(shouting)

Determination.

do you like them video games? what about those there romhacks? well pop on in here and talk about them then! what are you waiting for?!
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Re: Determination.

Post by Whimsical Calamari »

No Lynch wrote:
Euparkeria wrote:
Answer simply "yes" or "no": This Gaster dude... is he exclusive to any type of run? And if: what run?
No. Gaster is typically only found by messing around with your save data in a particular way. He's… a bit of an oddity.
Various clues to his existence can appear during the first run, too. I got the Wrong Number Song the first time I ever played.
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Re: Determination.

Post by Ivy »

anyone who DIDN'T get the wrong number song sucks at exploring
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Re: Determination.

Post by Lunikyuu »

I'm the only one I know who didn't get the wrong number song ;_;
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Re: Determination.

Post by freakin whatzit »

i got the wrong number song on my second playthrough.
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I AM VERY DISGUSTED WITH THE TRASHY MAN. IN SPITE OF THE MONSTER, AND THE COACH, ONLY TRASHY, I WILL BEAT DOWN THEM ALL. FOR THIS I MUST STRENGTHEN MYSELF. THE MONSTER IS THE SAME TOO. COLLECT ALL THE TRASHY, RIGHTEOUS FELLOW ARE ALL UNPARDONABLE! YOU DON'T AFFECT ME. THE TRASHY STROLLING IS AN EYESORE!
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Re: Determination.

Post by randoguy101 »

both gaster and the wrong number song appear literally randomly. the wrong number song has like a 30% chance of happening I think? and most of the gaster encounters have a less than 1% chance of happening
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Re: Determination.

Post by Euparkeria »

Random chance, eh? Like [ispoiler]Uboa[/ispoiler]from Yume Nikki. It seems my guess had some truth in it.
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Re: Determination.

Post by Coryman »

Sorry for the necro, but I've got a statement to debate.

Sans doesn't bleed - it's the ketchup from earlier


(Read only after genocide)
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Re: Determination.

Post by Ivy »

Coryman wrote:Sorry for the necro, but I've got a statement to debate.

Sans doesn't bleed - it's the ketchup from earlier


(Read only after genocide)

don't even get me started. you level up immediately. that's entirely false

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Re: Determination.

Post by TheFinalSentinel »

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Re: Determination.

Post by raekuul »

Ivy wrote:
Coryman wrote:Sorry for the necro, but I've got a statement to debate.

Sans doesn't bleed - it's the ketchup from earlier


(Read only after genocide)

don't even get me started. you level up immediately. that's entirely false

He's the only monster that we see 'bleed'. Go kill the Goatfam and Undyne again, you'll see what I mean.

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Re: Determination.

Post by Ivy »

raekuul wrote:
Ivy wrote:

He's the only monster that we see 'bleed'. Go kill the Goatfam and Undyne again, you'll see what I mean.

ah, looks like I've made a mistake. nobody was denying that he dies, just the blood aspect. yeah, that sounds right

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Re: Determination.

Post by Coryman »

Afraid I'd answered the community for a moment, heh heh.
On the other hand, I've heard he doesn't count towards your kill count... Maybe he dies to a froggit whilst bleeding out?


In other news, I tried drinking ketchup today... Tastes good, but has an unpleasant lumpy texture
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Re: Determination.

Post by Ashan »

I went back to this game after like, a month or 2 ago when I did my neutral run. A couple nights ago I did the pacifist run, and I just finished my genocide run tonight. It was definitely my favorite run cause it's the only one where there's actually like... gameplay challenge.

I got to Sans my first time last night and ragequit after an hour. Gave a few more attempts today and then a friend told me to buy the Sea Tea or whatever, and then I got it after a few more attempts. I really liked that fight other than the attack where he flings you around.



I think I would enjoy the game more if the fanbase wasn't so insufferable with the memes and hyping up the game to impossible standards. Before playing, I was being pelted with the idea that I'm going to become attached to all the characters, so I couldn't really go in being objective about that idea. I mean, it's possible if I wasn't told that, I still would have felt the same, but I kinda wish I discovered the stuff more organically. And honestly, I didn't find any of the characters that interesting other than Sans.

