One day you'll turn a rat man; and then, your story'll stop being so pointless, won't it? All these years questions such as: what I'm? Why do I even feel like I exist? Why reality exists in the first place? Were either ignored or unanswered correctly, but reality is your consciousness were nothing but a hallucination of schizophrenic scientists working in Aperture Science. And why do I get explanation right now, and why is it in form of a TH-cam comment? Well, that's just effect of your pills kicks i- Sorry, it doesn't, you're looked in your sick imagination, until dose'll arrive... If it will.
I'm also happy that the creators of Stanley Parable allowed it. Even if he has the voice of the narrator, it's still the devs who handle the rights for the voice style. (I think)
@@we_played_Hob_Gobbies_together That's where the "I think" part goes. Thanks for not reading all of my comment and leaving the most important part. Bozo.
@@leilanpad9638 sadly, no... but it's definitely one of the most popular ones, if I remember. I'm not sure if there are that many mods of the Stanley Parable honestly, so it should be easy to find. Heck, there's even a video showcasing it.
Well now they need to update that boundary break ending to randomly have a chance of the Narrator abandoning Stanley, and then coming back after a minute, and grumble about rats noclipping through the walls.
"Apologies Stanley, there were just some rats flying around the office that I had to deal with. What? Of course flying rats exist! No, I'm not arguing with you Stanley, you and me are going to talk now about how boundary breaking ruins the artistic intent of creators. Wait, how did you get the Bucket?! You aren't supposed to... oh... I see.. you aren't Stanley.... You're a little rat boy too. Sneak your way into the new, new content early did you? Well I won't stop you. Im tired of people ruining my story. I'm just going to go to the memory zone. Feel free to restart any time you like."
It's more that Shesez's audio compressor isn't setup correctly, so it's just uniformly lowering the volume of anyone speaking, then super high octane mega boosting into space all the quiet bits where the lip smacks and breathing are.
Having taken a class over the business of voice over, the breaths were very noticeable and distracting. Not that it takes away from the Narrator, of course, it's just a mild distraction. Most breaths are taken out of audio recordings when implemented into projects.
You see Stanley, this is what happens when greedy content creators sign off on a deal to the game developers to have original lines recorded for their video.
15:30 That rat appears at multiple places! If you hang around for a while in the "pink room", you'll find this rat occasionally peeking out from a slit in a box lying on the floor.
William just being overwhelmingly sarcastic regarding Bitterman and Narbacular Drop is really quality stuff. More developers should just state absolutely, empirically false information when asked for the meaning of their art, and I'm not kidding.
When William came to a set of two open doors, he created an alternate reality where he proceeded through the left door as a particle and the right door as a wave.
"flying photographic rat, scurrying around behind the scenes taking minuscule rat photos, for your rat blog, on a much smaller version of the internet, for rats" that one is going to stick to me like molten cheese
19:01 There is a random dialogue the Narrator may say when starting a new game: that you're being followed and if you turn around quickly, you might catch them. Knowing this makes that dialogue a lot funnier =)
There's actually a part of the 2013 version where you can see another Stanley run by if you're quick enough to get there when that bit of dialog is playing.
@@nixter4214 Yeah, he’s still there and it still creeps me out to this day. (I’ve seen him a couple times, and both times, it was late at night and I was alone in my room.) Although, I don’t understand why people still keep saying that if you’re fast enough while that dialogue is playing, you can see him, because I remember I waited around at the start of the game for a few minutes and that particular dialogue didn’t play and I still saw him.
Funniest Boundary Break episode ever! William’s explanations and outro had me rolling!! Lots of amazing discoveries and great explanations on your part too!
@Safwaan yeah and who gives a shit if its unique? its entertaining and this is so niche it wouldnt become cliche` so quickly as to warrant a dumb comment like this.
5:41 not only is it a "flat texture of a skull" - it's SPECIFICALLY the anamorphically-distorted painting of a skull included in Holbein's "The Ambassadors"! They managed to make this easter egg even more fun than it used to be!
A common hypothesis about The Ambassadors that I've seen stated as fact is that it was meant to be placed at a doorway or stairwell, so that viewers would see the skull clearly. kinda poetic for a piece that's supposed to be viewed from a specific angle to be referenced in the stanley parable.
The distorted skull texture is most definitely a nod to Hans Holbein’s Renaissance painting “The Ambassadors”, which features a similarly distorted, anamorphic skull. The skull was strategically placed and rendered so that it would be seen properly from a doorway leading to the room where the painting was originally placed, and if you go see it at the National Gallery in London, they even went to the trouble of adding a nice footprint marker on the floor, so you can witness the effect for yourself.
5:40 That skull is from the painting "The Ambassadors" from 1533. The skull in the painting is also stretched and distorted and can really only be seen properly when looking at the painting from a specific angle, so them having it stretched in-game is very fitting.
Its role, too, is in the spirit of "memento mori," whereby works of art would include some symbol of death as a reminder that any form of life depicted is ultimately fleeting and will pass. The painting contains the implication of its own undoing. Pretty fitting for the ending which uses controlled perspective to present a false image of "freedom" in the form of a straight path the player is not allowed to deviate from.
@A Toaster I can totally understand that feeling! I've read that the painting was done to hang in the landing of a staircase, so the angle of the skull would be fitting if someone was walking up the stairs and looking at the painting.
it would be so cool if a huge game company such as Valve would take an interesting gameplay mechanic based off of that from Narbacular drop and evolve it into its own game mostly made with reused things from half-life and a connected story to half-life, and eventually create a sequel that would forever impact gaming as a whole due to its perfectly done story, memorable cast of characters, creative gameplay mechanics, and fun multiplayer mode. That's just me tho
10:19 Man, it's such a shame that there was never a fully-realized version of Narbacular Drop. You'd think that with a concept so revolutionary the whole team would be picked up by a really prolific game developer and be allowed to make something that changed the gaming world as we know it...
