: I think that's more being invested and enthusiastic about being in the moment
: in terms of actually playing the game rather than seeing yourself in a
: narrative. For example I died a million times on one level in one little
: area in Halo 3 on normal because I'm terrible at video games. The Master
: Chief didn't die because I know he'd get through this without breaking a
: sweat. That's how I can personally dissociate myself from this single
: video game character because they have one or two more levels left in
: their story.

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.