, or games that isn't a game, so I think we'll talk about all of that here today. I mean, it's over a 10 year old game. It did have a re-release in the form of Ultra Deluxe in 2022. So excited to talk about all of that here, eric, and you know see what we thought about this experience and get into all of that.
Speaker 2:So, before we begin, want to welcome in all of our returning and brand new listeners to the podcast. If you want to know where you can find all the rest of our content, make sure you stick around to the very end. We'll let you know where you can find all of that. So, without further ado, eric, let's just jump into the Stanley Parabell Again. Originally released in 2013, the game carries themes such as choice, the relationship between game creator and player, as well as predestination and fate. You play a silent protagonist named Stanley alongside a narrator, and the player is confronted with a bunch of different branching pathways. Think about a choose your own adventure book, except for you basically start this over and over and over again. So, eric, tell me how you came across this, because, again, I had heard of this over the last few years. How did you come across it here over the last few months?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So a family member was actually playing this and I happened to notice on my friends list on my PlayStation 4, which my son was playing at the time and I was like I don't, what game is that? I've never heard of that game. And then I looked it up and I owned it. I had access to it because it was available on PlayStation Plus one month here recently, in the last, I would say, three to six months. So I didn't even know. You know the vibe when you pull up PlayStation Plus those are my games for the month, you owe me those and you don't even look Unless you see it's the Suicide Squad and you know.
Speaker 2:I don't want this. This month Did I really download this.
Speaker 1:No, so nobody's playing that, this game. I then clicked, went to the PlayStation store, saw some clips and I was like what is this? And my son, who loves stuff like the back rooms, immediately saw the allure of this empty, mysterious office and was like I want to give that a try. So for a game I thought he would kill some time in. We both pressed play and we're taking turns playing this game because it was something that we had no clue going into what it was about and Phil, like I mentioned at the top of the episode, who knew this is something we'd even do an episode about. So definitely a game that's not normally in my wheelhouse, but glad that I kind of stumbled upon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a very, very interesting experience and I know that it sparks a lot of conversation. Even though the reception to this is very good, and rightfully so, it very much leans into, as you mentioned, a lot of meta humor. So, you know, with the rise of a bunch of shows, you know, I think a lot of people think about things like Deadpool, things like that. The writing in this is much better than any Deadpool film Definitely will give it. That Talks about how, even though this game came out over a decade ago, all of the commentary of it is still very relevant, especially with the state of gaming right now. I think it's even more relevant than ever and also kind of shining a spotlight on the expectation of choice. Right, like everybody that plays any open world game or any type of story driven game, they want to know that their choices matter, and in so many instances we're finding out in these big budget games that they don't like.
Speaker 2:The most famous one that I can speak to is Mass Effect, the Mass Effect series. So Mass Effect two, one of my favorite games of all time. I was having a great time with Mass Effect 3, only to find out that every single choice that I made came down to picking one of three different colors and you know you can look into that and how devastating that was for the Mass Effect community and they had to re-release DLC to essentially fix the ending. It was like the how I Met your Mother or Lost of video games at that time. So I think a very, very fun experience for people who have their finger on the pulse of gaming, I think this, if you haven't already played this within the last decade it's been out. That's who I would recommend this to now.
Speaker 1:I would agree with that and I think it's one of those games where, like it had that nostalgic appeal for people that had played the original. And obviously I don't know that because I didn't play it, but that's kind of the vibes I was getting in my research and, for my perspective, somebody completely new to not only this game, but I never really played anything like this because it is very much a pointless game. If you really think about it, phil, what there was an achievement either for this or the original, uh, that's like super rare. Do you remember what that was?
Speaker 2:it was something about like, if you never play the game or something if you don't touch the game for 10 years, you get the uh the achievement or the yeah, or the steam achievement. Now people have cheesed it and now a whole bunch of people have it, unfortunately. But if you had it, if you got it based off of, you know, actually getting it very impressive, but yeah it, literally, if you didn't play the game or touch it for 10 years, you got the trophy achievement, whatever.
