Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

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Mongrel
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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby Mongrel » Thu Jan 28, 2016 4:55 pm

Yeah, my understanding is that essentially the Sans fight is simply a survival gauntlet.
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nosimpleway
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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby nosimpleway » Thu Jan 28, 2016 5:12 pm

A lot of fights are.

As I understand it, after the first Soul segment, you basically can't lose the Photoshop Flowey fight. Your HP gets sheared away by percentage, rather than any amount of flat damage, and there are always enough heal items around after you call for help. Think of it like casting Demi on a monster over and over in Final Fantasy, where the spell does less damage each time.

The Asriel fight is impossible to lose because every time you die, your soul just sticks itself back together again. You get pushed back a couple turns in his attack pattern, but now you can fill up on Last Dreams and know what's coming.

The Sans fight is also scripted, but in a way that makes it hard to win, rather than impossible to lose. The script only proceeds if you swing and miss. Stopping to eat an item or Check him means you're no closer to winning.

Sans really is the weakest monster. He only has 1HP! So you can't not one-shot him, once you hit him.

Although sleeping does let you extend your HP above its normal maximum, so maybe Sans actually has, like, 9999999/1 HP on account of all that napping he does.

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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby Blossom » Thu Jan 28, 2016 7:02 pm

I think by "one shot" she means beating him on the first try, without reloading.
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Friday
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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby Friday » Thu Jan 28, 2016 7:32 pm

I think by "one shot" she means beating him on the first try, without reloading.


Yeah.

I do know that Sans responds to the following during an ending:

1. Never take off bandage (first armor)

2. Never use a consumable

3. Do both 1 and 2

4. Never save your game/die

5. All the above??? (not sure if this has even been done ever.)
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nosimpleway
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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby nosimpleway » Thu Jan 28, 2016 11:45 pm

There are videos of people who can get through the Sans battle without getting hit at all, so I've no doubt beating Sans on the first try is documented.

And if you can beat Sans without taking a hit, chances are good you don't need to eat, save, or concern yourself with armor. So you get the "challenge" script added to your ending.

Do not expect me to ever include those lines into this L.P. having earned them legit, though.

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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby Grath » Fri Jan 29, 2016 1:45 pm

nosimpleway wrote:There are videos of people who can get through the Sans battle without getting hit at all, so I've no doubt beating Sans on the first try is documented.

And if you can beat Sans without taking a hit, chances are good you don't need to eat, save, or concern yourself with armor. So you get the "challenge" script added to your ending.

Do not expect me to ever include those lines into this L.P. having earned them legit, though.

beatbandito wrote:I forgot the true power of an R^2 LP was grinding beyond human capacity.

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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby nosimpleway » Sat Jan 30, 2016 11:29 am



It shouldn't take me 3 hours of continuous play, I hope. I'm already to the part where Sans threatens to use his special attack after my third try, and I'm pretty sure that's only a few rounds away from the end.

That said, my very next battle was so utterly pooched that I stopped for a while after that was done. So we'll see.

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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby nosimpleway » Sat Jan 30, 2016 7:18 pm



Boy, these videos get really short when I cut out all the actual fighting.

So, I learned something important: don't try this fight when you're sick. You don't have time to stop and sneeze, and resisting the urge to sneeze really throws off your concentration from the bonetrousle. So, it'll be a couple of days before I try this battle again.

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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby nosimpleway » Sat Jan 30, 2016 7:54 pm

I've lasted long enough to get very nearly all of Sans's battle script to display. I'm actually pretty near the end! For those who can't read it in the video:

what? you think i'm just gonna stand there and take it?
our reports showed a massive anomaly in the timespace continuum.
timelines jumping left and right, stopping and starting...
until suddenly, everything ends.


So who is he including in "our"? He's studying timelines jumping back and forth? How do you even measure something like that? Is this how he "shortcuts" around, both to move and later on in the fight where he mixes up his attacks? It's only alluded to, but I'll get into that explanation later.

heh heh heh...
that's your fault, isn't it?
you can't understand how this feels.
knowing that one day, without any warning...
it's all going to be reset.
look, i gave up trying to go back a long time ago.
and getting to the surface doesn't really appeal anymore, either.
because even if we do...
we'll just end up right back here, without any memory of it, right?
to be blunt...
it makes it kind of hard to give it my all.
...or is that just a poor excuse for being lazy...?
hell if i know.


Explaining much of Sans's personality, throughout every run. You know he's comically lazy and unmotivated in any run, and the true pacifist alludes to it when his Lost Soul urges you to "just give up. i did." But here's why. Sans actually knows that there are creatures out there who possess adequate Determination to reset time. And despite knowing this, Sans can't do anything about it. So why bother doing anything? He's one of the most understandably depressed characters around. Maybe he could be friends with Napstablook.

all i know is... seeing what comes next...
i can't afford not to care anymore.


Hence the series of videos getting posted to the thread.

eugh... with that being said...
you, uh, really like swinging that thing around, huh?
listen.
i know you didn't answer me before, but... somewhere in there, i can feel it.
there's a glimmer of a good person inside of you.
the memory of someone who once wanted to do the right thing.
someone who, in another time, might even have been... a friend?
c'mon, buddy. do you remember me? if you're listening... let's forget all this, ok?
just lay down your weapon, and... well, my job will be a lot easier.


