Undertale - Pet dogs and date a skeleton!

Yeah. I think they find it easier because they can go "oh, well, it wasn't really Flowey's fault, it's Chara's fault for pushing him there!" and then feel shallow compassion for him by putting all the difficult baggage on someone else.

Hell, I do. But I try to catch myself from it.

 

It's a hard thing not to do. Especially when you don't catch yourself doing it.

 

And on that note I'm gonna go kill Papyrus again.

 

I'm honestly really happy that the no mercy route is an option in this game, because I've played two amazing games (specifically Spec Ops: The Line and OFF) where you end up doing awful things and are blamed by the narrative for doing so. I've also heard plenty of butthurt players then going "well, the game MADE me do it so it's not my fault!" and totally missing the point.
This game, you choose to do awful things, very deliberately. You can't place blame elsewhere.

 

Spoiler

there has been a theory going around that the narration is actually Chara speaking, though. I don't have links right now, but there's a thing with. fuck, what enemy was it. but some ACT options and flavor text sound like they might be Chara or, at least they aren't from Frisk.

 

hmm... maybe I'm weird then?
I feel bad about what happens in the genocide run. In an abstract way I feel bad about abandoned baby animals and wolves eating other animals.
It's very likely that when faced with a few paths to explore and the option to go back and explore all of those paths, that most people will try to explore them all. Curiosity is a fairly big part of how humans as a species act the way they do.
So to me it was clear that I'd eventually do a genocide run or at least watch it online. Because I'm curious. I wiki-dive on random topics for fun all the damn time after all. It was the kind of natural inevitability as wolves eatign that eventually my curiosity would win out against the moral judgement of the source material. So while I feel very strongly for and with the characters and I am heartbroken, on a morality level I cannot judge people who want to do a genocide run. In fact I think I judge people who do a genocide run and then don't want to own up to the fact that they themselves decided to do that and shove all the blame onto Chara more than people who upfront admit to having done a genocide run for the heck of it.
And I totally want a dlc for a fourth option. So many characters still need saving! Flowey, Asriel and Chara and Gaster are still lost even with the best possible ending. I want to save those people too! It's important to me that a true perfect ending should give me the ability to save everyone just as the geno ending allowed me to destroy everything! And given how we only learn about Chara and meet them through a genocide run, as we only truly learn about and meet Asriel in the pacifist run, I feel that this fourth ending would need to take place after having gotten every ending at least once and it would need to be tedious and hard and very very complicated. But I believe it must be somehow possible to bring every single character back with you to the overworld and have everyone end up happy and well-adjusted.

 

I would give toby my soul for a fourth option wherein I can save everyone ever.

 

In other news, I've just been thinking about Alphys saying she should have killed you when she had the chance and then I remembered...she has a determination extraction machine in her goddamn lab. I dunno, the one in the lab definitely looks big, but if she had a smaller version, or one hidden in another area of the lab that might be something to think about as a plot bunny anyway

 

While I wholly support people who do like the Geno run, I dunno, it just doesn't do much for me.

It just feels like half a game? You race through a deserted, charmless map where all the puzzles are solved for you and all the NPCs have fled, effortlessly and mindlessly oneshotting enemies and grinding even though there's nothing fun about it, just because that's what the route requires. It has two great fights and sheds a little more light on a few characters, but on the whole it's just depressing and unrewarding. And I know that's the point of it, but eh, I just couldn't invest time in it myself. Good on everyone who does like it though, I'm tremendously impressed by people who end up being able to easily beat Sans! It's a lot more skill than I have.

But I find a lot of the neutral routes a whole lot more emotionally interesting and upsetting than Geno anyway. Like, say if you kill some enemies but not others, how it might end up effecting the game in ways you don't expect - kill Snowdrake and his cousin comes looking for him, and later on you bump into his distraught father who says they parted on bad terms and he wants to make up with his kid but can't find him. Kill all of the dogs but Doggo, and he becomes convinced that they're all playing a trick on him by not moving so he can't see them. Kill only Papyrus and the music in Grillby's stops, half the town starts talking about the things they liked about him in spite of his goofiness and they start wondering where he went, and the distraught Undyne attacks you with no joy or passion after mourning him in her own way.

That and 'The people your actions hurt now have to live with the consequences of them, fuck you' gets me a whole lot better than 'Then a demon of true murder and lust for power and all that destroyed everything forever but will give it back in exchange for ur soul'.

I dunno though. As much as I like Asriel and Flowey and whatnot, I think that saving him would sorta, I dunno... do a disservice to his sacrifice? That, and part of the appeal of the game is recognizing the things you can and cannot change, IMO. Bittersweet shit.

Besides, look where Undertale takes its inspiration from.

You couldn't save King. You couldn't Save Toroko. And you can't save Asriel.

 

Spoiler: Actually, yeah

I was thinking about this last night, and while I don't know what the enemy event is, I thought of at least one thing that really supports this. The narration for reflections!

In a normal or pacifist run, when you have Frisk examine a mirror or Alphys' monitor, the narration says stuff "It's you!" or "Despite everything, it's still you." But in a geno run, it turns to "It's me, [Name]."

 

SO UH ABOUT THAT THING

about some normal runs being more upsetting than geno runs

Spoiler: someone on tumblr did art based on a run i never imagined

the run where you only kill papyrus

it's so upsetting

and it really nicely illustrates that high LOVE = distanced = no pain idea

a geno run is murdering EVERYONE, indiscriminately, hunting them down until there's no one left

but a mercy run where you kill Papyrus???

i just

killing papyrus is never necessary to a normal run

if you just lose against him three times (like i did) he just fucking lets you go

fucking naptsablook is more likely to kill you than papyrus

i

T_T

 

I have been trying to do a no mercy run. I about cried over Undyne and Papyrus and just. I don't think I can do this lol

 

@Sailorbeefcake

I don't think it's a disservice, not depending on how it's done. But then I am the sort of person who believes that no one has to lose. In fact that it is utterly impossible for anyone to be truly lost. Undertale hits so near my mark of wanting to save everyone, of that being the most realistic outcome if the hardest to pull off, that not getting it is to me the disservice. I'm rather sad about it and after having thought about it my initially incredibly high opinion of Undertale lessened a bit. I love it dearly, but it's still not quite what I want and I only realized that after sitting and thinking about it for a while. Which is why it stings more than not being able to save Giygas in Earthbound does.

I couldn't save Asriel because Toby limited himself. He limited Mahakaruna.

 

Although I'll note that the end of the game isn't necessarily the end of the story, and that it's implied Flowey will pop up on the surface now. So it's very possible something could be done to help him.

 

I think Asriel's dialogues actually suggests the opposite, he very deliberately intents to imprison himself and by extension flowey in the underground in eternal solitude. The question is if Flowey won't somehow get out if he gets angry enough about everything. Asriel's plans of containing himself apparently didn't go much farther than 'I'll stay here until I turn into flowey again and hope that's enough.' but then maybe he planned to blow up all pathways to the overworld once everyone had moved out?

 

I honestly think Flowey will get bored, and then Frisk will be waiting for exactly that. They're DETERMINED.

 

it's my headcanon that frisk gets alphys' help in transferring asriel's consciousness from flowey into their body

it worked for chara naturally, right?

 

at least he'd have jerry, right?
...
on second thought, that would probably make things even less bearable

 

tbh if all i had was jerry i would go full on murder king