Speaker 1:And I think that summarizes what I mean by a pointless game, because it's a game that you don't have to really take seriously. You just kind of go through the flow and figure out what these choices lead to. Sometimes you do the same choice twice, you learn from it, you keep it going. New things appear based off of choices that are made. Phil, this game very much turns into a sequel of itself at one point, which was expanded content for the game. So I just really like all of that. But then you mentioned the narration earlier and I like the meta-ness of it. It's very self-aware At one point and I don't want to say spoilers because there's so much stuff in this game, guys. So I mean, at this point in the episode, if you don't want to hear anything, go play it.
Speaker 1:But, phil, at one point there is a section where we're just going over past reviews of the game, like live reviews, and I thought that was like really funny. I thought it was entertaining and at no point did I really feel like the bit was old. Now, if I doubled my gameplay experience, I wonder what that would be like. But when I brought this episode up to phil, I mentioned that this game you could play two to three hours and have a pretty good idea how to speak to it, and the fact that you went beyond that threshold, phil uh, seemed like a good sign yeah, I hit about a little bit over four hours and a lot of that was because I was just playing through it and my daughter came in and she's like, what are you playing?
Speaker 2:And I just handed her the controller and it was really fun to also watch her make the decision. She also, in her first playthrough, chose the I want to take over the mind control device. So you know, know, that speaks to good or poor parenting, you decide, I don't know that. We had the same initial walkthrough of the game but she didn't get tired. She played it for a good couple hours and didn't really get tired of it until until after that time. So I think it's really fun. Like you said, the, the sequel stuff that portion of it was really cool. Love my bucket, I will die for my bucket. Uh, that that was really interesting.
Speaker 2:And once again, I think really this serves more as a just kind of pointing and having a discussion with what we really perceive as a game. The other game that kind of comes to mind when I think of the stanley parable. There's a game that came out in 2000 also in 2013 and it's called gone home and it is also a. Basically, people have argued that Gone Home really isn't a video game. It's very story-driven, it's basically an interactive book, and that's what I think about as well for the Stanley Parable.
Speaker 2:Is this even really a video game? As much as it is an opportunity to bring a lot of these conversations about the state of gaming into the forefront, like you said, with that meta humor, with really good narration, because there's not really any mechanics to the game. You just walk around, you click, um, at one point you run out of jumps. Uh, did you get that achievement? Did you get that trophy for the jump disable? So if you, after you, use all of your jumps and if you try to jump more later, it gives you, it gives you a trophy. It says, no really, we disabled the button.
Speaker 1:So, um, that was fun okay, well, talking about again things that you made me have an experience. Did you get the when you were asked to enter in the time at the beginning of the game when you loaded it up? Yeah, did you get the prompts and the discussions about?
Speaker 1:like you really didn't have to do this thank you so much like this means nothing. And then, like every time you would do it, it would just be like wow, you're like really dedicated, you do not have to do this and I was determined it led to something. So those are like the little things in the game that like make you want to keep going, because when you think the game has found its ending point, its stopping point, it doesn't, it just has an endless amount. It's a pointless game about nothing that you can you could kill so much time in.
Speaker 1:And I think when we talked about a game like last month in Guardians of the Galaxy, one of the frustrating things I've had with some of these games is the decision making doesn't really matter in some of these games that present like dialogue, options or choices that you can make, and I feel like, if you're going to go all the way in on it, this is the type of game you would do that for, and I don't know. I just really appreciated it and, as you can maybe hear in my voice, we did a convention this past weekend, so it was like perfect timing for us to do an episode like this that's a little casual, about a game that phil has much of a legacy, but also I've never heard a single person talk about in our friend circle no, and I don't think you really would, because I would never be like man, you really gotta play the Stanley Parable.
Speaker 2:It would be more so if somebody was like I came across this game called the Stanley Parable and I'd be like, oh yeah, I really enjoyed my time with that game. It would never be something that, like, I actively promoted to people. I was trying to figure out if, when the game came out, when Ultra Deluxe came out, if it was like made available for free to people who already had the original game I don't know if you came across that. I do see that it was made, for the original game was made free on the Epic Game Store in March 2020. 2020, man, that would have been a good time to play through this. Huh, right, right as the the world shut down. So I'm not sure. I guess it was uh, because I believe the ultra deluxe was when it was first made available for consoles.
