RWP: Undertale

Having never played Undertale before and not knowing much about it other than the cute little skeleton sprite of Sans that I had seen before, I went into this game with almost no expectations. But immediately upon loading the game, I was reminded of another game I had played before called Earthbound due to its striking similarities. The first thing I noticed was the overall “feel” of the game — the aesthetic of the pixelated graphics, the way you move your character sprite in space, the chiptune music — it almost felt like I could have been playing an additional sequel in the Mother series that Earthbound is a part of. Only a few minutes into playing the game, I searched online to see if this game had been influenced by Earthbound or the Mother series, and it turns out that it is no secret that that was indeed the case — in fact, the creator Toby Fox has stated it explicitly in this tweet (Mother 3 is the game that follows Earthbound in the series).

Combat:

Walking around:

Having played Earthbound before, I had already known it to be a unique RPG that very intentionally subverts many tropes of the typical RPG. For example, a lot of the game is set in normal suburb-like areas, the protagonists equip weapons like bats and yo-yo’s, and there are strange enemies such as crazed cultists, deranged hippies, out-of-control taxicabs, and more. As such, I figured that Undertale would be similar, so I knew to expect that there might be mechanics that stray away from the traditional RPG. And there indeed were — things like having the option to win a battle but not fight an enemy by sparing them, enemies having real emotions and sometimes not even wanting to fight, etc. But in Earthbound, even with all of its subverted tropes, the main mechanic of fighting and destroying an enemy to gain experience points and money is still very important, and I saw that reflected in Undertale with fighting offering the clear advantage of gaining experience points while sparing does not. So even with the expectation of this game being very different, I still fell into the trap of blindly fighting enemies without batting an eye.

But there certainly is procedural rhetoric that exists in Undertale to guide the player towards the pacifist approach. Toriel, who is also a monster, saves you from Flowey at the very beginning of the game and shows genuine empathy towards you. She also mentions when explaining how combat works that some monsters don’t even want to fight, and that you always have the option to spare your enemy. However, if you are going into the game with no prior knowledge about it, it is nearly impossible to complete the entire game without killing a single enemy (unless you happen to truly be the most empathetic human in the world). I find it really interesting that the pacifist route is considered by fans of the game to be the only proper way to play it, certainly in part due to intentional design by the developer with how the pacifist route is the only one that leads to a happy ending, but it is nearly impossible to successfully reach this ending on your first run, even with all of the procedural rhetoric that exists to point you in that direction. But perhaps this is also by design — it is easy to imagine that the developer might want you to explore the different possible endings of the game, first by having you take the neutral or genocide route, then having you learn from that and then eventually take the pacifist route. I personally have not played many games that offer alternative storylines based on your decisions like Undertale does, and I don’t know how many of those types of games exist out there, but I think this is one of the coolest aspects of Undertale that makes me want to see for myself what kind of story I can create with my own decisions. Overall, I really enjoyed the game!!