SuperBiasedMan

Undertale - No need to kill things, even if they try kill you

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That music article is very good. I hadn't noticed most of that stuff consciously, but as soon as it was pointed out it seemed obvious so I mush have at least subconsciously been aware of. The second part if is here if anyone wants it.

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Does anyone else feel like there is something to be said for the no mercy (and maybe also the pacifism run) being achievable by killing % of "enemies", instead of killing all/none of them? Unless I'm missing something, I think the message will stay intact (maybe less so for the pacifism ending), and less prior knowledge of the game would be required to reach a large part of the content.

 

I guess you could say that Undertale is extremly aware of how people interact around games -

with references to the fact that some use walkthroughs or trying to cheat the save system

- but I think that the game is too commited to letting these meta-jokes inform it's design, in a way which drags it down a little, in this case.

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Nope. I think both runs are all about committing to an idea: In one case, not killing anyone for any reason, and in the other completely conquering the game in every possible way. Doing anything in between gets you a neutral ending.

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Then I probably missed something. For me, the game's main message had to do with the role of violence in conflict. I didn't read any of the game as a comment of commitment to a philosophy or fundamentalism (in the sense of having principles, I'm not sure that this is an actual correct usage of the word). With this subject matter in mind, I found the binary (I guess trinary, including the neutral endings) moral system to be a really off-putting approach that felt like simplification not because of lack of resources, or for the sake of clarity, but rather from a place of genuinely not having a very good grasp about what violence means and how it affects the world, or a having a very skewed moral system.

 

To be fair to myself, I formed this opinion of the game after my first playthrough, which was a Pacifism one, and I suspect that on subsequent playthroughs I just filtered anything that didn't match my already formed opinion about the flaws of the game.

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(minor spoilers throughout that aren't worth spoiler tagging)

 

The thing is I don't think it's as much a commentary on violence as it is a commentary on the way games portray violence as the primary mechanism to affect the world. With that lens, I think it makes a lot of sense that two 'canon' paths through the game are either never killing anyone/thing or killing literally everything so much so that you don't even have to do puzzles in the genocide route and you can just roll right through the zones.

 

I do think there's a degree of weirdness that a game that is being critical of a violent dogma requires the same or the opposite dogma to get a true ending. But again, it's not critical so much of the dogmatism as it is the idea that violence is the total focus of it. The game is explicitly about determination and how powerful a force it is, but wants you to use it for nonviolence rather than violence to show what can be possible (in games/in theory) rather than have someone always make a beeline for the same old thing. I also think the fact that the neutral endings point you towards the good ending makes sense for this.

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The thing is I don't think it's as much a commentary on violence as it is a commentary on the way games portray violence as the primary mechanism to affect the world. 

 

^ this is what it really comes down to, I think.

 

Foggy isn't the first person I've seen pointing out the all-or-nothing criteria for the special endings as a possible flaw. Although others have seemed less intelligently critical ("what, I can't kill AT ALL in the pacifist run? not even a teensy bit of killing?")

 

Of course, in any real world context, zero killing and 'a teensy bit' of killing are not remotely the same. I'm not necessarily making a moral judgement either... because even if you ignore what's 'right' or 'wrong' about any given situation, the difference between not killing people and killing one person is huge! I think it's huge. But in video games, often, it's nothing.

 

I have less strong opinions about the criteria for the no-mercy ending (which I've watched but not played myself). In some ways it's more arbitrary, I guess. 

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I have less strong opinions about the criteria for the no-mercy ending (which I've watched but not played myself). In some ways it's more arbitrary, I guess. 

 

It absolutely is, but in a way I thought it was kinda intentional to make sure that you'd only get that ending intentionally, rather than stumbling onto it.

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I think the very first 'puzzle' in the game being about not walking the middle road is a pretty strong indication

 

But that puzzle had Toriel guiding you both to the top and the bottom of the grid. In undertale you can't really walk the middle ground, since the outcome of any single encounter can't be neutral. So  I don't think it actually translates to what actually goes on in the game very well.

 

The game is explicitly about determination and how powerful a force it is

The more I think about it, the more I agree with this claim, but I'll try to explain what why my initial take away from the game was very different:

I thought that determination was an in-game narrative explanation of a mechanic that is often left unexplained (saving), as an attempt to suspend disbelief. Explain is maybe not the correct term - since it is more than an excuse to include a non-realistic system (obviously Undertale isn't concerned with realism, and the determination metaphor is far more effective than the Animus thing in AC, with which at first I thought it shared a purpose). The little snippets of text about determination, I thought, were meant to draw parallels between the emotional state of the player as they reach a checkpoint and that of the character. This at the time made sense to me, since it is very clear that Undertale is very much aware of how it affects the player's feelings and thoughts, and has in-game content that is meant to reflect and parallel these thoughts (in a varying amount of success, depending on the player, of course).