Speaker 1:So yeah I don't know that yeah, it's considered an already had it.
Speaker 2:okay, yeah, and it was. Uh, even, like I said, I, we haven't even touched the surface as far as how many endings there are in this game. I did look up some of them on YouTube that I won't spoil here. But yeah, and for those of you sickos that like to play on mobile, it's also on iOS, so you can even play it on your iPad or your iPhone.
Speaker 1:That's crazy, but again a fun experience Nonetheless. It's a game that on uh for pc, at least on metacritic and open critic has a 90. So again.
Speaker 2:I didn't even think about oh, I'm not playing on pc. I was like oh my god, mods, but I'm playing on a playstation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pretty pretty. I mean honestly, the. The scores in general are, uh, the ones that are there on metacritic pretty high and yeah, uh, top critic average right now nine, uh, 90 if it matters. The the one that are there on Metacritic pretty high and yeah, top critic average right now 990 if it matters. The, the one that literally matters the least, but we bring up all the time. Ign gave it a nine for whatever that's worth. So, yeah, that is uh, the Stanley Parable guys like it just again is a very simple concept and game that I think is executed really, really well and, although phil says he wouldn't actively promote it, here we are releasing an episode on the podcast feed so let me ask you is this a game?
Speaker 1:yeah, is it. Yeah, I had fun with it yeah, I had fun too.
Speaker 2:I'm just asking you is is, is this a video game?
Speaker 1:we probably should have had this discussion before placing it in the game no, but well, we hadn't played it yet.
Speaker 2:Well, really well, I I had. You know you'd played a little bit of it, but like I I'm in in its execution, in in its experience, like, would you, would you classify this?
Speaker 1:because I think you can make an argument that it's not even really a video game, as much as it is, again, an interact, interactive storytelling, interactive conversation okay, okay between yourself and and the narrator I will present to you a example of the only thing I think, the only thing I can think of that you would do instead and tell me if that would work better or a different medium or genre would work better.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking you would imagine this is like a netflix interactive show oh, kind of like, where, like yeah like where you'd click the remote and say I want to do this action and then it plays a clip. In my opinion and I am really curious what you think based off your question In my opinion that doesn't work as well as if you're holding the controller and the aesthetic of the video game. But if there's another medium or genre that you're thinking this could work, let me know, because that would lead lead, uh, to some credence to your thought. Sure, I think this is a video game for that reason, because I can't think of one, I can't think of another genre or medium for it yeah, because it's not like you can do that in like a movie or, and even even though there are, you know how you would.
Speaker 2:Everybody did this, everybody cheated on the pick your own adventure book. You're like you'd like peek over to the page. You're like, nope, I don't want that ending, I want to go. I don't want to do that one you know.
Speaker 1:And I've been. I've been getting into a lot of games recently where it's been fun to pick it up where I left off right, and it's just easy to pick up and put down. So like slay the spire, uh bellatro, I'm playing those and one of the main appeals Stanley Parabell, is that like I don't have to start over, I just kind of pick up from where I left off, where, like when I brought up that interactive show concept, it's probably not going to work the same, especially for the amount of turns and endings as well and endings that you could take with this game.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I would. I feel like I've made a strong argument. You tell us, but I, yeah, I think very much. It is a video game and I think it perfects everything it sets out to do, even if it only really accomplishes like two or three things. At the end of the day, it is pointless. It is a video game though.
Speaker 2:Also it is do you get the rocket league ending the rocket league?
Speaker 1:I don't know, I'm just okay, all right, tell me about that after, yeah, so but yeah the stanley barrowball, everybody uh I told phil uh, at a particular time I was gonna gonna cut it off because at some point we'll just ramble and phil, maybe this is it. I thought I think that's a valid question, though, and I'm very curious for people who have played it what they think, because ultimately, it has a a decent community, especially with the way this thing performed when it released the expansion, you know, when it came onto Steam. So if you are a Stanley Parabell lover, let us know what you think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and for those of you that are considering playing it and dive into it, don't overthink it. Don't overthink it. Also. There's no jump scares. It has a very creepy aesthetic because of the backroom feel, which is so crazy that it's coming up so much here recently with me.