At this point Sans tries to spare you. If you accept his offer, you GETTTTTT DUNKED ON!!!! as shown in the first video above. And if you take another swing at him:

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woah, you look REALLY pissed off...
heheheh... did i getcha?
well, if you came back anyway...
i guess that means we never really WERE friends, huh?
heh.
don't tell that to the other sans-es, ok?


The offer of mercy and the shrug when it's rejected are shortened a bit in later playthroughs.

sounds strage, but before all this i was secretly hoping we could be friends.
i always thought the anomaly was doing this because they were unhappy.
and when they got what they wanted, they would stop all this.
and maybe all they needed was... i dunno.
some good food, some bad laughs, some nice friends.
but that's ridiculous, right?
yeah, you're the type of person who won't EVER be happy.


I'm pretty sure any time Sans refers to "the anomaly" he's referring, in his limited way of understanding as a character in a game who doesn't know he's in a game, to the player. I mean, I'm the one with my finger on the Reset button; it's not the ingame character Rtwo or Frisk. And if I can't be happy with the True Pacifist ending, and reset that (twice, even), then is there ever a result in the game I'll be happy with?

you'll keep consuming timelines over and over, until...
well.
hey.
take it from me, kid.
someday...
you gotta learn when to QUIT.
and that day's TODAY.
'cause, y'see... all this fighting is really tiring me out.
and if you keep pushing me...
then i'll be forced to use my special attack.
yeah, my special attack. sound familiar?
well, get ready, because after the next move, i'm going to use it.
if you don't wanna see it, now would be a good time to die.
well, here goes nothing... survive THIS, and i'll show you my special attack.


That part I'll refrain from documenting until I can actually reach it in battle.

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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby Friday » Sun Jan 31, 2016 4:34 pm

For the benefit of people reading this LP who don't want spoilers (unless it's R^2 showing them) I'll tag this post.

So who is he including in "our"?


Sans is heavily implied to be working with Gaster, or at least, was working with him before Gaster blew himself to everywhere and nowhere. You can get this info by getting his key during a true pacifist run and seeing his room, and then the room behind the house. He also refers to his "job" which is policing the timelines to make sure someone doesn't collapse them all, which is what Rtwo/Fallen Child's goal is.

c'mon, buddy. do you remember me? if you're listening... let's forget all this, ok?
just lay down your weapon, and... well, my job will be a lot easier.


This always tickled me, because he's outright telling you he'll kill you if you surrender.

Additional fun fact! If you actually do reset the game after GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETing DUUUUUUUUUUUNKED ON!!!! Your name will be changed to "Buddy".
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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby Esperath » Sun Jan 31, 2016 5:04 pm

Chara discovers the uncanny ability to get dunked in Spare Bud.
pisa katto

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pisa katto

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nosimpleway
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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby nosimpleway » Mon Feb 01, 2016 5:01 pm



I like that one of the last thing Sans does is throw you down what's basically a Turbo Tunnel. Buddy, I don't think I'd have gotten this far if I hadn't spent months of my life on Battletoads back in the day.

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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby zaratustra » Mon Feb 01, 2016 7:05 pm

nosimpleway wrote:Image
An inside joke that only Rtwo-the-ingame-character understands, apparently.


The joke is that he just killed like six dogs.

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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby Healy » Tue Feb 02, 2016 2:04 am

That speech Sans gives you when you get wrecked ten times is one of my favorites.

Re: the bit after the turbo tunnel: have you tried eating the pie (or a similar heavy-hitting healing item) right before that last attack? It's supposed to give you enough HP to survive that last section.
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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby nosimpleway » Tue Feb 02, 2016 3:48 am

I have. I'm good enough at everything up to that one round that I generally have Instant Noodles ("They're better dry", full restore) and the Pie by then. But the telekinetic slinging-around that Sans does every turn before that final attack fucks me up every time, and he's brutal enough about it that it shaves off another half HP. I might do better in the future, but a last-minute HP restore hasn't helped yet.

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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby nosimpleway » Wed Feb 03, 2016 2:13 am



As it turns out YouTube will let you upload static images to put in videos, but not your own audio clips. Oh well.

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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby Mongrel » Wed Feb 03, 2016 4:42 am

I like how the list of suggested youtube clips to follow consists of UFC clips and Jim Croce's greatest hits.
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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby nosimpleway » Wed Feb 03, 2016 2:08 pm

Pretty sure those are based on browsing history, although I'm surprised to see Jim Croce's greatest hits on mine too. The other three are Undertale and LP related, though.

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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby nosimpleway » Wed Feb 03, 2016 2:27 pm

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Rtwo's personal narration continues to be creepy and weird.

