The game I will be analyzing for this assignment is Undertale. The main dynamic that I want to look at is the “route system” dynamic which serves to give that variability to the story along with the player agency that keeps you engaged. A major part of the game is that the story is one of how you interact with the characters. What happens in the story is a representation of your actions through the game in with even the smallest of characters. This is informed by the LV and EXP mechanics, which track how how many monsters you have killed through the game. These numbers change the story significantly beyond giving you more power. The ways that characters act changes, the entire story, even the game play loop changes depending on these numbers and what they mean for the choices the player made. This also ties into the aesthetic of Discovery, as when you play the game a certain way, a certain outcome is presented. Therefor, if you play it in the opposite or a different way, a separate outcome is presented. the mechanics of getting LV and EXP from killing monsters, which then changes how the characters throughout the story interact with the player. Every enemy has a way to defeat them without killing them, which doesn’t give EXP, just gold. There are 3 routes: Pacifist(kill no one), Neutral(not the other routes), Genocide(kill everyone). this leads to very different game play experiences, with the Pacifist giving you very deep connections with each character and having fights that aren’t the hardest, while in genocide it is a depressing slog intentionally made to be boring and has brutally difficult fights.
