What Was Undertale Actually About?

Undertale was pretty strange, wasn't it? Who would have thought that an indie game developed by a relative unknown would become such a massive hit that it's still making the rounds in public discourse four years after Deltarune Undertale's release? follow up sequel sidequall alternate universe meta fanfic officially in production and with a shiny new demo with similarly rave reviews, it got me thinking

what

undertale

was really about, seems like a simple question but for the life of me, I couldn't. Actually, to find a satisfactory answer, the Internet was no help either, you would need to wade through an obscene amount of Steven Universe song parodies that are somehow more popular than the originals, a bunch of webcomics, and of course , game theory, only to find out that Nobody has really attempted a full you and me read-through before.

I think Undertale itself is at least partially to blame here because the game seems to deliberately avoid coming to any kind of thematic conclusion or while throwing an endless stream of unrelated concepts and ideas at you. Is it about violence? Well, maybe not quite dealing with the pain, but there's definitely something there, the game has to be about something right, so it was up to me to desperately try to come up with some kind of cohesive reading of a game that actively resists any attempts To get it right after many sleepless nights, I think I managed to solve it.

Oh just a heads up by the way almost everyone has played Undertale so I'll summarize a lot of the plot so this video is not 90 minutes long I think unlike a lot of other metafictional games like Stanley Parable or Bioshock , which focus much more on game creation, the metafiction of Undertale deals much more intimately with how and why we play and interact with stories in the first place, but to understand that we're going to have to go back to the beginning, buckle up . I think if there's one thing in Undertale that hasn't gotten the praise it deserves yet, it's the first five minutes or so, the introduction of the game.

It's this rollercoaster of subverted expectations and deception that excellently sets the stage for

what

's to come. there's the subverted intro where it turns out the big bad monster army lost. there's the fact that you're playing a different character than the one in the intro. Flowey turns out to be evil only to be replaced by Toriel who is kind, it's a complete narrative whiplash and for a very good reason, once Toriel takes the initiative any underlying story that a typical game opening has is shattered when you jumps beyond what is obviously supposed. It's a training puzzle and then he tells you not to kill the monsters that appear randomly, don't kill the monsters in an RPG, what the hell is this game we've been trying to get right?

It's a tutorial, but not for What you think is likely that you already know how to solve basic puzzles and play an RPG. Undertale is

actually

teaching you how to analyze stories. Undertale wants you to make decisions with full knowledge that you are a player playing a game, not like you are part of the world, the problem is that we have been so conditioned to experience games a certain way that

undertale

needs to break down what you know so that you can approach things from a new perspective right before Toriel lets us off the leash to begin with.

In the ruins proper, there is a scene where she tests your independence by making you walk through this room without her. This seems like a pretty straightforward characterization of Toriel and there's also a nice Easter egg where you can find her hiding behind this pillar, but it's

actually

a subtextual clue. to the player who will need to rely on her own intuition to pull it off, as evidenced by the fact that you must challenge her to continue despite having taught you how combat works just a few minutes ago. The story does not give up. Each of the different types of monsters in the ruins work slightly differently than how you'd expect them to, for example Winston will auto-save and you're supposed to run into some of Vegetoid's bullets despite what you learn. by Flowey Undertale.

Instead of keeping its metafiction for a late-game twist, it never wants you to fully immerse yourself, all the weird tricks and simple twists aren't supposed to be particularly challenging, they're meant to keep you from settling into a routine that this It makes you constantly aware of how you are experiencing the game rather than passively absorbing it. This is demonstrated at the end of the ruins, once you meet up with Toriel, she kindly takes you to her nice house, makes you a nice cake, and gives you a nice room. stay there, which is very nice of her, however, you quickly realize when talking to her and snooping around the different rooms, although not only does she have no intention of letting you go, but you are not the first child she has adopted from this way.

The subverted character once again when you try to escape from work goes to destroy the exit to the ruins and enters the fight with you. However, the problem is that as you lose health, the attacks will also deal less damage and will eventually avoid you completely. Toriel can't actually kill you. This serves a dual purpose: to demonstrate Toriel's mercy but also to frustrate you. Work is the hardest enemy to defeat pacifist style in the entire game and I think that's deliberate. To beat Toriel, you can. You don't talk to her like you can with every enemy up to this point and forgiving her doesn't really seem to do anything, she doesn't even go so far as to repeat the same responses to trick you into thinking you've exhausted her dialogue based on most players.

