The way I see it, other mediums lets you watch or listen to emotions, and thus create bonds, or feelings of empathy, whenever you react to, or relate to, what you listen to or watch.
Video games, however, allows you to BE emotions. To become someone else and inhabit something else entirely. It removes the veil completely. Now you're in the character's shoes, there's no middling in between what you're going through and what the character is going through, it's all direct, immediate.
Everything just hits you in a completely different way that it would do in other mediums. I'm not talking a superior stance, of course - video games can never truly emulate the empathetic impact of real-life acting, for example, but it's my favorite way of experiencing both narrative media as well as abstracted gardens of play.
There, and then, there's just endless potential for this medium to engross you into it's own world and it's own coherency and rules, whether they be superficial or grounded in gritty, relentless realism. Whether it's through puzzle design, third-person action or the most intricate RPG systems you've ever seen, games can sort of short-circuit your emotional receptors, take control over them and allow you to taste defeat at the hands of an enemy, or victory on top of one. It can create ways to lose yourself in words you could never imagine, or places you've always wanted to imagine.
When I play Tetris Effect, I am joy, when I play Shadow of the Colossus, I am sadness, when I play Breath of the Wild, I am freedom.
I am just THERE.
It sounds ultra pretentious, I know... But it's how I view games.
