Undertale: 6th Anniversary Retrospective

Play as a pacifist. The problems of Undertale can be solved without any villains.

I want to start off this post by saying that I do actually know how to spell “violence.” I just wanted to be a cool guy and make a Tails Gets Trolled reference.

dumb ass will learn ,

Well everyone, it looks like it is now officially another rotation around the sun with Undertale in our lives. 6 full years since the fateful day Undertale started its journey from fan-funded passion project to cultural touchstone of the internet age.

Depending on if the Tumblr, Twitter, or whatever toxic hellhole site ruined this game for you, this might either be a glorious day or one that you will make sure to avoid the internet for.

Can I digress from this potshot joke for a second? I am truly disappointed that people will refuse to give this game a chance because of the fandom. I DO NOT care if you think the fans are annoying. It is so easy to avoid the fandom and enjoy it on your own merits. Annoying is not an excuse to me. You know why?

My life was changed by someone annoying.

An annoying dog, to be precise.

I’m going to be honest with you devoted readers (can I call you that?). This post is more for me than it is for you. I know that I am almost assuredly not going to say anything that you do not already think, know, or love about Undertale. I know that this post will probably get buried underneath all of the fanfare about the game’s anniversary. But when it comes to Undertale, I’ll go the extra mile because I love this game that much. If you’re reading this, I have a good feeling that you do as well.

This blog is usually reserved for me talking about some specific theme or analysis of the game. I’ve tried my hardest to not really use this as a gushing place for whatever I’m obsessed with at the moment. But maybe my pure passion and adoration for this silly little world that Toby Fox created can pass that analytical threshold. I want this to be an analysis on why I LOVE this game, and I hope that it can help to create a discussion among people I know about what really makes this game stand out to them.

Essentially, I am going to break this post down into a few parts. I love organizing things (except my room, you’re not allowed to look). This class, we will be covering:

• Plot
• Choice
• DETERMINATION and the Fourth Wall
• Music
• Why I Love This Game

Ok, I’m too excited from talking about talking about Undertale, so let’s cut the snail facts and get to the heart of the matter.

Did you know that snails… sometimes flip their digestive systems as they mature?

 

Plot

It should be obvious for pretty much anyone that is reading this, but I recommend, nay require you to play Undertale before you read the rest of this post. To take a line from the Sonic loremaster and Sopranos fanboy Cybershell, you are not allowed to read the rest of this post until you’ve played Undertale.

Seriously though. Huge SPOILER WARNING for the rest of this post. I do not want to spoil Undertale, but it is nearly impossible to talk about everything that stands out to me without delving into the nitty gritty of the game itself. Trust me, the game will be much better fresh.

We are officially in the age AFTER Undertale

On its surface, the plot of Undertale is simple, almost beautifully so. It’s the traditional story of the kid who has lost their way and has to find their way back. As the small child goes through the new world which they have discovered, they make friends and see so many fantastical sights. The monsters are all not too different from us, even though they may be things like an airplane, flexing creepazoid, or even…

I always read his lines in a modified Towelie voice

… a homicidal flower.

The wrinkle in the traditional story is that all of your friends actually want to kill you. It’s just that you both don’t know it yet. Knowing this forbidden knowledge (which is really only explicitly stated between you and a few of the main characters) is one of the key points on how this game will hit you so emotionally.

Something so simple? How could it make such an impact?

The impact it makes isn’t in its intricacies or how it was a shock coming out of nowhere.

What a twist!

The magical ingredient that really pulls it all together is what everyone does to actually cope with this revelation. Having the monsters try to reconcile that their new bestest buddy in the whole wide world is one of the reasons they are trapped in the Underground is a brilliant way to drive home the game’s central theme of love.

The brilliance is truly in the simplicity.

You as the player need to reconcile that too when you finally meet Asgore. You’ve heard every single thing about him from his bloodthirst of humans to him being a cuddly teddy bear. By the time you meet him, you have absolutely no idea what to expect of the big guy.

Chilling.

The truth is something a little more gray.

That destruction of the Mercy button is absolutely one of the most powerful moments of the game. This entire time, everything about Undertale, from the original fundraising page to Steam to the actual dialogue has been saying that there is always another way out of fighting.

But for once, there truly is no way out of having to use that violence.

