Five Years After Its Release, One Of The Stanley Parable's Achievements Can Finally Be Unlocked

As it turns out, your whole reality might be The Stanley Parable, if you really think about it. This existential crisis has been brought to you by an Achievement for the game that just became available, five years afters its launch.

An Achievement called "Go Outside" has a simple requirement: don't play The Stanley Parable for five years. The game launched on Oct. 17, 2013, making today its fifth anniversary, and the first day the game the Achievement can actually be unlocked (at least, without cheating). The Stanley Parable's creator, Davey Wreden, took to Twitter to mark the occasion.

Of course, it's possible to unlock the Go Outside Achievement without actually waiting five years. Turning the game off, adjusting your computer's clock, and then booting The Stanley Parable back up again would be enough to convince the program that it was five years into the future. Go Outside also isn't the only weird or time-based Achievement in The Stanley Parable; there's another for playing the game for an entire Tuesday, which can be similarly gamed by the less scrupulous Achievement hunters out there.

The most interesting thing about the Go Outside Achievement is how it interacts with the themes of The Stanley Parable. The game finds the titular player character Stanley following the instructions of a narrator through the story--or not following those instructions, as the player decides. But an Achievement that's earned by not playing the game raises one important question: did you ever really quit playing The Stanley Parable at all? Isn't all of life just following instructions and doing what you're told, making your whole existence a version of The Stanley Parable? It's heavy, man.

The bad news is, if you've never gotten around to playing The Stanley Parable and now you're intrigued, you're going to have to wait another five years to fully complete it.