Undertale is primarily a commentary on the ways people approach media. Genocide route, in that context, is a response to playing through games in the increasingly prevalent mechanical and consumptive way. While there's enough in there to support Toby exalting authorial intent, I think he's noticing trends in the ways people approach games (consumptive and completionist), but hasn't really diagnosed the cause, which is why he condemns the player for playing through genocide (or choosing to see it without playing themselves) as a personal failing rather than getting at things like the culture industry or trends in game design and marketing that encourage that kind of approach. As not a great fan of authorial intent I still see a lot of value in a game (or anything really) having the guts to resist people who only want to engage with it in a boring or distanced way.
One of the things that prevents me from playing lots of RPG games is that they give you freedom to make your own character, have some choices you can make, basically expect you to identify with the protagonist to some degree, but then gameplay is designed in a way that forces you to become the genocide man. In particular I hate this with animals and monsters, where you are supposed to enter to their habitats and scour them clean of all life so you can loot the treasures, or just get XP, with no moral weight on those actions whatsoever. Or with human enemies, its typical to slaughter throngs of nameless mooks, only to be given an option to spare the last final one.
Fundamental problems is that virtually all video games dont really design hostile NPCs as characters opposing the player, but a mere gameplay obstacle to be overcome in order to progress. They have no sense of self-preservation and will tirelessly pursue you as long as they have a single HP left, they cant be negotiated with, will never try to get away from fight they are loosing, run away in fear, beg for mercy or be incapacitated in any way other than murder.
>>32542compeltionism is like ocd to me. When I see the list of achievements and it's not 100% it feels like I
have to do unlock, even If have to go great lenght or outright fuck with the code to get them without playing.
It reaches a point that it genuinely kills my enjoyment of games.
>>32656Same as I said above, though it doesn't kill my enjoyment.
>>32655Firstly, the RPG elements are very capitalistic actually so you're basically forced to exploit mother nature for resources. This is actually too much like real life, it forces you to ask these questions but IRL we don't even care because somebody else does the killing for us. Secondly, negotiating with enemies is also… kinda hard IRL. Especially if you work for the state (whether it's an empire like in Skyrim or the global government like in Deus Ex). The ACAB slogan exists for a reason, when radicals get into a shootout with the police they don't ask themselves questions like "WHY ARE WE STILL NERE!? JUST TO SUFFER!!?" Otherwise they would be dead. Such a liberal mindset honestly, the idea that we can "negotiate." The purest form of class collaborationism.
>>32674 (me)
I think Undertale is similar not to games like Skyrim where there are clear hostile factions but more to classic JRPGs. In classic JRPGs you're not fighting some ideological enemies, you're fighting some "monsters." Why are they monsters? They just are. Why are you fighting them? You have to.
Undertale is an allegory on racism.
>>32655The reasons for this is that the easiest way to program the game is for all hostiles to just charge you without any thought, and for winning in a scenario to entail deleting the NPC from the game.
You could make a game where the characters are more careful and deliberate with how they behave towards you. You could make a game where you aim a cursor at people and click the mouse to say words. If you do that, you are going to be doing a lot more work coding how those systems operate. Just programming things to go after and kill you is easy. Turning the NPC into a ragdoll and turning off its behavior system when you shoot it enough times is easy.
>>32755 (me)
also shooters (especially FPS) are one of the easiest 3D games to build. you just control a camera and click on the right things to win. the rest of it is basically window dressing.
>>32755But its not complicated though. The absolutely simplest version is just having enemy attempt to run away and despawn when their health get below certain threshold. Or rudimentary morale system, like if their ally got killed near them, they have % chance to leg it. And especially when we talk about AAA titles with development budget in millions, the issue isnt in it being too complicated or time-consuming to program, but industry being too stale to innovate basics of gaming in such a way.
Out of the top of my head, Gothic games lets you beat NPCs without killing them, in Kingdom Come: Deliverance you can leave wounded enemies live, and in Warband soldiers flee when battle goes south for them.
