Undertale

Latina Bunny · Jan 7, 2016

My sister heard about it, and is thinking of playing it, but it doesn't like the sort of game for me....

...because I would fail this game so bad, lol! I kind of like killing lots of asshole people and monsters. *glances at Skyrim, Morrowind, Baldur's Gate II, Dragon Age Origins/Inquistion, Mass Effect 1-3, Tomb Raider series, Uncharted series, etc, etc, and sees many, many, many dead corpses*

It reminds me of Dishonered game which gives you more enemies and punishes you with a bad endings if you killed a lot of people. That annoyed the crud out of me (especially since a large part of the appeal of the game for me were your powers and weapons).

Plus, I'm not really good at (and sometimes get bored of) stealth and pacifist runs. *looks at Deus Ex Human Revolution and sees many corpses again* Whoops.

nastyjman · Jan 7, 2016

lilyWhite said:
It's still "not the obviously-good ending".

And actually, there is one boss that cannot be reasoned with. I eventually discovered online (after I had played the game) that avoiding killing this boss requires you to jump through hurdles unlike every other battle before without any indication that's what you're supposed to do. Said hurdles involve requiring you to run away from the battle—except said boss prevents you from running at first because they want to murder you that much.

Still didn't stop the game from trying to guilt-trip me over killing them in self-defense, which is about the time I realized how most of the monsters are just terrible people but the game doesn't notice or care.

I think the monsters that are trying to kill you are either suspicious of you or are unaware that they're hurting you. They are magical creatures after all. And their magic might be harmless with other monsters, but with a human, it could be damaging. That's how I see it.

Zoombie · Jan 7, 2016

Like the Greater Dog who thinks he's just having fun.

Heck, his spear has a smiley face!

NoirSuede · Jan 7, 2016

I don't find the fandom that bad, but honestly I just kind of float around enjoying fanart and fancomics? "Cancerous" seems pretty heavy though, all I've seen is people having fun. I've been really enjoying all the fancomics (body horror warning) and fanart and theories and cosplay and voice acting.

I do wish a certain small minority of the fandom would lay off on Toby Fox for refusing to allow for-profit Undertale fanworks. It's only a few people complaining about it, mostly people who want to sell prints and keychains... but jeez, let a creator protect his IP.[/QUOTE]

You haven't seen the Tumblr Undertale fanbase (which is where most of Undertale fanartists come from), where we have stuff like harrasing the creator of Hatoful Boyfriend for drawing Mettaton and Napstablook "wrong"

Viridian · Jan 7, 2016

bunny-gypsy said:
It reminds me of Dishonered game which gives you more enemies and punishes you with a bad endings if you killed a lot of people. That annoyed the crud out of me (especially since a large part of the appeal of the game for me were your powers and weapons).

Yeah, I didn't really like that either. The problem with Dishonored is that your moral choice affected your play style. If you wanted to be a good guy, you were forced to play stealth the entire game. It worked for me (I fucking love stealth) but I can see why it annoyed other people.

You haven't seen the Tumblr Undertale fanbase (which is where most of Undertale fanartists come from), where we have stuff like harassing the creator of Hatoful Boyfriend for drawing Mettaton and Napstablook "wrong"

That's how tumblr is. I've seen people on that site rip each other to shreds over nothing. I don't think it has anything to do with Undertale specifically.

NoirSuede · Jan 7, 2016

Viridian said:
That's how tumblr is. I've seen people on that site rip each other to shreds over nothing. I don't think it has anything to do with Undertale specifically.

But even on Tumblr itself Undertale's fanbase (and Steven Universe's) is considered one of the most toxic, so there's has be something to do with Undertale specifically.

Viridian · Jan 7, 2016

NoirSuede said:
But even on Tumblr itself Undertale's fanbase (and Steven Universe's) is considered one of the most toxic

I have no idea what you're talking about.

VeryBigBeard · Jan 7, 2016

I don't do Tumblr or fanbases much, but I do know gaming culture in general has a big problem with indulgence. It goes beyond gamergate stuff and into the way games are perceived. If they don't give us what we want, game players tend to be... nasty. Or at least, a minority of them get very, very vocal.

Treading delicately here, but it was the same way with Mass Effect's ending. I think some of it is inherent to the medium--games get us closer to the story, often without much of a character to hide behind. It's usually our choices, our performance. It's one of games' greatest strengths, and provides huge storytelling potential. This is a medium where I, as a writer, can actually put you into a situation and play with what you see, feel, and how that develops around you. And Undertale, by all accounts, does this.

