Undertale

I'll admit right now that I didn't read the entire article (I gave up after it seemed to reach a point where it was giving more examples of essentially the same idea, but only because I'm impatient), but that does sound like an awesome way to play a game!

I mean, playing Neverwinter Nights, for example, I always found it kind of silly that the enemies *must be killed, rawr!* without many other options. I mean, I enjoyed NWN, but even so, when I heard about Planescape: Torment, and how you could navigate the entire game without killing anyone (with great dialogue), I had to wonder why that wasn't a standard option in more games.

Anyway, thanks for sharing. It's an interesting idea, and I hope the developer makes a lot of sales.

I played a lot of Undertale this week.

You can't wash murder off your SOUL. Remember that, if you play the game.

;-;

That is all.

It's a glorious little game, and I loved every second of it.

If you play this game through to the end and don't cry at least once, then you probably don't have a soul.

Sold!

I've been seeing a lot about Undertale but didn't really understand what it was about -- now I do, and oh man, I wanna play it.

I just finished the neutral and pacifist endings of this game. I'm really tempted to try a genocide run, but I've heard it's really hard, so maybe I should just watch let's plays?

i've only played the demo, but wow does this game seem like fun!

i couldn't find it in myself to play as anything other than a pacifist and i think a game has to be pretty awesome to make you not want to be, y'know, a violent killing machine all over the place. it helps that the music is fantastic as well.

Hapax Legomenon said:

I just finished the neutral and pacifist endings of this game. I'm really tempted to try a genocide run, but I've heard it's really hard, so maybe I should just watch let's plays?

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Fun fact!

I was watching the Genocide Run on a lets play.

A character says; "Honestly, I think what's worse are the sickos who watch this stuff. You know. For fun?"

And I was like, "CRAP! THEY CAN SEE ME THROUGH THE YOUTUBES!"

How did the Undertale fanbase get so cancerous ?

Yessss 50th post

Forgot to check in here and say I finally played Undertale, and oh man, I loved it. Easily my favourite gaming experience of 2015, and it got to me in a way few games ever have. Definitely one I will remember and replay again and again.

(Only did Neutral and True Pacifist, didn't have the heart for Genocide -- and a certain blue-eyed boss would have been too much for me anyway. But I watched presshearttocontinue play Genocide and had fun.)

Really can't enthuse enough about what a joyful, heartening experience it was to play. Amazing fun gameplay and a killer soundtrack.

NoirSuede said:

How did the Undertale fanbase get so cancerous ?

Yessss 50th post

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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.

The article's worth a read just for the embedded video of the little boy and the piñata.

...oh, and the game sounds nifty too.

When I played Undertale, something kept bothering me about it. Well, the obvious "inspiration" from EarthBound was a problem for me, but there was something else I couldn't put my finger on until I had played it for a fair game.

Undertale is a game where you are a terrible, terrible person if you should kill someone, even in self-defense...but you are expected to sympathize with and like the monsters who try to murder a child because they're human.

(The "friend" who got me to play it ended up showing me the Genocide ending, because he thought he'd enjoy my reaction to it. Between the so-terrible-it's-not-even-remotely-amusing final boss fight and the terrible arbitrarily-necessary-plot-device ending that both serve to underline the double standard of Undertale's "moral"...well, he admitted that I scared him a bit. )

lilyWhite said:

Undertale is a game where you are a terrible, terrible person if you should kill someone, even in self-defense...but you are expected to sympathize with and like the monsters who try to murder a child because they're human.

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This is only true if your'e considering the 'neutral route' a bad ending. It's not perfect, it's not the 'true end', but it's still a 'good end'.

If you go through the game killing monsters that attack you, you still get a 'good' neutral ending -- it's called the 'No Mercy' ending but the Wiki calls it the Leaderless Ending because a lot of people use No Mercy to mean True Genocide. Sans asks you to think on whether your actions were justified, but he's not outright hostile about it and doesn't condemn you or stop you*, and he understands that it was just in self-defense.

The game tries to steer you down the good route, but you only get locked into the Genocide plotline after you've killed multiple boss monsters who tell you outright that they're not going to fight you. And even if you fight every single monster that crosses your path, without listening to their intentions, you won't get true Genocide -- you have to go to a level of grinding that's impossible in normal gameplay to actually hunt them down. It still gives you the a 'good ending' if you kill only in self-defense.

