Undertale

(written on 5/29/24)

(ft. thoughts I stole from sirmilkman because they were watching me play through the whole thing and called me out any time I messed up a puzzle)

(skooka also watched me play through it but that commentary boiled down mostly to "you should go genocide RIGHT NOW")

It's Undertale! You've probably heard of this game before and probably even played it. I played it a few years back, and I've been meaning to replay this game with the lens of a story writer and after making some small games of my own ever since Undertale Yellow came out (and also with word that more Deltarune chapters are fast approaching). As you can probably guess from how popular this game is: I really enjoyed it! The only low points were the handful of times it leaned too much into wacky random internet humor, but these moments were very far between. Everything else was so beautifully written, polished, and overall charming. In fact, I enjoyed this game on this revisit a LOT more than on my first one because last time I played it, I did not understand a lot of the telegraphs or strategies and thought the attacks were too unpredictable when they are not! I was just very bad at games back then! I still am bad at games actually, but less so now.

Undertale does such a great job of subverting genre tropes, both narratively and in terms of gameplay. The combat system is super creative and dynamic, and a ton of the characters refuse tradition like not buying items from you at stores or acknowledging that their overworld sprites only face one way/don't move. When you revisit various areas, they look the same as when you started, but a lot of the dialogue says that everyone either is too lazy to move or are doing things slowly it's imperceptible. One boss also has a joke about only facing towards the camera the entire time both because they're a performer and because their weak point is on their back. I was also shocked at how many game mechanics are explained in-universe in a way that actually enhance the worldbuilding. For example, food items are magical, explaining why they instantly heal. So many RPGs also have characters just increase their health points by levelling up, which I can only imagine means their skin gets thicker somehow, but Undertale provides a really good explanation for practically everything.

(Everything from this point onwards is going to be spoilers)

Obviously, there's saving and loading, but there's also levelling up, monsters turning into dust, and a very interesting magic system. Having monsters be made of magic instead of physical matter was masterfully used to create new funeral traditions, explain why their bodies seem physically impossible at times, and even adds to the impact of a death because if no one sees the dust before it scatters, there is literally no trace of that being. That's kind of terrifying. If a monster just doesn't show up one day, you would have no idea if they were killed or not. Getting back on track, monster bodies being made of magic also creates a much more realistic explanation for levelling up, where Frisk isn't actually getting physically stronger by killing enemies, but instead their intentions and emotions enhance their health and damage against purely magical attacks. Magic is heavily tied to emotion, which functions both narratively and for gameplay, as a monster who feels hopeless or safe will lower their attack and defense. It makes me wonder if lv. 20 Frisk would be any stronger in a fight against another human than a lv. 1 Frisk, as since they would both be physical Frisk's intention to hurt wouldn't actually increase their damage output in the same way.

As I'm sure you're aware, this game has genuinely phenomenal writing. Toby has almost total control over tones throughout the entire game, switching Undyne's hangout from wacky antics about being way too strong and high-strung to her genuine concern for Papyrus's well-being, trying to find a new hobby for him so he doesn't die in battle. It also explains why he keeps trying to cook despite being awful at it- he wants to impress Undyne and be well-loved, which is the same reason he wants to be a Royal Guard. Generally, Waterfall was the most powerful section, with the somber music and cool colors with fewer encounters allowing you to really soak in every bit of lore told through the tablets and echo flowers. The final trek through New Home is similarly emotional, with all encounters being replaced by explanations of monster history and anticipation for the outcome of the final fight. And then as impactful these moments are, the game also delivers some of the funniest facial expressions and wacky jokes I've ever read. A few have been worn out by the stupid amount of memes people make of this game, but it's clearly only so popular because it was able to appeal to such a broad audience. I also found it hilarious that the puzzles were something that most monsters actually were aware of and complained about because they were created to stop humans and end up having entire crews and traditions to make sure every part of the Underground is so full of obstacles to the point where post-game dialogue mentions the freedom of the surface not booby-trapping everyone every few steps.

