Undertale Analysis

[Music] so the way i see it i'm analyzing my experience with undertale not the universal experience of undertale so i'm going to explain what i understand what i infer from it and what i think of it this means that i won't be answering all the questions a player might have this isn't a lore video and i don't want to be hunting around a wiki to find out what actually happened so again i'm going to stick with what i get from the game this may lead to the video finishing without me technically analyzing certain story beats that i didn't catch i still believe this is a valid approach as the alternative is to lie and act like i fully understood everything which would mean i'm no longer analyzing my experience with the game while also being disrespectful to the viewer because you deserve my honesty this whole explanation may come off as like paranoid but i just want to make sure we're all on the same page okay let's go undertale is a video game that you already know about but in case you don't it's an absurd turn-based rpg where you can kill everything or nothing created by toby fox with assistance from a few others it became so ubiquitous on the internet that you no doubt recognize this feather or this noise [Music] i didn't play it until this year and yet managed to avoid spoilers despite its popularity i think its humor and charming characters are so memetic that it ended up getting boiled down to a few key things which meant that if you weren't actively engaging in discussion or community around the game it was actually kind of hard to get spoiled on i knew of its self-awareness non-violent potential and earthbound inspiration and that was enough to make me want to play it so after regularly checking the price on steam for a year and a half and then buying it on sale because i'm a cheap i've played through and i'm ready to analyze my experience with undertale as you launch the game you're met with a brief prelude it establishes that the two races of monsters and humans ruled the earth but the one day they went to war the humans were victorious and sealed the monsters underground with magic time skips to the year 201x and you're presented with mount ebeau as you're told that those who climb the mountain never return you see your human child fall into the underground the art is super cute and the music reminds me of some really good generation 3 or 4 pokemon stuff which is enough to get me excited you reach the title screen and when you proceed you see the controls you'll notice that your mouse doesn't do anything and that you use the arrow keys to move this is a strange choice to make in 2015 but i argue it adds to its charm i don't think it can be denied that knowing a game was made by a single person or a very small team adds to the experience it immediately feels more personal and little quirks and mistakes can be treated kindly by the player because well this one person made a whole game they're bound to make some mistakes so i was more open to the unconventional controls to me it also harkens back to flash games which were often made by one person and had simple accessible controls like using the arrow keys to move so like i said it adds to the charm i think you name the fallen human and start the game you wake up right after the fall having landed on a bed of golden flowers after leaving the room you see a cute little flower who's kind enough to teach you how the what i mean game works you're taken into the combat screen and flowey explains that the heart you see is your soul your heart can go stronger if you gain more lv or love the equivalent of levels flowey shares some love through white pellets and by collecting them you almost die flowey is not to be trusted and explains that the world is kill or be killed the game does not wait to subvert our expectations if the typical easy friendly tutorial can't be trusted then what can well toriel a monster who jumps in to save you from flowey restoring your health toriel is kind and affectionate backed by sweet music she offers to guide you through the ruins so you follow as you follow it turns out that toriel is the easy friendly tutorial the game has used the tutorial to subvert our expectations and quickly establish two contrasting characters the monsters trapped underground would in any other game be the mindless drones you slaughter throughout but undertale make sure you know that's not the case the core gameplay mechanics are taught to you here you're introduced to the simple puzzles you'll solve throughout the game but now that i say that out loud it's not really true you're presented with the idea of puzzles but toriel can't seem to let you solve them she coddles you and at times literally holds your hands through them but this isn't really a bad thing in fact it further defines toriel's character and lets you know that puzzles are usually quick simple and rarely look the same you first experience combat by ignoring it as a human monsters will attack you but you don't have to fight back toriel encourages you to start a conversation with the monster and says that if you stall she'll come to resolve the conflict so you go to a practice dummy start a fight and head to the act menu choosing to talk causing the battle to end not long after this toriel goes to get some groceries before you go to her house giving you a cell phone to call her if need be she tells you to wait where you are but still isn't back after a few real-time minutes so why don't we progress ourselves a friendly monster will explain that if you act accordingly or fight until an enemy is almost dead they may not want to hurt you anymore and you can use mercy to spare them as you go you will soon face your first random encounter you fight a froggit the same type of monster you talked to before by going to the act menu during the fight you can compliment it it doesn't understand what you said but they blush because they're flattered anyway when it attacks the same box with the controllable heart shows up a little frog jumps around the box and you have to dodge it to avoid taking damage every enemy move is some unique little bullet hell challenge this one is more like a bullet heaven but trust me they get hard this is such a unique and engaging way of building rpg combat stuff isn't controlled by percentages and you never fall back on button mashing now that you've made the froggit all flustered you can head to the mercy menu and spare it so in this fight i was kind to the monster who then realized that i was no harm and no longer wanted to fight it wasn't actually a fight at all sure the froggit tried to attack me but i'm a human likely all they know of humans is that they stole the monster's freedom so i can't really blame it after exploring the ruins further you come across a ghost named napster block blocking the way this is the first boss and demonstrates how interesting and unique the battle system is as you act to achieve naps to book up he opens up and eventually stops attacking you the fight ends and he explains that he retreats to the ruins to avoid people and yet he met someone who cares about him here it's a super cute interaction that shows what the battle system is capable of the mere fact that i'm befriending these monsters is so much more inherently compelling and rewarding than just killing them it makes each fight more meaningful as it's an opportunity to improve someone's day rather than ruin it which is rare for a video game this approach essentially gives a small arc to each fight as you slowly win the enemy over it makes these monsters not seem like enemies but characters who can change and have personality i think calling them generic monsters is a purposeful decision to follow this method of labeling every enemy you kill under an umbrella so you don't question why you're killing them so it presents them onto this familiar way that to video game players means you're good to kill but then gives these monsters character to make us question that decision not just in undertale but all the games we've played eventually you run a tutorial and she takes you to her house the save point outside her house is called home almost as though the game itself is reiterating toriel's overbearing nature inside she surprises you with a pie she cooked for you earlier she asked if you preferred cinnamon or butterscotch but the pie is both toriel is so dedicated to caring for you that she seems insecure about her own ability and confidence toriel puts both in just in case she was just saying what you thought she wanted to hear she's maybe too caring but it's hard to be mad she's clearly trying very hard to make you feel safe in a hostile world that in reality is not all that hostile toriel talks of you living here and has even got a room for you it's clear she's not intending to let you leave the underground unfortunately for her i'm playing a mute child in an rpg so it's only inevitable that i go off on a great adventure looking around the home is comforting you learn that toriel likes bad jokes and reading by the fire and the music is plodding it soothes you as it strums away [Music] it might not be that bad staying here after all you are story all about leaving the underground but she seems reluctant to answer soon retreating down the stairs you follow her down and she reveals that she plans to block off the one-way exit to the rest of the underground she thinks you'll die out there to the hands of asgore without question to be fair she's right but this is a video game so getting another stab at it won't be too tough you try and stop her and toriel says she'll only let you out if you prove you're strong enough and the fight starts luckily for us we can act and end the fight peacefully so we don't have to hurt her i tried to talk to her during the fight but i couldn't come up with anything to say after a few turns the game says that talking isn't the solution here i was confused there's got to be a way to spare toriel i keep trying to talk thinking that if i stall enough she'll stop fighting but she doesn't at the beginning of each turn you're given some text relating to the enemy's status and it says that toriel is acting aloof acting i know she doesn't want to hurt me in fact once my health is low enough her attacks actively avoid me and while she does that she looks away she knows i know but doesn't want to look at me and acknowledge it but she's not saying anything i figured that this was a scripted thing that once i get her health low enough she'll snap out of it and the fight will end peacefully so i start attacking her i seriously hated doing it the game has made me relate to it made me care but games often have scripted fights like this in the beginning so surely i'll be fine her health gets lower and lower and i get more nervous i decide to do just one more attack and suddenly i do more than 300 damage she's dead [Music] plenty of games have scripted fights like this but undertale isn't really like other games she hopes that asgore's plan never comes to fruition and with her last word says this i had been playing this game for only an hour and it made me almost cry at a character's death i think that's pretty incredible the moment it happened i knew that i had officially locked myself out of the pacifist playthrough but i didn't restart i easily could have it would only take 20 to 30 minutes to get back to that part but it was so powerful and heart-wrenching that undoing it seemed wrong i'd no longer be able to get the non-violent route but i still never killed anything else for the rest of my playthrough because i know that's what toriel would have wanted the first thing i did was go right back to the home i was holding on to hope that another subversion would come along maybe she respawns too like me but no it was wishful thinking instead the home's filled with mournful music and a kid who's suddenly very lonely [Music] you exit the ruins and venture out into the underground proper and are met with flowey he hopes you're happy with your choice and mocks you acknowledging that if you wanted to you could go back and change it he seems to be more aware than the other characters he talks to you the player where everyone else more talks to the character you happen to be playing you emerge into a snowy area with a thick forest following the path the music is eerie and as you walk you swear you see something at the edges of the screen it confronts you and and it's sans the jokey skeleton guy who people on the internet against all odds want to for some reason he's supposed to hunt humans but doesn't really care for it you see a conversation between him and his brother papyrus who by contrast is incredibly enthusiastic about hunting humans in the hope that it will get him into the royal guard they're both very obnoxious but entertaining enough that it isn't grading as you leave sans asks if you'll make papyrus's day by letting him see you a human this injection of heart into these two characters is i think what really makes them work it helps their annoying traits feel endearing and makes them relatable and genuine feeling like actual characters not just bits of code put there to make you laugh after exploring a bit you fight doggo this encounter teaches you another layer of combat if a projectile is blue you'll take no damage if you aren't moving when it passes over you it's a simple addition that's incorporated with some good jokes but it'll prove to add more to combat than you might initially think in this area you can also take a piece of snow from a snowman at his request deeper into this snowy environment papyrus sees you and he excitedly watches as you try and cross his puzzles much like the mother games i can appreciate how blatantly undertale exerts its own gaminess it also makes papyrus the more likeable character as he either solves his own puzzles and obstacles for you or fails to get them to actually work he really is harmless and it makes his intentions and actions which when you think about it accrual seems softer and well less death inducing you keep going meeting npcs fighting bosses solving puzzles and playing a weird golf minigame all of this comes to a head when papyrus presents you with his random puzzle this is a series of coloured squares with each colour having a different rule assigned to it there's like seven different rules which are all very conditional and confusing and so by the end of the explanation you've already forgotten what was said at the beginning i was worried about this because i expected this to be the moment of subversion all these other puzzles had been lame or broken but this time it was going to work and i was going to be and i was right this was the moment of subversion just not in the way i thought it would be the game had conditioned me to expect how it would surprise me and then taken advantage of what i thought was my own insight to truly do something unexpected undertale's subversion isn't shallow it's self-aware and evolving another great facet of this moment is how the game makes the best of its presentation it's a very simple looking game not bad looking but certainly simple and so you would think that conveying emotion visually would be hard but that moment when papyrus spins off screen in complete silence with a big wide grin on his face after the random puzzle fails is so palpable i know exactly how he's feeling and all it took was some silence and a simple spinning animation not long after you find yourself in snowden the first town of the game the one word you need to describe this place is lovely the monsters are kind goofy and easy to like the music is soothing and makes this freezing climate feel comfy where you're not retreating into the buildings to escape the cold but being invited in and embraced by them and their warmth each person you talk to has a distinct tone of voice and what they say broadens your horizons when it comes to what monsters can be you will learn the most from the store owner if you walk into a store you'll be met with a menu that has a large portrait of the store owner you can't see yourself at all and i think that's because you the player is the one interacting with this place you can directly ask questions and due to this essentially first person view the store owner is looking in your eyes not the characters i think this is another acknowledgement by the game that it is a game it understands that buying and selling is a purely mechanical exchange you're there to increase your stats and money or to stock up on other goods for combat encounters the questions you can ask certainly make sense if they were coming from your character but the character never initiates dialogue in other circumstances except combat but that fact doesn't hurt my point it reinforces it combat 2 has this almost first person perspective where the only part of your character you can see is your heart and soul but maybe that isn't your character's heart and soul maybe it's yours see the game makes the point of calling it your soul so the damage you take isn't really physical it's emotional and mental when you die in a video game you don't feel physical pain you feel frustration anger disappointment emotional things in these two situations combat and dialogue are what gives the player the most power and control that's where you really role play in the overworld you largely go along for the ride almost always following a linear path now i'm not saying that in combat or at shops your character isn't there or you don't have any control in the overworld as there are optional things to find but undertale appears to make a conscious decision to take away some of the layers between you and the game in situations where you can really role play and in a game like this one that looks to surprise you and make you rethink why you do the things you do in video games that makes complete sense the game's making sure you understand that what it says about the character you control it also says about you oh boy that was a tangent so to loot back before i got kojima levels of verbose and pretentious what can you actually learn from the snowden store you learn that sans and papyrus just showed up in snowden one day that the monsters used to confine themselves to the ruins and that even with a magical barrier blocking their way to the