 

I now realize it is kind of the opposite of that? That instead of trying to justify the save system with the determination thing, the game's narrative does revolve around determination to begin with - and the Save system is a comment on how powerful the power of determination is, which is a pretty straight forward case of mechanics as metaphor.

 

I'm not sure how productive assessing which of these two approaches is correct, as it comes down to what Toby Fox meant, not what the actual game contains.

 

For me, in any case, the former was what I took away after my first playthrough, and it did make me feel like most of the meta stuff, and the commentary on violence/how games present violence come off as pretty shallow, and even gimmick-y. However, in the light of some of the things expressed here, I'll certainly rethink my position on the game.

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Well to be clear, I only thought about determination this way a while after finishing. I also thought that it was mostly a justification/meta jokey thing but I noticed the real ties when I saw the Genocide run.

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This essay's been wandering around tumblr today.  A $1000 backer to the kickstarter made an arrangement to have his fursona included in the game as his backer reward, and within a week chanbros discovered who he was and found his fetish art related to the character and have been hassling him about it since, and he talks about how that's been affecting him and his relationship with the game here

 

Okay, this has been a long time coming. Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware of threading comments on twitter so mostly I’m just grabbing what I wrote there and stuffing it in a text post to get it in one place.

 

Okay, hoo, here goes. So, seven months since Undertale. As Toby predicted, I was found in under a week - then found out shortly after. Now people say shitty things to me and about me legit all the time. It stings but, y'know, water off a duck’s back. I’m autistic, I’m fat, I’m poly, I might be NB, I have anxiety disorder, I’m on medication. I’m used to getting things slung my way. And I knew that once the connection was made to me in Undertale, it’d be same old story. We both knew how it would go. Toby warned me, expressed his concerns and asked me if I wanted to back down. I said “its worth it to be part of something I love so much”.

 

The problem is, some stuff had happened preceding that and surrounding that that kind of hurt.

 

Firstly, he was cool with me, loved my character, said nice things about me, agreed to a unique room, an encounter, a battle and NPC. Then someone said “hey, Sam’s a freak by the way”. I never was told who, only that someone brought it up to him. Ever after, its been pain. Now, unique area, npc, boss fight, encounter - all that stuff went to another backer, who I’ve since been told is his friend?

 

I didn’t hear much for two years. I waited patiently, hopeful the bad stuff was over, super excited for Undertale. Then one day he messages me near the end of development and asks if he can just shitcan the whole thing, refund the money. All the fun ideas we talked about got scrapped. I stood up enough to say “no, thats real unfair” and that was about it. In the end, we didn’t even get to see the lovely sprite Tuyo did for So Sorry’s front - we only get the back in the game. I think its probably okay for me to share this now - if she says otherwise, I can take it down, of course.

tumblr_inline_o5yfk5G4t91qzbcet_250.png

I love the fight, I love the game, but its all tangled up in so much stress at this point. I don’t feel like a “cool secret” as I was told about. I feel like a skeleton buried under the floorboards of a closet. People keep comparing me to Muffet and its not hard to see why. She’s really cool, I love her design and the battle is amazing. But she’s also an external creation and you HAVE to fight her before you are even ABLE to trigger the So Sorry secret for some reason. That and not even getting my name in the credits with the other monster designers it feels like yeah, he didn’t want anything to do with me.

 

And I’m done, I’m done feeling hurt about it. I’m done with the naysayers being enabled nothin being countered. I’m done doubting myself for ever wanting to be out in the open. I’m a real person. My life has meaning no matter what.

 

And it would have been fine if Toby had actually ever directly addressed any of it. Instead, it was “don’t harass my backers, no good will come of it” and “all monsters are good”. No good came of it - for me, at least. It wasn’t all your backers being harassed and they weren’t being harassed for being your backers. It was one developmentally challenged guy who wound up with a weird job on the internet. I’ve tried talking to Toby about it, as has Khato, as have a couple of friends we talked to about it. Toby doesn’t want to make a scene. He’s worried about the backlash I think? But he has nothing to lose and I had everything to lose by being so involved. And I’m tired of losing. I’m tired of being indefensible for existing. I already got hit by the backlash. I’m just tired.

