Undertale's No Mercy run is by far
the most hyped aspect of the game due to its memorable battle with Sans
and creepypasta-esque ending. There have been many fan animations and
fangames that iterate on its ideas. Sans has become the face of the fandom.
Edgy Sans battles are by far the most prominent product in the fangame scene.
Indeed, Sans and Megalovania have become so synonymous with Undertale that they were the
representation of the game in Smash Ultimate. It's understandable why this and the eerie
imagery of Chara have cemented themselves in the fandom. The Sans battle is intensely
challenging, especially for first time players, and after spending the other routes as a
mysterious but overall comedic characte, save for his rare serious moments, the chance
to actually fight him is a draw. It's gotten to a point where people know about the Sans fight
before even playing the game, thereby removing the surprise factor as well as overshadowing
everything else the route has to offer. And I think that this is emblematic of the
very themes the No Mercy run tries to both communicate and deconstruct.
I think that, as time goes on, the smaller details in the route are lost in
the shuffle, so in this video I'd like to look back and reflect on what Undertale's
No Mercy Run was really trying to say. The first thing to understand about this route
is that it's not one you simply walk into. The game doesn't tell you what you need to do,
and if you simply proceed through killing everything in your path, you're more likely to
stumble onto a neutral route with a high LV. No, the only way to begin this
route is to actively pursue it. The Ruins doesn't even give you a kill counter.
You just have to grind, and grind, and grind, getting stuck in a fairly tedious loop of mashing
the attack button with no indication of when or if anything meaningful will change. If you remove
the years of fandom osmosis and spoilers from the equation, the trigger to this route effectively
relies on the assumption that something WILL change from grinding, when in most RPGs, that
is not the case, other than increased stats. Sure, if you've done previous runs with kills, you'll know that Undertale handles its casualties
very differently from other games of its genre. To that end, it's likely this route is designed
for experienced Undertale players first. The kind of people who after getting one or more endings
may stop and ask, "But what would happen if I did keep killing? Is there an upper limit? How
high can I get my LV at the start of the game?" Though there's also the camp of seasoned RPG
players who assume grinding is necessary and do so to get ahead of the curve. Undertale's
metanarrative does still work on that front, as the game thrives on deconstructing
RPG staples from the use of violence to the ability to enter people's homes or pawn
things off on shopkeepers. But some people will look at this game, assume that you need
to get strong, and thus you need to fight and level grind for future challenges, thus they
focus on the mechanics over the narrative, and in turn feed into the very aspects
of gaming this route aims to dissect. In either case, nothing meaningful happens
until you hit the required killing threshold, at which point you'll finally get your
first taste of what this route has to offer. An empty battle screen, the tiny "but
nobody came text" and the ominous music of the same name all set the tone.
The music persists outside of battle, droning and droning on and on. What's brilliant
about this is that But Nobody Came samples a fraction of Flowey's theme, slowed down
so significantly that it's unrecognizable. This is a fantastic way to allude to
the fact that by doing this route, you are effectively following in Flowey's
footsteps, though we'll touch on that more later. Napstablook doesn't even dignify you with a
battle if you've exhausted the counter. At first, Toriel's house seems unchanged, until you
interact with the drawer and get the red text, "Where are the knives?" When you interact
with the mirror, you get the text, "It's me, [Name]." If you had inputted your own name
rather than the canonical name for Chara, this is likely especially unsettling, and
doubly so if you've played the other routes, where the text instead says "It's you!" A single blow is all it takes to strike Toriel
down, and she feels it. Her broken laughter as she realizes she was protecting everyone else
from you really sells just how much of a villain you have already become. After all, there was
no greater force pushing you down this path. No evil possessing you to take it, no matter
how many fanworks like to take that approach. It's just you. Whether from
curiosity, boredom, or hype, you chose the most difficult path from a
gameplay perspective because you wanted to see it through. While not a point of no
return, it is a teaser of what's to come. And unlike in other routes, Flowey recognizes
you as his long lost friend and also sees himself in you. He agrees to work with you,
which carries over into subsequent areas, where he's disabled puzzles to encourage and
support the endless slaughter of monsters going forward. The moment you step out of
the Ruins, the route is truly underway. Unlike the Ruins, which kept its normal
music until you exhausted the kill count, Snowdin's music is already slower from the
start, hinting that something is amiss. The interactions with Sans and Papyrus take
on a different tone as well. Rather than repeating the same familiar shenanigans,
Sans immediately picks up that Frisk isn't emoting much at all. He tries to play it off,
urging them to go behind the lamp, but they don't. The game is already going off script,
almost as if it isn't supposed to be this way. The way Sans' theme fades out really adds to
the tension and hammers in how wrong this is. In a way, this can reflect how you, the player, have potentially already seen it all
and just want to get to the point. The most unsettling part of the start
of Snowdin is how Sans basically says to keep pretending to be a human, suggesting
that by this point, you've already become something far worse where the in-game narrative
is concerned, and this will be followed up later. Snowdin is also where the kill countdown begins,
as you've come far enough that it's clear that this is your objective. From a game design
standpoint, this does two things. First, it demonstrates a clear change in the game
and further lends itself to that uncanny, off-script feeling, but two,
it gives you direction you were previously lacking it. If this
is how you want to play, fine, but the game will still throw deterrents your
way to test your dedication to following through. Snowdrake is just one of the hurdles and
he teaches the importance of killing unique enemies if you wish to complete the route.
