Reading this Undertale LP fills you with determination.

[Friday]

Fun fact: Hard mode isn't Hard mode. Genocide is Hard mode.

[nosimpleway]

Resetting after Hard Mode doesn't give you any sort of guilt trip or fourth-wall break or anything. So, back to business.


In the middle of Flowey's introduction speech I realized I didn't have my screen capture software running, so I backed out of the game. Flowey calls you out on it if you do that, too.


The first neutral ending I got, I killed Toriel. Undyne became the empress and swore to hunt me down, since I couldn't befriend her. What happens if you get a neutral ending where Toriel survives?

I mean, I could go through the game without killing anything and just not date Papyrus, Undyne, or Alphys. That'd get me the neutral ending. But what's the point of playing through again if I'm just going to do the same thing over and over?

So I'm going to kill everyone except important story NPCs. As it turns out, the number of monsters in any given area is finite, and as you ruthlessly murder them, the encounter rate goes down. Until...


You start having encounters with no one at all. This replaces whatever background music was playing in the area with But Nobody Came, a bleak and desolate and ominous bit of background effect that really only sounds like any sort of melody when it's sped up to twelve times its usual tempo.


Going on a murder rampage is enough to out-spook Napstablook. He disappears from his napping spot as soon as you approach.


We've seen me not kill Toriel enough already, haven't we?

: You think you're really smart, don't you? In this world, it's kill or be killed. So you were able to play by your own rules.

: You spared the life of a single person. Hee hee hee. Froggit, Whimsun. Vegetoid, Loox. Migosp, Moldsmal. Think about those names. Do you think any of those monsters have families? Do you think any of them have friends?

: Each one could have been someone else's Toriel.

: Selfish brat. Somebody is dead because of you.

Flowey laughs and laughs before diving underground again.

[nosimpleway]

Things I've learned on a murdery run: monsters squeal and squeak in different ways when they die. Pokemon get different introductory cries that get pitch-adjusted when they faint, monsters in Undertale only make their sounds when they're dissolving to dust.

And you can in fact spare monsters when they're at low HP without having to ACT any particular sort of way. Toriel's sucker-punch is the exception, not the rule.








You can let Lesser Dog go after one pet, or keep petting until his neck stretches all the way around the screen. Likewise, you can keep petting Doggo before you let him go, until he gets so panicky that he loops around to being calm again.


You can also ring the bell on his guard station a couple of times to continue to tease him after the battle is over.


The snowman is as upset and mortified as you'd expect if you stand in front of him and eat the chunk of his body you'd been given.




Between bouts of unstoppable murder I manage to annoy Papyrus by trying to leave when he presents me with puzzles.

[nosimpleway]

Speaking of Lesser Dog, his head gets hidden behind the dialog box after a while, but if you are persistent he will poke out the other side.




It does not loop around again.


If you pester Papyrus for help, he will eventually confess that there's a puzzle bypass switch on the tree here.


You can end the fight with Greater Dog by ignoring it until it leaves you alone out of boredom.

[nosimpleway]

Whether it's an important character detail or just one informed by gameplay, but you cannot die in the fight against Papyrus. He's only the second boss, and the first one will swerve her bullets away from you to keep you safe, so this might just be a way to avoid the Game Over screen for a player who's still learning the ropes and was caught off-guard by the Blue Attack.

But it also kind of means that Papyrus has some pretty amazing control over his magic, considering that even Toriel can kill you by accident.

: I WILL NOW SEND YOU TO THE CAPTURE ZONE!! OR, AS SANS CALLS IT... OUR GARAGE??? YOU'RE IN THE DOGHOUSE NOW!!! NYEH HEH HEH HEH!!


Papyrus throws you into his coolshed until Undyne shows up to collect you. Papyrus, ever the gracious host, has provided a small dog bed, a chew toy, and a bowl of kibble.


A lot of Papyrus's friends in the area are dogs (which is probably easy when you're made of bones), and he only clapped eyes on a real human a few minutes ago. He probably doesn't know how wildly inappropriate his accommodations are. He's still pretty bad at fences though.


Papyrus is relieved when you show back up again.


If he captures you again, Papyrus claims he's improved things such that you won't even want to leave.