surface monsters still believe freedom is coming it's refreshing to get a legitimate conversation not just comedic banter that at times does feel a little try-hard like the game is worried you'll stop playing if it doesn't make you laugh every five minutes in the library you'll find a book that mentions monsters being much more dominated by emotion better attuned to their souls than humans are if a monster doesn't really want to fight their attacks are weaker and if a human is intent on killing them those attacks will do more damage it further explains the player's ability to spare all these monsters and makes the monster's actions more forgivable not only are they confronted with a symbol of their imprisonment but they're easily overtaken by their feelings undertale does a great job of presenting multiple reasons to make you understand that monsters aren't inherently bad but have the ability to be bad and do bad things as you leave snowden you're surrounded by a thick fog and papyrus's shadow lays before you he explains his predicament of finding you a human he likes while also having a single-minded mission of killing humans when pharah speaks of this he does so as though he's not talking about you but someone else it is of course very obvious that he is talking about you but this conversation is a great case study of undertale's excellent characterization papyrus is goofy but sort of self-serious dedicated but kind of incompetent complex but immature he's dealing with a pretty serious issue questioning his beliefs and goals grappling with who he thinks he should be and who he actually is but price is confronting this stuff while still not being mature enough to just talk to you about it this over-the-top comedic character can still show depth and complexity because the game's framed this conversation within his characterization without this well-thought-out approach the game's tone could easily set these characters up to be joke machines not people you care about as the conversation goes on it appears the layers are breaking down that you're both aware of what he's doing and who he's really talking about but then he flips it at the last second insisting that you're the one feeling this way it's funny but a bit sad he was so close to getting there having the self-awareness to truly open his mind and consider himself but he falters at the last second and the facade goes back up papyrus overcompensates and fights you this fight is fabulous initially he seems unsure his attacks being no issue to avoid in the act menu you can flirt and he insists you go on a date after he captures you he's battling with the expectations he believes are put upon him he believes he has to hate and capture humans because of the world he was brought up in and he believes he must go on a date with you because that's what you want he's lonely and insecure enough that he will hold on to two contradicting ideas while not even considering what he liked to do we've seen my new character arcs within the standard battles of the game but a major one reveals itself here after a few turns flirting wasn't progressing the fight anymore so i attack once papyrus sends out his blue attack which he hypes up but can be avoided by just staying still as we learnt before but then your heart turns blue and falls to the bottom of the box those same ground level bone attacks come back but now you have to platform over them as the blue heart is affected by gravity this is a brilliant moment one that is funny enough that you don't care that it's unfair it made me want to go back and see if i could avoid all the blue bones and stop from turning blue at all i mean i i didn't do that i got to do but i wanted to in one instant the entire method and approach of fighting for prize completely shifts it's basically a whole other combat style no doubt one that is still true to the core of evading attacks but different enough to feel fresh and like the potential of the combat system is nowhere near being met as you continue fighting papyrus struggles with his contradiction with his actions he attacks you tries to capture you but with his words he's telling you how to better avoid the attacks and pondering what to wear on the date this dichotomy speaks to his upbringing this reaction to humans was instilled into him and has become muscle memory second nature but now he questions it and uses his mind to examine it now he still does talk about becoming part of the royal guard by capturing you but that shows that his mind isn't made up he's still fighting with that too he's just wanted over more than he has his instincts and body so he attacks with his actions and questions with his words the fight isn't just subversive and engaging and exhilarating it flawlessly weaves gameplay and narrative to create something that is satisfying on multiple levels you overcome the small challenges of avoiding attacks and get the reward of learning more about papyrus understanding his plight the attacks get harder and harder to avoid as they become more complex the growth of the blue attacks i mentioned earlier comes into play here blue projectiles are weaved with white ones to change how you avoid attacks stopping and starting having to predict or understand how projectiles will move so that you don't set yourself up to get hit while you stay put you start to feel on the back foot as you take more damage now although i felt tense during the fight i never felt stressed the game's tone allows it to build this tension while not doing so by mounting too much pressure on the player the culmination of the fight isn't just to do with gameplay but story too it helps that up to this point i never felt combat was unfair i hadn't been given any reason to expect something unreasonable but then there's papyrus's final deadly attack [Music] oh i guess there isn't one he instead just does a long normal attack until wait wait oh the dog's back okay now it's just bone words oh skateboarding bone and then wait how am i supposed to dodge that what do you want me to do to fly or some oh okay that was cool papyrus almost concedes and spares you after the fight the fog clears and papyrus chastises himself saying undyne the leader of the royal guard will be disappointed in him the game gives you a choice and you ask him to be friends papyrus lights up and gives you directions to the surface during this encounter papyrus notably grows as a character and we get to see it happen and feel it happen thanks to gameplay the game broke its own rules to defy your expectations and create a gripping experience one totally unique to undertale sand sits shut inside the mouth of the cave ahead and asked if you want to go get some food with him it's a great opportunity to see how other monsters interact with sands seeing as before this the main cast don't feel tired to this location for much reason so to see him be a member of this community dispels that at grilby's stands ask if you've heard of a talking flower papyrus has mentioned that one whispers things to him when he's alone flowey is influencing papyrus if you go around and talk to everyone after sansa leaves you get new dialogue specifically about sans much like mother 3 you'll rarely see the same dialogue twice creating characters that have actual opinions and feelings ones that change as the circumstances around them do after leaving grillby's you notice papyrus outside his house ready for your date you go inside the house and can inspect everything there with papyrus providing commentary you do the same inside his room eventually talking to him then the date starts proper papyrus is snagged to date rule book and you're in a pseudo fight screen even doing something like a date papyrus feels there are rules and expectations to live up to being self-conscious of his own ability after following their date rule book for a while papyrus confesses something this is where you find out that he doesn't actually like you back knowing this puts the fight with him in perspective where he was battling with expectations despite that he doesn't get too dejected he vows to keep being a really good friend appearing to not be worried by his own perceived letting down of you seeing papyrus evolve as a person over these first couple hours is really gratifying and feels like payoff for all the conversations he and sans had with you deeper into the cave you see papyrus report to undyne leader of the royal guard with papyrus officially being a friend the game does a great job of presenting undyne as the real villain ominous music casted in shadow head to toe in armor so you get no indication of who they are it's pretty effective papyrus fails to stand up for you still pledging his allegiance to undyne this doesn't erase papyrus's changing character but shows that things rooted that deeply in you aren't simple things to remove if anything it made papyrus more relatable continuing to traverse the cave you run into a massive fan of undynes clearly idolizing them you see as what happened to papyrus is happening to this child becoming numb to the concept of killing and hunting humans really it mirrors us how playing games growing up causes you not to question the act of killing in a video game undertale creates a world where killing you is normal but imports you not to kill back by presenting this scenario it can call out our actions and make us consider them as there's a clear mirror of what we've done in undertale itself in the cave you can find these echo flowers which repeat what was last spoken to them this environment is the perfect backdrop for the tragedy that the echo flowers present hearing the words of monsters who wish for freedom who may no longer be alive the music is sweeping grand in its drama and despair [Music] it's genuinely quite emotional and made me think back to killing toriel forced me to think about what i'd done even if it was by accident the game does all this without actually saying it mind you no one walks up to you and asks why you'd kill it just presents the moving parts to bring that realization and introspection out of you you find some plugs divulging information about the war and the difference between humans and monsters a human soul is much more powerful than the monsters and as such they persist after death this allows monsters to have the capacity to possess a human soul making them very powerful we've heard that the king asgore is searching for human souls so how powerful and evil must he be this also justifies the player having the capacity to make it through the whole game killing everything in sight as your soul which remember is what the heart in battle represents is much stronger than that of monsters some really unique encounters with undyne take place in the cave she'll jump out and start attacking in the overworld not as an actual fight the game's ability to consistently present new gameplay is impressive and makes the whole experience feel tremendously considered this isn't quite one of those times though in these instances you're dodging projectiles or obstacles combining timing with pattern reading and reaction speed it's really not that different than facing an attack during a normal fight but by presenting this threat in the overworld it feels more threatening and dangerous you understand that there's no fighting back here escaping is simply the only option at the end of the first appearance undyne mistakes the fan for you and attacks them despite that the fan is still obsessive soon you cross over into an area known as waterfall you see more echo flowers and tea more conversations this area exceeds in brevity you aren't interrupted constantly you're just given a chance to look around engage with the echo flowers and take in the atmosphere the game's tone of voice can make it hard to hang on to ambience very long and so getting some here is really appreciated this is taken advantage of as the game uses this opportunity to elaborate on the war it wasn't a war per se more a massacre there's another high octane encounter with undyne ending with you falling off a bridge and into the darkness below you wake up on a bed of flowers similar in likeness to flowey the area is covered in garbage providing insight as to how monsters and humans are similar as you find things like food and anime dvds among it all moving forward you come across naps to book's house when you enter there's this plucky music playing you can choose to lie down and relax with him and if you do a spacey ambient track plays as the world around you fades away napster book seems simple on the surface but they have the capacity to consider think outside themselves and explore something more the way the game explores different characters in completely unique ways allows each character to stand out really well and that's the book is an example of that around here another storefront can be found you can ask gerson about an emblem sitting over his shoulder it's the delta room the emblem of the monster kingdom the triangles represent the monsters with the meaning of the winged orb being contentious some believe it's an angel from the prophecy sent to liberate the monsters some believe it to be an angel of death the answer depends on the player on a pacifist react you were the liberating angel on a violent one harbinger of death from what gerson and others have said the king is well aliked talked about as an incredibly kind person a kind person who wants your soul exploring ahead more plaques are found only someone with a powerful soul can exit the barrier but someone with the strength equivalent to seven human souls could destroy it for good the king is looking for these human souls to freeze people as you explore you're interrupted by undyne again you have your back to a wall as they approach to attack but before they can their biggest fan jumps out excited to meet them undyne drags the fan away allowing you to flee around the corner and onto another precarious bridge the fan calls out to you now understanding your human the kid tries to muster up some malice towards you but comes up empty as they run off they slip barely gripping the bridge you have the option to save them as undyne appears you decide to take it the child stands up for you causing undyne to retreat the fan says your friends and runs off not tripping every other encounter up to this point ends with them running off screen and tripping excluding this one if we once again compare the fame with papyrus i believe we find an explanation the fan is a child they haven't had all that extra time to dig their heels into their beliefs where papyrus tries to do both on humans and be your friend the fan seems to accept that you aren't an enemy under any circumstance the fan hasn't undergone the extra years of telling themselves they're right because of this when faced with you they are able to unlearn their behavior easier than papyrus so the fan runs off with confidence no longer tripping you cross the bridge and are intercepted by undyne again they mention that asgore needs only one more soul to break the barrier and undyne is intent in providing it undyne removes her helmet as some fantastic music plays and it's hard not to root for her honestly especially as seeing her face makes her less menacing it's a super fun moment she gives a speech saying that i remorsely kill everything in my path that i did it because it was easy and fun this would be such a landmark part of the play through if she wasn't wrong the game appears to only check if you've killed anything not how much you have actually killed so in my case undyne goes on this rant while i've only killed one monster and it caused me to vow not to kill now killing toriel was certainly a horrible thing to do but undyne's language is harsh the game really commits to confronting the player while not taking appropriate measures to ensure that this will actually track for a player's run so far in a game that allows you to make decisions that it will later call out small inconsistencies like this really stick out breaking the illusion in a sense after her speech undyne attacks undyne turns your soul green changing its state you can't run from a battle in this state and instead of moving you have to play a sort of rhythm game blocking each of these arrows in a pattern the game is kind in how it ramps the attacks up really easing you in it doesn't feel too easy though the music pulses along with a repetitive unstoppable pace making you forget how polite undertale is actually being here she'll turn the heart red again in an attempt to catch you with an off-guard attack which leaves you with the opportunity to run away i was so into the fight that i didn't even think about it at first in fact i died after 10 minutes not having even figured it out it's a testament to how engrossing and bought in i was and also to how goddamn stupid i am even in the second attempt it took me like five or six minutes to finally think of it once you do run she'll chase you and will inevitably catch up as you continue fleeing you'll enter hotland the next area as papyrus interrupts by calling suggesting that you him and undyne should hang out sometime undyne's armor becomes her undoing under the swattering heat as she passes out conveniently there's a water cooler right there so you have the choice of giving her some after cooling down she shambles out back to waterfall with you having saved her life she seems like she could be changing undyne had you standing right before her defenseless but she walked off instead you're immediately greeted with a lab there's a massive screen with your face on it it's been following your every move it seems a scientist alphys is surprised to see you in there she's the royal scientist and she tells you that as she watched you she couldn't help but root for you alves wants to help you through hotland with her knowledge at this point it's obvious some monsters can be trusted and alphys is incredibly lovable and doesn't seem like she could do any harm at least not without apologising while it happens but she isn't all helpful her robot which is being calibrated to kill humans is on the loose as she explains this mettaton crashes through the wall of the lab [Music] the rules are broken yet again as this fight is actually a quiz show mandatory asks progressively more objective