The Beginner's Guide FULL NO COMMENTARY WALKTHROUGH GAMEPLAY 'The Beginner's Guide Walkthrough'

Full playthrough of The Beginner's Guide with no commentary. I would encourage everybody to experience this game for yourself instead of watching but for those that can't here's a playthrough.

The Beginner's Guide is a narrative video game from Davey Wreden, the creator of The Stanley Parable. It lasts about an hour and a half and has no traditional mechanics, no goals or objectives. Instead, it tells the story of a person struggling to deal with something they do not understand.

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[WisecrackEDU]

Hey Nizzu, we're making a video on The Beginner's Guide, and would love to use some of your footage. Can we get your permission? We'll include links back to your channel. You can email us, tweet, DM, whatever! Thanks so much!

[lephalacat]

The game in a nutshell:

Davey: *I've connected the dots*
Coda: *You didn't connect shit*
Davey: *I've connected them*

[LochNessHamster]

I played this game right after having a falling put with my best friend at the time. It really helped me take an introspective look at myself, and my own toxic behaviors as a person and especially as a friend. I think I'm a better person for it, and this still remains one of the most powerful emotional experiences with a piece of media.

[Reismiilch]

the house cleaning game really touched my heart. The sentence where "Coda" said that a house is the soul taking care of the house owner itself

[ShaunCloudSwain]

In literature and art there's several discussions concerning the relationship between the artist and the art. Davey holds, to an exact point, the Romantic stance. Romantic as in the era in which art was judged by how greatly it represented the internal psychology of the artist. But Coda's supposed insistence that not everything has a meaning or has to be seen by the audience is very much in the way of Aestheticism: Art is seen as is, without the author in mind. No context needed. The game comparing these two stances is in line with Post-Structuralism: That the author function is removed, but only for the sake of fluid meaning. To confide in an author is to believe in a single meaning, which there is not. But it is necessary to consider the context of the author as a frame of reference for the differing subject positions of the spectators and how the text allows itself to be understood. Here, the "discours" is through the process of narration that attempts to reflexively explain its meaning. The narration, and all of the games are, in fact, part of a single text. None of them are isolated. So the narration must be interpreted as ambiguous or open-ended as the rest of the game.

This same sort of idea is explored in the novel "Pale Fire" by Vladimir Nabokov. There is actually quite a striking resemblance between the two.

[ItCameFromTheSkyBeLo]

Davey makes us complicit with violating Coda's privacy. The moment you walk through that door and read the writings on the wall, you are culpable. And it hurts.

[HuntinaterH]

I always thought it was weird that davey included his email at the beginning of the game, and only now it’s hitting me that he probably did that so coda would know how to contact him if he one day saw this

[Clarinexus]

Thank you for doing a no comment walkthrough. This is a good example where "Let's Play" video people can just get in the way...

[nvidiatablet]

did anyone else feel really calm during the house cleaning game?

[waxerwaer]

It amazes me how many times I can watch this and get different feelings and how so many people interpret this story differently. The main example I want to talk about is 37:50 The house cleaning game. This is a spoiler and it should definitely be read AFTER you watch that section for the first time and honestly the entire game






Alright I'll start with a LITERAL interpretation of that section.


So the housekeeper NPC as I call it starts out already standing in the middle of the home when the player walks in. The NPC is boasting good intentions of cleaning up the house, but says the player will need to help too.

So it seems like they will clean the house together and maybe their are a few minor blemishes to it, nothing major but the couch is messed up the table is dirty, ect. But you do not work together all that happens is the 'housekeeper' keeps nagging and pointing out more and more blemishes you need to fix, most of them you didn't even notice.

Anyway the task grow more and more ridiculous, cleaning things that are hardly dirty and fixing things you already fixed but just were not up to the standards of the House keeper NPC. And it never ends, you keep going going going and going cleaning the same things for a long time and it feels like it will never be enough for the approval of the house Keeper NPC. And all the housekeeper NPC does is nag you more, and at most offer cheesy insights about you even when you dont ask. And finally after a pause it asks you,

" Do you enjoy this."


Ok, so this is again a simple section that is open to wide interpretation but to my mind that section your player character is "Coda" himself and the talking cleaning npc is the narrator, a therapist for Coda, or some collection of similar concerned parties.


With that in mind like the NPC says think of the "player's home" as a literal representation of the soul, more specifically Coda's own soul or perhaps his outward/perceived personality.

So narrator and Coda are just starting their relationship and the narrator walks right in the middle of Coda's "House soul" and all he can see are the blemishes. And these house 'blemishes' could figuratively be seen as the things that are imperfect about Coda. Perhaps Coda even agrees there are some parts of himself that could need cleaning so he agrees to have the narrator help him clean it, help him improve himself.

But soon it becomes clear that the narrator isn't really helping coda, all he is doing is calling attention to the things that are wrong, or perhaps just what the narrator perceives as "wrong." Again again and again and never helping or even praising the things about Coda that are good. All the player/coda can do is rush around the house trying to fix the things the housekeepernpc/narrator find are wrong.

And then it finishes with the line

"Do you enjoy this?"

Does Coda enjoy this "perfecting" of the soul the narrator is making him do?


