Undertale

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Esperath
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Re: Undertale

Postby Esperath » Sun Jan 03, 2016 11:34 pm

Friday wrote:This kind of thing actually goes a little bit deeper into my theory of game design vs whiny people, in that whiny people insist games have to be "fair" on first time playthroughs (i.e. best possible result attainable without pre-knowledge, fuck ups, or death) which is fucking stupid and no that is not the case shutup. It's okay that a bird knocked you into a pit and you died. Try again. Yes, if it happens a bunch the game is either poorly designed or Masocore, but being against birds into pits as a thing entirely is stupid and you're dumb and Medusa Heads will hunt you in your next life and they will knock you into pits/spikes/more medusa heads


Okay, so Undertale is both emotionally manipulative and preachy. I mean, that's the point of the game. However, I can see why people got pissed about the whole Toriel thing; I'd compare it to a forced tearjerker in a mediocre movie. If you're watching something and you're not terribly invested in the characters, then suddenly there's this scene that was run through focus groups to elicit MAXIMUM TEARS, it feels like sloppy storytelling. The tears don't feel like a natural extension of your feelings toward the characters. In particular, if you thought the tutorial area was too (boring/hard/repetitive), which can apply to a reasonably large subset of your playerbase, then your gameplay experience to that point is sort of weak, which makes the suckerpunch feel even more contrived.
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zaratustra
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Re: Undertale

Postby zaratustra » Mon Jan 04, 2016 7:00 am

Healy wrote:Okay, so I can at least understand most of the Undertale ships I've encountered just fine. Sans and Toriel I get, they get some nice scenes in the game and both love shitty puns. Alphys and Undyne are canon, no confusion there. Mettaton and Papyrus aren't as out there as you might think: there's a couple of phone conversations you can get where it seems Papyrus has bit of a crush; Burgerpants and Nice Cream Man are a little weirder, but, like, I get the dynamics behind it, and at least this way the fuckcat's happy. And while I'm not gonna even pretend that I don't think Sans/(insert self-insert here) isn't deeply weird, I can at least see the appeal.


Deeply disappointed no one else has considered Muffet/Asgore.

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nosimpleway
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Re: Undertale

Postby nosimpleway » Mon Jan 04, 2016 2:32 pm

Spider pies just aren't the same, man.

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Blossom
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Re: Undertale

Postby Blossom » Mon Jan 04, 2016 3:04 pm

I find it real hard to picture Asgore with anyone except Toriel, and she made very clear that's not happening again.
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Healy
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Re: Undertale

Postby Healy » Tue Jan 05, 2016 12:54 am

zaratustra wrote:
Healy wrote:Okay, so I can at least understand most of the Undertale ships I've encountered just fine. Sans and Toriel I get, they get some nice scenes in the game and both love shitty puns. Alphys and Undyne are canon, no confusion there. Mettaton and Papyrus aren't as out there as you might think: there's a couple of phone conversations you can get where it seems Papyrus has bit of a crush; Burgerpants and Nice Cream Man are a little weirder, but, like, I get the dynamics behind it, and at least this way the fuckcat's happy. And while I'm not gonna even pretend that I don't think Sans/(insert self-insert here) isn't deeply weird, I can at least see the appeal.


Deeply disappointed no one else has considered Muffet/Asgore.

I've seen Muffet/Alphys, and, bizarrely enough, Mettaton/Asgore, but yeah, I've never seen that particular pairing before. There's just not many people interested in shipping the Epic Divorce Goat, sadly. What do you see in that ship, if you don't mind me asking?
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Re: Undertale

Postby zaratustra » Tue Jan 05, 2016 6:24 am

Common interests! They can discuss tea and being in charge.

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beatbandito
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Re: Undertale

Postby beatbandito » Tue Jan 05, 2016 8:35 am

Esperath wrote:the whole Toriel thing; I'd compare it to a forced tearjerker in a mediocre movie.

Nope, ur dumb and that fight is thematically appropriate.

There are two main mindsets that lead to killing Toriel (accidently). Either you're one of the people that managed to not notice that it's impossible to lose or you did notice and you didn't let it impact your mindset.

Home is a kind of freaky place. You've got old boxes of shoes, promises of snail pie and lots of home schooling with little hope of going outside, and a secret basement you're not allowed to go in. On top of the dreams and, obviously, the fact that you can't progress if you stay you're already not supposed to feel comfortable there. Looking back and seeing Toriel as a tragic figure, people decided they always thought of her as a mom, but you don't in the experience. You're not supposed to gain any real love for her before that fight, but you are gaining LOVE.