Whoops

This is my favorite joke because she explains the oven 2 seconds earlier

Mettaton just keeps buying journals like candy

This game also has one of the most insane amounts of foreshadowing ever? Like my friends would tell me to backtrack through really long corridors as a joke and were equally surprised when Flowey or a new NPC was waiting for me there. And you can theoretically piece together what Flowey is almost exclusively through the Snowdin Librarby if you're really paying attention. Additionally, Mettaton prompts Alphys with her lines when she stumbles, setting up that all of Hotland is scripted from the get-go. More importantly, so much of Deltarune is already referenced that me and my friends were arguing over its intentionality. Namely:

Papyrus's date features an Egg, a major secret collectible in Deltarune
- sirmilkman was yelling at me for pointing this out because there's promotional art indicating Papyrus is the man who gives you eggs in Deltarune and they refuse to believe that theory
Deltarune is an anagram of Undertale and it's in-game symbol has TWO designs, one which better matches Undertale's situation (two down arrows for monsters) while the other has two up arrows for the two lightners. Both designs seem to be used roughly in coordination with hints towards each game's story
- More importantly, a "delta" can be the triangular point where a river meets the ocean, and Deltarune has a lot of secret references to "a song of the sea."
  - half of the Riverman/Riverwoman's dialogue and appearance ALSO reference Deltarune and the sea AND THEY JUST SO HAPPEN TO BE IN A RIVER??? Some of this has to just be coincidence but that's still insane
sans repeatedly mentions "going back" and the Snowdin shopkeeper says he and Papyrus just sort of... showed up one day and asserted themselves.
- the skeletons' house and Grillby's are also identical between Undertale and Deltarune, implying one was moved from the other. The fast travel door in Deltarune is almost identical to sans's Undertale door. Even the Judgement Hall looks like it could possibly be another building he moved over because it has the Delta Rune on windows which are streaming in SUNLIGHT. And it isn't the Delta Rune that represents Undertale- it only has the one down arrow for a Darkner. We don't know what the church interior in Deltarune looks like yet, but I would have to bet it's at least similar to the judgement hall.
there was a lot more (goners, Gaster, etc) that foreshadows Deltarune, but I didn't get any FUN events so oh well!

I only played through the pacifist ending both times because the game is too good at making me feel bad for killing :(
However, I know enough about genocide to understand that it's commentary on the compulsion for people to squeeze every last bit out of games to 100% them. What I found very interesting is that the Neutral ending is deliberately unsatisfying to lead you to go back and change things, but then the pacifist ending calls you out for trying so hard just to see if you can change things. While you eventually do change the ending, it's still such a fascinating concept that your desire to keep trying things differently just to see what happens is ultimately giving the villain exactly what he needs to accomplish his master plan. To me at least, it's also vaguely implied that when you stop playing the game, everything is frozen in time, so in a way Flowey is trying to save his world by continually playing into your curiosity and teasing you with the possibility that you missed something. Kind of because of this idea of the game teasing you about checking everything, backtracking at the end of the game almost killed the mood for me because there's no more gameplay variety and fast travel is limited, but it's entirely optional so I can't hate that too much.

I have literally no way to transition this paragraph from the last one but the ethical dilemma of either killing Asgore or letting him kill humanity was something I had entirely forgotten, and it's only strengthened by the revelation in the Pacifist Ending that Asgore actually didn't want to go through with reigniting the war and was deliberately stalling for a century, keeping his people trapped so that he never had to take another life unless by sheer chance another human happened to fall into the Underground and make it all the way to him. He only promised that he would use the seven souls to shatter the barrier and overtake the surface so everyone would cling to hope. Given that monsters lose strength when hopeless, this probably saved the entire species, but also meant he would at least have to kill any humans in the Underground just so monsterkind would continue to believe. Furthermore, this information is only revealed during the Pacifist Ending, but means that other endings could theoretically be possible if you were allowed to convince Asgore to use the souls he already had or sacrifice your own. The game did not need this detail, but it makes his situation so much more sympathetic when he's secretly dreading what he'll have to do if he wins. It's such a fascinating way of qualifying his character and duty.