questions but you can look to alphys who's making the answer with their hands somehow knowing the solutions what continued to blow me away as i played undertale is the sheer creativity the game never settles for being itself establishing rules only to break them but only in compelling fun ways as you're presented with these new concepts they rarely feel forced or contrived the world has been established as being absurd and strange and the game has established itself as purposely subverting the assumed rules of video games so that each time you have to run away from a boss instead of killing it or cheat on a quiz show to avoid death you're open to it undertale opens you up to the idea of it constantly changing and evolving but doesn't cause you to predict how it will evolve and change the characterization of this encounter is also great mettaton clearly gets frustrated with you for answering correctly but refuses to let the game show host facade slip alphas can't help but interrupt when a question about her favourite show comes up leading to mettaton asking who alphas is a crush on she looks around nervously while mettaton stops the timer for this one question clearly getting revenge for alphas telling you the answers the fight ends with mettaton rocketing off and you completely understand the personality of two new characters alphas gives you a new phone which allows you to access item storage from wherever i haven't leveled up once since the toriel fight yet i've still felt code to grow thanks to finding better gear and getting quality of life changes like the new phone even without that though undertale would still feel rewarding to play because the biggest facilitator of character growth is the game world this completely alien place now feels more familiar and personable i want to learn more you leave the lab and venture out into the hot atmosphere of hot land did i seriously write that god damn what a vivid sentence that is as you go you get interrupted by alphys's status updates on social media which clue you into a few things first she's very cute but more importantly she knows exactly what traps are ahead and can in some cases disable them this does make sense maybe she set the traps in puzzles but it does make you suspicious especially when you remember that she knew all the answers to mettaton's ridiculous questions the puzzles you do face aren't all that interesting the jump panels don't really add much and feel redundant not including a few down the road which are more complex but they don't require all the previous ones to make them feasible to complete then there's the social media interruptions i just said they're cute and they are but the game prioritizes trying to make you laugh over letting you solve puzzles and face challenges the best example is this bit where you have to push three switches as you go past to disable a barrier right as you go to press the third one though alphys interrupts causing you to miss it so she just disables the barrier for you now it's not even a hard obstacle and it wouldn't feel that rewarding to do by yourself but by this point you've been getting interrupted like every 15 to 30 seconds i just wanted the game to let me play it for a bit if a phone popped up in a corner of the screen with these updates and you could read them as you walked it would completely fix this problem but the game is convinced you want to stop and read all this text and though it's almost always right in its predictions of the player's behavior in this instance there's a disconnect this moment does make me understand why someone wouldn't like undertale though if you just want to play a game i could very easily see how the characters would seem obnoxious how the gameplay would feel inconsistent and how the game could come across as very proud of itself to create a bad impression so to jump back a bit you eventually walk onto the set of a metaton cooking show with another entertaining unique sequence playing out as you leave the set the cork and interview the music is thumping and buzzing around and the course silhouette waves under the heat now before i said this world was feeling more personable but it does so on a personal level it legitimately puts pressure on you as you realize that you may know some people but the core and the king who wants you dead is ultimately unknown and then like 15 seconds later the goofy music and sans come back the game just makes sure you get nervous for what's ahead and then comes back in to entertain you throughout all of hotland you are regularly facing new monsters and having to dodge new attacks while learning about sad monsters as people these encounters aren't constant though in fact as i played the low encounter rate made each time i was sprung with a battle a surprise the encounters are random but are also splash enough that they never feel that way the placement of each one felt purposeful and considered it's pretty amazing that a game with random encounters managed to give that impression and speaks to the game's restraint soon after making these two knights confess their love to each other you play another metaton minigame this time disarming bombs looking back at all these minigames and unique encounters they all still revolve around timing based and evasive challenges i mentioned how vastly creative the game is but it's actually creative within its own limits i only realized this because the game contextualizes all these encounters differently so that the gameplay itself never feels muddy or inconsistent like what i mentioned with the undyne encounters you never feel like you're doing the same thing over and over again even though you really are at this point it seems like alphys knows exactly what is going on but would rather let you sweat before disarming all the threats making it seem like she's saving you once you pass into the more mechanical part of hotland alphys makes herself vulnerable asking if you want to watch tv together sometime saying you should add her on social media you realize that alphys is so used to understanding people through a screen that that maybe she's been saving you from the precarious situation she puts you in so that you'll want to be friends with her because she doesn't think you would otherwise looking at the major characters you can see why the game was so popular online people like alphys papyrus sands snaps the book they're all so relatable but not just relatable in the sense of oh they're insecure and don't know how to feel they're relatable in the i grew up constantly consuming media and eventually internet media to the point where i try and pass all social interactions through that filter and set of rules this is maybe so self-deprecating and down so many layers of irony that i can no longer tell what i actually like and what i just think i like not that i feel like that i'm making feature-length youtube videos about video games because i'm incredibly well adjusted so these characters are specifically relatable to internet audiences to the people who tend to engage with video games at the most passionate level so everyone who would relate to these characters does in a way you don't come across often and burying these characters in a video game built to make you play it differently than anything else is really smart because when you see yourself so closely in the monsters of a game of course you're going to try and save them the next boss fight in hotland is against muffet the spider the gimmick here is that you're connected to these threads having to bounce between them to avoid spiders it's a cool fight and when trying to think of what to compare it to only one thing came to mind but only the concept came to mind not where i saw the concept so i'll attempt to explain it it's pretty simple you have these three lanes with paths in between them the enemy will travel down a lane switching as it meets the in-between paths so you have to predict which lane they'll end up in i think this is a pretty common concept so sometimes you just have to avoid them sometimes you'll have to place the in-between parts to take them to a certain spot and i'm sure there's a shitload of other variations but the important thing is that this is usually visualized at least from what i remember using spiders so the lanes and pods are webs and you have to avoid them or whatever and so you have this undertale boss fight that references back to this typically spider-themed mini-game and the boss fight is against a spider where you have to avoid the other spiders with you being the one confined to these lanes another subversion i i think at least the connection is kind of tenuous and i'm not convinced that i didn't just make this all up but i swear i've seen it before and if any game is going to flip that idea on its head it's this one also the music is so good it's densely layered and has this sort of sickly sweet sensation with how high-pitched all the different melodies are after sparing her you're sung to by mettaton over what is essentially a final fantasy song before getting dropped into the dungeon below in the dungeon you're faced with a random puzzle again you think it'll simply fail once more but you actually have to do it here we see undertale not just subverting other games but itself it sets up the random puzzle as failing after building it up so when mettaton realizes you know the rules from earlier on you don't sweat it because you're not actually gonna have to do it but then you do and you're just randomly walking around hoping in vain that you'll somehow get to the end but the squares just keep going on so you keep panicking and the walls of the fire enclosed around you until alpha switches them off very obviously staging this to save you and when this happened i felt like an idiot because undertale is kind at times it teases you like in this instant but ultimately it wants you to keep playing so it stretches the world around your ability never revealing the limits so that you never feel completely safe from danger after this you fight melaton although it's another clear attempt by alphys to make you feel cool she feels more confident and self-assured having guided you through hotland and it's hard not to be grateful that you could play a part in her growth as a person just a bit further ahead you find yourself at the mtt resort from some store owners you find out that alphys hasn't seemed to do anything after becoming the royal scientist and that's used to be close to the store owners themselves sans is outside the hotel and you go to have dinner with him he asks if what you have to do is worth it to get home and tell you a story he found a massive locked door near a sentry station at snowden and so he began practicing knock-knock jokes one day he gets a response and makes a habit of telling them back and forth with whoever's behind the door now when sam speaks from his perspective his voice changes [Music] and these voice changes are essentially another method of characterization in fact text in general is these little snippets obviously cause you to form a connection between the people and their voices another part of them for you to know sans is kind of casual not as immediate as say mettatons because mettaton's a robot their speech is precise and exact executed by algorithms and programs and then the font the font used for sans has slightly rounded corners again more casual and informal with mettaton using all caps and a font with sharper corners and finally the scrolling of this text when talking to sans it comes as you'd expect one letter after another but when talking to mettaton it appears in chunks feeling appropriately more robotic there's plenty of changes for main characters and it's a respect and attention to detail that few other games possess but back to the sand story soon the two were reciting jokes to each other and it becomes a habit one day this person asked sans to look after a human should one come through here so he did but he says that if he hadn't made that promise you'd be dead where you stand [Music] he says he's joking but you kind of no he's not i actually think this moment which should be memorable is a bit lame the music cuts out the text scroll slowly betraying the character specific text quirks i just mentioned to make it stand out more and the little character portrait of sans has no eyes it's like something out of a creepypasta i say that because sans has been so firmly established as a goofy uncaring guy that this sudden shift feels like a kid trying to make him edgy and scary he's just so dumb i mean he's a skeleton who constantly makes shitty jokes while perpetually having his hands shoved into the pockets of his hoodie i'm sorry you cannot take that image and make it scary just by emitting a few pixels in the music maybe that's the intent to make it seem goofy but i don't get the impression it is as you digest this moment though you realize who he's talking about it's toriel we've seen her journal filled with bad jokes from when we were there at the start of the game and now maybe sans is right if i have to kill someone like toriel to get home is it worth it i've found friends here i don't know if the character you play as has other friends family or what their home is actually like the game actually makes you question the whole quest objective which proves its ability when it comes to making the player have some level of introspection about their decisions and feelings within the game in the lobby of the mtt resort is an elevator to the capital of the underground which is currently out of service this reveals something i don't like about the game's world as you progress things seem to happen spontaneously and conveniently the point where i can feel like the world doesn't extend very far past your fingertips like if you reached out there would be nothing there breaking the illusion and making you realize that this is just a game i only got this impression in parts though when it talked of the monster's history i couldn't believe it because it's so far in the past i don't expect to see it but it mentions the capital a couple times and it reminds you that you're only seeing a small part of the underground and knowing that there's a lot more to see while not getting a glimpse of it breaks the illusion as i said it's not a major concern i still cared for the world and monsters but it sticks out more when it otherwise manages to make a place so absurd feels so real entering the core has a sense of finality to it this is what you've been staring at on the horizon and it delivers on its reputation it's a culmination of previous challenges to the point where you fight new versions of the first monsters in the game while also presenting new monsters and moves to touch these remixes of old monsters final froggit and whimsilot require new actions to be spared they have to be reached almost by admiring or consoling them as though they are literally hardened versions of themselves more violent and less emotionally available leaving this first part of the core you're met with mettaton who tells you that alphys has been trying to insert herself into the story by creating obstacles and such alphys is planned to jump in and save you while you fight mettaton but they have other ideas they lock you in the room with them and the fight starts [Music] your heart is yellow in this fight essentially turning it into the ship of a smug after a call from alphys you learn to turn mettaton around and flip the switch to off this only causes mettaton to reveal their final fabulous form you now have a ratings chart and have to choose actions that will increase the ratings the most for example boasting that you won't get hurt and then making it through mettaton's next turn unscathed will raise rating but boasting and then taking damage will lower ratings as you've disappointed the audience this is a pretty tough fight as you're facing truly unique challenges it sticks to the spirit of evading but you now have another variable the ability to shoot objects so these objects have reactions and suddenly there's more possibilities and complexity to the fight but losing a few times isn't bad it allowed me to use the actions to their full potential with better knowledge of attacks i could boast more confident that i wouldn't get hit this new system also adds way more strategy than other fights you have to make note of the past present and future if you've gone a couple turns without taking damage it's a good time to heal turn and then you can use that higher health from getting hit to take some hits and satisfy the audience by letting them see the new villain get their immediate comeuppance so in the heat of this intense battle with already more to account for you have to try and remember what you just did what you're doing now and what you're going to do next the game acknowledges this with mettaton having attack where you have to shoot obstacles and remember which ones you shot as it's rewinded having to dodge all over again on top of all this while deciding what to do during your turn ratings keep decreasing so this battle has this super intense music a constant reminder of your performance so far the need to remember all mettaton's attacks and your decisions and finally this fantastic sense of urgency as you never feel you can stop forcing choices to be made basically on instinct it's just so much fun it's completely engrossing and energizing and i know i've said this word so many times but unique it's astonishing how completely the game can balance old and new to feel fresh but familiar and with this fight having a sort of learning curve it's so satisfying throughout the fight you get opportunities to shoot mettaton's heart breaking their new body apart and the music oh my god it never settles always changing letting you catch onto a tune come along a bit and then listen to a new one the way i've written about this boss fight probably feels scattered and a bit sloppy but that's how it was playing constantly being pleased and shocked that something new was happening it's probably some of the most raw fun i've had in a boss fight in any game mettaton as a boss isn't frustrating or despicable we've been endeared to them through cooking shows the news literal song when it comes to the gameplay of undertale this fight is the