Failure to do so will warrant the text "that comedian…" on save points if you failed
to take him out, as well as text declaring the failure state if you failed to complete
the task before exhausting the kill counter. It is worth noting, however, that
Jerry is not a mandatory kill, nor is it a unique enemy. At high
LV, you can spare it and move on, which is a generous design decision,
given how difficult Jerry is to take out. As an aside, I really wanna appreciate how the
skeleton dialogue is still really funny despite the eerie tone of the route overall. You get
gems like Papyrus talking about how he wants to look his Sunday best or Tuesday good and
styling his "hair" as well as Papyrus actually noticing the rock before the human, and Sans
once again pointing out the lack of response. Papyrus starts to lose his temper throughout
the puzzles, from getting annoyed when you walk through the maze when it's a "loving tradition
to suffer through puzzles" to meta comments about how he's supposed to explain the
puzzles, then threaten with dangerous japes, and my favorite bit, where he says, "OKAY,
THIS IS NORMALLY THE PART. WHERE YOU EITHER AGREE OR DISAGREE. AND DEPENDING ON YOUR
ANSWER. WE SAY SOMETHING GREAT IN RESPONSE." Just seeing Papyrus lose his patience is
equal parts comedic and sad if you've seen him in the other routes, so passionate
and excited to share his puzzles with a human. Through it all, Sans encourages
you to try the puzzles and have fun, in stark contrast to the kill count
ticking down further and further. On a much more unsettling note, the Snowman
interaction is one of the most chilling in the route. Where in more passive runs, you can
take the snowpiece as a gesture of kindness, here you're given the option to take
and take until there's nothing left, which is a lovely encapsulation
of the no mercy route as a whole. The Gauntlet of Deadly Terror brings more
of Papyrus' irritation. At this point, he just knows you'll skip the puzzle, so he
doesn't even bother. Undyne would probably appreciate it more, anyway, because while she
hates puzzles, she LOVES Japes. This gives us a tiny nugget of extra characterization,
which while nothing groundbreaking, highlights the wacky friendship that Papyrus
and Undyne share before his final moments. But perhaps the most memorable part of
this whole section is when Sans talks about the upcoming Papyrus fight and
how if you keep going down this path, you're going to have a bad time. An
infamous line that has great payoff later. If you've successfully completed the route, you're
treated to some genuinely unsettling atmosphere, like something out of a creepypasta. The shop
is empty, and you get nothing but "But nobody came" as greeting text. You can steal items and
money and read a note where the shopkeeper pleads not to hurt her family. This really sets the tone
that you are a mass murderer in a lived in world, and these 'random encounters' aren't just faceless
exp but people with hopes, dreams, and families. The entire town's utterly vacant, save for
Monster Kid, who somehow missed the memo. The little girl in the inn is just a decoy. Monster
Kid just blames everything on adults acting weird… And then there's Papyrus. I feel like a lot of people focus on Papyrus'
belief here and not the dialogue surrounding it. They totally ignore his glorious roast,
calling you a freaking weirdo, berating your lack of interest in puzzles, and taking note of
the dust and the dangerous path you've taken… But despite all this, he offers
his unwavering belief. He extends the hand of friendship, even
when he knows he could die. In fact, if you spare him here, he admits
that he was actually incredibly scared, and if you inspect the box of bones during
his date after the fact, he'll mention how lucky you are that he didn't use his Special
Attack, which would have surely blasted you. Many players do feel their conscience kick in
here and abort the run due to Papyrus' warmth and kindness, but those who proceed will find
that he goes down instantly, and he's taken aback by how swiftly he's defeated. Even so, with his
dying breaths, he continues to express his belief that you can change. It's heartbreaking and made
worse by his check text calling him forgettable, showing how little he matters if all you're
doing is killing to see what happens. What's also interesting is that Papyrus is
also a turning point in the neutral run, since not only does his death remove Sans from
all of his funny scenes, remove his theme from Grillby's and the snail farm, and give Undyne
a much more somber pre-battle speech, but it also is the only time his neutral judgments
show more genuine anger at your decisions. It's also by befriending Papyrus that
you're able to befriend Undyne and, in turn, befriend Alphys in pacifist
runs to unlock the game's best ending. This in turn further highlights
the significance of Papyrus across all routes and makes his role in
the no mercy run more poignant. If the Ruins was a test of patience in seeing
if you can even incite a story change through violence, Snowdin serves the purpose of testing
the player's emotional detachment by lampshading it through the character interactions, culminating
in Papyrus' final appeal to your empathy. As Sans states in his neutral judgments, to increase
EXP and LV is to distance oneself, and in doing so, it becomes easier to hurt and kill, and
Papyrus is the encapsulation of this lesson. With his death, you're likely fully committed
to experiencing this route either as a means to an end by getting new interactions or
simply to progress most efficiently by focusing on the RPG mechanics. Thus far, the
bosses have been mere formalities at best, with no genuine challenges to speak of aside from
appeals to your emotions and the tedious grind. You may think everything from
this point will be a breeze, and most of Waterfall will cement this mindset,
but don't lower your guard, or you'll regret it. Waterfall starts off mostly unassuming,
as it's already a fairly somber part of the game. Setting aside the slower music and
the strangely silent echo flowers, Monster Kid remains ditzy and unaware, carrying on with their
usual schtick, but this is very much by design. You're tasked to kill 18 monsters.