Valve picked up on it and thats what the game is using. The game simply used Portal 2's world portals. Its the same engine. There are several maps in Portal 2 that do the same.
at 10:25 the obscure game William is talking about is actually the precursor to Portal and features Portal's main mechanic of the portals, Gabe would see the game and hire them to create portal. edit: from memory the "wormholes" are used to project the screen that you see when you look into a portal but haven't entered it yet. Edit 2: this is just bri ish humour with him calling it obscure
And if you haven't played Narbacular Drop (so named to make it easy to search for) you should. It's the direct predecessor to Portal, but the player character (Princess No-Knees) can't jump, like Stanley. (Also you don't just shoot the portals, you can actually slide them around and the view through changes accordingly.)
Yeah it was odd to hear about the oft-forgotten precursor to Portal and then hear it’s not s precursor to anything. It’s such an odd gap in information. It’s like knowing the name and birthday of the artist that sculpted Mount Rushmore, but not knowing what state Mount Rushmore is in.
THANK YOU. It blew my mind to hear the guy say that the obscure game that went nowhere was a precursor to one of the most defining games of that generation.
12:05 It's a model from Half-Life 2. Originally, The Stanley Parable was an HL2 mod, and this location is a destructed version of the map from the mod. So these monitors are taken from the Eli's lab
@Dino Sauro that looks like blender or maya to me, i can see the node editor, outliner, timeline etc. graph editor and stuff as well, grease pencil drawing.
19:15 I'm willing to believe that this stanlurine is used for the "collectable get" screen that pops up whenever you collect the first si- I mean, all six of them. Complete with the subtle blue rimlight.
12:05 Those monitors are lifted straight from Half-Life 2. This entire ending is a reference to the original 2011 mod version of The Stanley Parable, which used to use Half-Life 2 assets. On one of the monitors, you can see the head of a Cremator, which was an enemy cut from Half-Life 2. *EDIT:* Also, since this comment of mine seems to be gaining some traction, I think you should do some Boundary Break episodes on some Need For Speed games.
4:57 This is exactly what makes this game genius, they don’t care if people find out or not, they just want layers and layers of meta details in this game and I applaud them for that.
14:43 It IS an asset import! Davey confirmed it when his brother played this ending on stream; he said he only had to message the devs and they sent him the assets.
Narrator: "Now this is a story, all about how, this man's whole world was upside-down. Now sit right there, if you would so kindly. As I tell you a story, of a man named Stanley."
The 2D skull in the freedom ending is also a refference to a panting called "The Ambassador". It was hung up in a stairwell so the artist added an illusion where if you look at it from the top or the bottom of the stairs the elongateds skull would appear 3D.
6:12 That "weird grid texture" is one of the default Dev textures for Source. Most likely the developers put it on the bridge because it's not meant to be seen from Stanley's perspective up close. It also saves on resources as its low detail
Im kinda loving how delightfully energetic the developers are when commenting on your findings! Really shows you how much care and passion they put into their game!
Kevan Brighting, the narrator, I don't think is a developer, but William is and Davey Wreden is the writer and original creator of the first version of the game. Also fun fact; do you know about the TH-cam channel "DougDoug"? If you do, his real name is Doug Wreden, and he is actually the brother of Davey Wreden!
I’m assuming that the low poly rat is another reference to “Little Stanley”, with the first one I noticed being somewhere outside during the first visit to the Memory Zone, which is a picture of a real rat that says something like “R.I.P. Little Stanley” on it. (I can’t remember the exact quote) Who Little Stanley was though, I don’t know, but I’d have to assume that it was a pet for someone who worked on the game.
Speaking of rats, I forget where I found it, but when the Narrator is revisiting the Stanlurines (Figleys?) the pink room has a little rat inside one of the file boxes.
When I saw the one in the memory zone, I thought it was someone on the dev team's pet hamster. did not realize there was a theme of dead rats through the whole thing :P
I assume firewatch has so much environment because they just ported it straight from the game. The entire game wasn't loaded at once, rather they had sections that would load based on location. That circle was the medicine wheel.
@@XanderHDD It looks worse because having the entire map load in all at once would be a lot of pressure on a computer; like staryoshi said, parts of the map only load depending on the players location (aka doesn’t load until the player gets close enough to notice) and because the player can’t really go beyond the tower here, the majority of the map doesn’t load, and the parts it does load are low poly. (Source: I am a game art major who works on these kinds of things)
I recognise the skull from the end of the Freedom ending. It's ripped right from a famous painting titled _"The Ambassadors"_ which is most well known for the incredibly well-done anamorphic depiction of a skull which is only properly visible if the painting is viewed at an oblique angle. Also, the skull itself is the object that the Narrator is called from.
he's so damn british. I somehow never picked up on it before, despite the narrator, the plug sockets, probably the license plate on the car in the insanity ending..
"Look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. ..." That Shodan reference is a clever Easter egg of devs calling you a hacker lol
12:05 is using a desk prop from HL2, eli's lab. The screen on the right, with the almost circled thingy is actually the head of a scrapped beta NPC called the cremator. It was supposed to walk the streets and burn any dead bodies. The devs just left it there as a "funny haha" I guess, but the actual head of the scrapped NPC can be found and inspected. It is sealed in a jar... Really makes you think - if valve didn't scrap the beta version of Half life 2, how dark and sadistic would it be? And that's not even the darkest thing about the beta.