By cutting up what is undoubtedly a water sausage out of the bun into the bowl of kibble.





: BUT! IT JUST WON'T WORK ON ME! I AM THE PERSISTENTEST! AND IF YOU THINK YOU ARE PERSISTENTESTER... THAT IS WRONG! GRAMMATICALLY WRONG! BECAUSE THE CORRECT FORM WOULD BE... NOT AS PERSISTENTEST AS PAPYRUS, THE PERSISTENTESTEST! I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS LESSON. NYEH HEH HEH HEH HEH HEH HEH!!!


It's gotten to the point where Papyrus has to wonder if this isn't just some desperate cry for help.


Despite being the persistentestest, the next time you run into Papyrus he will admit he's kind of sick of capturing you over and over again, and you can get to Waterfall without ever winning against him. The rest of the scenario plays out the same.

[nosimpleway]

By which I mean you can go to Papyrus's house and have your skeleton date afterward, too.

Papyrus stands on the left side of the house when you're investigating his living room. When you enter the kitchen, Papyrus runs over to the right side so he can narrate from there. Enter and exit rapidly and he'll run back and forth, which is worth a new message when you talk to him.


If you press [C] to bring up the Dating HUD before being prompted, there's a message for that too.

Fast forwarding a bit...


Once you've gotten to the end of the bridge, Undyne is throwing spears blind. She can't actually hit you on this screen.


Napstablook remembers how you brandished that stick at them back in the RUINS, so even though they save you from the Mad Dummy it's super-awkward. Oddly, you can go hang out with them and play Thundersnail anyway.

[nosimpleway]

My crimes are various in this run. Undyne is justifiably pissed.


Pff, I can take it.


The first round of spear-throwing always comes only from the top of the screen. The shield defaults to facing upward. If you intentionally get hit by moving the shield away...

: When I said face towards danger... I meant face towards the bullets!

Same attack, all from the top. Get hit again...

: Look. I gave you a spear to block the bullets with. Do I have to explain this any more clearly?

Same attack. Get hit again...

: WHAT ARE YOU DOING? JUST FACE UPWARDS!!! IT'S NOT HARD!

Do it again...

: I wanted this to be a fair fight. I thought if I If I beat you like this...

Repetition hers.

: It'd truly show how strong monsters can be.

: BUT NOW??? I DON'T CARE! I'M NOT YOUR FREAKING KINDERGARTEN TEACHER! Unless your kindergarten teacher... DOES THIS!


What follows is a storm of bullets tougher than anything she throws at you otherwise. At the end, she swaps the soul color back to red for her usual sneaky attack, allowing you to run away and continue the merciful path.

Fast forwarding a bit more...


Now that I'm sure Alphys and Mettaton are just screwing with me, I call their bluff and get every question wrong. The first wrong answer saps half your HP. Each further attack takes less and less, until you're down to 1 HP when asked about Alphys's crush.


Speaking of, let's try a new option there.

: ...WITH BRUTAL COMBAT CAPABILITIES? SIMPLE. TO IMPRESS MR. ASGORE DREEMURR, OF COURSE! OR AS ALPHYS CALLS HIM... "MR. DREAMY." THOSE STRONG ARMS... THAT LUSTROUS BEARD... LIKE ALL THOSE WHO CREATE WEAPONS, SHE CRAVES THE TENDER EMBRACE OF A BURLY MAN. CAN SHE TRULY BE BLAMED?

Sometimes you've just gotta stop going after big fuzzy boss monsters, and get to know a cute fish.


This is also the part where I realize that Alphys's mandatory cellphone upgrade is what allows you to dial into the dimensional boxes and access the extended inventory space that implies. Because I am smart and possess human-level pattern recognition.


I run into every egg and splash of milk I can, run out of fuel, and am conveniently saved from death when Mettaton has to cut to a commercial. Alphys hems and haws over accidentally making the challenge too difficult I mean wait nevermind before allowing me to continue.


Don't forget, between these cutscenes I'm still being a homicidal asshole.

[nosimpleway]

If you stall out on the bomb-defusing challenge, Alphys will still have already "hacked" the big bomb into not exploding by the time you're done, but she beats herself up even more over the "danger" you were in.


Most monsters dissolve into dust with a squeak or a roar when they're killed. Tsunderplane crashes and explodes.