Higher than Snowdin but lower than the Ruins. Nothing you can't handle.
The enemies fall easily enough. Onionsan is gone, leaving just an empty path.
Shyren goes down without a fight. Otherwise, nothing really changes until you encounter the
Mad Dummy, whose rage is strong enough that she fuses with the dummy body and becomes the Glad
Dummy. This is presented as a moment of joy, as she has fused with a corporeal
form after a strong burst of emotions. However, if you consider the materials released
after the original game, this becomes quite sad. In the Switch and Xbox versions of the game,
the Mad Dummy ghost has found a body she's even happier with: Mad Mew Mew, a form that she
describes as being so fitting that as soon as she saw it, she knew it was her. And if
you consider the newsletters as well as the canonical post-pacifist alarm clock dialogue
that applies to all versions of the game, then her ultimate fate is to become
Mad Mew Mew and live a happy life. So not only is this ghost fused
with a body that, while serviceable, isn't the ideal form, but just as soon as you
help this ghost become corporeal, there's no desire to battle. To continue the route, you
strike the Glad Dummy down anyway, as if it's inconsequential. Just another obstacle slain in
one shot. At this point, it might even feel dull. And then you get to Gerson's shop. I did a
more in-depth video on the character and how his interactions in this route especially are
so cool, but one thing I love about Gerson in this route is that he talks shit and can back
it up because you really can't hurt him in the shop interface, and threatening him won't
do any good. You're just wasting your time, which is precisely his goal, to
buy monsters a chance to escape. Temmie village is completely vacant,
meanwhile, save for the shop. In a way, the shopkeeper Tem not realizing what's
amiss arguably makes matters even worse. At the bridge, Monster Kid finally wises up,
freaking out as they realize what's really going on, but despite everything, they want to emulate
their hero. Despite everything, they take a stand… Everything about this 'fight' is chilling, from
the song "In my way," which is a slowed down version of Anticipation to the description
of them simply being "Looks like free EXP." If you spare them here, you're back on
the neutral route and will get the sad version of Undyne's speech if Papyrus
is dead. Everything resumes normally… If you try to kill them, Undyne takes the
killing blow, and you get what is one of the coolest moments in the entire game, yet one that
is tragically overshadowed by a certain skeleton. Undyne's sheer determination to not only save
monsterkind but the entire world allows her to transform into the powerful Undyne the
Undying, whereas in the neutral runs, you get a much more somber version of
her final stand. This is the turning point for this route as a story. The
last time you're really asked to engage with Undertale's world, characters, and
emotions before the meta fully kicks in. Undyne, who in other routes is so focused on
justice without considering what comes next, takes a stand because she realizes this
is something much bigger than the barrier, the souls, and justice for her people. In this
moment, Undyne transforms into the hero, who in any other game would be the protagonist taking a
heroic last stand to stop the ultimate evil from destroying everything. Her battle theme, Battle
Against a True Hero further cements this fact. But you aren't playing as Undyne. You
aren't the hero. You're the villain, continuing to kill long past the point where
there was any meaningful fun to be had, and so the game throws its hardest challenge yet at you.
Whereas Sans is a fight that you can eventually learn and memorize the patterns for, there's an
element of randomness to Undying that makes her a whole different beast, even if a certain level
of predictability occurs as you keep trying. There are no heroic monologues. There's no chance
to abort the route during this fight. By landing that attack on Monster Kid, you are locked in for
one hell of a fight, and in many respects, Undying is another test of your patience and resolve by
asking if you are truly more determined than her. Determined enough to keep trying, suffering defeat
after defeat just to see it through to the end. In Undertale, determination is the power
that controls the save file. It is a word repeated again and again at save points in all
routes, but on this route, it goes from quirky and charming statements on being filled with
determination to a cold, blunt, "Determination." And it's by being more determined than Undyne
that you're able to stop her, because for as determined as she is, you, the player, are more
determined, assuming you don't give up here. What I find so interesting about Undyne's
defeat here is how despite everything, she's still smiling. She has an unwavering
belief that you'll be brought to justice, that Alphys has already watched the fight and
chosen to evacuate everyone, and that in the end, Asgore will use the six human souls. An empty
promise, as we'll discuss later, but at this precise moment, Undertale's narrative dies. It
dies with Undyne, with that last shred of hope… Because Hotland is by far the
most empty experience yet. When I said the narrative dies with
Undyne, that doesn't mean there's no story, but it does show a marked shift by severely
scaling back the presence of story and scenes in favor of the bare battle mechanics
and the grind. When you reach the lab, Mettaton reveals that Alphys has already
evacuated everyone, and while Mettaton talks shit, he soon flees as the world needs
stars more than corpses… and that's it. From this point on, there are no mandatory
puzzles. You can continue straight through to the CORE and fight Mettaton
if you want, though in doing so, you'll get the Queen Alphys ending and
miss out on the last legs of this route… But considering you must kill forty monsters,
some might find it's more worthwhile to do so. At this point, while the kills are simple, forty
is twice the number you had to grind in the Ruins, and more than twice the number for
Snowdin and Waterfall. It is this route's ultimate test of patience, save
for its two very difficult boss fights. And the grind is really all that's left.