12:05 It looks like the room from Stanley Parable 2011 edition, when it was just a mod for HL2. So the model you see here is also from HL2, precisely it is used in Eli's lab in Black Mesa East. Also, you can see a Cremator head image on one of the monitors.
The part of the video that talks about being warped back to the top of the “infinite” hole made me realize something. Because of this warping functionality, the narrator technically COULD have created a truly infinite hole if he actually wanted to, but just chose not to because he figured “the hole was as deep as anyone would actually need.”
Thumbs up on the intro ALONE holy crap! I can't believe I'm just discovering this video now! Kevan Brighting is such a wonderful human being, and he plays the role of snide, sarcastic British crumpet *so* well, I wish him (and you) nothing but the best of luck! This game was one of the most formative for me in my life -- it's where I first started watching TH-cam videos, watching JSE and his playthrough, so this game holds a ton of nostalgia for me, then playing it myself and getting to experience it in my own time was another wonderful treat. Thank you for making this!
The anamorphic skull at 5:50 is definitely a shout out to Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors (1533). It was the fashion at the time to include reminders of death, or memento mori, in art. As the ending is essentially Stanley giving up free will to live in ignorant bliss, I think the comparison is obvious
I just found out about this channel, So when he started his "Intro", i actually thought that it was a recorded part of Stanly Parable, used for preventing players to see the actual game.
6:20: That "really odd grid texture" is just a dev texture, I'm guessing they figured it looked enough like a bridge to just leave it like that (or potentially they missed it for the same reason)
I see that Keven has been active good for him,also classic narrator,being petty. Also this isn’t disappointing to us. Edit: And the others like William for coming up too.
5:04 playing through the game for the first time, i found a glitch here that lets you drop down below the walkway into the black box surrounding you. if you carefully wrap around the left side of the railing without hitting the area that triggers the final cutscene you can drop down and prevent yourself from finishing the game, forcing you to restart. i was expecting the narrator to say something clever like he does in the white room or the monitor room, but he never did
12:31, its a reference to the fact that the game was originally in the source engine. the whole area is made out of Half Life 2 textures including the monitors. The face on that monitor is a scraped NPC from Half Life 2 called the cremator.
10:27 fun fact!! If im not mistaken, narbacular drop is actually the precursor to the portal series! (Not lore related) if I remember correctly the dev team of nar drop were contacted by valve and later on made portal 1 just from their concept of the demon faces making portable holes (wormholes)
10:25 so sad to see narbacular drop never bore any fruits of the team's labor. i really feel like the orange box could've used a game with the same concept
@@SuccerEspecially since the technique isn't called wormholes, it's called portals or portalling. Very useful for creating seemingly impossible rooms and hallways (If you've seen anyone play MyHouse.wad, a portal is used to reveal the rooms where you pick up the pepsi and milkshake among many many other places.)
14:18 that's the medicine wheel and it's actually featured in Firewatch. They seem to have directly ported the center of the Firewatch map and some of the other things made it into the game too. Neato!
The Narrator is by far my favorite character in any video game and he doesn't even have a model, hearing him here is insane. Stanley Parable is absolutely legendary, 10/10 video.
Fun fact, although this video is very old: The people that developed the „wormhole“ and Narbacula Drop are the same people that later worked for Valve and developed „Portal“ which is using the same technique. They‘re also the ones that ported the wormhole to the Source engine, allowing developers like the ones of Stanley Parable to make use of it.
In a period in paintings it was a big thing to include skulls as a reminder of death, called a memento mori (I think) especially popular to sneak them into commissioner paintings for rich clients. Sometimes these skulls would be really obvious, but sometimes they'd be weird stretched out images of a skull so that you'd only recognise it for what it is by looking at it from a specific direction. Sounds like the developers of the Deluxe Edition didn't just save on resources - they upgraded the art history reference.
12:11 the monitor on the far right is a Cremator, a cut enemy from Half-Life 2. The Stanley Parable was originally an HL2 mod, which is what this ending references.
12:05 As others have pointed out, these were assets lifted from HL2. As far as whats on the screen, it looks exactly like FL Studio, which is a DAW for music production
Guys the news letter is absolutely amazing trust me you won’t regret it, I actually need to go back and read past newsletters because the comedy is top tier
6:26 that grid texture is just a dev texture for hammer aka source but it is strange considering that ultra deluxe is made in unity unlike the original made with the hammer editor
Amazing episode!! I was kinda bummed we didn’t get to see more of the (mostly) infinite hole. It’s my favorite part of the game. Not gonna spoil anything, it really is special, it would be great to see how it works and changes
11:59 So this out of bounds sequence is actually a callback to the original Half-Life 2 mod version of The Stanley Parable, those monitors are taken straight from Eli's Lab in HL2, along with most of the textures and assets there.
was Eli very into music production? Because I swear on the monitors, that looks like a low res, 2011 version of fruity loops (FL Studio) and I can't tell if I'm tripping or not.
"go ahead rat boy"
best line ever
One day you'll turn a rat man; and then, your story'll stop being so pointless, won't it? All these years questions such as: what I'm? Why do I even feel like I exist? Why reality exists in the first place? Were either ignored or unanswered correctly, but reality is your consciousness were nothing but a hallucination of schizophrenic scientists working in Aperture Science. And why do I get explanation right now, and why is it in form of a TH-cam comment? Well, that's just effect of your pills kicks i-
Sorry, it doesn't, you're looked in your sick imagination, until dose'll arrive... If it will.
I was gonna say.. Zamn
@@melonowl333 i mean....🫣
@@ZtarvoKright? 💀😭
Oranglordd you are everywhere, you are in reckerless stream chat and in the comment section of stanley parable
I like how William constantly sounds like he’s being held at gun point to say the lines.
i like how William is being held at gunpoint to say the lines.
