this is where I state that while I think Undertale is a great game, I feel people give Toby Fox almost too much credit.
how so?
i am seriously, seriously impressed by Toby Fox's writing
Me too, but that's not really what I mean.
Death of the author is a thing and I feel people are free to interpret the game how they want, but people say things like "Undertale is intended to be blah blah blah", and it bothers me.
I see a lot of dialog to the effect of Undertale somehow making other games invalid as opposed to being a reaction to them. Art that seeks to subvert the status quo rarely works (see: almost any other game that tries to pull the "the player is an awful person" card) and I think Fox deserves plenty of credit for that alone. I don't like it when people go DID YOU KNOW THAT UNDYNE AND ALPHYS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE PARODIES OF TYPICAL FAN REACTIONS TO THESE JRPG TROPES because that's fucking boring and also would require Toby Fox to, I don't know, plant several different messages in the game at once, which these people often like to imply are definitely there by authorial intent, not merely by interpretation.
It has the same problem as 'X is just a dream of Y' or 'X is purgatory'
It's not entirely invalid, but it's overly reductionist and ignores the greater themes in the work in favor of promoting their pet theory.
nah. i'm being really negative, sorry. like i said, the part i find most interesting is the conceit of a person having access to save/reset, considered fully in-universe, like, forget all this crap about video games, just a fella with time-bending omnipotence.
and i like that it is a video game about not killing things, even if mechanically it's not really different. we need more of those.
And yeah, I feel like the ultimate moral of the game at large is about player culpability. Feel good because you were kind. Feel bad because you were cruel and needed to see everything. Either way, you did it.
this might be hollow to me because for me personally at least, killing isn't really an option. like kexruct said, you are basically supposed to not kill anybody, in the same way in Call of Duty you are supposed to kill anybody. It just elaborates what happens if you go against what the game wants, more - in CoD you'd die, the end.
I know that's the meme but I feel the Undertale fandom has kind of devolved.
Characters aren't talked about with any nuance: sans likes puns and will make you have a bad time, papyrus is spaghetti boyfriend, undyne and alphys are nonmammalian lesbians, asgore is fluffy, toriel is mom, frisk is DETERMINED, chara kills everything (or if you're contrarian is actually Just Misunderstood). At the same time I feel like people ignore the really really obvious moral of the game, for whatever reason.
on top of this most of the interesting theories about Dr. Gaster have already been come up with, and it feels like a speculative dead-end to me.
Actually, if you want something I actually got out of the game, that I think was nearly an intended message, it's knowing that, say, if I was in Flowey-before-the-game's situation, trapped in a limited world with characters that are short dialogue trees, with no apparent way to get out that doesn't involve violence, and incredible time travel powers, I would probably kill everybody. To see what happens, to look for a way out. I'd kill every combination of individuals to see what happens if that's what it took. If I found information that way that I could use, I'd go back and use that impossibly-obtained information to get out, without using violence again.
I don't really feel bad about it. Hell, I've done it in other games. In Analogue there are two endings you can get without special information, and each keeps one character alive while killing the other. I got the ending about killing one, and then used information from that to get the impossible ending where neither one of them dies. And in real life I have on multiple occasions killed small animals that are simpler than me for the sake of understanding my world better.
It's good to think about, and I think Undertale is good at that... though you only even know Flowey's history if you take the wrong actions.
this might be hollow to me because for me personally at least, killing isn't really an option. like kexruct said, you are basically supposed to not kill anybody, in the same way in Call of Duty you are supposed to kill anybody. It just elaborates what happens if you go against what the game wants, more - in CoD you'd die, the end.
Well, there's also the neutral endings, where stuff happens because of what you've done.
To me, there's no "supposed" in Undertale. I mean it's not like one route is canon and one isn't. It stands by itself, for itself. Whatever you do is canon, and branching timelines are mentioned to exist. Calling the player a horrible person, punishing them for what they've done is not the same as an actual barrier. Whether it's right or not to explore every aspect of Undertale are good questions, but the fact is that it can be explored, and it's accessible.
Even ignoring Sans trolling you, the gameplay is essentially a puzzle danmaku game. The RPG elements are focused on figuring out what series of ACTs this monster needs in order to spare them, a far cry from the standard 'figure out what this monster's elemental weakness is'. And the danmaku plays with the idea of limited space. Your usual touhou game gives you 2/3rds of the screen, but here you get a small chunk that changes in size for some battles. Mettaton's the only boss that I'd say comes close to 'normal' danmaku, and even that has the hype mechanic.
this might be hollow to me because for me personally at least, killing isn't really an option. like kexruct said, you are basically supposed to not kill anybody, in the same way in Call of Duty you are supposed to kill anybody. It just elaborates what happens if you go against what the game wants, more - in CoD you'd die, the end.
