I remember when some Louis haters claimed Louis probably removed/covered the triangle and then a few weeks ago he showed off his ankles--and his triangle. Bless.
Spare Time: How Does Undertale Make You a Better Person?
(This is a super long post about Undertale's game design; it has no spoilers, except for how to win the Dogi fight toward the beginning of the game.)
This week, we take a look at Undertale, and how the battle system encourages peaceful and positive virtues. Hopefully, this post fills you with determination.
So I'm currently doing a sort of research project where I'm looking at video games and exploring the game design to see how to incorporate virtue into game design aside from the story, and Undertale is really making me happy right now.
I'm currently playing Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, and Mario and Luigi: Dream Team; all three of these are RPGs where the focus is going around and destroying enemies to gain experience and fight bosses. It's essentially the normalization of murder, and while I don't think that it has any serious negative effects (especially in the case of Mario games), it probably doesn't have any positive effects either.
So I started playing these games as pacifist runs, where you do as little damage as possible. If there's a boss you have to fight or something, there's no way around it, but the challenge is seeing if you're capable of progressing without the experience. It seems pretty doable for these games, but what I'm noticing is that these pacifist runs aren't fun. There's no reward given by the game for doing things peacefully. Of course, it's building virtue regardless, but you have to choose to do the pacifist run, which isn't that common.
Then there's Undertale.
Undertale is an RPG that pretty much encourages not killing enemies. There's an innovative battle system that, while having a 'Fight' option, also includes 'Act' and 'Mercy' options. The 'Act' option lets you do various things to the enemy, including complimenting, flirting, and various other things (it depends on who you're fighting), and the 'Mercy' option lets you either Spare the enemy (essentially skipping your turn) or Flee the fight. If the enemy's name is yellow, then Sparing the enemy will end the fight peacefully, and it's really satisfying. Also great about the game is that while there is the option to do a Genocide Run (fighting everything like a generic RPG run), the best of the game's multiple endings is the ending of the True Pacifist Run (I have yet to learn what distinguishes this from a normal Pacifist Run, but I figure I'll find out soon enough). With Undertale, I don't even think it's accurate to call them 'enemies'; I only say 'enemies' here for lack of a better word.
So why is it more fun to Pacifist Run Undertale than other RPGs? Because Undertale has the Pacifist Run planned into the game; most RPGs plan around combat and killing enemies and don't even think about pacifist runs when considering the game as a whole. What makes the RPGs I've been playing unfun to Pacifist Run is mainly that when you flee a fight, the enemy stays in the field and can easily come back to try to fight you, and it becomes a waste of both the money lost while fleeing and the time trying to avoid re-encountering enemies. (For the record, the RPGs I've been playing have all been Mario RPGs, so there's bound to be similarities not included in other RPGs. But I expect these similarities to be found in other RPGs as well, at least in the combat focus and the re-encountering problem.)
But Undertale plans around the Pacifist Run; earlier I pointed out that the Act option changes depending on the enemy, and that's actually really important to the gameplay. If you're doing a Pacifist Run, the game kind of becomes a puzzle, trying to figure out what actions you have to do to turn the enemy's name yellow so you can Spare them.
Probably my favorite so far is these two dog guardians, called the Dogi, that you fight; the Act options in the fight include Pet, Roll Around, and "Re-Sniff". They immediately dislike your smell, but if you Roll Around in the snow and dirt, then have the dogs Re-Sniff you, they'll find your smell nice; after this, you can Pet them, and then their names turn yellow so you can Spare them. This fight was fun, and I did no damage whatsoever to the dogs. The ever-changing Act options make it fun to find out how to successfully Spare the "enemies". Also, when you Spare them, you don't re-encounter the same enemies over again, which makes the Mercy options even more appealing. The system's kind of like Pokémon, where the encounters are random, regardless of when you flee from other Pokémon.
Now, I’m still just beginning my playthrough of Undertale, so I might do another post having to do with Undertale once I finish the game, or progress further, at the least.
Undertale became super popular after it was released, and that makes me really happy. I'm not sure if any content in the game is questionable, as I haven't played too far into it yet, but so far it's a game with a great story, a system that really pushes not killing enemies, and some amazing music and humor. I can't say from how much of the game I've played, but Undertale may be my new favorite game, and I'm glad there's a popular game that embraces the virtue of mercy; it being the Year of Mercy makes this even better to notice, too!
As always, thanks for taking the time to read this! If you have any comments or questions, I’d be happy to answer anything. Reply to this post or send an ask to the Friday Night Questions blog, and I’ll respond! Thanks again, and may you have a Merry Christmas, or Happy Holidays if you don’t celebrate Christmas!