And its the same voice actor as the man on a secret ending
Kinda true
I'm completely in love with the OG comment, I can't un-hear it, not to mention he also sounds constantly on edge, truly fascinating
I like how the gun is being held at Williampoint.
Hearing the Narrator call you a rat boy has so much incredible meme potential.
TRUE
The rat on the couch only makes sense with that quote
Squeak-sez
Olaf saying "And theyre dead!" From frozen 2 had so much meme potential but no one did that
Yes
The games have given Kevan Brighting a secure job as the Narrator. What a down to earth guy if he's lending his voice for the community as well.
Yeah, he's done the Narrator voice a couple other times for other TH-cam projects. Real cool dude.
I love it
I'm also happy that the creators of Stanley Parable allowed it. Even if he has the voice of the narrator, it's still the devs who handle the rights for the voice style. (I think)
@@konaqua122 Nah that's not how it works. Good try bozo.
@@we_played_Hob_Gobbies_together That's where the "I think" part goes. Thanks for not reading all of my comment and leaving the most important part. Bozo.
The stretched skull is in reference to a 500 year old Easter egg where a painter hid a stretched out skull you had to look at a specific angle to see
Do you know the name of said painting?
@@Freezorgium The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein
Thank you, I feel so cultured!
wow i looked that up.. hhhoowwww did he do that back then? What, did he get down at a weird angle and try to paint 'forward' from that angle?
came here to say this
"Go ahead ratboy" is strangely such a powerful sentence
"go ahead rat boy" *doom music starts playing*
Kevan Brighting is absolutely fabulous. Love how he’s always willing to contribute to projects like this.
Remember when he contributed to a mod that turned the Escape Pod ending into a good ending? That was super neat.
@@Mike14264 do you remember what the mod name is and the author?
@@leilanpad9638 sadly, no... but it's definitely one of the most popular ones, if I remember. I'm not sure if there are that many mods of the Stanley Parable honestly, so it should be easy to find. Heck, there's even a video showcasing it.
It's right here: th-cam.com/video/-9EGHaOCl5c/w-d-xo.html
i remember seeing a video of like, some guys school project that they managed to get kevan brighting to do a voiceover for
Hearing the narrator was such a hilarious and interesting opening. As always, great video!
Ye
that was hilarious
i couldn't even watch this video, william sounds cringy as fk
More than just the opening
@Yes , i agree shut up
Well now they need to update that boundary break ending to randomly have a chance of the Narrator abandoning Stanley, and then coming back after a minute, and grumble about rats noclipping through the walls.
Why can I vividly imagine this?
"Apologies Stanley, there were just some rats flying around the office that I had to deal with. What? Of course flying rats exist! No, I'm not arguing with you Stanley, you and me are going to talk now about how boundary breaking ruins the artistic intent of creators. Wait, how did you get the Bucket?! You aren't supposed to... oh... I see.. you aren't Stanley....
You're a little rat boy too. Sneak your way into the new, new content early did you? Well I won't stop you. Im tired of people ruining my story. I'm just going to go to the memory zone. Feel free to restart any time you like."
I like how he says. "Its a way for lazy developers..." before goung on to show off a super sweet effect I didnt know was possible in gaming.
I know he references Nerbacular Drop, but Valve hired those guys and they went on to create Portal using that tech.
Well it is lazy cause the whole thing is in the same level, it's not like he's saving any space
@@Adriethyl it's a joke, he's acting like Portal never happened
🎶 C u m 🎶
@@JenkemJohannes69 mm
The fact that you managed to collaborate with the narrator and creator of the Stanley Parable is incredible
i found the creator kind of annoying
@@Rusty84CV That's kind of on purpose.
davey warden created the stanley parable, william is just the CEO of the company, and helped with the remake
@@sonicSnap that’s just completely untrue. The two of them co-created it originally and now Davey is mostly just the writer
@@Soup_of_goop Davey made the original mod. William came on board for the remake and has been dining out on it ever since
Hearing the narrator without proper audio editing is an interesting experience
It's more that Shesez's audio compressor isn't setup correctly, so it's just uniformly lowering the volume of anyone speaking, then super high octane mega boosting into space all the quiet bits where the lip smacks and breathing are.
Breathing is a human thing, we can only talk for so long until we run out of breath.
@@xDEADLOCKEDx2468 most videos cut breaths if you have never noticed.
Having taken a class over the business of voice over, the breaths were very noticeable and distracting. Not that it takes away from the Narrator, of course, it's just a mild distraction. Most breaths are taken out of audio recordings when implemented into projects.
@@C.I... most people do that since a lot of people don’t know how compression and side chaining works
That intro was legendary!
(And outro)
The intro was just a little part of it
You see Stanley, this is what happens when greedy content creators sign off on a deal to the game developers to have original lines recorded for their video.
It was!
3d cheese!
15:30 That rat appears at multiple places! If you hang around for a while in the "pink room", you'll find this rat occasionally peeking out from a slit in a box lying on the floor.
Theres also another rat i found in the area where the narrator was showing off all the stuff for the Stanley parable 2
@@Zer0_days_Offical I didn't expect to find you here tbh
@@qwp1884 I expected him there
@@Zer0_days_OfficalDo you recall where exactly?
The Narrator actually being in the video is possibly the best thing ever
William just being overwhelmingly sarcastic regarding Bitterman and Narbacular Drop is really quality stuff. More developers should just state absolutely, empirically false information when asked for the meaning of their art, and I'm not kidding.
I think he's on drugs? 😂
@@MostBronzeChunner i'm afraid he's just hilarious
He pretty much quoted the Quake wiki word for word lol
William is the personification of his own game
When William came to a set of two open doors, he created an alternate reality where he proceeded through the left door as a particle and the right door as a wave.
