Undertale: a good enough game

Today is Undertale's 10th anniversary. In case you weren't aware, this game used to be a cornerstone of my online identity; I used its sprites as my avatars and cherry-picked its flavor text for my social media bios. I cared about this game a lot, and I still feel the shockwaves of its emotional impact on me when I revisit it. So, today's anniversary seems like an appropriate time to write about the thesis statement that's been brewing in my head: Undertale was a good enough game to become my all-time favorite game, at least for a couple years.

The game wasn't perfect, or anywhere close. I suspect many of the people who hype it up to this degree are allowing their perception to be colored by the game's context - factoids like its miniscule team (not "solo dev" as is commonly claimed), Toby's background being primarily in music rather than games, and the indie success narrative it helped to weave. There's a time and place where these details are relevant, but it's not going to be the pitch or the review (not that this blog post is either of those things).

I don't mean to deny the game's intrinsic merits, though; Undertale being "good enough" implies that it is also, on its own terms, good. As a plain old videogame, it brings some interesting ideas to the table, particularly during combat. The dialogue and pacing are both solid, though with plenty of room for improvement. And its soundtrack is, of course, stellar.

But none of these qualities are quite what I would point to if someone asked me why Undertale was my favorite game for so long. My answer is simple, though highly personal: the emotional climax of the pacifist route struck a chord that I desperately needed to feel at that time.

This part's about myself

2015 was a complicated year for me. I graduated college, started my first real "industry" job, and moved in with my soon-to-be ex. My friends were exclusively online and, as I recall, exclusively at arm's length from me. There was a stretch of a couple months where I cried myself to sleep every other night. I felt broken; I questioned if I was unlovable. You know, standard early 20s depression stuff.

What I really needed at the time was a therapist, or at least a better way to confide in friends than a private Twitter account. What I got instead was a cutscene where you hug a sad, kinda-dead-but-it's-complicated goat kid.

Fiction though it may be, this was the closest thing to a heartfelt hug I had experienced all year. I cried and cried, and barely had the words to explain why. Undertale marked the start of my recovery from this low point in my life.

And that's in spite of the game!

Here's the thing: I barely understood what the fuck was going on during this sequence.

Sorry, "Asriel Dreemurr"? Is this like, Asgore's final form? Or, oh, was that the name those random monsters told me about on my way to the throne room? Because that happened yesterday in real life and I didn't know what relevance their story had to anything to know what tidbits of information to retain. Is that the same kid as the mysterious voice in those True Lab tapes? Am I the same kid from those tapes???

The way this part of the story is set up I would describe, mostly pejoratively, as clever. It all holds up to scrutiny after a couple plays, or once your game has a wiki to reference. But on my first playthrough, on the first week of the game's release, I had none of those things. I was completely lost. It was only after I went back to play the game again, with the context of a couple reddit trawls & wiki reads, that the true emotional weight of the scene finally settled in my head. It still hit on that first playthrough, but it's kind of a miracle that my utter confusion didn't get in the way.

And this isn't just a problem with Asriel's story. The whole gotcha where you "name the fallen human", see it in the UI during every battle, and then find out that you actually named the first human who fell instead of the one you've been controlling this whole time? None of that clicked on first playthrough. I don't even think I would've figured it on my second playthrough without reading supplementary materials about the game.

Most characters' plot threads weren't nearly as convoluted as Asriel and Chara's, but much of the main cast has characterization issues of their own. Near the end of the pacifist route, I was informed that I had "befriended" all of the other main characters, and they talked about me as such. I hadn't said more than 10 prompt-based words to any of these monsters, and the "dates" a few of us went on were just extremely silly (yet mandatory, as I would learn) cutscenes.

I see what the game wants me to feel; I just don't think I earned any of it. Should any of these characters consider me their friend? Maybe Toriel, even though she accidentally¹ killed me in battle and then left me to die in the underground (god forbid a woman does anything). Maaaybe Papyrus, given that he was even more careful about never killing me (and is emotionally naive enough that him believing we're friends feels in-character). But the rest of the cast singing my praises right before the Asriel fight just felt weird.

I will concede that I don't know how to solve this problem without at least doubling the length of the game. The crux of it is that Undertale isn't anywhere near long enough for a silent protagonist to develop a meaningful relationship with the other characters. That's not to say that Undertale's short length was the only issue with its writing, though; hell, I'd argue that Deltarune Chapter 1 develops its cast more thoroughly than Undertale's entire pacifist route, despite being less than half as long! Sure, Undertale had to tie up all the loose threads in one self-contained experience, while Deltarune Chapter 1 had the luxury of setting up plot beats to revisit in any of the next 6 chapters. All I'm saying is that the story Undertale was trying to tell needed more dialogue - more time & circumstances for the characters to develop - to really earn the emotional weight it swings around.

But, like, it's still a good game

So, the part of the game that had the greatest impact on me is marred by some glaring flaws. So what? It still succeeded in tugging at my heartstrings! Wherever the narrative didn't quite resonate, there was always something to fill in the gap. That something could've been a joke that landed at just the right time, a fourth-wall break that snapped me out of the gamer's trance, or a song that conveyed the emotions the story didn't have time to tell.

I'll always remember Asgore shattering the Mercy button, and the catharsis of seeing it pieced back together after defeating him. I'll always remember how genuinely upsetting the Photoshop Flowey fight was, and how I actually had to think about the Fight / Mercy option after defeating him (in a game that's all about picking Mercy over Fight). And I'll always, always remember how hugging Asriel in the game felt like receiving a hug in real life.

It's no stretch to say that Undertale changed my perception of what art can do for its audience. When I think about the music I was writing around this time, I remember that my only real goal was to make something that sounded good or cool - something that could land me on a well-respected label. Nowadays, I couldn't care less about that. I've been writing music with the intent to make people feel things. It might not be as commercially viable as Riddim Fusion or whatever my rhythm game songs lean towards, but that's fine by me. I'd rather my art be genuine than pristine. It worked for Undertale and I think it'll work for me, too.

Undertale, divorced from all context of its inception & creation, is an 8/10 game at best. I have no doubt that I could find a "better" RPG out there - that is, one I'd ascribe a higher number to. But I don't care about the number. Undertale was good enough. It was my favorite game for a long time, and it earned that title not through flawless execution, but through its willingness to try anyway.