Well, there's also the neutral endings, where stuff happens because of what you've done.
To me, there's no "supposed" in Undertale. I mean it's not like one route is canon and one isn't. It stands by itself, for itself. Whatever you do is canon, and branching timelines are mentioned to exist. Calling the player a horrible person, punishing them for what they've done is not the same as an actual barrier. Whether it's right or not to explore every aspect of Undertale are good questions, but the fact is that it can be explored, and it's accessible.
I dunno, I feel like for all the choice it presents to you there is very clearly a "right" thing to do in Undertale. You're pretty clearly supposed to get to True Pacifist and then not touch the game ever again, just because you can do other things doesn't mean you're wanted to.
I actually really like that about the game. Ambiguity in that situation would've been a cop out.
i should go to bed but thoughts kinda buzzing a bit gonna jot these down before i turn in
i was thinking, Chara's little speech about the numbers is clearly about games. Chara represents the player, or something in the player's mentality, so they're a game character
Flowey is more interesting. The monologue in New Home on no mercy, it works on two levels, it's clearly a metafictional thing about games, and a cleverly written one that, for me at least, described a very familiar kind of phase in my engagement with a game, but besides all that it's also a simple story about someone who lost the ability to empathize. it's disturbing, and it's also very sad, i think. like it's still a make-believe thing (real people don't time travel) but it kinda lets you inside his head and helps you understand why he thinks and acts the way he does
also i was thinking, neutral ending, while you do have to attack Flowey (as opposed to Asriel), it doesn't actually do you any good according to the story since he can just go back on his save, and then he kills you a whole bunch of times
once he loses his powers, then you can kill him, but you don't have to, and if you play pacifist and spare him, he definitely seems different. we don't get to see a lot of post-ending spared Flowey but i do wonder what he would have done after that.
we can wonder things like that because Undertale puts the characters foremost, hence the RPG format, specifically JRPG influenced, those are big on the dialogue and communication
like the problem with critiquing violence in an FPS is, sure, you can show the effects of violence more clearly, but the mechanics don't give the developer much scope to offer an alternative
Undertale pacifist route forces you to understand the people you're up against, even if it's just figuring out, like, ok, this guy likes to clean things, this one has a crush on you but won't admit it, this one just wants some affection. The bosses are tougher because the characters have more going on with them, you need to pay more attention to their dialogue and reactions and figure out what it is that will make them stop fighting you; i can't see any obvious way you could implement these mechanics in a more conventionally violent genre
Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
That's fair. I want to argue further that either end encourages you to stop, but the reset in any incarnation is still there for you to choose, but yeah, okay. I get it.
Flowey is more interesting. The monologue in New Home on no mercy, it works on two levels, it's clearly a metafictional thing about games, and a cleverly written one that, for me at least, described a very familiar kind of phase in my engagement with a game, but besides all that it's also a simple story about someone who lost the ability to empathize. it's disturbing, and it's also very sad, i think. like it's still a make-believe thing (real people don't time travel) but it kinda lets you inside his head and helps you understand why he thinks and acts the way he does
Flowey is more interesting. The monologue in New Home on no mercy, it works on two levels, it's clearly a metafictional thing about games, and a cleverly written one that, for me at least, described a very familiar kind of phase in my engagement with a game, but besides all that it's also a simple story about someone who lost the ability to empathize. it's disturbing, and it's also very sad, i think. like it's still a make-believe thing (real people don't time travel) but it kinda lets you inside his head and helps you understand why he thinks and acts the way he does
like the problem with critiquing violence in an FPS is, sure, you can show the effects of violence more clearly, but the mechanics don't give the developer much scope to offer an alternative
Undertale pacifist route forces you to understand the people you're up against, even if it's just figuring out, like, ok, this guy likes to clean things, this one has a crush on you but won't admit it, this one just wants some affection. The bosses are tougher because the characters have more going on with them, you need to pay more attention to their dialogue and reactions and figure out what it is that will make them stop fighting you; i can't see any obvious way you could implement these mechanics in a more conventionally violent genre
tl;dr version of this which i should have just said the first time: in undertale, the non-violent approach is actually *fun*, and more rewarding, not less, as opposed to, like, an FPS where pacifism is itself probably a Bad Time
and it feeds back on itself cuz like knowing how much fun you can have befriending these characters make the prospect of killing them that much less appealing
Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
I'd like to hear what you think about that, actually, so maybe we should take it elsewhere.