Stall all you want after the colored tile maze. Mettaton won't hit you enough to drop you below 1 HP, and will keep implying that your only hope is to push the yellow button and shoot him.


Between his estranged father and Amalgamate mother, Snowdrake is a lot more than the regular random encounter he appears to be at first glance.


I guess one of these playthroughs I'll have to screw around with my system clock and see if that triggers whatever's supposed to happen here. Not this time, though.


Mettaton makes some weird faces if you hit him. It's worth doing a couple of times, though, since the Violence bonus from lashing out is worth 300, 250, and 200 ratings points the first few times you do it.




GO VISIT YOUR COUSIN YOU PIECE OF SHIT

[nosimpleway]

die die die 666 fornicate die die die die die


Flowey praises my ability to be a ruthless murderer, of course. Doesn't stop him from enacting his plan of absorbing the souls and killing me again and again in a time loop.


At the end of the Photoshop Flowey fight, when you're at his mercy, you can suicide by running into his bullet ring. He loads a previously-unseen save slot if you do, and eventually gets annoyed enough to comment on it.


And once he's in flower form again, I go ahead and off the bastard.


He seems pretty happy about it, all told.


Up until his face melts off.

[nosimpleway]

And the post-credits phonecall...

: so... it's been a while. the queen returned, and attempted to resume ruling the underground. she enstated a new policy... all the humans who fall here would be treated not as enemies... but as friends.

By the two or three dozen or so monsters that remain, I suppose.

: but people REALLY didn't like that policy. because of you, not only was the king gone... but the human souls had gone missing as well... along with the lives of countless citizens. nobody wanted to see that happen ever again.

: so the people started a rebellion to overthrow the queen. undyne spearheaded the revolution, of course.

Nobody spearheads like Undyne.

: she was pretty mad after what happened to asgore. she threw the queen out of the castle with her strength.

Given that it's Undyne, she may have literally thrown Toriel out of the castle.

: then she became the empress of the underground... and banished the queen back to the ruins. seems like undyne's... hmmm... even more vehement about destroying humanity than ASGORE.

: but hey! it's not all bad! she's not so lonely anymore. me and papyrus go and visit her... we bring her books from the library, or play games... we've even convinced her to leave sometimes. as long as me or papyrus stay behind to watch for humans. but papyrus loves doing that.

: YEAH!!! I LOVE STANDING IN FOR THE QUEEN!!! I'VE BEEN PRACTICING FOR WHEN A HUMAN COMES. I'M GOING TO BE A GREAT MOM!!!

: BY THE WAY, WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO?

: oh, nobody.

: OH, COOL. TELL THEM I SAY HI!!!

: papyrus says hi. well, i hope things are better where you are. later.

And that's that. So... if you leave all the major characters alive, Toriel gets deposed as queen and Undyne becomes empress on a crusade to destroy humanity. If you kill Toriel, Undyne becomes empress and goes on a crusade to destroy humanity. Maybe I should have stuck with the pacifist ending after all.

[François]

You know, you'd expect that at some point I'd stop being surprised at how many sets of variables are explicitly prepared for in this game. But this point has not come today.

And once he's in flower form again, I go ahead and off the bastard.

During this read, iTunes shuffled to Bohemian Rhapsody. As if on cue, "mama, just killed a man, put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he's dead".

[Friday]

Undyne automatically becomes Queen and leads a crusade to kill humanity if you don't either kill or befriend her.

There's a flowchart of possible neutral endings and how they all piece together out there, somewhere.

Killing Papyrus always results in sans thinking you're a piece of shit, for example, regardless of your other actions. He's willing to forgive you killing anyone else; after all, they are all trying to kill you, except Alphys, but you can't ever kill her. Papyrus as you demonstrated does not have a single murderous bone in his body.

*zoom in, wink*

[nosimpleway]

Huh, so there is.

A flowchart, I mean.

I could transcribe it here and it'd save me a bit of time replaying and recording, although I wouldn't have a guide for which faces go with which line of dialog like I usually do. I mean, it's all text anyway. I could just go sans: and type it out.