Also the sprites in this game are really ugly, which I don't think helped. Everyone talks about they feel so bad about being a dick to Toriel, but she just looks like a stupid ugly fat goat, so I can't convince myself to feel anything for her.

I'm probably coming across more negative than my actual feelings are towards this game, cause I don't hate it. It's pretty cool and clearly had a lot of effort and thought put into it, but I'm just shocked that people played through it and suddenly market is as literally their favorite game of all time. Before playing through, everyone makes you feel like you're missing out on something amazing, and now that I've played through it I still feel like I'm missing out on something.
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Re: Determination.

Post by ACesspoolofHatred »

Ashan wrote:I went back to this game after like, a month or 2 ago when I did my neutral run. A couple nights ago I did the pacifist run, and I just finished my genocide run tonight. It was definitely my favorite run cause it's the only one where there's actually like... gameplay challenge.

I got to Sans my first time last night and ragequit after an hour. Gave a few more attempts today and then a friend told me to buy the Sea Tea or whatever, and then I got it after a few more attempts. I really liked that fight other than the attack where he flings you around.



I think I would enjoy the game more if the fanbase wasn't so insufferable with the memes and hyping up the game to impossible standards. Before playing, I was being pelted with the idea that I'm going to become attached to all the characters, so I couldn't really go in being objective about that idea. I mean, it's possible if I wasn't told that, I still would have felt the same, but I kinda wish I discovered the stuff more organically. And honestly, I didn't find any of the characters that interesting other than Sans.

Also the sprites in this game are really ugly, which I don't think helped. Everyone talks about they feel so bad about being a dick to Toriel, but she just looks like a stupid ugly fat goat, so I can't convince myself to feel anything for her.

I'm probably coming across more negative than my actual feelings are towards this game, cause I don't hate it. It's pretty cool and clearly had a lot of effort and thought put into it, but I'm just shocked that people played through it and suddenly market is as literally their favorite game of all time. Before playing through, everyone makes you feel like you're missing out on something amazing, and now that I've played through it I still feel like I'm missing out on something.
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Probably the biggest factor in why this game is praised as the greatest thing ever - and what, to me, gives it so much value - is its meta factor. It plays with you in ways most games usually don't, doing things like taking into account a player's tendency to reset or retry segments due to certain factors

(See: Killing Toriel and resetting to Spare her, being able to skip past Mettaton's opera after a reset, every line of dialogue with Flowey whenever you load up your save at the endgame in a Neutral run and keep fighting Asgore over and over)

and serving as a meta-commentary on gamer tendencies as a whole

(See: Sans's Judgment, pretty much everything Flowey-related, the Genocide route forever calling you awful for grinding out everything like you would in an actual RPG)

, and it continually tries to catch the player off-guard.

The fact that Undertale's writing is comedic and surreal and incredibly meta in nature means that it was probably inevitable that it was gonna have a rabid segment of its fanbase that would hype it up as the greatest thing in the universe. And I think that, given how strongly it plays with the element of surprise, all those loud voices spouting memes and such can actually really hurt the experience, which I find hella unfortunate. And, I mean, it's easy to say "Well you shouldn't judge a game just based on its fanbase!", and while I do think that's true, it's a lot easier said than done when said fanbase resides in the packed stadium of loudspeakers known as The Internet.
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Re: Determination.

Post by raekuul »

Also the sprites in this game are really ugly, which I don't think helped.
Read any good books lately?

Seriously, though, what improvements would you suggest to the sprite work?
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Re: Determination.

Post by TaviTurnip »

raekuul wrote:
Also the sprites in this game are really ugly, which I don't think helped.
Read any good books lately?

Seriously, though, what improvements would you suggest to the sprite work?
I'm completely butting into this, but. As a spriter I have to agree, but my issue is more that the pixel art is grossly inconsistent with itself. The battle animations also go against all "sensibility" that anyone who's grown up doing pixel art for 10+ years knows, but that's fine and it is okay for something like those animations to evolve into their own thing.

