Stat him, /tg/.

>>52171382
Size/Type: Large Magical Beast
Hit Dice: 5d10 (27 hp)
Initiative: +3
Speed: 20 ft. (4 squares), fly 60 ft. (poor)
Armor Class: 14 (+1 size, +3 Dex), touch 14, flat-footed 11
Base Attack/Grapple: +5/–1
Attack: Bite +9 melee (1d4–2 plus petrification)
Full Attack: Bite +9 melee (1d4–2 plus petrification)
Space/Reach: 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Petrification
Special Qualities: Darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision
Saves: Fort +4, Ref +7, Will +2
Abilities: Str 6, Dex 17, Con 11, Int 2, Wis 13, Cha 9
Skills: Listen +7, Spot +7
Feats: Alertness, Dodge, Weapon FinesseB
Environment: Temperate plains
Organization: Solitary, pair, flight (3–5), or flock (6–13)
Challenge Rating: 3
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always neutral
Advancement: 6–8 HD (Small); 9–15 HD (Medium)
Level Adjustment: —

>>52171382
Shit game/10

>>52172259
>Alignment: Always neutral
>Not Neutral Good

His entire existence revolves around trying to protect his people. Doesn't get much Gooder than that.

>>52172515
>Being this much of a fucking newfag

>>52172515
Did you even read the rest of the stat block?

>>52171382
Owlbear/10

>>52172259
Yes

>>52171382
Owlbear but extra dumb.

>>52172486
Great game/1

>>52171382
Shit character
Shit plot
slightly shitty game

Asgore is the ultimate representation of undertale's shitty message. If somebody tries to kill you, that just means they are oppressed and need love. It's simultaneously a message of zero accountability and white guilt. It's no coincidence that frisk is a child because the message is that no amount of innocence can save you from bearing the sins of others.

Undertale needs less love and more LovE

>>52172878
Flowey pls go

>>52171382
STR 16
DEX 10
CON 3
INT 3
WIS 1
CHA 1
FAG 100

>>52172878
>less love and more LovE
the fuck is LovE

>>52172967
Level ov execution.

It's a really stupid acronym for a stat that basically represents your corruption in the game. It does absolutely nothing unless you spend hours grinding to max it out, and then a demonic entity takes control of the player and then tries to put you on a guilt trip. The game then PERMANENTLY becomes altered unless you alter some files and mess with steam.

In other words, it's a pretentious load of shit.

>>52172967

Level of Violence

>>52172967
Level of Violence, basically a person's capacity to hurt others.

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>>52171382
Well, fuck it, I may as well "stat him" in my system, because why not.

>Asgore Dreemurr
>Suicide (100 Tenacity)
1-2 Swipe - Target Hero. Target Number 16 Defensive Action or Wound.
3-4 Fireballs - All Heroes. Target Number 12 x 2 Defensive Action or Wound.
5-6 What Must Be Done - Raises Target Numbers' by +4 for the round.
7-8 Execution - Target Number 8 Defensive Action or Triple Wound

This game is despicable and pernicious propaganda intended to sell pacifist ideals to children.

It presents peace and rehabilitation.as the ideal of justice rather than punishment and reparation. It depicts a world where just war is impossible. It demonises the player for protecting their own safety.

It sells poisonous leftist ideals, that nobody is evil except the player. It is actively treasonous and seditious.

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>>52172878
> It's simultaneously a message of zero accountability and white guilt.
Jack pls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNKIjLLZMWs

>>52173026

Your mixing up

execution points

And level of violence

>>52173072
>It presents peace and rehabilitation.as the ideal of justice rather than punishment and reparation
It is

>>52173072
Can't tell if ironic or not at this point

>>52173154
>confusing mercy with justice
I can tell that guy is taking the piss, but this particular part has a point. Justice was always about retaliation and reparation.

>>52173154
Spoken like someone who has never actually been wronged and worries more about the feelings.of rapists, thugs and murderers than their victims.

I am sure, were you to be a victim yourself, you would willingly give your attacker all you own because he is "troubled" and you are so evil you deserve to be the victim.

No mercy. Mercy is not just. The evil must pay.

Also anons really seem to hate this game for its message of

If you can magically reload your life at death or when you feel like it you have no reason to kill a person

You can literary just keep trying until everyone live and your only excuse not to is you don't want to or your bored

>>52172878
>If somebody tries to kill you
Dying is not a big deal in Undertale

>>52173194
>Justice was always about retaliation and reparation.
And the countries whose Justice system is moved by those principles are third world shitholes.

>>52173211
1. nothing wrong with me
2. nothing wrong with me
3. nothing wrong with me
4. nothing wrong with me

>>52173248
> And the countries whose Justice system is moved by those principles are third world shitholes.
I disagree strongly. America became a strong country because it was based on the principle of strength, not acceptance. So did many other countries and empires.
I'm not inclined to commit to this argument right now, though, so consider the topic closed.

>>52173295

Then you can considered your argument dismissed

Please have a nice day

>>52173295
No, America became a strong country by watching everyone else kill each other with weapons they bought from America.

>>52173295
>So did many other countries and empires
Such as Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Egypt, Indonesia, Chad...

>>52173213

It's not even like it's particularly accurate to say that the game judges you for "defending yourself," as there's only one character who reacts to how many people you've killed during your run and his primary assessment is that it's important you're honest with yourself about why you did what you did, although he will opine that you're kind of a shithead if your EXP starts to reach a point that indicates you were seeking out fights instead of reacting to random encounters.

Part of undertale's thing is that you and the character you control are not the same person and some of the characters are aware of that. You're not being honest with yourself about why you killed the encounters if you say it's because that's what the player character would do. You're not the player character, and you know perfectly well dying doesn't do anything more than mildly inconvenience you and that it's completely possible to end every encounter in the game except two nonviolently.

You chose not to, and that's the long and the short of it. No point buying an RPG that is sold as "an RPG where no one has to die" and then getting huffy the guy who knows what you're up to isn't impressed when you kill people.

>>52173395
Killing Toriel was the perfect set up for a redemption arc anyways.

>>52173072
either bait or someone who doesn't understand why the prison population is growing

>>52173310
It's in a comic so it's true. Ironically the comic is also black and white

>>52173430
>someone who doesn't understand why the prison population is growing
explain then

>>52173310
>white is good and black is evil
Really makes you think

>>52173395
>It's not even like it's particularly accurate to say that the game judges you for "defending yourself,"

The toriel fight immediately punishes you for understanding the basics of RPGs. Games are like cinematography. They can tell the player things without saying them outright the same way a movie can say can say something with a camera angle. Toriel is a friendly character who obviously holds back in your fight, and this tells the player that she's not really trying to hurt you. The mercy option for toriel also works completely differently from the previous and only time you were told how to solve conflicts non-violently. The scenario is dishonestly presented to get a cheap emotional hook in your mouth.

> You're not the player character, and you know perfectly well dying doesn't do anything more than mildly inconvenience you and that it's completely possible to end every encounter in the game except two nonviolently.

Undertale fans don't understand that the fundamental problem with their defense of the game is that it doesn't work unless you are spoiled on the story. Of course if you hang out on tumblr and everybody tells you the right way to play the game, you are going to have a different experience from a player judging the game on its own merits.

>>52173430
It's bait. It's actually a twist on traditional RPG tropes and nothing more.

>>52173606
The Toriel fight is a test to see if you've been paying attention

The game hints many times in the first chapter that it's going to not play by the standard RPG rules, and there's a dude you can talk to who straight up tells you to try selecting "mercy" sometimes even when it isn't yellow, hinting at how to beat her.

>>52173606

Wasn't spoiled, and managed to work out what was going on with Toriel. One of the basics of RPGs is talk to every NPC you come across, and one of them flat out tells you a situation might come up where you have to try and spare someone that isn't ready to be spared. Which obviously means that it will come up, and lo and behold maybe five minutes later the Toriel fight happens.

It's not even like the NPC that tells you how to resolve the fight is hard to find.

>Undertale fans don't understand that the fundamental problem with their defense of the game is that it doesn't work unless you are spoiled on the story.

