The Stanley Parable

maybe i enjoy his games more than most other story-driven games oartly because they're 3D and i can walk around and explore the world while listening to it, rather than clicking through menus or reading paragraph after paragraph of text?

Well, I play a lot of interactive fiction/text adventures, so I don't mind text, but one thing that makes a difference for me is this sense of "exploring the world". So I am happy with a text adventure that is on rails, it only has one outcome, you just have to get there - I am happy with that if it has a well-implemented world that I can play with while I get there. Which is why I don't like twine games: I can live without real choice, I can live without the ludic element, but I can't stand interaction being solely reduced to a click. I need to look around. I need to at least try to poke things.

I think part of why the Beginner's Guide worked so well for me is b/c I am in a, not an uncynical place, but... I guess in a fragile state of mind at the moment? So the emotional aspect very much resonated with me, and the attempt at navigating both another's mind and your own, and whether there can be reciprocity (regardless of whether they are aspects of the same person, it's about attempting to achieve connection in a highly disconnected state and the futility of such).

it didn't even occur to me that it might be fiction

One of the commenters in the other thread said something about knowing that Coda wasn't real spoiled it for them, and you say this, but... at no point in playing did I ever think Coda was real and this was a real, biographical story. I can see why some people might have but that just seemed a given to me (in the same way I didn't assume the voice-over artist in Stanley Parable was actually the developer). I never thought Coda was real, but it didn't make the story any less real to me. Metafiction doesn't mean it's not fiction. You still have to buy into the world. I still believe in Anton Vowl and the story that erupts from his absence in A Void, even though I know it's a beautifully-executed example of a lipogram. I believe in him but at no point do I believe he existed. Fiction is potentiality. The Beginner's Guide is a possible world where this story happened, and David Lewis assures me that all possible worlds are in fact real.

I am definitely blethering now, I just wrote a whole lot more but deleted it. Will stop. I liked this.

i know the feeling - i think at least half of what i write for ILX ends up getting deleted. fwiw your post references several really interesting things that i'll be looking into while sitting in airports all afternoon and evening, so thanks!