This poster is from one of my most favorite games of all time “The Stanley Parable” by Galactic Cafe. The basic premise of this meta-game is that there is a narrator who dictates of the directions you have to go. You can choose to follow in every step that he takes you to, but most of the time, you can choose to deviate from the route the narrator pushes you toward. It’s a quirky and fun game I recommend playing.
Understanding the context of the game, the poster shows two choices of doors you can take while a yellow line deviates to neither choice while scaling up the wall. The poster would have been a very boring-looking and bland visual of two uninteresting choices of doors, but the contrast of the line’s yellow makes the poster glow with brimming opportunity. It can represent how the player can choose NOT to take the normally presented doors and, instead, take a completely different route that is absurd and nonsensical. The yellow line to scales up to the title of the game, possibly indicating that “The Stanley Parable”, the given title of the game, is more than just a simple method of choosing displayed alternatives.
Although, on the outside, the poster may seem simple and with minimum given information, I believe the poster asks a very interesting question, whether it be the choices you pick in-game or in real life: what choice will you make to shape your story?
“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?”
-The Narrator / The Stanley Parable