Undertale

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TheFeniX
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Undertale

Post by TheFeniX »

So, anyone who's bothered to read any of my gaming rants (all zero of you) know that I'm pretty good at dumping on Indie games. This is because most of them are shit with a single gimmick that's supposed to harken back to yonder days of youth (they don't) or make me think about myself as a gamer through trite dialog (they don't). So a while back, on the insistence of something I can't recall, I tried out the demo to Undertale. I was noticeably impressed with the depth of this 8-bit wanna-be game.

Undertale, like Earthbound, is a schizophrenic game and it pulls it off quit well. On the surface, it's a pretty tame little game with a few dark moments. Digging deeper (into the actual game) you'll find themes.... lots of them, tons of them, some cutesy like the power of friendship, dome downright horrifying and nightmare inducing. There's just too much to hit on to explain it all, but something that's bothered me is developers dumping on players for "liking" violent content, when violent content is usually the only allowable course of action. Undertale gives you actual choices (killing or mercy), explains why it works quite well, and leaves you to deal with the consequences of your actions. And even though this is what is touted most about the game, it is far from everything.

The game contain numerous 4th wall breakings (sometimes smashing it with a hammer) and isn't afraid to hammer the player directly for not even trying indirect solutions. It's hard to pin these down without spoiling parts of the game, but it becomes immediately apparent when it happens. Interface screws are also plenty, which works a lot better on PC than those console games that tried it.

I paid $17 for this game (it's $10) because the soundtrack is fucking awesome. I'm only about halfway through and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. But I'm also not going to have a bad time, so there's that. At least I found something to break my moratorium on single-player games.

Laughed when the wife saw me playing it: "What the Hell is this?"
"i7, two-slied 970s, this baby is probably pulling 2,000 FPS."
"You're weird, I'm going to bed."
Darmalus
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Re: Undertale

Post by Darmalus »

I love the daylights out of this game. The humor, the music, the characters, the music, the plot and story, it even made me enjoy bullet hell for once.

I think what made this game go from simply good to amazing for me was that it really, masterfully put together the illusion of meaningful choice. Since I never have to kill to win the game, and the characters react in reasonably appropriate ways to death around them, killing feels like a suitably weighty option. Usually in games with a "no killing" option it's functionally no different than killing, hit them they fall down, at most a slightly different cut scene text crawl at the end. Games with characters that "wish we could all get along" when the mechanics require me to commit mass murder are especially humorous and good at keeping me disconnected from the game world.
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TheFeniX
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Re: Undertale

Post by TheFeniX »

Well, it's been a month in a half, so I don't know if spoilers matter. That said, if you haven't played the game, don't read the following, but I'll make it black so you have to highlight it to read it easier.

It's telling that some guy working out of his parents basement can hit on themes AAA developers and indie devs with an agenda to push fail miserably at. Namely: The amount of misery "FeniX" has brought upon the denizens of the gaming world is pretty horrifying when I think about it. If a world like "Wreck it Ralph" actually existed, with real characters in the games. My expy's name would be spoken either in terror or not as it's on a "He who shall not be named" level.

The game seems to recognize that most other games give you no choice in how they are played, but this game gives you every option to not kill and chastises you even for fighting in self-defense. Normally, I'd scoff at this, but the game is right: even after a death, I have the godlike ability to SAVE. Doesn't that grant me extra responsibility?


There's too much to hit on, but the game was great. That said, the fan-base that's popped up around it is... not so great. But I can't hold that against the game.
Darmalus
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Re: Undertale

Post by Darmalus »

Heh, since I'm not using the default theme the black text is just as visible as the regular text.

I think what really makes the "morality system" of Undertale work is that it's not actually a system, it's just the characters actually reacting to what I do (I would not want to make a decision tree diagram of this, that would be insane). There are moments like this in other games, even when no-choice linear they are written well enough that it feels like people reacting to what I do instead of just piling on points until a meter reaches a break point. The problem, of course, is those are usually just moments scattered in an otherwise standard many hours of gameplay.

The downside, however, is that it makes the standard karma/paragon/D&D grid/etc. morality seem even more paper-thin than usual.
Spoiler
Gameplay and story integration where SAVE LOAD and RESET were all known, in-universe superpowers really helped prevent the usual dissociation caused by menu screens. This wouldn't work in most games, but that is an awesome strategy of never letting up hammering "these are real consequences" into the player.

I never played pokemon growing up, so I never thought "I need to weaken her first" and then accidentally kill goat-mom. I gather from various comment that accidentally killing her followed by Flowey's gut-punch if you reset was a really common experience. So I was spared that.

And I agree, in most games I would be considered a complete monster, but making me care about my decisions requires giving me meaningful decisions with consequences in the first place. So a monster I shall be.
As far as the fan community, I live by the assumption that "90% of everything is terrible/mediocre" and just assume I'm going to have the sift for the good parts. Nothing about it has struck me as especially bad, but then again I don't even remember the stuff I don't choose to grant permanent hard drive space. *shrug*

I agree there is just too much to hit on, I don't even know where to begin.
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TheFeniX
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Re: Undertale

Post by TheFeniX »

Darmalus wrote:The downside, however, is that it makes the standard karma/paragon/D&D grid/etc. morality seem even more paper-thin than usual.
It's always been used as a crutch in electronic games, when it was really meant as a guide-line for DMs to follow. But it's also why DnD and other games of that type are filled to the brim with cannon-fodder with no redeeming qualities and the plethora of "bad guy" mooks to slaughter because violence is a really easy way to create tension and show advancement. Not just in games, but all other types of media: the good guy slaughters his way up the ranks to get the the big bad guy to slaughter him.

