Undertale Helped Me Understand CEOs

There’s been a certain human behavior that I’ve never really been able to understand, or even visualize, for a lot of my life: that of a great many corporate CEOs (and various associated executive leaders they surround themselves with).  Well, I suppose it's more just the ultra-rich as a whole, but it's the heads of corporations who most notably engage in this behavior, so for the sake of ease, we'll just refer to them all as CEOs in this rant.  Anyway, 1 of their behaviors has always confused me.  Specifically, the all-consuming greed that drives them to harm or even destroy the lives of others.

Oh, now, come on, don’t look at me like that.  I’m not naive.  The concept of greed isn’t some ghastly unknown to me.  I’m as familiar with, and able to grasp the concept of, avarice as the next average person.  The desire to accumulate more of something (typically money) is a thought pretty much each and every one of us is familiar with, and I’m no exception to that.  Hell, I’m not sure you can exist in a capitalistic society without a functional understanding of greed, as it’s the fundamental fuel and backbone of the entire damnable system.  And before you go labeling me a Socialist or a Communist, let me point out that I don’t believe greed is any less prevalent in those systems--it (and the desire for power) is just the wrench that inevitably gets stuck in their works and destroys them, rather than the oil that greases their gears.  Greed is an inherent part of our nature as human beings.  One that we absolutely should try to overcome and rise above, mind you, but to act like it’s not naturally there is silly, and to not understand it pretty well is nearly impossible.

But there’s greed, and then there’s what CEOs feel.  Like...okay, regular greed, the kind that we all know and are familiar with?  There’s a purpose to it.  Usually not a good one, but a purpose nonetheless.  You desire more of something (typically money) because of its potential use for you.  Maybe you’re begging for bucks because you’re destitute and in need of what money can buy you--that’s a purpose (and 1 of the few morally acceptable ones).  Maybe you’re craving more capital because it might mean some more luxuries in your life--that’s a purpose.  Maybe you're avaricious for acquisition because it might mean being able to show off your wealth to others, gain their admiration or jealousy--that’s a purpose.  Maybe you’re covetous for cash because you want the ease and power it brings, the favors you can buy with it, putting you above the laws that restrain normal people--that’s a purpose.  Maybe you desire more dough because you want the security of knowing that if hard times hit, you’ll have something to fall back on--that’s a purpose.  Maybe you lust for lucre because you want to create a legacy to pass on to your inheritors, and make sure they’re comfortable, secure, or even affluent--that’s a purpose.

But there can come a point where further greed no longer serves any purpose.  Let’s take Activision-Blizzard’s CEO, Bobby Kotick, as an example, here.*  Mr. Kotick, as of the moment I type this, has a net worth of $600,000,000.  His annual income, in 2019 (the most recent "normal" financial year, I reckon), was $30,000,000.

Think, for a moment, about anything and everything you can conceive needing, wanting, setting aside for financial safety, and leaving to your family.  Consider how much money it would take for you to impress anyone and everyone you’ve ever known with passing familiarity.  Contemplate every luxury that you could own and make enough use out of to actually enjoy.**  If we for a moment buy into the idea that possessions, comfort, adulation, and wealth can buy happiness, try to conceive everything it would take to bring you as much enjoyment as you could ever want, for the rest of your life, with enough extra to provide very well for your family after your passing.

All done with the thought exercise?  Well, you’ve racked up quite a charge on your mental American Express, but I can almost guarantee you that you have not gone over budget for Bobby Kotick’s salary for a single year, and it’s all but certain that you haven’t broken what he makes in 2.

Okay, but so what?  So the guy makes a truly exorbitant amount of money.  He’s earned it, right?  Well, I mean, not really, in fact not at all, actually, he’s just the one telling the company what to do while the employees do 100% of the actual work involved in making that money, but hey, that’s the system.  The point is, what’s so mind-boggling here?  He’s made it to the absolute top, he won the game of life.  There is nothing left in the game of capitalism for him to strive for, because he’s already able to do and acquire absolutely anything he wants and can effectively enjoy or benefit from.  The fact that he’s in a position where the money keeps accumulating even beyond his ability to find ways to enjoy it is sickening, but irrelevant; it’s just a passive fact.

Well, what defied my comprehension for so long is the fact that Bobby-boy wants more.

Yeah.  Having already accumulated more money than could ever be entirely spent on things that he could take enjoyment from for the rest of his life, with the guarantee of dozens of lifetimes’ worth of money coming to him every year, Mr. Kotick continues to make bids for more.  In the last year alone, he demanded--and was given--a bonus of $155,000,000.  Yes--while already possessing more money than he could meaningfully spend on anything, Bobby Kotick petitioned to be handed over 1/5th of his entire net worth, out of the blue.

And this money didn’t come from nowhere.  It didn’t just happen to be lying around, waiting to be claimed.  In the past few years, Kotick’s company has laid off over a thousand employees, hundreds of which were canned just this same year as Bobby’s bonus.  Not to mention that a significant number of Activision-Blizzard’s rank-and-file employees are paid so little that they can’t afford the lunches sold at their own cafeteria.  The money used to foot Bobby’s bonus came at the expense of thousands of other people’s comfort, health, and livelihoods.  Bobby isn’t just greedy beyond comprehension in a vacuum--he’s actively and knowingly worsening the lives of others to satisfy his avarice.

And THAT’S what I could never really, truly grasp until recently.  It’s always just been too beyond my imagination to really understand.  How can a human being at a CEO’s level still reach covetously for more?  Once you have so much wealth that the wealth becomes meaningless, because you’ve already passed the point of being able to buy anything you could ever, ever need or personally enjoy, then what motivation can there possibly be to desperately seek more of it?  And especially confusing--why go out of your way to harm others in that pursuit?  To a man for whom all doors are already forever open, a key can exist as no more than a faintly understood, intangible concept, so why would that man go out of his way to grab other people’s house keys right out of their pockets?

It’s always confused me, because even by the low standards of human behavior, it’s completely illogical.  Bobby Kotick and his like are exerting themselves in pursuit of acquiring something that, relative to them, has no value.  And while I wouldn’t be so naive as to believe that Kotick or any of his peers have even the slightest capacity to feel empathy--in our world, you don’t often get to the top of an economic or political venture while burdened by a functional human psyche--it equally confused me that they could care so much about accumulating what is functionally nothing to them that they’d go to the trouble of harming others for it.  I didn’t get it.  I acknowledged the reality of the behavior, but I didn’t understand how it was possible.

Until, about a year ago, I suddenly remembered Undertale’s Chara.

Undertale is 1 of the more masterful works of art in the modern age, and its beneath-the-surface antagonist Chara represents a lot of things.  Amongst them, Chara symbolizes the player him/herself--or, more accurately, an archetype of a gamer that the player has, in order to meet Chara, undertaken.  Chara is a psychopath, incapable of caring for those around him/her, whose only observable joys come from destruction...and from the increasing of his/her stats.  In fact, we don’t really even see evidence that Chara actually enjoys the murder and suffering he/she is responsible for, only that he/she is utterly determined to cause it.  The only thing we truly know for sure that Chara enjoys is the act of gaining power--and even that’s not about the power, but the fact that the number denoting the power has increased.  To quote Chara him/herself:

“Power.
Together, we eradicated the enemy and became strong.
HP.  ATK.  DEF.  GOLD.  EXP.  LV.
Every time a number increases, that feeling...
That’s me.”

It’s a chilling, and yet very accurate, indictment of a certain mentality that some gamers have toward their pastime.  I’ve seen, and I’m sure at some point you have as well, players who approach games with a narrow mentality of solely caring about what tangibly benefits their protagonist.  They make their decisions based entirely on what most benefits them, regardless of what it means for the story and the characters within it--if the game’s story presents a choice between letting an innocent child live and having no tangible reward from it, or brutally killing that child and acquiring an extra point of Strength or a slightly better weapon from the act, this particular type of player will commit infanticide every time, because that’s what’s better for them.  The fact that the benefit from this terrible act might be so small that it will never produce a noticeable effect on the rest of the playthrough is unimportant--all that matters to this kind of gamer is that a number or inventory slot informs them that they have benefited.

And sure, it’s all just a game, so it doesn’t really matter, but at the same time...if gaming is a major hobby or passion of yours, and yet you don’t care enough about it to even feel any remorse over what may happen to the people (imaginary though they may be) within the game from your actions, then isn’t that still troubling?  It unnerves me a bit, at least.