For me a huge pet peeve with the pixel art was that a lot of it was fake NES or "retro" style with no shading or texture, but then a lot of the sprites did have shading, additional colors, overlay effects or filters, and it all clashed with each other. The music had the same situation (which thankfully does not hurt the game and manages to make it better) and at least in my case, when you're trained to look at all art for its handiwork and consistency, it's kind of a headache that half of it doesn't match itself.
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That all aside, I don't think most of the art was actually objectively bad, except for all the Snowdin NPCs which just looked like "weird Tumblr person" junk that didn't need to be in a good game. Same with a lot of the Hotland NPCs. They were probably the only sprites in the game that should actually be described as bad. Everything else was just inconsistent.
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Re: Determination.

Post by Zummorr »

raekuul wrote:
Also the sprites in this game are really ugly, which I don't think helped.
Read any good books lately?

Seriously, though, what improvements would you suggest to the sprite work?

One thing that bothered me is that Player Character kinda has this off orange skin tone, misshapen head, and really stiff 8 frames of animation. (not entirely true)
meanwhile most other characters had portraits, and/or tons of cutscene animations. (like undyne and metaton)

Maybe it's just me, being bothered because I'm used to PCs having the decent numbers of animations in game, be it Alucard from Castlevania or FF6's cast. Mario of SMW.
TaviTurnip wrote:The battle animations also go against all "sensibility" that anyone who's grown up doing pixel art for 10+ years knows, but that's fine and it is okay for something like those animations to evolve into their own thing.
Just curious what you mean by "sensibility", do you mean how the battle sprites are made up of a bunch of small segments and are animated together or is it something else?
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Re: Determination.

Post by TaviTurnip »

Zummorr wrote:
TaviTurnip wrote:The battle animations also go against all "sensibility" that anyone who's grown up doing pixel art for 10+ years knows, but that's fine and it is okay for something like those animations to evolve into their own thing.
Just curious what you mean by "sensibility", do you mean how the battle sprites are made up of a bunch of small segments and are animated together or is it something else?
Sorta yes. I'm not stubborn like the most elite/tryhard pixel artists online, but even I kinda "dislike" the idea of sprite animating via tweening and special programming and, in this case, moving parts for relatively small graphics. I don't actually dislike it, but it still rubs me in ways where I'd prefer properly drawn frame-by-frame animating :P It's not an objective thing, it's just something I'd never actually do and don't prefer to do and also feels kind of "lazy" when a character can apparently be fully animated with only like three static sprites. It's sort of a principle versus execution thing. I'm not actually putting it down, it just goes against what I know and do for spritework.
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Re: Determination.

Post by Ashan »

Uh yeah, so I don't really have a response to everything, but as for the sprite stuff, what tavi said is basically it. I'm not necessarily turned off completely by the tweening, but it really bugged me how awful the player character looks. Why are you so yellow? Why are your eyes all squinty? It legit looks like a racist Asian stereotype. I'm guessing that's not what it's supposed to be, but I don't know what it is supposed to be. And most of the enemy sprites, I don't even know what they're supposed to be conveying. Like, does froggit have an octorock in front of it? What are the 3 dots, fire? What is Shyren? I'm assuming it's a mermaid or something, but where is its face? Why does it have spikes on its front, or is that supposed to be its back? I just can't tell what anything is.
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Re: Determination.

Post by Ivy »

the overworld sprites are one of the best parts of the game
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Re: Determination.

Post by Rixithechao »

A number of different artists worked on the game, so the mish-mash style could partly be attributed to that. But I think it was largely intentional -- partly to mess with players' expectations and partly as an homage to the Earthbound/Mother series, which was a major source of inspiration for Toby and also had its' fair share of wonky/inconsistent graphics.
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Re: Determination.

Post by Willhart »

Rockythechao wrote:A number of different artists worked on the game, so the mish-mash style could partly be attributed to that. But I think it was largely intentional -- partly to mess with players' expectations and partly as an homage to the Earthbound/Mother series, which was a major source of inspiration for Toby and also had its' fair share of wonky/inconsistent graphics.
I never noticed that before. Having certain amount of variety, especially between the combat and the regular exploring does work well I think. Makes each part feel like a separate thing, which adds more pacing and variety to the game, and there is still good bit of consistency which ties everything together. Breaking that intentionally does emphasise some parts well too.
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Re: Determination.