 

Also Toby isn’t bad, I just think how he’s dealt with me has been kind of, uh, a little dehumanizing. Just all this stuff is really contrary to the meaning and moral of his game since I guess I’m the wrong kind of monster. And I’ve spent seven months dealing with the stress. Its affected my health and my work both and there’s no end to it. It feels good to finally get all that off my chest. Its been a long time in coming but its been killing me, very slowly.

 

tldr: toby was more invested in me being a secret than me being a cool secret and not standing up for me made me feel isolated and hurt

 

I appreciate all the well wishing by the way. Its been exhausting and the support means a lot to me (by the time of posting it to tumblr, there’s been an outpouring of it on twitter and oh my god I was not ready for that).

 

I hope one day people like me and my audience get to just be ourselves in our own little corners of the world without being denied happiness.

 

I don’t think I’m a great person or anything. I try to avoid hurting people. Some times I do. I know I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. But I’d like to think I’m generally an okay person and I just want to be treated with the same amount of respect as all living things

 

going forward, I don’t know what to do now. I don’t think I can talk to Toby about it anymore than I already have. It hurts too much. I didn’t want a refund, I just wanted to be involved in something that made me feel powerful emotions and give what I could back.

 

when the game was being kickstarted, I fell in love with it instantly. I spread the word to every person I knew. I explicitly asked if he’d want to do the fantroll thing and he said sure. When it came out, I spread the game to everyone I knew, everyone I cared about and a bunch of people I look up to and respect because the game means so much to me as it is and I wanted to share that good with everyone who might want it. I worked and saved up as hard as I could to be involved - as best as a low rent commission artist CAN do - and I did it again when the game came out and I saw people itching to play it. It means a lot to me - I have a lot of stuff going on in my life but it made me feel like maybe things would be okay.

 

but the longer I go on dealing with the stress, the less I’m sure things will be.

 

some people have asked about what the original plan called for. I don’t have it to hand but it involved him stumbling around his art studio, trying to draw a butterfly that wouldn’t keep still. silly and toothless stuff, but thats all the plan was for. Just something light and fluffy. I commissioned some art from Tuyoki of it at the time since she was open and seemed to want to work with me. We didn’t have a whole lot of interaction, but she never did anything that made me feel intensely alienated or anything. Thats the piece at the top of the post - again if she isn’t cool with me sharing the work, I can take it down from the post.

 

Finally, someone’s told me it may be even more complex and possibly worse than I was aware of. I won’t say anything specifically until I can find out. I don’t know what the case is and I don’t want to say anything based on supposition, only what I’ve experienced or understand. I guess I’ll make an addendum to the addendum if I find out more.

 

Thanks for listening, folks, and thank you for the kind words on twitter.

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This essay's been wandering around tumblr today.  A $1000 backer to the kickstarter made an arrangement to have his fursona included in the game as his backer reward, and within a week chanbros discovered who he was and found his fetish art related to the character and have been hassling him about it since

What's weird is that given the truly staggering amount of dirty fanart the other characters have accrued since the game's release he was at most just a little bit ahead of the curve here.

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Nah dude there's porn of a bunch of those characters.

 

I can guarantee this without having seen any of it myself. At least I don't think I have?

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Toby Fox addressed the harrassment issue today -

 

About Sam / “So Sorry”

 
Hi, this is Toby.
 
It seems there’s been a lot of hate directed towards the character “So Sorry” and its creator, Sam. This is very disappointing to me, as UNDERTALE is basically a game about accepting and befriending people that are different than you. Everyone has the right to like or dislike anything they want. But there’s no reason to turn your dislike into a personal attack. Sam’s inclusion was a result of his honest support for a game he really cares about - which all of you care about, as well. And I accepted that inclusion. So, “So Sorry” is as much a part of UNDERTALE as anything else.
 
The reason I didn’t make a statement about this before was because I was worried that calling attention to the issue would just incite more harassment against Sam. However, it seems my silence may also have enabled harm against him, and for that I apologize. Just to clarify, potential harassment against Sam was also the reason I offered him a refund and asked him if he wanted to change his character to a different one. I promise I was acting without ill will in the way I perceived as the best for everyone.
 
Regarding everything else, I have talked to Sam and we are cool. That’s all I have to say. Neither of us want any hate directed towards the other. Or towards anyone, really. Please respect that.

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