At any rate, that’s Chara, by his/her own words--the unrelenting, uncaring drive to see numbers increase.  It doesn’t matter whether those increases are needed, or important, or even something you’ll ever benefit from--you can beat Undertale without needing to kill everything in the game to accumulate as high a level and stats as you can get; you can beat just about any RPG comfortably without maxing out your stats.  All that matters for Chara, for the kind of player that Chara represents, is that tiny little shot of dopamine at seeing a stat increase, at having a little numeral tell you that you’re greater now than you were prior...even if your increase has no practical value because no obstacle could have stopped you before it.  As Chara him/herself said in the past, according to an unreleased (but by all appearances canon) piece of dialogue found here, what matters when filling a glass of water is doing so most efficiently, completely to the top and even beyond that, regardless of how thirsty you are.

And that’s how I now can understand Bobby Kotick, and all his kind.  They’re Chara.  And Chara isn’t something made up--he/she is a representation of people, a lot of people, who demonstrably only play the game to achieve the maximum and nothing less.  People who level-grind past the point that they can kill a game’s final boss in a single turn aren’t addicted to the application of that power, they’re just addicted to the pleasure of seeing the numbers representing that power rise.  But in real life, the only universal stat of any significance is your wealth--and Bobby Kotick and his peers, these real-life Charas, just like seeing that number jump up.  Regardless of whether it has any function for them.  Regardless of what other people--no more than NPCs to them--are damaged in the process.














* Please understand, though, that while Bobby makes a great, well-rounded example of what I’m talking about, he is by no means unique to those in his position and class of wealth.  If we looked at the CEO of Ubisoft, or CD Projekt Red, or EA, or Disney, or Epic Games, or Apple, or Kimberly-Clark, or Amazon, or General Motors, or almost any other given major corporation, all that would change are the figures and dates, not the actual content of their behavior.


** I think it’s important to make this distinction, here.  A lot of people like to talk about how much money a person “needs,” but Cr1t1kal once made a compelling point about why this is a bad mentality and turn of phrase to adopt.  It’s not unreasonable to want more than what you strictly need--wanting to have enough to be able to enjoy life is beyond what one strictly needs, after all, and yet it’s only right and natural that we pursue pleasures, satisfactions, and lasting fulfillment within our lives.  Only ants don’t care about anything but strict necessity.

BUT, it is also equally important to make the distinction between what you can own, and what you can own and effectively enjoy.  Owning 7 different homes, for example, is meaningless because you can only realistically enjoy the luxury of owning 2 or 3, 4 at most--any more is either a possession that will mean nothing to you because you won’t use it, or a burden because your instinct to make use of it will negatively affect your living habits as you keep jetting from 1 to the next all year round.  Cr1t1kal’s point of viewing matters beyond just “need” is reasonable, but we must also recognize that its own parameters are not limitless.

Undertale's Flowey's First Meeting

Humble though Toby Fox gives every appearance of being, there’s not much doubt that his greatest claim to fame, Undertale, is a masterful work at nearly every turn. There’s so much that Undertale has to say to its player, and so much that it can say, and it never wastes an opportunity for that communication, whether through direct or indirect (or both) methods.

You take the initial meeting with the antagonist Flowey, at the very start of the game. Although I’m sure we’re all familiar, the quick rundown is that you’re dropped unceremoniously into the game, within a largely dark and alien setting, and within moments of gaining the ability to move your character, you come across a smiling, cute little talking flower who greets you and offers to let you know how things work down here. Expecting a tutorial at this early stage in the game, the player of course goes along with Flowey’s directions, and catches the little white “friendliness pellets” he tosses the player’s way...only for that pellet to immediately reduce the player’s HP, and to their dawning horror, Flowey’s face twists into an ugly, demonic grin as he tells you that the real way things work is that it’s kill or be killed, and that you’re an idiot for so easily trusting him. He prepares to finish you off, but you are, at the last moment, saved by another, later revealed to be Toriel. But the true damage is already done, as I’ll get into later.

It’s the first, formative experience that the player has with another entity in Undertale, the first moment in which the player has some agency in the game’s events and the protagonist’s actions...this is, essentially, the moment of birth for Undertale’s narrative, that from which every following moment in the entire course of the game will be informed. And Toby Fox uses this incomparably vital, founding event to its utmost! Many a player and critic has lauded Frisk and Flowey’s first meeting for all it accomplishes as Undertale’s opening gambit, and rightly so. It serves as the first taste and tutorial of the gameplay interface, and the pattern of the conflicts to come over the course of the game. It establishes a clear, prominent, and compelling villain to the work, to such a penetrating degree that Flowey can then be absent beyond occasional hints and rumors for 90% of the rest of the game without losing his singular presence when on stage. It grabs the player’s attention with violent speed and effect, drawing them immediately into the game to a degree that many RPGs can’t match with their more basic narrative methods.

But like I said, there have been many players who already have made note of all these ways in which Flowey’s introduction is a very skillful and effective narrative stroke, and let’s face it, most of them have probably done so more eloquently, and all of them have done so with more brevity, than I’m likely to. But there is 1 more way in which Flowey’s introduction is worthy of notice, in my opinion, which I have yet to see made mention of* by Undertale’s fans and philosophers, and so that’s why we’re here today.

Flowey sets a tone of paranoia that makes trusting those who follow him a frightening and difficult task for the player. Now, this by itself isn’t a unique revelation; many have spoken of how effective this is as a way of keeping the looming fear of trusting others present through the whole game. Flowey’s betrayal is sharp in our mind as we meet Toriel, and we have to make an effort to trust her in spite of how clearly kind and loving she is, because Flowey, too, seemed friendly and helpful, at first. Then, once we have allowed ourselves to trust Toriel, a being who clearly wishes only to keep us safe, happy, and loved, we have to re-learn to trust when we leave her protection--the meeting of Sans puts our hackles up again for a moment, for he approaches from the darkness, his intentions unknown, and though we learned to trust the familial Toriel, her warning that there are others out there who wish to harm us, and that we’re going out among them, brings back our memories of Flowey and the fear of others once more.

But Sans is immediately friendly, as is Papyrus, through whom we can learn to trust someone even though they are strangers, and even more, strangers who supposedly are our foes. But then we next encounter Undyne, and she is our foe, and once more the knowledge that there are those who wish to destroy us, imparted so effectively through Flowey at our beginning, brings us to fear this new and unknown person. Yet if we can find it in ourselves to master our fear once more and avoid resorting to violence, we discover that even those opposed to us can, in fact, be made into friends, with patience and understanding. Mettaton ups the stakes once more, a threatening figure who has (we think) not chosen enmity with us, but rather is hardcoded to seek our death, reminding us of Flowey once more (as Flowey posits that the world we’re in is a black-and-white case of kill or be killed, a hardline belief related to Mettaton’s supposed programing). And if we can even manage to put forth the effort to befriend--or at least sidestep--him, we finally face Asgore, the threat of whom we have been warned over and over again since Toriel, and who reminds us a final time of that first, scarring meeting with Flowey by forcing us to subdue him much in the way that Toriel shooed the malicious little dandelion off.

The betrayal experienced at Flowey’s petals early in the game, the distrust it creates within the player, is recalled again and again as Undertale goes on, admittedly with less pull every time (which makes Flowey’s return, at the point at which you believe yourself to have completely overcome the paranoia and perceptions he created in you, all the more jarring and even terrifying). But what I believe, and haven’t seen others comment on, is that this does not just serve to create a lasting, engaging question of trust and fear in terms of the player’s own experience and perceptions. The juxtaposition between the fear of betrayal and the hope for friendship and love created through Flowey’s introduction and all the following encounters in the game also comes back to 1 of Undertale’s themes: the examination of conflict resolution in one’s journey through life, and the creation, mentality, and terrible destructive wake of choosing to kill, of a mentality that chooses to meet opposition with violence, and to delight in doing so.