Everything that made Hotland so memorable, from its Mettaton TV shows to Alphys'
absurd phone calls and texts to the little NPC interactions are all gone.
Even the encounters with Muffet and the Royal Guards are so fleeting
and barebones they barely matter. The Guards do at least have a fun
bit of flavor text if you check them, quoting the novel "Kitchen," and if
you choose to draw out Muffet's fight, you learn a lot about the situation in
Hotland that you'd otherwise miss. I go into this in more detail in my designated
Muffet video (linked above), but effectively, Alphys left the path into Hotland open so
that Muffet and the spiders could escape, but Muffet refused due to her pride, which
in turn allowed you to continue killing. But this is something you can only learn if you
break from the pattern of the route. When you can instantly kill her and carry on your business,
why bother? It's rather ironic in a route designed around the idea of going out of your way to
break the game for new content that one of the only ways to get new dialogue from this character
is to break the conventions from that route and actually let the fight play out in full, thereby
adding to the time you must take in Hotland. It speaks to the level of care Toby put into
this game. He didn't have to write an entirely new script for Muffet here. He could have had her
simply not speak at all, but instead, he tucked away interesting characterization for those who
think outside the box and ask, "What happens if I DON'T kill her yet?" This in turn plays into the
Flowey-like philosophy this route is built around, where it's less about killing and more about
exhausting outcomes and bleeding the game dry. Otherwise, the only meaningful interactions
before Mettaton you get are the two shops. Bratty and Catty have a letter where they
reveal that they were evacuated with most of the other Hotland monsters with some
last minute humor of them trying to use up their gel pens and telling you not
to steal their junk, and Burgerpants… Is an absolute king. His dialogue is so sassy and exasperated. In
the middle of a massacre, he's still at work, even as people are dying all around him, and
he's just as willing to talk shit about his boss and how inconsistent Mettaton is with
his hours and scheduling and how he has an entire CD dissing Burgerpants. The best part of
his interactions is that if you threaten him, he drops the amazing line, "I can't go to hell,
I'm all out of vacation days." It's a fun treat from a character standpoint amid an empty
environment with little story left to grasp. Chances are, you still have a lot of encounters
left by the time you reach the CORE, which means you're left with more tedious grinding. At
least the music is good, even slowed down, which makes it a little more bearable even
if the enemies aren't as quick to kill. What I find so interesting is Mettaton NEO.
His pre-battle speech hypes him up as another difficult boss on the same tier as Undyne the
Undying, a secret alternate form that was designed as a human annihilator. The music is even a remix
of the opening riff of Battle Against a True Hero, which when combined with the cool alternate
design makes you think you're in for a treat… But if you fail to attack him and drag the
battle out, you get nothing. You're stuck in a loop. The music doesn't escalate. It's
also just a loop. You went through all that grinding. You put up with so much tedium, and
you don't even get a cool boss fight for it? Mettaton NEO goes down like a chump. If
you met the requirements for the route, you don't even get a moving monologue. He just
talks about his fan club and then explodes. However, if you FAIL the run, he actually gives
a passionate speech about how, despite your best efforts, you aren't completely evil. You won't
harm humanity. If you were trying to be pure evil, you failed. He's grateful that Alphys and
humanity will survive in his dying moments… And it's just so interesting to me, this
disconnect between failing to meet the required kill count and succeeding. By failing,
you get a more sentimental speech. By succeeding, it rings hollow, but perhaps that's
the point. Because why bother with emotional gravitas when you probably
just want to get to the point? Isn't it nice that he barely talks? That's less
text to deal with. Get on with it, game! If the narrative was a rotting corpse before,
with Mettaton's death, it's fully cremated. By the time you reach New Home, there's
nothing left of the original story and heart. Track 71 does not play, in favor
of a slowed down Small Shock. Instead of monsters telling you their
tragic tale, Flowey appears. This is where the true message of
Undertale's No Mercy Run shines through. At first, you get some missing context to Flowey's
story that, while hinted at in the other routes, really puts things into perspective. He
awakened as a flower, terrified and alone, and though Asgore came to comfort him, he felt
no love for him. Though he tried to go to Toriel, she also failed to rekindle any lost love.
