Undertale/Deltarune

There is a huge difference between games that call out the player and games that call out the protagonist.

Undertale only does the former when the player actually deserves it.

This song needs more love.

Yeah, what they do is examine implications of different game mechanics or player behavior from in game perspective.

While I would argue that games aren't "meant to be fun escapism" per say, that would be getting off topic, but yeah, I don't think dev of any game sets out to make game that makes players feel bad. Maybe think more perhaps, but not feel bad.

Also I don't think any of those games particularly call out "game industry" itself?

Edited by SpookyMask on Sep 5th 2019 at 6:13:04 PM

I get what you’re saying, but we have the trope Blamed for Being Railroaded for a reason. Spec Ops: The Line is probably the most notorious, though, and the only one I know of that takes it too far.

Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Sep 5th 2019 at 11:17:26 AM

SoundCloud

Because I'm supposed to feel oh so bad if i kill something i know isn't real, no matter how much the game thinks i'm supposed to feel that way, right?

Edited by Demongodofchaos2 on Sep 5th 2019 at 11:15:49 AM

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x5 Yeah i second that most of that list doesn't make sense. Fallout doesn't do that, metal gear doesn't do that outside of maybe MGS 2, shadow of the colossus doesn't do that, prey certainly doesn't do that, braid doesn't do that, for just those I played and can be sure about, so that rant feels kinda out of nowhere.

at this point it's kinda looking like not wanting stories that aren't unambiguously happy.

Also pretty sure that reducing video games to "fun escapism" is more than overly reductive.

Edited by Yumil on Sep 5th 2019 at 5:22:42 PM

"when you stare too long into the abyss, Xehanort takes advantage of the distraction to break into your house and steal all your shit."

If that’s your approach to gaming, then maybe just avoid games where the tagline amounts to “Yay, pacifism!”

Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Sep 5th 2019 at 11:18:29 AM

SoundCloud

If you're just going to go the "but it's not real", then you might as well not bother with meta commentary in the first place.

Edited by LordVatek on Sep 5th 2019 at 11:21:14 AM

This song needs more love.

Not at all.

I like games where writing is strong enough and consistent enough where it deserves that quality. Pacifists games are fine.

Saying they are inherently superior is dumb, though.

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Metal Gear Solid 2, Shadows of the Colossus, Braid, and Bioshock I would argue are. Fallout and Prey less so, not judging the player as directly or judgmentally. DDLC lures you in with "this is a game" and then says "but it isn't now suffer for your ignorance" I felt bad for turning the game on.

The idea of "here is the video game looking back at you, expecting you to be the ultimate dirtbag, and sometimes railroading you into the ultimate dirtbag route" is annoying.

It feels like a lot of games around a certain point in time were experimenting and, in some cases, abusing their ability to address the player and call them out. In some cases like Braid, Metal Gear, Shadows of the Colossus, Spec Ops The Line, and for some Undertale itself - it's baked into the game's plot so that you can't avoid it.

How many people killed Toriel by accident and restarted to fix it, just to hear Flowey chew you out for knowing how save files work? You can't spare Asgore. If you play Undertale like a normal RPG and kill monsters who randomly decide to impede you, and are in fact capable of killing you, you're a bad person.

Edited by Soble on Sep 5th 2019 at 8:32:51 AM

I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!

Games that have you play morally ambiguous roles can be super affecting. Bastion was a game that hit me very hard because of the experience of knowing that what you're doing is in the wrong, but justifying it to yourself with the promise of fixing it later.

The game makes the assumption that you are invested in the story and characters. In that sense they are real, or at least the feelings you may have about them are real. People do get upset when their favorite characters die in fiction, even if it’s not real. Gerry Conway got hate mail and death threats for killing Gwen Stacy for example.

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x3 Braid definitely isn't about that because there's no place for the player in it. it's just the story, and it's told through gameplay first. Braid makes no judgement about the player for playing the game.

Same goes for shadow of the colossus. there's no judgement of the player involved, just a sad ending in not particularly upbeat story.