Undertale allows the player to play in 1 of 3 ways: Pacifist, in which they take care to never kill anyone;*** Neutral, in which the player opts to kill opponents at least once during the game’s course; and Genocide, in which the the player goes out of their way to murder every single possible opponent, even hunting them down to do so. Of these methods, however, it’s safe to say that only Pacifist and Genocide have particular significance to us and to Undertale’s messages, with Neutral seeming to exist mostly to urge you to pursue the Pacifist route. In each of these 2 more important routes, the game examines not just the results and mindset of resolving one’s problems with either violence or peace, and the difficulties therein for each, but also the formation of the kind of person who chooses to never repay violence in kind, and, more significantly, the formation of the kind of person who kills, casually, frequently, indiscriminately, habitually, and most importantly, remorselessly.

While Undertale examines the formation of such a psychopathic monster in multiple ways, the opening encounter with Flowey represents its best attempt, in my opinion. See, ultimately, that which keeps a person from solving their problems with others with violence is empathy.**** To have an immediate, strong compulsion not to harm others as a means of resolving conflict, one requires the ability to understand another’s feelings--to recognize their capacity to experience the pain you could inflict upon them as the same as your own capacity for suffering--and the ability to see other people, even initially hostile ones, as people that you can personally connect to in a positive way. Without the ability to view others in the same way as you view yourself, there is no possibility for regret for your harmful actions towards them, and there is no possibility for respecting their life.

And that’s what Flowey damages: the player’s ability to empathize. Flowey being our first and arguably most memorable formative experience in Undertale attacks our ability to trust anyone we meet after him. And trust is foundational to empathy: without trust at its most fundamental level, the ability to trust that another could possibly not be a threat to you, the ability to trust the world enough to recognize the capacity of any other being to be a source of anything but danger...well, one cannot empathize if one cannot allow for the possibility that others will not, sooner or later, be a threat to one. By making such a strong attack on our ability to trust every character that follows him, Flowey’s introduction by extension makes the same attack on our ability to empathize with them, and thus pushes us in our paranoia strongly toward a killing mentality, where otherwise we might have had a far easier time choosing to be peaceful from the start.

And through this scenario, Undertale examines the creation of a killer. Flowey’s introduction and its effects upon the player are allegorical for the cause--or a cause, at least--of a mindset of violence. So much of who and what we are as individuals is formed upon our early experiences, the perceptions of our world and its other occupants that we first gather--and Undertale argues, through Flowey and his influence, that an initial lesson that the world is threatening and contains dangerous falsehoods will strongly push a person to respond in kind for the rest of their life, even if subsequent positive experiences can eventually break that paranoia’s hold. An early experience bereft of love, nurturing, and security can damage our perception of the world in ways that will be felt forever--and can easily start us down a path of mistrust, then apathy, and finally violence.









* Which doesn’t mean that no one has thought of this, of course; it’s not like I scour the internet all day every day for every single comment and video made on the game,** so I certainly could have missed someone else figuring this out, as well. But I at least am confident that if I haven’t seen this observation made yet, most other people probably won’t have, either.


** Not to say that I’m doing anything better with my time, mind you. In fact, since I am at the time of writing this playing yet another Kemco game, I’m pretty sure I spend my time on far worse activities.


*** Jerry notwithstanding. But, I mean, it’s Jerry.


**** Yes, logic should also be a deterrent against violence, as any long-term understanding of social forces will inevitably show that peaceful resolution is the superior approach in the vast majority of cases...but let’s face it, interpersonal problems are called interpersonal for a reason, and that which is personal triggers our emotions, not our rationality.

Undertale's Toriel's Important Lesson

If you haven’t played Undertale, then don’t read this rant. Period. If you want to spoil yourself for a lot of other games, that’s your prerogative, but I’ll not be party to anyone who lessens their eventual experience with this gem by discovering its central plot points ahead of time.

Also, as a warning, this rant was written while I was a bit feverish, and generally out of it, so...it feels, to me, kind of spacey and unfocused. Still, I think my thoughts on the matter are worth expressing (as much as they ever are, at least), so here you go.



It’s really no exaggeration to say that Undertale is one of the most significant RPGs created in the video game industry’s 40+ years of existence, and I anticipate that it will forever be so. There are multiple claims that Undertale makes to its prominent spot in this art form’s history, but what, in my opinion, truly makes it stand out as a unique work of storytelling in its medium is that Undertale is, to my knowledge, the only game that makes a truly compelling and earnest statement on the power and vital necessity of nonviolence in resolving conflicts.

True, many RPGs are eager to loudly proclaim the importance of forgiveness, diplomacy, tolerance, open-mindedness, and various other factors that together form peaceful conflict resolution, but (again, to my knowledge) none of them actually walk the walk. Their heroes may fight for a peaceful world, they may forgive their foes and spare them, they may try to avoid overcoming their obstacles with violence, but sooner or later, it all still comes down to winning climactic battles. I’m reminded of 1 of Wild Arms 4’s last moments, in which its dimwitted protagonist Jude tells the game’s antagonist with fervent passion that one cannot solve one’s problems with violence...then immediately proceeds into the game’s final battle, during which all involved will be stabbing, shooting, burning, freezing, smashing, and performing various other violent acts upon one another, the outcome of which will, indeed, have solved the conflict definitively. Yes, not a lot of RPGs are as blatantly, immediately, and humorously self-contradictory as Wild Arms 4, which makes sense as not a lot of RPGs are written with such a galling lack of competence as that raging inferno of suck...but ultimately, RPGs still nearly always contradict their messages of lauding nonviolent resolution by having the most important moments of conflict in their course be settled by battles.*

And true, there ARE RPGs, a few of them, in which violence is not necessary. The Deus Ex games have made a point since the first installment of making it possible for a player to make it through them without actually killing anyone. Additionally, while I have never played any (unless Rune Factory counts?), I would assume that most of the farming simulator RPGs** don’t require violence. Still, there is a substantial difference between games in which pacifism has simply been made possible, or games in which there is little to no reason not to be nonviolent, and a game like Undertale, which focuses strongly upon and explores the dilemmas that a nonviolent approach faces, and bases the very heart and soul of its message and story’s course upon pacifism, and the weight and consequences of death and apathy.

In its treatise on nonviolence, Undertale involves the majority of its cast, including even many of its NPCs and monsters of lesser importance. Ultimately, however, I believe that it is Toriel’s lesson to us which is the most valuable, both as a component of Undertale’s story and message, and as a lesson to take away from the game.

For, you see, the trial Toriel presents to the player represents what I believe to be the most absolutely vital aspect of the concept of pacifism and resolving conflicts without violence: patience and determination. It is also the aspect of pacifism that I think is least emphasized by shows, movies, games, and all other storytelling mediums that advocate nonviolent approaches, sadly but not unexpectedly, since it’s hard to really sell the concept of patience without devoting more time to showing it than the limited schedules of most storytelling vehicles are willing (or even able) to commit to.

Before Toriel blocks your way in Undertale, the monsters you encounter are simple enough to get by without resorting to violence. The logic paths necessary to take in order to Spare each one are both short, and easily intuited. Toriel is the first occasion the game throws at you in which the concept of trying to resolve a conflict peacefully is a true challenge, and it is made all the more jarring to the player by the fact that they have been conditioned thus far to have few, if any, complications in Sparing their foes. There has always been a clear avenue to a nonviolent victory, until Toriel flat-out denies your Spare attempts and cannot be appealed to with dialogue. Essentially, Toriel is your first and most iconic encounter with personal conflict in which an opponent refuses to let you settle your differences peacefully.

Beyond that, she is also the only opponent I can think of in Undertale for whom determination and patience are the keys to success. Certainly you need both of those things to weather the battles against Papyrus, Undyne, the guards, and many others in the game, but in each major conflict following Toriel’s, your patience and determination comes in the form of navigating the long twists of gameplay until you have a chance to succeed in Sparing your opponent--Toriel, by contrast, is simply outright a test of whether you can be determined and patient enough to outlast someone’s enmity in spite of, initially, no sign that there will ever be any opportunity for concord. Which is by itself a thematically intelligent decision from a gameplay perspective, since Toriel, in Undertale, is meant to be linked to the concepts of video game tutorials--so of course, her boss battle itself serves as a final, educational trial run for the foundations of later boss battles, in the sense that, as I said, later major battles take the necessity for patience and persistence and add more levels of gameplay onto it.***

But while other characters in the game build upon Toriel and present different analogies for routes to peaceful resolution, I think Toriel’s is the most important to truly understanding and embracing the concept of pacifism. Yes, it’s important to learn from Undyne the value of giving up on foolish notions of pride as you outlast her through the act of running away and avoidance, which many mistake as cowardice. Yes, it’s important to learn from the dummy that rage and a refusal to forgive are so self-destructive that there is no need to harm those who feel such things toward you, for they eventually destroy themselves. Yes, it’s important to recognize and forgive the fact that hostility is often the result of misplaced feelings of obligation or self-dissatisfaction, as we learn from Papyrus and Alphys. Yes, it’s important to learn what even small-time enemies in the game can teach you, like that sometimes someone may do something injurious to you by accident, having mistakenly thought they would be helping you, as Vulkin does with what they think is healing lava.