Post by Zummorr »

I suppose at some point I should say my thoughts on Undertale. My brother put the game as thus: It's a game about putting up with annoying people.
Jesting aside, it's really good and more importantly a condensed experience.

But like most RPGs it kinda peters out in the last third of the game, In terms of quality.

But it does some things really right. particularly in incorporating drama into the boss fights themselves. It's kinda a small thing to add all those text responses, but it does alot to help sell the characters mid-fight.
At the same time it has a good genuine sense of humor about it, some good tunes, and a

pretty dramatic twist. your first time through.



But not going to lie, even pacifist run has got some really weak parts.

The game really starts to lose steam (Ha) around Hotlands, where you meet up with the jarring Alphys She's a character pulled from similar veins as Otacon, in that she's basically a shut-in who literally causes almost all of the starting problems for our protagonist. The problem is that she is essentially (Tu)Toriel 2.0 who interrupts the game really frequently when you are pretty close to the end.

The ending with Metaton felt pretty satisfying for Metaton, but not as much for Alphys. She's just stuck in a really unsatisfactory place as a character who is both overly helpful and also the most harmful character in this world.

Since we on the topic of characters. Muffet, she has a good design which hits a sweet-spot of creepy and cute. Her boss fight is good. But she has really no bearing on the events of the game whatsoever, and is actually a step-lower in terms of threat escalation compared to Metaton who was introduced earlier. Arguably she is much lower in terms of threat compared to Undyne. Even if she is more heavily armed than Undyne. (Ha)

One of the biggest missed opportunities of the game is the Monster City. It is heavily alluded to in dialogue and in a background in Waterfall and it's a complete non-area, where you just walk up and meet the king Asgore.

Some other minor Pacifist run issues are the fact that you have to call up Papyrus on a specific map screen to befriend Undyne, and you can't befriend alphys until you beat the game. Seems like really bizarre decision to make an item that is pretty much only used for jokes into an essentially thing for flags. Oh well La-Mulana Remake does a similar thing with Xelpud.



Personally I find the gameplay of the Genocide run really lacking.

There really are only 2 new encounters and a lot of trivialized and time consuming nonsense inbetween those. Thematically (how an author thinks about people's behaviors) it's also a big mess. With Chandra,Flowey, and Sans all conveying really different themes.
Flowey conveys that the genocide run is an expression of freedom and power. Being bored with helping people and living in a world without consequences he revels in the murder. Considering the world his plaything and abusing his power.

Sans is kinda all over the place. on one hand playing the hero role trying to prevent the part where "everything ends." He tries to 'convince' you to stop and expresses how burnt out he is with everything. He expresses that he doesn't want anything from you, you simply wants you to stop. He accuses the player of being the kind of nihilistic person calling them "an unhappy Anomaly." who "won't ever be satisfied" and that if you "can do something." "You have to."

On one hand he's trying every trick to prevent you from deleting the world, and on the other hand he's trying to empathize with how burnt out the player might be, and on the other hand he believes that the PC is deeply troubled, and on the other hand he realizes that you have a driving desire to continue, even if you know it will give you nothing, even if you know it's not in your best interests. Hmm we might have too many hands here.


Chandra is really out of nowhere though, with minor hints as to her existence from Flowey and at Waterfall. She circumvents the player's actions and destroys the game world, making the statement that "Atk, Def, Level, this is what we are." perhaps as an allusion to the fact that you had to play the genocide run like an older RPG by grinding mobs. Perhaps an allusion of how some think of RPG characters purely as stats.
It's just really jarring since the stats numbers you have are pretty much irrelevant in this game. And it's completely at odds with the genocide run being an "expression of freedom/the end result of realizing that there is no freedom."



Thinking on it, I'm not a follower of Homestuck, but weren't Pre-adolescents adorned with reality bending super-powers part of it's gig? could be completely off base, but

Chandra

strikes me as something borne from that line of thinking.

I know there is alot of ragg-a-dag nit-picks. Overall I still think it's really good.
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Re: Determination.

Post by Ashan »

Zummorr wrote:things
I agree with a lot of this.