It's just games are also expected to be "fun". And fun's a really problematic word, because loads of things are entertaining and really engrossing and engaging without explicitly being fun. Playing soccer is fun--but I still get cursed at when I give a penalty against one team and they disagree. Game systems can bare our emotions. That's how they're powerful as stories. Only sometimes anger can be the by-product, because it's more fulfilling to win. More meaningful to lose, but videogames in particular have thrived for 30 years or more on power fantasies, escapism, wish fulfillment and, in general, winning. There's LOADS of good in that. But try to break it, expand away from it, and you get, at best the "it's not a game" comments (think of Gone Home and Depression Quest and such) and at worse a lot of really nasty, only partly-related vitriol that's always there, beneath the surface, and which is being leveraged by these amazing games to create meaning, cultural understanding, and aesthetic experience.

I do think games will age out of the indulgent phase, and I think escapist, power-fantasy games will always have a huge part to play. I also think power fantasies can be and have been incredible stories. Just not the only ones. And there are days I wish "gamers" as a community would grow up and accept that diversity, only it's not really the community as a whole just that same subset of it that's very, very loud and seems to have real problems with any kind of diversity.

Zoombie · Jan 7, 2016

Viridian said:
I have no idea what you're talking about.

That's because it's shockingly easy to avoid parts of the internet, sometimes.

Viridian · Jan 7, 2016

Zoombie said:
That's because it's shockingly easy to avoid parts of the internet, sometimes.

Alright, I'll bite. Maybe I'm just missing something. What is the Undertale fandom doing that's more toxic than the rest of tumblr?

Zoombie · Jan 7, 2016

Viridian said:
Alright, I'll bite. Maybe I'm just missing something. What is the Undertale fandom doing that's more toxic than the rest of tumblr?

I dunno.

Honestly, I don't. This news is news to me!

I'm just assuming that, since I tend to spend time in like, four sites, I'm just not informed.

Latina Bunny · Jan 7, 2016

Viridian said:
Yeah, I didn't really like that either. The problem with Dishonored is that your moral choice affected your play style. If you wanted to be a good guy, you were forced to play stealth the entire game. It worked for me (I fucking love stealth) but I can see why it annoyed other people.

I'm sooo bad at stealth games or any mandatory stealth stages of a game.

I'm one of those naturally anxious people who gets scared/startled easily, and when I get like that in games, I tend to just want to get the whole scary/tense/suspenseful situation over with, so I just end up charging at whatever was causing me stress, guns a blazing (or swords drawn, depending on the game), lol.

Also, I can be overly cautious, so my stealth attempts would be sooo agonizingly slow, making the suspense worse, and in the end, it just end up being plain exhausting for me (because my heart would be beating so fast, and my body would be tense and on edge the whole time).

It gets to a certain point where I just give up, get out of over, and just rush the enemy, praying the enemy dies before my character does, lol.

I gave up on Dishonored after finding out about those creepy, infected people. They groan and move like zombies, and I just haaaaate zombies. :0 The whole "trying not to kill anyone" aspect didn't help, either, because it involves stealth... However, I wanted to kill those things dead, dead, dead, but I couldn't, because I would get the darned bad ending, lol!

I gave up on the level after discovering those things. *shivers* (After that one infiltrating some kind of party and kidnapping some fancy lady mission.)

I can suffer doing stealth with some guards (though they stress me out as well), but zombie-like things? *shakes head* Nope, nope, nope!

NoirSuede · Jan 7, 2016

Zoombie said:
I dunno.

Honestly, I don't. This news is news to me!

I'm just assuming that, since I tend to spend time in like, four sites, I'm just not informed.

http://chrisray-the-lariat-king.tum...6380/ua86-thefeelofavideogame-steven-universe

bunny-gypsy said:
I'm sooo bad at stealth games or any mandatory stealth stages of a game.

I'm one of those naturally anxious people who gets scared/startled easily, and when I get like that in games, I tend to just want to get the whole scary/tense/suspenseful situation over with, so I just end up charging at whatever was causing me stress, guns a blazing (or swords drawn, depending on the game), lol.

Also, I can be overly cautious, so my stealth attempts would be sooo agonizingly slow, making the suspense worse, and in the end, it just end up being plain exhausting for me (because my heart would be beating so fast, and my body would be tense and on edge the whole time).

It gets to a certain point where I just give up, get out of over, and just rush the enemy, praying the enemy dies before my character does, lol.

I gave up on Dishonored after finding out about those creepy, infected people. They groan and move like zombies, and I just haaaaate zombies. :0 The whole "trying not to kill anyone" aspect didn't help, either, because it involves stealth... However, I wanted to kill those things dead, dead, dead, but I couldn't, because I would get the darned bad ending, lol!