The game's frigging tagline includes the phrase "nobody has to die." It's a pretty reasonable assumption to go into the game blind with the expectation that you can find a nonviolent solution with any monster you come across. Frankly I'm honestly surprised that Toriel is where people trip up, because again, you're given a hint before you fight her and the way to spare her is a lot more intuitive than how you spare Undyne.

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>>52173310
>A fictional character proves my philosophy correct

>>52173544
I'm not that anon, but I don't think justice works if its spiteful and self-destructive.

If we just lock up every person that jaywalks, that places an enormous burden on society. We end up with millions of people producing nothing of value in an industry that has a vested interest in increasing crime. This burden on society reduces our ability to raise upstanding citizens and creates an enormous conflict of interest. A punitive approach also creates repeat offenders, which creates more victims, which creates more criminals. There is also the issue of lumping in crimes against humanity offenses with statist bullshit offenses if we have a system that focuses on punishment.

I'm not going to get into the philosophy of redemption and what that has to do with paying a debt to society, but a system that doesn't have a focus on rehabilitation fucks over innocents and criminals alike.

>>52172804
Certainly overhyped, put still really good game/fanboys and contrarians

>>52173733
Doesn't matter. Didn't you hear me when I said
>It is actively treasonous and seditious.
Take your dumb libshit logic out of here!

The game would have been better if there was more options than just "be friends with everyone or kill them"
What would be the moral of the story if you could run from every encounter you faced? Or if you could beat every monster into submission and then spare them?

>>52173847

You are aware you can still get the happy ending if you do exactly that, right?

>>52173214
Only because you can respawn. Literally nobody knows you have this ability except Sans, and the humans that came and were killed before you clearly didn't have that ability. While the gameplay style is actually kind of interesting the monsters are assholes and a logical person would be reasonably justified in killing every person they encounter.
>Monsters randomly begin attacking you for no reason
>Psycho bitch tries to force you to live with her and be her kid
>Dangerous retard tries to imprison you so you can be killed and your soul harvested
>Essentially secret police tries to track you down and kill you
>A lunatic robot who tries to kill you so he can escape the underground and become famous
>A guy who wants to kill you so his people can escape the underground (which honestly isn't that bad a place)
The only reasonable person is Sans since he doesn't actually try to kill you until you are possessed by an evil child intending to destroy the world.

Of course losing to Papyrus several times for example shows you that he isn't actually dangerous but until you actually lose to him you can be forgiven for thinking that he is evil but just incompetent.

>>52173847
There are neutral endings depending on how high your LV is. The game does acknowledge if you just play it as any other RPG and kill every encounter/boss, but don't go out of you way to kill anymore than that.

>>52173882

The monsters would actually have a pretty good reason to attack you, what with their view being that humans are a race of ultrapowerful psychopaths that can hate you to death. Humans wouldn't exactly be making nice with cthulu-spawn that routinely fall into our cities and wander around killing things.

>>52172740
That's not an owlbear.

>>52173740
I'm amazed by how many morons think Undertale is morally complex

It's a good game, and has a lot of clever elements, but it has the moral depth of a birdbath

>>52173689
>The game's frigging tagline includes the phrase "nobody has to die." It's a pretty reasonable assumption to go into the game blind with the expectation that you can find a nonviolent solution with any monster you come across.

From a narrative perspective, that's basically cheating.
Let's say there is a game with the tagline "You will never get struck by lightning!" and then to get the good ending, you have to go to a thunderstorm and hold up a lightning rod while wiggling your bare feet in the mud.
As a player, it makes sense what you are supposed to do. However, it results in a nonsense narrative and it defeats the message.

I must admit that this is really not an easy problem to solve, and any game that has a highly experimental type of story structure is not going to 100% make sense. Conventional games have nonsense plot devices as well, but we are just more acquainted with them.

>>52173882
You are clearly told again and again that the monsters have been trapped underground for generations by the humans after a bloody war. You can argue that the monsters are a bit too bloodthirsty, but it isn't for "no reason." And once you learn about their only means of escaping their personal hell, it becomes a bit easier to feel sorry for them if you are at all emphatic.

Likewise only some monsters attack you. Many are just NPCs out for a chat and a few actively help you (though usually for some gold). You are also purposely ignoring the tone of the game. If the game presented itself seriously at all times you might have a point, but from the very beginning it is made clear this is a game that is mostly humorous with occasional sad parts.

>>52173964
Undertale expects you to metagame like that, it's written around you metagaming like that

>>52173964

I do think part of it is that Undertale expects you to play through multiple times regardless of what your experiences are the first time, so part of the idea is that you can groundhog day that shit and figure out what a better way is if you don't like the outcome of doing it the first time. Toriel is probably set up to be a bit of a twist on the usual "Now you must boss fight the tutorial person to show them you can survive, where they will be injured but OK afterwards" by showing fighting someone down to 0 HP will basically always kill them in this game and that it's very easy to kill someone by accident when you're fighting in this world.

The villain does make fun of you if you are caught by surprise by that and put things right with a reset, but his perspective isn't exactly an objective one.

>>52173973
>You are clearly told again and again that the monsters have been trapped underground for generations by the humans after a bloody war. You can argue that the monsters are a bit too bloodthirsty, but it isn't for "no reason." And once you learn about their only means of escaping their personal hell, it becomes a bit easier to feel sorry for them if you are at all emphatic.

Frisk is a child. If we have to ignore that in order for the monsters to be defensible, then they are no better than animals and shouldn't be humanized.

>>52174346

Considering that the primary thing most monsters know about humans are

>1. They murdered the prince, who was also a child, for going to the surface to bury his sibling
>2. They can make monsters die simply by wanting it to happen
>3. As far as monsters can tell don't have the capacity to feel mercy or compassion

Frisk being a smallish human means precisely jack shit to how dangerous they are.

>>52174044
It's a great twist on a common trope, actually

>>52173964
What a shit analogy. gg

>>52174346
Also, you're ignoring that most of the monsters aren't attacking him. Aside from the royal guard, Muffet, and mettatons mercenaries, they're trying to be your friends. Snowdrake is telling you lame jokes, the volcano monster just wants to hug you, etc. They're not malicious, and the things they're doing wouldn't be dangerous to other monsters, so they don't understand they're threatening you. And once they do realize, they stop.

>>52174458

None of that has anything to do with frisk being a child. You could make a list of atrocities committed by <insert race or nationality> and it still wouldn't justify acting like a perverted fiend to a lost child.

A child carrying a weapon and indoctrinated with a violent ideology is dangerous, and should be treated as such. However, treating something like its dangerous is not what undyne does. She is a monster, and I'm not using the sesame street definition.

>>52174609

>The star-spawn of cthulu has landed in the city again.
>Right, I'm gonna go kill it.
>I don't know that that's right. It's just a LITTLE shoggoth.
>It's already capable of disintegrating a grown man with a light touch. I'm not waiting for it to get bigger.

In the pacifist run, Undyne's attack is unprovoked, although she also sees no other way for her people to escape the underground.

In every other run, Frisk is a killer considerably more powerful than Undyne and she knows it when she goes to take you on.

>>52173964
Your analogy is both clunky, and looking at it backwards. "No one has to die" isn't "you will never get struck by lightning," it's "no one has to get struck my lightning."

But trying to make it make sense: The game does take place in a thunderstorm. Various people are going to try to hand you a lightning rod. You, also, can hand them a lightning rod. You can also convince everyone to throw away their lightning rods.

The basic idea behind undertale is that you can choose to never fight anyone. While people might attack you (even then, it's not explicitly clear they're knowingly attacking you, see the books in the library where they mention bullet-filled birthday cards), you have the option of defusing the situation.

>>52172878
Also that bit with the Original Child being a sociopath makes the whole thing unnecessarily unfair, adding to the retardation.
Also, as has been noted before, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, than the game is basically just humping Earthbound's leg for 20 hours.

>>52174527
Basically undertale would make a lot more sense if the fandom was able to admit that undyne and sans are pieces of shit and are the real villains of the story.

