Morality and Monsters: An Underground Movement
“A traditional role-playing game where no one has to get hurt”. This tagline is the Kickstarter selling point for Toby Fox’s hit indie game Undertale. RPGs, or Role-Playing Games, are often dominated by the idea of attacking enemies, choosing to define their universes with black-and-white moralities with little room for grey area. This often leaves the player with a clearly laid path to follow — kill the monster, save the princess. In Toby Fox’s Undertale, however, this is redefined. The monsters, driven underground by humans, are the victims of a long-standing war between the two. Your choices have weight. Unlike many other choice-based games, there are consequences to every action. Undertale will remember. This game mechanic challenges the premise it was founded on — life is a series of choices with the capacity for change and the decisions you make both in-game and otherwise make an impact on the world around you.
Though there are many forking paths that Undertale may lead to, there are three “main” endings. There is the “Neutral” route, often the first route of completion. This is achieved by minimal violence and inaction toward specific characters. The “Genocide” route is a brutal, harsh style of play that involves killing anything and everything encountered in the game. Throughout this playthrough, the very fabric of the game changes — you become much worse than the monsters you kill.
The beautiful melodies once played in the background of the game become a chilling silence. Suddenly, the environment becomes completely devoid of sound as everything is killed or in hiding from you. Opposite this, there is the “Pacifist” or the “True” ending. This is a path of complete nonviolence and sympathetic interaction with those around you. This is an ending that reveals the entirety of Undertale’s motives and backstory. Without multiple playthroughs, this run is impossible — but to ignore this run is to ignore the core of Undertale.
The outcome of the game changes based on how you play the game. After you play the Neutral route, your actions are weighed against you at the end of the game. Sans, a game-breaking pun-loving skeleton, gives a summary of what you did and didn’t do. He directly encourages the player to replay the game and do the right thing. At the end of the Pacifist run, however, you are begged to stop playing the game. Flowey, the villain of the game, pleads that you leave the game alone. He begs for a happy ending. The Genocide run is dark and unrewarding, providing none of the charm of either of the other playthroughs. Rather than be a passive player, Undertale forces the user to think about their choices to gain rewarding equivalent responses.
Choice-based games are not a new concept to the video game genre — in fact, many games tout this feature as a selling point. What makes Undertale different than industry-led games like Telltale Game’s The Walking Dead series is the message — Undertale chooses to form, then break the idea of actual in-game morality. The character can make up for their actions through a long, arduous process of replaying the entire game for the game’s intended ending, or it can choose to defy the underlying narrative. If the player chooses to kill everything, the game remembers across multiple save files. Games like the The Walking Dead utilize this mechanic for choice, but your actions ultimately lead toward the same static ending. Undertale utilizes its choice-based system to supplement its argument that individual choices matter and a capacity for change and growth ultimately determine who you are.
The characters in Undertale are quirky, yet lovable. Through a random encounter system not unlike the mechnanic the beloved RPG game Pokémon utilizes. The player is presented with an interesting array of characters, ranging anywhere from a shut-in mad scientist with a dark past to a spaghetti-loving skeleton named after a font. The game’s design allows for the ability to FIGHT, ACT, or to give MERCY to the monsters. Like many other RPGs, the FIGHT option is listed first — though, throughout the course of the game, the characters urge you to show them MERCY. You can grant this by ACTing in a certain way, causing the monsters to show their humanity. The characters are often rough, almost challenging the player to consider a violent reaction. This fluidity forces the player to think beyond their preconceived notions of “good” and “bad” and accept the nature of those they encounter with the same outlook.
“Despite everything, it’s still you.” is a quote that summarizes the whole of Undertale’s morality. Despite everything the player has done or learned, they are still themselves. Their decisions are their own and their lives are their own. Undertale’s replayability aspect creates an interesting dynamic. If the player was truly evil in a previous playthrough, the game is hesitant to grant you clemency — in some slight way, the characters remember what you did in the previous playthrough.
Alphys, a seemingly innocuous royal scientist, twists the boundaries of Undertale’s definition of “good”. During Alphys’s research to escape the underground, she injects monsters with “determination”. This causes the monsters to fuse, creating horrific results. Even with the families of those departed asking for their loved one’s bodies back, she hides in fear of what the public would think of her. In the “Pacifist” ending the player and Alphys achieved a similar goal — they both kept monsters alive at all costs.
Alphys is plagued by her actions throughout every playthrough but one — the “True” ending. Befriending Alphys gave her the courage to show you what she’s done. She shows you the consequences of her actions and forgives herself. Even through horrific actions, the active choice to do right by those she wronged makes her good. Despite everything, it was still Alphys. This makes Undertale a game less about a black and white morality and more about the choices that lie in between. Everything you do impacts the narrative.
Throughout the playthrough, the player’s choices lead to a grand conclusion. The world reacts to the way you play — the game is entirely up to your choices as a player. The consequences of your actions are concrete. The selfishness or cruelty of your actions define the ultimate narrative, crafting an almost entirely new story each time to the way that you play. The character you play is a completely blank slate, with your actions defining the path. The game mechanic is the message — “determination” to actively choose your reality through choice is, at its core, human.