I really do feel like a lot of the level design is lacking. Like you mentioned, it gets kinda bad by the time you get to Hotlands, but even before that, there's so much that just looks really bland. Hotlands is mostly made up of arbitrary, pointless paths you have to walk. It has conveyor belts for seemingly no reason (there's a screen that's just a bunch of zig-zagging conveyors in each direction. You can't fall off them, they're basically just there). The arrow things that shoot you across jumps with steam never really serve a purpose as a proper puzzle (in fact, for the amount the game talks about puzzles, the only actual puzzles in the game I recall spending some time with is the ones where you move the blocks to shoot the spaceship. Unless the puzzle talk is a joke?)

And the ruins at the beginning is kind of just bland hallways that would fit in on an Atari game. Again, there's not really puzzles that I can remember, mostly just jokes (the rock that moves itself) and things that might take a couple attempts to do (the cracked grounds that you follow the leaf path below).

Sans and Flowey were pretty much the only characters I actually enjoyed reading dialogue from. A lot of the other characters seemed like blatant "relatable" tumblr bait. Napstablook or whatever his name is is basically just a heap of self-deprecating tumblr posts. Alphys is weeaboo nerd stereotype who embarrasses herself on social media and is really awkward around her crushes! When Sans isn't being serious he's the silly pun posts. Papyrus is kind of the opposite of Napstablook where he talks highly of himself even though he's pathetic.
I found Alphys in particular to be pretty insufferable. I know she was written to be kind of like that, but I didn't find a lot of the jokes surrounding her to be all that funny. They were pretty predictable, and I wanted her gone whenever she was involved in the story.

What you mentioned about having to call Papyrus to befriend Undyne I think might be wrong? I recall Papyrus calling me while I was running from Undyne's fight and him saying "The three of us should hang out!" or something, which I just took as a funny joke because I was currently being chased by her, so I never thought anything of it. If a friend who already played didn't mention to me that I actually do need to leave and go to Undyne's house, I probably would have missed it. I think this is what you were getting at, but it was something I made note of, that it's kind of annoying when they use a joke as an actual hint necessary to complete the run properly.

The stats being irrelevant is something I had issue with too. And it's kind of why I feel like Undertale doesn't have much replay value. You're supposed to follow a beaten path, so if you're not doing a "casual" run (which is the one nobody ever mentions), then you're either going to never level (in a pacifist run) or level up to max (in a genocide run). Either one you do, the game basically caters itself to the run you're doing. The pacifist run never really requires you to need more than your 20HP, and the genocide run never really requires you to worry about stats since which quarter of the game you're in, basically completely dictates what your stats will be. Hell, at the end of the game you're given armor and a weapon that do 99 defense and 99 damage respectively, so what's the point even? It's basically just story items. The game really isn't much of an RPG, and you can probably get most of the experience from watching someone else play it.

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Re: Determination.

Post by Rixithechao »

I don't recall having to

call Papyrus to befriend Undyne either, just having to befriend Papyrus and give Undyne the glass of water.



As for the genocide route, Toby meant for it to be one big statement about completionism - that players do whatever it takes in order to get every achievement and see every outcome, and in the process they, as you said, treat game characters as just stats. I figure the route was designed to be tedious, unsettling and unsatisfying to really drive that point home and deter the player from selling their soul, and the soulless pacifist endings really hammer in that feeling of "was it worth it?"



Last but not least, Chara. Chara is the character you name at the beginning of the game, the first child that fell into the underground. The tapes in the true lab and a conversation you can have with Asriel at the end of the true pacifist run reveal Chara was adopted by Toriel and Asgore, then they manipulated Asriel to get revenge on humanity for unspecified reasons. Alphys may be responsible for the creation of Flowey, but Chara was the ultimate cause of the game's events. In the genocide route, they're meant to be the embodiment/manifestation of the completionist mindset, and it's implied they gradually possess Frisk's body as the player kills more and more monsters.



Edit: For the record, I'm not trying to paint Undertale as some absolutely masterpiece or anything like that. It does have its' flaws, and it's not for everyone; I personally found the characters endearing but I can see how they'd get on folks nerves, especially with all the obnoxious hype (which I'm ashamed to have been a part of). The level and puzzle design didn't bother me, but I don't blame folks for finding that stuff lacking compared to other RPGs. And I first played the game at a low point in my life, so I'm sure there's no small amount of personal bias in play here.
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