But before you realize any of these things about other people, before you come to understand that your enemies have reasons and history for what they do, and before you can draw conclusions and begin to think about how one overcomes such obstacles to find a peaceful solution to one’s conflicts with others...it is essential to understand first and foremost that to choose the highest road, to choose to commit to pacifism, to choose the path to solving problems between people without resorting to violence, takes time, and it takes persistence. You will encounter people in your life who do not want to work toward a positive solution. You may outlast their attempts to harm or destroy you once, but they will not give up just because you did not immediately cave in. Getting through to someone, finding a way to friendship and understanding beyond enmity and apathy...you have to be willing to fight for that goal for a long time, and you have to be willing to keep trying without despair even when there just doesn’t seem to be any progress.

And that’s what Toriel represents, and teaches. There is no trick of conversation paths, no part of the bullet hell gameplay that you have to perform--there is only the patience and persistence to keep Sparing her, to keep refusing to harm her in spite of her enmity and her refusal to accept your peaceful appeals, until finally, the determination of your love outlasts the lesser power of her feeling of duty, and she gives up and accepts your desire for peace. Diplomat, therapist, teacher, parent, manager, negotiator, mediator, spiritual leader...for any and every one of the countless positions one may pursue in which communicating with people and finding resolutions to their conflicts is a component or focus, Toriel provides the fundamental groundwork for the essence of how to achieve success and greatness.















* I should clarify here that I don’t hold this as a serious flaw against these games. Yes, it is a flaw with Wild Arms 4 because of how stupidly the message is presented, but by and large, RPGs do a fine enough job at encouraging people to view the nonviolent path as the better, and using violence as a last resort. In our world, that is, perhaps, a far more realistically good approach to take. I’d much rather continue to see many RPGs show that the attempt to avoid violence, even if that attempt doesn’t work, is the right thing to do, than have the genre stop even trying out of an inability to get around its gameplay system’s necessities.


** More than 20 years later, I still cannot believe that this is a thing.


*** She also, I suppose, serves as an educational trial run of boss battles for a No Mercy player, in that she is the first time you must kill someone you’re truly emotionally attached to. A taste of the horrible guilt to come for you. And you deserve it, you monster.

Undertale Theory: Frisk is Suicidal

03/02/2017 EDIT: It took over a year, but I finally worked out how Undyne fits into the mirror dynamic of Alphys and Undyne in terms of the theme of depression, and have added this understanding below! DAMN, does it feel good to have figured that out at long last! Having done that, I now declare this rant officially finished!



For God’s sake, don’t read this if you haven’t thoroughly played Undertale. This rant has as many spoilers as a Bethesda game has bugs.

Also, many thanks to my pal Angahith for being a sounding board on this rant. As always, sir, you are a prince among men.

Oh yeah, and, uh, today’s rant is kinda dark. I mean, you can probably tell from the title here, but...yeah. You’ve been warned.



When it comes to RPGs that inspire theories, Undertale is pretty high up on the list. Pretty much any RPG can inspire at least a couple fan theories to explain its lore, characters, or events a little better, of course--I’ve shared a few of my own before, and I’m certainly not the only bloke who comes up with them. But there are some RPGs that just seem to invoke a huge number of theories from players. Sometimes this is because the game’s events and setting are rich, interesting, and/or subtle enough that it not only inspires love, but also creativity, from its fans, like Chrono Trigger. And sometimes this is just because the game’s plot and/or characters are sloppy and don’t make enough sense, and the players are forced to do the writers’ job and come up with some logical rationale for the idiocy they’re witnessing, like Final Fantasy 8, or Mass Effect 3’s ending.* Undertale falls into the former category, and in a major way.

Undertale’s got all kinds of fan theories being thrown around, on all kinds of websites. Theories about what’s up with Shyren’s body, theories about the backstory for Frisk, theories about the backstory for Chara, theories about why Mettaton NEO is a pushover, theories about the river person, theories about what went on in the True Lab, theories about Sans and Papyrus’s history, theories about the histories of the other 6 humans, and loads, bucketloads, craploads, truckloads, entire cargo-ship-armada-loads of theories about W. D. Gaster. And, whaddaya know, I’ve got a theory of my own to add to the mix.

Let it never be said that I was immune to peer pressure.

So, here’s my theory: Frisk is, or at least was at the beginning of the game, suicidally depressed.

“Goddammit, The RPGenius, you festering pile of bovine fecal matter!” you mutter to yourself now, which hurts my feelings, by the way. “I’ve ALREADY heard this theory from like every Undertale discussion board, chat room,” (those are still a thing, right?), “and Youtube video comment page I’ve come across. Stop wasting my time!”

You silly person, I’ve been wasting your time for like 10 years now. I’m not gonna stop now.

But anyway, yes, I am not the first individual to think that Frisk might be suicidal. Many players have inferred this possibility from a few telling lines that Asriel says during the ending of the True Pacifist playthrough. During this ending, you have the opportunity to go all through the game and talk to everyone you encountered along the way, as was the case in Earthbound, and if you go all the way back to where the game starts, you can actually find Asriel there, tending the bed of flowers that originally broke Frisk’s fall. Asriel has a good conversation with Frisk, within which he notes that people don’t usually go to Mount Ebott for happy reasons, and makes the implication that this might have been true for Frisk. That, combined with the fact that Mount Ebott is publicly known as a place where people have disappeared, makes the possibility that Frisk came to Mount Ebott to end his or her life very plausible. The implications made elsewhere in the game that Frisk doesn’t seem to have parents or a home to return to are suggestive, too, giving a potential glimpse into Frisk’s life that does not seem a happy one.

The thing is, though, that, as far as I’ve seen online, this is the end of people’s verifiable theorizing about Frisk’s potential suicidal nature. The general fanbase does not seem to have much else to add to this theory’s pool of evidence. And that is where I come into this. Because I’ve noticed a lot of things in Undertale beyond Asriel’s words and Mount Ebott’s reputation that relate to this subject.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that severe, life-threatening depression is a major theme of Undertale that underscores its entire plot!


Point A: The Neutral Pacifist Ending. This was what tipped me off and made me think there might be more to the idea of Frisk as suicidal than just Asriel’s words alone. This ending comes from your first run as a pacifist, not killing anyone but not having the ability yet to visit the True Lab. Essentially, this is the best ending you can get on your first playthrough. In this ending, like every other neutral ending, Frisk receives a call from Sans, and you learn about what the underground has been like since Frisk’s adventure through it.

Well, there are a couple of lines in this ending that stand out as slightly weird. Not completely out of place, exactly, but at the same time, they don’t quite sound like a natural part of the conversation, either. During the 1-sided conversation with Sans, Papyrus, and Undyne,** Undyne will tell Frisk, “So, where-ever you are...you have to try to be happy, okay!?”, and Sans will tell Frisk, “So, uh, hey...if we’re not giving up down here...don’t give up wherever you are, ok?”

1 occurrence of such a line I can pass off as just an oddity of conversation, but 2 lines like that in the same conversation? It gets my attention. The way Sans and Undyne are talking to Frisk, it’s not like they’re just describing the challenges they and their society face, which is, otherwise, the focus of the conversation. It’s more as though they’re saying that not only do they and their society face difficult times ahead, but also that they know that Frisk will, as well. With no explicit indication of what difficulties Frisk could be facing that would cause him/her to need encouragement such as this, my instinct is to relate it to 1 of the only things we’ve been able to infer about Frisk: the implication that the kid came to Mt. Ebott for unhappy reasons, the most likely being to take his/her own life. And if we are to connect that possibility with these slightly strange lines...they suddenly make some grim sense.

