My Thoughts on Undertale

I have a lot of things to say about Undertale, and I figure this is the best space to do it since I can conveniently hide everything behind a Read More so that you don’t get spoiled.

As a disclaimer, I’m not going to hold back on discussing things from both major ending paths, since they are integral to my opinions on the game. You will be spoiled if you read this without already knowing them.

I think the last time I played a game that made me cry, it was when I was about 5 years old. After a lot of toiling about on my own, before the internet existed, I had managed to beat Super Mario Brothers 3 with nothing but my own skill and perseverance. I was so excited about this that I wanted to show my mom, and some time while I was out of the room, the cartridge glitched so the screen was illegible and crashed. I was so sad! But then I beat it again and felt better.

What is it about this game in particular that can actually incite emotion in someone such as myself, twenty-two years after I had thought myself better than to cry at a video game? I hope to explore that with a write-up of my various opinions and thoughts, as someone who has played through both the nice boy route and the Literally Satan route.

I think the best way to tackle this would be to list my thoughts on the major characters in the game, since their interactions are integral to the experience. Just for fun, and perhaps to endear or infuriate some people who read this, I’ll order them from least to most favorite. However, please note that I like all of them. I just have some very clear preferences as to who is better for me. First off…

Asgore: Sure, he had reasons to do what he did, but it’s difficult to find him sympathetic. His demeanor is one of the scariest in the game to me, since it mixes genuine gentleness with a reluctant, but still fueled desire to kill. I feel that even in the happiest ending, he has a lot more to answer for than he really has to. Those experiments that basically melted a bunch of monsters together were his idea. As Toriel mentions, he prefers lying in wait like a coward for humans to approach him before taking their souls, as opposed to entering the surface and actively taking them. Something about him is severely damaged, though that is understandable given what happened to his family. I like him as a character, but I think some of the other characters are too nice to him.

Alphys: She has a lot to answer for too. However, she’s aware of this the entire time, which puts her far above Asgore for me. Everything she did was either an accident or she was mandated to do it, so I can actually consider her sympathetic. She’s absolutely terrified that she did it, and she subtly admits at one point that it almost drove her to suicide. That you get a chance to pull her back around and help her atone for this is a very welcome story development to me. Aside from that serious stuff, her general demeanor is very easy to relate to as someone who used to/still does go through some of the anxiety-fueled behavior she exhibits (i.e. phonecall anxiety, I used to have it so I completely understood this). Also, she is one of the major source of anime jokes for this game, and I can’t get enough. As an aside, I find it interesting that she is the only major character who cannot be killed.

Sans. A crowd favorite, and for good reason. He’s the first person you meet after your encounter with Toriel, and he does a good job of lightening the mood. He’s also one of the most enigmatic characters, and it’s very likely we still don’t know everything about him. He may not even be a monster! Regardless, I think he’s great. He’s a good comic relief, but at the same time, some of his comic relief is actually part of why he’s so enigmatic. He can walk off screen and appear in completely different places, which seems like a funny joke by the game at first, but knowing more about him completely changes the nature of what he does. He’s one of the two characters who actually stands up to you (and how) in a genocide run, and his dialog during this fight suggests that he’s involved in some sort of knowledge of time travel. It’s pretty vague, but the secret room in his house more or less confirms that he has the ability to do this, somehow. He made me laugh a fair number of times throughout the game, and he also righteously made me have a bad time when I chose to be mean to everyone in the game. I can’t say it wasn’t also the best and most fun fight in the game, though.

Undyne. Undyne is a bit of a sleeper hit. She doesn’t really show you much of her personality unless you properly spare and befriend her, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I was not disappointed when it came time to have friendship scenes with her. She was probably the second best comic relief in the game for me, given that she both believes anime is real, and is… well, extreme in everything she does. What really sold me on her was playing a genocide run, though. Even if you feel you have to fight and kill her in a normal run, she fights you as-is to the death. When you go through the game heartlessly killing everyone, she gives her own life to keep you from murdering a kid, and it’s that situation that causes her to show that she has the ability to resist death and become some sort of avatar of heroism to stop you. What I like about this is it’s not the need to preserve her own life that causes her to do this, but an overwhelming desire to save the world from you. It’s a genuine show that she really is selfless when it comes down to it, and I think that was one of the best ways to get that point across. Both hilarious, and a powerful character emotionally and physically. She’s great.