With this evidence they will conclude that they will have to fight Toriel reluctantly and they will be unpleasantly surprised when out of nowhere they do about 15 times more damage killing her instantly, this is an emotional blow to the stomach and instead of simply accepting it as part of the story, your new metafictional perspective is very aware that you have failed, that you could have saved her if you had done better, two things happen here, or you will be locked into the so-called neutral ending of the game where you have killed at least one person and the memory killing Toriel will cause you to think more carefully about the future or, more likely, you will realize it.

Oh wait a minute, this is a game where you can reload your save and not kill it. This time, by doing this, you've accepted the nature of Undertale as a well-made game that you can manipulate, but it's not yet done with you Moments after you kill or say goodbye, the tutorial Flowey appears again and chats with you for a bit if you succeed. . she saved herself the trouble the first time, she'll talk to you about needing to end the frustration and give you a vague warning about her future plans, but a much more interesting dialogue will be displayed if you reload to save her.

Flowey knows what you did, he knows you. you used the power of save to bend causality to your will and in doing so replaced him as the de facto manipulator of time and space. This revelation that you are somehow fluent makes you feel gross and guilty like you cheated and that's something. that's hard to rationalize because, well, you did it, you bent the rules of the game so you could feel better about yourself, even if you didn't save Toriel, you're faced with the fact that you could have saved her but you chose not to and without Undertale's help , you would never have been able to realize what that decision really meant.

The media has the power to teach us things about ourselves and that is what the next area is all about. You meet Sansa Skeleton in a really creepy scene where she ambushes you in the Woods immediately after being told how dangerous the world outside the ruins is, luckily Sans is pretty cool and is quickly followed by his brother Papyrus who initially he wants to capture or kill you. The main problem you have to face in Snowdin is the repeated and completely failed attempts of the great papyrus to capture you and drag you to the monstrous capital.

These small interactions are the highlight of Snowden, without a doubt each one is a small vignette that shows the very ambitious plans. of papyrus crumbling around them usually due to their own incompetence my favorite Is this ridiculously complicated, randomly generated maze, possibly set only to spawn in the easiest possible solution? It's brilliant though, the highlight of Snowden from a conceptual point of view is the emphasis on the power of stories and media to give us the opportunity for personal reflection, let's start with the obvious things the random monster finds in the ruins . Getting rid of the bad guys non-violently required perhaps some innovative thinking, but it was never particularly difficult here and for the rest of the game, non-lethal solutions to the monsters.

The encounters are a bit more complicated than the alternatives, each requiring surviving multiple rounds of bullet hell, as well as paying attention to monsters, which isn't something most RPGs make you do, e.g. , the only way to pacify Snowdrake is to realize that he wants to. be a comedian perform a neutral action to make him tell a joke and then laugh at him to show that he is funny, it takes a lot of work considering running away also keeps you on the pacifist path and you will really miss it for money which is basically in everywhere, anyway, assassination, on the other hand, will reduce the encounter rate permanently, as well as making future fights easier by leveling you up and giving you more hp, the option to worry about monsters, sacrificing a group of expanded health and perhaps most importantly.

Your moment is difficult to seize and gradually becomes more frustrating. This is a deliberate tale that once again offers you the opportunity to question yourself to find out how you feel and make an informed decision about whether you care about these monsters after all. It's much harder to beat an older dog to death after you know he just wants some pets. This self-interrogation is also why Undertale likes to ask you strange and useless questions all the time. An eventual choice forces you to look inward. Do you prefer Junior Jumble or are you a dirty liar? You prefer to know without or the great papyrus.

You may subconsciously already know the answer, but Undertale offers you the opportunity to consciously discover your own opinions and biases. and act accordingly, all of this is shown in very clear terms through your interactions with Papyrus, just as playing Undertale has given us the opportunity to engage in some introspection, and playing the monsters vs humans game has offered papyrus the opportunity to do a little soul-searching. over time, the papyrus goes from being a direct adversary in the first puzzle to being useful in the xoxo puzzle and in the end he even deactivates the deadly gauntlet of terror because he has realized that something about himself the papyrus is not violent, He just wants approval, friendship and learning. made him realize that he doesn't really want to hurt you like the other monsters you've met, of course you've learned things too.

At the beginning of Snowden Sands it seemed quite sinister and the papyrus seemed like a credible if clumsy threat, however, now. You know that the Skelly Bros, as well as the other centuries, are basically harmless, all because for a brief moment your personal history and theirs intersected and you were both able to learn from each other. This is what I mean when I say that Undertale is metafiction, as it relates to the audience, although there are some obvious parallels between Toby Fox and Papyrus, as two people creating games, most of the metafictional commentary focuses on around us and how humans can learn from stories even if they don't realize, however, our relationship with stories.