Flowey felt empty. Apathetic. Utterly lost… To a point where he tried to follow in
Chara's footsteps and take his own life. His fear of what would happen
after death was the one thing that kept him alive, and it was also how
he discovered his ability to save and load. And it is here where Flowey serves as
a fantastic analog to you, the player. Andrew Cunningham touched upon this in
his excellent video on Undertale's themes, but I think what really makes this hit home
is how it transitions from hooking you with missing pieces of Flowey's backstory to
using that backstory to create a mirror. When we engage with video games for the
first time, if it's a game we truly love, we get lost in the story, immersed in the world, and it becomes a genuinely emotional experience.
We love the characters, or perhaps hate them, but the first time around, it's all new. It's
all fresh. It might even be unpredictable… But with each passing playthrough, you know
more and more. If a game has alternate routes, that can captivate you for a time, giving
you new ways to engage with the gameplay, the story, the characters, and the world.
Eventually, however, even that will grow familiar. Not necessarily unfun, but familiar
enough that your engagement will typically change… Just like Flowey. He started off making friends
and doing everything right, but eventually grew bored and decided to
explore other options. He tried all manner of different outcomes and combinations, but
eventually he knew the game so well that it lost the special meaning it might've
had in life and in his initial runs. If you grind out his neutral dialogue, you
can learn some supplementary information, like how Papyrus used to be his
favorite and how he'd had a few run-ins with Sans that didn't end well.
His monologue here adds more context to what led him to those outcomes and
encounters, and that's just it. To truly grasp Flowey is to become Flowey.
To get everything you need to know about him, you need to play through the game multiple
times, try his tutorial in different ways, lose to Photoshop Flowey enough times to exhaust
his game over dialogue, try both killing and sparing him in different runs, repeat the neutral
ending enough times to exhaust all his dialogue there. Eventually, he will wise up and start
repeating, "Don't you have anything better to do?" The text in the house is so blunt. Nothing
useful. No chocolate. "I've read this already." "The entries are always the same." You can
infer some characterization about Chara, like how they made the drawing on the wall,
how the family photo leaves them speechless, how they react to the Mr. Dad Guy Sweater and
their confirmation of the date they arrived. The worn dagger and heart-shaped locket
become the real knife and the locket, with appropriately unsettling flavor text.
Physically, these items are the same objects, but the way you view them has changed, just as
the way you engage with the game has changed. But it's Flowey beneath the spotlight. Flowey
who not only represents the way players may revisit games time and time again to try
and recapture their initial joy, to find something new, to get everything out of
an experience, but also comments on how many people who don't have the drive to play
this route will instead watch playthroughs. And this is very true. Many people
are content to leave Undertale's Pacifist ending and the good vibes,
but still want to see what else is there. Even if you don't directly
engage with the darker outcomes, or even if you simply back up and manipulate
saves, that nagging curiosity often drives many fans to dig deeper. To ask questions. They need
the full picture. They need to know what happens… In the end, though, it's still hollow. Flowey
has grown tired of everything. Saving, killing, in the end, there's nothing left for
him. Nothing left but some fragile hope for connection, that there's someone
like him, someone he can't predict, someone he can relate to and live out his
days on the surface with happily… In a way, this reflects the way that many people in
fandoms seek community and common ground. Except that Flowey soon realizes that's not
what he's going to get, because just like him, you need to see it all. Seeing it all means
destroying everything in your path. Bleeding the story dry. When faced with his own reflection,
Flowey suddenly feels fear. Genuine fear. Even he starts to plead to stop, to go back, to give
it all up, but you're so close to the end. So close to a gratifying finale that will make this
slow, tedious slog of a grind finally worth it. You reach the Last Corridor.
If this is like any other run, Sans will be there to cast judgment. What will
he say, now that you've cleared everything in your path? What will you get? He promised you
a bad time if you continued down this path. His pre-battle dialogue is full of poignant
callbacks. Asking if people can change, if even the worst person can be better…
It's the same sentiment Papyrus echoed until he was mercilessly struck down.