The other monsters might just not understand humans at first. Asgore knows what he is doing, but he is clearly under enormous pressure to do something he doesn't want to. The undyne ending makes it clear that Asgore doesn't really have a choice in the matter. The true ending even reveals that no bloodshed was necessary for the monsters to escape.

>>52174746
Having played both I will say that these are the things I consider EB and UT to have in common

>The coloring style
>The random lines at the start of a turn

>>52173606

>Undertale fans don't understand that the fundamental problem with their defense of the game is that it doesn't work unless you are spoiled on the story

I went into the game knowing literally nothing about it other than what two of the songs sounded like. I figured out how to spare everyone just fine. NPCs teach you Mercy is an option even when it doesn't look like it is. It's really just a test to see how committed you are to your decisions and makes your choices more meaningful and hard won. Surprise and delight is the essence of good game design.

Justice without compassion is merely vengeance

>>52174700
>The basic idea behind undertale is that you can choose to never fight anyone. While people might attack you (even then, it's not explicitly clear they're knowingly attacking you, see the books in the library where they mention bullet-filled birthday cards), you have the option of defusing the situation.

You make a salient point. The only exception is undyne. She tries to murder you with a spear without any discourse. Diffusing that situation is unrealistic and only works because of the quirks of how turn-based RPGs work and how undyne is inept. Undyne is the part of the game where the lightning rod analogy is true. Without the tagline, frisk vs undyne not being a fight to the death IS bullshit.

Fuck undyne. She is the loose thread that pulls apart every justification of undertale.

>>52174747
>Asgore knows what he is doing, but he is clearly under enormous pressure to do something he doesn't want to.
So how is her following his orders, any more monstrous? It's not like she's a random serial killer. She's one of his soldiers, and is after you on his orders.

>>52172878
Come on, at the very end the game itself makes it clear its idealized message of non-violence does not translate entirely to the real world.

IMO there's a second, more realistic message hidden under the "never hit anyone ever" bullshit, and if I were to GM an Undertale or Undertale-inspired game, it'd be the central theme. Consider: the violence is a metaphor for difference, distance, unease, disagreement. Those don't make for very cool confrontation mechanics, as opposed to dodging knives and fireballs. So the metaphor is here to make the game more fun.

Ultimately it's not the nonviolence itself that makes Undertale, it's the hilarious dialogue and interactions. It's not about being a saint, it's about talking to people so different from you, the idea of having a conversation with them is just fucking bizarre. Make friends with the freaks and weirdos! They might turn out to be real bros with stories to tell.

>>52174878

How is running away not a realistic and valid option?

>>52174921
You have it backwards.

In the endings where toriel takes over the underground and decrees peace with humans, undyne overthrows her and is bloodthirsty as hell. According to papyrus, asgore is "a big softy" and would let Frisk escape the underground should they meet.

The royal guard is obviously a threat to the royal family.

>>52175006
If somebody wants to kill you and they are on the loose, running away just means you die in your sleep. The underground is undyne's domain afterall.

>>52174747

As far as Undyne knows humans are not only insanely dangerous (even a child can wipe out their entire race), they're responsible for their imprisonment underground AND the only way to change that is to kill 7 humans. She's far from without justification.

I can't even think what Sans conceivably did wrong. He only fights you if you are literally committing genocide.

>>52171382
As someone who doesn't really care about Undertale lore or message it tries to convey, but still played through it purely on the gameplay merit: Undertale falls for the same pitfall as Spec Ops: The Line - it judges you for trying to explore the entirety of its content, which is counterintuitive for what is clearly a game.

Unintelligent digital puppets that exist purely for your entertainment do not deserve to be treated like actual people.
You can immerse yourself in the digital make-believe world or play nice with its inhabitants all you want, but in the end it's all purely for your entertainment, and said characters are nothing more than scripted lines of dialogue and pixels on the screen.

>>52175059

I don't think the idea that Undyne would harry you for the entire game is a fair assumption. The moment you try the running away option it's pretty clear that's the intended means of progression. It's not like you have to go very far before you see a sign for "HOT TOWN" and then it becomes very obvious what's about to happen.

>>52175017
>In the endings where toriel takes over the underground and decrees peace with humans, undyne overthrows her and is bloodthirsty as hell.
That's because Asgore was like a father to Undyne. (Or maybe she's into bara goatdaddies, we will never know.) As far as she knows, a human killed him, he was right about killing humans, and she wants revenge.

>>52175102

>Undertale falls for the same pitfall as Spec Ops: The Line - it judges you for trying to explore the entirety of its content

I think that's the game's strongest aspect. That games need not be tedious checklists of achievement hunting and completionism; that they can be about making meaningful interactions and genuine moments.

It's integral to the game's morality system - one of the few systems that lives by virtue of encouraging the player to assign their own sense of value to the characters and their actions, rather than implementing arbitrary and 'gamey' rewards like Infamous. Genocide playthroughs SHOULD feel kinda empty and boring, because killing for it's own sake really is pretty soulless. It makes your friendly interactions with the cast feel all the more authentic and dynamic by contrast.

>>52175094
>I can't even think what Sans conceivably did wrong. He only fights you if you are literally committing genocide.
If toriel didn't ask him not to, he would have killed you on a true pacifist route anyway.

>>52175148
>I don't think the idea that Undyne would harry you for the entire game is a fair assumption.

It isn't a fair assumption from a metagaming perspective. It IS a fair assumption if we step in frisk's shoes and think about the story. People without mental illnesses don't just try to hunt a specific person down to kill them with sadistic glee, and then just get chummy afterward.

>>52175298
I disagree strongly. When I decide to to go Genocide route, there is no reason to natter on into my ear like an annoying nanny about how bad of a person I am.
I am a grown-up and I am aware of what is considered right and wrong. I already realize that my actions would be unacceptable if they occured in real life. That's why games exist - to allow us to do what is impossible to do in real life. Like, yes, genociding everyone in the Undertale world.

>>52175312
>If toriel didn't ask him not to, he would have killed you on a true pacifist route anyway.
This is because he knows you can Save/Reload and senses disturbances in time. Therefore, he's extremely wary about you, because he's dealt with Flowey in the past. (There's dialogue mentioning Sans in the Omega Flowey fight that implies Flowey's gone through the Sans fight before.)

To be fair, when there is one other entity in the world that can save/reload and it wants to destroy everything, you have a pretty good reason to want to kill things that can save/reload, especially since you know they're not actually dead unless they decide they want to be.

>>52175312

>Metagaming

Welcome to their entire premise of Undertale. The entire character of Flowey is there purely to contextualize metagaming within the narrative.

Also, it's not even metagaming in this instance. There's nothing meta about watching a horror movie and expecting a scare. You know full well it's a horror movie and it'd be ridiculous to insist viewers avoid knowing basic genre expectations before watching. Likewise, Undertale is advertised as a social game where you don't have to fight. That's not metagaming, it's literally the premise of the game and it constantly incentivises trying different options out.

PS, as far as Sans knows the only hope for Monster-kind is to kill humans. Something humans have shown themselves willing to do to monsters.

>>52172486
Eh, the game was good, the sudden explosion in popularity, not so much.

>>52175373
I'm one of the posters here that's being critical of undertale, but I still disagree with you. The characters are bothering you about your actions in-universe. Its an expected reaction to what you are doing. The shitty grind of genocide is something I would criticize, but I wouldn't expect the game's characters to jerk you off for actively pursuing the villain ending.

>>52175094
I suppose you could argue that him not stopping you until the very end of a genocide run is his worst crime, but that's because he's certain that you'll just reset.

>>52173962
It's the Outline effect. The game paints a faint picture of a few interesting characters, which artists and authors fill in with their own ideals and interests, making the game seem a lot more interesting than it is.

That and the soundtrack was decent enough to make a good game better.

>>52175385
It's important to know that Sans himself admits that he can't sense the resets and doesn't carry any memories from them. He just knows that they can happen at any moment.

>>52175431
I am fine with being criticized in-universe. I am not fine, however, with said critique being dragged out. You made your point, fine, I'm a bad person, can we get it over with it already?
Using boredom as punishment for your players for breaking your arbitrary moral standards is not something that should ever happen in game design.
Consider a game like, I dunno, Dishonored. You can a complete fuckwit and murder your way through it, but the game doesn't punish you for it by intentionally turning less fun.

