In the age of Rick and Morty, endless doses of nostalgia, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe multiverse, the term “going meta” has gone quite mainstream. What better time for developer Crows Crows Crows to release an updated version of 2013’s The Stanley Parable, a first-person narrative adventure that pushed the boundaries of what a video game could be and was far ahead of its time. The newer edition, called The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, will be releasing on April 27 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
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Ultra Deluxe includes a slew of new storylines to follow and new endings to ponder, building on the content in the original in what the team is calling an “expanded reimagining.” Knowing how esoteric Stanley’s adventures get in the original and considering that this is the game with a demo that is secretly a completely separate game about the concept of demos, it’s entirely possible that the whole game is completely different this time around. It’s at least much bigger, as designer Davey Wreden said that the Ultra Deluxe script is longer than the entire base game.
Ostensibly about an atypical day at the office for a typical man named Stanley, The Stanley Parable branches off into numerous rabbit holes by taking player choice into account above all else. The new edition will take the game to consoles for the first time. The original release, which is as famous for its acclaimed plotting as it is for its droning but poignant narrator, was a critical darling when it came out on PC.
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The Ultra Deluxe release date has been a long time coming. The upgraded version was originally announced in December 2018 for a release in 2019. It was then delayed into 2020 before being pushed again to 2021 and then, finally, into 2022. Crows Crows Crows handled this in its signature style, poking fun at how companies usually delay their games through a certain brand of social media post.