shining representation of the neutral run now saying this i must acknowledge that i had probably the ideal experience of this fight after losing a few times and getting my head around the quirks of the fight i started to make some real progress i was also taking a lot of damage and and as i got metatome to their last phase i had very little help i took a wrist and attacked instead of healing and made it through with one health after striking a dramatic pose there were over 11 000 viewers and some of them started calling in they loved the show and more importantly mediton mettaton realizes that maybe they should stay in the underground and and you can go through the barrier seeing this architect place is so satisfying and having this arc play out thanks to your continued interaction makes it that much more meaningful the pure amount of heart and soul that undertale possesses and the game's ability to give you the power to dish out that heart and soul is part of what makes it so much fun to experience and is why it's such a great rpg specifically so i got this super intense fight that was right down to the wire only for it to be turned around because mettaton realizes their value to the people of the underground looking back over the fight i realized just how generous the game was being i had five health at the beginning of the last turn i swiftly took a hit and lost two damage i got hit two more times but they only damaged me for one hp each the game understands the tension and desperation of this moment and so lowers the power of mettaton's attacks for the sake of preserving said tension but i didn't feel cheated or babied it felt like the game was actively making sure i was ultimately getting the most dramatic memorable moment out of it it felt like part of the reward for treating the vast majority with peace during this fight it stuck out to me just how effective the little combat box is it provides hard limits for your movement and focus to dodge attacks you really only need to pay attention to that box and it's so small that keeping everything in your periphery is pretty easy and causes you to take note of projectiles without really meaning to you walk on to the end of the call but before you can leave alphys catches up with you she admits to lying that she wasn't telling the truth when she said a human soul was strong enough to cross the barrier you also need a monster's soul we know that monster's souls don't hang around so the only way to cross would be to kill asgore some characters have said he's kind but he's also on the relentless search for human souls you enter the castle and interestingly when saving just inside the entrance you get no determination message further into the castle you come across a place that's identical tutorials a similarly acoustic song is playing and the save point out front is called new home a mirror to the one outside toriel's which was simply called home this new home is completely saturated of all color save for the golden flowers sharing likeness with flowey the flowers at toriels were much more muted and in some cases dead these two places harbour lifelessness but in contrasting ways but these contrasting elements colour and flowers both represent life a flower is a being something that is literally alive and would describe something colourful as full of life it's clear as gorontorial had some connection whether friends family or lovers i'm not sure but without one the other loses some of the life in their home walking throughout asphalt's home monsters interrupt you they tell a story of a human falling into the underground the king's son asriel hears the human call out and helps them bringing them back to the castle eventually the human became a part of the family treated as a child and sibling this brought hope in the hearts of the underground wishing for unity and peace between humans and monsters soon the human became sick their last wish being to see the flowers from their village just a day later the human died with the power of his unbridled grief asriel absorbed the human soul becoming incredibly powerful azru across the barrier with his newfound power and laid the human on a bed of golden flowers at the center of the village the humans seeing asriel and the dead body assumed he killed them and attacked azrael didn't retaliate and ventured back home he collapsed in the castle and his dust spread through the garden having lost two children at once the king queen and other monsters fell into despair thus began as god's plan to kill any human who entered the underground using their souls to break the barrier and free the monsters the regular monsters relay this story and speak of the barriers destruction with hope and joy they don't see your death as a loss of life but as their own emancipation i emphasize the story being told by normal monsters because this decision does something that other rpgs don't the grunts of a villain's army usually feel like fodder there for combat and nothing more you rarely get a sense of if they believe in the villain's plan or if they're there out of circumstance but by having the same monsters you've been turning peaceful the whole game communicate this tale it tells you that they truly see their freedom lying at the end of this plan it fleshes them out more than most other games and gives you a good idea of this world's overall opinions and feelings making it feel real and by extension somewhat understandable you travel throughout the castle as this story is told and after its conclusion find yourself in the last corridor baiting light and casting silhouettes it feels final and grandiose in an understated dramatic way and the fact that a game that looks like undertale managed to pull off moody lighting is seriously impressive sans stands further down the corridor bells ring out as he talks now lacking the distinctive voice and font he judges you for your level you see exp stands for execution points love abbreviated to lv stands for level of violence every kill you make extends your level of violence and by numbering and turning those things into stats it makes them easier to contend with as you keep killing you can distance yourself from it seeing it purely as a way to get the numbers up with it becoming easier as your love and exp increase this explanation is not just related to undertale but most rpgs assigning stats and exact numbers to characters is a way of implementing mechanics and most rpgs have a mechanical core built around combat or violence so they numb you to the act of killing by rewarding you for that violence it becomes easier because the game says it's okay because you improve that killing and because your stats increased making you literally more powerful sans asked that you look inward which the game gives you time to do by the way and ask if you've done the right thing after you have he's back with his character portrait font and voice hoping that no matter the answer you are at least honest sans leaves you with this introspection and the power to control the monster's future this moment is the ultimate statement of undertale i think its focus on non-violence and subversion culminates here because sans is not talking to our character he as the author is talking to us he's talking to video games as a medium this isn't a criticism or confrontation or shaming of creators and players but a question shouldn't we look for another way why don't we try and push video games to live outside of a violent power fantasy why don't we create narratives that could only exist in video games and why don't players try and really think while they play a game questioning their own decisions and again this isn't a condemnation because no matter what we find when we look back on our playing or creating of games as long as we stop now to consider it think about it and maybe approach it differently next time then that would be great that's all that's being asked of you and me by saying this undertale actually becomes a celebration of gaming it has the respect to challenge all who are part of it to help it to continue progressing and growing it speaks its statement as a question to make it feel heartfelt and honest instead of blunt and elitist and it asks this question with compassion in his voice loving what video games are but looking forward to what they will be and i think it's brilliant now it's not a sweeping analysis of this obsession with violence and power we see in video games of course i think it's making a broad general statement more speaking to trends than specific players or video games themselves but it is a more thorough effective and well executed questioning of video gaming than all others i've seen before so as a player what did it do to me well personally i've specifically searched out and played games that allow for a non-violent experience in the past few years so i didn't feel guilt exactly but it did make me ask why aren't more games like undertale no doubt it's fun to shoot things but why are we constantly pursuing some sense of mainstream acceptance that games are a legitimate form of storytelling while focusing what truly makes video games unique interaction almost purely around violence the big blockbuster games that are supposed to be great narratives just can't seem to give up their obsession with constant extreme violence and death they never actually treat games as this legitimate storytelling medium because the narrative elements are so far removed from the gameplay elements the narrative potential of video games lies in their interactivity the ability to forge more personal connected relationships with characters and worlds and then changing those worlds and relationships with your own actions that's why games like undertale and gone home are better as narrative and character-driven games the narrative is directly improved by and enhanced thanks to your interaction with it while naughty dog games are trying to make you feel bad for killing after it's crafted tons of unique execution animations that make you feel really cool for doing that same killing again this is general and this is just what undertale made me think so i'm not saying that undertale as a game thinks this just to clarify but the fact that a video game has made me examine its own industry to this extent is kind of amazing so that's what this grand moment of undertale did for me on one level because while this is all super unique and thoughtful this same scene has further significance as it's asking about our decisions not just in all games but also this one specifically this is another crucial point of this section's success because it doesn't come out of nowhere undertale's world has been built around this ability to kill or spare so we can ask this big question while still making sense on its own level within its own world and on that level i felt like because i regretted killing toriel so much she was the most outwardly kind and loving and accommodating character in the game but she was the only one to die okay and maybe this is a reach but if you remember i killed her because i believed it was a scripted fight like in so many other games thanks to the failure of other games to respect the player's agency and interaction it caused toriel to die here in a scripted fight you don't have control it's going to end when it wants to not when you cause it to so perhaps this is some weaving of the two levels of undertale's commentary the lack of unique storytelling questioned on one level of the commentary led to the assumed violence that's called out on the other level of the commentary like i said maybe a reach but in my case specifically i think it holds up even if it wasn't intended now having said all this that wasn't the end even though it kind of feels like it we've still got to confront asgore and complete the story of this world if you pass the throne room and instead head down the hallway you can enter a room lined with coffins containing the other human souls one is empty with your name engraved on it the throne room itself is covered with vegetation and most notably a large patch of golden flowers asgore is watering the flowers and oh man he is not a villain your first introduction is him sustaining and supporting life the life of his child's favorite flower a child he adopted throughout the game you get this sort of conflicting messaging monsters say he's nice yet he's killed six humans before you and plans to lead you to the same fate but when you meet him here you do so with more context more understanding when he turns to you and recognizes who you are i was kind of hit with a revelation i knew him and toriel had some relationship and he was the king so it should have been obvious but right then seeing his face it hit me she was the queen and i'd killed her the music in particular is so perfect it rings out filled with silence to leave you with your thoughts and emotions a moment only to ring out again restarting the process [Music] it's like this noise that happens in the background because you're too consumed with what's happening in front of your eyes and the worst part of it all is he's so nice his eyes are gentle and kind he speaks with enthusiasm and he's such a dad he leaves giving you time to prepare for what must happen one throne sits in the center of the room and another lies in the corner covered with a sheet something seemed to happen to make human toriel separate but he's clearly not over it [Music] the next room mirrors the first of the game but without the golden flowers without the life you leave this room and come face to face with the barrier it stretches infinitely as this distorted wind echoes around you it moves in and out like it's breathing visually it sits in stark contrast to all the other environments being vague and in a sense incomprehensible it's so monolithic that it's intimidating and the task of tearing it down would feel impossible all in vain the fight starts although it doesn't seem appropriate to call it that you'll feel with determination one last time [Music] asgore's first action is to destroy the mercy button this will end with one of your dead i'd been locked out of the pacifist option but i refused to accept that my first attempt i just kept trying to talk hoping that maybe if i tried enough he'd open up but he doesn't i think the reason killing toriel weighed so heavy on me was because she was all i killed it's vivid because the immediate regret and shock was individual throughout my playthrough there are plenty of games which try and have sympathetic villains and some succeed but none as much as undertale these are two people who don't hate each other but who have best interests that inherently clash forcing them to fight i never felt any malice for asgore and i never sensed any from him we were just two people with a goal and the only option each of us could see to make it there involved killing the other as far as gameplay goes asgore has brilliant attacks some are similar tutorials being based around fire magic another example of gameplay and story interacting but asgore is a bigger and more deadly possibly because toriel was always holding back in that fight what's so great about asgore's attacks is how tight they are you always feel like you're only just dodging every time and it keeps the tension razor sharp the game's ability overall to craft micro challenges that can be overcome by the player is staggering you feel good at the game but never too good the best attack of his though is the eye flashes he'll fade into darkness with his eyes flashing a sequence of blue and orange he then uses his weapon to swipe with the order of his eyes flashing determining when you should move or stand still it has two phases essentially the build up where you have to observe his eyes and then the payoff where you have to actually make the dodges it's this tiny little journey each time and getting it right is super satisfying oh and the music is so good the way the soundtrack blends sounds that are blatantly synthetic and those that aren't add so much those retro inspired sounds give the game heart and charm and the modern at times kind of orchestral sounds capitalize on that charm to create a large important atmosphere making those moments have weight with it working to full effect here throughout this whole intense process asgore never talks and with how i stress the importance of these mid combat character arcs you'd think it would happen again here but that's ultimately for the better asgore is a violent person he doesn't want to hurt you so i think like toriel he gets through it by shielding himself putting some of that distance that sans mentions between you this causes his silence to actually flesh out his character show his dedication his ultimately kind nature and demonstrate just how effective that distance can be so asgore's health is getting a bit low so you go for another attack and you've defeated him at this point asgore opens up when his son died the monsters hope died with it but after asgore declared that he would kill any human who entered the underground to eventually break the barrier that hurt returned toriel however was disgusted leaving to try and take care of humans before they left the ruins trying to save them asgore didn't want power but he wanted his people to have hope now though he'd just like to see his wife and child you have the choice to kill or spare him i mean it isn't really a choice because it's obvious the correct answer is mercy and anyone who did otherwise is completely heartless but it's nice of the game to act like you could choose to kill him asgore says himantoria will take care of you as long as you stay in the underground and oh god i wanted to die how could i tell this man that i killed his wife so i was honestly a little relieved when flowey killed him not really of course i almost cried the fact that i was that invested in both toriel and asgore after spending not even an hour with each of them is a testament to how amazing the characters are and honestly that's applied to everyone in the game even the monsters flowey absorbs the human souls and repeats it's kill or be killed the screen fades to white and then what ah i didn't get to save am i really gonna have to do the whole asgore fight again my emotions can't handle that man ah okay i'll