Final detail I found neat: Alphys's original plan to use a vessel to allow them to account for the lack of human souls to shatter the barrier actually ended up succeeding, and she never knows it. Even without being aware of this plan, Flowey goes about collecting as much soul power as he can until he can control the entire world (or probably just the underground since game mechanics only exist in a magical atmosphere), meaning Alphys' was on the right track and, had the Amalgamates not gone wrong and traumatized her, could have been the hero of the Underground.

sans is my favorite character he's genuinely just a nice person trying to do the right thing in the funniest way possible

me too buddy... me too...

While I'm on the subject, I should probably bring up Undertale Fan Games! Namely Undertale Yellow and TS!Underswap. Spoilers aplenty!

Undertale Yellow

is clearly a passion project with some super nice animation and incredibly accurate expansion of Undertale's world. Even so... I occasionally found the writing to be slightly annoying, especially in the Wild East mission segment. The game clearly thinks characters are more likeable when they are when their pacifist encounters feel entirely pointless, as a majority of boss fights are resolved through INACTION, meaning they literally just realize they shouldn't be fighting you after you do nothing for 13 turns. You are not convincing them that they are in the wrong. They know they are in the wrong and just take some time to accept it. I do not like that. Most of your actions also do nothing, making having them in the first place pointless. It doesn't help that Flowey's dialogue in multiple areas is just him complaining about how slow or crowded it is. Ironically, the characters who are written to be annoying are more likeable because others react to them the same way that you do. El Baildor was exiled for trying to get everyone to dance constantly, Ceroba is weirded out by Mo Money, and Axis is just reaching unheard levels of ticked (level 7 at LEAST). And then for characters like Marlet, she really only gets in your way but the game never seems to realize this. She actually seems more interesting in the neutral and genocide routes, where her hindering you is more intentional. And yet, somehow despite all of that, they NAILED that Pacifist Ending. Even though you go into the game knowing Clover dies, it was very good about not indicating where/when/how that would happen. I thought maybe Clover was going to be on the doorstep to the true lab when Flowey decides that's far enough and just ended them. Instead, the Pacifist Ending was such an unexpectedly heartwrenching moment and I still feel sad just relistening to that section in the OST. Part of the reason that the ending worked so well for me is that Clover was allowed to have somewhat of a character through little moments like holding hands, hugging, doing finger guns with Starlo, and even having their own dialogue boxes. These details are really tiny, but they worked so well to make you care about the character and understand their motivations, giving you enough for their sacrifice to feel genuine and showing that even though they didn't talk, they did listen. Clover even stays standing long enough for Ceroba to leave just to ease her pain of watching another child die, and I was fully in tears by that point. The genocide route has similar stuff, where Clover will pull out their gun or shoot without waiting to be in battle. Of course, there's also the shocking "I was forced to neutralize that human" segment. Because of stuff like this, I feel Clover is a more interesting character than Kris Deltarune (for now). Now, Kris does acts on their own (my favorite example being when they pull out their shield to protect Susie from the Chaos King's attack) and has people refer to how they used to act, but as of right now all we really know about their motivations is that they miss Asriel, feel like they don't fit in with all the monsters, and they don't want to be controlled. All of these are kind of things you'd expect from someone in their shoes, not specifically their character. We also know that they didn't talk too much and were a prankster, mainly from Noelle, but their motivations for both of those traits are unclear, as not talking could have been from shyness around monsters or just been that they didn't have much to say. That said, Undertale Yellow is a complete story while Deltarune only has a fraction of its content out, so maybe we'll get more as we go on. That tangent was a little off track, so to wrap it up I'd say that I really liked all the Undertale Yellow content from Steamworks onwards. The backstory, atmosphere, minigames and battles got so good and creative and made up for the game's sluggish pacing earlier. Both Axis and Guardener put very fun spins on the standard battle formula, with Axis requiring you to intentionally get hit to avoid damage and Guardener forcing you to select parts of the menu repeatedly before you could use them, incentivizing you to prioritize based on your situation (freeing items if you're low on health, selecting fight if you're on that route). Both of these were very fun twists that entirely recontextualized everything, and are some of my favorite Undertale-style battles because of it. This game also let you immediately replay boss fights without sitting through their cutscenes, which was such a welcome addition.