It's a little more complicated than that, something the next area cascade discusses in more detail, but before that, please give me a moment to talk about the papyrus dating scene. It's not at all relevant to my reading, but it's the funniest part nonetheless. in the whole damn game, look at her outfit, it's cool and the music, oh, it's so good, and crime radar, crime radar egg, okay, let's get serious again, okay, I'm going to be To be honest with you, the waterfall is probably the least interesting area in the story. to offer the puzzles don't have much subtext, there isn't much interesting value to talk to and there is a lot of walking around, yes the main focus of this area is your repeated encounters with the terrifying captain. the undyne royal guard as well as learning about the history of the war with humanity and that's where I want to start.

The most obvious theme that runs through the entire story of humans and monsters is that it wasn't a fair fight, it was an all-out fight. bloodbath, not a single human was killed and countless monsters were destroyed. The game makes it very clear that monsters and humans are not the same. It will take the souls of almost every monster in the underground just to match your strength. It is not surprising thatAzkal wants. To get your hands on it, there are some interesting parallels between the continued hostility of human monsters and our relationship with fiction. Human beings have evolved to understand the world through stories.

In ancient times, humans used to tell stories of gods moving the sun across the planet. Gosh, I was wrong, but you correctly explained the idea of ​​days and things haven't really changed much since the point is that humans learn through stories and because those stories inform much of our understanding, people tend to to become very attached to them when they confront each other. by someone who has experienced different stories or the same stories from a different perspective and has come to different conclusions, the default human response is violent rejection, it is this pushing away things that contradict our worldview that has informed basically all of human history. cultures clash people die no one has a good time this is what happened when the differences between humans and monsters became too big and the humans won now this is the part where you're probably expecting me to say that we should be tolerant of everyone and respect the everyone's beliefs, right, not exactly what we should do is keep an open mind, this becomes blindingly obvious when you face undyne, she, unlike papyrus or hard work, really wants to kill.

You, she's convinced that humans are evil, so convinced in fact that she'll break orders so she can fight you sooner and lie about all the monsters wanting you dead, even though you know for a fact that's not true in combat. . Undyne can't be. she reasoned with her and unlike Toriel, she can't even wear herself out; in fact, she only makes Undyne angrier if you don't validate what she already thinks. It's very easy for players with violent inclinations to dismiss her as someone who will never see your side. of her story and in doing so they ensure that they won't see hers either.

The solution to defeating undyne as a pacifist like any other monster is to make an effort to understand who she is, what she wants, and most importantly, what she believes, and it is only by realizing that undyne wants to kill you because she thinks you are a threat and that you can do something about it, you have to run away until she passes out from exhaustion and then prove her wrong whether she likes it or not, breaking that cycle. of violence, then you can go to the house one night and, like with papyrus, help them realize something important about it through play, namely that humans are not actually a threat and that friendship is the biggest competition of all and, as you maintain that, you end up cutting. that Jesus Christ, even though he wanted to kill us, it is through understanding Undyne that we were able to defeat her without a fight and completely reject her worldview, learning some valuable lessons about why monsters feel the way they do in the process, However, history also makes it clear. that while we should keep an open mind and analyze everything to try to learn from everyone, that doesn't mean everyone is right, take the crazy and dumb mini-boss for example, they are unique in the fact that they have almost no redeeming features. they offer no real opportunities to learn and they refuse to do it themselves, you can't even defeat them pacifistically, naps, the blue casters intervene and drive them away from the enemy of undertale, such as it exists, aren't they the people who disagree with you and they maintain a different worldview like undyne and at one point most monsters because we have a lot to learn from people or stories we don't agree with.

No, the real enemy of undertale are those who, for whatever reason, refuse to admit that there is a valid way of seeing. things other than their own people who isolate themselves from any evidence of the country and, as a result, are unable to learn anything about the world and much less about themselves, people like Flowey, for example, who is unable to see beyond killing or die, this revelation. It also points to a solution to the monster's problems in general, we need to free them and reopen a dialogue with humanity because the two groups have a lot to learn from each other, such as, to give an example that comes to mind here: wonders of anime and video games, but we will get to the end of the waterfall is quite close to the middle of the game and also where the undertale goes from establishing our knowledge of our relationship with the stories to showing the consequences in the ruins in the ones we were.