Sure the narrator based on the game commentary describing this period seems happy with Coda, He describes Coda as, "At peace after that dark prison game, and Grossly happy all the time." Grossly happy, perhaps that is just how the narrator is perceiving his 'friend'

Like the only emotion Coda can show around the narrator is completely blissful happiness and fulfillment or else he knows the narrator will just call him out and demand he fix it. Like he is not allowed and should feel bad for being sad, or angry, or any other human emotion for even a moment.

The narrator says this is when he thought Coda was at his best, but what if he was at his worst. The stress of constantly cleaning his house, the stress of constantly keeping himself mentally perfect in the eyes his 'friend' was the worst part of Coda's life?

"Do you enjoy this?"

It might have come from the Housekeeper NPC but I think that last line was Coda taking control for a moment.

Did he enjoy this always doing nothing but changing himself to suit the whims of narrator? Did he have to keep everything in order?

Maybe Coda likes the bed unmade and the books jumbled on the floor? Maybe he liked the parts of himself that the narrator only saw as flaws? Maybe he didn't want to be perfect all the time but in the end felt better when he wasn't criticized and pitied whenever he had a "negative" emotion?

Anyways I feel like I could talk for hours on that one section and maybe thats me projecting but this really is a marvel of a game with more interpretation in 90 minutes then the entirety of most of the intellectual books i read in school.

[GenericProtagonist]

42:18 "Again, you can't stay in the dark space for too long." That line hit me like a brick. It was stated previously that if you stay in the dark space for enough time, you'll start to enjoy it. But you can't stay in the dark space to enjoy it because you have to move on even though you don't want to.

[mclongballstv]

Thank u for doing a no commentary play through. It's so annoying listening to someone try to be funny while ur trying to watch this game

[en]

I absolutely love the post prison escape call because as someone who managed to recover from depression, anxiety and pretty much being on the verge of committing suicide, this feels like a genuine conversation I'd have with my old self.

Being completely still and widly in motion at the same time, to eventually beginning to miss my old mindset just because it is easier to deal with, to ultimately having forgotten what it really was like..

I sometimes look at my old notes and there are some lines that make me say "oh right! I used to think like that a lot"
It's still surreal to realize that I have actually forgotten most of it.
The only thing that is left is that I know it was a terrible time in my life.

And if someone is reading this and is going through the same thing I did:

Be a bit easier on yourself, it will be okay.

And when things do start looking up, then it is not you getting used to the pain or you just pretending to be okay, it is real and I promise it will happen more and more often until you can call it normalcy again.

[TranslationHell]

davey (the nonfictional one) is such a smart writer. even past the first playthrough's more obvious emotional beats. he's so so good at recontextualization. every line turns into a new sort of gut punch knowing the full truth

[Ketsado]

That was quite the experience. It's indie games like this that really push the boundaries of story telling through interactive media. They did an amazing job immersing the player (or in my case the viewer) into the world of the creator, the way they put everything together in addition to the narration. I loved every moment of it.

[thedailylemon]

This is such a punishing narrative. To go through the whole experience trusting the narrator only for time to expose him as one with flaws and regrets, to learning that he is a massively broken individual who unknowingly destroyed someone's passion for his own benefit, and yet, you can't seem to hate the narrator. You only feel a deep sadness and existentialism for him. Sure, what the narrator did was horrible, but instead of just feeling disgusted and closing the game, you continue to play and feel for Davey, wanting to connect to him, seeing him in his full vulnerable self, someone who hates themselves so much, they objectively go against someone else's wishes in a hope to feel SOMETHING. Truly wonderful experience

[EmmaBonn]

I went from

Wanting to know that Coda was alright

To wanting to know that Davy and Coda made up and did something together that wasn’t games

To realizing

That

I don’t need that

And I’m probably projecting

[niceballsjoseph]

twice a year or so i'll come back and rewatch this when i'm feeling bad. it's so good.

[theflyinghawk]

In the beginning, we see these games as a way to discover the one who created them; in the end, we realize they're a way to discover ourselves, the players. I just love it.

[laytonspuzzle]

(0:00:20) Intro — October 2008

ACT I: WHISPER
(0:03:31) Chapter 1 — Whisper — November 2008
(0:07:48) Chapter 2 — Backwards — November 2008
(0:09:11) Chapter 3 — Entering — November 2008
(0:09:46) Chapter 4 — Stairs — December 2008
(0:11:52) Chapter 5 — Puzzle — January 2009
(0:14:14) Chapter 6 — Exiting — January 2009
(0:14:58) Chapter 7 — Down — March 2009

ACT II: PRISON
(0:22:36) Chapter 8 — Notes — April 2009
(0:29:34) Chapter 9 — Escape — May - June 2009
(0:37:20) Chapter 10 — House — August 2009
(0:42:59) Chapter 11 — Lecture — September 2009
(0:45:24) Chapter 12 — Theater — January 2010

ACT III: MACHINE
(0:49:29) Chapter 13 — Mobius — June 2010
(0:52:28) Chapter 14 — Island — December 2010
(0:57:26) Chapter 15 — Machine — May 2011
(1:04:22) Chapter 16 — Tower — June 2011

(1:16:00) Chapter 17 — Epilogue