I gave up on the level after discovering those things. *shivers* (After that one infiltrating some kind of party and kidnapping some fancy lady mission.)

I can suffer doing stealth with some guards (though they stress me out as well), but zombie-like things? *shakes head* Nope, nope, nope!

You don't have to do a perfect pacifist run to get the good ending, you can kill 1-5 guys and you'll still be in Low Chaos (heck by the end of the game I've killed about 30 guys including the zombies yet I still got the good ending).

shivadyne · Jan 7, 2016

bunny-gypsy said:
Plus, I'm not really good at (and sometimes get bored of) stealth and pacifist runs. *looks at Deus Ex Human Revolution and sees many corpses again* Whoops.

i haven't beat the game yet, but i think the fun part in not killing anyone is the other options you can use. i really like the option of flirting with moldsmals. it amuses me even when i've used it a ton of times by now.

plus, you can always go the route of murdering everyone. i mean, a lot of people seem to like doing so?

NoirSuede said:
http://chrisray-the-lariat-king.tum...6380/ua86-thefeelofavideogame-steven-universe

i wouldn't really rely on hear-say too much from tumblr? i spend a lot of time on there and the undertale fans i know of seem pretty tame, but it's possible that it just depends on what blogs you follow on there, i guess.

EMaree · Jan 8, 2016

nastyjman said:
I think the monsters that are trying to kill you are either suspicious of you or are unaware that they're hurting you. They are magical creatures after all. And their magic might be harmless with other monsters, but with a human, it could be damaging. That's how I see it.

There's a book in the Snowdin library that talks about how monsters communicate with their magic, without any knowledge of how dangerous it is to humans e.g. a birthday card will release a spray of magic that would kill a human, and it's just how they say 'Happy birthday!'.

NoirSuede said:
You haven't seen the Tumblr Undertale fanbase (which is where most of Undertale fanartists come from), where we have stuff like harrasing the creator of Hatoful Boyfriend for drawing Mettaton and Napstablook "wrong"

I've seen plenty of the Undertale Tumblr fandom, and honestly they're mostly cool people, I really have to be looking for the drama to find any. Most of the top artists -- like Hato Moa and Rochi-chan -- are ESL and never really engage with long fandom discussions. Even the flippin' subreddit is pretty low on drama.

I've been on Tumblr for a long, long time now -- honestly, avoiding the drama is as easy as not looking for it, not reblogging it, not engaging at all. I also try not to follow power users who actively feed the fire. Stephen Universe and Undertale are, like Shivadyne said, pretty damn tame areas of Tumblr. Especially compared to social issue tags.

Tumblr might be infamous for drama, just like Livejournal was back in the day, but the system is still designed to share cool stuff: photos, music, comics, cosplay. It's really easy to just use the site for sharing cool stuff and keep out of the rest. Like all tools, it's how you use it.

It's really kind of surreal to see Tumblr drama treated like a new thing. Fandom drama's been around forever: Livejournal, bulletin boards, IRC, 'zines, and Usenet were all just as bad and often worse, because when fandoms were smaller it was a lot harder to avoid rifts. We're living in a good time for geekery, it's incredibly easy now to engage with your passions while still setting boundaries.

Zoombie · Jan 8, 2016

DAS WARNING: There be spoilers in this post. But, uh, there were spoilers earlier in the thread so...whatever.

A thought has occurred to me!

It has been said that Undertale had a double standard, because it judges you for killing monsters, even though monsters try to kill you. But...in the game, it is made very clear that Frisk (the human protagonist's true name, by the way) IS AWARE of the time shifting. Reloading the game after killing Toriel means that using the "talk" act says: "You think of mentioning to Toriel you killed her...but that would be creepy."

Later, when you fight Asgore, if he kills you, and you use talk on him, you mention how many times he has killed you and he gets sad.

Furthermore, if you reload the save game before talking to Sans, he will actually notice that you already knew what he was gonna say, and then give you a codeword to tell him when you travel back in time. If you reload again, you DO use that codeword.

(it's fartmaster)

(because of course it is)

So, Frisk knows she (IN MY HEAD FRISK IS A SHE, SHUT UP) can travel through time

And knows it from the first time she died or reset the timeline, right...so at THAT POINT, killing ANYONE is completely inexcusable.

Frisk can afford to take the high ground because Frisk knows that she is not in any danger. If she dies trying to befriend a monster, then she comes back to life.