“Try to be happy.” “Don’t give up.” Are these not the words of encouragement that someone gives to a friend they know to be going through a rough time? Someone they know, or at least suspect, is depressed?***

It’s an interesting possibility, that these lines represent a further indication of Frisk being dangerously depressed, particularly when you consider that it would be a very appropriate bookmark were it the case. After all, in this scenario, you would basically have a story which starts with Frisk alone, and in that solitude depressed, and ends (Neutral ending, remember) with Frisk alone once more, with Sans and Undyne’s comments hinting that the depression threatens to return now that Frisk is once again left without anyone else.

That, however, would definitely be reading a LOT into things, so much that it’s barely a theory at all, more like an idea. But, it’s not the only point I have to make.


Point B: Having opened with one of my stronger arguments for this, we’ll take care of a minor, largely speculative detail now, though one which still can work toward the idea of an overall theme of depression and suicide. Consider how it is that Frisk gets to the land of the monsters to begin with: by falling down a hole.

Now consider: when you think of suicide, methods of death come to mind? Toaster in the bathtub. Gun to the mouth. Not being white while within a mile of a police officer in the USA. Medication overdose. Cutting ahead of me in line at a pizza place. Yes, there are a lot of well-known methods associated with taking your own life, but there’s definitely one that’s going to be pretty universally on any mental list: jumping from a fatal height. People usually think of this in terms of leaping off the top of a building, or doing a catastrophically unsuccessful reenactment of when George Bailey met Clarence, but, y’know, when you boil it down, it amounts to this: choosing to fall from a height you’re sure will kill you.

So if we were to say, for a moment, that Frisk IS suicidal when he/she goes to Mt. Ebott, that he/she IS climbing the mountain with the idea of disappearing like the legends say children do there...and that Frisk happened to see a hole in the ground, a deep, dark hole that seems almost surely a fatal plunge...doesn’t it start to seem like Frisk might not have fallen into the monster kingdom, so much as jumped?

Now, note, I do acknowledge that this is a small piece of evidence. It really only serves to bolster another, legitimate piece of evidence (Asriel’s words combined with Mt. Ebott’s reputation), rather than stand on its own, and it’s certainly somewhat iffy. After all, even considering the possibility that Frisk was suicidally depressed, he/she really might just have accidentally fallen in the hole; it didn’t have to be intentional. We know, after all, that 6 children have fallen in that hole before, and it stretches credibility way to far to try to assume that they ALL were trying to kill themselves, so we can only logically assume that the hole leading to the monster kingdom is legitimately difficult to notice (at least, until you’re falling in). Still, it’s something to think about, and lends at least a little more backing to this idea.


Point C: Think about something. When we get depressed, when we are truly at our lowest, what is it that keeps us going? What is it that a suicidal person lacks? Something in their lives to live for, perhaps, or at least, something good enough. A hope for the future. Enough survival instinct to stop themselves. When you get right down to it, though, those are reasons one turns to suicide, but not the bottom line. The bottom line is that what drives the reasons for a person to, in depression, take his or her own life, and what allows them to go through with it, is that they lack the strength of will to continue to suffer. What keeps us alive, depressed or not, from day to day is our willpower to continue living, our perseverance to meet our essential needs and see the day through to the next. In other words, what keeps us, as human beings, moving forward with our lives, overcoming obstacles, providing our bodies with the means to keep going, is...Determination. The Determination to live.

The choice to continue living is, barring the eventual and inevitable fatal circumstance that takes the choice away from us, a matter of our Determination to do so. When we go through difficult times, it is our Determination to get past those times and arrive at better ones that sees us through, if it is strong enough. When we are in pain, it is our Determination that allows us to endure that pain to endure that pain that sees us through it, if it is strong enough. The difference between someone who can keep going, and someone who simply cannot take it any more, is that one person’s Determination has been able to outweigh their difficulties, and the other person’s Determination has not.

Now look at Undertale. The human will, the drive to continue and succeed, is immensely important to this game. Determination is the mystical, indeed the divine, attribute in Undertale that allows Frisk to use save points, and return from every defeat. Determination is literally what keeps Frisk alive in Undertale!**** That which keeps us from killing ourselves in real life is also what staves death off in Undertale!

In fact, when you think about it...the only way for Frisk to honestly, permanently die in this game would be to voluntarily opt not to use Determination to resurrect. Or to put it another way...Frisk can only die by choosing to stop living.


Point D: In your final conflict with Asriel, he will taunt Frisk (and you the player) that he’s going to keep killing Frisk, and Frisk is going to keep coming back to be killed again, and again, and again. Why? Because Frisk (and you, the player) wants a happy ending. You can practically see the way Asriel spits this at Frisk in malicious mockery, but it’s certainly true enough, right? If you didn’t care about getting a happy ending, you and Frisk wouldn’t have gone through the trouble all throughout the game of not killing anyone. It would have been much easier to play the game like a regular RPG, and thoughtlessly kill anything that happened to get in your way--but you’re here, at the true final battle of the truth path of the game, because you chose not to. Indeed: you want that happy ending.

Well...isn’t this essentially a metaphor for life? What is it that we strive for, ultimately? Why do we seek to enjoy our lives, and/or give our lives meaning? Isn’t it, in the end, so that we can die without regret? By continuing to live even when we know it can’t be forever, aren’t we, in a way, trying to make it so that our death is as happy as it possibly can be? Isn’t the hope that the future holds better things, and good conclusions, that which gives us so much of our Determination? Couldn’t you say that the hope for a happy ending is something that keeps us from taking our own lives--or, in other words, from giving ourselves an unhappy ending? We keep our eyes on the prize in life to keep us going...and without a happy goal, it’s hard to keep our Determination.


Point E: “You called out for help...

...but nobody came.”

This line, found at a few places in Undertale, is a great reference to Earthbound, which used the line when enemies called for reinforcements unsuccessfully, and used a similar line during the final battle when Paula’s praying and seems to have run out of people who can answer her call for aid. Undertale, of course, expertly turns this seemingly innocuous battle text from Earthbound and turns it into something dark, a simple phrase that denotes the terror and despair of being alone, in need of help, and having your cries for a savior go unanswered.

But beyond the reference to Earthbound, and beyond being a perfect representation of the way Toby Fox took the Earthbound/Mother method and brought it to amazing new places, could there be more to this? When Frisk calls out for help in the fight against Flowey, calls out for someone to please come and save Frisk from this terrible conflict that he/she cannot overcome him/herself...when Asriel called out for help at discovering that he was alone, and not the way he should be, and could not find humanity (monsterity?) and hope within himself...could there be something more, than just an emotionally gripping phrase that expresses the true terror of danger, fear, and loneliness?

Well, let me ask you something: what would be another way to say “called out for help”? A plea for assistance. A request for aid. A shout for reinforcements. Or maybe you could say...

A cry for help.

You know. That thing that people do, as a desperate last resort to stop themselves before they fall to their inner darkness and do something terrible? The phrase used when we talk about the ways that a suicidal person tries/tried to let others know that they need(ed) help, in the hopes that those others would find a way to help them before it was too late?

Yup. That line that Toby Fox already made chilling and dark might be still darker that you thought.


Point F: The theme of serious depression runs pretty deeply through the triad of friend pairs in Undertale.

Let’s look at the first pair, Toriel and Asgore. The king and queen of monsters lost their children, a loss which is, from what I’m told, the single most horrible psychological and emotional pain that can be experienced.***** Essentially, this is something that can, and frequently does, cause serious, long depression. And how they respond to this loss is telling.

Asgore’s first response is momentary anger, as he lashes out and declares that the monsters of his kingdom will from now on kill any and all humans that find their way into the kingdom, and work towards destroying the barrier so they can make war against humanity as a whole as revenge for this loss. But afterwards, he becomes paralyzed by indecision, as his anger faded and he realized that violent revenge was not the right answer. He could manage neither to actively pursue his plan, nor take the hope away from his people, who were all just excited about finally leaving Mt. Ebott and experiencing the freedom of the surface world. As Toriel chides at the end of the game--if Asgore had truly wanted to follow through on his angry plan, if he had really not been held by indecision, then he could have done so after acquiring the first human soul (since he could use it to pass through the barrier himself, kill and collect more human souls on the outside, and bring them back to destroy the barrier altogether).

Instead, Asgore simply sat and waited, and just feebly hoped that what he feared wouldn’t come. He was crippled by an inability to move forward or back, stuck in a limbo--too afraid, regretful, and defeated to go forward with his intentions, but too afraid to disappoint those who had put their faith in him to go back.