So by the last hit, either out of desperation or blind determination to move forward, you've already decided how you want the fight to end, and it does. It doesn't speak poorly of the game that you didn't care about a character before they died, but it speaks well of it that you forgot there was a time when you didn't care.
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Esperath
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Re: Undertale

Postby Esperath » Tue Jan 05, 2016 3:34 pm

I was playing devil's advocate but go ahead and keep insulting me
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Esperath
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Re: Undertale

Postby Esperath » Tue Jan 05, 2016 3:36 pm

btw, you emphasize the other point that makes people hate Undertale; the rabid fanbase that lashes out at anyone who disagrees with them.
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Rico
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Re: Undertale

Postby Rico » Tue Jan 05, 2016 3:46 pm

Yes, clearly "ur dumb" is a serious insult representative of Undertale's fans rabidly lashing out.

Call off your goons, Toby Fox!

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Re: Undertale

Postby Rico » Tue Jan 05, 2016 3:49 pm

Also after a couple playthroughs I'm pretty sure the forced crit is more a hint at Chara than a real gotcha attempt.

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Esperath
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Re: Undertale

Postby Esperath » Tue Jan 05, 2016 3:50 pm

guess what, if you preface your comment with that, yes, I'll take it as a serious insult regardless of how it's spelled.
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Rico
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Re: Undertale

Postby Rico » Tue Jan 05, 2016 3:56 pm

That's your prerogative, I guess.

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Esperath
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Re: Undertale

Postby Esperath » Tue Jan 05, 2016 4:10 pm

Listen, you don't open any reasonable discussion with an insult, facetious or not, if you want someone to actually listen to what you have to say. It's what you do in Youtube comments, not here. This shit really pisses me off, and Rico defending it just makes it worse. So, beatbandit, don't address me like that in the future, playful or not.
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Friday
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Re: Undertale

Postby Friday » Tue Jan 05, 2016 4:14 pm

Also after a couple playthroughs I'm pretty sure the forced crit is more a hint at Chara than a real gotcha attempt.


Yeah, picked up on that as well. Gotcha aside, there's no real reason you'd hit so hard all the sudden.
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Esperath
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Re: Undertale

Postby Esperath » Tue Jan 05, 2016 5:09 pm

Friday wrote:
Also after a couple playthroughs I'm pretty sure the forced crit is more a hint at Chara than a real gotcha attempt.


Yeah, picked up on that as well. Gotcha aside, there's no real reason you'd hit so hard all the sudden.


It's probably a combination of gotcha, indicator of Chara's presence, and a means of getting the player to reset the game (and by extension, making them aware that there's some metagaming stuff going on very early when Flowey calls you out on it).

If you're looking at intent vs. outcome, many people are going to encounter the crit as a gotcha, some people are going to reset, and relatively few are going to learn enough about Chara to know what's going on. Even finishing True Pacifist doesn't really reveal that Chara can act through Frisk; you have to either actively pursue the genocide run or consume post-game content online to know about it.

(Just so it's clear, I intentionally killed Toriel my first time through and accepted it, so there was no "gotcha" moment for me personally. I knew that I couldn't get the true pacifist ending on my first playthrough, and that I'd miss out on second-game content if I played regular pacifist. I ended up getting Papyrus ending because he was the only boss I left alive.)
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MarsDragon
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Re: Undertale

Postby MarsDragon » Fri Jan 08, 2016 11:40 pm

My feeling about all of this is that discussion of Undertale is going to be a lot better in five or ten years when the hype has died down and people can look at it in hindsight.

Most important part of that sentence was "when the hype has died down".

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Re: Undertale

Postby Mongrel » Mon Jan 18, 2016 2:28 am

I wasn't OCD enough to call Papyrus or Papyrus & Undyne on the phone (i.e. I usually just forgot that there's phone dialogue on pretty much every screen up till the Core), so I was watching some videos with all the phone calls.

The phone call to papyrus (when you haven't befriended Undyne) outside Gerson's is probably the funniest one I missed:

IF YOU SEE A SHOP, YOU SHOULD STOP... DROP, AND ROLL
INTO SOME GREAT DEALS!!
BECAUSE WE'RE HAVING A FIRE SALE!!
AT MY IMAGINARY STORE, WHICH SELLS FLAMES.

I can imagine it as a line in an episode of Space Ghost C2C.

The lasagna one you get with solo papyrus outside L2 is pretty amazing too though.
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nosimpleway
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Re: Undertale

Postby nosimpleway » Mon Jan 18, 2016 4:29 am

Funny you should mention those.

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Esperath
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Re: Undertale

Postby Esperath » Thu Jan 21, 2016 1:34 pm



crossing the streams
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