Papyrus didn't even put up a fight. Then there comes the, "do you wanna have
a bad time?" A threat that if you proceed, he will truly, finally take action. His pre-battle speech interestingly echoes Asgore
in the neutral run. Then he strikes suddenly and relentlessly. Unless you know what's coming,
you're likely to be blindsided and lose on that first attack. This is an effective way of
demonstrating what you've gotten yourself into. You wanted something new. Something epic. A
true challenge worthy of your time. What you get is exactly that, as the Sans fight
for beginners is brutal and unyielding, forcing you to learn the patterns and
memorize them to even stand a chance to survive. Toby's signature song, MEGALOVANIA,
truly captures the feeling that this is the end. Sans even lampshades how his
battle deviates from the norm, with him attacking first and refusing to
stand still and takes hits. His battle monologue sheds light on his awareness of the
bigger picture. Timelines starting, stopping, resetting… Though it began with Flowey in his
myriad runs, it's just as possible that you contributed to this, if you're the sort
of player who explored other runs prior. If this is your first run, perhaps not, and
perhaps it really is Flowey where it all began, but it still ultimately has led to this
moment, where "suddenly, everything ends." But this puts into perspective Sans' apathy
in other runs, why he doesn't step in when his brother's in danger, why he doesn't
even try to do any good. While it's true that he made a promise to Toriel, that can
only explain so much when he's by his own admission, he's given up on 'going back' and
that he doesn't really care about the surface. It's only when the fate of the world really
and truly hangs in the balance that he finally is willing to throw down, because there's
no one left to do it who truly understands. What a lot of the Sans fight hype loses is the
fact that it's part of a much bigger narrative, both on an in-universe and meta level.
The Sans fight only works as well as it does because it's earned, particularly
if you did do neutral and pacifist runs before but decided to go back and see
what awaited at the end of a dark path. In neutral and pacifist, Sans never fights you.
He's an overall friendly face who cracks jokes and sells hotdogs with occasional threatening
moments like the Mettaton Resort scene and his various judgments. If you kill Papyrus, he
disappears for most of the game. His judgment dialogue changes a lot on reloads depending
on your LV, and if you reload the game on a pacifist run in the corridor enough times,
you get his passwords, his key, and learn about the lab in his basement, which reveals
there's so much more to him than meets the eye. Then there's the fact that on most neutral runs,
he just asks you to look inside yourself and ask if you did the right thing. Only if you
kill Papyrus does he grow truly judgmental, either calling you a dirty brother killer
or demanding to know why you killed him. Subsequent reloads can net more unique
reactions to your specific level of violence, which also feeds into the Flowey-like mindset
of trying everything to see what changes and in turn makes the battle against him the
culmination of the route's meta themes. Hell, if you did keep redoing the
neutral ending to get Flowey's dialogue, his warnings about Sans being
dangerous finally see their payoff here. And yet so many people will come to Undertale
just for the cool Sans fight. Sans has been reduced to just this fight, and the no mercy
run has been reduced to just this fight and the fandom on the whole is so obsessed with it
that many, many fangames are just recreations of it that are harder, or maybe some kind
of AU, or some other character in a similar position without the story and buildup to make
those fights hit as hard in the first place. If you enjoy those kinds of fan projects,
there's no shame in that. Fan creativity inspires people to learn how to make art, music,
code, and that's something to be cherished, but I do think it speaks to a wider problem
in the Undertale fandom and fandoms as a whole where one element gets so hyped that it becomes
divorced from its meaning and initial impact. What's meant to be a deconstruction of
completionism and the way we as humans consume a narrative until there's nothing left
but bones has become this epic power fantasy of beating The Hard Boss, so recreations
try to be as obscenely hard as possible and there's a significant lack of fan battles
that explore neutral or pacifist-related angles. Not that they don't exist,
but they are a minority, and full scale fangames are incredibly
difficult to develop, so it's not even that I expect fans to meet the standards
set by TS Underswap and Undertale yellow. I just think there are interesting
things to say about the Sans fight and where it stands as one
piece of a greater puzzle. With that all being said, the moment where
Sans delivers his mid-battle speech marks an interesting point. He tries to encourage you
to turn over a new leaf, tries to encourage you to make friends. There's this reflective idea
that perhaps you did act kindly in previous runs, that maybe things were different and
maybe they could be different again. Exhausted players may decide to spare
him here because they've gotten their fill, or they just want to see what happens… It's a moment of genuine surprise for Sans,
where he even points out how you've gone against everything you've tried to achieve
on this run. He acknowledges the difficulty in making the choice and says it won't go
to waste... but at this point in the game, it's too late to turn back, at least by
conventional means. And Sans gets the last laugh. He dunks on you, tells
you to quit and never come back. Because that's Sans' driving motivation
here. He isn't trying to win. He's trying to be so irritating to fight that you lose
the will to continue and either stop playing or start over and THEN give it a rest. And
it's so interesting to see how his dialogue just keeps updating the more you lose, injecting
dark humor before another bleak dance with death. If you get dunked on and refight him, he
even concludes correctly that he got you, but you still came back, showing that you were
never looking to be his friend in the first place. He mentions the other Sanses, assuming
that in different timelines, that friendship might've meant something. This also paints his
get dunked on speech as a sincere plea to just give up and that he does see it as a way out
and a way for you to change by way of stopping. Unfortunately for Sans, each subsequent
loss prepares you for the next. The more you fight Sans, the more you learn
and adapt. Sans is limited by the fact that he's a video game character
who can only make good guesses about your actions and intentions because he's
so good at reading people. You, however, are a player on the other side of the
screen, able to come back swinging, learning and gaining momentum until you've lasted
through even his longest and nastiest attacks… And all he can do is stand there and do
nothing. Yet again, this is a culmination of the route's meta nature. Just as
Sans cheated by attacking first before, he now uses the constraints of the battle system
to drag things out. He knows he can't win, so he'll make you sit there. The
only problem is that he's tired. All it takes is for Sans to fall asleep,
and you can break the rules of the battle system. You can cheat. You can move
the box over to the button, attack him, and though he dodges the first strike, a