When we are introduced to the idea that Undertale is a game about the way we play and engage with stories, we are also taught to understand the importance of self-awareness and a critical eye when examining texts. Snowden continues this understanding by explaining how stories can allow us to better understand the world and ourselves, and in doing so, preparing us for life's challenges and the cascade is about understanding that we often react violently when presented with ideas that challenge our own. , but that is an impulse we have to fight with because the more we reject the outside world, the more isolated we become and we miss valuable opportunities to learn and become better people.

That's something we'll discover in the next area. I won't hide it. Hotland is my favorite area in the entire game, every piece is packed with personality and the two main characters on screen have almost constant screen time, and that's a good thing too because hotland is really about putting what we've learned into practice. As we get to know and then analyze the characters of Alphys and Mettaton the initial impression of the outfits we get is that she is kind of a joke character, she's awkward, she likes computers, she plays video games, wait, that's actually Alphas. a pretty accurate representation of not only the typical nerd but also the underlying demographic that alphys suffers from. due to anxiety, difficulty talking to people, and lack of self-esteem, however, like many nerds, all of those things fade away when she has the opportunity to talk about the things she loves.

Alphys compares herself to mettaton, who very much represents the other extreme. Up the social ladder Mettaton is charismatic and confident and if you don't mind me saying a real hottie, there is the slight downside of the fact that Maxton has it in for humans, but don't let that distract you from his square charm despite the appearances, these two are emblematic of many of the same ideas, most of Hotland is spent venturing through some pretty complicated puzzles and battles between these big encounters with Metaton, where he'll mimic his classic TV show format before try to kill you, there is a kitchen. program with human souls as the main ingredient, a news program where it turns out that everything is bombs and even an opera, but luckily your new friend Alphys always manages to save the day with a new device like this jet pack or an upgrade for your phone that makes it shoot lasers it's not very clear over time alphys opens up to us about her insecurities, she talks about how she lacks self-confidence, but after teaming up with us she was able to face her fears, conquer her demons and appreciate everything.

The things that make her special sound familiar to anyone, oh I'm sure it's nothing to watch your progress on the deer because of alphys and it was what made her decide not to kill us the same way, interacting with other monsters made her they saw us In a more favorable light, Alphys's arc is like a repeat of the papyri, a non-violent monster learns to accept who they are by hanging out with us, right, no, it's a little more complicated than that when you get to the lair mettaton central, alphys. She suddenly loses all composure when things go wrong and retreats, seemingly undoing her growth.

It is only after speaking with Mettaton before their final battle that the reason Alphys has been lying is revealed, she asked Merito to pretend to be a villain so she could insert herself. in your story by artificially becoming the heroine Alphy's love of video games and anime is a good thing, it is a fundamental part of her personality and should be celebrated, but instead of using fiction to wonder who she is, what she has done or to whom Love, Alphys has retreated into this childish fantasy and refuses to truly engage with the world, since finding new ideas would mean asking herself some uncomfortable questions.

Both humans and monsters react negatively when our preconceptions are challenged, but that reaction can be even more dangerous when it is directed at ourselves. A similar arc both alphys and metaton, who at the time was a ghost like napstablook, they met in a human culture fan club and it was through the experience of human stories, but more importantly, by meeting alphys and his perspective, that Mettaton began to form a cohesive sense of self-identity, this culminated when Alphys built him a body that reflected this new identity in a transparent metaphor of gender transition, but like Alphys Mettaton's good intentions They lost their way, became absorbed in the inauthentic glitz and glamor of human celebrity and ended up forcing the people around them to conform to an increasingly narrow worldview and Alphys didn't make the cut, it's not until everyone metrotom fans call at the end of his battle he realizes that he has become the inspiration for a new generation of monsters and reconnects with why he first wanted to change the mistake that both Alphys and Mettaton is that they use stories to avoid learning about themselves and isolating themselves from the world.

Alphys trying to recreate the game he loves tries to replace the cliche character growth of mew mew kissy. cutie for a real personal introspection mettaton 2 tries to fill the void her friends once filled with the glitz and glamor of showbiz, rejecting anything that reminds her of her roots instead of letting the stories and media give them the thumbs up. opportunity to understand more about the world and themselves, these two are hiding. of inconvenient truths, they would rather not address alphys hides from the past and mettaton from the person she used to be for a much more constructive alternative example, look at how sans and toriel share a love of jokes, which yes, they are a type of story So.

Their mutual passion allowed them both to deal with their isolation in a constructive way, leading them to become more accepting and compassionate people who, like sanses, didn't kill you where you stood. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for most monsters. If you've been paying attention to things going on in the background, you'll have noticed that the monster type is obsessed with the history of war long after it. humanity has forgotten about it and moved on. Kids play humans vs. monsters, they have these obvious ones. human murder simulators out there and even what passes for monster religion has become a matter of justifying war instead of looking for new stories and new opportunities to grow.