i'll reopen it uh just do it again i suppose oh the game didn't crash flowey closed it a save point can be found in this black void but flowey smashes through the save screen a representation of the game and is now addressing you the player obviously this is an rpg all the characters are technically addressing you but before it was the character of me the sprite on the screen but now it feels like me me like the meat space me this is backed up when flowey says your save has been erased and is going to make you relive this moment over and over by respawning you at it what happens next is so bonkers that it's kinda hard to explain flowey transforms into a grotesque mix of human plant and machine most importantly he breaks the visual style of the rest of the game the simple graphics were cute and endearing but they feel like a framework in place to make this moment as impactful as it is flowey is literally unlike anything else in this world so much of it was random seemingly nonsensical but it was always tied together by the art style flowey isn't because flowey is more you're immediately faced with a barrage of attacks with no option to fight back and when you do get one it does like one point of damage i died like 20 seconds in and flowey has taken over the game over screen as well he's inescapable this is how to create an ending it really feels like the game as a piece of software is being mangled and that once you're done with it it won't actually be playable anymore giving a stronger sense of finality than i've really ever seen before flowey crashes your game again and at relaunch you're back fighting him what's so clever about this is that when you really look at it the game is still being kind it's giving you a checkpoint right before the fight so you lose no progress but it can hide that behind flower wanting to kill you again and again so it can hold up the tone it's just established while respecting the player's experience i very quickly die again but was greeted with new text once i launched it really makes it feel like flowey knows what's happening and is responding to it reinforcing him as being completely rogue and going against the game's intention making it further this time you're eventually thrown into this void having to dodge obstacles if you manage to act then they all turn to healing items one of the human souls is assisting you preparing you for the next challenge it's heartwarming knowing that even in this up situation you're still getting support that love and kindness can still shine through the fight continues in this loop doing more damage and dodging new attacks while having interludes for their six human souls the attacks themselves are so overwhelming and quick that you never really get a consistent read of their pattern and the regular barrage of new attacks makes it seem like flowey is evolving becoming more powerful off just cooking up new ways to hurt you after six interludes the souls heal you together rebelling against flowey this drops flowey's defense to zero and makes his attacks more reasonable you can't die at this point but i'm so bored in that i still collected healing items after a few minutes of attacking flowey is finally defeated until he reloads file three now he kills you instantly reloading and killing over and over eventually the souls use their overwhelming power to stop flowey one way the souls help here is by turning the white pellets into healing items this is exactly how flowery tricked you in the beginning his example as to why the world was killed or be killed but in that first instance toriel saved you and in this one the souls despite how much flowey has tried to prove that the world is cruel he's actually failed to do so even when he became a god and made his sole purpose torturing you there was still a way to turn it around thanks to support and love undertale subverts everything it can but never its message of believing there are always good people and even among those who are told are our enemies i think this shows integrity and that undertale doesn't try to be different for the sake of it but to create something wholly unique which it certainly succeeds in doing your soul sits in a void filled with this empty noise that's similar to that of the barrier flowey sits in front of you slumped over and you're given the choice to kill or spare flowey can't understand why you'd spare him threatening to kill everyone if you let him live he says he hasn't learned his lesson but he has he recognizes what he's done and hates himself for it to the point where he believes he should die for it his threats are encouragement to give him what he believes he deserves this self-loathing and guilt makes flowery relatable at the last moment before he flees you're back at the spot where you first saw flowey where he no longer sits as you enter the underground again the credits roll [Applause] after that i got a call from sans i'd made a snowman really happy way earlier in the video i mentioned that i took a piece of a snowman and that he wanted me to take it far away i'd kept that piece of snow in my inventory the entire game i'd honestly forgotten about it and for it to actually pay off was hilarious it was rewarding sans explains what has happened since i left undyne now rules looking for an alternate way to break the barrier hoping to declare war on humanity sans had been knocking on the ruins door hoping to get a response but none will come after the phone call the game's finished that's undertale [Music] [Music] uh now as i've said a few times in my first playthrough in the guitorial so going into the actual pacifist run was largely the same as that's the case i'm going to skip or plot stopping only when something new actually happens so let's get to it this time around flowey asks you not to kill anyone proving there is some continuity here i'm playing the game for a second time and it knows that when toriel walked in i got unreasonably happy knowing that this time i wasn't gonna it up the ruins before toriel's house are made more bearable thanks to your knowledge of them as toriel goes to destroy the door to the underground she asks you to go to your room well i actually did that this time even having a nap but unfortunately it didn't change anything when toriel is asking you to prove yourself she notices that you look shocked because you're hearing the words she said before you ended her life last time this will happen regularly the game acknowledging that this isn't your first time around and it all works together to preserve the feeling that the world has been reset not reborn remnants of your last journey remain in the fabric of it going into the fight against toriel i still wasn't sure how you spared her but the fight does a good job of nudging you towards the answer if you try and talk to her you get this text you thought about telling toriel that you saw her die but that's creepy can you show mercy without fighting or running away thanks to my prior knowledge i could take the time and think over the options you have in battle coming to the conclusion that i could attack but purposely miss as you do that toriel begins responding and that was so rewarding she stops trying to put distance between you the music stops and she begs you to go back to her home after enough time though she contends with her feelings understanding that hers aren't the only ones here that she should accept that you want to leave i stepped out into the underground with a renewed sense of purpose i was going to prove to toriel that me going out into the underground won't lead to death or violence i was going to make her proud [Music] snowden plays out largely the same which is good and bad i would have liked if maybe puzzles were a variation of the first playthrough using the same mechanics but having different solutions as it is though it's not a big deal puzzles are so bite-sized that once you remember the solution you can fly right through them sans actually mentions how weirdly good you are at the puzzles these details combined with the fact that sans was the one who told you about the true meanings of love and exp makes me think that he has more self-awareness than others that he understands something bigger or outside of the underground is going on it's great that the game leaves these breadcrumbs as it gives you a completely new motivation going forward it wasn't my primary goal but it did make me pay close attention even though i'd been through this before just to see if i'd learn more about what sans knows another small thing that changes is the title screen i was greeted by sans and papyrus but most notably toriel sleeping in her chair it's a cute little thing that lets me pat myself on the back each time i play small choices you can make along the way like on the date with papyrus never ultimately changed the outcome of everything as the dialogue is just written to somehow circle back around to where it was already going i wasn't expecting great diverging paths but in a game that tries so hard to make each battle and interaction unique it's a shame that these dialogue based interactions have little variation in them especially as the game seems to expect you to replay it and on a replay you'll probably choose different options to try and get the most out of the game something that makes replaying the game that much easier is the music it becomes recontextualized as you move through these areas again as an example waterfall has this slow kind of syrupy music [Music] on my first playthrough it was empty and echoey fueling my curiosity and want to explore but this time around it was comforting and peaceful like i was just strolling through at my own pace knowing what turns to taken choices to make i didn't feel this about every song and area but happened every now and then to give me a new appreciation of these areas and music interestingly the game is actually made harder on a non-violent run as you have less hp at your expense this is a great decision as it shows the challenge that comes with challenging yourself if we are so used to being violent in other games we find it harder to do the opposite in undertale exaggerating to the player that you are in fact going against your instinct in a way in the fight against undyne she this time calls out my goody two-shoes stick not my violence it was nice to have an indicator that i had not ruined my run that did make me a bit wary though i was worried i would get to the end not having fueled some criteria i wasn't aware of but i'd not killed anything so what else could that be i'll just keep going i got to the castle got vindicated as sand said i have strived to do the right thing and then fought asgore i still didn't know how to end the fight peacefully and was worried he was going to die again as he talked he revealed why he attached this plan i felt helpless waiting for flareway to kill him again and for me to get the same ending but flowery didn't show asgore says you him and toriel could be a family though soon admits that was a silly fantasy asgore believes you are the prophesized angel that we heard about from the turtle merchant so he sacrifices his soul hoping he can find a way to break the barrier from the outside he believes that's what ezreal would have wanted then flowey shows up destroying asgor's soul and skipping our fight knowing it's pointless what the that was the pacifist ending so after the credits i get another call from sans toriel now rules us queen and the underground will treat humans as friends there's no chance of freedom anytime soon but sans believes it's coming he has hope he has determination it was ultimately satisfying and worth playing again to get a different outcome but seemed a bit limp not as different as i was hoping okay so i didn't get the actual pacifist ending i had to befriend undyne this really confused me i mean undyne was way more of an antagonist than papyrus and sands were sure i saved her life but where would i go to befriend her anyway well you're told that by papyrus he calls you up as you run away from undyne where he says the three of you should meet at her place this seemed so clearly to be a joke and just a joke i mean he says this as she's trying to capture you not to mention that i had no clue where her house was so i was further led to believe it was purely a joke but it's not i think this part of the pacifist run is pretty sloppy the hints are there but in the wrong places things like going on a date with papyrus are purposefully just a bit out of the way so that the player has to make the conscious decision to do the peaceful thing so i understand the need to conceal the decisions that led to the feeling of these pacifist prerequisites but like i said this is too concealed if papyrus is caught shortly after you saved undyne's life i think it would serve its purpose better one you would not be taking the call under the pressure of the fight so it'd be more memorable two you take the call knowing you just saved her life and she just passed up an opportunity to capture you three you won't even get the call if you don't save her life meaning you still have to make the decision to do the peaceful thing and four as it happened not long after she tried to capture you it still could be misconstrued as a joke leading players not playing completely peacefully to brush it off as nothing more upholding the concealment crucial to its purpose now as for the knowing where her house is well yeah that's on me i didn't make the correlation between this house in waterfall and her face i do appreciate that even though i didn't do all the right stuff the ending still changed in some ways but man this experience took a lot of the wind out i had to load my save back up and do the other stuff i had missed so the feeling of doing it myself was stripped away and i didn't feel like i was fully to blame for it so i was a bit frustrated too i mean if it isn't obvious i i love the game so i got over it but it's just one of those things that tarnishes the experience a bit especially if you're making an analysis video about it and now your structure of analyzing things as the game naturally progresses is just completely with and you're gonna seem like an idiot to everyone who watches gee glad i'm not doing that then god damn it papyrus stands outside undyne's home it was exciting to have the feeling of having no idea what was going to happen again especially as i said with undyne being clearly more aggressive and concrete you know hatred of you that doesn't really follow through though undyne is certainly way more opposed to being friends than papyrus or sans but the opportunity to explore what makes these two feel at odds is not really taken it's still a whole lot of fun though you get to see how her and papyrus interact which makes these characters feel way less disconnected especially since papyrus and sands rarely show up after snowden but on some level this friendlier approach does lead to something being said the two of you seem completely at odds in undyne's eyes anyway yet when you go to her house she's just as goofy and charming as the other characters you're not all that different just coming from different places convinced that your placement pre-ordains that conflict will follow it shows that our expectations like the expectations to kill your enemies in a video game don't always make that much sense that they can easily be misinformed and that trying to be open-minded can broaden your horizons i said that sansa's monologue in the castle is undertale's ultimate statement but it's fortunately not the only one becoming friends with undyne explores this concept from a different angle adding nuance and depth to its insights about both the world of undertale and the assumed violence and hostility of video games undyne makes you tea and points out that you chose golden flower tea asgore's favorite this demonstrates how the game carefully places details that are of note to anyone playing regardless of playthrough if you've taken the pacifist route first time round this detail serves as foreshadowing for asgore and toriel's loss of ezreal which you learn later down the line but from the second playthrough on it instead becomes a detail which fleshes out our already established knowledge of asgore undyne expounds on her own backstory talking of training with asgore and becoming the head of the royal guard she says she could never let papyrus into the royal guard believing him to be too innocent and nice undyne has enough self-awareness to acknowledge what the royal guard is but is so set in her ways that she doesn't question that institution despite that she's kind in her own way affectionate towards you there's a contradiction in her beliefs that doesn't show willful ignorance but naivete she's been indoctrinated into this universal disdain for humans in a unique way being convinced that her position is inherently righteous despite the fact that their very position is predicated on the oppression of others all while ultimately being similar and capable of being allies with those people she used to be oppressing if she were to step down she's a bit like a cop or someone in the military but let me be clear the context and material conditions of the monsters in undertale is over people who've been thoroughly suppressed by humans making the response more understandable and the people monsters still reachable undertale creates a unique circumstance for its characters that fortunately distances them from the concepts and backwards rationalization of policing and military avoiding any direct comparisons of the monsters and oppressed class to systems like the police and military which help perpetuate the divisions between oppressive and oppressed classes the needle is threaded really well here to create characters that are presented as villains while still being redeemable thanks to their circumstance not to say undertale is making this comparison that's purely my point of reference not something baked into the game undyne gives you a cooking lesson that ends with her house in flames and she feels defeated thinking she couldn't even manage to make you do friends you're thrust into one last undying battle which quickly ends as she realizes that you don't want to hurt her and that actually she doesn't want to hurt