second one hits automatically. At this point, you are unstoppable. You will
win. You will reach the end. But before that, there are some poignant
lines that speak to the nature of the run and what it's trying to say. How there's
no real benefit from continuing at this point. How you're doing this because you can,
and because you can, you think you have to. Earlier in the fight, he wondered if maybe
the 'anomaly' just needed good friends and bad laughs and, above all else, happiness. However,
if you have gone through the other routes before, then it's likely it's all been there,
done that. Even Sans realizes this. He says you're the kind of person
who will never be satisfied… But if there's an ending to experience, a new boss or hidden lore, then is it
really so bad to reach out and take it? Some people get offended at how Undertale
criticizes the act of playing and completing games, but I think the people who get offended
by this need to stop and consider the type of game Undertale IS. It is a game that treats the
inhabitants of its world as more than obstacles to defeat, but characters who live in that world
and explores the consequences of their deaths. In a game that asks you to consider options
besides murder, like empathy and understanding, of course it's going to treat the act of killing
as something more severe. Because this is a game that's supposed to make you think about tropes
and trends that are treated as second nature in video games. It's a deconstruction. If it makes
you uncomfortable, then it's doing its job. Sometimes the best works of media make
us look at things we take for granted and question why it's so normal. But that
doesn't mean Toby Fox hates video games or that Toby Fox hates YOU. He grew
up with many RPGs that he holds dear that don't give this same attention
to player action and consequences. Undertale simply wants to explore what
it would be like if those aspects of games were actually acknowledged in-universe
and make players think about the tropes and trends that we typically don't consider
by drawing explicit attention to them. So when Sans dies, and you proceed down the empty
hall, and when Asgore no longer recognizes you as a human, this isn't to say that Toby thinks you
are a LITERAL demon. Rather, it is emblematic of the kind of person you'd have to be to
carry out these kinds of deeds in-universe. This even pays direct homage
to the ending of the game OFF, which is the likely source of inspiration
for this route and its meta message. Skip to the timestamp above if you
want to avoid ending spoilers. But effectively, if you choose to
abandon the mission to "purify" the world by killing and destroying everything,
then you and the Judge face off against the player character as the Bad Batter, now
shown as a monstrous creature rather than the human-like avatar he appeared as before.
Many times throughout this run in Undertale, characters like Flowey, Sans, and Undyne have
questioned your lack of humanity and now, at LV 20, you are so powerful you have
ascended beyond the form of mere human. You are the player. You exist outside the
game and are not beholden to its rules. There is no enemy strong enough
to satisfy you any longer. Because Undertale's metanarrative is
twofold: There is the angle of "this is happening in this world" and "this is
a game acknowledging you as an outsider, a player, someone with agency that
no one in this game truly has." True, the game could have given you a
triumphant final stand with a six souled Asgore, as was teased and foretold earlier in the
game… but I think there's something so hollow about walking in, expecting something
big, but Asgore can't even recognize you as a dangerous human at all and falls before he
can truly understand what's happening. It plays into a similar dissatisfaction with Mettaton
NEO, who faces similar hype without payoff. You can argue it's unsatisfying from a game
design standpoint and even an in-universe story standpoint, but from a metanarrative
standpoint, it makes perfect sense. You're riding high after Sans, believing there's
still an even bigger challenge yet to come… But nope. Nothing. You kill Asgore. You slice
Flowey into nothing even as he begs for you to let him live. Flowey, who up until this point was
so confident, so ready to treat you as his equal… but in the end, he is still fictional, just
pixels on a screen. And now he's in your way. And then you see the image of the fallen human,
the human you name at the start of the game. There's a lot to be said about Chara's morality
as an in-universe character and how literally the version of them here should be taken. While
I do think the "with your guidance" part is pivotal in that the actions taken on this route do
ultimately lead them to their final conclusions, for the sake of this video, I think it's
more pertinent to look at the Chara who appears here not as the literal fallen human
who died all that time ago, but a symbol. This is doubly important as you are asked to
"name the fallen human" at the start of the game. Many classic RPGs ask you to name
the protagonists or even party members. Even in games that gave them more defined
personalities, such as Final Fantasy VII, you had the ability to insert any time you
desired. So, if we look at Chara here as an encapsulation of RPGs at their most surface
level, then everything starts to click. The further you progress into this run, by
focusing on grinding and growing stronger, the more the game's humor and heart
fades away. The puzzles are already solved. Major characters die before
they can leave a strong impression, with the sole exceptions of Undyne, Sans, and
Flowey, and rather than the fun puzzle aspects of solving how to spare enemies, you just
mash z until they die and the numbers go up, just as in most turn-based RPGs of old, you'd
simply mash the attacks to get stronger faster. And it's so easy to stop. The game gives you many
ways out, to go back to the fun and quirkiness and breathe some life back into the game. To
get to this final screen, you must forgo all of that. You must play the game "straight,"
when it's not meant to be a straight up RPG. And so Chara, in this context, is the feeling you
get from progressing through a game. Everything, from HP, attack, LV, and even gold count, so
one could argue that even in more merciful runs, that feeling of growth and progress, that
feeling of Chara is there. And indeed, their memories as an in-universe character
appear in places like Toriel's house if you sleep, the game over screens,
and the Waterfall flashback… But by now, even the narrative's ashes have blown
away. All that's left is a black screen and eerie ambience. If this is your final run, then you
have most likely seen the broad strokes of what Undertale has to offer. Isn't it time
you moved on to newer and better things? This is your last chance to close the game
without consequences. If you close the window now, without choosing erase or do not, then you're
free to reset and play the game to get a happier ending. It does require you to force quit,
but you still have the choice, and it's not like you have anything to gain at this point,
save for dialogue and seeing what happens. But no matter what you choose otherwise, the
end result is the same. You never had any control. You were driven by that urge,
the desire to see it all consumed you. And so the game closes. Files are created
internally as a reminder of what you did, and you must wait ten minutes with only
the sound of wind to decide whether to sell your soul or remain in solitude.