The monster species has largely become more isolated than humans could use the narrative of war as a security blanket to ignore their problems and deflect their personal problems, but why has this continued for so long? Surely the monsters would have moved on after hundreds, if not thousands, of years and would have to deal with the monster king's blood, as miserable as his war has made him. The monsters have nothing but good things to say about the boy, well we're about to find out as we enter the final area, New Home, but before we can do that, Alphys has one last light revelation, it takes more than the power of a human soul to cross the barrier that traps monsters underground you will need a human soul plus a little more monster soul to be able to escape you will need to kill asgore and if you don't he will kill you well.

The long walk through the monster capital begins completely in silence, giving you much-needed time to decompress after the hectic fight against the metastones and the plot of fields that surrounded it, until you find a house that It looks eerily similar to the tutorials, except it has all the telltale signs. of their absence is when the monsters begin to appear and instead of trying to fight you they tell you their story, the only one they have. Gore's reasons for going to war with the surface are not born of wounded pride, greed, or even old anger. is grieving, the difficult part about this story is that it portrays Gore as the most sympathetic character in the entire underground.

He lost everything and he is still trying to do right by those he cares about, but he is wrong. Asgore has not been able to reach an agreement. the death of his two children at the hands of humans and followed the same kind of path as alphys and mettaton by killing humans to save the underground asgore is trying to symbolically save azrael and the human child the problem is that all this will do is reinforce his trauma by destroying human civilization the monsters will remain isolated many will die and stillso he won't bring his children back we are left with an impossible choice if you kill a gore who has every reason to feel the way he does, undo all the work you have done to help the monsters on your journey and crush any hope they have left, proving that Asgard is right, but if Asgore kills you, you will create even more suffering, justifying all the worst beliefs among society about humans and he will never truly be. able to accept what happened is to kill or be killed things become even more complex when you enter the hall of judgment and are judged for your sins by the sands of all people this is your real job to judge anyone who comes this far and Also to helpfully summarize the game's themes for those who miss them, basically, experience and love are not the simple game mechanics you thought they were, they represent execution points and level of violence, and it's the latter that Sans has more to say. about love is a representation of what we talked about earlier in Cascade, the more you kill things, the easier it becomes to justify your violence and the deeper you go into this singular obsession, the harder it becomes to see anything else in reverse, as sans says By Keeping your lover alone means that you are open and receptive to the stories the world has to offer and you are more willing to learn from what you see and become a better and more complete person, that does not mean that you are passive or easily manipulated .

It just means that you are accepting and that you have an open mind, however Asgore's mind is closed, he surrounds himself with the golden flowers that were such an important component of his children's death and even keeps the children's souls close at hand. that he murdered He constantly reminds her of his doomed mission. Asgore is kind to you, even giving you the time you need to put your affairs in order, but all that belies and inner stubbornness when it comes to Asgore, whether it be your death or his, is inevitable and there is nothing that can change that and so with no other options, you finally agree to fight the battle with asgore, it feels almost bad, unlike hard work, there is actually no pacifist solution reflected by asgore, who literally destroys the mercy button when he starts to Fighting you, even clicking the fight button, maybe for the first time feels like a betrayal. of your values, your remorse for being forced to fight blood is juxtaposed with the boss music and deadly attacks to create this brilliant sense of unease, as if this shouldn't be happening, but despite that, there is a hope that there will eventually be a way to talk to him, evidenced by the fact that his attacks will reduce you to one hp before killing you, showing that somewhere deep down asgore has some mercy left after a battle Hard-earned, Asgore will eventually collapse and basically ask you to kill him.

At his lowest moment, Asgore confronts the reality of what he has done and why he murdered six children because he cannot accept the death of two. He has turned monster society into a war machine that attacks outsiders on the spot just as humans did to Azrael. Stories from years ago don't always have happy endings and in many ways it is the ones that make us feel sad, angry or uncomfortable that we have to learn the most from Asgore's story is a lesson in how even the most well-intentioned people can do it. Do the wrong thing just because they weren't willing to look inward and maybe change, remember that for a little later, eventually Asgore offers you the chance to kill him or spare him, but regardless of what you choose, Flowey appears kills, Asgore becomes on god and then the game crashes, well let's vote it again I guess, oh dear, yes, by absorbing the six human souls, Flowey has become the most powerful being in the story and has regained the ability to influence the world, turning him into god in the final ingredient. because his metamorphosis is the seventh and final human soul, Flowey's final fight, unlike everything else, almost deliberately lacks depth, yes it's a flashy boss fight, but it's actually quite forgiving, there are allusions to the personalities of the six human souls, but in the end they end. be some sort of plot device to defeat Fly once and for all through the power of friendship or something, it's all a bit superficial, even once we've defeated Flowey and are offered the chance to forgive him or kill him, we haven't really proven that yet. his kill or be killed philosophy is wrong, we have simply delayed it, if we kill him he will not only be proven right, but he will come back to life the moment we reload our saved game, forgiving him isn't much better.