you either she compares your inclination to avoid violence to asriel here she realizes her attitudes towards you were wrong through direct comparison and relatability once she connects with you on a personal level the realization strikes you're not actually that bad but it's not all undone instantly undyne still says she will hunt the next humanity falls into the underground undertale shows the beginning of undyne's journey when it comes to de-escalating her hatred of humans acknowledging that this kind of change isn't instant and requires genuine engagement and intent from the person who's changing that's something unique to the pacifist run the game's characters and world become more complexly and interestingly written your reward for peace is to experience more of this world showing that although seeing your numbers go up in an rpg is gratifying there's still gratification to be earned when approaching a game from this non-violent angle it's proof that just having to kill isn't factually the most rewarding playing experience undyne goes to live at sands and papyrus's place now that her house is burnt down and has a favour to ask she'd like a letter delivered to alphys it's a personal letter and explaining its significance to the player would require vulnerability so she instead insists that she hates hotland and doesn't want to go there herself as we interact more with undyne we see that her characterization backs up her attitudes towards humans someone who is afraid of opening up this much someone who is this loud and aggressive is the perfect fit to emphatically hate humans as much as she does to deliver this ladder you basically have to travel from one side of the world to the other but this isn't nearly as frustrating as it could be this dude in the boat can directly take you to waterfall or hotland so getting place to place is not much of an hassle and now that i think of these three areas the connection between them becomes apparent snow and ice running water and extreme heat the game uses these three forms of matter to communicate different feelings snowden is quaint and cozy waterfall is isolating endower and hotland is pressurized and energetic once you deliver the letter alphys misinterprets it believing you to be the author so you go on a date a very awkward date at the garbage dump alphys admits to actually liking undyne not you and thank god having both alphas and papyrus not like you romantically makes them feel so much more real like they make their own decisions i love dragon age but everyone in those games is so into you that it's off-putting and the process of romancing someone is so blatantly contrived with you just piling compliments and random gifts onto them but here alphys feels like a real person i just showed up in the underground why would she possibly like me that much more than undyne and why would it be my decision she should have the power to say no and in undertale she does this all leads to an incredibly sweet confession between the two which pays off more thanks to the time undertale is dedicated to our understanding of them the final thing to do for this true pacifist run is to go to alphys lab where you can find a foreboding note telling you to take the nearby elevator to learn the truth you reach an underground lab appearing to be abandoned as you walk the halls data entries show up alphys was tasked by asgore to finding another way to break the barrier alphys tries to formulate a method using monster souls she discovers what causes human souls to persist after death and determines it to be determination so all those little messages we got each time we saved were proof of our persistence and the persistence of our soul the game met us with challenges some that led to our death but we still persisted each time to make it this far and to go back a bit when we made it back to the castle and saw no determination message that was because alphys has just told us that we'd have to kill asgore we'd have to do what we swore we wouldn't this explanation gives more weight to such a small element and causes you to reflect and actually acknowledge your determination alpha's plans to formulate determination and inject it into the souls of monsters this requires monsters who are comatose soon to die this lab area has four keys that you must find to open a door you explore the lab while uncovering more of alpha's experiment it's totally different from everything else in the game but not out of place while looking you'll have to battle these monsters which are a disturbing amalgamation of monsters you've previously fought in the act menu you have options that are available when fighting each of these monsters on their own this leads to a lot of actions being possible in battles forcing you to recognize the monsters in the mix and remember what action made them peaceful previously to get out of these battles while taking minimal damage you must properly know and understand the monsters you've been sparing having some sort of notable connection and consideration for them your knowledge is tested being rewarded for genuine thought of these monsters as their own characters and people on top of that the game is distorting and perverting what is familiar making its impact more effective so as for what we find out here let's dive into that now alphys extracts determination from the sex human souls and plans to combine that with monster souls in a soulless vessel to create a seventh soul thereby being able to break the barrier as for the vessel alphys chooses the first golden flower to grow in asgore's garden she fails to create the seventh soul so returns the vessel and six human souls back to asgore the comatose monsters melded together unable to handle the determination they were injected with with the families never receiving the dust of their family members causing them to harass alphys the flower flowey is gone here we see the backstory of flowey being a soulless being that has life but what we concretely learn from all this is why alphys is the way she is she had one task and failed she felt she let everyone down and other monsters let her know about it her insecurity self-hatred anxiety and depression makes total sense and we feel for her because we know she doesn't deserve to feel that way like the section with undyne here we're given the opportunity to dive into alphys character get yet another perspective to broaden our understanding of monsters and how their experiences can differ just as much as ours through undyne and now alphys we see that the hope asgore planted in his people wasn't a good one it led to monsters like undyne thoroughly driven by their hatred it led to alphas tarnishing the lives of monsters families as well as herself creating flowey beyond these data entries we also find some other interesting material they're tapes showing moments between the family of asgore toriel asriel and nathan not who i'm playing as but the fallen human that's who you're asked to name when you start even though the player will likely assume they're naming the person they play as i name the fallen human nathan so that's how i will refer to them these tapes talk of a plan that azrael and nathan have come up with which appears to be obtaining six human souls nathan seems a bit cruel laughing off when they and ezreal accidentally poisoned asgore this stuff was really interesting but it was also starting to lose me a bit i was worried stuff was going to get convoluted especially with the potential of timelines being represented by different playthroughs you use the four keys to unlock the door and find a way to power the elevator again as you do you run into alphys she's decided she'll tell the families what happened to their relatives despite how hard it will be alves in particular is so specifically relatable that seeing this change in her is significantly memorable in the elevator you get a call saying you've helped everything fall into place with the elevator freaking out and taking you right to the castle with no way to re-enter sand is nowhere to be seen in the hallway and this time when i checked the coffin marked nathan i realized that coffin was for the fallen human not who i was playing meaning at some time or possibly to this day asgore intended to take nathan's soul asgore isn't in the throne room he's at the barrier ready to fight already it begins barely toriel is here she realized it wasn't right to make you choose to leave or stay to kill or be trapped she chastises asgore soon interrupted by undyne and your other friends insisting that no fight happens it's so sweet but not to the detriment of itself they could easily shove asgore and toriel back together to make it a perfect ending but that wouldn't make sense so it's not done what happens here is kind of corny but it works so well because it's earned and executed wonderfully alpha's asked how papyrus knew to call everybody to the barrier and he replies saying a tiny flower told him flowey who sans had said was following papyrus is the only reason this reunion is happening then they're snared by flowey who has the human souls and now your friend souls as well he keeps dangling the perfect ending in front of you so that you'll keep going once you're happy with your ending you won't play undertale anymore so flowey prolongs it the game basically just scrambles your understanding of everything you've done would killing as much as possible lead to an increase of stats and thus the power to actually kill flowey would stopping here meaning he lost or would he still be happy knowing you never got the satisfaction and will one day come back this late into the game your expectations continue to be twisted and it's brilliant flowey attacks ready to kill you again and again and again and again but your friends help you by blocking attacks and healing you the way they heal you is by speaking positively encouraging you enriching your soul not your body so it makes sense that even in that state their belief in you can provide real support because that heart has been a representation of your soul the whole time also when flowey gave that little speech i didn't have a clue what would happen next the game so thoroughly surprises you at such a constant rate that you're at once prepared for anything and nothing you're shocked but bought in a second later because nothing is out of the question in undertale other characters like bosses side characters and even normal encounter monsters give encouragement flowey then harnesses their souls and asriel stands in front of you this is flower's true form a fight begins and boy is it a great one [Music] the weight of it is conveyed by the music the ever-changing background and asriel floating around overlapping on top of height elements not below as though they are just another physical part of the encounter your act menu allows you to heal yourself or lower damage taken for the next turn and when you die your soul refuses which is a cute little play on words i think it's important that even though flowey has been shown to take control of the game the game itself is still kindest on a pacifist playthrough you're essentially invincible here and asriel's not meaning that flowey is not actually capable of truly stopping you asriel does wish for that power though he says that once you're gone he'll be able to take over the timeline and reset everything our choices still have power even in the face of flowey who has taken some control over how the game plays out flowey slash azrael continues to mock the player their attachment to undertale's characters and the determination that will have us replaying just to get a happy ending asriel transforms again but this time you're stuck your only option being to struggle ezreal is now ending the timeline resetting it after some deaths you can no longer access the save file but are able to call out to your friends within ezreal as you reach out you're taken to a battle with them here you have to think back to your memories of them to act in ways that will remind them of you and bring them back not only is it super satisfying to do this but it efficiently shows off their arc where they started and where they are now thanks to you your choices and actions really feel respected here like they had a significant effect and so much stuff happens in undertale that when you think back to the things you've learned about them it feels like the good old days in a sense on top of this this process of thinking back and calling out to your friends is just what we did with the amalgamations in the lab it's continuing to show that although the monsters aren't quite as significant to your play through they're just as important within the world once your friends are saved you reach out to do the same to asriel when you do so you see the memories of asriel saving nathan but why would you have those memories as you keep saving asriel his attacks get weaker as his reluctance grows after all a monster's power is tied heavily to their emotions asriel talks to nathan saying they're only doing this to keep them around because only the human understands them he's not ready to say goodbye again seeing the tapes in the lab the coffin marked for nathan the fact that that name is who your level is ascribed to and now asriel talking to them it made me wonder if we were some reincarnation of them if that's what all the humans have been so far and that's why azrael doesn't want to lose you again because then you'll be back ready to be lost all over coming out of the battle ezreal stands in front of you back in their normal monster form he knows nathan has been gone a while and learns that your name is frisk with other monster's souls inside him he can love again as opposed to his soulless flowery form he asks for forgiveness and you give it as his final act asriel breaks the barrier with the power of everyone's souls freeing monsters [Music] oh you comfort azrael and before leaving he asks you to take care of asgar and toriel as he will inevitably turn back into flowey without the power of the souls okay uh before we go on some stuff has to get said first off asriel says that he knows nathan isn't there which immediately proves wrong what i said about being a reincarnation great work nathan but the other evidence like nathan showing up next to the love or level of violence is still there so there's some connection between the player and the fallen human with that connection being clearest in the level of violence perhaps nathan is the potential of violence within you but that we will probably find out next holy the game managed to make flowey an understandable villain that you have sympathy for i mean they kind of cheated by turning him into a cute goat monster but still holy and finally that is such a fantastic fight for this playthrough i mean it just sums up everything the playthrough stands for and delivers so hard you wake up surrounded by your friends with it all being a bad dream having experienced what you just did it's so good to see them again they now use your name frisk if nathan is some presence within you perhaps now it's completely gone making you just frisk as far as your friends remember there was a flower a flash of white and the barrier was gone with you in the dream torrio gives you time to do anything you may feel the need to before going to the surface first of all i stumbled around trying to get exactly in the middle of the group so the composition of the thumbnail would be just right other than that there wasn't anything else i needed to do no loose threads i was compelled to follow no quest to complete but i didn't walk to the surface i went through and talked to every single character i seriously took like half an hour just getting one last memory with these people and they all had something new to say with the triumphant music in the background it was like some glorious victory lap i've said the word rewarding 11 times so far sorry for the bad vocabulary by the way but this was the most rewarding thing of the whole experience including what's to come you save the world in a lot of games but in very few do you get to talk to every single character of that world you just saved everyone had something to say about what had just happened what it was like being free what they were going to do in the future and to have everyone talk about the same thing with such reverence and hope made it so worth it getting a bunch of money some good gear or an achievement this is how you reward a player if you think your world is worth caring about give the player proof that it cares back because it's such a fantastic experience one unique to the interactive medium of video games seriously if you've played this game before and didn't do this give another pacifist run a try and make sure to hit everyone up before leaving to the surface it's worth it and to anyone who's not played undertale before keep this in mind when you do play because you really should give it your time i'm talking like it's the end of the game and on some level i wish it was but it's not i'm going to save leaving to the surface for the end because we'll need it after what's to come [Music] i really didn't want to do this i've talked with my love of these characters a lot so to undo the happy ending and then kill them to satiate my own curiosity wasn't something i was looking forward to i probably wouldn't have done it at all if not for this video but maybe that's what i'm telling myself to avoid the guilt this is the genocide run you kill everything it starts off with flowey making you confront what you're doing at the title screen you're given the ability to true reset this means all memories will be erased even flowey who had some self-awareness across play-throughs will be back to normal i named the fallen human nathan again i didn't really want to but it felt right if the character you control is frisk they knew the player would be the potential for evil within that character so it just made sense to name them the same thing i kill the dummy in the first frog at your face which toriel would usually scare off once i got to the second save point the froggit that tells you that sparing is an option isn't there because i just killed it the effects of your violence are felt within the world immediately part of the genocide run