There is a reason why Sans is the one who judges you, too - he's aware of the time fuckery because of the gadgets in his secret lab. Which of course, EVERYONE knows about if you find the fartmaster code and use it to get his key, then find the key in his room to then check out the secret hidden door behind his house OBVIOUSLY THIS GAME IS SO SIMPLE!

shivadyne · Jan 8, 2016

EMaree said:
There's a book in the Snowdin library that talks about how monsters communicate with their magic, without any knowledge of how dangerous it is to humans e.g. a birthday card will release a spray of magic that would kill a human, and it's just how they say 'Happy birthday!'.

that's extremely interesting, actually. i wonder how many battles were due to simple miscommunication...

as for the issue of tumblr and undertale's fanbase (along with steven universe), it's pretty easy to avoid a lot of drama on there. i was in the homestuck fanbase at the height of it and believe me, the keystone motel reviews debacle was honestly tame compared to some of the stuff they're still pulling even now.

i can't recall any specific thing that undertale fans have done wrong by comparison. all that comes to mind is the GameFAQs best game ever contest and that was won fair and square. like i said, though, i follow a lot of pretty chill blogs so i might've just been missing the worst of it.

Taylor Harbin · Jan 9, 2016

I just wanted to pop in and say this is probably one of my all-time favorite games now. It made me cry from the happiness of the Pacifist ending and that's NEVER happened with a video game. I won't bother with Genocide. It literally couldn't stomach it.

nastyjman · Jan 11, 2016

Zoombie said:
DAS WARNING: There be spoilers in this post. But, uh, there were spoilers earlier in the thread so...whatever.

A thought has occurred to me!

It has been said that Undertale had a double standard, because it judges you for killing monsters, even though monsters try to kill you. But...in the game, it is made very clear that Frisk (the human protagonist's true name, by the way) IS AWARE of the time shifting. Reloading the game after killing Toriel means that using the "talk" act says: "You think of mentioning to Toriel you killed her...but that would be creepy."

Later, when you fight Asgore, if he kills you, and you use talk on him, you mention how many times he has killed you and he gets sad.

Furthermore, if you reload the save game before talking to Sans, he will actually notice that you already knew what he was gonna say, and then give you a codeword to tell him when you travel back in time. If you reload again, you DO use that codeword.

(it's fartmaster)

(because of course it is)

So, Frisk knows she (IN MY HEAD FRISK IS A SHE, SHUT UP) can travel through time

And knows it from the first time she died or reset the timeline, right...so at THAT POINT, killing ANYONE is completely inexcusable.

Frisk can afford to take the high ground because Frisk knows that she is not in any danger. If she dies trying to befriend a monster, then she comes back to life.

There is a reason why Sans is the one who judges you, too - he's aware of the time fuckery because of the gadgets in his secret lab. Which of course, EVERYONE knows about if you find the fartmaster code and use it to get his key, then find the key in his room to then check out the secret hidden door behind his house OBVIOUSLY THIS GAME IS SO SIMPLE!

Yep. If there was a movie equivalent of Undertale, it would be Groundhog Day.

If you played or watched a Genocide run, take notice of Sans' dialogue with you in the end. He mentions that he got bored with restarting and resetting everything. This boredom leads to DETERMINATION being shifted over to Flowey. Flowey then possesses the power to go back in time and alter timelines. Then YOU come along and supplant Flowey. My theory is that Chara had glommed to your body, despite being weak, yet she possesses DETERMINATION.

Yeah. There are layers and layers on this game that really blows my mind. So glad I paid the admission price for it.

Viridian · Jan 11, 2016

Frisk is a girl in my head, too. I didn't realize Frisk was supposed to be ungendered until halfway through the game.

Raxis · Jan 18, 2016

Recently bought and beat Undertale. The true pacifist ending has such strong feels, I'll never be able to bring myself to do the bad ending.

On an unrelated issue, I seem to get Papyrus and Undyne about 50/50 whenever I do this one "which character are you" internet quiz (a rare decent one). Should I consider that a compliment?

Zoombie · Jan 18, 2016

Raxis · Jan 19, 2016

One thing I'd like to include over the "is it wrong to kill the monsters" argument is that it's almost comically easy to placate non-boss monsters into leaving you alone. Only the enemies in the Core put up any sort of genuine fight (which is sensible, given they're outright trying to kill you thanks to Mettaton).

Undertale

Lover of Contemporary/Fantasy Romance (she/her)

not nasty at all

Dragon of the Multiverse

Running gags aren't for me

local good boy

Running gags aren't for me

local good boy

Preparing for winter

Dragon of the Multiverse

local good boy

Dragon of the Multiverse

Lover of Contemporary/Fantasy Romance (she/her)

Running gags aren't for me

brushing off the diamond dust

a demon for tea

Dragon of the Multiverse

brushing off the diamond dust

Power to the pen!

not nasty at all

local good boy

Dragon of the Multiverse