this was my first playthrough, no I have not done any other endings, so lets just talk about this route. Also yes I know I'm really late here, I was told it was weird there was someone this late playing it multiple times
...but yea, games great Lol
as I described in my stream, this game feels like an adult swim short, one of those that aired at 3am and is 15 minutes long, those shows make no sense and are just a bunch of weird shit happening.
BUT Undertale had the talent to only DIP into that insanity and still be coherent. Sometimes.
It goes beyond a parody of RPGs, its a celebration of RPGs, It takes every RPG trope and convention and twists it, almost every single time. Expectations are always broken. Long side quests go no where but it always feel humorous like "Damn I fell for that" instead of being pissed off like in a normal RPG
I seriously could no believe this game at times
but every so often, it revealed it had the chops to tell characters and story. It was very apparent very early on. Toriel was the first step, she just seemed like the friendly tutorial person that helps you out and you start your adventure from there. (Flowey was technically the first one but they were pushed away really fast though)
I even had the feeling at the time what she was doing was really off, she just kept saying this was your new home out of no where and was trying to take care of you almost FORCEFULLY, I was questioning it immediately but I'll admit, I was just being a smartass, but then the game gave you the option to ACTUALLY question it and once she broke down, it turns out she was indeed trying to hide something
so this is where she betrays you right? NO! The game actually MAINTAINS she was genuine, but she gave her many layers and it turns out you are definitely not the first human down here, so she was trying to protect you. She even started calling herself pathetic, the mother figure is "human" (not literally) and had her own feelings of doubt and failure just like anyone else, and it was almost sinister to see her want to destroy the door and FORCE you to stay, but all of her actions were done for your own good, as I said, she MAINTAINED her motherliness.
and that was just TO START. This KEPT happening and I was stunned everytime.
I can keep going on, but yea, this game...was just in another level.
Toby Fox? I don't want to say hes a mad genius, but at my most cynical many years ago, I even thought "Damn I wish I made a Earthbound clone and made millions of dollars and had my character in smash"
Nah
nah
there is no way in a million years I could've done this
and good ol TF was just a music writer with no knowhow about game development? I have an appreciation for this person. I cannot believe someone was able to look at GAMING from so far above to sculpt this game with so much care and attention and affection for the medium.
I won't get too into it but I did like Earthbound but it was always missing something to me, it wasn't fun to play IMO, and the game had ALOT of frustrating things to it, I dont think its as perfect as people make it out to be
I am not saying Undertale is perfection either, but I feel like this is was EB was trying to do, its not a fair comparison, this game came out like 15 years after EB, I know, but still, this game's charm is unmatched
I compared the gameplay to punch out, PO is a boxing game but its a puzzle game at heart, I said this was the PO of RPGs, trying to figure out how to talk down monsters for pacifism was tricky at times
This game made you double guess EVERYTHING, I AM a person who overthinks things and I was QUADRUPLE guessing things
nothing is consistent, maybe some people will find this annoying but it fit the game.
Now the ending
What the FUCK
I DID manage to figure out that Flowey was Asriel really early on, but the game SCREWING with you and shattering the fourth wall was WTF
There was a double subversion here
you name the file, you can name it after yourself like most people and you assume its your character
Turns out its actually one of the humans before you, the first one I think.
(The character you use is Frisk)
"oh okay, so its a different character thats neat"
But then you find out it was THIS character that was doing all of the evil within Flowey/Asriel
then it comes full circle when you beat the game
Flowey says you should leave them all in their happiness, if you start a new file, you will ruin everything. You will be exactly like Flowey wanted to be. Then...he calls you by your name that you put down
YOU were the human afterall. It will come to pass and evil will truly conquer because you want to replay it. FUCK you Toby Fox LOL
its even more sad because I will attempt the Genocide run next.
Good GOD. I AM evil
and even quotes he said came to mind, when you were fighting him he was saying "I will kill you over and over and over 1,000,000 times"
Its exaggerated, but he was TRULY talking like a player of a game who replays stuff.
oh my GOD bro
This game, I don't even know man.
And heres the thing, I"M NOT DONE YET, like I said, I still have to do the genocide one. Now we can see OTHER SIDES of these characters that we were not exposed to. its exciting because WE ARE NOT DONE WITH THEIR DEVELOPMENT, there is MORE to these monsters.
They were ALREADY layered and deep enough, but good god man, I cant...I DON"T KNOW MAN
https://i.imgur.com/qBpLe47.png
http://i.imgur.com/25MHSn1.gif