The character is a fictional element being played by a real player. There's no way around that, and that's all it takes to qualify by the definition that's generally being used here. A close/tight POV (actor stance in Forge jargon) doesn't change that, and neither does a deliberately distant POV (author stance in Forge jargon).
Also as someone who would class all RPGs as storytelling (with the possible exception of something that is literally just a series of subsystem interactions where the character is just a stat block) I'd consider that close POV to be pretty much the default, especially for players.