Anyway, some of the complaints about the game seem to be that it doesn't convey the idea of its pacifistic mechanics properly, and RPGs have a certain set of in-built expectations. But like...aren't you also expected to pay attention to everything that NPCs say, as they not only impart information about the story and world, but also the mechanics?
i think i killed toriel the first time because i got confused by her dialogue options after SPAREing because it looped around to ellipses again and i assumed they'd just loop around
well, i've been thinking about this quite a lot, and i can't think of any non-contrived, non-immersion-breaking way that you'd do something similar to Undertale in an action game
i mean the whole figuring the enemies out and resolving things non-violently aspect
i'd be very open to being proven wrong on this, wrt to the FPS or any other genre
Unless you're, uh, shooting over their heads and spooking them? I dunno. This kind of thing is handled better imho with genres that have more "wiggle room" as far as verisimilitude is concerned. "FPS" is a product of a much narrower set of ideas than "RPG" or even just "JRPG" is. I'd posit that it's next to impossible (but what a feat it would be!) with a Modern Warfare-type game but entirely possible with something more removed from reality.
Yes, I know Battlefield: Hardline technically let you arrest most (all?) of the enemies but it was often commented that this mechanic felt at odds with the game as a whole. The neat thing that Undertale did is that it engaged in pretty much exactly the same way as any other classic JRPG while contextualizing its mechanics in a very responsible way and not glorifying violence. Something like what B:H did change the dynamic on a more fundamental level (and that's ignoring the fact that it's probably not done well in that case anyway)
that people might not believe the 'nobody has to die' tagline, presumably?
actually Undertale *was* kind of misleading, in a mischievous kinda way (immediately after that in the trailer, Flowey breaks through the middle of the the words 'nobody has to die' and winks at you)
i'm not criticizing though, i just think that's kinda funny
The game was being sold on the tagline of "You don't have to kill anybody".
tbf games, and especially indie games on steam, lie in their descriptions all the time.
like constantly.
So, Undertale didn't lie about it's description. what's your point?
first of all can you not be a fanatic for fucking everything you like? Toby Fox does not need you to defend him, he's doing fine.
Secondly my point is that it is not unreasonable for someone to assume they've been hoodwinked when purchasing a game like Undertale if they didn't know much/anything about it prior.
I know that's the meme but I feel the Undertale fandom has kind of devolved.
Characters aren't talked about with any nuance: sans likes puns and will make you have a bad time, papyrus is spaghetti boyfriend, undyne and alphys are nonmammalian lesbians, asgore is fluffy, toriel is mom, frisk is DETERMINED, chara kills everything (or if you're contrarian is actually Just Misunderstood). At the same time I feel like people ignore the really really obvious moral of the game, for whatever reason.
on top of this most of the interesting theories about Dr. Gaster have already been come up with, and it feels like a speculative dead-end to me.
I know that's the meme but I feel the Undertale fandom has kind of devolved.
Characters aren't talked about with any nuance: sans likes puns and will make you have a bad time, papyrus is spaghetti boyfriend, undyne and alphys are nonmammalian lesbians, asgore is fluffy, toriel is mom, frisk is DETERMINED, chara kills everything (or if you're contrarian is actually Just Misunderstood). At the same time I feel like people ignore the really really obvious moral of the game, for whatever reason.
on top of this most of the interesting theories about Dr. Gaster have already been come up with, and it feels like a speculative dead-end to me.
that is how fandoms work
that's why I don't pay much attention to them
(*shrug*)
This was my reaction too. It's an understandable and fair complaint, but it's akin to calling water wet, I think, and not mutually exclusive with interesting stuff coming out of it.
I thought the plot was kind of interesting, fannish as it is. I guess it's sort of the same "consequences of time travel" thing as Undertale, but with different consequences.
I know that's the meme but I feel the Undertale fandom has kind of devolved.
Characters aren't talked about with any nuance: sans likes puns and will make you have a bad time, papyrus is spaghetti boyfriend, undyne and alphys are nonmammalian lesbians, asgore is fluffy, toriel is mom, frisk is DETERMINED, chara kills everything (or if you're contrarian is actually Just Misunderstood). At the same time I feel like people ignore the really really obvious moral of the game, for whatever reason.
on top of this most of the interesting theories about Dr. Gaster have already been come up with, and it feels like a speculative dead-end to me.
that is how fandoms work
that's why I don't pay much attention to them
(*shrug*)
This was my reaction too. It's an understandable and fair complaint, but it's akin to calling water wet, I think, and not mutually exclusive with interesting stuff coming out of it.