>>52175373

The intention isn't to nanny, but to present a meaningful alternative. It's not so much a moral lesson as it is a reflection on player agency and criticising the idea that 'you have to do it because it's there'. The fact the story becomes permanently corrupted if you do genocide means not doing genocide actually becomes a meaningful choice and fosters a sense of attachment to the characters. It's a rare instance where leaving things as they are is more rewarding then slogging through padded content. Going from the misery of MGS5 and pushing myself through it's blatant padding and empty world for the sake of getting my money's worth, Undertale telling me to fucking go outside was a breath of fresh air.

>>52175541
>The fact the story becomes permanently corrupted if you do genocide means not doing genocide actually becomes a meaningful choice
A meaningful choice of not exploring half the content of the game you paid for? Souns suspiciously like "you could've turned off the game anytime" line Spec Ops tried to pull.

>>52175533
I disagree. I feel like making the Genocide route fun would defeat the purpose. Now the message is "hey, murder is awesome except when we say it isn't," like every single other RPG out there.

>>52175600
Spec Ops gave you the meaningful choice of not exploring ALL the content of the game you paid for. Undertale gives you the option of not exploring the content of the game that you don't want to explore, and that it knows you don't want to explore, because even if you don't like the characters it's not fun, and both you and the game know you're only exploring it because you want to 100% the game for some reason.

The genocide route is pretty much the equivalent of stabbing random NPCs in an RPG because you can, even if the GM punishes you for it and the system itself actively tries to stop you.

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>>52175600
100% agreed. There are certain boundaries you do not cross in game design and your cartridge self-destructing or self-corrupting is one of them.

There are certain things you just don't do, not because of tradition, but out of some basic respect for both the artistic medium and the consumer. Permanently corrupting the game isn't a meaningful choice, its toby fox telling the player "fuck you."

That said, the way post-genocide runs end is somewhat interesting. The notion that when you sold your soul, you really did something terrible is well done. This would have been a good thing for the game if "true reset" was an actual option and not a complete lie.

Sidenote, how many chara-type characters are there? I'm talking about a quasi-demonic entity that gains the ability to exist based on the sins of others.

>>52174683

It's not necessarily unprovoked: Her only point of contact with you before she attacks is Papyrus, who is a truly terrible judge of character.

She's treating you as dangerous because until half way through her section, all she has to go on is "We need his soul" and "Humans can kill monsters effortlessly"

>>52175600

Yes, a meaningful choice. Is it meaningful to do every last tedious side mission in MGS5? What does it matter? Does it affect anything in story? No. Is there any benefit to completing them? No. Yet, I felt compelled to do it, because fuck it, it's there. I'm not having any fun, but I might as well waste my time since I forked over the cash.

That game had the audacity to ask me to be sad for a bunch of no named soldier npcs when it forced me to kill them. I wasn't given any choice or even any kind of interaction between the soldiers that might have made me give a shit about them. It felt soulless and heavy handed.

Undertale made me like its characters by giving me lots of fun ways of interacting with them. I felt bad when I killed Toriel and I was surprised when the game called me out for trying to savescum. It made my actions feel meaningful. Like they had consequence. So when given the choice between killing them for the sake of it or letting them live happily ever after I felt super good about letting them live. It was comfy. It felt like the game had a soul of it's own and that was more memorable to me than anything that happened in Kojima's bloated sack of open world nothing.

Also, the game cost as much as a fancy coffee. I hardly felt like I was throwing cash away by not doing every last thing.

>>52175520
>It's important to know that Sans himself admits that he can't sense the resets and doesn't carry any memories from them. He just knows that they can happen at any moment.

I don't remember him ever outright saying this, just making frustrating hints about being reset-aware. The dude is a massive troll and takes every opportunity he has to fuck with you

To say he doesn't remember them is also just factually wrong. Most major characters get a sense of Deja-Vu . Torial says that, as a mother, she always gets a sense that she's known the children for longer then they've been with her, Papyrus feeling like he's already done his intro speil, Undyne feeling like you're a friend before dismissing it as human mind control, and Asgore straight up nodding when you say he's killed you before.

And this is all ignoring the fact that he counts how many times he's killed you. You can be good at reading emotions all you want, you can't tell me he can tell the difference between someone whose died nine times and ten times

>>52175748

>out of some basic respect for both the artistic medium and the consumer.

I'd say the best way to respect the medium and consumer is to make an artistic statement and provide an actual choice. I find it more insulting when devs throw in monotonous bullshit in the form of reused assets disguised as extra content for the sake of having more content. That's wasting my time and treating me like an idiot.

No Skyrim, you do not have "infinite quests" and fuck you for pretending you do.

>>52175312

The problem with Undyne is that she really needed just a nudge to help the player understand the context.

I really think a bit more dialogue and a "skip turn" like "Undyne stops to catch her breath." would help players understand that there's no reason to sit there and take it. It could have also been reinforced by an stationary enemy in the caves that can't be spared, but has a special "run" dialogue to indicate that you don't have to positively spare all enemies.

She's really the only point in the game that doesn't follow well.

>>52175980

Do many people really get stuck on Undyne? It was just intuition to me to try all the options.

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>The game judges you for defending yourself saying you're a horrible person and blah blah blah
>waaaah why are people getting angry at me when I kill their family and friends

The game's literal Judge talks to you like a gym coach ashamed of a student for not trying hard enough in basketball. He'll only really hate you if you kill his brother

>>52176057

The big problem is that Undyne prevents escape when you hit the actual fight.

It's not immediately obvious that it's a temporary debuff, so many people think they're stuck in and have to outlast her.

>>52175969
I'd say the best way to respect the medium and consumer is to make the game fun, dixi.
Everything else simply doesn't matter. I don't care for your artistic statements or meaningful choices if I'm not having fun.
I've played through Spec Ops that I'm so fond of using as an example, and guess what, I've had fun. I've enjoyed the storyline, but trying to project the character's motivations on me? No fucking thanks. But even despite that, it's a great game reminiscent of Apocalypse Now with actually fun content.
Same with Undertale. I've played through it, I've enjoyed the characters etc. - trying to make me feel bad and actively supplanting my experience by making half of the game boring? Fuck you. If it's not fun, then it shouldn't be there in the first place.
Not the side-missions in Skyrim and MGS5 that people above mentioned, not stupid "feathers"/"flags"/"notes"/etc. collect-a-thon that Assassin's Creed series is so fond of, and certainly not making half the game barren of content to enjoy just in attempt to guilt-trip me for literally no reason.

>>52175890
He says that the main reason he's so depressed is because he knows that at any moment everything he's ever accomplished could be wiped away and he wouldn't even know it. I think he hints that he was a scientist once, and that's how he learned about it.

Also, when he's counting your deaths, he says "you look like someone who's died X times", which means that he doesn't remember the last time you fought, just that he can tell from how increasingly frustrated your character looks.

I'll give you the Déjà-Vu thing, but that's something all the characters have.

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>>52175600
>half the content

Genocide is a complement to the routes, but is hardly half the game's content. At best there's some additional context for Flowey's actions, but that's intentional. Genocide offers very little that's actually new, the only reasons you would want to do it are for 100% completion and the Sans fight. Which is the point: you are doing horrible things for no other reason than that you can. And because you can, you feel like you have to.

This is the trap Flowey fell into, part of the reason he is what he is. He wanted to know what would happen if he did things differently, and his lack of a soul let him kill everyone hundreds of times just to see their reactions.

Unlike Spec-Ops, Undertale actually gives you a real choice: Neutral, Pacifist, and True Pacifist offer plenty of content. Neutral in particular has tons of variations based on your actions and lends itself to replay value if seeing different endings is your thing. That's also the intended way to play the game. If you're not metagaming, you're going to do a Neutral run first, and all the reactions and differences get you consider different actions getting different endings. Thus you can discover Pacifist on your own and go into True Pacifist for a satisfying ending.