[Esperath]

Killing Papyrus always results in sans thinking you're a piece of shit, for example, regardless of your other actions.

nope, you can get shitty dog ending and sans thanks you.

shitty dog ending = kill all bosses (toriel, papyrus, undyne, mettaton, asgore) but no one else

[nosimpleway]

With Flowey dead -- and his death sticks with game save resets apparently??? -- the only introduction you get to the underground is Toriel walking up and saying hello.


If you rush to the wrong switch before Toriel's in position at the far side of the room, you get a message. Toriel scolds that she went out of her way to mark the right one for you...


There's still more ways to mess with the dummy battle...


That Mad Dummy can call you out on later.


When Froggit asks how you feel about yellow names, you can respond that you don't like them at all. Froggit will tell everyone to get rid of the yellow names, then.


If you ask to bring them back, Froggit gets a little annoyed that he went through all that trouble, but it's too late anyway. Everyone already threw out their yellow names. But last year pink names were in fashion...


So everyone can drag those back out instead.


You can find the yellow names once you hit the garbage dump section in Waterfall.


Flowey's not around after the Toriel fight either. Purely to check in I turned around at the bridge in Snowdin to see if he still dove underground as soon as he scrolled onscreen, and... yep! So Flowey is alive and still watching me, regardless of his attempt to keep a low profile.


I like these two.

[nosimpleway]

You can save Monster Kid, you can rush Undyne. I've done those things already. What happens if you just stand and watch? Monster Kid loses her grip and falls, and Undyne dives down to save her.




I call bullshit on this one! The only person I've killed so far in this run is Toriel, and there's no possible way Undyne could know about that.


Toriel isn't the only person I'm gonna kill, though.






Even in death, Undyne doesn't give up. She holds together out of pure willpower.


And her attacks come fast and furious.


Each turn she taunts you and pretends like she's not slowly losing cohesion.


But her attacks get slower and slower, and the patterns simpler and simpler to block.

[nosimpleway]

Sheesh, I thought she was gone already.


There are longer spaces between each letter in her text box appearing onscreen, and the blip of her letters printing gets lower and lower in pitch.


If she's hanging on through pure determination, and now she's losing her form, does this mean she's going to melt into an Amalgamate?


No, guess not.


Papyrus calls when he normally does, clueless to what just happened.

Oddly, the WELCOME TO HOTLAND sign isn't lighted and doesn't scroll when you kill Undyne.

[nosimpleway]

On a lighter note, there's one more option I haven't chosen for the quiz show.

: DR. ALPHYS HAS A CRUSH ON... THE UNKNOWABLE. YOU SEE, ALPHYS BELIEVES THERE IS SOMEONE OUT THERE. SOMEONE WATCHING HER. SOMEONE SHE THINKS IS "CUTE" AND "INTERESTING". HELLO, THEORETICAL PERSON. DR. ALPHYS LIKES YOU. TOO BAD YOU ARE NOT REAL.

: *DERISIVE LAUGHTRACK*

: H-hey, I've done research about this! There are alternate universes out there! S-someday, maybe, I could meet them...

: YOU SAID THE EXACT SAME THING ABOUT "MEW MEW KISSY CUTIE". BUT I'LL GIVE YOU THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT. PERSON, IF YOU'RE OUT THERE... HOW ABOUT GIVING US A SIGN, RIGHT NOW?


There is a long, awkward pause.

: THAT SETTLES THAT, DOESN'T IT?

[nosimpleway]

During the bomb defusing sequence, it's possible to catch the Extremely Agile Glass Of Water bomb while it's still flying around. Normally you have to defuse the other five before Alphys traps it in the center of the area with EM fields or some ridiculous nonsense.


Oh, thanks, I'd wondered why Tsunderplane did that when they're let go. I mean, that still doesn't actually explain anything...


Anyway. Did you know the savegame files for Undertale are in plain text? If you know where to look and what to change, you can fill your inventory with anything you like, or level up, or bump up your hit points...


Or save yourself hours of grinding just to be able to afford a marked-up jug of Spider Cider.



A voice: They said a human wearing a striped shirt will come through.

A voice: I heard that they love to stomp on them.

A voice: I heard that they like to tear their legs off.


Buying from Muffet's own bake sale means she thanks you for your generosity instead of attacking.

[nosimpleway]

There's another enemy that can be spared by using the Stick, and it's not on you might expect.