So few games actually offer a true non-violent experience. Dues Ex and Metal Gear tried, but you're still beating dudes down and I'm pretty sure I recall both those games requiring you to kill people. I never tried a pacifist run-through of Vampire Bloodlines, but that got screwed at the end anyway due to the launch date.
I never played pokemon growing up, so I never thought "I need to weaken her first" and then accidentally kill goat-mom. I gather from various comment that accidentally killing her followed by Flowey's gut-punch if you reset was a really common experience. So I was spared that.
There's multiple punches on that. "Maybe she hasn't been feeling well. Or maybe she's not feeling anything at all." I also figured out easily how to not kill her and I like that the game punishes you for the "try and weaken her" approach. I was able to go no-kill on my first playthrough and only had to reload my Save to get the true ending.
And I agree, in most games I would be considered a complete monster, but making me care about my decisions requires giving me meaningful decisions with consequences in the first place. So a monster I shall be.
Yea, I can't get over Mass Effects' "True consequences" system meaning absolute dick years back. Even KOTOR did it better. Only a few games actually hit the player with not only actual consequences, such as Star Control 2 could lead to entire species getting wiped out, but also swinging at the player directly. This is obviously hard to do, but a few games have tried. And the games themselves fell horribly flat while the developer/writer chastised the player: fuck those people.

If your options are:
1. Play the way we want while we bitch at you.
2. Don't play the game.

Those aren't options: fuck you.

As for the community: only thing left I'll say on that. The complaints about the difficulty of the sans fight is hilarious. You had to work your ass off, grinding enough to slaughter every monster you can possibly run across. And you're complaining all that work lead to the most sadistic boss fight, that isn't just the computer cheating, I've ever seen? I stumbled across some webcomic an author drew that was his online persona punching Sans in the face. Really? You're that mad about it? Get dunked on. And that's just one complaint. There's.... other stuff I don't care to go into.
Darmalus
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Re: Undertale

Post by Darmalus »

TheFeniX wrote:As for the community: only thing left I'll say on that. The complaints about the difficulty of the sans fight is hilarious. You had to work your ass off, grinding enough to slaughter every monster you can possibly run across. And you're complaining all that work lead to the most sadistic boss fight, that isn't just the computer cheating, I've ever seen? I stumbled across some webcomic an author drew that was his online persona punching Sans in the face. Really? You're that mad about it? Get dunked on. And that's just one complaint. There's.... other stuff I don't care to go into.
AHAHA! Get dunked on indeed! I've seen plenty of praise for that fight, a brutally sadistic capstone for a brutally sadistic Genocide run. Judging from the quality of the comics and stories it spawned, Genocide runs in general stir up some deep emotions. Some of my favorites came from when people broke down and couldn't bring themselves to finish a Genocide run.

Man, I really hope Toby adds a complete Hard Mode to the game. I love the two brutal fights in the Genocide run, but I can't bring myself to actually do what's needed to reach em.

I really like the W.D. Gaster lore. Hiding a character and sub-plot where only the data miners will find it, and making that actually part of the meta-plot of that character... damn.
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Prannon
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Re: Undertale

Post by Prannon »

Just finished a pacifist run of this game. Holy fuck.
Spoiler
You honestly have to do two rounds of this game to really get to the true ending. The first ending you get all the way to Asgore, and you have to figure out how to beat him.

End up beating him, and then you have to fight flowey. Fight flowey, and then you have to replay all of the stuff that you missed before so that you can get to the real ending, only to find "flowey" again. Only not. And even I'm not going to spoil that.
Jesus Christ. I haven't played a game that captured me like this in a really like time.
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TheFeniX
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Re: Undertale

Post by TheFeniX »

Technically, if you do a pacifist run the first time and get the neutral ending, all you have to do is reload your save after beating Flowery (he tells you this). Then you go back to find the True Lab. So, it's like a 1.10 amount of runs. If you messed up and killed anyone though you do have to do another playthough.
Darmalus wrote:AHAHA! Get dunked on indeed! I've seen plenty of praise for that fight, a brutally sadistic capstone for a brutally sadistic Genocide run. Judging from the quality of the comics and stories it spawned, Genocide runs in general stir up some deep emotions. Some of my favorites came from when people broke down and couldn't bring themselves to finish a Genocide run.
I like how the fight has it's own meta. The point is to get you to give up, reset, and do it "right" because sans know if he loses, your SOUL is toast, and there is no way to get a happy ending from that point on. At least until people found the files to remove.
I really like the W.D. Gaster lore. Hiding a character and sub-plot where only the data miners will find it, and making that actually part of the meta-plot of that character... damn.
I do and don't like it. I play games, I don't generally bothering hacking them or data-mining. It's cool he added it, but it's not something I personally care about because it's so outside the scope of the game. To me, it's like the "Hot Coffee" content from GTA: San Andreas. Knowing it's there is more trivia than interesting.
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