>>32766>But its not complicated though.It's
more complicated is the point. Video games are a business, so things are going to be biased toward the easiest (cheapest) option.
>The absolutely simplest version is just having enemy attempt to run away and despawn when their health get below certain threshold.No, that's more complicated because you have to code for the fleeing behavior as well as checking to despawn them after they are out of sight etc. It's way simpler to just have them de-activate and drop as a ragdoll.
>Or rudimentary morale system, like if their ally got killed near them, they have % chance to leg it.This is already a lot more complex. You need to have some kind of routine that runs every so often to check for whatever you set as the condition to run. You need to program in the behavior and the checker, and you need to record dialogue so the player knows they are running in fear and it's not the navigation bugging out. It's way easier to record the voice actor doing a few death screams and just program
if health <= 0 {self.die()} and make a die() function that plays a death sound, switches off the normal programming and turns them into a ragdoll.
>And especially when we talk about AAA titles with development budget in millions, the issue isnt in it being too complicated or time-consuming to program, but industry being too stale to innovate basics of gaming in such a way.That's part of it but also a big part is that it's a business and they will cut corners if possible. Even the biggest budget games with the most attention to detail still end up cutting a shitload of corners for this exact reason. Red Dead Redemption 2 is currently treated as the high water mark for all of that kind of thing, but it's still got lots of scrapped content and features that are obviously unfinished, because Rockstar decided to work on GTA Online, which was a lot more profit for a lot less effort.
>Out of the top of my head, Gothic games lets you beat NPCs without killing them, in Kingdom Come: Deliverance you can leave wounded enemies live, and in Warband soldiers flee when battle goes south for them.And there's free mods for Skyrim that gives you like a dozen options besides outright killing people. The problem is not that it's not doable or something. The problem is that doing it requires work, and people have to be paid to do that work, and businesses don't want to pay more than the bare minimum.
>>35318I think you're missing that it's not that it's
too complicated just
more complicated than necessary for the purposes of the product. AAA game studios aren't in the business of innovating. They're making products and actively try to streamline the development process which makes it harder to do anything outside the box.
>>35298a fangame actually getting finished and being good helps me cope with the deltarune drought
hell the entire wild east segment feels like something straight out of a deltarune chapter
>>35365Post the link next time.
https://toby.fangamer.com/newsletters/spring24/>>35329It's only 3+4 together now.
>So, new strategy: No more waiting for Chapter 5. Instead, we are going to focus on putting DELTARUNE out for purchase once we finish Chapter 4. That should make everything a bit more reasonable! https://toby.fangamer.com/newsletters/halloween23/ >>35425This game was pure shit.
Play underrail instead it was actually good.
>>35507>>35607I think I have a better way of saying this now. If you're taking Sans' view on it, all he really knows is that there's a 8-to-12-year-old reeking havoc on his world, and he can't really do anything about it. He only acts against it when(again, from his limited, sub-file-system perspective) the universe itself is at risk. If you're taking Chara's critique on it, realize that they're not viewing it from the perspective of it being
literally a game; they're viewing it from the perspective of an (implied) abused child coming to the conclusion that the only way to stop being abused is to become stronger than everybody else. On the level of the player our direct mirror Flowey is shown to have had the same curiosity and he's not demonized for it
per se, considering that the friendship with Papyrus that resulted from it is shown to be overall positive for the both of them. In fact, he even bonds with you a little bit over obscure trivia on the characters on repeated Neutral playthroughs.
It's clear that Toby is not damning curiosity in games. Hell, depending on how deltarune will go he's likely encouraging it.
>>35641He's still taunting people
watching others do a genocide run, while being too pussy to do it themselves.
Spec Ops: The Line is much more confrontational with its players.
