I might have mentioned OneShot before and if I did, I'm not sorry. After all, I wrote an entire paper on how cool its in and out of game mechanics are, so I will give you guys the short version here. Major Spoilers ahead!
OneShot is a Steam game where you are the god of a dying world. A little cat-like child named Niko has been ripped from their world and tasked with replacing the "sun," which is a large lightbulb. What makes this game so much fun--and later heart-wrenching--is that you as the player interact directly with Niko. They are very much aware that you are there and you develop to become a parental figure for them. They ask for your advice and about your own world. You learn about their interests and the family that they miss so much and are desperate to get back to.
This is when things get creepy. There is another fourth wall-breaking being in the game known as the Entity. It does not want Niko to replace the sun and it does not want you around either. It addresses you by name through computers while Niko is blissfully unaware, taking your name out of Microsoft files without you inputting it into the game itself. The game hides files in your own computer, deleting things as it wants, forcing the player to open and close monitors and dragging things across the screen. All of this is out of the game, yet it is a crucial part of it.
All of this leads up to the ultimate choice at the end of the game: let Niko replace the sun and the world lives but they can never go home, or let the world die while Niko returns to their family. The game has made it blatantly clear up until this point that you and Niko are very separate beings. They are their own person, a child asking their parental figure what they should do in this situation. The game thrusts this guilt and burden onto you, making it very obvious that whatever happens, it is YOUR choice, not Niko's.
I love this aspect of storytelling as it makes the player its own character in the narrative, not just as the one controlling the main character. It is wonderfully immersive, as well as extremely sad, but it works so well! I would love to see more games that do this with its player/character interactions.
Let me know if you would like me to post the full article that I wrote!
Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneShot
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