"flying photographic rat, scurrying around behind the scenes taking minuscule rat photos, for your rat blog, on a much smaller version of the internet, for rats"
that one is going to stick to me like molten cheese
Legendary, absolutely legendary.
I think that just described the NSA
The narrator commenting on clipping through walls and insulting you for it at the beginning had me laughing so hard
Was that actually part of the game or did the person making this video add those lines?
19:01 There is a random dialogue the Narrator may say when starting a new game: that you're being followed and if you turn around quickly, you might catch them.
Knowing this makes that dialogue a lot funnier =)
There's actually a part of the 2013 version where you can see another Stanley run by if you're quick enough to get there when that bit of dialog is playing.
@@abadgurl2010 still in the ultra deluxe version
@@nixter4214 Yeah, he’s still there and it still creeps me out to this day. (I’ve seen him a couple times, and both times, it was late at night and I was alone in my room.) Although, I don’t understand why people still keep saying that if you’re fast enough while that dialogue is playing, you can see him, because I remember I waited around at the start of the game for a few minutes and that particular dialogue didn’t play and I still saw him.
@@elisabethheiman2104 he moves in the opposite direction this time
and when you pick up the bucket, the narrator says the paranoia melts away
0:16 hearing his voice like this is so funny to me and i kinda love it for some weird reason
Funniest Boundary Break episode ever! William’s explanations and outro had me rolling!! Lots of amazing discoveries and great explanations on your part too!
Hello oddheader.
Dude thank you so much for continuing to watch my stuff. Keep me in the loop about which conventions you're going to so that I can meet you someday
Oh wow hey oddheader love your and Shesez's content 😀
@@BoundaryBreak whips the ass of a lama lol
"Haha, nice!"
It's such a smart idea to have the actual narrator of the game presenting this episode, keep up tue good work man
@Safwaan Comment didn't say it was unique
@Safwaan yeah and who gives a shit if its unique? its entertaining and this is so niche it wouldnt become cliche` so quickly as to warrant a dumb comment like this.
@Yes , i agree BEGONE BOT
5:41 not only is it a "flat texture of a skull" - it's SPECIFICALLY the anamorphically-distorted painting of a skull included in Holbein's "The Ambassadors"! They managed to make this easter egg even more fun than it used to be!
I noticed this too and got so excited that I know this useless piece of trivia! Bravo internet person!
Is that the one referenced in Minecraft or am I remembering it wrong
A common hypothesis about The Ambassadors that I've seen stated as fact is that it was meant to be placed at a doorway or stairwell, so that viewers would see the skull clearly. kinda poetic for a piece that's supposed to be viewed from a specific angle to be referenced in the stanley parable.
The distorted skull texture is most definitely a nod to Hans Holbein’s Renaissance painting “The Ambassadors”, which features a similarly distorted, anamorphic skull.
The skull was strategically placed and rendered so that it would be seen properly from a doorway leading to the room where the painting was originally placed, and if you go see it at the National Gallery in London, they even went to the trouble of adding a nice footprint marker on the floor, so you can witness the effect for yourself.
that's what I was thinking as well
That's what I was thinking! I always love seeing what kind of hidden obscure references game devs hide
Glad so many people knew about that painting
I wasn't ready for "Will the real error please stand up" lmao
5:40 That skull is from the painting "The Ambassadors" from 1533. The skull in the painting is also stretched and distorted and can really only be seen properly when looking at the painting from a specific angle, so them having it stretched in-game is very fitting.
It also has the cool s in it so yeah
Its role, too, is in the spirit of "memento mori," whereby works of art would include some symbol of death as a reminder that any form of life depicted is ultimately fleeting and will pass. The painting contains the implication of its own undoing. Pretty fitting for the ending which uses controlled perspective to present a false image of "freedom" in the form of a straight path the player is not allowed to deviate from.
@A Toaster so true, also the funny skeleton and the stretch are just way too accurate to todays memes its impressive
Damn, ninja'd. Anyway, It was painted from an "anamorphic perspective" to get the optical illusion effect.
@A Toaster I can totally understand that feeling!
I've read that the painting was done to hang in the landing of a staircase, so the angle of the skull would be fitting if someone was walking up the stairs and looking at the painting.
everytime william comes in it sounds like he's been dying to explain all of this lol
Thanks, Ratboy. The grid on the bridge doesn’t seem weird, it’s just graph paper grids
Probably just a standard placeholder texture
@@The-Okami-Project source has a grey and an orange placeholder texture, the bridge was using the grey one
@@waywardwriterryu7185 I'm pretty sure Ultra Deluxe used Unity instead of Source. I have no clue what their defaults look like though.
It's weird that a bridge would have a grid texture though
@@bobafettjr85 Grey I think
10:30 “didnt evolve into a major franchise” love the subtle portal reference
it would be so cool if a huge game company such as Valve would take an interesting gameplay mechanic based off of that from Narbacular drop and evolve it into its own game mostly made with reused things from half-life and a connected story to half-life, and eventually create a sequel that would forever impact gaming as a whole due to its perfectly done story, memorable cast of characters, creative gameplay mechanics, and fun multiplayer mode. That's just me tho
didn't*
10:19 Man, it's such a shame that there was never a fully-realized version of Narbacular Drop. You'd think that with a concept so revolutionary the whole team would be picked up by a really prolific game developer and be allowed to make something that changed the gaming world as we know it...
Let alone a spawn a sequel with multiplayer
Well here we are again, it's always such a pleasure, remember when you tried to kill me twice?
@@abadgurl2010 Oh how we laughed and laughed. Except, I wasn't laughing.