The thing about Genocide is that it's hard to actually discover on your own. Killing everyone you meet won't activate it, you'll get an empty underground flavored Neutral ending at worst. In order to actually start the run, you have to sit in one place grinding until the random encounters run out. If you weren't spoiled on this, you have to tell the game "I am going to stand here and kill people until I am physically stopped." Thus, the game will treat you like a sociopath because that is what you are making the player character out to be. There are no puzzles in Genocide, because it's all about stats and combat. And you kill everything in one hit because you've been grinding like a madman.

>>52176251
The point is not that I lose half the content. The point is if I want to play throught the Sans fight - which is one of the best fights in the game - and see the Genocide ending, I have to suffer through boring grinding. That's not a mark of good game design, and don't even try to pull the "it's intentional" line. Fun should never be locked behind "boring grind" walls, even to make an artistic statement.
>inb4 shifting the goalposts
Yeah, I guess I am. For me, gameplay is equivalent with fun, however, so when I'm saying "half the game", it's true for me. If I'm not having fun, I'm technically not "playing" the game - I'm just grinding through boring content in hopes of getting something fun in the end.

>>52176218

>Everything else simply doesn't matter.

What happened to games as an "artistic medium"? Art doesn't need to be art. It can make you think or feel things that aren't necessarily fun. I think making a point about consequences and choices in games qualifies as art.

Also, people have different ideas of fun. What's fun for me clearly isn't fun for you, as I really enjoyed feeling like I had attained a truly happy ending in my fairytale about skeletons and fish-women.

I also wouldn't say genocide is "half" the game. It's really only there as context. The Yang to Mercy's Yin. I also wouldn't say it's COMPLETELY boring. Seeing the abandoned towns and shopkeepers freak out is 2spoopy and Sans is a super memorable boss fight. It's really just the regular monsters that are a grind, and it's not exactly titanite slab/pure bladestone farming levels of grind.

>>52176386

>even to make an artistic statement

Art by definition has absolutely nothing to do with fun. Art doesn't have to entertain. It often doesn't. It just needs to say something and make it mean something. Jean Luc Godard has a ten minute sequence of a traffic jam in Weekend and that's required viewing for film students.

Genocide really is supposed to be a grind. It's supposed to make you question why you feel the need to do things just because you can, thereby lending gravity and meaning to your choices.

You don't have to agree with that, but it's not some miss step in game design. It's a design choice.

+20 to all roll made to go off topic

>>52176397
>What happened to games as an "artistic medium"?
If it's "artistic medium" ONLY, then don't call it a game. Call it an interactive narrative or something, like it's the case with Dear Esther or other shit like that. And again, I'm not against a good story - I enjoy it just like everyone else, but when I turn on my game console or PC expecting a nice game of Tetris and get a Brave New World narration instead - that's bullshit.
Art in my game is fine, when the game itself is good. Art for the sake of art being marketed as a game, though, is pure bullshit.

>>52176517
I'm gonna be honest, I think it's just not a game made for you. That doesn't make it a bad game, it's just not what you're looking for in a game.

Just because I don't like grand strategy or puzzle games doesn't mean that they all suck, it just means that they're not what I'm looking for.
Please watch the following instructional video for further explanation.
https://youtu.be/0la5DBtOVNI

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>>52176517

>If it's "artistic medium" ONLY, then don't call it a game.

It can be both. For a long time the idea of game's even having artistic merit was scoffed at. You can have fun stuff about dating skeletons with little bits of meta commentary thrown in, all for the price of a McDonalds. I think that's bretty gud.

I wonder if Undertale had marketed it's meta elements more heavily would they have still worked as effectively? Wouldn't that kinda rob the impact?

Or maybe it's just okay not to have UNIVERSAL appeal.

>>52176587
> I'm gonna be honest, I think it's just not a game made for you. That doesn't make it a bad game, it's just not what you're looking for in a game.
I think we can shake hands and agree on that. I mean, clearly Undertale is enjoyable to a certain degree - hell, I enjoyed it, but for me gamist elements are more important than artistic.
>Just because I don't like grand strategy or puzzle games doesn't mean that they all suck, it just means that they're not what I'm looking for.
It's exactly the opposite for me, because I adore Paradox strategies and puzzle games alike.

>>52176517
>Go into the route where you farm and kill everyone with your overpowered stats.
>Complain that you farm.
>Complain that you kill everyone.
>Complain that your stats are overpowered.

There is something incredibly broken in your ability to process simple logic.

>>52176517
The game part is Neutral, Pacifist, and True Pacifist. Genocide is included in the game, but it is not a game. The point of Genocide is that there's always a choice. If you want fun, the other routes are there. You can kill everyone for a Neutral-Bad ending. There's no grinding and unfun bullshit to sift through, and you still get to be a "villain." You still get fights and puzzles, and dialogue.

If you are playing Genocide, you do not want fun. You are doing it because it's there and you feel like you're not finished yet.

>>52176631
>>Go into the route where you farm and kill everyone with your overpowered stats.
My point is that said route shouldn't even exist in the game. If it's boring, why put it into the game? Just making an artistic point isn't enough of a justification for me to intentionally put boring gameplay into the game.

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>>52176662
>Just making an artistic point isn't enough of a justification for me to intentionally put boring gameplay into the game

Which is a valid opinion that doesn't make a game objectively shit.

>>52176662
Why not? You don't need to play it. Fallout New Vegas has that Caravan minigame. That doesn't make the game suck, you can completely ignore it. Disregarding the limited time they had to work on it, and the time spent on Caravan could have been used polishing the game more.

>>52176699
But makes it subjectively shit for me. Thus, I'm explaining my reasoning to you, and not just throwing insults around like a retard.

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>>52176662

>Just making an artistic point isn't enough of a justification

I can only agree to disagree at this point. I came for the ost and stayed for the weird meta-stuff.

You know, in both extreme endings you get control of some or all of the interface usurped from you.

Get to Asgore in Genocide and Frisk (Chara?) attacks without even your say-so.

Get to the True Lab in True Pacifist and from that point on any attack will miss, no matter how many times you hit Fight.

So what does that make you, the player, in any non-neutral route? An unwitting pawn?

>>52176727

Im not that anon, but you can be meta without shitting on the medium.

Extra text for stuff like replays = meta
"true reset" being a lie = shitting on the medium

>>52176837

I'm not sure how it shits on the medium.

>>52173925
>Horrible beast suddenly shows up in your country
>Willing to buy and sell stuff normally
>Can converse with people like a reasonable person
>Go up to it and try to kill it
The royal guard is justifiable but random jackoffs should either ignore you or run like hell.

>>52175787

This is really getting at the heart of my most pressing frustration with gamers right now. The idea that hours of content is the surest measure of a game's worth. It's a ridiculous standard that only exists for games. Is the dictionary a better book than Catch-22 because it takes longer to read? Is a 12 hour video of paint drying better than The Princess Bride because it lasts longer?

At some point you have to understand that the 'value' of games is more than just a sum of the amount of time you spent on them. And to me there's a lot of value in a videogame that actually makes me feel like I've made a real, tangible choice. Not a Fable 'kill the kid or build him a teddy bear' choice, not a Bioware 'will you choose the right dialog option to get into a character's pants' choice, but something that felt more real for it. Choosing not to play content that you paid for is an actual decision, not a pre-made dialog option designed to make you feel like you have agency within the pre-constructed confines of the game.

That, to me, was more valuable than the few hours of 'content' that a genocide playthrough would have offered.

>>52176887
There's a few things you need to remember about Undertale's monsters.

>most don't know what a human looks like
>monsters are made of and have resistance to magic
>their "attacks" don't really hurt each other and many don't think of them as attacks
>they are highly empathetic and vulnerable to emotions
>most monsters are stupid as shit

>>52177048
> Choosing not to play content that you paid for is an actual decision
So is not playing the game at all and doing something else. So is donating to charity. So is kidnapping a random person on the street.
I am not sure what is your point.

>>52176837

A medium only grows by questioning expectations and boundaries. If people never did that, games would have never gone past tetris and space invaders.

