The work is mysterious and important.

More specifically, it makes me realise what games do better than every other medium.

Disorientation: it’s a major theme in Severance.

A photo from the TV show Severance, showing the smartly office-attired characters Helly, Dillon and Mark S, as they turn to the camera with quizzical expressions on their faces.

From the beginning, we, as an audience, long to know what’s going on.

What is the purpose of their number crunching?

What are they working towards?

Cover image for YouTube video

The whole premise is that you’re free to split one person into two people.

One cannot recall details about the other.

But it’s always second hand.

A screenshot from The Stanley Parable, showing two open doors in a bare and nondescript office environment. The Narrator of the game is telling us that Stanley, the player character, will take the left door. But will he?

We are never, as in Portal, the people experiencing it for ourselves.

We can never be, as we can in a game, them.

This thought reminds me sharply ofBefore I Forget, a game about being a person living with dementia.

A screenshot from The Stanley Parable showing an open-planned office room that’s grey and uninspired in its decoration. But all of the cubicled working areas are deserted - there’s no one around. The game’s Narrator tells us that all of Stanley’s co-workers are gone, and wonders what it could mean.

Thisdoesattempt to show us what it’s like to experience something ourselves.

The house rearranges around us, and objects in our house are strange and incomprehensible.

The life we once lived has become increasingly obscured.

A screenshot from The Stanley Parable showing, from a top-down view, a male-looking character in a grey office, sat at a corner desk, pressing one button on the keyboard of a boxy computer in front of them. The game’s Narrator tells us that this person does this every day of every month of every year.

It’s unsettlingly powerful.

It’s wonderfully done; you should watch it if you’re free to.

But it’s still not as immediate as being the character yourself.

I don’t know how you could obscure that from the player if they played the two roles.

But if you could solve that problem and adapt the idea: that’s a game I would play.

In fact, I think I have played it.

We start disobeying the Narrator-delivered rules and seeing what happens.

It is parodic, mysterious, and unexpectedly funny.

It’s everything Severance also is.

So baked into that show’s DNA is that video game.

To me, the blueprint of The Stanley Parable is plain in Severance to see.

And I love that it’s games influencing thecreationof TV shows rather than only being adapted for them.