@@dr.JackieBright Under the circumstances I’ve been shockingly nice
Valve picked up on it and thats what the game is using. The game simply used Portal 2's world portals. Its the same engine. There are several maps in Portal 2 that do the same.
THIS IS LITERALLY THE GREATEST CONTENT THAT ANY CONTENT CREATOR HAS EVER CONTENTED IN TO EXISTENCE
FOR RATS
You seem very content with the content.
This is the comment I always wanted
Bro he’s a content rat, people these days…
Content paparazzi'd*
at 10:25 the obscure game William is talking about is actually the precursor to Portal and features Portal's main mechanic of the portals, Gabe would see the game and hire them to create portal.
edit: from memory the "wormholes" are used to project the screen that you see when you look into a portal but haven't entered it yet.
Edit 2: this is just bri ish humour with him calling it obscure
And if you haven't played Narbacular Drop (so named to make it easy to search for) you should. It's the direct predecessor to Portal, but the player character (Princess No-Knees) can't jump, like Stanley. (Also you don't just shoot the portals, you can actually slide them around and the view through changes accordingly.)
He is obviously joking since he said “one shot” “never realized” “it did not evolve into any major franchise”
Yeah it was odd to hear about the oft-forgotten precursor to Portal and then hear it’s not s precursor to anything. It’s such an odd gap in information. It’s like knowing the name and birthday of the artist that sculpted Mount Rushmore, but not knowing what state Mount Rushmore is in.
@@vbarreiro That's what made it so funny to me. Trying to claim it's much more innovative than it really is. :P
THANK YOU. It blew my mind to hear the guy say that the obscure game that went nowhere was a precursor to one of the most defining games of that generation.
12:05 It's a model from Half-Life 2. Originally, The Stanley Parable was an HL2 mod, and this location is a destructed version of the map from the mod. So these monitors are taken from the Eli's lab
The third monitor also resembles a cut HL2 enemy
@@blazeking6432 yup, a cremator
yep, the one on the right really stands out and you can tell from the shape of it that it’s a combine drawing. never could get this out of my head
@Dino Sauro seems like Kelly Bailey made those shots
@Dino Sauro that looks like blender or maya to me, i can see the node editor, outliner, timeline etc. graph editor and stuff as well, grease pencil drawing.
19:15 I'm willing to believe that this stanlurine is used for the "collectable get" screen that pops up whenever you collect the first si- I mean, all six of them. Complete with the subtle blue rimlight.
Knowing how tightly scripted the game is, hearing the creator stutter like he's walked into the wrong conference room is kinda funny.
I wouldn't mind if william became a permanent part of boundary break
12:50
I would take a guess that this is a cheeky reference to "Missing String" errors in video games.
I truly believe that the way that Kevin Brighting delivers his lines as the narrator could not be better. Treasure this man, he is a gem.
the entire team sounds unhinged or awkward i love it
12:05 Those monitors are lifted straight from Half-Life 2. This entire ending is a reference to the original 2011 mod version of The Stanley Parable, which used to use Half-Life 2 assets. On one of the monitors, you can see the head of a Cremator, which was an enemy cut from Half-Life 2.
*EDIT:* Also, since this comment of mine seems to be gaining some traction, I think you should do some Boundary Break episodes on some Need For Speed games.
Went here to say that x)
Half-Life 2 has been said 4 times, one by me, and 3 from you.
Why did I do this? I have no idea.
Seconding the Need For Speed thing. Need for speed 2015 has a pretty amazing freecam available for it.
The left monitor almost looks like a development program.
@@saikashima282 source sdk?
Starting a petition to change the channel’s name to “Rat Boy’s Boundary Break”
4:57 This is exactly what makes this game genius, they don’t care if people find out or not, they just want layers and layers of meta details in this game and I applaud them for that.
14:43 It IS an asset import! Davey confirmed it when his brother played this ending on stream; he said he only had to message the devs and they sent him the assets.
During Doug Doug's stream
Don’t you see Stanley’s face during the weird infinity hole dream thing
And that one time ur in the roof and Stanley won't move and the narrator gets all sad
@@mirandamilf26 same model
That's in ultra deluxe, i believe you dont see Stanley's face in the original release
@@bubble_espeon Read mr squishy's reply
@@bubble_espeon if by original release, you mean the hl2 mod on moddb then you are wrong. stanley is male_07
Narrator: "Now this is a story, all about how, this man's whole world was upside-down.
Now sit right there, if you would so kindly.
As I tell you a story, of a man named Stanley."
did you just rhyme "kindly" with "stanley"
@@tekayo63 yes
Next up, rhyming orange with banana
Girl slappy!
@@ItsJustAFoxxo bornana
The 2D skull in the freedom ending is also a refference to a panting called "The Ambassador". It was hung up in a stairwell so the artist added an illusion where if you look at it from the top or the bottom of the stairs the elongateds skull would appear 3D.
William Pugh is my favourite Boundary Break character, so glad he's a new member of the cast!
6:12 That "weird grid texture" is one of the default Dev textures for Source. Most likely the developers put it on the bridge because it's not meant to be seen from Stanley's perspective up close. It also saves on resources as its low detail
Close. It looks more like a wall texture from Portal 2, which The Stanley Parable (2013) was based on.
@@thelballyt Might be but I disagree. The material you see is a grid reference which is kept purposefully low quality for optimization
@@kilzial2204 It is a dev texture, just checked in Hammer. I got it confused with the similar metal wall textures that also appear in Portal 2.
Stanley Parable was originally a Half-Life 2 mod released in 2011, idk where you got the idea that it's based on Portal 2 from.
@@EdenNeedsATH-camHandle Because this isn't the original mod. This is the redux.
