Undertale - Pet dogs and date a skeleton!

i have a friend who died over a hundred times to undyne bc she didn't realize she could equip stronger armor

she was unintentionally doing a gross bandage run

 

Spoiler: Undyne fight

It took me four or five tries before I thought "hey, how bout I RUN AWAY and get some more heals and--WAIT SHIT I CAN JUST GO THAT WAY :D"

I poured some water on her and she glared at me and went away, so I guess we're cool now.

 

Spoiler: the cooking show

Alphys continues to be more adorable than should be allowed. Also more awesome. OMG JETPACK PHONE.

Also, FUCK YOU METTATON STOP THROWING SHIT AT ME WHILE I'M TRYING TO GET YOUR CAN OF FUCKING SOY SOUL

*adds Mettaton to the "will be spared but first kicked in the cojones or whatever analogous bits they have" list*

 

So, on reflection.

The Genocide ending of Undertale is the logical endpoint of the story. Not only narratively, but also in terms of game difficulty curves, the game is simply not complete without it.

The pre-Genocide Pacifist ending is the equivalent of the point in a novel where everything seems to be going well and all the conflict is being resolved, and you go "???" because you clearly have more than one-third of a book to go through and there are several important plot points that are still up in the air and you're not sure how the author is going to resolve them... and then the narrator breaks the fourth wall and warns you that everything is about to go Really Bad for the protagonists, so if you want to pretend the story has a happy ending you should just stop reading now and put the book down forever.

Except it goes one step further and tries to pretend that you will be personally to blame for everything that happens unless you choose to accept the unsatisfying non-ending and walk away.

You are not making any choices. You are only turning the pages. The story ends on a gigantic downer and it is always going to end on a downer. The most you can do is stop reading.

(The post-Genocide Pacifist ending basically reflects how you can't really go back to pretending the happy ending is canon after you've read the real ending.)

 

...except that you're the one who chose to play it that way? You chose to go and kill everyone, you chose to take it right up until the end, because you wanted to see what would happen.

 

Yes, just like you would choose to turn every single page in that book, just because you want "to read the whole thing" and "resolution for all the plot threads". You monster.

 

??? Except that you absolutely can get the whole idea from just doing that? There's perfectly good resolution in the Pacifist route.

Also, generally a book doesn't go 'are you REALLY ABSOLUTELY SURE' every time you turn a page. Whereas the option to avert a genocide run happens for nearly the entire run.

 

I have a very good response for this argument, one that shows without any doubt that I am right and you are entirely wrong. Unfortunately I have placed the only remaining copy of that argument in the stomach of this adorable, sweet, naive character and the sole way of retrieving it invovles cutting their stomach open, killing them in a horrible, painful and protracted way, while they tearfully beg for their life and ask what they did wrong to deserve this. So I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, unless you want the blood of this adorable, sweet, naive character to be on your hands. You monster.

 

Hah, now I'm reminded of the ending to

Spoiler: Stephen King novel major ending spoiler

The Dark Tower, where the text DOES warn you 'dude no leave it here on a hopeful note' before the end, but if you continue, you get hit with Roland going back into a Groundhog Day loop that he's repeated an unknown number of times, begging not to be forced to do it again. (though it's not completely hopeless, there's a suggestion that eventually things might change.)

 

?????????

You're not making any sense and it seems like you know you don't have any argument so you're deciding to go for emotional kicks like that makes any sense. Seriously, what even.

 

It's 4 AM and I can't sleep because I am upset about fiction.

Are you *sure* you want to continue to question my perfect and convincing argument? Because if you do, the fictional character will die horribly and it'll be very sad and it will be entirely your fault, just because you wanted to get the last word in an online discussion.

 

?????? The only one who's taking this so seriously is you? You're just being confusing and at this point I've got to think that you're being intentionally so to annoy people so that you don't actually have to defend your argument, then acting like someone saying 'i disagree, please respond with support with your argument' is being unreasonable and then trying to frame that disagreement as actually being support for your argument.

So... did you just want to be a dick to someone on the internet for no reason and try to make people feel like shit? If so you might want to jaunt over to one of the other threads to talk things out, or have some tea or something.

 

I am trying to illustrate what I find annoying about Undertale's "choices" and its attempts to hold the player "responsible" for them, by setting up a highly contrived and arbitrary scenario where I attempt to blackmail my interlocutor with the fate of a fictional character.

...so, yes, you got me. I don't actually have a good argument for why playing the Genocide route would not make me a bad person (if I were willing to spend money* on a game that annoys me on a philosophical level).

But in forcing me to reveal my argument, you have caused the death of this poor innocent fictional character! So now you are as tainted, tainted I say, as any of us who have ever been presented with a fictional scenario where one of the choices is to kill a character, and then made that very choice! You are victorious... BUT AT WHAT COST TO YOUR SOUL.

*Hm. I wonder what sort of route "pirated the game to play it" would be. Kind of a copy protection thing. Flowey and Chara both appear acting dismayed and disgusted, and tell you that you have Gone Too Far even for their taste. Chara doesn't even want your soul any more.