Asriel/Flowey: The tragic character of the game, if I ever saw one. Flowey is almost enigmatic like Sans, except that going through both routes, you do get to understand what he’s doing, how he’s doing it, and why he’s doing it. While one of the most complex characters, he’s also almost thoroughly explained, and it’s all very interesting. Putting both routes together, he has a clear unhealthy relationship with the fallen child. I consider it a very big deal that you clear him of this in the pacifist run, helping him realize what a good person actually does and that his foster brother actually sucked. Conversely, experiencing his continued obsession with the fallen child in the genocide run is uncomfortable.

I know a lot of people desire a happier ending where you completely save him, but as a person who has written stuff before, I can understand how his fate as it is has a positive impact on the story. His sacrifice wouldn’t really mean much if everything was just okay afterwards. He is at peace when you last leave him, and he doesn’t die or anything, he just reverts back to a flower. I consider this a huge deal, because he had been living without emotions, reversing time and killing people for fun at his leisure for who knows how long before you showed up. You helped him overcome that and be himself again. But, even if he were able to, he would have to face people he’s murdered for fun repeatedly and live with himself. It may be best to let him choose solitude, if that’s what he wants. That’s my thought, anyway.



Papyrus: My favorite thing about the silly dumb skeleton is that he is much deeper as a character than you’d ever guess by just playing through on pacifist. He’s absolutely hilarious and I loved him from the get-go, but something that puts him this far up my list goes beyond his outstanding comic relief.

When you’re committing genocide in the Snowdin area, you’re also constantly screwing up all of his puzzles. The main character doesn’t play along at all, and simply walks through them before Papyrus can even finish talking about them. You repeatedly crush his fun and make him unhappy, while also murdering everyone you possibly can. When you finally confront him in that foggy area, he says that you’re a weirdo… and then proceeds to try to be your friend, and that he believes you can veer off of the path you’ve put yourself on. Of course, he continues doing all of this in his usual silly way, but that’s what makes it powerful. He knows you’re a killer, but he still stands there and tries. He doesn’t hate you a single bit, even if you do choose to kill him.

He’s absolutely the nicest character in the game. There’s not a single thing you can do to make him think you aren’t worth the effort, even when he doesn’t like what you’re doing. He is so close to my #1 that I would almost consider them tied.

Toriel: I know what you’re thinking. “Ooh, big surprise, everybody likes her!” Well, I have my reasons, which is part of why I assembled the list this way. I have the most to say about her above the rest, because she was central to my experience with the game.

I hadn’t played the demo for this game. I had no idea what to expect from the first moment. I’d heard of Toriel, of course, but not seen her in-game or known anything about what she does. I was not prepared for it at all, and from very early in the game, I found her extremely endearing due to how motherly she is to the kid. While she might overdo it slightly, I had no problem with that whatsoever.

It starts to get a bit personal here.

People who know me probably know that my parents are no longer with me. I like to say that I’m over it, and that’s true in most respects, but things like this open up the bottle, so to speak. This part of the game hooked me heavily. I even tried to avoid asking her about leaving the Ruins, since it seemed obvious that it’d upset her and I had no idea if that was avoidable or not.

I tend to tell people that I figured out how to spare her due to the hints from the frogs earlier on, but that’s a partial truth. I put that together halfway through the fight. In truth, I just didn’t have the heart to hit her, after all that. I wanted to believe that I didn’t have to do it, and I was rewarded for that. It felt pretty nice!