is killing every monster in each area this includes random encounters there were only a finite amount within the ruined snowden waterfall in hotland actively pacing around the ruins waiting for an encounter made me feel psychopathic i was much more aware of what i was doing searching for stuff to kill the satisfaction of leveling up is completely removed when you know what it really stands for once you've killed all the monsters in a given area the music changes in the ruins it's droning and haunting it's like now that all of the life is gone from here you can hear what you sound like having gone through here two times before i knew the music well by this time i was humming along but by sharply shifting it you're pushed out of the familiar in the comfortable the active change makes it feel like the game is judging you when you save after the area is empty of monsters you don't get a description of what's making you determined you just get the single word stated plainly this is because you're single-minded you don't draw your determination from the details around you but from the ambition within yourself to kill all life that you may run into you still find encounters being interrupted while you travel but nothing shows up you're made to see where life would have been if you had not erased it napster book disappears before you can reach him your reputation already preceding you the game's characters are reacting to your decisions to make them feel realer and to make you feel worse your evil isn't just demonstrated through direct acts of violence but also those that lead to them it's my third playthrough by now i know what characters are going to say so i skipped repeated dialogue from the monster's perspective i rush along conversations and interactions to get to the killing faster like i said single-minded and by skipping this dialogue and not acknowledging what's being said i further distance myself from whoever's talking despite all this talk i was still dreading the toriel fight and what i'd be doing i just wanted it to be over with but i've never hated getting what i wanted more one shot when this happened i actually gasped out loud and put my hand over my mouth i i just looked at it in disbelief you can see i just paused here for a while taking in what just happened it's such a profound moment one that stops you in your tracks and once again makes you consider what you've done you run into flowey as you leave the ruins and he says something he knows your nathan knows that the foreign soul inside a frisk with the potential for evil is truly in control flowey or azrael reveals his plan and asks you to help him with it you leave the ruins well ruined and venture out into the underground the first dialogue with sans is different and you don't hide behind the vase when papyrus comes over the interaction is basically completely skipped as though the game knows you're not here for what you've already seen when you go to leave sans asked if you'd keep pretending to be human to make papyrus feel good about seeing one with this and then sansa's speech in the castle it seems like he does have a level of awareness the others don't an awareness that isn't gone despite the true reset hinting at some far-reaching power once sam says this the snowden music that plays is slower and when you save it says 16 left 16 monsters left to kill in this area just out of efficiency i started grinding here that's what you're really doing the game is replicating grinding but presenting it to you under its own context to make a point grinding is boring and repetitive so what do you do you listen to music or a podcast if you're emulating something then maybe even speed it up but by doing that you're increasing the distance again finding ways to remove the reality of your actions the slower music makes it feel like the world is ambling along like you're slowing it down and killing it the world wails wanes and wines like it's letting out the world's death nil what were previously lively strings now sound sour and limp and the slowing down of the digital instruments adds this distortion that makes it seem like it's having difficulty barely eking out and being heard once everything is dead that same droning from the ruins plays further proof that the music does represent the voices and feelings of monsters in that area your character walks right through papaya's shock puzzle taking control from you if nathan is meant to represent me then this is me being shown that the evil i've let loose and frisk is separating from me and gaining control as it does so later on a switch for a puzzle has been quote depressed with the vines flowey is actively assisting us by losing all of our other friends we've gained a new one who is really an older one at the random puzzle you're treated to more new dialogue it's plenty entertaining but it's all underpinned with the knowledge that you're eventually going to kill them papyrus gives up on starting the puzzle and finding out that his enthusiasm wasn't as endless as it seemed is kind of heartbreaking you're seeing these characters that you love at their lowest and the only person who can be blamed is you after crossing the bridge towards snowden sands threatens you saying that if you fight papyrus as he believes you will you're gonna have a bad time this does a similar thing to the moment in mtt resort but it's more effective here i've seen heard and felt the game responds to my actions in the genocide run and so sansa's threat doesn't feel empty and out of place because this time it's been legitimized when you arrive in snowden no one's there at all it's abandoned the store owner has left a note asking you not to hurt their family you can take any items you want and steal whatever money has been left this is your reward for how you've played you can have as many healing items as you can carry and have all the best gear free of charge but it's not given by an npc you helped out but rather forgotten or ignored in the haste with which people wanted to escape you as word had spread the genocide rat is very confrontational but here we see on mass and clear view what we're doing to this world when you enter the shop text pops up reading but nobody came this is the same message you get when you have an encounter after having killed all the monsters in an area even in a playthrough dedicated to being as hellish as possible the game tries to make sure you know that the monsters you killed and got exp from are just as much people to be respected as the characters you could buy items off it's a bit like the game is trying to reach you that maybe if you make this observation you'll question what you're doing as you trudge through town you realize just how much personality these tertiary characters injected into the world the things they had to say weren't often all that memorable necessarily but they were further proof of the heart and humanity the underground has or rather had there is one monster seal hanging around in snowden undyne's biggest fan they say that everyone else is gone and hid somewhere but they aren't worried as undyne will protect them yet another example of the game protruding points across play-throughs emphasizing just how much this child has been told to look up to undyne in her position walking into the fog you're met with papyrus he offers to help you to stop walking the path you currently follow when you enter the fight papyrus is sparing you you've officially become the monster the way we gave all those other monsters a chance by sparing them is the way we're being treated right now papyrus is making no effort to hurt you there's no indication that he's tricking you we have absolutely no justifiable reason to hurt him but we think we do we've told ourselves that we're just doing this to see what happens to see how the game changes but is that justifiable no matter how we phrase it our determination is still driven by the want to kill seeing all the game has to offer is our reason but the content of that goal is killing everything the game has made us instead treat these monsters with kindness but have we really learnt anything if we immediately fold on that as soon as we are presented with the possibility of seeing more i don't think it's really an answer and i don't believe there's meant to be undertale wants us to question ourselves not answer for ourselves so that the next time we play a game we ask those questions again and maybe think back to what felt the best and proceed with that with the answer hopefully being benevolence it makes a lasting impact with the hope of having these questions sit with you falling off the bridge in waterfall makes more sense thanks to a better understanding of the narrative asriel is the one talking to nathan and this appears to be some sort of memory perhaps the memory is spurred by nathan falling onto a bed of golden flowers and maybe on the genocide route flowey has placed those flowers there to save you and allow you to continue killing the total merchant is still in his shop offering a completely different perspective he's not intent on hunting you down and he's not running away his life has been too long to bother himself with fear or anger you're able to threaten him here providing another avenue with which to guide your antagonism down making it seem more all-encompassing this playthrough was the first time i found the tim village thames are these weird little monsters who were supposed to be goofy but when i visited it was more or less abandoned and the store owner now felt less quirky and more creepy as it was no longer surrounded by all the other thames the way the game leverages its control over contextual elements is really impressive and engaged with often to keep providing unique experiences the undying fan confronts you wondering if you're really as bad as undyne says and this time you are you enter a fight with the child i'm gonna have to kill a kid i mean i don't have to but i want the bad ending what am i gonna do not be a child murderer don't be ridiculous i did it through a pain face waiting for what was to happen while really hoping it never came and luckily my wish was granted the establishing text here says in my way the evil force of nathan is gradually gaining more control as love increases speaking to you and providing the only reason they need to kill something it's in their way you attack the fan but undyne dives in to take the hit she starts to turn to dust but refuses she hangs on through pure determination the thing that monsters are said to lack is there ready to be harnessed and controlled as undyne gives her speech the music chants along you really feel like the villain here but in a more specific way it feels like you're being towered over looking on with regret as you realize what you've just created waiting for them to unleash that newfound power on you and that's exactly what i got because this fight is brutal you use the same rhythm game adjacent mechanic but this time dialed up a lot i had trouble with it on other playthroughs but here it was deadly that feeling of being overwhelmed and regretting what you just created carries through the fight so well your first time facing these attacks is bound to have you taking hits it certainly had me doing so and then on top of that when i went to heal i realized i only had monster kennedy and spider donuts the first healing items of the game my power had made healing unnecessary and so now i was on the back foot trying to regain my health back 10 at a time then losing at 15 at a time it all snowballs together to end the fight quickly and have you intimidated for the next attempt for me it had been intimidated for the next 30 or 40. i tried to be undyne for three or four hours and never got past two thirds of the way through i got some better healing items from the turtle merchant but i still couldn't get very far the rhythm moves are designed to disorient and overwhelm with them being packed tightly together to make it hard to predict what direction will be next or by having these yellow arrows which switch directions at the last moment those in particular did my heading for some reason i couldn't wrap my head around them fast enough to actually block them properly i looked up some strategies online and found that i'd missed the optimal weapon for this fight and by not fighting a specific enemy type over and over i'd only got here at level 10 not 11. if i wanted to get a better chance i was going to have to start all over again or download a save from the internet yes yes i know i cheated but just to lay it out like i said i'd tried this fight for hours and got no way and to get somewhere it seemed like i was gonna have to replay a lot while extending the grinding process just to get one more level on top of that i already had thousands of words of notes and a lot to say about the game and i didn't want to scrap a video this long because there were one or two things i just wasn't skilled enough to do and to embarrass myself even further i couldn't even do it with a save that had all the best items and was level 11. i actually used to save from right after the fight i'm really sorry i really did try but i just couldn't do it so to try and be fair i won't say anything about the gameplay of this fight that i never got the opportunity to experience i'll talk about what i actually played and leave it at that hopefully you understand getting crushed by this fight did still offer some sense of reward as i was now playing the villain thanks to this fight i still got to see the hero win and save all the monsters from what threatened them without playing the game through twice over previously this reward wouldn't really exist it's only through having a personal investment in undyne they were able to derive some sense of triumph from our defeat undertale keeps justifying your previous experiences by taking advantage of the affection you feel for this world and its characters which is a really smart way to build a new playthrough out of your other ones we find out from undyne that alphys has been evacuating monsters to safety and that asgore has absorbed the six human souls she passes with hope running rich in her heart thanks to her friends much like how we felt during the fight against flowey slash azrael hotland is empty as well but mettaton is in the lab though soon leaves in the lab you can find unopened letters from different monsters thanks to our knowledge of alpha's experiments we can now see that these are from the families of monsters who she tried to use in her experiments even when characters aren't here we still learn about them thanks to the game's attention to detail without alphas here the traps in hotland aren't set up creating an excuse that makes this route's efficiency tie back into the narrative throughout hotland you'll find these electric barriers they showed up every now and then in previous runs but here they feel like a cheap method to stop you from exploring different parts of this area i suppose you could try and say that alphas erected them to impede you maybe but it ultimately feels like a rush solution to having you avoid these sections as expected the mtt resort is just as empty as everywhere else what sticks out about this area though is how the game changes up its treatment of you throughout this whole route the game's been chastising you forcing you to look at what you've done and really stewing that but here it adds another dimension brady and caddy have left letters for you at their shop these letters aren't written out of fear but out of a desire to just tell you to off they just make fun of you undertale's found a way to still communicate its humor even under such dark circumstances it shows a great understanding of its own character and shows off the versatility of that character it then does this again immediately through the fast food worker within the resort and is a fellow wage slave i definitely relate the call can be completely skipped thanks to its core structure in the core you have to hit some switches to get a central elevator operational in the initial playthroughs this approach serves as a sort of culmination of the game's central loop which is puzzles and combat but here it allows you to completely skip that area thanks to that central elevator or are you being operational this represents the game's largely respectful attitude towards the player even when you're endlessly searching out to destroy everything the game stood for it respects what you're doing in terms of the game playing experience which is replaying it for the second or third time but on the ground level doesn't respect your actions within that game playing experience so we'll forge a structure built to let you get through the parts you've already seen much quicker while making characters themselves detest you and attempt to absolutely block or stop your actions within the game the best example being undyne you have another fight with mettaton though this time it swiftly ends in brutality [Music] walking through the castle silently something strange suddenly hit me nathan's face previously frisk's face seemed to be a little gag looking utterly disinterested in whatever was happening but as i walked on and looked out over the underground it became legitimately unsettling this sounds very silly but it really reinforced just how dead-eyed and empty nathan was like a soulless soul it doesn't help that no music plays earlier i mentioned the music changing possibly reflecting the feeling within that area and that's why it drastically changed once nathan was the only one left and so if we track that up to here nathan really is empty just a husk that unflinchingly walks onward to exert their power and cruelty you make it to asgore's home you're interrupted by flowey this time talking of waking up as a flower although confident by asgore he feels nothing as you interact with objects in the house you will at times be met with red text talking from a different perspective it seems it's nathan commenting on these objects in their relation to them from when they were a part of the family in the home you can find the knife weapon a counter to the toy knife found in the toriel's home at the beginning at the start you were trying to be the genocidal character imitating it but now you've