I think that all they need is some hints of character added into the games (not in the cutscenes) and we’ll get to step into their shoes like never before!

The closest I came to feeling part of a game was probably Zelda and Metroid Prime. Link has very little personality, and he never speaks, and this caused me to feel I was him more than most characters, and I even feel like I grew up with him over the last 15 years I’ve been playing the games. And in Metroid Prime, not only is it in first-person, but Samus doesn’t speak, either, so I also felt a bit more like I was a part of the game.

It really does feel like more than a game now that you’ve said it. It feels like more in the same way that Mass Effect was trying to be more. Mass Effect let me make a custom Shepard, and I did feel some attachment to the character, but it just didn’t quite get there.

I never got beyond seeing my Shepard as an extension of myself. He behaved the way I wanted him to, reacted the way I wanted him to, related to the characters the way I wanted him to. Shepard was more or less an avatar. There wasn’t enough about them that was “immovable” to make it feel like I was actually stepping into someone else’s shoes.

I didn’t think any game would get closer to it than Mass Effect…glad to be proven wrong.

Your characterization of playing *as* Red is pretty intriguing. In games where you don’t get to customize your character it’s often difficult to feel any connection to him/her/it. Like, I got perfectly caught up in Nathan Drake’s story in the Uncharted games, but I never felt any personal attachment to his actions. Nothing is ever going to make me empathize with Mario in the Mushroom Kingdom because that’s not what those games are about. And the trials and tribulations of Mega Man are hardly mind-blowing. But when developers really allow players to develop lasting relationships with these unchangeable “people,” as it sounds like the folks who made Transistor have done, it sheds new light on games as something more than just “games.”

True or not, those comments do frame Chell as a character rather than an avatar don’t they? They aren’t generic enough to be directed at the player. …never really noticed that until now…makes Portal seem even more brilliant!

Still there definitely was a hint at characterizing Chell in the first Portal, like when it reacted to how “quickly” Chell disposed of the Companion cube, as if Chell just threw it out without a second thought by choice rather than it being the only option available to the player.

But again, how much was true?