Flowey openly admits that he has no intention of changing his ways, so mercy here will simply bring us back to square one, even the credits are a little bleak and it's not like we get a particularly happy ending for the characters, or they're still trapped underground with no chance of freedom, but then Flowey shows up and tells us that since we were so kind and forgave him, he could get us a better ending. I mean, well, that sounds like a definitely no-strings-attached deal to a lot of people. it actually ends after the fight with Flowey because let's be honest, it's a very legal word to beat the game twice just because you killed Toriel and I actually think that's okay because even if you don't realize it, I think you would have already done the same thing. that Undertale was trying to get you to trust me for the rest of you, the true pacifist route, as it's called, adds a bunch of extra content that activates only after you reload your save after the fight with Flowey and you've done some special things like not killing anyone.

Besides going on a date with Papyrus and Undyne, speaking of which the first thing on the menu is for you to deliver a letter from Undyne to Alphys, which is certainly a step back from fighting a mad god, but it's worth it, I promise. so we return to hotland and deliver the letter, it turns out the letter was a romantic confession and only in the best ronkon traditions has there been a slight mix up, what follows is a very awkward date with alphys that ends in us, we roleplay a conversation with her and the person who really likes undyne, this is kind of a metaphor for what we've been doing all this time using a game to learn something about ourselves, eventually undyne is added to the mix in a brilliant scene and the two have A heart-to-heart conversation, everything seems to have worked out well, but you can really bombard Alphys with all the affirmations in the world and tell her that you love her for who she is as much as you do. but that's still not the same as taking the time to look inward and ask yourself some important questions and alphys has finally realized that after being directed to her lab, alphys tells us through what eerily looks like a note from suicide that she left to face the life she created too long ago and that it is something she has to do alone.

She also says that if we want to learn the truth we can go down and see for ourselves no matter if you want to save Alphys, she learns the darkness from her. backstory or both, the only way to proceed is to enter the elevator and descend into darkness. Now there is a lot to talk about in what is called the real laboratory. Several really crucial legal questions are answered and many more are presented, but let's get started. At the beginning with the concept of determination, determination is supposedly a quality that only humans have that allows their souls to be much more powerful than those of monsters and this whole place was designed to extract it from captive human souls and experiment with it. result.

It is these things that the Amalgamated see inject determination into the monsters that actually cause them to melt and mutate into strange beings composed of everything they used to be. This is what traumatizes alphas, not only being directly responsible for creating the amalgamates in the first place, but also the prospect of having them. to face their families and explain to them what their dead loved ones have become and who is buying it, it is quite easy to understand why they chose to hide from reality in the first place, the way to overcome amalgams is not to fight them, in fact , you can't really, instead you have to help them remember who they were and accept their new identity.

Snowdrake's mother, for example, needs to come to her senses by reacquainting her with her love of jokes, which will allow her to stabilize her. enough shape to let you pass, plus if you kept holding your staff from the start of the game, this dog amalgamation can be easily skipped in the real lab. We also learned a few more details about the first fall in humans and Azrael. It turns out that the first The Child forced Azrael to participate in a plan that involved him committing suicide and Azrael absorbing his soul, presumably as a way to break the barrier, and we know how that turned out.

Also, the name you chose at the beginning was actually the first boy's name. We also learned that Alphys was unintentionally responsible for the creation of Flowey, speaking of Alphys. Finally, after a close call with some hungry amalgamates, we meet her and Alphys says that he left the note not because he wanted to die, but because he was afraid to confess. Keep her down here forever, but thanks to the support of those around her, Alphys has had the opportunity to learn about herself and, more importantly, change for the better, she has become a woman capable of facing failure head-on. and stop fooling herself and never would.