Even then, the sequence after that slayed me, to be told that I just couldn’t come back, ever. I spent the rest of the game with that hanging a raincloud over my head. Was she just gone from the story? Was there no good way that could have gone? I became filled with some glimmers of hope here and there when Sans mentioned her, because until then it seemed like nobody else in the game even knew she existed.

You can imagine my absolute relief when I managed to trudge through to the full ending sequence, and man was that all great. She was there, and so was everyone else who was cool. I don’t feel I need to sing the praises of the last boss to anyone reading this, though. You already know.

So you also probably know where this is headed. I remained fairly stoic (though uplifted) about the ending past the parts that usually get people, i.e. Asriel’s fate, and then it came around to the pre-credits sequence at the sunset. It was already a very happy ending, and then everyone left Toriel and the kid to talk on their own. I guess at that moment I felt overjoyed, like the story knew how I’d been feeling all throughout the game. Then the choice came up, and I did finally lose it. The good sort of lose it, like the ‘this is everything I wanted and thought I wouldn’t get’ lose it. The exact closure to the story that I wanted, yet somehow it took me by surprise.

I guess I’d become so used to modern storywriting that always feels the need to search for what the reader wants most and dangle it in front of them like some kind of sadist, but never give it to them without some sort of heavy compromise. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it is becoming the norm. To have a story break that mold on me despite numerous tense and uncomfortable moments (Flowey, the lab, Asgore’s death, etc.) was an experience that I don’t feel I’ll get from any other media for a long time.







Then I was convinced to play a genocide run. I was told that it would make me love the characters more, and I thought about it. My inner storywriter went “I can totally see that” and I was on board. I streamed it, since I didn’t have the heart to do it alone after the aforementioned experience. From the first “But nobody came” I really stopped feeling too good about doing it, but I pushed onward. Obviously, I felt like trash after killing Toriel, and every subsequent major character as well. It really wasn’t a nice thing to do, and I would almost completely regret it.

However, it is true. You’ve probably read my gushing about Papyrus and other characters up there if you’ve gotten this far in this block of text. I saw sides of some characters that were very important toward appreciating them more, and very important toward being able to make a write-up like this. I got to play the game a bit longer, rather than feeling like I had to never touch it again or I’d ruin the happiness.

This is just me looking at the positives, though. It’s horrible to do a run like that after becoming so attached to the first ending. I can’t say whether I’d do it again if given the chance, but I tend to heavily encourage others not to do it. It really doesn’t feel very good to do after you’ve actually gotten attached to the game’s nice-person aesthetic. However, that’s just my view, and I can’t stop other people from having their reasons for being curious enough to try it. It happened to me, after all.

The worst part about it… or at least I used to think so, is that when you do a genocide run, your further pacifist runs change into horrible endings. With but a small addition at the very end, your nice journey becomes a giant ruse for the fallen human to exit the barrier and begin a worldwide murder spree. The game has your number, and won’t let you get away with thinking you can be both a good guy and a bad guy.

At first, this felt almost traumatizing. “I want a good ending again!” I thought. But then I thought about it more. Why? I’ve already gotten it. This is something different, and gives me a new motivation. I don’t know if it’s one that can currently be accomplished in the game, but I would love it if it were.

I want to be able to confront the fallen human. Even if it is supposed to be the embodiment of bad things I’ve done, I want to be able to fight it, talk to it, mercy it, whatever. I want to interact with it beyond letting it run amok and have no repercussions for all of the bad things its done in the game’s story. I don’t feel that messing with some values on my PC to get rid of it is enough for me.

Is it possible? I don’t know. It’s probably not, in all honesty. However, it’s the one loose end that bugs me the most, more than the weird Gaster stuff everyone is looking into. I can’t accept that the “demon” just gets away with everything, and I want there to be some way to deal with it in the game itself.





Anyway, I think those are all of my thoughts that I can bring forth at the moment. I’m very happy with this game, and very passionate about the story! On that note, I hope that anyone who read this far actually got something out of it, and I want to thank you for reading through that many paragraphs of me gushing about a video game. You’re a peach!