The game actually tries very hard not to judge you, you have to persistently go against most of the mechanics of the game to be condemned as a horrible person. It continues to offer turning back points through most of the True Genocide route: you're locked onto the plotline after Mettaton Ex, but you can still reset the game at the Sans fight and return to a normal neutral/Pacifist playthrough. The game is relentlessly optimistic, you can be forgiven right up until the final 5% of your murder spree.

(*Spoilers: He's a wee bit more hostile if you kill Papyrus, but he still doesn't judge you as beyond redemption.)

Yeah, as Em says: The game only really judges you if you kill everyone.

Quite a few monsters do not attack you in any meaningful way - like, say, Whimsun (who doesn't attack at all and will run away after the first round) or Migsop (who doesn't attack if there are no monsters around to tell him too.)

Plus, remember, the monsters HAVE been trapped underground for an incredibly long time in a miserable prison after humans slaughtered most of them in a completely lopsided war. Asgore didn't do the right thing - and I can understand why people condemn him...but I wouldn't say the game has a double standard.

It just has one standard: killing people is bad.

It is bad when Asgore did it - it tore his marriage and arguably his life apart.

It is bad when you do it - even if you DON'T get possessed by a genocidal demon monster child, it still makes the game world a sadder, more miserable, more dreary place.
In the converse, mercy and kindness is good, even if it is hard.

I like these morals - they're simple, but well told. I also like how the game doesn't remove entertaining gameplay by positing this moral choice. It's not the difference between choosing a fun way and a lame way to play the game, because the gameplay is focused primarily on defense so whether you kill or not, you still get the fun bullet hell segments!

I wish more games were like Undertale. Not in the "indi Earthbound inspired top down isometric bullet hell game with funny characters and 4th wall breaking humor" way, but rather the "well written and engaging and capable of using the medium in new and interesting ways" way.

Yeah, as Em says: The game only really judges you if you kill everyone.

Quite a few monsters do not attack you in any meaningful way - like, say, Whimsun (who doesn't attack at all and will run away after the first round) or Migsop (who doesn't attack if there are no monsters around to tell him too.)

Plus, remember, the monsters HAVE been trapped underground for an incredibly long time in a miserable prison after humans slaughtered most of them in a completely lopsided war. Asgore didn't do the right thing - and I can understand why people condemn him...but I wouldn't say the game has a double standard.

It just has one standard: killing people is bad. (Though, I'd like to note that "bad" is not the same thing as "unjustifiable." You can do a lot of bad things and justify it. But that doesn't mean that the actions aren't bad things.)

It is bad when Asgore did it - it tore his marriage and arguably his life apart.

It is bad when you do it - even if you DON'T get possessed by a genocidal demon monster child, it still makes the game world a sadder, more miserable, more dreary place.
In the converse, mercy and kindness is good, even if it is hard.

I like these morals - they're simple, but well told. I also like how the game doesn't remove entertaining gameplay by positing this moral choice. It's not the difference between choosing a fun way and a lame way to play the game, because the gameplay is focused primarily on defense so whether you kill or not, you still get the fun bullet hell segments!

I wish more games were like Undertale. Not in the "indi Earthbound inspired top down isometric bullet hell game with funny characters and 4th wall breaking humor" way, but rather the "well written and engaging and capable of using the medium in new and interesting ways" way.

Argh! I can't stop thinking about this game. The music. The nostalgic aesthetics. The story. The characters. The CHARACTERS!

I think this game is a perfect example of video game as art. It engages your emotions and also imparts a strong message (given that you do the RIGHT thing). I badger my husband to play the game, but I don't want to say too much that it would spoil the experience for him.

I finally picked it up and I'm in love.

I've spoiled myself on almost everything, though. I'm gonna do a genocide run at some point, but that boss fight with Sans looks hard! I doubt I'll be able to beat him.

I watched a video of a guy getting dunked on by Sans. My poor sides are aching.

My first run was spoiler free until I got curious on who one of the characters was... Then I spoiled it to myself. But despite that, the reveal was still rewarding and hair-raising. I think the emotional impact is still different from actually playing the game than watching someone play it. Still, I would have loved to experience that twist spoiler-free.

I went in mostly spoiler free, and it was nice.

EMaree said:

This is only true if your'e considering the 'neutral route' a bad ending. It's not perfect, it's not the 'true end', but it's still a 'good end'.

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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.

lilyWhite said:

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.

Click to expand...

Well, the game's plot is designed around the use of the reloading mechanic we all take for granted - so killing, then reloading to find a way around it (or a way to kill even more) is part of the narrative.

Plus...considering that boss' character and the plot, her trying to kill you does make sense.

Hell, one might even say it's downright justifiable.