An option mentioned but not shown previously.


Yep.


Not really. It's why I spared you the first time. But if I'm going to replay the game a bunch of times I'm gonna try different things, ya know?

: Hee hee hee. No.
Every time you load your SAVE, I'll come back. And every time you try to get a happy ending... I'll be there to tear it away! Ha ha ha!!


Anyway, Flowey absorbs the souls and vanishes. There's no Photoshop Flowey fight.

I've seen the headcanon that, in the true pacifist ending, you save Asriel too. He never turns back into Flowey. It really is the best for everyone.

But he's already in Flowey form the next time you boot up the game. It doesn't take long for him to revert. So while everyone else's happiness is permanent until you rip them out of the timeline in a reset, Asriel is doomed to soulless flower form anyway.

So yeah, we can keep playing this game. There's no way to win that's actually best for everyone





: so, it's been a while. since you left, things have... gotten interesting. with ASGORE gone, the people looked to undyne to rule... but she was nowhere to be found. so mettaton just kind of... took over?

: he's brainwashed everyone with his stupid TV show. and made the underground into his personal paradise. it's honestly... kinda disturbing. as for me? oh, yeah. i'm his agent.

: HEY THERE, DARLING! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR HARD WORK... THANKS TO YOU, THE UNDERGROUND IS MORE EXCITING THAN EVER! OOH LA LA... STATUES... MONUMENTS TO MY BEAUTY... FLOWERS IN THE ARRANGEMENT OF MY NAME... HEDGES IN THE SHAPE OF MY SMILE... UNDER MY RULE, THE UNDERGROUND'S PROBLEMS ARE OVER, BABY!

: CROWDING? DREARINESS??? WHO NEEDS THE SUN WHEN YOU'VE GOT THE SPOTLIGHT!!? ECONOMIC COLLAPSE? EDUCATION PROBLEMS? WHAT!? EVERYTHING'S COVERED IN GOLDEN GLITTER! THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS, BEAUTIFUL!

: AND, I'VE ENSTATED A NEW POLICY ON HUMANITY. IF A HUMAN FALLS DOWN HERE... THEY CAN JOIN MY FAN CLUB FOR FREE!

: OH, YOU MIGHT BE WONDERING ABOUT ALPHYS.

Hadn't occurred to me.

: DON'T WORRY!
I BUILT A STATUE OF HER, TOO!

: ...REALLY THOUGH. I REALIZED I WAS... NOT THE GREATEST TO HER. SO, I WENT TO APOLOGIZE. AND, TO ASK HER TO HELP ME RULE. ...BUT I COULDN'T FIND HER. TRUST ME. I LOOKED.

: ...ANYWAY. I HOPE YOUR LIFE AFTER MEETING ME... HAS BEEN WORTH LIVING. IT MUST BE A STRUGGLE. PLEASE, THINK OF ME ALWAYS. JUST CONSTANTLY. THINK OF ME POSING. BEAUTIFULLY... OH YESSSS!!!! OH, MY OTHER AGENT WANTS TO TALK.

: HEY!!! IT'S ME, PAPYRUS!!

And here I thought I could turn off Caps Lock again.

: IMAGINE ME WEARING COOL GLASSES, AND A SUIT. AND IMAGINE SANS WEARING SUNGLASSES BEING A BOUNCER.

Both of those are kinda hard to imagine, honestly.

: THAT'S OUR LIFE NOW!!! IT'S SO COOL!!! THINGS HAVE GOTTEN WAY BETTER SINCE YOU CAME HERE!!!

: WELL, MINUS THE FACT THAT EVERYTHING SUCKS... FOR ANYONE THAT DOESN'T WORSHIP METTATON. AND MINUS THE FACT THAT MY FRIEND UNDYNE IS MISSING. WHO KNOWS WHERE SHE WENT. SHE NEVER LIKED METTATON'S SHOW. PEOPLE WHO DON'T TEND TO KIND OF... DISAPPEAR.

: I MISS HER A LOT SOMETIMES.

: IF YOU SEE HER, CAN YOU TELL HER I SAID HI? THANKS! SEE YOU LATER!

Man, killing people just makes things worse and worse, huh?

I mean, I dunno what I expected, but still.