Isn’t that similar in many ways to someone seriously depressed, who can’t find the determination or energy to follow through with their wishes and plans, instead just drifting one day at a time?

Toriel, meanwhile, is the foil of Asgore. They are connected by the same loss, the same pain that can, and in Asgore’s case did, lead to depression. But Toriel takes her grief, and acts to overcome it. She opposes Asgore’s plan, and leaves with her child’s remains so as to bury him/her. To bury the dead is a very important ritual in their passing, for it symbolizes an acceptance of the deceased having passed. Although in reality it’s rarely so simple, to bury someone is to show that you have made peace with their passing, and Toriel does so in bringing Chara to the ruins and burying him/her where he/she first entered the kingdom. Additionally, Toriel makes herself active, and in the way that will allow her to move forward and be what she loves to be: she makes herself a mother to any human who falls into the monster kingdom, and shields them (or tries to) from Asgore’s intentions. These actions, actions of acceptance of loss and of moving forward to try again to find a new way to experience the joy that had been taken from you...these are the actions of one who overcomes depression. Asgore’s actions, sadly, are those of one who succumbs to it.

Next, you have the second pair of friends, Sans and Papyrus. They represent another pain of existence that leads to serious depression: loneliness. They are both people who have no connection to others, who are outsiders. As human beings, we need connections to one another, meaningful connections that enrich our lives and give our lives so much more worth. If there’s anything that pastel princess ponies and pale teens holding mentality-shooting guns to their heads have taught me, it’s that. Some of us may need (and prefer) fewer connections than others, but few of us can healthily get by without love, respect, and camaraderie from someone. And when we feel alone, when we feel cut off from all others and like there is no one who can understand and care for us, we are in danger of the deep depression that can lead to suicide.

Sans is fatally lazy, despite his great talents, possessing only enough work ethic to do the bare minimum, if even that. The fact that he’s all about comedy is telling, to me--comedians are, I believe, famously susceptible to darker thoughts. For many comedians, humor is their defense against the misery of existence. Tina Fey writes that her view on the world as a comedian, her focus on finding that which can be laughed at, was formed when she was very young (4 years old, I think; it’s been some years since I read her book). She was playing outside, alone, and a man came up to her, slashed her face with a knife, and left, giving no explanation and never being caught. If I recall her writing correctly, Fey says that her comedian’s mindset was forged in that moment...because it was the only defense strong enough not to fall apart in the face of such terrible, dark, senseless reality.

Anyway, back to Sans. He’s from somewhere else, as Papyrus is, here for a purpose that no one can know about (and it’s doubtful that many would understand anyway), with abilities that make him unable to take part in the society around him in any meaningful way. While others lose themselves to the moment, Sans has a mastery over existence that they do not, and it separates him from them in an extreme way. And so he sits, and lazes, and accomplishes nothing in a world that he very well may see as largely meaningless. After all, as Flowey points out, once you’ve seen the same thing over and over in all its variations, it becomes less real to you; you cannot connect to it any more.

Meanwhile, Papyrus is lonely and separated from others, as well. He has no friends, and it’s clear, though not explicit, that this fact really bothers him. Just as Toriel was the counterpoint to Asgore, though, Papyrus is the healthy contradiction to Sans. Papyrus may be friendless, but he takes assertive, determined action to change this fact. He seeks to join a group and find purpose, he bangs at the door of that group’s leader (Undyne) and throws himself (albeit in a clueless manner) into the work of capturing a human so he can become publicly known and liked--he puts his all into making people think he’s worth befriending. And, of course, he genuinely befriends Frisk, seeking friendship in an unlikely place when the opportunity arises. These actions, that of actively going out and being proactive in search of companionship, are those of a person who overcomes his depression. Sans’s, unfortunately, are those of one who is succumbs to it.

Lastly, we have the pair of Undyne and Alphys. Regarding the latter...do I even have to describe her side of this, really? She’s the most outwardly obvious in terms of dangerous depression. Alphys feels herself a failure due to her past mistakes, and runs from reality in various ways. She doesn’t answer the calls and letters of the families to whom she promised more than she can deliver on. She keeps the True Lab, the site of her failures, hidden. She lies to others to make herself seem better than she thinks she actually is. Alphys is paralyzed by the thought of the world seeing what she truly is; unable to gather the courage to face the potential consequences, she lets her failures fester and her true qualities remain hidden. The feeling that you are a failure, that you have let down those who depended upon you and/or had high hopes for you in ways that you cannot make amends for, are powerful sparks to ignite dangerous depression. Alphys loathes herself, and there are even aspects of her retreat into the True Lab, once you’re on the true path for Pacifism, that imply that she might be contemplating killing herself there.

Now, I personally think that, unlike Sans and Asgore, who pretty tidily stay confined to their single (though impressive) ties to the theme of dangerous depression, Alphys represents a lot of aspects of dangerous depression mixed together. She is more connected to the theme of suicide than any other character in this game, which is probably intentional and appropriate, since she's also the friend who requires the most effort to befriend, and whose friendship unlocks the path to the game's true conclusion. Nonetheless, 1 of these depression aspects found within Alphys is mirrored by Undyne: the reliance of other people upon oneself.

For Alphys, the expectations and hopes of Asgore, the families of the 'fallen' monsters she experiments upon, and even just the entirety of the monster populace, all overwhelm her, and drag her into an abyss of self-loathing and fear. She cannot handle telling those relying on her of her failures, and this sense of both failure and of disappointing others spirals into self-loathing, which in turn dictates how she conducts herself with her friends. She can't handle letting others down, particularly not when she fails as spectacularly as she does, and so the reliance of others upon Alphys drags her down into a depression she can't escape from, which feeds and fuels every negative thing she does, says, and feels about herself. Alphys shows us the way in which we allow our fears of disappointing others, of failing when others have high expectations of us, to utterly destroy us from the inside out.

Undyne, on the other hand, is a character for whom the concept of others relying on her does nothing but empower her. To make the hopes and dreams of the monster populace come true, she throws herself into her work as captain of the royal guard, and uses the idea that others are relying on her to bolster her resolve and fight harder against Frisk. In fact, others' reliance on Undyne quite literally empowers her, during the game's No Mercy path--in much the same way as RPG and anime heroes often do for their most climactic battle, Undyne takes on the hopes, dreams, and wishes of the entire world to gain the power of a True Hero in her attempt to stop Chara. Where the expectations of others are an anchor that drags Alphys down, Undyne uses them to push herself forward all the harder. Once more, we see the the major characters of Undertale showing us a mirror image of an individual who succumbs to a cause of deep depression, and an individual who healthily overcomes it.


Point F.5: My sister has made an insight of her own on this theme of serious depression. Not only do the pairs of friends in Undertale have this theme running throughout their character development, but so, too, does the game's villain, Flowey. When Asriel describes what it was like for him after waking up post-death and finding himself now trapped in a flower's body, he talks of the horror of being trapped in an existence in which he knew he was missing a capacity for emotion which he once had, knew that he should feel love for Asgore and Toriel, his parents, yet found himself completely unable to feel that comforting warmth. Truly a terrible situation...and one which is very similar to a common part of serious depression: a numbness to all that goes on around you, a loss of the ability to feel joy and passion for things that used to be important to you.

Flowey even talks of having attempted to kill himself as a result of this condition, in fact. He tells Chara (this is during the No Mercy run, in which Frisk has been consumed by Chara's spirit) that he discovered the power of Determination at a point in which he tried to end his life, and at the last, too-late moment, got scared and desired to keep living. So yeah, that's about as hard a piece of evidence as you're going to find that serious depression and suicide are a theme underscoring Undertale.


At any rate, that’s about all I have to say, but I think this theory holds up pretty well. Subtle though it is, there is a theme of depression and suicide that underscores a very significant amount of Undertale, and considering some of the other darker themes that Undertale possesses, it certainly seems to fit the standard. The possibility that Frisk is suicidal really does fit into the rest of the cast and game undertones very well.

Ahh, I do so love a game that challenges me to really think!














* I still maintain that if SquareEnix were to swallow its completely causeless pride and adopt the Squall is Dead theory as canon, it would transform FF8 from an incompetent, sloppy, insulting mess into...well, not a GOOD game, exactly, but at least one with some modicum of artistic value.

