: Those can feed into each other though. Taking the example of Halo 1, when you
: have to escort Keyes you probably got more invested in him as a
: character-- or you wanted him to die because he's an idiot when it comes
: to combat. When Cortana told the Chief about how "the Covenant found
: something, something buried", I knew some mysterious shit was doing
: down and I was going to have to sort it out with the business end of my
: rifle, and there would probably be new things to see, and I got excited
: about the prospect and anxious to find out what was going on.
: That doesn't really contradict your point, but it illustrates how games are a
: different beast. I didn't have much of a sense of the Chief as a character
: at either of those points in my first play-through, but I was still
: invested in the story and had thoughts and feelings about things in it,
: just not so much about the Chief himself.

Oh, I can totally understand where you're getting at. Games definitely evoke a different sense of emotion, however similar they may be, compared to say a film or television program. You want to do all these extravagant acts because you know your character is capable of that while the gameplay affords you the ability to do so. That's how I see these characters more as individuals than mere vessels to inhabit. I know that the Master Chief could come out of boarding Truth and Reconciliation unharmed while someone with skills like Nathan Drake or Lara Croft would have probably died coming across their first Stealth Elite. If I had been one of the latter characters I'd wonder after maybe my sixth death that perhaps whomever assigned these Reclaimers without serious combat skins is an asshole, thus taking me out of the moment.