It's the perfect time to reflect. But you were the one who destroyed the
world and pushed everything to its edge. And unlike some other video games with bad
endings, this is a video game that holds you, the player, accountable. And really, who cares
about things like story or empathy when you can power through games and feel the rush of growing
stronger? As my friend xenamoi pointed out, Flowey is an exploration of completionism
and what that would feel like within a game's world if the power to replay was
an in-universe ability, while Chara at the end of the route represents the side of
gaming where you focus solely on mechanics. You taught them that these are all that matters, so go on and move on to new worlds,
new games, and continue to do the same. Even if you can delete the flags, it's
so fascinating how the game lulls you into the assumption that everything is okay
until the VERY end of pacifist. In a way, it might even drive some players
to keep playing just to see if there are even subtle changes
to hint that something is amiss. Personally, I interpret both endings to soulless
less as "Chara is going to kill everyone on the surface now lmao" and more "getting this happy
ending doesn't erase what you did before." Even if everyone else forgets, the game still
remembers. Chara still remembers. Regardless, it's a simple yet effective way to really hammer
in the deconstructive idea of accountability from in-game actions as well as the drive
to see everything new that you can find. If you repeat the no mercy run, Chara even
suggests that your return to the game is due to a "perverted sentimentality" and if you
must keep playing after destroying the world, to try something else. After all, isn't
this what you came here for? To see if anything changed. To fuel that endless cycle
of replays and ensure every stone is unturned… Until there's nothing but a hollow realization
that there's no grand reward waiting at the end. I think the No Mercy run is a contentious one
for many reasons. Some hate the grinding and find it boring and bad game design. Some despise how
Mettaton and Asgore are hyped up as big battles, only to be utter jokes in the end. And indeed,
if the route was meant to be a fun and enjoyable gameplay experience, then I'd say it falls
short, but as a metanarrative about the ways we connect with video games and the ways
we try to stay with works that mean a lot to us and find every secret and new line of
text along the way, it works incredibly well. It's just that not everyone goes to games to
be held accountable, and not everyone wants to slog through tedium just to get to the
two cool boss fights, even if ironically, the Sans fight's narrative purpose as a final
deterrent instead drives people to seek it out. You can look at Undertale Yellow as an
interesting response to the original run, as it includes more difficult boss fights, a more
"uplifting" ending for its human protagonist, and is less of a metanarrative and more
of a narrative, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Undertale's route
was special for all its quirks and flaws, and to try and replicate it beat for beat
wouldn't work nearly as well the second time. I think that's also why Toby took
a different direction in Deltarune, exploring a whole other side of the metanarrative
through the way we as players co-opted Kris' life and the way we have to push them into hurting
and manipulating Noelle to get an alternate route no one was convinced existed at first
due to the seeming linearity in the game. And while I do think the weird route works
as a better marriage of gameplay and meta, I don't think its predecessor was wrong.
Everything from the frustration and tedium to the disappointment was by design,
and at the end of it all, it got me, someone who isn't even really a fan of the route
or how obsessed the fandom is with it, to make an almost twenty page script, because it turns out
that even I had a lot more to say than I thought. If you liked this video and want to see more like
it, consider subscribing and ringing that little bell because the algorithm hates creators.
I do cover topics outside of Undertale, even if Youtube hates that fact, so if you
wanna check out some of my other media and character analysis, I'll provide some
links in the end card and description. Because the algorithm is unpredictable
and my income always in flux, my Patreon is a great way to show direct support and
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written works, concept art, music, and more. With all that said, thank you so much for
sticking through to the end. Have a fantastic day!