I would argue that the expectation of 'you will never face true long term consequences for your choices ingame because you can always reset' is a very interesting one to question. It raises a lot of interesting questions, as evidenced by the discussion in this very thread.

Other games have done similar experiments recently, and I'm really interested to see more of it. Nier and it's recent sequel did it in a really really cool way, for example.

>>52176859

It's not even a full step removed from a game cartridge that self-destructs after a playthrough. If you pay money for something it shouldn't be designed to damage itself.

>>52177137

Because that choice is contextualised within the game's narrative and has consequences for the characters and story. Kidnapping and charity has nothing to do with anything. Not going genocide is a choice that has meaning within the game's world.

>>52177150
Nier is an entirely different beast. You are given a choice of "do you want to erase all of your progress for the sake of having a flower on your title screen?". The thing is, by that point, you have already experienced all the game could offer, so you are losing literally nothing in terms of experience. And if I decide to play Nier again at whatever point in the future, I surely will not start it from midway, so savefiles are pretty much meaningless in the long run.
>>52177217
>Because that choice is contextualised within the game's narrative and has consequences for the characters and story.
Somehow, I doubt that. The script doesn't change just because you refuse to read further.

>>52177137

My point is that the genocide ending permanently corrupting your game actually lends weight to the choice of whether to play through it or not. I actually agree with you that Spec Op's "lol you could just have turned it off anytime" message was retarded because they clearly didn't design that to be a satisfying experience in its own right.

Undertale is different in that it's designed to have a satisfying conclusion without all content being explored. And at that point you have to make a choice about which is more valuable: That experience, intangible though it was, and the 'extra content' that is the genocide playthrough. The fact that you can't ever go back on the genocide ending is what makes it an actual choice at all.

>>52177151

Loss can add meaning to the experience. Why do you think there's such a hardcore crowd of people who like permadeath games or ironman runs? For some people, harsh consequences for failing actually enhance the experience rather than detract from it.

>>52177151

That analogy doesn't work. A game self destructing doesn't give you any kind of choice or relate to the events of the game.

Making a comment about compulsive completionism isn't shitting on the medium or the players. It's just trying to get you to think and reflect about your behaviour and why you play games the way you do. It encourages you to assign more meaning to your actions. That's actually showing quite a lot of thought and respect to the medium and player.

>>52177289
>Why do you think there's such a hardcore crowd of people who like permadeath games or ironman runs?
Again, a different beast entirely. It doesn't corrupt the whole experience, it merely resets your progress.

>>52177247

>Somehow, I doubt that. The script doesn't change just because you refuse to read further.

It literally does though. That's the entire hook of the game. Dialogue and endings change depending on what you have or haven't done.

>>52173072
>Retributive Justice
When will this meme end

>>52177333
Stopping reading the book midway and then imagining your own ending doesn't qualify as actually reading through the book, anon.

>>52173295
>Strength not acceptance
>What is war profiteering

>>52177379

We're not talking about books anon. We're talking about Undertale.

>>52177289
After you lose an ironman run, you can start another. The game is identical to when you bought it.

Undertale doesn't "add meaning" or "lends weight to the choice" it just lies. It isn't even a lie in the same sense as a plot twist or something like that, it lies like a dry-clean shirt that's labelled "machine washable."

If you bought a shirt that was dry-clean-only, and it was labelled "machine washable," then ruined your own shirt, would you ever accept that the shirt maker was trying to make an artistic statement and not being a pretentious turd? Does breaching this boundary in shirt design improve the art of shirt making?

Some boundaries are not artistic. They are practical.

>>52177247

>"do you want to erase all of your progress for the sake of having a flower on your title screen?"

The fact that you phrase the question like that seems to suggest you're the type of person who doesn't allow themself to become emotionally involved in the games they play. To anyone who actually allowed themselves to become immersed in the story the choice would better be described as 'would you sacrifice all traces of your own existence to save a friend's life'?

And I'm not trying to pass judgment on that attitude, but frankly it renders this whole debate pretty pointless. You won't enjoy Undertale or understand why other people do because it's designed for people who allow themselves to be immersed in the stories they play through. In fact as you so accurately pointed out, the game goes out of its way to criticize people who have this attitude by pointing out how boring and hollow that makes the experience.

>>52177402
When you stop playing after you finish the True Pacifist ending, you don't somehow magically grant everyone a conclusive happy ending. The world is still there, in unstable equilibrium, and you haven't actually reached an ending at all, you just set the world on indefinite pause.

>>52177299
>That analogy doesn't work. A game self destructing doesn't give you any kind of choice or relate to the events of the game.

It DOES work because you DO have a choice.You can avoid a game self-destructing by turning it off before it self-destructs. This is similar to avoiding undertale's corruption by not completing the game.

>Making a comment about compulsive completionism isn't shitting on the medium or the players. It's just trying to get you to think and reflect about your behaviour and why you play games the way you do. It encourages you to assign more meaning to your actions. That's actually showing quite a lot of thought and respect to the medium and player.
You can make a comment on something without making a product that damages itself.

>>52177417

>it just lies

What does it lie about? Flowey tells you right at the start actions have consequences and that those actions are immutable. It's only crime is meaning what it says.

>>52177379
Have you played Undertal, anon?

In this analogy, Undertale would be a series of books. Neutral is the first book, which you read all of. Pacifist and True Pacifist are sequels that you also read all of. Genocide is a tie in What-If short story that isn't necessary to understand the rest of the plot.

>>52177459

No, this analogy is really bad. Undertale doesn't blow up before you can complete it. It doesn't rob you of being able to play it. You can play all its content as much as you like, but if you make a certain decision it makes a VERY small, but permanent change to the ending that has big implications for the story's world and it's characters. So it all boils down to how much meaning and value YOU personally assign to this decision.

>>52177417

>The story clearly shows you that 'resets' are not a pure gameplay convention, but actually a phenomena within the universe

>It also directly shows you that you (the player) are not the only being with the power to manipulate or 'remember' resets.

>You willing choose to free an unimaginably murderous and powerful entity that explicitly has those same powers

>You act shocked and betrayed when, go fucking figure, it has consequences that resets cannot immediately solve.

Wow what a point you have there. Definitely the same shit as your retarded washing machine analogy.

>>52177453

You're factually wrong here. When you fire up the game after true pacifist Flowey even begs you to leave things as they are because stuff is dandy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI0Pb_z4HSU

>>52173211
>No mercy. Mercy is not just. The evil must pay.
Holy shit radical paladin calm down.

>>52177485

Would you support undertale if flowey said "If you do a genocide run, I will delete system32," and then the game made good on its threat?

>Deciding whether seeing the genocide ending is worth having to reinstall windows gives weight to choice, blah blah

It's an extreme analogy, but I only made it because you ignored the point that some boundaries are not artistic, they are practical. Breaching a practical boundary just for the sake of doing so is pretentious because it confuses doing something that hasn't been done before for good reasons with being visionary.

>>52177314

I'm not trying to claim they're the same thing, just that the same principle applies to both of them. Accomplishments and choices are meaningless without consequences. So long as every choice you make within a game can be easily reset, there can be no consequences. If there are no consequences, there is no meaning to the choices in the first place.

I mean come on, this is a discussion we're having on a board for Tabletop Games. Imagine if anytime you did something stupid in a tabletop you just told the GM 'sorry I don't like that, can we rewind so I can do it differently?'. That would completely undermine everything fun or interesting about tabletop gaming. I don't see how a videogame trying to emulate that same feeling is in any way a bad thing.

>>52177552
>No, this analogy is really bad. Undertale doesn't blow up before you can complete it. It doesn't rob you of being able to play it

It robs you the ability to play it as if it were new, which is something no other game will do to you. This permanently damages the replayability of the game, which is a practical loss in functionality. Like it or not, undertale is programmed to damage itself.

>>52177672
>It robs you the ability to play it as if it were new, which is something no other game will do to you.


Not him, but you might want to look up the concept of "Legacy games" for board games. It is not exactly a new concept, and games like Gloomhaven are quite popular despite the fact that you cannot play each game as if it was new.