She would have if she had not been exposed to the stories the world had to offer and she had not used the knowledge she was given to direct positive growth. Alphy's story finally gets the happy ending it deserves and with that we have taken all the necessary steps. To claim the happy ending that the reformed flower promised us if we go back to our school and try to fight him, things start the same way, the same intro, the same badass opening theme, the same terrible choice in front of us, but then Toriel appears and saves. The day followed by everyone else, as expected, this was all a ploy by Flowey to gather all the monsters in one place so he could steal their souls and all human souls, allowing him to ascend to his true form, Asriel Dreamer. , The son. by toriel and asgore ezreal slash flowey is the final enemy of the game and as such represents the antithesis of everything undertale wants you to understand azrael is an embodiment of the refusal to learn and the refusal to change by taunting you with the promise of a better ending and constantly resetting the world, Asriel makes sure that he can keep playing childish games with his friend forever, indicated by the fact that you literally can't lose this fight, but the strange thing is that when you hear his petulant demands towards you and his way of sassy names for things god of hyper death we really realize that azrael is not a threat, he is almost pitiable, he really has a flower and his true self, asriel's entire worldview is simplistic and stunted, never grew up and doesn't want to face the realities of the world or who she has become asriel restores our friends to how they were when we first met them, but we can restore them by giving them opportunities to question their old selves, we show undyne our peaceful intent, allowing change it.

Human Opinion We once again remind Toil and Asgore that their children's love will never go away, allowing the two to move on from their deaths a second time and show Alphys that she should not be ashamed of who allows her to try. to doubt himself forever this time flowery slash Asriel, on the other hand, has spent so much time literally running from everything that might challenge him and seemingly spending every waking moment trying to convince himself that his obviously flawed ideology is correct , which he is We lost even those basic self-analysis skills that we learned in the tutorial.

The only way to end this endless battle is to teach Asriel, ideally with the help of the magical powers of the rainbow, how to look inward and eat like a person, just as Undertale taught us. the pattern should be obvious stories, whatever their form, songs, books, jokes, games, stories from people's lives can even tell us a lot about ourselves, but true personal growth has to come from within Undertale Excel , discovering prejudices and opinions that you didn't even know you had. For example, the unmade question asking you whether the anime is real or not, sneaks in some complex morality about the ethics of lying for the greater good and the subjective nature of belief while pretending to be a joke.

With every question you are asked, you get a new one. opportunity to affirm your beliefs or change for the better by meeting and befriending all these monsters. They have also learned about themselves and have decided to change not only the named characters but also all the secondary monsters where before they were alljust poorly defined. by attack patterns, hp totals, and maybe a pun on a name, if they were lucky, they can now determine their own identities. See, what I mean, determination is the ability to change or determine who you are and the only way to do it. that choice is learning about yourself through, you guessed it, stories without stories to direct our personal growth.

We'd end up like these guys, monsters who've had determination this whole time and don't even know it. We just had to help them realize it. the undertale message, if that's what you want to call it, is not really a message, it's more of an imperative undertale, it doesn't demand that you learn something specific or come to a particular conclusion, all it wants is for you to learn something and become a a better person for it, it doesn't matter if it made you think about the ethics of violence over family grief, whether you prefer scotch or cinnamon, all the story asks of you is that you learn from it once it has finally been worn down and forced to confront.

Asriel himself relents, lets his twisted game end and returns to his inner child form honest with who he is and the growth he needs to make with this knowledge in hand and with the awakened determination of the monsters within him, Azrael breaks the barrier and establishes Everyone is now free. Both your job of freeing the monsters and Undertale's job of communicating the relationship between people and stories are already done and it's a good thing too because this particular story ends once the barrier is broken, you are expelled back to the overworld. and if you get the chance to say goodbye to everyone, you can wander around the different worlds and see how everyone has changed for the better - for example, the Snowdrake family has learned to accept each other through a mutual love of comedy.

Sunderland has realized that they weren't After all, I'm not really in love with the player and Froggit has learned a little more about the universe, but if there's one thing all the monsters have in common it's that they talk about this being the end. of their life underground and move on. a pretty obvious clue as to what you should really do remember that part of toriel's walkthrough tests your independence after explaining the basics to you, that's what's happening here, undertale has armed you with the basics of narrative theory and has given you some really great starting points. points so you can go out into the big wide world on your own, it helps you take the first step, but the rest, as they say, is for you to determine.

In my first playthrough of Undertale, I reacted pretty strongly to the way Alphys used his game. Passion to hide from his personality flaws that prompted me to adopt a new philosophy when it comes to my love for games. I wouldn't passively absorb them. I try to learn something about myself or game design from each one I played and eventually I started writing down those observations, yeah without the story I might not even have started this whole YouTube thing, it seems like Fox used it at the time. less partially.undertale to help come to a deal to make the terrestrial halloween hack basically a pretty bad and overly edgy romhack.