The crux of the plot of Undertale’s charm is in how it makes you care for all of these characters. It may seem forced with the pacifism choice being constantly pushed in your face, but it just comes naturally. Toby Fox does an absolutely wonderful job of making these absolutely goofball designs and monsters end up becoming loveable people with their own dreams, aspirations, and thoughts on what needs to be done to finally free themselves. These monsters become your friends. You don’t want to kill them because the game says not to. You don’t want to kill them because you LOVE them. This natural connection is what makes the Pacifist Route a truly tear inducing moment when you are finally given the chance to hug Asriel in his real form.

Choose “Do Not Hug” at your own peril.

It is also what makes those moments of mass destruction and senseless killing in the Genocide Route hurt so much more.

Hey man… It’s not your fault.

Speaking of those different endings…

 

Choice

There has been a push in a lot of recent games about choice having an actual effect on your playthrough. In many games, the choices you make are superficial and only serve to let you get extra items or see a little bit more about a side character that you may like.

Then, there is the push that games like Until Dawn employ. Your choices truly matter in the most absolute sense of the word. The words that you say and the things that you do or don’t do have an overwhelming impact on who lives, who dies, and how the story plays out itself.

I haven’t played, I’m too scawed.

Undertale is certainly no different. Your choices make an incredible impact on what happens in the world around you.

As I’m writing this, a new thought has swirled into my head like a fish in a bowl.

I just wanted to post this meme.

The choices in two of the three main routes (Neutral and Pacifist) do not actually affect you all that much. In both of those routes, the game ends with you escaping the Underground. While Genocide can have everlasting consequences (who thought that would be a sentence I would write) on the game and yourself personally, the others are more of a lesson in empathy. The choices that you make do not derail your escape, but they may forever change the lives of the monsters Underground, especially those that you have befriended.

Every Undertale fan who is worth their salt will tell you that the true way to really get the full Undertale experience is to play through the Pacifist Route. They are pretty much right. It’s the longest playthrough, it tells you most of the lore, it has the most interesting puzzle gameplay style, and everything else.

Every date I’ve ever been on has looked exactly like this.

The choices that you make truly matter because you show that same level of caring and understanding to the monsters that they do to you. Because of your choices, you get to learn about all of the choices that every other character has made. This includes the fun ones like how Undyne started training under Asgore and how Sans and Toriel made a (love?) connection over their love of terrible jokes.

But it gets darker.

Much darker.

The True Lab is probably my favorite area in the game. Not because of the sudden tonal shift (well partially), but the way that it shifts to show that not only did your choices matter but everyone else’s did too. Suddenly the reason that Asgore seems so scared to really take on DETERMINATION makes sense. Alphys becoming a total shut in resulted from her choices to not come clean about the failed experiments.

Her being a weeb was just an unfortunate side effect.

If you want to get even darker, it shows how the choice that Asriel made to follow Chara into the human world mattered too. That sad story of the prince who died that you hear about in the Neutral Route? You hear the true story of how a human child, who was born of such hatred, ruined the lives of monsters forever, and how a young child filled with confusion, rage, and every other feeling could become a monster like Flowey.

Powerful.

Your choices matter. They affect the lives of everyone around you. It can lead to the storybook ending that everyone dreams of…

Ambassador to humans?

… the death of everyone including yourself…

A jumpscare in a game that shouldn’t have jumpscares.

… or maybe somewhere in between.

The service in the Underground is REALLY bad. Someone should fix that.

The game’s power lies in how it makes those choices matter and how those choices stick with you and everyone else. Alphys can’t run away from the weight of what she did in the True Lab. You can’t run away from the suffering you caused in the Genocide Route.

Oh wait, you thought you could? No, no. This is Soulless Pacifist. You are damned for eternity.

Live with yourself.

Soulless Pacifist is really an interesting concept. Without knowing how the delete the game’s contents to a full reset (which is actually possible), you could forever corrupt your game to never truly have a happy ending again. The game gives you the option to play the Genocide Route, but it never tells you it exists or even that it’s a good option to go with. The game actively tries to make Genocide as unfun as possible to show you that this is not the way that the game should be played. Puzzles are gone, you have to grind forever, and Undyne the Undying and Sans, while absolutely fun boss fights, are entirely brutal to the average player.

But you stuck it out, you got the ending you heard about, and you got to be the completionist that you call yourself. You’ve destroyed the world and brought it back.

Do you think you deserve a happy ending?