>>52177648

Tabletop games would make a great comparison. Imagine if after running an evil campaign in D&D, the option to play a non-evil campaign was permanently removed from the game. Not just your current campaign, but any future campaign.

This is the problem with undertale. It tries to present deliberate product decay as an artistic feature.

>>52177616

Every 'meta' thing Undertale does only affects Undertale's own files. Your point is basically saying 'You like acupuncture, so clearly you'd be okay if someone stabbed you full of needles randomly'.

>>52177616

You really seem to be hung up on the idea that the game somehow destroys itself. As if it is committing some form of vandalism because it had the gall to ask you to think about the choices you make. It's not an extreme analogy. It's not an analogy at all as nothing is being taken away from you. It boils purely down to your own sentiment and whether you are satisfied with a happy ending or not. Practicality doesn't enter into it. Nothing is hindering or damaging your game. It's giving you a choice: are you satisfied by the ending or do you need to see everything before you're satisfied?

>>52177728

As >>52177723

so kindly pointed out, there are games that do precisely that. And people love the shit out of them. Pandemic Legacy is one of the most beloved boardgames I see discussed online and it's hardly a replayable experience.

>>52177739

A game cartridge that deletes its own content if you get the wrong ending is still only effecting its own files.

Of course, this conversation is going to go in circles unless you agree with me that the right to truly replay a game is a boundary that should never be crossed by a single player game. If we can't agree on that, then there is nothing else to say.

>>52177552
>>52177485
>>52177616

I always felt that the "choices have consequences" and "you are not above consequences" rung hollow when you could simply delete a file in the game folder and you would still get the true pacifist ending. In the end it kinda seems you were above consequences.

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>>52177748
>Practicality doesn't enter into it. Nothing is hindering or damaging your game. It's giving you a choice: are you satisfied by the ending or do you need to see everything before you're satisfied?

A copy of undertale that is fresh can experience every ending. It is the full game.

A copy of undertale post-genocide cannot experience every ending, and this is a loss of functionality. It lost this functionality through its own design. By definition, the product is damaged compared to the unplayed version.

Pic related. Yes, you have a choice whether or not to use this card, but whether you agree with its design philosophy or not, IT DAMAGES ITSELF.

>>52177672

>It robs you the ability to play it as if it were new

Well you can't play it new anyway if you've already done a genocide run you've already played it. You can only play something for the first time once. That's the point.

It doesn't damage replayability. You can replay it as many times you like. If anything it rewards replayability, because it's showing you a new ending. It just depends on whether the ramifications of that ending are enough for you to personally want to keep things as they are or if you're not bothered and just want to see more.

You have lost absolutely no functionality. You can do everything exactly the same. It just depends on how that one second of change to the ending makes you feel about your choice. If you don't care you lost nothing. If you care then that's a reward in itself.

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>>52177728
I think you're making out the effects of the Genocide run to be far greater than they actually are. All it does is change a few sprites in whichever ending you picked. In one, it adds red X's over the ending photograph, and in the other it adds glowing eyes and a stinger.

This does not in any way damage the gameplay or cause anything to play differently from before. All mechanics and dialogue remain the same; all that changes is the implication that you ruined your happy ending with the addition of a single frame.

In tabletops terms, this is not taking non-evil campaigns off the table. This is playing through a heroic module you've run before with everything the same, and your DM tacking on "btw you turned evil in the epilogue" at the end, after the game was already over. A dick move to be sure, but hardly damaging the actual game.

>>52175373
Anon, those people are reacting as they would in-universe if an alien baby turned up and starting murdering literally everything.

You can't complain about content makes sense in-universe if all you're after is exploring content

>>52177877
It seems your argument is based on the idea that any game which is designed to be permanently altered by certain choices is irredeemably bad. This would be the point where we agree to disagree, since that seems entirely subjective.

>>52177945
Even then, it's playing through a heroic module you've ran before where you explicitly go out of your way to be as evil as possible and at the end you irreparably break the universe, meaning you can never play the module again, but have the option to have your characters sell their souls, which will result in the module being reset but also in demons being able to possess your characters after the end of the module.

>>52177877

How do people this autistic actually function in TTRPG campaigns? Wouldn't your crippling fear of missing out on every last drop of 'content' prevent you from doing anything with actual consequence to it?

Seriously despite your overblown metaphors it's not as if the game blows itself up. It just adds a few frames of moral judgment onto the ending screen. That's it. That's all the 'destroyed content' you're whinging about amounts to.

>>52178035
I think you blended metaphor and actuality a bit too much there.

>>52178072
I find a metaphor works best when it's basically the exact same as the actual thing. No room for misconceptions that way.

>>52178069
>How do people this autistic actually function in TTRPG campaigns?


Anon you do realize that most of /tg/ doesn't actually play TTRPGs, right? That's why we have so many outlandish That Guy stories.

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>>52177877

That card is another bad analogy. It can only be used once if played as intended and causes damage to the product. Undertale causes no "damage" to itself. It loses no functionality. You can see every ending multiple times, but doing one of those endings will lock you out of one of the others. And even then it is only changing a single second of the true ending and really only matters if you want it to.

You use the word damage, but it doesn't really apply to something so subjective. If you don't like consequences being permanent that's okay. You don't have to play games with consequences, but they aren't automatically badly designed because they don't appeal to you.

>>52177838

Sure, you can always game the system to thumb your nose at the intended design. You can mod Dark Souls to make yourself invincible, but it's hardly fair to say there's no challenge because of that.

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>>52178035
>meaning you can never play the module again

Not quite. In this metaphor, Undertale is a single module with a few endings. Doing the Genocide does not prevent you from playing the module again in a heroic way. All it does is change the epilogue, once you are no longer playing. It goes like this:

>Play module once, being heroic, and getting the good ending
>Play the module a second time, now being as evil as possible and selling your soul
>Playing the module a third time, being heroic again, but because of the soul selling your good ending is tainted

In the third playthrough, nothing about the module itself changes. The characters and mechanics do not change. The dialogue does not change. You can still play the heroic side as many times as you want. The ONLY change is that after the heroic story, you get a little note on the last page that says you got possessed after the game was over. It applies only to this module and no other campaign.

I am of the opinion that equating this little note with a self-destructing cartridge is a poor example. Genocide DOES NOT prevent the game from being played again. You can still play True Pacifist as many times as you want afterward. Your epilogue and happy ending are ruined, but nothing is being done to prevent you from playing.

>>52178216
>It loses no functionality. You can see every ending multiple times, but doing one of those endings will lock you out of one of the others
>It loses no functionality.
>but doing one of those endings will lock you out of one of the others
>It loses no functionality.
>but doing one of those endings will lock you out of one of the others
>It loses no functionality.
>but doing one of those endings will lock you out of one of the others
>It loses no functionality.
>but doing one of those endings will lock you out of one of the others

Guuuys. Its like 3-click process to delete your Undertale savefile from your computer and restard your game. Why are you doing this to yourself?

>>52178349
Read the rest of the post. You get to play again if you sell your soul, just like Undertale.

>>52178387
The ending comes after the functionality is over. You are no longer playing at that point, you are simply watching a cutscene or getting an image.

"Functionality" in this case is referring to the game's mechanics.

>>52178506
But there is no route in Undertale that can never be done again. You can also do Genocide as many times as you want.

>meaning you can never play the module again

So what exactly is this referring to?

>>52178387

>An entire SECOND of the ending is changed
>This is a loss of "functionality"

Anon, I'm not sure what you think that word means.

If you're that stubborn you can just delete your fucking save file. Just stop going around in circles with really overwrought analogies, complaining about your subjective dislike of an NG+ feature as some grand act of self destruction.

>>52178562
If you don't sell your soul to Chara at the end of genocide, when you reload the game, there'll be a black screen for 10 minutes, then they appear and ask you to sell your soul again. There's no way to get back to the game without selling your soul and thus permanently altering the ending.

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>>52178633
Thanks.

>>52173070
What's your system?

Really I have a hard time feeling sorry for any of the Undertale monsters when they're out creating murder bots, malformed soul abominations, and eldritch murder plants, and this is on top of the ones that try to stab you outright.