>>35966It's funny that you mention The Line, because so many people complained that the game "railroads" you into doing things it later criticizes you for (a complaint that completely misses the game's point). Yet when Undertale gave these same players all the choice they could ever want, they STILL complained about the No Mercy route because of how the characters responded. Turns out, these players never cared about player agency at all, they just didn't want to be criticized for power fantasies or content consumption.
Stuff like this ultimately proves The Line right, and adds to just how well the game has aged (along with tone-deaf things like Call of Duty adding white phosphorous as a killstreak reward, among other things).
>>36214>these players never cared about player agency at all, they just didn't want to be criticized for power fantasies or content consumption.If there as any doubt of this in 2016, it should have entirely vanished by now.
Games really are nothing more than toys to these morons.
Polite sage.
>>36214Spec Ops has some great moments, but the white phosphorus really isnt one of them. I had 0 emotional reaction to it, because I tried like dozen times to get through the section without using it, until I realized the game literally wont let me, so I clicked the war crime button and watched the "wow cant believe you did such a bad thing you bad person" cutscene. It feels cheap because the rest of the game does offer player choices. Like when locals lynch one of your teammates and corner you, you cant walk away, you have to shoot, but you can choose to shoot above their heads, scaring the mob away without hurting anyone. That setpiece utilizes game mechanics and plays with player agency and expectations of the genre far better than the white phosphorus thing did. Or the ending, which was one of the most impactful moments I ever experienced in a video game, when the marine squad comes to rescue you, and as player you have to fight the instinct to shoot them on sight because that is what the game has been training you to do the whole time.
>>36216It's not about player choices or player agency, brainlet. The entire game was a prank on Cawadooty players. The marketing and trailers leading up to release suggested exactly nothing of what will happen.
The entire speech by Konrad is pointed directly at (you), and why you bought this game in the first place. With the final message that Cawadooty players should kill themselves
now.
>he actually shot Konrad>and then got the fade to white endingPathetic.
>>36216You're falling for the same trap these other players did. The white phosphorous scene DOES have a choice, just not a conventional one - you can quit at any time. But you're not going to, because you're here to make yourself feel better, and quitting flies in the face of that.
That's the point of the game, and it's why it waits until Konrad's apartment to spell it out for you - because if you've made it this far, you're the kind of person who will never quit no matter what. It's also why the final choice is designed the way it is - the game is challenging you to prove it wrong by quitting, or prove it right and see how much farther you can take Walker's pointless, insane, self-serving adventure.
There's a reason the white phosphorous scene happens right in the middle of the game. It's not supposed to make you feel guilty - quite the opposite, actually. It's giving you the same excuse that it gives Walker, i.e. that you shouldn't care because you "didn't have a choice," so that you will keep pushing forward until you confront Konrad.
The scene is so much more than "wow, you're a bad person!" It's a turning point that not only pushes you further into Dubai, but gives us the first real look at who Walker is, completely recontextualizing everything he's done up to this point (and us with him).
>>36228The game literally makes you choose between quitting or continuing in the ending.
Regardless, this is still missing the point. Even if there was a "walk away" ending (which would come with a heap of logistical issues), that's not what the game is about. You came here to play the hero, so why would you quit? The game isn't just telling you that quitting is a valid choice - it's telling you that
it's a choice you're never going to make.This is why I said the game is challenging you with Konrad's confrontation. It gives not one, but
two different ways to end the game right then and there - but fully expects you to shoot Konrad. Hence why there are three unique epilogues after shooting Konrad, but none for quitting.
We could argue whether or not quitting actually is a valid choice, or whether a choice not being obvious in-universe makes it any less valid (Undertale also delves into both of these ideas…oh hey, that's right, this is an Undertale thread!). But ultimately this gets away from what The Line is trying to focus on.
>>36236On your first playthrough, you might not notice this billboard. It's on the very first level, long before the white phosphorous drops. That's right - Walker has been hallucinating the entire time, presumably because of whatever nightmare went down in Kabul. He was broken from the start.