I quite honestly like most of those jokes, although I can get being frustrated at people whose understanding of the characters begins and ends at them.
The game was being sold on the tagline of "You don't have to kill anybody".
tbf games, and especially indie games on steam, lie in their descriptions all the time.
like constantly.
So, Undertale didn't lie about it's description. what's your point?
first of all can you not be a fanatic for fucking everything you like? Toby Fox does not need you to defend him, he's doing fine.
Secondly my point is that it is not unreasonable for someone to assume they've been hoodwinked when purchasing a game like Undertale if they didn't know much/anything about it prior.
First of all, calm the fuck down here, I'm just asking what your point was because you act like your own personal bias is something that has to be attributed to everyone.
Not everyone is cynically thinking that game-fucking descriptions are fucking lying to them.
Could you not do the "but I suppose not," please. That is one of the several obvious things in this thread, given that we're all talking about the game. I misread you, and saw you two arguing, so I tried my best to politely ask for it to be taken elsewhere.
Comments
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
and i like that it is a video game about not killing things, even if mechanically it's not really different. we need more of those. this might be hollow to me because for me personally at least, killing isn't really an option. like kexruct said, you are basically supposed to not kill anybody, in the same way in Call of Duty you are supposed to kill anybody. It just elaborates what happens if you go against what the game wants, more - in CoD you'd die, the end.
otherwise, not interested no, it's ok, i just wondered
I don't really feel bad about it. Hell, I've done it in other games. In Analogue there are two endings you can get without special information, and each keeps one character alive while killing the other. I got the ending about killing one, and then used information from that to get the impossible ending where neither one of them dies. And in real life I have on multiple occasions killed small animals that are simpler than me for the sake of understanding my world better.
It's good to think about, and I think Undertale is good at that... though you only even know Flowey's history if you take the wrong actions.
No win condition, that you know of. Now let's see your choices.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
i was thinking, Chara's little speech about the numbers is clearly about games. Chara represents the player, or something in the player's mentality, so they're a game character
Flowey is more interesting. The monologue in New Home on no mercy, it works on two levels, it's clearly a metafictional thing about games, and a cleverly written one that, for me at least, described a very familiar kind of phase in my engagement with a game, but besides all that it's also a simple story about someone who lost the ability to empathize. it's disturbing, and it's also very sad, i think. like it's still a make-believe thing (real people don't time travel) but it kinda lets you inside his head and helps you understand why he thinks and acts the way he does
also i was thinking, neutral ending, while you do have to attack Flowey (as opposed to Asriel), it doesn't actually do you any good according to the story since he can just go back on his save, and then he kills you a whole bunch of times
once he loses his powers, then you can kill him, but you don't have to, and if you play pacifist and spare him, he definitely seems different. we don't get to see a lot of post-ending spared Flowey but i do wonder what he would have done after that.
we can wonder things like that because Undertale puts the characters foremost, hence the RPG format, specifically JRPG influenced, those are big on the dialogue and communication
like the problem with critiquing violence in an FPS is, sure, you can show the effects of violence more clearly, but the mechanics don't give the developer much scope to offer an alternative
Undertale pacifist route forces you to understand the people you're up against, even if it's just figuring out, like, ok, this guy likes to clean things, this one has a crush on you but won't admit it, this one just wants some affection. The bosses are tougher because the characters have more going on with them, you need to pay more attention to their dialogue and reactions and figure out what it is that will make them stop fighting you; i can't see any obvious way you could implement these mechanics in a more conventionally violent genre
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
fans *do* produce some amazing things, that is true
i have too low a tolerance for the worse aspects of fandom to bother with it myself, but that's just weakness
tl;dr version of this which i should have just said the first time: in undertale, the non-violent approach is actually *fun*, and more rewarding, not less, as opposed to, like, an FPS where pacifism is itself probably a Bad Time
and it feeds back on itself cuz like knowing how much fun you can have befriending these characters make the prospect of killing them that much less appealing
i mean the whole figuring the enemies out and resolving things non-violently aspect
i'd be very open to being proven wrong on this, wrt to the FPS or any other genre
Like closest i could come up with is if you had a Fallout-type game that heavily penalized the use of violence
actually Undertale *was* kind of misleading, in a mischievous kinda way (immediately after that in the trailer, Flowey breaks through the middle of the the words 'nobody has to die' and winks at you)
i'm not criticizing though, i just think that's kinda funny
that's why I don't pay much attention to them
(*shrug*)
Dr. Andonuts calls you a fag.
C'mon, guys. We're friends here, right? No need for this.
did we learn nothing from this game