become truly deadly beyond that though this weapon is here in asgore's home it belongs or belonged to someone it sits in the same room as the locket a very powerful piece of armor this room is nathan and asriel's we see what we've become when you equip the knife text shows up saying about time nathan is happy to finally be holding their weapon [Music] flowey continues talking of his attempt at gaining some sense of compassion but he never managed to muster it he finds toriel in hopes that she'd be able to restore his feelings but she failed flowey felt life was pointless without anything or anyone to love and so ended their existence as flowey passed he regretted his choice unknowing of what happens to someone who is soulless when they die this desire to hang on this determination had him wake up like it was a bad dream a bad dream that's what toriel says when you wake up after fighting azrael on the pacifist route meaning that you likely died but woke up again thanks to your determination thanks to saving flower experimented with this power and decided to befriend everyone he soon grew bored of it though already knowing what they would say and what they would do so we killed them just to see what would happen he used all the excuses that i use when justifying my decision to kill everything and then he chastises you the viewer by saying that at least he isn't one of those sick people who watches it happen yet again commenting not just on the experience of a video game but the community and discourse that evolves around it with people feeling better than others because they were able to kill everyone so really me being bad and not being able to kill undyne makes me better than than everyone else who did actually finish the game legitimately flowey grows tired of it all having done everything until nathan something truly unpredictable came along flowey could no longer load his save as nathan's determination had surpassed his blowy believes that toriel must have taken nathan back to the ruins and given them a proper burial when they first died then the flowerbed frisk fell onto him must have been that burial which tracks as they were nathan's favorite flower the last thing they'd wanted to see before death so did nathan infect frisk after they fell into the ruins that makes sense as that's where nathan's soul a human one would persist nathan's determination was greater than flowers as it was backed up by my determination and frisk's determination flowey would now like to free everyone just to see them suffer on the surface and will forgo the things he was going to do with the power of the human souls we saw what that would be during the neutral run if it means you can live on the surface together every time flowey pops up you're thrown into a pseudo battle screen but the text reading nathan is nowhere to be seen unlike usual to me this says that flowey is talking to nathan directly with those same words being applicable to the player nathan is beginning to truly embody us and vice versa flowey says you're both the same because you wouldn't hesitate to kill the other if they got in the way nathan then does this sort of threatening flowey he regrets what he said you've become threatening and more evil even in comparison to the character who wants to use their godluck power to terminally torture everyone planning to do so for eternity this whole section is poignant and abiding its predictions are correct and its criticism's fitting undertale finds new things for you to question about yourself to create a self-reflection that evolves and develops over time to give you a better understanding of yourself in video games as an art form the game is never sticking its nose up at you though there's not a sense of superiority but rather a sense of relatability it feels like you're watching someone impart the introspection they went through about games onto you just to see how you respond and react to it none of this will be possible without compelling characters charming writing engaging interaction and thoughtful design all of which undertale succeeds at you're confronted by sans again in that same hallway you're now going to have the bad time that he promised in the mtt resort it is and i didn't disappoint i certainly had a bad time at the mtt resort i found sand very non-threatening and unbelievable as a powerful force but that's all undone here after dying sans acknowledges that this isn't your first attempt and continues to do so as you try again and again and you'll be doing that because holy is this fight hard on my third attempt i made it through the first gauntlet of attacks which sam says are his hardest and then the song plays the one i've heard so much of i finally get to hear it all [Music] yeah sans dodges your attacks clearly displaying himself as outside the constraints of the game and follows it by some very precise attacks on the fourth attempt he cuts his little speaks short completely taking me off guard the fight keeps finding ways to surprise you and essentially cheat but it's not frustrating it's captivating this challenge looms over you and i was excited to see what i died you next i did start to see new attacks in dialogue but progress was very slow the fight only actually progresses if you try and attack sand so healing must be kept to a minimum sansa's attacks weave all the compact concepts used previously while simultaneously evolving them to create a fight that feels like it's been built out of and on top of your whole journey across play throughs throughout the fight you get dialogue from sans he was aware of the different timelines being engaged with by the player and felt the game end he's now been living with the knowledge that each time you begin playing you'll stop playing knowing this has made him complacent nothing feels like it has purpose when it will all be reset one day only to be back at the beginning with memory despite all that he has to stop you now considering what you'll do if he doesn't after enough attacks sans are something he asks you to stop to stop the fight and consider that in another time he was a friend he wants you to become who you were when you're on the pacifist route he's sparing you but also giving you an opportunity to heal i had struggled to get to this point which actually made me crass aside the desire to be spared because i didn't want to have to get back there so i healed up and attacked then the fight really got going sans flickers you between these micro challenges one after the other projectiles now move over the hud making the process of navigating menus itself dangerous sans was hoping that the player who he calls the anomaly would stop playing once they were happy with the game presumably after getting the pacifist ending that making those friends will be enough but we went back for more this time to do the total opposite in a good feeling we often look for understandable motivations that make them believable yet we as a villain like those entirely where asgore wanted to save his people and keep their hope alive we've decided to commit genocide just to see more of the world imagine if kuja from final fantasy 9 wanted to destroy the world as an excuse to go see italy or some that's kind of what we're doing here and i think that's interesting we haven't just become a villain but one that would be considered unrealistic or uninteresting because of how purely evil and unknowable they are so to talk about the difficulty of the fight sansa's attacks only do one damage but they do that every frame you also take a special type of damage called karma which causes your health to tick down over time the hardest thing about it is the length i was able to divide some reliable strategies but when it came to the second half it was a lost cause you have to face these attacks a couple times before you can really try and see what works to avoid them but when you have to go through a few minutes of almost perfect gameplay to actually get there getting those chances becomes harder and harder i honestly found that once i was trying to keep the ladder moves in my head i would perform worse at the beginning ones i got maybe 75 of my way into the fight but that was the closest i got i tried for about eight hours before i made a deal with myself i didn't want to cheat the fight so i decided to begin writing the video and every night i would dedicate some time to fighting sans and if i got to the end of riding the pacifist route and i still hadn't beaten him then i'd cheat and guess what i finished writing the pacifist route and sans is still there alive again i'm really sorry about this but now he didn't just have notes but over 10 000 words written about the game i couldn't let it end here i don't think the fight is badly designed it personally asks too much of me but i'm not letting it color my opinion of undertale negatively i still think it's a brilliant section i ended up just using a cheat that would replenish my health to max periodically which did preserve some of the tension later into the fight sans begins to talk of his special attack before that he slams you against the walls of the combat box at a high rate wrapping up the pure speed of the fight then the next tourney does it again at yet a faster rate before rapidly switching between moves forcing you to adapt and react quickly you're thrown down what is now a combat hallway dodging obstacles and dealing with a few more complicated box bashes before these skull beams fire constantly replacing each other and never letting up after that sans continues to bash you against the box feeling frustrated and fed up his attacks slow and eventually he stops exhausted sans uses his special attack which is to do nothing sans is just going to stall forever deny you the satisfaction that comes with victory this fight is as hard as it is to force you to stop it's supposed to be unfair so that you leave this world and its people alone sans sort of begs for you to just quit and i felt for him and everyone else but that didn't make me stop every criticism the game is leveled at me can't really be denied and that's what makes it so uncomfortable the fight overall is so heart pounding and climactic it's unreal i know i was a naughty little cheater but i still really value the time i spent on it even the 8 hours of failure the fact that the fight holds up as well as it does speaks to the strong mechanical core of the combat despite the game being more about the characters and narrative here undertale creates that same cool feeling violence of other games but gives it so much more weight thanks to how the game's crafted and predicted the player's experience as you sit there the heart will glitch out if you touch the left wall sans begins to drift off but hitting the left wall wakes him back up this prolongs this silence while also causing you to pay more attention to sansa's face as he sort of twitches when you hit the wall through this single decision the game gives you some level of response causing you to repeat it and make the silence longer and more boring for the player while also making the player study sansa's face and actually realize that if you stay still he'll fall asleep once he does you can push the box to the left and eventually down over the fight button you one shot him like so many others he asked papyrus if he wants anything at grillby's and turns to dust you're now level 20. i was exhausted after this and totally unprepared for what was to happen undertale never lets up on its commitment to subversion even in the closest thing to a traditional video game challenge it never settles constantly being itself unashamedly that red text shows up again in the coffin room saying it looks comfortable in the throne room as course is a flower just warned him about you asgore doesn't recognize you as a human but a monster suddenly you went to combat you have no choice nathan's taking control asgore insists this can be solved peacefully but nathan doesn't falter they attack asgore flowey lands the final blow out of nowhere he tries to explain to nathan that he can be helpful he doesn't have to die flowey now speaking in ezreal's voice asked nathan not to kill him nathan doesn't listen flowey's death is so ugly and relentless at this point i had my hands off the arrow keys i seriously no longer felt in control a human is on screen it's nathan nathan states plainly what i've already explained the power we saw to increase our stats and see more of the game was what awakened nathan we doomed this world it's been mentioned it's been touched on but to actually hear nathan say it in a positive way to thank us for it while i control is stolen by them it made me regret it i wanted to go back and do the pacifist ending again just to make myself feel better and now i don't know if that will be possible our stats increasing was actually nathan's stats increasing hence the name next to the level nathan says there's no point being here anymore all is dead they want to erase the world the save and move on maybe to another save maybe to another game undertale understood that we'd name the fallen human after ourselves as his custom in rpgs so nathan is me and that potential carries over even when playing a different game you have the choice to erase it i chose no and nathan doesn't like that an attack is made and something dies the game crashes after relaunching you're met with an empty screen and some howling wind reminiscent of the barrier while on this screen i began taking notes about what had happened after some time passed texts showed up i've returned here and you're asked if you think you're above consequences i said no but that was a lie i had chosen not to erase the world and i tried to say i wasn't above consequences when i had to truly face what i created nathan i tried to run away you can go back to try and deny what i'd done i simultaneously hated and adored what undertale had done to me i felt ashamed of my decision in a video came it was fake made up but to some extent it was true it was representative of me i just didn't want to accept it the voice offers a compromise it takes your soul and in return brings the world back i accept it the game crashed and when i launched it again there it was truly reset i started a new game up just to see if it was a true reset i had to name the fallen human again the only name that made sense was nathan because i had become the potential evil that rested in me the name was more fitting than ever i have deliberated over a decision in an rpg before but none had me accept something of myself that i denied was there this is what video games have the potential to do and undertale dares to do it pulling it off flawlessly the game was truly reset by the way but not really because i was part of the game i interacted with it and pushed it forward and although the world has been reset my memory hadn't when i saw toriel all i could think of was what i'd just done and i didn't want to go on i felt guilty i didn't want to look at them and again it's all just code they can't see me but it felt like they could that's just how good undertale is by stopping and not doing the pacifist route again i'd be avoiding consequence again and so i didn't want to do that i wanted to be someone who takes responsibility and does the right thing the game forced me a player a person through a character arc jesus christ i wanted to end on a happy note leave these characters that i adored with a happy ending and i wanted the same for this video so let's go get that ending shall we the last characters i talked to before leaving to the surface were frisk's friends seeing them all not dead was so good it was such a relief the things they say are funny and entertaining and emotional it's an end that feels like a beginning having seen the worst seeing the best and knowing i did it through my own guilt was fulfilling on a fantastic personal level i felt like i'd seriously grown as a person when you save and it's called the end you're not walking to kill asgore at the barrier you're not losing control and having to face the demise you laid upon everyone you're taking a step towards a new opportunity with people you've grown to love and i was ready everyone looks over the horizon and marvels at what they see what they feel asgore asked for is to be an ambassador for the monsters someone to connect the two races papyrus goes off to make a good first impression with the humans and sands undyne and alphas follow asgore soon leaves as well toriel asks what you'll do you have the choice to stay with her or go back to where i don't know i chose to stay with her like i said i didn't really know anything about frisk to me it just made sense to stay with the people who loved them the ones i knew loved them the two walk off hand in hand we see the credits of all the different monsters characters and creators everyone is living a happy life free from the restraints humans had put upon them undertale is so many different things it's critical but celebratory kind but really hard simple and at the same time complex it's a story and experience that only video games could deliver it's a testament to what this industry and medium can do and i think we should all admire it for that and take note i cherish what it's given to me and what i gave to myself because of it some serious thought and consideration consideration that has made me better to everyone who contributed to this game thank you so much you made something incredible and to everyone who watched this video sorry for not completing those fights hopefully you can forgive me i understand this doesn't cover everything and it's kind of personal but i want to analyze my experience with things because no two will be the same and they all offer something unique something to learn from beyond that though thank you for watching i appreciate any support and knowing that i was able to provide some entertainment means the world to me [Music] the last thing you see is toriel putting some butterscotch pie in frisk's room as they sleep just the same as in the ruins but this time free [Music] you

Channel: Nafan

Views: 2,186

Rating: 4.9819002 out of 5

Keywords: Undertale, RPG, Analysis, Indie Games, Video Essay

Id: E84-D2eCxQI

Length: 151min 22sec (9082 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021