sense of self in "Slay the Princess"

I haven't finished playing through Slay the Princess, since there is about four billion different endings and different combinations of character paths. But I have gotten through quite a bit of them. And Slay the Princess has some of the best execution of a branching narrative that I've seen in a game--even if a lot of the endings are effectively the same, the different characters(?) are where this game really shines. These "characters" are what got me wondering though, because really there's only like three or four characters; these characters have different versions and iterations of themselves. Which made me ask the age-old question: is a character a completely different person when different events happen to them? Or are they still the same, just contained in different appearances?

https://slaytheprincess.miraheze.org/wiki/The_Princess, the titular princess.

In Slay the Princess, you are tasked by the narrator to, well, slay the princess. You are told she will end the world if you don't character. You play as the hero, who, depending on your choices, will begin to act differently depending on how you play him. Did you try to flirt with the princess? You may start to hear the voice of infatuation. Did you go against everything every character said? The voice of the contrarian might be rattling up around there too. And they'll start talking to each other too--they'll start talking to you, influencing your decisions.

The changes don't stop there either. The princess, after you inevitably fail to slay her, will begin changing whenever time loops (yes, time loops--pretty much whenever you die, which is typically the outcome for trying to kill the princess). Depending on your choices, again, the princess will begin to morph into different beings. The betrayed, the sharp princess, the terror princess, the nightmarish doll. Each of these are still the princess, but... not? You still are going with the goal to slay her, which would still make her the princess, but her form is constantly changing (which ties in to the endings of the game, but I'll try to keep it mostly spoiler free). It seems like the only constant in this game is the character of the narrator--I mean, even the setting changes, warping based on your decisions.

Does change make you a different person? With the different iterations seen in this game, my gut is leaning towards no. It's pretty much that popular Undertale line, right, "despite everything, it's still you." Change doesn't mean someone's new. Just because a person is different from who they used to be in the past, doesn't make them a new person.

But what about growth, what about people that want to be different? I've said a lot that I wouldn't consider myself the same person I am now to who I was in high school, or middle school, or grade school. I'm brand new every day. And each iteration of Slay the Princess is new--and yet the hero and the princess always find each other.

I'm not sure where I am going with this. I'm still kind of sorting through my thoughts on it, but I can say that I've been really enjoying this game. More to come about Slay the Princess soon, I'm sure. This'll be a shorter post it would seem--maybe to make up for my last seven-minute-long post on Wednesday.