Moonspeak Undertale - friendship/genocide RPG

[evdk]

It's not bullet hell ffs.

Bullet purgatory? Still too much for me, in any case.

 

[Siveon]

I suppose a more apt term would be shmup-lite. Though bullet purgatory does have a funny ring to it.

What's bullet heaven, then? A genre where you mostly see your own bullets?

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Bullet heaven is bullet hell after you git gud and can sightread everything.

It's not bullet hell ffs.

Bullet purgatory? Still too much for me, in any case.

Out of curiosity, which attacks in the game have too many bullets in your opinion?

 

[evdk]

Bullet heaven is bullet hell after you git gud and can sightread everything.

It's not bullet hell ffs.

Bullet purgatory? Still too much for me, in any case.

Out of curiosity, which attacks in the game have too many bullets in your opionion.

Well, I rage quit during the Royal Guards fight.

 

[Phage]

Bullet heaven is bullet hell after you git gud and can sightread everything.

It's not bullet hell ffs.

Bullet purgatory? Still too much for me, in any case.

Out of curiosity, which attacks in the game have too many bullets in your opionion.

Well, I rage quit during the Royal Guards fight.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Case in point, that fight has like max 4-6 bullets on the screen at one time. Doesn't seem very hellish to me.

That's an example of another tendency, to call anything involving bullets and non-trivial difficulty "bullet hell", stemming from the perception of actual bullet hell shmups as being super difficult. Which is another misconception, as a lot of them are actually easier than "traditional" shmups.

 

[evdk]

Oh, guilty as charged. The genre is not my cup of tea, so I have only some murky knowledge about the nomenclature, plus I universally sucked at all my attempts to try any of the associated games.

Spoiler

And I mostly just wanted to make an one off joke about bullet purgatory

The Royal Guards fight might not even be that difficult, I just was getting tired of the game at that point, this coupled with the puzzle elements of the fight and having to watch their stupid introductory scene whenever I replayed it made me quit. (Really, having to alternate two buttons to skip text is genius design)

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Another thing Toby Fox could stand to learn from the genius ZUN - in Touhou games you just hold Ctrl to skip through dialogue.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Pretty sure you can dialogue skip in Undertale by holding a button down.

 

[evdk]

Pretty sure you can dialogue skip in Undertale by holding a button down.

Nope. One button fast forwards the dialogue in the dialogue window, another closes the window to open a new one.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Ah, you're right. Just loaded it up to see why I had that impression- it's because on a controller, you can just put your thumb between the two buttons and jiggle it back and forth for pretty much the same effect.

 

[Bigg Boss]

Ah, you're right. Just loaded it up to see why I had that impression- it's because on a controller, you can just put your thumb between the two buttons and jiggle it back and forth for pretty much the same effect.

Yeah, I had to do that pretty fast to skip some parts. The two finger technique is a must. Shitty design.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

PC exclusive retro indie game designed for controllers, what an incredible confluence of decline.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Yeah, I can see it sucking if you're using a keyboard or a gamepad with the buttons spread too far apart.

 

[lightbane]

If you thought Flowey's boss form wasn't disgusting enough, you haven't seen anything yet.

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

A Grillby's visit to the tune of 'Cheers' works really really well.





Ending is kind of a downer.

 

[MrRichard999]

Its in German now... http://www.romhacking.net/translations/2566/

 

[vean]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCFGU79rX34

Yahtzee says it's the best game of 2015

 

[vean]

I have to say that I'm surprised how little discussion there is about the beloved Undertale.

It's is described as a brilliant and transcendently innovative game. It got what is probably the most glowing review on the Codex ever.

You would think people would want to talk about it, but all we get is *crickets*

Why would that be?

 

[Jasede]

I have to say that I'm surprised how little discussion there is about the beloved Undertale.

It's is described as a brilliant and transcendently innovative game. It got what is probably the most glowing review on the Codex ever.

You would think people would want to talk about it, but all we get is *crickets*

Why would that be?

 

[agentorange]

because it's gay shit

 

[Cowboy Moment]

I guess I have something to say, having completed the Genocide route a few days ago and therefore having seen nearly everything the game has to offer.

Not going to repeat my general thoughts on the gameplay, I'll limit myself to the two extra Geno bosses. Undyne is pretty fun, even though I'm not a huge fan of the DDR minigame, the shmups segments were well done, and the ones with spinning concentric arrows were probably the most fun thing to dodge in the entire game. Sans on the other hand is mostly rather dull memorization, with tons of cheap crap that becomes trivial once you know it's coming. There's a few decent semi-randomized attacks there, but overall I struggled to clear it more out of boredom than anything else. At least the music was good.

The story itself is nothing special, what makes it good is very clever use of the metanarrative, in particular to make some interesting points about replayability and branching narratives in games. Undertale is the rare kind of game that openly argues in favor of certain design philosophies, which is honestly pretty cool, even if it ultimately advocates for feels over systems.

I do feel, however, that it undermines its own message somewhat with how the True Pacifist and Genocide routes are structured. True Pacifist in general is the weakest route in the game - it requires little to no additional effort relative to typical Neutral routes, and concludes in a pretty dumb ending, where the villain calls you an idiot for wanting to get the "perfect" ending (in which he is correct), and then the game gives said ending to you anyway through the power of FRIENDSHIP. I at least expected having to choose between saving Asriel and breaking the seal, or needing to make some kind of sacrifice resulting in a forced reset ala Nier. But nope, you win and everyone is super happy. I suppose the fact that this comes at no additional effort is part of the philosophy of trying to engage the player emotionally through aesthetics rather than challenge, but it still felt cheap to me. Best part of the route is the message you get after completing it and restarting the game (also true for Genocide, but that one has a really good ending).

