#metanarrative

[veeinafrica]

Undertale spoilers

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I don’t really blame anyone who wants to keep their True Pacifist ending, or who don’t even want to think about the genocide route, but I do think there’s something beautiful in it that’s worth exploration beyond ‘woah epic boss battles.’ I think a big part of the games themes rely on the struggle between empathy and determination, how in a world where you *can* do anything, the question becomes whether or not you *should.* TP is a tough route to take on, but emotionally and narratively I found it kind of easy. It’s easy to be determined when you marry that feeling to being right.

But geno is the route that I think actually tests a player’s determination, where the game’s interrogates you out of what you want from the story and why. It’s pitting the two best parts of us as humans, our ability to push through awfulness and our ability to see others as worthy of respect and consideration, against each other. And it asks us which one we value more as individuals and from our stories.

To be clear, I don’t think the beauty comes from *completing* a genocide run. In a lot of ways I think abandoned Geno —> TP is one of the most narratively satisfying ways to end a game. I just think that it’s the struggle and seeing it play out on screen that I believe makes the game such an instant classic.

[prunejuice100]

Lowkey when talking about deltarune people gotta stop saying "the player" and start saying "you" because I swear some of these people think the player is just another character in the story. No man, it's YOU. The one in the chair. The one making the theory. It's only you.

[gravityr00m]

@cosmonautroger

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[onironerd]

I haven't really seen anyone talk about this before so I guess I'll crawl out of my possum dresser and do it myself.

I believe Sybil is meant to be a mirror to the player.

Not the player character, aka The Scarlet Cousin / Y/N.

You. The player. The Problem Between Chair And Keyboard.

Sybil has been 'taking back' her daughters through the centuries to get the 'best' outcomes possible. Much like we learn more about what's going on in Scarlet Hollow with each playthrough... Essentially 'taking back' the character we played during the last and erasing them during our next one. We get a blank slate, free to make new choices and form new bonds. Noone remembers the previous ones. They're a part of us that we sent into the world of the game, but when we start a new playthrough, they are erased. Only we remember them. To everyone else, it's like they never existed.

Sybil talks about how she's become able to see the 'tapestry' of choice and consequence. Which threads lead to which outcomes. How she accepts the burden of what must be done, because she knows which sacrifices have to be made to achieve the future she decides is best. Just like we, the Player, have gained insight in which decision chains must be followed to get our desired outcomes through our multiple playthroughs. Without them, we can never gain the full picture of what is happening in Scarlet Hollow. Without them, we can never learn everything that is possible, in all its variations. Without them, we don't have the power to steer the story towards saving the most people possible. And even with all of the knowledge we can gather through all those playthroughs, we cannot save everyone. Just like Sybil can't. All we can do is make decisions on what is worth sacrificing and what is worth saving. Taking on that burden and responsibility is what the game is about at its core.

Sybil manipulates the people around her to steer them in the direction she needs. She wasn't always this way. But with each daughter she took back, humans became more and more like tools to her. Chess pieces. Actors in the play she is directing. Similarly, with each playthrough of the game, the player learns which responses to give or actions to perform to direct the game towards our preferred outcome. We no longer immerse ourselves in the game to behave naturally, to interact with people and the world in a genuine way. We take on a specific role to steer the path. We calculate costs and benefits. We tweak the threads. We use our power (traits) to achieve ideal outcomes, and where we can't, we cut our losses in a way we decide is best. We weigh what is acceptable to give up and what is not. Because we know what's going to happen, just like Sybil does. And as one of the achievements we can get reminds us: inaction is also a choice. The responsibility, the burden, is ours. There's no way around it.

We've all wished we could simply take all traits and give Scarlet Hollow its ideal story, its perfect happy ending. Which is exactly what Sybil wants to do by taking The Entity's power for herself. No more negative consequences, ever. No more hard decisions. No more moral anguish about what is right or wrong or best for as many people as possible.

No more sacrifice. No more choices to make. No more mistakes to learn from. No more possibilities to discover. No more stories to write.