Now for TS!Underswap!

I went into this pretty much blind out of curiosity, fully expecting the swapped roles to be pointless like so many other versions of Underswap... and they weren't? Remember when I was talking about Undertale I mentioned how interesting it would be if you could convince Asgore to pick a different path? THIS IS THAT DIFFERENT PATH. After setting up measures to attack humanity, he realizes he doesn't want to be part of more violence AND IS EXILED BECAUSE OF THAT. And sans takes Papyrus's role to make his brother happy that their town has a real super hero while Papryus finds a new hobby by applying his trap-making skills to creating gadgetry, which is such a fun idea. This game's writing is also so spot-on you literally could have told me this was Toby's next game and I would have believed you. All of the role swaps let you see the characters in a different light while staying almost entirely faithful to their character, like Burgerpant trying to pursue his dream of acting or Mettacrit (Mettaton) trying to be a performer without a physical body and being stuck in smaller gigs as his diaries in Undertale mentioned. It makes me wonder if ghosts don't show up on camera, so he can only do live events. All of the new fights are super fun and wacky, but my personal favorite is the Crossbones battle where he starts using soul modes as a metaphor for saving/loading and Chara's whole situation. At one point he even just stops telegraphing some attacks just to mess with you, which is the most sans thing ever and I love it so much. Even the jump is recontextualized into leaping across tall buildings like a superhero. He also has such a great dynamic with Count Koffin K, Harry and Larry. Speaking of which- having stereotypical monsters in a stereotypical evil castle like some cheesy old horror movies is such a perfect fit for Undertale's world and I can't believe I haven't seen something like it before. One of the penalties for getting hit in an overworld dodging segment is just a Count Koffin K jumpscare and that's like??? Amazing??? Like don't get me wrong I loved all the 1950s stuff in the first area but I can not imagine how they're gonna top the goofy cartoonish antics of the Starlight Isles. And on top of all the fun wacky bits, Team Switched perfectly emulates Toby's mastery over switching moods, with some really sweet moments with the veteran parade and sans and Papyrus spending quality time together. Even Count Koffin K is completely silent as Chara regains a memory before he sincerely asks if they're alright. The story also has put itself in a very interesting position of not just having 7 soulless Temmies, but ALSO HAVING FLOWEY AND ALSO (spoilers) HAVING FLOWEY NOT BE ASRIEL??? This fangame also better explores how humans work by mentioning that cremation is the only way to be sure the human body doesn't continue living after losing the soul. This was such an unexpected addition that perfectly mirrors Undertale's focus more on how monsters work and I'm really interested to see if they continue to expand on it, because the Temmies are bodies without souls and there's one for every human who has fallen (assuming Frisk was in play at one point) so I'm inclined to believe they're basically zombie kids? Briefly touching on the overall gameplay, everything is super polished with a journal to keep track of everything, very abridged repeat cutscenes, a choice between puzzles to avoid making the first area feel stale on different runs, and most delightfully everything was designed for backtracking with lots of speed boosts and fast travel points. Overall, this is by far my favorite Undertale fangame and I'm really excited for it to be continued. I would highly recommend you check it out and do all the side quests.

Fanart of Monster Mix that has nothing to do with anything anywhere on this blog but I like how it looks so