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Image: You must be the one that flower just warned me about. Howdy! ...erm... What kind of monster are you...? Sorry, I cannot tell. Well, we can always

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The battle menu cuts Asgore off mid-sentence. And I like the implication that Rtwo's control has made Frisk unidentifiable as human anymore, since Asgore recognizes him on the spot in any other playthrough. But hey, didn't Alphys give the red alert a while ago? Why is Asgore still good-naturedly wandering around his garden with his guard down? That's a good way to get

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Uh, stabbed. Alphys can't do anything right.

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This seems... superfluous.

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And excessive. Desperate, even.

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Image: It was all a trick, see? I was waiting to kill him for you!

Image: After all it's me your best friend!

Image: I'm helpful, I can be useful to you

Image: I promise I won't get in your way

Image: I can help... I can... I can...

Image: Please don't kill me.

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Asriel should know as well as anyone that begging Rtwo for mercy isn't going to do anything. Rtwo is as soulless as Asriel himself, after all. And so Flowey is stabbed, slashed, again and again, until nothing remains.

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Re: Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

Postby nosimpleway » Wed Feb 03, 2016 3:30 pm

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Greetings.

I am Rtwo.

The music for this section is a single, high chord with the occasional heartbeat-like thump.

Thank you.

Your power awakened me from death.

My "human soul." My "determination." They were not mine, but YOURS.

At first, I was so confused. Our plan had failed, hadn't it? Why was I brought back to life?

...You. With your guidance, I realized the purpose of my reincarnation.

Power.

Together, we eradicated the enemy and became strong. HP. ATK. DEF. GOLD. EXP. LV. Every time a number increases, that feeling... That's me. "Rtwo."

Now. Now, we have reached the absolute. There is nothing left for us here.

Let us erase this pointless world, and move on to the next.

So, let's talk about some history.

RPGs ask the player to do a lot of killing. I mean, a lot of killing.

Even the ones without Suikoden-style mass army battles or anything have a lot of padded-out random encounters with creatures that exist only to be killed. They have no plot significance, and often don't exist until the screen gets all blurry and you find yourself in another fight. If you want those sweet experience points and whatever the game you're playing calls skill points, you're going to have to drop some HP down past zero.

Once in a while you get a game where monsters aren't explicitly killed -- Earthbound has monsters "become tame", "stop moving", or "surrender", for example -- or a game that gives you some other option to end the fight -- Shin Megami Tensei's well-known dialogue options -- but even in those games you're fighting for your life throughout. Ultima 4 sees the player ascending to avatarhood by adherence to saintly virtues... but sure enough, those virtues affect who and how you fight as much as not.

This goes way back to the basis of the genre. Dragon Quest is ultimately about managing money (since that's all you lose when you die) and your initial gift of 120 pieces of gold isn't enough to afford the equipment in town you'll need to start your quest. The difference between your starting gold and the Copper Sword, Leather Armor, and Leather Shield available for initial purchase can be measured in the number of Slimes you have to kill to raise that kind of dosh. That number is one hundred and ten. If you buy a Club and Clothes as a stopgap? You'll have to kill another forty to make up for it. And that's just to get started.

Once in a while a game will go to some lengths to point out that the monsters you're killing aren't part of any natural ecosystem or anything. They're discarded science experiments, or aliens from the moon, or risen from the soul-stuff that remains when living things die (to use examples from Final Fantasy alone). But that doesn't excuse the dozens-to-hundreds of human (or whatever other sapient race) enemies you also kill, or games including Dragon Quest or Shin Megami Tensei where monsters are shown to have their own sapience, place in nature, or even villages and societies.

Undertale isn't the first game to point out "Hey, that's kind of fucked up, isn't it?" but uh, hey. That's kind of fucked up, isn't it?

So here we meet the ultimate villain of the game. It's not Asgore the king, reaper and collector of human souls. It's not Undyne, murderous and vindictive. It's not even Flowey, the soulless manipulator of events.

It's the player's own drive to grind, to see numbers go up, to end the lives of others in order to amass an abstracted level of increased power and skill by the collection of abstracted practice-as-experience-points. The canon name for this character is "Chara", but when prompted for clarification Toby Fox has Tweeted that the player is intended to use their own name. I mean, "Chara" is just a placeholder, the first half of the blank slate label "character".

Chara-cum-Rtwo has always been there, from the beginning of the very first run, acting as narrator. They are the little voice in the back of Frisk's head, filling in information on the underground that the human couldn't possibly know. It's Chara who points out "Despite everything, it's still you" when Frisk looks in the mirror. It's Chara who provides the cruel or nasty Act commands, like heckling Snowdrake's attempts at humor. It's Chara who recognizes Asriel's form as the God of Hyperdeath, probably snickering from the back of Frisk's mind at Asriel turning into his own childhood Original Character Do Not Steal.

In any but the genocide run, Chara remains a background element. Only when sated by very deliberately grinding out Experien-- pardon me -- Execution Points do they wake up and take control. And now, with everything in the underground dead, with my LV and HP as high as it will go, the elemental embodiment of level-grinding thinks it's time to put a wrap on it and move on to the next game.

I'm not so sure. I'm not done with Undertale quite yet.


And then the game crashes.

The game's explored just about every other sort of horror short of an animatronic chicken in a bib popping up and biting at the screen,

I stand corrected.

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