 

Dude, seriously, you're not being clever or anything here, you're just being nasty. Could you knock it off? Or would that ruin the smartness of the argument that's clearly your biggest concern here.

 

OK, OK, I'm going.

(tainted!)

(you monster.)

 

Spoiler: Spoils for Undertale endings way too cavalier about this

I feel like a better way of approaching this is also breaking the gameplay aspect from the plot aspect of Undertale. Genocide is, at least to me, massively unsatisfying as a resolution and with how everything wraps up. You murder hundreds only to have a fight with one person with implied time powers, watch the king get chump shot, and stab your accomplice to death only to get the same in return with the destruction of the setting and permanent ruining of your game. After, presumably with the narrative clues on how to get this ending, calmly talking down a sparkledog minmax god who has kidnapped everyone and get a comical and adorable ending.

On the inverse with gameplay breakdown, you get access to the most complex and thrilling fight of the game that can be only accessed through a grindfest and careful hording of items throughout the game's sparse world. It's massively unsatisfying as a story end but it's fantastic as a game mechanic, which makes a really interesting counterpoint to it: as a videogame boss battle, the end of Genocide mode is worth it. As the end to a story, it is neither edifying nor similarly elaborate and thrilling as the Pacifist end (or even standard ends!)

I will admit, I find the Genocide mode deeply unsatisfying. I understand it and appreciate why others like it, but I feel like its shock value and pretty base tragedy instead of the earlier game's relentlessly active story

 

I like the genocide run for the insights into what various characters are like when we are the antagonist. On a story-end, it isn't a complete or satisfying path---but it fills things in that the other endings don't show.

Like, we only get Queen Alphys by ending a geno run in Hotland/Core (but still killing Mettaton.) Flowey's speech about what it was like when he first woke in th garden. Undyne managing to go full anime, Papyrus showing that Undyne was pretty damn correct that the battlefield is not place for him. Gerson being a smartass, hiding in a shop screen (where game mechanics say we can't walk around and so can't fight) to snark at us and delay us with chatting, more likely to slow us than a fight.

And there are no true consequences except to our feelings about the game. The spirit of being willing to tear the game to pieces in order to get at every bit of information... that spirit fully embraces the meta fuckery of messing with our save files, of avoiding Consequences by just not answering the question, of deleting the evidence of the answer if we do.

It's the true ending of the game.... if we, like Flowey, need to see every little thing of the game, exhaust every possibility, replay so many times that we're thinking in variables instead of characters/story. I feel the game is more complete for having that path in it... and it not being narratively enjoyable, other than those bits of characterization, really drove home the feeling of ugh, why am I doing this? This is boring.

 

I get really weirded out when people take the routes in Undertale as moratoriums on the player's morality. I guess if you're completely unfamiliar with the genre of game Undertale is that might seem to be the case, but as @swirlingflight described, the game is playing with genre conventions as a part of telling that story.

It's not just about giving the player Consequences, it's following these genre conventions to conclusions games in this genre don't usually explore. Unquestioningly trying to fight or kill everything that attacks you is a genre convention of this kind of rpg - but Undertale asks, what if you had the option not to do that, even though the game expects you to? It also allows you to take the most common option, and even grind for levels and money to make the game easier - but unlike the genre convention, you can end up killing everything you come across if you do that, and the game throws huge challenges at you so you can't have a total cakewalk. It even has results for all sorts of cases in between, in the form of what endings you can get.

And then it uses that to tell a story. I mean, yeah, you could take the genocide route as the You Are An Awful Person route if you really want to, but it is telling an interesting part of the story, of what you inadvertently awaken when you go along with genre conventions. It's a completely legitimate part of the story and - well, this is personal opinion, but - I don't think Toby Fox would have put it in as some sort of 'you're an awful person now!' gotcha. He just doesn't seem like that kind of storyteller.

It makes sense that that 'ruins' your game afterward, because this is a game that also plays with resetting when things go wrong as an actual in-world thing that doesn't necessarily wipe the slate, especially not for the players. I don't see that as a punishment, but a logical extension of the mechanics - when you end up playing to Chara's worst tendencies and awaken them, they're an active part of the game unless the player actually messes with the very structure of the game to remove them again. (There's plenty of hints that they're along for the ride in a non-genocide, pre-genocide run, too, but they're a passive observer and guide.)

I think that's pretty neat, myself, even if I am too much of a marshmallow to play that route. (At least in part because I can't hack the combat and can't be bothered to cheat engine myself invincibility. I watched an LP of it instead.)

 

Spoiler

* Those pathetic people who want to see everyone die...

* But judge the people who get their hands dirty doing it...

 

See, that doesn't bother me a bit. Flowey is an unreliable narrator, and his skewed idea of how things work is a considerable part of what makes the game's narrative what it is. I might have felt a twinge of conscience at that originally because marshmallow, but ultimately it's fiction, and exploring dark things in fiction and how they fit into their narrative is, if nothing else, good brain exercise.