Panopticism and the Stanley Parable

A Panopticon is a circular building with an observation tower in the center used for surveillance. The outer wall contains inmates that cannot see each other, but are constantly in view of the tower.
In the game, "Stanley", the player's character, is essentially one of these prisoners given the opportunity to escape. At first, Stanley is not sure how to function when he finds that the facility is uninhabited by his former employees (At least, this is how we are told how he feels). As he proceeds from room to room, the narrator begins to guide Stanley. I saw the narrator as the remnants of the authority Stanley is accustomed to; even though he is not being watched, he has been conditioned so as to govern himself accordingly. The idea is that  Stanley is being controlled without the governing power being present.
Stanley's, and to a certain extent the player's, free will is constantly in question. If you disobey the narrator's guidelines, you remove yourself further from the constraints of his directions, but move closer to being trapped within another endless situation. If you follow the orders, you eventually discover the extent of the monitoring of the employees.
It's natural to assume that proceeding through the game and escaping the facility is the reward to be gained, but as Stanley steps outside the narrator still speaks of how Stanley is feeling at that moment, eerily echoing back to the discovery Stanley just made about a machine controlling his emotions.
Even though you escape, you're still being controlled, and this was the ultimate goal of his captors.