Meta characters can help add a bit of surprise to your story and even some comedy but what is a meta-character? Meta characters are characters that are very self-aware no matter what medium they are in. A big example of this is Deadpool. The character of Deadpool knows that he is in a film and that in turn adds a lot of comedic potential for the character and something audiences may have not seen before within a film. These characters can add a lot of surprise and suspense and this is something that has been fairly new within film and TV but is been around for quite a bit of time and has had time to grow within the gaming medium.
Examples of these types of characters in video games would be Monika from Doki Doki Literature Club. In this game you play a guy that is persisted to join the schools literature club by his best friend Sayori. He meets 3 other girls called Natsuki, Yuri and Monika. The game starts off from being a Romance visual novel but then slowly turns into a psychological horror game. Once this shift between the 2 genres happen you find out that Monika is self-aware.
A game that inspired Doki Doki Literature Was a game called Me You And Her. The difference between this game and Doki Doki Litriture Club was that the self-aware elements were a big part of the plot of You Me And Her being that Aoi knows that she is part of the game and in You Me And Her. In You Me And Her you meet 2 girls named Aoi and Miyuki. After finishing Miyuki's storyline and you move on to Aoi's storyline it is revealed that Miyuki is self-aware as well.
Self-aware characters in games makes the audience think differently about how they play that game in the examples of Me You And Her and Doki Doki Literature Club Having these self-aware characters helps the audience build a deeper connection with the character that is self-aware because it makes the character feel more real. The breaking of that 4th wall makes the audience look at these characters in a different way. This trope works very well within the psychological horror genre because it makes the audience feel uncomfortable and makes them more intrigued to play more of the game. Having this trope helps keep the audience gripped to the story.
When writing self-aware characters you have to have an understanding of the genre and medium that you are writing in. Having a better understanding of what medium that you write in helps you plan the most effective way to bring in that self-aware character. With the example of Deadpool the character was able to be a good self-aware character because of the way the characters written and the understanding that the writers had with the story that they were writing in and also with the constraints they had with writing a self-aware character in a film. Writing a software character in a film and a TV show as opposed to a videogame gives you a lot more restrictions and you have to think of ways that you can creatively either get around those restrictions or adapt them to a way that it would work. When writing a self-aware character for a videogame you have a lot more freedom but the design of the game and the type of game makes a big impact on how you write your self-aware character.
With Doki Doki Literature Club and Me You And Her These games are able to use the restrictions they had to their advantage and they incorporated things outside of the game to make the audience feel more uneasy. With Doki Doki Literature Club as an example the game uses game files within the gameplay of the story. When the game changes into a psychological horror the player notices that the character files of Sayori disappears once she dies within the game this also happens to Yuri and Natsuki Once the player finds out that Monika is self-aware.
Writing self-aware characters is a lot different in film and TV than it is in games. A big difference is that the audience is less immersed in a film and TV show than in a videogame because in video games the player is controlling the main character whereas in film the audience is watching the main character and has no control over them. Understanding the genre that you are writing in is very important because then you can understand how the self-aware character is going to interact with the audience as well as of the characters. For example Deadpool uses the comedy element of its film to joke about the makers of the film but also joke about other superhero characters which works very well with their poor also being a superhero film so if you're writing a comedy you can use the self-aware character to joke about the other characters in the film or things are going on outside of the film. It's about how you can use those characters within the genre that you are writing in, in an effective way.
In conclusion there are many ways that you can write these characters that can be very effective but it takes a lot of understanding of the genre and the medium that you are writing in to write to these characters right but when written in the right way It can make an effective twist to a story or make a story more interesting and suspenseful.