Speaker 1:But we did talk about the back rooms. But the one you. The reason I thought you might like this game is the severance times. Did you yeah, did you get that vibe for sure? What was your thought?
Speaker 2:100. Yeah, it's definitely very much walking through the, the halls of lumen. So, uh, really really cool. Honestly, they could release a severance partnership or mod and okay now, oh my gosh, it would be, it'd be crazy, that would be wild love that. So imagine like milchick chasing you down the hall. Now it's a totally different game, but still just imagine milchick chasing you is it though, like I don't know?
Speaker 1:I feel like those would be things they could implement that wouldn't break the mechanics of the game like.
Speaker 2:Imagine waking up in the conference room and you hear mark honestly, I'm like super excited I didn't.
Speaker 1:Whatever I made that I I didn't even think about that. Uh, yeah, that would work, and they could either make it a stanley parable dlc or they could like have some partnership where it's just a severance game under that model. I don't know, either one works for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a Severance game doesn't need to have crazy graphics either, or you don't even keep it the same way it is and you never see anybody. You just hear Milchak or Cobell or whatever All the different rooms you can go to.
Speaker 1:That's super cool. That would be a fun concept when the show ends, I feel. Give people a little bit more of a taste and keep the legacy of the show going. Praise Kier, just walk into a room with goats. That's what it's all about.
Speaker 2:Alright, folks. Well, again, we definitely recommend the experience that is the Stanley Parabell, whether you think that it's a video game or not. For those of you that have been longtime fans of this game, please let us know what did you think when Ultra Deluxe came out, if you played it all the way back when it originally released in 2013. But if you want to find all the rest of our content or anything else to keep up with us, such as social media, you can find that in the Linktree link in the show notes of this episode. The best ways to keep up with us over on social media are Instagram, tiktok, discord and Twitch. We also release videos on YouTube. If you prefer a visual medium, you can support the show by heading over to Apple Podcasts, spotify your favorite podcast player and giving us a five-star review. Thumbs up, five stars, whatever that may be over there. Like, share, subscribe on YouTube.
Speaker 2:You guys know the drill and sharing content, letting us know that you listen, letting other people know that you listen. I cannot stress how, like we had more people than we probably ever have come up to us at this previous convention and tell us that they were listening. We love that Like. Thank you guys so much. It's so cool meeting y'all in person and knowing that you listen. It means the world. So, but if you find yourself maybe wanting to join a very, very fun community to get some extra perks for the podcast, eric will let you know about that before we wrap up.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So that would be Patreon, which we're pushing hard this year because we're doing a lot more on that platform and we can only do those things with your support and the support of our current patrons Briar, stefan, t3kato, corey from the World is my Burrito and Vintage, and Bridget from Retro AV Rewind. We really appreciate your support on that platform in exchange for behind the scenes and early access to episodes like this one. Speaking of that convention, I got some footage behind the scenes of how our weekend went and I'm trying to do a vlog style. I'm really going out of my element, doing some things out of the norm this year, and creating a vlog is one of them.
Speaker 1:I'm summoning my inner Ivan patch Very envious. Go check his vlogs out if you're interested in the convention scene. But all the free stuff to support the show helps immensely the likes, the comments, the shares, the listens, the engagement all of the above is appreciated and we will see you on the next one. My name is Mr Eric Almighty. That is my co-host, phil the filipino, and please don't forget, we release new episodes every wednesday on the podcast, plus bonus content on platforms like twitch and tiktok, and all you gotta do is wait for it so I heard you're looking for a go-to source for entertainment.
Speaker 2:Wait for it Gaming.
Speaker 1:Wait for it. Anime Plus Ultra. Mr Eric Almighty and Phil the Filipino yeah, they've got you covered.
Speaker 2:And all you gotta do is wait for it. This is the Wait For it Podcast.