3:45 well, you can actually see Stanley's face pretty clearly on several occasions in the original game, as well as the Deluxe version
Ah yes his face that’s where we were looking 🥶
@@Kellestial ?
If I didn't disobey the narrator and keep watching, I'd have never heard the developer tell me to buy the game!
Im kinda loving how delightfully energetic the developers are when commenting on your findings! Really shows you how much care and passion they put into their game!
Kevan Brighting, the narrator, I don't think is a developer, but William is and Davey Wreden is the writer and original creator of the first version of the game. Also fun fact; do you know about the TH-cam channel "DougDoug"? If you do, his real name is Doug Wreden, and he is actually the brother of Davey Wreden!
I’m assuming that the low poly rat is another reference to “Little Stanley”, with the first one I noticed being somewhere outside during the first visit to the Memory Zone, which is a picture of a real rat that says something like “R.I.P. Little Stanley” on it. (I can’t remember the exact quote) Who Little Stanley was though, I don’t know, but I’d have to assume that it was a pet for someone who worked on the game.
Speaking of rats, I forget where I found it, but when the Narrator is revisiting the Stanlurines (Figleys?) the pink room has a little rat inside one of the file boxes.
Oh yeah, I saw that too. Seeing that actually made me kind of sad.
thare are 3 found so far
When I saw the one in the memory zone, I thought it was someone on the dev team's pet hamster. did not realize there was a theme of dead rats through the whole thing :P
@@PixelWitch I think you're right. I thought it looked like a hamster and not a rat.
“Oh you’re one of those ‘content creators’ aren’t you?”
- The narrator from Stanley parable 2022
17:35 i love how the plate says camaro despite being on a mustang
I assume firewatch has so much environment because they just ported it straight from the game. The entire game wasn't loaded at once, rather they had sections that would load based on location. That circle was the medicine wheel.
I didn't think it was fire watch though, the graphics looked a lot worse than I remembered
@@XanderHDD It seems that using freecam disables post processing. You can see how it's supposed to look for the first couple of seconds
@@XanderHDD It looks worse because having the entire map load in all at once would be a lot of pressure on a computer; like staryoshi said, parts of the map only load depending on the players location (aka doesn’t load until the player gets close enough to notice) and because the player can’t really go beyond the tower here, the majority of the map doesn’t load, and the parts it does load are low poly. (Source: I am a game art major who works on these kinds of things)
@@XanderHDD according to the writer on Doug Doug’s stream, it literally is straight up the assets from firewatch and rocket league
Ratboy admitting to the fact was the perfect punchline to what was already a great joke/performance.
I recognise the skull from the end of the Freedom ending.
It's ripped right from a famous painting titled _"The Ambassadors"_ which is most well known for the incredibly well-done anamorphic depiction of a skull which is only properly visible if the painting is viewed at an oblique angle.
Also, the skull itself is the object that the Narrator is called from.
That little "I hope that's acceptable" was really adorable
he's so damn british. I somehow never picked up on it before, despite the narrator, the plug sockets, probably the license plate on the car in the insanity ending..
Stanley was so fascinated by all of those newfound discoveries, he praised the content creator for his ingenuity.
"Look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. ..."
That Shodan reference is a clever Easter egg of devs calling you a hacker lol
Imagine that line actually being a part of the game and not made for the video, I’d love to see that!
@@GamingGardevoir I mean they DID have Shodan on the music player behind Stanley's computer
@@DeerBonesBaby I meant if they could get a clip of the line to play when it’s found
12:05 is using a desk prop from HL2, eli's lab. The screen on the right, with the almost circled thingy is actually the head of a scrapped beta NPC called the cremator. It was supposed to walk the streets and burn any dead bodies. The devs just left it there as a "funny haha" I guess, but the actual head of the scrapped NPC can be found and inspected. It is sealed in a jar... Really makes you think - if valve didn't scrap the beta version of Half life 2, how dark and sadistic would it be?
And that's not even the darkest thing about the beta.
12:05 It looks like the room from Stanley Parable 2011 edition, when it was just a mod for HL2. So the model you see here is also from HL2, precisely it is used in Eli's lab in Black Mesa East. Also, you can see a Cremator head image on one of the monitors.
The part of the video that talks about being warped back to the top of the “infinite” hole made me realize something. Because of this warping functionality, the narrator technically COULD have created a truly infinite hole if he actually wanted to, but just chose not to because he figured “the hole was as deep as anyone would actually need.”
Thumbs up on the intro ALONE holy crap! I can't believe I'm just discovering this video now! Kevan Brighting is such a wonderful human being, and he plays the role of snide, sarcastic British crumpet *so* well, I wish him (and you) nothing but the best of luck! This game was one of the most formative for me in my life -- it's where I first started watching TH-cam videos, watching JSE and his playthrough, so this game holds a ton of nostalgia for me, then playing it myself and getting to experience it in my own time was another wonderful treat. Thank you for making this!
The anamorphic skull at 5:50 is definitely a shout out to Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors (1533). It was the fashion at the time to include reminders of death, or memento mori, in art. As the ending is essentially Stanley giving up free will to live in ignorant bliss, I think the comparison is obvious
"The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is not a horror game"
The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe: 18:56
I just found out about this channel,
So when he started his "Intro", i actually thought that it was a recorded part of Stanly Parable, used for preventing players to see the actual game.
6:20: That "really odd grid texture" is just a dev texture, I'm guessing they figured it looked enough like a bridge to just leave it like that (or potentially they missed it for the same reason)
I see that Keven has been active good for him,also classic narrator,being petty. Also this isn’t disappointing to us.
Edit: And the others like William for coming up too.