Sure the in game lore paints them as the victims, but you're reading their take on the story in their realm that paints them as the victims. For all we know somewhere up in the human world there is a mass grave where hundreds of humans lie dead and mangled from some sort of teakettle monster with whirling razor dicks.

>>52179377
>when they're out creating murder bots, malformed soul abominations, and eldritch murder plants
This was one monster. The rest dindu nuffin for the most part.

>and this is on top of the ones that try to stab you outright.
The ones that aren't guards or soldiers trying to stop you because you're literally an eldritch abomination to them are actually just doing what they normally do, but it's harmful to you because you're human. As mentioned above, they have bullet pattern birthday cards.

>>52179377
A monster can become a nigh-omnipotent god with 7 human souls. Their entire goal was to collect these, and they only almost managed it by killing children because even a child is capable of wiping out their race. That's not really their lore since we see these things actually happen in game. In the monster-human war, the monsters could not manage 7 human casualties. Fucking 7. Human souls are the game's mcguffins because apparently killing a single human is a legendary feat.

7 fucking kills.

>>52179377
I doubt it, considering how easily the humans apparently won. All of Alphys' experiments (all the things you just named) are after the barrier is made and everything. If they'd had something like Mettaton or Flowey DURING the war, I doubt they'd have gotten off as easily as being sealed away, even had they been beaten.

>>52179801
>>52179802

Once again though we're told about the war from their perspective, and they're sure as hell not going to paint themselves out as soul devouring sins against nature with armies of murderbots. You say that it takes only seven souls to make a monster crazy powerful like it makes humans super scary when you can flip that in reverse and say that monsters are fucking scary because they inherently can subsume souls and go insane with power after only seven kills.

It's also interesting to note that the monsters were sealed underground and not outright killed. If humans were all heartless assholes who were afraid of monsters eating their souls, why didn't we just kill all of them in the first place? Typically in fiction you seal something that is too powerful or dangerous for you to kill.

>>52180010
I just figured that the humans' king at the time was a lot like Asgore - not willing to commit fully to the war and just wanting to do the minimum necessary to make the monsters no longer his problem.

>>52180010
Not either of them, but considering how easily a pretty normal 10 year old girl can go through their entire population without even a weapon...... I'm inclined to believe them.

>>52175373
Undertale isn't saying your are a bad person by going through the genocide route, and neither does Spec Ops, even though people get irrationally angry at that game because they think that is what it's trying to tell them.

Undertale is a game that knows it's a game. It wants you to connect with its characters and love them, and in the most ideal case bring forward some kind of meaningful inspiration to the player; the importance or friendship, trying to bridge the divide even with people who seem worlds away from you, or whatever other thing a person can take away from such a story. The purpose of breaking the 4th wall within the game is to keep the player honest about this connection. If you try to cheat out of accidentally killing Toriel, the game outs you as a fake to add a consequence to metagaming, where the goal in doing this is to try and make the player treat the story more honestly and sincerely.

Going through the genocide route doesn't make you a bad person, and at no point is Undertale trying to say this. But it does make you the villain of the story. It means that to you (and to me), the game in the end was really just a game and nothing more.

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>>52180010
It doesn't matter how the monsters painted themselves in the war. It's an observable fact that they were straight up unable to kill seven humans.

Monsters are WEAK. The magic holding them together unravels if the person attacking them wants them to die badly enough. Betrayals and emotional turmoil can cause and worsen wounds, and the willpower required to fight through the pain and stay standing is demonstrably corrosive to their physical bodies.

Toriel could be killed accidentally or instantly dusted by a surprise backstab with a toy, Undyne was dead the moment she gained determination, and all of Asgore's health meant nothing in the face of a single intent driven strike. Yes the monsters think of themselves as victims, but all evidence points to them also actually being that pathetic and helpless.

Funny how True Pacifist doesn't solve the issue of humans being terrified of a monster with 7 human souls.

Death by Glamour was my favorite song.

>>52172878
Genocide is the only way to beat the game. The other endings are all fake.

>>52172878
Or maybe, now just maybe, the message of the game is that you should eliminate things that have grown to bore you and move on to the next.

>>52180394
At that point, Asriel could've done just about anything with his powers. So what's he do? Basically play an impotent game with an unkillable child.

>>52177672
>It robs you the ability to play it as if it were new, which is something no other game will do to you. This permanently damages the replayability of the game, which is a practical loss in functionality. Like it or not, undertale is programmed to damage itself.
Except for every game with New Game Plus that doesn't go away once you've unlocked it.

LE GASP DARK SOULS DAMAGES ITSELF IT'S A TERRIBLE GAME

>>52173072
Is this really not sarcasm? It's never been easy, but we need to believe in the good in other people more, not less.

>>52173295
Ok Jontron, you can stop posting any time now

>>52172259

Just outta curiosity, is it just one very diligent dude making these posts or do a bunch of you keep owlbear stats on handy for copypaste?
>>52173072

Anyone got that one image where the dude is claiming mercy is the antithesis of justice and therefore evil?

>>52182346

Shit, my bad, it was already posted here >>52173310

>>52182346

It's here:
>>52173310

I have to say, that comic made me think for awhile. I don't think I agree with it, but that's probably a discussion for another day.

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>>52182346
The owlbear thing became a meme, it's not just one guy.

I wish it was the crab that caught on.

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>>52172259
Wait a second. I usually just skip over these posts, but I just noticed this isn't the Owlbear. This cheeky motherfucker actually just changed the size category of the 3.5 Cockatrice statblock.

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>>52182346
I do have a screencap image of the statblock for use in stat me threads, but I'm always late to post it.

>>52177063

Undyne shattered a table with her magic, clearly it's not just pixie dust

Regardless of whether the monsters are mostly good or bad, destroying every last one of them is the only responsible answer, as any one of them that happens to be near a human when they die becomes a nigh unstoppable abomination. And then if that monster chose, they could easily kill a half dozen more humans and become a literally omnipotent god. To allow monsters to exist is to doom the earth to such a fate, sooner or later

>>52182479
Vulnerable to Memes
A monstrous crab that is prone and on it's back must make a saving throw against massive damage from any attack that deals at least 1 point of damage to it.

>>52174458
The monsters are ridiculously weak.

A child with child toys is hurting and killing monsters, and barely being harmed by their attacks, even when they are really going after you? Fuck, it's.a good thing you aren't an adult

>>52171382
Favored Enemy:Children

>>52175102
It actually rewards that because you can only win the game on several playthroughs.

Genocide mode rather then belittles the player for it (Since the game doesnt make itself less fun in doing so) just uses the completionist thing to say "Doing this in real life is fucked up".

It's not a pogniant idea but its not inexcusable. It's supposed to make you think about responsibillity or something. The game doesnt make you or prevent you from doing anything but if you decide "Hey lets kill everyone" you do exactly that.

>>52178481
Shhh, shhhh. Don't spoil the tard fight.

>>52185874
Monsters absorbing human souls is a terrible way to accrue power. As expressed multiple times in the game, absorbed souls are still alive and can take control of the owner. Even then, a monster with a single human soul is still vulnerable. People often forget Asriel was killed in 201X by mundane means. I'd be more worried about humans absorbing monster souls than monsters doing anything.

>>52186971
The other part of that is that monster souls are extremely weak. One of the books speculates that it would take the soul of every monster in the underground to equal the power of one human soul. This is why Asriel wasn't straight up omnipotent: he absorbed six human souls, plus the souls of almost every other monster. He was at 6.999% of seven human souls because Napstablook didn't show up to the final battle.

The point about souls being able to rebel is valid, though.

>>52187062
>One of the books speculates that it would take the soul of every monster in the underground to equal the power of one human soul. This is why Asriel wasn't straight up omnipotent: he absorbed six human souls, plus the souls of almost every other monster. He was at 6.999% of seven human souls because Napstablook didn't show up to the final battle.
Fun fanon, but the book says "the SOULs of almost every monster", not every monster, and the barrier needs a power equivalent to 7 human SOULs to break. He did have the power of "god" as far as it mattered. It just didn't matter because he ultimately stood down.