If anything, prey or fallout are more judgemental, but so is skyrim by that same definition cause that's not judging the player, that's making branching story paths.

As for undertale, I don't really see how the murderous psycopath mocking you for actually caring about people and undoing your mistakes is supposed to be mocking the player and not establishing the themes of the game and characterizing people. the guy spends literally all of his screentime shitting on you but the one time it looks remotely meta it gets to you ? come on.

Edited by Yumil on Sep 5th 2019 at 5:28:39 PM

"when you stare too long into the abyss, Xehanort takes advantage of the distraction to break into your house and steal all your shit."

Undertale doesn't actually say much about the moral implications of violence in video games, honestly. Despite its appearances, the approach it takes is more nuanced than people give it credit for. After all, a lot of the characters try to kill *you* if you get too violent against them. They're not portrayed as being wrong for doing that. And Sans does acknowledge that some of your kills may have been in self defense (although, since you have the power to reset time, maybe you could find another way?).

Anyway, Flowey is a jerk. He'll chew you out for almost anything you do. He'll chew you out for being violent OR for being a pacifist. He's just trying to get your goat, either way.

"when you stare too long into the abyss, Xehanort takes advantage of the distraction to break into your house and steal all your shit."

@Shiny Cotton Candy: Well yeah, but I don't actually like Spec Ops: The Line's execution even though I understand the point.

I mean, point of that game is that you COULD have stopped playing the game at any point, but didn't, its not actually about your ingame choices. The games whose meta point has to do with quitting the game gets kinda old to me fast because its kinda like killing a dog in sad movie, its not actually hard thing to do.

Its one of those things that is genuinely not fun and genuinely is genius point because well, most people wouldn't continue playing game they don't find fun where you do horrible things that offend you :P So its kinda like "well why DIDN'T you quit while you could?" But I kinda consider it cheap because you had to buy the game and buying game already makes you invested into finishing it.

(Undertale on otherhand never tells you to play genocide route, incentive you to do it, tell you that it exist or otherwise encourage to do it. Only people on internet really do that :P)

@demongodofchaos: Undertale doesn't say its superior for being pacifist game though nor do pacifist games usually say you are bad person for playing violent games

Kinda saying that "Oh no, I should feel bad for fictional characters" is kinda saying that you don't want to get invested into stories or characters in first place.

Yeah, I think lots of people genuinely don't realize that Flowey is untrustworthy as narrator of the message because his whole character is about mocking you and trying to make you feel bad

@Soble: Still don't get Fallout's presence in that list?

Edited by SpookyMask on Sep 5th 2019 at 6:33:11 PM

Yeah nobody here claimed anything close to "pacifist games are inherently better" so not sure where that came from.

"when you stare too long into the abyss, Xehanort takes advantage of the distraction to break into your house and steal all your shit."

First thing he does is lie to you and try to kill you

Forever liveblogging the Avengers

Spec Ops is a perfect example of my point, for exactly the reasons you listed. A game that actually wants you not to play it is going to get a widely negative reaction.

Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Sep 5th 2019 at 11:35:17 AM

SoundCloud

Undertale is on the blamed for being railroaded page even though the writeup grudgingly admits that it’s not actually railroading

Forever liveblogging the Avengers

oh goody, the sound of shoehorning examples. I didn't missed that.

"when you stare too long into the abyss, Xehanort takes advantage of the distraction to break into your house and steal all your shit."

Gonna also say that Undertale's message isn't entirely "consistent". Different characters have different opinions on things. Toriel doesn't blame you if you kill her— she's at least somewhat relieved you have the strength to survive, and she realizes she "forced" you into this situation.

Mettaton also doesn't blame you— he realizes he brought it on himself.

Undyne, by contrast, thinks your existence is a crime. Other characters only judge you if you've killed innocents. And some just hate all humans.