5:04 playing through the game for the first time, i found a glitch here that lets you drop down below the walkway into the black box surrounding you. if you carefully wrap around the left side of the railing without hitting the area that triggers the final cutscene you can drop down and prevent yourself from finishing the game, forcing you to restart. i was expecting the narrator to say something clever like he does in the white room or the monitor room, but he never did
I’m convinced Shesez made it so everyone else’s breaths are amplified, like he’s the only one who can control his breath.
12:31, its a reference to the fact that the game was originally in the source engine. the whole area is made out of Half Life 2 textures including the monitors. The face on that monitor is a scraped NPC from Half Life 2 called the cremator.
To be precise, it's from the original 2011 version, which was a half-life 2 mod using mostly half-life 2 assets
10:27 fun fact!! If im not mistaken, narbacular drop is actually the precursor to the portal series! (Not lore related) if I remember correctly the dev team of nar drop were contacted by valve and later on made portal 1 just from their concept of the demon faces making portable holes (wormholes)
19:05 Ohhh maybe that's why the narrator says that someone was following Stanley as a little inside joke
0:50 Narrarator: Hold up, Im bout to end this mans whole sense of self worth.
Brits.
10:25 so sad to see narbacular drop never bore any fruits of the team's labor. i really feel like the orange box could've used a game with the same concept
Ever heard of Portal??
@@Succer Do you know what the sound "woooosh" means?
@@RToast13 Yeah it was sarcasm I guess
@@SuccerEspecially since the technique isn't called wormholes, it's called portals or portalling. Very useful for creating seemingly impossible rooms and hallways (If you've seen anyone play MyHouse.wad, a portal is used to reveal the rooms where you pick up the pepsi and milkshake among many many other places.)
14:18 that's the medicine wheel and it's actually featured in Firewatch. They seem to have directly ported the center of the Firewatch map and some of the other things made it into the game too. Neato!
I love the “will the real slim shady please stand up?“ reference at 4:50 lol
Hearing Kevan say "I will find you" is so menacing-
The Narrator is by far my favorite character in any video game and he doesn't even have a model, hearing him here is insane.
Stanley Parable is absolutely legendary, 10/10 video.
I actually hope William joins the Boundary Break crew, he's great and he's a funny guy.
Who are the others, I don't see games doing this too often. At least not in the way this game does.
Kevan Brighting Is amazing for actually collaborating with fans, I love that about him,
Fun fact, although this video is very old: The people that developed the „wormhole“ and Narbacula Drop are the same people that later worked for Valve and developed „Portal“ which is using the same technique. They‘re also the ones that ported the wormhole to the Source engine, allowing developers like the ones of Stanley Parable to make use of it.
In a period in paintings it was a big thing to include skulls as a reminder of death, called a memento mori (I think) especially popular to sneak them into commissioner paintings for rich clients. Sometimes these skulls would be really obvious, but sometimes they'd be weird stretched out images of a skull so that you'd only recognise it for what it is by looking at it from a specific direction. Sounds like the developers of the Deluxe Edition didn't just save on resources - they upgraded the art history reference.
The developers commentary was hilarious on this. I was laughing pretty hard at the outro.
12:11 the monitor on the far right is a Cremator, a cut enemy from Half-Life 2. The Stanley Parable was originally an HL2 mod, which is what this ending references.
7:30 reading/hearing that makes me wonder if there was an ending planned to have the narrator with you
12:05 As others have pointed out, these were assets lifted from HL2. As far as whats on the screen, it looks exactly like FL Studio, which is a DAW for music production
Was looking for someone who said that it looks like FL Studio
I thought the same, looks like an old version of Fruity Loops
You can see Stanley's face if you jump over and over again in the "infinite" hole
15:54 I'm glad they brought in back that painting from the demo. It was first featured there.
I am so glad that the Narrator is part of this 😭 This game is so fucking clever
I’m glad you got the narrator to co star in this video
Love how he says Narbacular Drop wasnt explored into something major. When he full well knows it turned into Portal lol great stuff!
Guys the news letter is absolutely amazing trust me you won’t regret it, I actually need to go back and read past newsletters because the comedy is top tier
6:26 that grid texture is just a dev texture for hammer aka source but it is strange considering that ultra deluxe is made in unity unlike the original made with the hammer editor
There are a LOT of Hammer leftovers, those TRIGGER areas are straight out of the Source engine.
The bridge was probably made out of source grid textures in the original Stanley Parable.
Source textures are used a lot in Ultra Deluxe, its cause they didn't want the game to stop feeling like a source engine game.
@@DaRealBruner The skybox is different for the Freedom ending in the original game so they remade it using Source dev textures purposely. Odd.
That model might have been created with probuilder, and they simply left the default grid texture on
Amazing episode!!
I was kinda bummed we didn’t get to see more of the (mostly) infinite hole. It’s my favorite part of the game. Not gonna spoil anything, it really is special, it would be great to see how it works and changes
10:52
Narbacular Drop did evolve into something, it was originally the concept for Portal.
That's the joke.
William talking about how nothing came out of Narbaculor Drop got me. He has such great comedic timing.
I wonder if the “Rat-Boy” dig has any correlation to the low poly rat on the sofa. Knowing the devs; it isn’t a far reach lol.
11:59
So this out of bounds sequence is actually a callback to the original Half-Life 2 mod version of The Stanley Parable, those monitors are taken straight from Eli's Lab in HL2, along with most of the textures and assets there.
was Eli very into music production? Because I swear on the monitors, that looks like a low res, 2011 version of fruity loops (FL Studio) and I can't tell if I'm tripping or not.
@@JJmaster55 Impossible. Half-Life 2 has been released in 2004.
@@XeWuP probably just coincidence then. Fruity Loops has been a thing since 1997 though