It is recorded that he regrets depicting him as one of the sad, forgotten amalgams who looks a bit like gigaios, the final boss of Earthbound, and if you go straight to the beginning of the game through the large doors of the ruins and return to the flower patch where you first landed, even Asriel here, on his own, has had the chance to learn from its sad history and in a small way. changes, but eventually, if you exhaust his dialogue, he only has one thing left to say to you, don't you have anything better to do? And of course, yes, there's a whole world out there for you and the monster to explore just outside the barrier.

You can see Papyrus driving a car in real undyne and Alphys realizes that Gore and Toriel are starting to move on with their separate lives and everyone is happy on the surface. There's even a false ending before Toby Fox says thank you to all the people who made this story possible and there we have the ending, but that's not the end, at least not for some people, after finishing the game and restarting it, it appears Asriel and asks you not to restart the game and tells you that everyone is happy. and that the story is over, but that's not enough for some people after all, there are a lot of unanswered questions what is the first deal with the fallen humans how did Flowey get the ability to manipulate the timeline what is the strange sans try to break the fourth wall or just what happens If we intentionally challenge the game and start killing everyone, resetting your progress means consciously choosing to not only subject all characters to the undertale events again, but resetting your own progress in learning stories and growing from them, because clearly you have.

You didn't learn anything, you've become like Flowey was originally going to talk a little about the genocide group, but I think that would have been a mistake for those who don't know that the so-called genocide roots are the alternate ending. where you kill all possible enemies instead of befriending all possible enemies, look into the depths of the tale to find the real and mythical ending where you can save Azrael or discover all the details of the law, such as what it is supposed to It's wd gaster. In fact, learning anything about yourself in the game, the genocide brew is a trap, the same one that Alphys mettaton asriel asgore and a group of other people fell into, requires you to treat undertale like a normal role-playing game, closing yourself not only in the face of country evidence but all the monsters telling you to stop and even your own lack of fun, the combat in undertale is really boring and you have to do a lot in the genocide race to even start reaching new content , that new content is a renewed undyne fight. and a whole new final boss battle against sans are fine I guess but most of the difficulty, particularly in the battle without sans, comes from the wacky controls that were never built for fighting in the first place and that's the point .

You're not supposed to be doing the genocide run and your reward for beating sans you don't even get the catharsis of killing Flower yourself, the game takes control away from you there and then you're treated to an encounter with the first fallen child who doesn't. Answer any questions about the plot and permanently contaminate your save file by ruining any future pacifist ending with a violent twist. It is a hollow, frustrating and meaningless experience. Undertale did everything it could to stop you from playing, but it can't make you grow, it can't make you change. only you can, but instead you've tried to find a lesson in undertel when he makes it clear that he wants you to find one in yourself, which is really a shame because for all the people who matpat to this day continue to be obsessed with undertale matpat while also simultaneously, completely missing the point, matpat, there is a whole world of people who have been inspired to grow, change, or do something new as a result of their time with the game, from art to spin-off fanfic song remixes or even completely new games. these people have embraced the story of Undertale, taken something away from it, and grown as artists, writers, musicians, or just older people.

As a result, even Toby Fox has learned from Undertale Delta Room. The following game shows clear signs of improvement over its predecessor. The combat has much more depth, the writing is more agile and the pacing is much more consistent, but the influence is still there, it is clear to see that the influence that our time in the underground has had on us will never go away because we use the stories that he had to tell us. to become who we are today, but it can be uncomfortable to admit that we have learned everything we can from Undertale, it is time to move on after gathering all the material I needed for Undertale, I took my save file, put it in a folder and then I uninstalled it.

The forever game almost certainly broke the barrier for us and now it's time to come to the surface. Hello, hello and thank you for watching until the end. It was a great video, so I'm sorry. It took me a whole month to do it. I hope you enjoyed it and if you did and would like to see other similar videos, hopefully on a more regular basis, why not give me some money on Patreon? I promise you it will almost exclusively go towards buying chocolate and crisps with vinegar and salt, as well as funding my snacks, the top supporters get recognized and those people are samuel vanderplatz alex deloch dirk jan karen beld father of king joshua binswanger lunar eagle 1996 ivar olofson leach ii philippe hinson daniel metchers lucas slack strategy in ultima patrick romberg baxter heal william johansen brian latariani assaran jonathan kirkensen and chow thank you for your continued support over the last year and I'm looking forward to seeing what the channel has in store offer for 2019, so watch this space, I don't know.

Write these, so I'm not really sure what to say, so bye.