i'm sure someone has said this before but in stars and time is such a good example of how crucial different storytelling mediums are to serving different types of stories. sure, isat could have worked as a show or a comic, but the nature of the story demanded for it to be a videogame.
siffrin gets stuck in a time loop and has to relive the same day over and over until they become suicidal and depressed, all because of their fear of abandonment. their country is gone; it's disappeared and nobody knows what happened to their memories of it, and without a home to go back to, what will he do when his friends leave to theirs?
you had to be in siffrin's head for the 30+ hours of gameplay, not just because it's a videogame and someone had to be the main character for it, but because that immersion plays a crucial part in the way that the story is told. you had to go through the house over and over again, you had to replay the exact same conversations so many times you get the option to skip them, you had to fight every sadness and the king until you got sick of it, until you were frustrated with how repetitive the game was getting you just wanted to rush through the house and get to the end, because understanding exactly how siffrin feels is what makes the story so impactful.
you had to spend so much time in siffrin's head that his fear of abandonment becomes your own, so that you spend the whole game unconsciously trying to make them stay, that it's devastating when act 5 comes around and he self-sabotages all of his relationships and faces the king alone, the one thing they were afraid of. you had to get so attached to each of your family members that it's horrifying when loop looks you dead in your eyes in act 4, friends dead in the house without you, and all they ask is do you get it? do you get it? do you finally get it? and you're so immersed in siffrin's head that you don't until the end.
titsay
turnnoffyourmind
origamiaround
yousharknotpass
kaledo-art
germansingergirl