The thing is, you won't notice this the first time you arrive in Dubai. And neither do Lugo or Adams. They follow him because their first impression of him is the same as ours - a competent leader under a lot of stress. They don't realize the scale of the problem until it's far too late.
It's when Adams confronts Walker about the radio tower that he realizes just how delusional and selfish his CO is. From that point on, the only thing that keeps Adams around is the promise of suicide by cop.
TL;DR - Walker was more insane than Lugo or Adams realized, and by the time they found out there was no going back.
>>36238Dang. Never noticed that even on any subsequent playthroughs lol.
I get that they don't know he's mental at first but by the time he picks up the broken radio and starts talking into it they must realise something is fucked and when he starts literally just talking to them about stuff that isn't there (like the hanged men) there's no excuse to not just desert.
But whatever, still a good story, though I disapprove of the word of god that it's about COD, it being a criticism of US imperialism in general (with a side serving of video game criticism) makes a lot more sense IMO
>>36239They know
something is wrong with him, but they still have reason to trust him. Sure, he might be talking to ghosts and shooting corpses, but he's also giving them clear objectives that he says will end the nightmare in Dubai, and honestly? If you didn't know anything else about Walker, and been constantly confronted by the insane residents of Dubai for hours on end up to that point, you'd side with Walker, too.
It's only after the radio tower that they realize that Walker was never actually leading them anywhere, and that what was wrong with him was so much worse than just talking to ghosts.
>>36243>Including Ralseinooooooooooooooooooo don't say that it's not true
just because he's not real doesn't mean our relationship isn't real
>>36242You have to recruit them for them to show up in the Castle Town. Otherwise, you don't see them again. It's unclear what happens to them.
>>36243Darkners correspond to Light World objects, yes, but that doesn't make them any less alive in the Dark Worlds. Darkners also appear to have some kind of history outside of the time we interact with them (i.e. King and Queen being a couple, Jevil's rampage, etc.) which suggests that they either have a bad case of Last Thursdayism or they have more personhood than we're giving them credit for.
Of course, if we wanted to, we could follow the "Darkners are only objects because of corresponding items in the Light World" line of thought to its conclusion. If Darkners aren't people because they're in a world below the Light World, what happens to Lightners if there's a world
above the Light World? After all, Spamton wanted to reach "Heaven"…
Also, Chapter 3 and 4 will be shipped without Chapter 5. It's closer than you think.
>>36244The Castle Town fountain supposedly needs to be active to keep the Light and Dark Worlds in balance, since it's the extra fountains in the Card Kingdom and Cyber World that disrupt things.
Unless someone lied to Ralsei, or Ralsei lied to us, we probably don't want to mess with that fountain.
>>36245> just because he's not real doesn't mean our relationship isn't realSame, pic rel
>Darkners correspond to Light World objects, yes, but that doesn't make them any less alive in the Dark Worlds.true
>Also, Chapter 3 and 4 will be shipped without Chapter 5. It's closer than you think.I hope so
>>36255There’s a very interesting one called the Oberon Smog theory, which proposes that the Knight is actually a Darkner based off of Gerson’s hammer, taking on his personality and an anagram of his name because monster funerals feature the deceased’s remains being spread on an object associated with them, with Father Alvin simply being an accomplice. It relies on the “Ralsei is a dead Asriel” theory, though, which is why I’m not completely fond of it, but it’s still very unique.
Another interesting one is the Knight is Papyrus is Gaster — that is to say, all three are the same character (seriously, there’s an insane amount of overlap between Papyrus and Gaster’s character traits). My issue with this one is that it feels like two theories packed into one, and that Gaster (even if Papyrus) has much bigger problems to deal with than the Roaring.
I’m partial to it being Father Alvin because of how much evidence there is and, more importantly, he’s one of the few who have an actual motive. I understand if he’s not the most exciting candidate, but I personally think he would be a more cathartic reveal than someone like Dess Holiday who we don’t really know anything about or Gaster who has bigger fish to fry.
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