The Narrator (The Stanley Parable)

"But here's a spoiler for you; that timer isn't a catalyst to keep the action moving along. It's just seconds ticking away to your death. You're only still playing instead of watching a cutscene because I want to watch you for every moment you're powerless. To see you made humble. This is not a challenge, it's a tragedy. You wanted to control this world, that's fine. But I'm going to destroy it first, so you can't."

- The Narrator directly to the player in the bad ending

The Narrator is one of two characters appearing in the clever adventure/puzzle game, The Stanley Parable, along with the titular playable protagonist. The narrator's roles as a character depends on what the Stanley, the player, does, as the game allows the player to form an endless amount of conclusive outcomes.

What the narrator is exactly shall always remain a mystery. He is aware that he is in a video game, is just a voice in Stanley's head, and has complete control over reality itself, or at least Stanley's reality. He sees how Stanley's boring life works out and always puts a sadistic and/or helpful twist before resetting it to see what happens in the next incarnation of Stanley's life. Others believe Stanley is simply insane, imagining that he is being terrorized by an omnipresent bully stuck in his head.

Overview
Stanley is simply a middle-aged man working at an unlabeled office with several other co-workers. All he does is press the keys on his computer when he is instructed to, but he is happy with his boring occupation. However, on a certain day, everyone single human being in the office suddenly disappears, including the hundreds of co-workers and managers.

"Good" Ending
When Stanley investigates his boss' office, with the narrator's commentary, he stumbles upon a mind control facility, revealing that all of the workers including himself have been controlled to unquestionably and obediently work by the employers. Stanley, enraged, completely destroys the facility's power, demolishing the mind control devices before he barges out of the office as a free man.

"Bad" Ending
The bad ending truly shows the narrator's sadistic side. If Stanley instead activates the facility's power for himself, the narrator berates him for being so selfish and sets the office to self-destruct in two minutes. While the timer counts down, the narrator constantly insults and taunts Stanley and tells him out of pity why everyone disappeared. The narrator reveals that he simply erased them from existence and set Stanley free from the mind control machine, just to see what happens. He also reveals that the story of Stanley has been completely recreated by the narrator's god-like reality bending abilities several times, all of them differing. He sometimes allows Stanley to die a horrible, slow death, and at others gives him freedom, all depending on the narrator's bipolar mood and cold-blooded traits. At other times, he lets the office and everyone in it burn to a crisp, the narrator amused by how he allows reality to work out, but has it always reset for another era to begin. The narrator is cut off by the entire facility exploding, killing Stanley in the process.