The genocide route judging you harshly is because you kill *everyone.* What's it supposed to say? "Nah, it was cool when you killed the guy who was offering you mercy and tried to kill a completely defenseless child"? It's trying to be immersive, it won't break that to reassure you you're not *literally* evil.

Besides, I'd argue the true moral of the genocide route isn't that it's wrong to do it so much as...

Well. We have reached the absolute, after all. There's nothing left to do here.

Edited by Ishntknew on Sep 5th 2019 at 9:00:59 AM

If I recall Undyne says something like she knew she had to capture you and she was working herself up to it, looking for excuses (hence why even if you don't kill anyone, she berates you... for supposedly being urealistically goody-two-shoes).

As for the genocide ending, it's also that to achieve that you have to go extremely out of your way to hunt down every single monster. You'll never get it if you just go ahead and only fight what actually gets in your way. That is the kind of intent (and especially only doing it for the sake of doing it, because it's there and it "completes a set") that the game ruthlessly calls out.

Also, food for thought: if you do a genocide run and do one again, Chara/the Fallen Child is genuinely flabbergasted as to why you would destroy something you probably previously loved and agree to a deal with them only to destroy the same thing once again.

Yeah, pretty much. The game presents "okay, fight her a little but then hold short of actually killing her" as a viable option, and then changes the mechanics without warning so that trying to do that kills her. That's pretty much the definition of screwing with the player.

No, the game never warned me that suddenly my attacks would do ten times as much damage and one-shot the character I was trying to spare. I was actively trying to find ways around trying to kill her. One of the things I was trying was "maybe I can get her to low HP and then she'll be willing to back down". But nope! I tripped some hitting "lolno" flag and an attack that should have been safe instead killed her.

I can accept that as "yeah, the game is messing with you because it wants you to reload an earlier save" (though I'm not thrilled with it in terms of the experience it delivers), but I definitely do not accept the idea that "it's your fault, the game warned you, you knew what would happen".

Oh! That's much less of an issue, then. Something I read left me with the impression that it went full Happy Ending Override and prevented you from seeing the Pacifist ending at all. My bad on that.

My point is exactly that nothing needs to be hard. I do not enjoy difficulty in games. I did not enjoy Undertale in part because I found it difficult and therefore frustrating. This seems counter to Undertale's focus on narrative and its themes of player choice. I think the game would be better if it were easier, and allowing for more healing items would be a simple way to make it easier without otherwise affecting the experience.

Pretty much this. The minute you get meta and start talking about the player rather than the character, you lose any weight for moral criticism, because the player is aware that it's just a game and nothing they're doing has any real consequences. The character in a no mercy run is a Complete Monster who's murdering everyone they encounter for basically no reason, but the player had done nothing wrong because it's a video game and no one was actually harmed. Trying to call out the player for doing terrible things in-game falls flat because it's simultaneously acknowledging that the the game isn't real and giving the player's in-game actions moral weight as if their in-game consequences were real.

You can't half-break the fourth wall. You can come at it from the perspective of the characters within the story, or you can come at it from the meta-perspective as a player playing a video game, but mixing the two doesn't really work.

I'd argue that the fact that the route exists is encouragement to play it in and of itself. The fact that there's content there which can't be experienced any other way means that people will play that way — either for the challenge, for the 100% completion, or just because they love the game so much they want to see all of it.

Undertale understands this and then tells those players that they're bad people.

Meanwhile, if you actually want to discourage people from playing a certain way, a much better method is to just make it unrewarding. Subnautica did this with killing creatures — they're meant to be obstacles to avoid or escape from, not enemies to destroy. So dead creatures just... stop moving. They don't drop loot, they don't give you a Cosmetic Award, they don't even play an interesting death animation.

If the game wants to have a discussion about Video Game Cruelty Potential and the moral ramifications thereof, why is it entirely the player's fault for playing the game? Why doesn't the developer bear any responsibility for making the no mercy run possible in the first place?

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Why doesn't the developer bear any responsibility for making the no mercy run possible in the first place?

wat

It's almost like conflating in-game actions with real-world morality is ridiculous.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.