 

DETERMINATION and the Fourth Wall

As I talked about in my previous post about Doki Doki Literature Club, the fourth wall is a wall that exists for a very good reason. However, it can be broken, and in many cases it should be. But it needs to be done with care. Once the fourth wall breaks in a major way, there isn’t any contractor that can pick those pieces up and put them back together like they once were.

Toby Fox knew this as a writer and used it to his advantage. How did he do this?

DETERMINATION

Determination has become the meme word that all of the Undertale kids like to use to show that they’re in the cool crowd. They get it. They know the game (even if they don’t). But determination is so much more than a repeated theme or even a concept in the actual game that has almost supernatural abilities.

Determination is the lifeline that goes between our world and the world of Undertale.

At some points, it is almost comical how determination ends up being the explanation for nearly everything that happens in the game. Determination is what allows a boss monster’s soul to persist a bit after death. Determination in high dosages can cause regular monsters to live and then meld together into the awful amalgamates. Determination is also what the game uses to explain pretty much every ability that Frisk has that is due to it being a game. Kind of like midichlorians but actually good.

Here’s looking at you, George.

Once you learn that determination isn’t just some word that is used at the save points to make you feel like you can keep going, it kind of changes the whole world of Undertale. At the end of the Neutral Route, when Flowey is not only aware of your ability to save the game but takes it away, that moment is shocking. But it isn’t nearly as shocking once you really learn what determination is all about.

In the game’s world, determination is something that really separates the humans from the monsters. Even though the monsters have magic and every other power, humans hold the trump card. Determination. Notice how you’re the only human (outside of Chara).

You, as the human, have determination. That is why you can save and come back from the dead and everything else. I know this is such a “no duh” revelation that I am treating like it is gold, but there are so many different ways that games break the fourth wall and acknowledge the weirdness of game logic. They all seem to do it horribly.

Except Undertale. Undertale did it really well.

There are plenty of other ways that Undertale breaks through the fourth wall that are a lot smaller. Your screen shakes when Chara strikes you down. The window closes when Flowey kills you. The game glitches out once Flowey has control.

Flowey is stream sniping.

I think the beauty of Undertale is how blatantly it tells you that it is a game, but then uses the imagination and lore of the world to make you not care. It perfectly blends that connection of game and world and lets the knowledge of both serve to make the other stronger.

 

Music

This section is going to be short. Not because I don’t love the music, but I want the game to speak for itself. Literally. Well not literally because there isn’t any voiced lines. Actually, I guess there are. Flowey has that one line.

I think I lost the plot.

The game’s music is wonderful. I’m not someone who really listens to much game music outside of the game itself (unless they are vocal themes like in Sonic or Persona), but this soundtrack? I lost count how many times I have put it on for the long car trip and just lost myself in it.

Before I give you the assemblage of tracks that I really love from this game, I wanted to quickly talk about the concept of a leitmotif.

As I am sure all of my readers are very smart, beautiful and shower regularly, I am sure you are aware what that means. However, for the unwashed masses (since I don’t think many people read this), a leitmotif refers to a recurrent theme throughout a work. In music, this can specifically refer to certain sections and melodies that invoke similar feelings or connections throughout the rest of the work.

One of the best examples of leitmotif in Undertale is from the beginning track “Once Upon a Time.” You can essentially think of this as the theme of Undertale.

This little bit gets repeated all the time, even in random phrases like the jetpack race with Mettaton “Can You Really Call This A Hotel, I Didn’t Receive A Mint On My Pillow Or Anything.” (starting around 0:14).

To finally leading up to the big emotional ending (and my favorite song in the game), “Undertale.”

Tears every time, man.

A silly but personal favorite leitmotif of mine is the “Ghost Fight.” This song gets used in some form with “Dummy !,” “Spider Dance,” and even the Switch exclusive “Mad Mew Mew Battle.”

It’s evolving!

Now that I got my esoteric nonsense out of the way, I want to give you three of my other favorites and a quick why. I only picked three because I could talk about the entire soundtrack all day and this post is already unbearably long.

“Death By Glamour” is my second favorite song. It’s this perfect combination of soulless techno basslines with an extremely sexy jazz feel. It’s the perfect combination for the new form of Mettaton. It shows that deep inside, he is still the robot that he desperately doesn’t want to be, but he is going to dance and make you love him anyway. I don’t think there is a song that really sums up a character better than this one. Even if you haven’t played the game (I thought I told you not to read this?), I believe you could easily think of Mettaton and his design.

Get lost in those saxy tones.