Even the Indoctrination Theory wouldn’t be able to save Bioware’s ass, though.


** And potentially Alphys, if you did the after-Neutral-Pacifist-ending date thing with her, but didn’t go to the True Lab. Very few people are going to see this version, though.


*** Mind, I am not saying that these are necessarily effective or useful words of advice. I’m aware that cases of depression--particularly cases strong enough to cause one to commit suicide, as we are speaking of here--can’t usefully be combated solely by thinking positive. I’m just saying that these are the common words of others trying to help.


**** Well, it’s what keeps Frisk from being permanently dead, at least. Same thing, essentially.


***** I reckon that playing Wild Arms 4’s probably a close second, though.

Undertale's No Mercy Let's Plays

So, for this and any future Undertale rant, I’m just gonna go on the assumption that you know most of the important lore and details of Undertale, have played the game through to its end on at least one path, and that I don’t have to censor myself of spoiler material. Fair warning.

Oh, and get ready for the heaviest load of Taking A Game Too Seriously that you’ve ever seen. Seriously, hardcore Trekkies would say, “Dude, you know this isn’t real, right?” That’s how bad this is. I mean, this rant is basically me seriously engaging in an argument with a fictional character. If you're okay with seeing just how deep the rabbit hole of Utter Pointlessness goes, though, then by all means, continue reading to watch me fall to its very bottom, and then dig that rabbit a new basement.

On with the rant!



It’s okay to watch a Let’s Play of Undertale’s No Mercy path (also known as the Genocide path), rather than play it yourself. You don’t need to feel the lesser for it.

For anyone not in the know, towards the end of a No Mercy playthrough of Undertale (as in, a playthrough in which you intentionally and systematically kill absolutely every last individual that you possibly can), Flowey starts appearing sporadically as you walk through Asgore’s castle to fill you in on some of the game’s interesting lore, most of it specifically related to him. There is a point at which he states, while speaking about how liberating it is to just freely murder those around oneself,

“At least we’re better than those sickos that stand around and WATCH it happen...
Those pathetic people that want to see it, but are too weak to do it themselves.
I bet someone like that’s watching right now, aren’t they...?”

It’s a line that probably just seems like an odd bit of dialogue that means nothing in particular to someone actually playing the game, but to someone who’s watching the No Mercy run via someone else’s gaming video, it’s pretty damn obvious that Flowey is calling him or her out. I gotta hand it to Toby Fox, creator of Undertale: the guy really does think of everything. I saw that line, and I slammed my fist onto my desk because DAMN IT, EVEN THROUGH YOUTUBE FLOWEY MANAGES TO FUCK MY SHIT UP! I swear to Thanatos I hate that little dandelion asshole so damn much!

Ahem. So, here’s the thing. I find this little “Gotcha!” moment amusing and clever, to be sure, and I admire Mr. Fox for being sharp. But I don’t actually feel bad about watching a Let’s Play instead of playing through the No Mercy run myself. And I don’t think anyone else should feel bad, either.

First of all, consider the source of this criticism. I may be being told that I’m no better for watching rather than doing, and in fact that I’m actually worse for it, but...I’m being told this by Flowey. This guy is not exactly the mouthpiece of all that is just and righteous, now, is he? It’s like being rebuked about something by Suikoden 2’s Luca Blight, or Earthbound and Mother 3’s Porky. If Emperor Palpatine started lecturing you sanctimoniously about what was and wasn’t polite, how much attention would you pay to him, really?

But let’s consider the possibility that Flowey is more than just Flowey when he says this. Let’s say that this is meant, as is often the case with lines by Flowey and some by Sans, to be a direct message from the game to you. We’ll say that this rebuke is from the game, and Toby Fox himself, simply delivered through the mouthpiece of an obnoxious little bundle of tea ingredients. Do I feel a little chastised, now that the source of the reprimand is legitimate?

Still no.

See, here’s the thing. You can call it cowardice, sure. I did sate my curiosity about certain events of the No Mercy run, while being too cowardly to make them happen myself.* My reason for watching the Let’s Play was really more about learning the lore that only comes up in the No Mercy path, than “just seeing what happens,” so maybe I’m not even the real target of this line, but let’s say I am. You can call it cowardice. But it’s not equally bad to doing the act myself. Because drawing on the knowledge and experience of others who have done wrong helps us to avoid doing wrong ourselves. It is a GOOD thing to sate your curiosity in simulation rather than in practice. Reading others’ accounts of how it feels to commit wrong helps us to understand the criminal mind, which gives us the knowledge to recognize warning signs of potential criminal acts, and to better track down those who have perpetrated such deeds. It helps us to understand how terrible war is, so that we know better than to hastily wage it without just cause and no alternatives, and seek to bring its end about as quickly as possible. It helps us to find empathy with those who have done wrong, so that we can learn how to understand and help them to become better.

We learn best from mistakes. But they don’t have to be our own. When one commits a mistake to public record, it is for the benefit of all to learn it, to lessen how many times it must be repeated. I think it’s reasonable to say that the No Mercy playthrough of Undertale is “bad.” I would feel guilty (sick, really) if I did it myself. And if no one ever did, I still wouldn’t do it, even at the expense of not knowing what happened within it. But some people have played the No Mercy run of Undertale, and they’ve posted their experience online, and I’ll watch it, and satisfy my curiosity, and I won’t feel any less for it. Regardless of what Flowey’s incomplete and unexamined philosophy on the matter may be, there’s no shame in the knowledge of evil passed on by another, only in the knowledge of evil gained through experience.

Sorry, Flowey, but I’m not gonna feel bad about NOT killing people.












* I personally would call it simply loving the characters too much to commit harm against them myself, though. Of course, that opens up a whole new can of worms about what difference that makes, whether I’m a hypocrite for it, and so on. Oh well.

Undertale

When I play through an Indie RPG, I generally try to make a rant devoted to creating awareness for the game, since most of them don’t get the press that larger developers’ works do, and also have limited options for advertising. Also, in all honesty, I’d rather support the smaller mom-and-pop type of game developer, simply because I believe they have greater potential to push the RPG as we know it into new, exciting, and meaningful directions. I certainly don’t want to see the Big Developer RPG disappear, of course, because there are things that both sides of the industry can offer that the other really just can’t. Of them, though, the Indie RPG is the one that has the greater need, so that’s the one I try to plug, when given the opportunity.

And damn, does Undertale ever give the opportunity.

So, Undertale. As Indie RPGs go, this is the new big deal, making the biggest splash I’ve seen an Indie RPG create since Bastion. It has as close to a universal appeal as an RPG can possess. A lot of people say that it should be the Game of the Year for many trusted, respectable gaming sites. And IGN, too. There are some who say that it’s their new favorite RPG, period.* So, the question is...does it live up to its underground hype?

Pretty much, yeah.

Having revealed this rant’s conclusion too early, I will now proceed to continue writing as though you have any reason to read further after the above sentence. Undertale is incredible. It’s very, very smart, it’s quite funny, it’s one of the most creative RPGs I’ve come across, it plays to nostalgia while never treading within another game’s footsteps, and it’s emotionally gripping to an extreme, able to give you rich, heartwarming enjoyment, or deeply disturb you. I really wish I had known about its Kickstarter campaign, because it’s one of those games that I would feel a tremendous pride in knowing I contributed to its existence.

But I know about it now, thanks to my longtime buddy and, it turns out, reader, Angahith. I’ve mentioned him here a few times (he was the guy who prodded me to play my first Indie RPG, Mark Leung: Revenge of the Bitch), but it bears stating that the guy is just the salt of the Earth, one of those folks you come across sometimes who you’ll just never have anything bad to say about. Or at least, I don’t. I really don’t give frequent enough praise to my friends and family who contribute to my rants, including those who point me in the direction of great RPGs to talk about here, and Anga’s one of them. Good on you, sir, if you’re reading this.

Anyway, Angahith told me about Undertale, I tried it out, and I found it to be the best Indie RPG I’ve played to date. By a significant margin. Seriously, when I do my end of the year calculations, it’s going on my Greatest RPGs List, and it won’t be occupying a low spot, either.