And that's exactly what she's offering to take away for/from our player character. Whether that's a blessing or a curse is up to debate. But I think Sybil achieving her goal is a parallel to what happens if we try to cheat our way out of consequences by giving ourselves all traits - the power to save everyone.

Game Over.

[forgottenbones]

[filloax]

In defense of Deltarune meta-deniers

WAIT I am not going to say the player is not canon or the story breaks, wait

So, latest JaruJaruJ video. I'm thinking people are overreacting to it because of the last one (with which I also really disagree with, to be clear). But I don't find most of it that outlandish?

IMO, surprisingly many people make too much of a binary in the possibilities of player place in UT/DR. It seems that either the real flesh and blood player is 100% canon, with the game being aware it is an EXE, or you're refusing any sort of meta narrative and especially refusing player accountability.

I personally see it this way: if instead of the real player the soul (or SOUL, yes) was a player stand-in*, with the same POV, powers, an equivalent relationship to the world, which also is our player character, and in world a weird extradimensional being/angel/whatever, would it be different in any meaningful way than the alternative regarding the game's themes and message? Your impact and relationship to a fictional/"lesser" world, choices, etc.

To be clear, it WOULD still absolutely be meta and a 4th wall break, messing with things like UI, standard mechanics like saving, protagonist relationship, etc. is meta regardless of it being an in-world thing lorewise or not.

And, if that was the case, would it be ever differentiated by the game? This is Toby, he has said and demonstrated he doesn't say things outright if not needed, and in a case like this where the end result themes wise would be the same he woulnd't really say much.

Like, 99.5%** of Undertale works the same (again, themes-wise, not strictly plot-facts-theory-investigation-crafting-stuff) if the acting force is the IRL player or Frisk/Chara/whoever being a standin for the player in choices and all like in other games (with the power of saving etc. which is already a in-world thing)

Unless people saying this do not feel emotional involvement when playing choice-driven games unless they game is self aware it is a game and talking explicitly to the player? But that possibly cannot be the majority

* Not Asriel, or Dess, or anyone else, to be clear

** The 0.5% is the summation of the post True-Pacifist and Genocide ending scenes, which do leave little room for that part.

[filloax]

Player canon or not in UTDR

Deltarune Hot Take (which might not even be that hot at all if you fully read it)

Regardless of if it is, does the IRL player need to be canon to each game for the game's themes and commentary on player choice and lack thereof to still work?

Like, personally I still think the game is heading in the direction of either the player being canon to the game or a situation similar enough to be functionally the same. BUT, I've noticed people tend to treat other takes and readings on the matter as saying there is no meta element at all?

Like, let's make an example with Undertale as it's a completed game and simpler in general. For the sake of this point let's ignore the bit after true pacifist. IF the IRL player was not a part of the story, and every meta thing and choice was diegetically done by Frisk only (or Chara, for this point it's the same), with the save powers being only theirs just like they were Flowey's before: would the game now not be a commentary on player's choices, and all its other themes, just because its not literally you doing it in the narrative?

Take any other RPG or videogame with moral choices: in the vast majority of games there's not even a question if the player is canon, usually you're controlling a character just for the sake of gameplay, with no possession involved. But, usually people still feel very involved in the choices they make in RPGs (being ROLE-playing games after all), depending on how well written they are.

And, sometimes games can also comment on player behavior without player canonicity. I recently played Disco Elysium, won't spoil the specifics but there's a point where the game expects you to play a certain way, because of how games of that genre are usually played, and if you do a smart NPC sort-of-screws you over because he expected you to do that, and you did, because that's what you do in games. It still comments on player behavior in games on that genre, but the player is certainly not canon to Elysium.

End wall of text. I recently saw this kind of discussion pop around on reddit and other places, and I felt dumb because it seems like people think either a game is fully meta like UTDR can be or even more, or is not commenting on how you play it at all

[gravityr00m]

The insular value of being inside.