“Snowy” may not be an obvious choice for a lot of people, but this song is absolutely a wonderland for me. My two favorite seasons are summer and winter, and it constantly changes which one is on top. Even though I may complain about shoveling or what have you, I absolutely love the snow. Christmastime is my favorite time of year. I think this song, set in a winter setting, perfectly encapsulates that bit of wonder of walking through the snow and taking in the crisp and biting winter breeze. It also has that little feeling of nervousness and stuttered steps with the staccato piano.

You better not eat the Snowman Piece!

And finally, we just gotta end with the big meme itself “MEGALOVANIA.” I know it’s the normie pick, but what can I say. It’s popular for a reason. It is an absolute electronic/rock/metal banger. If there ever was a song that you needed to get you hyped up for the absolute hellscape of a battle that Sans is, this song gets it done. There is no way that you can’t feel any deeply kinetic wanting once the drums really kick in.

Fun fact, this is actually a reworked version of a song that Toby made for his Halloween Hack of Earthbound, which later appeared in the popular online powerhouse Homestuck, which I don’t think I’ll ever experience because I am terrified.

 

Why I Love This Game

We have finally reached the end. For those of you that have stuck through my ramblings about this game and how I am trying to sound smart by saying the same things that a million other people have said, I appreciate you. Give yourself a hand.

I want to end this all off with a quick summary on my experience with this game and why I love it so much. I have pretty much spent the rest of this post gushing about it, so this should be relatively painless without as much material.

I wish I could say I was one of the people who got into Undertale early. I did play it within the first month of release, but only because I saw it was gaining so much traction on Twitch. I didn’t play/stream it to get immensely popular overnight, but I did think that even if I didn’t love it that maybe the people in the chat would get me to love it anyway.

I didn’t need their help. I didn’t need anyone’s help.

For those that don’t know (or don’t care), my all-time favorite game as of writing this is Persona 5 Royal.

MUST play for any of my readers.

My third favorite game is Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.

EVA is my love.

Right squarely between those two is the game we are talking about today.

Undertale is such a phenomenal game because of how it grips you. All of those previously discussed points are absolutely true to me. It also grips you with the feeling of the unknown. The game gives you so much lore and information about the characters that you kind of wish it wouldn’t stop.

The thing is, the game doesn’t give you everything. There is still plenty to theory craft and have fun with. Maybe you want to learn more about the world before Chara fell and ruined it. Are you interested in what truly happens to Frisk once they leave the Underground? Or are you one of many who has been truly captivated by the being known as W.D. Gaster.

Seriously, what’s with this guy?

I am a sucker for characters and plot, so Undertale is like a full course meal with an extremely sweet dessert afterwards. However, it leaves me craving more and I think that’s why I keep playing it. I am not someone who plays games multiple times, but I keep playing Undertale and forcing people like my cousins (hello if you’re reading this!) to play it because I want to see if there is anything I missed while combing through the game.

I have a problem with media pieces that I love ending, which causes me to not really finish stuff. It drives certain people in my life mad (hello if you’re reading this!). I think that’s why I’m also so excited for Deltarune. Even though it definitely is not the world of Undertale, it has those same characters and some connected lore that makes me feel like I get to live that out again.

We DEFINITELY do not have time for me to get into this game.

Undertale means so much to my life and I think it always will. Even if I stop being a game nerd at some point in my life, I think the feelings I got from this game will always persist. Hell, I want to get a quote from the game tattooed on me!

What do y’all think? Good idea?

 

I just cannot recommend this game enough. If you’ve read through this even though you haven’t played the game, I hope that my passion has seeped through and has made you decide to play it. I promise you will still experience something incredible regardless of the spoilers.

If you’ve read through this whole 4,000+ word mess, then I’m sure you’re just as big of a fan as me. Talk to me. Tell me why you love Undertale and why it means so much to you.

Happy 6th anniversary, Undertale.

I think I’m going to start another playthrough now.

Who knew that falling off a mountain could be so freeing?

 

 

As always, if you have any comments, questions or concerns, feel free to use the Contact link and I’ll get back to you about it. Or you can leave a comment! I appreciate all the readers who have stuck with this list and I hope that my content is good enough for you to maybe drop a subscription. Either way, this was very good for me to get my thoughts out and I hope you enjoyed the ride nearly as much as I enjoyed putting you on it. From one fan to another (or a prospective new fan). This is for you.

~Jer