The Genocide route, on the other hand, is where the "point" the game tries to make is expressed most effectively - it's the best written route, and what time is lost on grinding (somewhat remedied with the alt+tab trick) is regained by being able to skip all the boring puzzles. I actually think that putting the hardest boss fights in it goes against said point - they would've been better off in True Pacifist, and one-shots in Genocide just like everything else is.

On that note, I feel like Toby Fox simply lacked the integrity someone like VD has - AoD has difficult combat because that's what the game's central theme requires, period. I feel like True Pacifist is as easy as it is not because it makes thematic sense, but because Toby wanted everyone to be able to complete it and get their "best" ending and feels.

All in all though, I'll take Undertale's approach to videogame storytelling over any amount of walking simulators and linear cinematic action-adventures. One thing I'm wondering is, if Undertale is, after a fashion, an anti-JRPG, then what would like an anti-Fallout or anti-AoD look like? Undertale's criticism of C&C as a method of achieving replayability doesn't really apply to a game like AoD where player and character are strictly and explicitly separated, so I'm curious what a game deconstructing the Codex' favourite design philosophies would work like.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Spoiler

I think the strongest theme of the game is that accruing power by crushing other people makes you a scumbag; this is why the happiest ending is achieved when you avoid this at all costs, while the worst ending is found by pursuing it to an extreme. In between the game constantly points out that the monsters you're killing are actual people- people notice when you kill their friends -not just the bosses either, a lot of characters have special dialogue relating to other monsters being conspicuously absent- or feeling betrayed if you befriend them then stab them while their guard is down. It's not so much an anti-jrpg in that sense, but an anti-murderhobo game, which applies just as well to something like Diablo, Roguelikes, MMOs, and plenty of other games.

There's definitely a secondary theme of pity for those who feel compelled to try everything they can rather than enjoying what they have, especially in the genocide route. I don't think it's the main point of the game though. Especially since it outright rewards you for experimenting in some places (like revealing yourself as an anomaly to Sans in the normal/pacifist route, and generally having a lot of extra dialogue for odd situations like fucking with the umbrella when you meet the kid in the rain, or dumping out all the water right in front of Undyne after defeating her.)

 

[Jick Magger]

Spoiler

I think the strongest theme of the game is that accruing power by crushing other people makes you a scumbag; this is why the happiest ending is achieved when you avoid this at all costs, while the worst ending is found by pursuing it to an extreme. In between the game constantly points out that the monsters you're killing are actual people- people notice when you kill their friends -not just the bosses either, a lot of characters have special dialogue relating to other monsters being conspicuously absent- or feeling betrayed if you befriend them then stab them while their guard is down. It's not so much an anti-jrpg in that sense, but an anti-murderhobo game, which applies just as well to something like Diablo, Roguelikes, MMOs, and plenty of other games.

There's definitely a secondary theme of pity for those who feel compelled to try everything they can rather than enjoying what they have, especially in the genocide route. I don't think it's the main point of the game though. Especially since it outright rewards you for experimenting in some places (like revealing yourself as an anomaly to Sans in the normal/pacifist route, and generally having a lot of extra dialogue for odd situations like fucking with the umbrella when you meet the kid in the rain, or dumping out all the water right in front of Undyne after defeating her.)

Spoiler

The game does also seem to give the message that uncompromising pacifism can be just as unsustainable as being uncompromisingly cruel. The only three bosses in the game that are dead set on killing you can't be solved by just sparing them. You have to flee from Undyne, disable or appease Mettaton, and either fight Asgore or wait for Toriel to intervene. It's also acknowledged in-universe that monsters are just inherently weaker physically than humans, which kinda makes killing them less and less excusable as you go along, culminating with your confrontation with Papyrus, who will straight-up refuse to kill you, which strips you of your 'self-defense' excuse. Asriel even mentions in the pacifist end that Frisk won't make it in the human world just by being nice to people, as there are plenty of people out there who'll exploit it to their own ends.

There's also the fact that being merciful won't save any of the monsters if you're really dead-set on doing a genocide route, and as you said; the best opportunities you can get to kill some enemies is to stab them while they're being merciful to you and their guard is down. San and Alphys' main lament in the genocide route and in one of the worst endings was that the entire run of events could have been avoided, had they just taken action earlier and killed you when they had the chance.

Whether or not it's successful is to the viewer, though. Of the three bosses I mentioned, two of them are avoided basically just due to serendipity, and of course most of this revelation is pretty much dependent on the player not being aware of it beforehand, though not to as much of a severe degree as Spec Ops was.

 

[lightbane]

Spoiler

The fact that the "True Pacifist" final battles were easy was intentional I think, it was meant to show that the PC's willpower became superhuman/filled with all of the determination. Considering you're unable to die, then it is a matter of time until you win the battle (plus it is not that different from loading from a nearby save point to keep fighting the boss over and over).

Another argument that absolute pacifism/weakness is bad is the whole Dreemur family. Had they not been so gullible, the Fallen Child would not have played them like a fiddle and most of the stuff would have been avoided. Same thing for Asgore's inability to man up and go search himself the missing souls.

Still, I agree that the Genocide ending was cool. Too bad that the aftermath's effects are barely noticeable. IMO it would have been better if there were more subtle hints that something was wrong (ie: whenever you look yourself at the mirror, sometimes the reflection is not yours but the FC's one. Same thing when you reach that tunnel with the puddles of water and see your own image).