So, let’s get the nitty-gritty. What makes Undertale so great? Well, first of all, from start to finish, it is just incredibly creative. I mean, the creativity infuses pretty much every part of the game. The setting and world of Undertale (as much of it as we’re made privy to, at least) is thoughtful and interesting, and puts a highly creative spin on the existence of monsters in RPGs. The plot is creative, wrapping around itself in deliciously complex and thought-provoking ways, while somehow remaining appealingly simple and straightforward. Relating to that is the clever way that the most fundamental of RPG mechanics are incorporated into the game’s story, events, and lore. It is something I’ve seen before in small ways in Breath of Fire 5, and Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle incorporated some RPG mechanics into its overall plot in a similar way...but if BoF5 and EoWC take a few tentative steps forward into the concept of using conventional game mechanics within storytelling, Undertale runs a marathon with it.

The style of the game is also creative. Now, yes, it’s pretty clear that Undertale adopts more than a little of the Earthbound/Mother style, so you could say that it’s not as creative for that fact, but, well, to be quite frank, this game uses the Earthbound method and surreal quirkiness significantly better than any of the games it borrows from, even the excellent Mother 3. This is a game that out-Earthbounds Earthbound, and by a lot, so I’d say that it’s still creative for that, because it’s forging into new territory with the Earthbound formula.

Also, the premise is creative. This is an RPG where you can go from start to finish without killing a single enemy, if you so choose. Oh, certainly, you can choose to kill any that come across your path, or all of them, just like in a regular RPG. But you also have the choice not to kill your opponent in every scenario, which is pretty damn rare when it comes to RPGs--as far as I know, such a thing has only been made intentionally possible in the Deus Ex series before now. And, at the risk of being spoiler-y, your battle decisions make a major difference to the progression of the plot, to the ending you get, and even to what message the game has for you and what emotional impact it makes upon you--how you treat your foes has as much or more weight upon the meat of the game’s story and characters as any choice made in games touted for player decision-based plot pathways, like Dragon Age or Mass Effect. Which puts Undertale’s premise and practice of providing potential pacifist play paths in its plot pretty far past its Deus Ex peers. Which makes it all the more creative.

Lastly, and related to the premise, the battle system is creative. Now, I generally don’t care about gameplay features, as you well know, at least not to the extent that they sway my opinion on a game at all. But I can (and have) acknowledge when gameplay is done well or poorly in an RPG, and Undertale’s battle system is simple but highly effective for working around its premise. As a seamless blend of traditional turn-based RPG combat and, believe it or not, the Bullet Hell genre, Undertale’s combat is, so far as I can tell, utterly unique to RPGs even as it functions on a very traditional and generic foundation. And by making the primary mode of action in this battle system a form of Bullet Hell gameplay, Undertale very effectively accommodates the play style of pacifism that the game touts as a feature, since the gaming skills of a Bullet Hell game are, first and foremost, about dodging and surviving attacks, less than concentrating on your own offense.

So yeah, the game’s creative. Very creative. One of the most creative RPGs you’ll ever come across. But creativity alone doesn’t make an RPG great, of course. Anodyne was very creative, but ultimately underwhelming because it didn’t know how to use its creativity to any effective end, in my opinion, while Grandia 2 can be seen as incredibly uncreative since it pretty much entirely employs overused tropes in its plot and characters, yet the way they’re used is so masterful that every cliche seems fresh, thoughtful, and engaging. So what about the rest of Undertale?

Well, the plot’s really strong. Whether you’re a saint, an amoral abomination, or somewhere in between, the simple story of Undertale is engaging, particularly in its beginning and later stages, and it expands its scope and its depth with masterful subtlety. This is a story which is simple and straightforward, yet it is also layered, nuanced, and ripe with the opportunity to mentally pick it apart in minute detail, to theorize about its behind-the-scenes aspects, to recognize tiny connections and recurrences within itself that betray its storytelling artistry, to rejoice as you hit upon a private insight on subsequent playthroughs. Rarely do I see such far-sighted care in arranging even the tiniest details to have significance, whether light or heavy, that can be found later. It’s a clever, secret subtlety that you see in creations of high care, precision, and vision, things like Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle, or Steven Universe. Like Planescape: Torment or Revolutionary Girl Utena, you’ll never truly know Undertale without viewing it from start to finish multiple times, even if you’re just repeating the same playthrough style. That’s not because it’s clumsily over-complex (like, say, Chrono Cross), but rather, because there’s just a lot of layers to everything, and you need time and repetition to peel them away. Mind you, it’s definitely not on the same level of brilliance as PT or RGU, but frankly, anything that’s in the ballpark enough to warrant significant comparison to either of them is doing something really, really right.

The characters are good. They’ve generally got a good level of depth and complexity, and they are extremely personable. Each makes his or her own unique bid for your affections, and I’d have some trouble conjuring up the kind of player who could resist the cast’s charms. Which is good, because this story of the value of connections and making peace with others, and/or of the disturbing, nay, horrifying repercussions of apathetic malice and self-interest, really would not work without a cast as lovable as this one. Likewise, the game’s got a good villain.** The villain has depth, performs the role really well (he will infuriate you, and also freak you the fuck out), ties strongly to the messages and themes of the game, and is a great foil for the protagonist.

Also, Undertale is funny. Or disturbing. Sometimes both. Like I said before, this game basically out-Earthbounds Earthbound. Included in that is the fact that it is terrifically funny in a quirky fashion, and the fact that it can seriously creep you out. But generally, it’s a lot of fun, and much like Mother 3 does, Undertale uses its quirky humor as an expert way to invest you all the more so that the meaningful moments have greater impact. I wouldn’t say it’s better than Mother 3 in this regard, but it’s close enough to be quite adept at playing with your joy and sorrow.

The music’s pretty nifty. Not as big a deal as the other stuff I’ve mentioned, but it sure does its part, and then some, to create the mood and underscore the emotion of whatever’s going on. If you’re really into the soundtrack of the games you play, I daresay this one is another selling point for you on the game.

Creative, funny, with a great, simple-yet-complex plot, and characters you really connect with. What else do you need from Undertale? Well, you’re the readers of an RPG blog written by a guy named The RPGenius so I’m gonna go and make the crazy assumption that you just might have some interest in RPGs, and that being the case, you’ll likely also really benefit from the interesting deconstruction of RPGs that Undertale performs. Now, it’s not exactly unknown for a game to look at and play with the conventions of its genre within its own story, but any time this happens with RPGs, it’s usually just to make lighthearted references and jokes about it. Which is fine, of course, I rarely tire of having my genre of choice poke fun at itself.

But Undertale goes a considerable step further with it. While it does make a few jokes about RPG conventions, Undertale is much more interested in looking at some of the things we take for granted about RPGs, looking critically at their moral and philosophical ramifications, questioning them and what they imply about we who take part in them. It’s interesting to see the game go about this, and I’ve been privately interested, perhaps even a little concerned, for a few years now about certain aspects of RPGs that we just take for granted but seem disturbing when you think about them. So yeah, that’s another point in Undertale’s favor for me.

Also, while this is something that some players have bemoaned, I like the fact that Undertale remembers. What you choose to do in this game matters, and it stays with you. You may be surprised at just how seriously Undertale wants you to understand that actions have consequences. I don’t want to spoil things here about the game...but I know that there are players out there like me, who are capable of attaching a real, meaningful value to the fictional individuals they meet in a game, and care about what happens to them, and if that describes you, I’d feel bad if I didn’t provide proper warning to you. So here it is: in this game, think about your reasons for taking any action you think you could regret if that action stayed with you. If your only reason is “to see what happens,” just...maybe think it over a second time. All I’m saying is, Let’s Plays exist.

So...yeah. I think that’s enough of a recommendation, right? Undertale is 1 of those real gems that has pretty much no flaws (besides a lack of a run button; backtracking for dialogue completionism takes forever), and a hell of a lot of virtues. I definitely recommend it, and if that recommendation holds any weight, you can head over to the official website to buy it. You can also get it from Steam, if you prefer that, for some reason. It’s only $10, and that’s a steal for an RPG of even half the quality as Undertale. Check it out.














* Enough to be noteworthy, that is. When it comes to RPGs, there seems almost invariably to be at least a couple people for any given RPG who will say it’s the best one ever. I’ve even seen people claim that they’ve never played a better RPG than the Mega Man Star Force titles, for Hades’s sake. Still, Undertale has more people making this claim than the standard.


** Or villains, you could say. Depending on things. A lot of things. Complicated things. Play the game.