(SPOILERS) The morals of Undertale are insane

Let me establish this: I really enjoyed (most of) Undertale. However, right at the end (of a normal playthrough), Sans comes by and tells you what a mean person you've been. Let's think about how much sense Sans is making, on a boss-by-boss basis. I've included Doggo and Muffet because I think they have some significance to them.

1. Doggo: he's a dog, and seemingly not too smart? He is certainly willing to hurt you, but maybe it's acceptable to think that you shouldn't kill him since he doesn't necessarily have the mental capacity to know better. Maybe? I mean, he's actually a monster, just like the rest of them, but he certainly doesn't seem too smart. You are still a CHILD, so I don't know that you could be blamed either. Maybe Sans is being semi-sensible here criticizing you using violence to stop Doggo.

2. Papyrus: he's 100% aware of what he's doing, but he doesn't really seem like he wants to kill you. Sans, you can have this one. I didn't kill Papyrus, he seemed like a cool guy.

3. Undyne: are you SERIOUS? Undyne follows you around in a suit of armor and 100% wants to kill you (and unless you are better at video games than I am, she will succeed multiple times). Let me repeat: you are a child, and Undyne is trying to murder you. Straight up. In real life, no one would ever get mad at your character for somehow defeating a murderous monster like Undyne. I killed her, and I felt good about it. And then Papyrus calls me and guilts me about it? Get better friends Papyrus. And Sans, are you serious man?

4. Mettaton: see Undyne. Fuck Mettaton. A robot who has a HISTORY of trying to kill you. I didn't kill him because I had clued in after Papyrus's phone call that this game was going to be weirdly judgmental about me defending myself from murderers.

5. Muffet: see Undyne. Fuck Muffet. Murderous spider, why do I care about you? I didn't kill her either because them's the rules, but I don't see why I should be judged if I did.

6. Asgore: This man has KILLED 6 CHILDREN.

In conclusion, this game is more judgmental than real-life courts. It's not the only problem I had with the game, but it's one of the worst.

Did you get the back story? To me, understanding the history of this world gives some justification to the attitudes. Also, yes, Undyne tries to kill you, but doesn't the fact that Asgore has kille 6 children mean that Undyne has failed to kill 6 children? Maybe I'm forgetting some stuff, but she's strong, so her failing to kill 6 children seems a little suspect.

Yeah, I know all of the story that Undertale has to offer. I'm playing a child and these characters are trying to murder me. And without playing well, they WILL, besides Toriel. If they wanted to chitchat, they should have led with something other than violence.

Note that I don't feel that the Genocide route is justified, because that isn't in self-defense.

They are not bad people once you get to know them... Honestly you're talking about characters like Undyne as if they are enemy soldiers or something. They do those things because humans imprisoned them in a mountain for eternity. Killing them kinda proves their point.

I don't think the game tries to hide that Papyrus is delusional. And if you don't kill Undyne, she says the same things about Asgore that Papyrus says about her (that he's nice and you're going to be great friends.) Which is obviously wrong. It just happens that Papyrus is an idiot-savant and if you trust him everything goes swimmingly, which I didn't have a problem with but it's the kind of ridiculousness I was on board with from the very beginning.

The game(?) does eventually deny that absolute passivity is a viable morality when faced with murderers so I see Sans' prodding coming from his ulterior motives at that point, but the game also completely sets you up for that moment and you don't have much of a choice in it.

Also despite the fact that you are a child, you can easily kill the strongest monsters in the world using little more than toys and garbage. There is a huge power disparity between monsters and humans that makes the battles between the player and them very different than between a child and a normal adult. The game is trying to show you how people can put up a combative front due to ignorance, but that front does not necessarily represent all of who they are. Sometimes you need to weather some unnecessary aggression to get to know someone.

I only killed Toriel and a carrot (by accident) and for the next 6 hours I was feeling super guilty. Sans making you feel bad about that made total sense to me. If you killed someone's friend in real life, no matter the circumstances, that friend would be pretty pissed with you. His speech was 100% what I deserved given the state of that world and the context the mechanics you're playing with put you in.

Also why the heck would you kill Doggo D:

@thatpinguino: that power disparity only really makes sense in the timeline where you have beaten all of them -- there are potentially many timelines in which one of them murders you. In Undertale, those other timelines are equally viable. Your enemies aren't innocuous, so you aren't a jerk for fighting back.

As for their history -- I have been thinking about all this in comparison to another game I really enjoy, Cave Story. The secret final boss in Cave Story is a tortured wizard named Ballos, who has an absolutely horrible past that isn't his fault. However, it also isn't the protagonist's fault -- and Ballos has been killing other innocents. So you kill him. And I never really felt that there was anything wrong with that.

@julius: I think Undertale pretty explicitly takes the stance that matching aggression with aggression is never the right answer.

@thatpinguino: That's a good way of boiling down the problem I have with the game, except it's more than just aggression, it's murderous intent. If someone is trying to kill me, I would absolutely defend myself. I enjoy that you CAN raise yourself above that in this game, that you can try to talk them out of it and peacefully resolve the conflict. I just don't think that that is the only morally acceptable action -- fighting back against someone trying to hurt you is something that I think is fundamentally morally good.

I look at it this way -- I am not the only one who had the option to approach the situation peacefully. Calling me the bad guy when I did not cause the situation in the first place makes very little sense to me.

@julius: You have the option to spare almost every enemy before you kill them if you decide to use force. Most monsters will turn yellow if you hurt them enough. So you can respond with force in most situations. The game just draws a hard line at killing.

Undertale is a fantasy, and as such it abides by fantasy rules. Such as the fantasy that there's always a better solution than violence. Pacifism is great, dodge these vicious killers and then incapacitate them with love!

If you can get past the hamfisted morality it's a decent game. I don't even mind the pacifism approach because it can lead to some pretty funny flavour text. The real issue is how the creator quietly judges you for not abiding by his super skewed outlook. It's like a Roberta Williams puzzle, only with a bunch more condescending author inserts.

@thatpinguino: I don't think bosses like Undyne blink yellow if you hit them enough. If they do... then I didn't see it in my playthrough.

@julius: Undyne doesn't, but every other non-Asgore boss has enough health that they will be ready to surrender by the time you damage them to the point of surrender. Undyne is the least intuitive fight in the game, but it is pretty clear that she's not a bad person when you're fighting her.

Papyrus will also try to date you even though you're a wee childe

He's not the only one who has no qualms dating a child o_o

Also, I still find it very disturbing that Alphys was performing a whole bunch of twisted secret experiments, and then when people find out, it's no biggie. Oh, Alphys, you so quirky, turning people into mutants with your silly little experiments and then imprisoning them in your lab. Ha ha, oh, that's our Alphys, all right!

@beachthunder: that's another example of the insane morals in this game. There is a huge double-standard for what a monster can do and still be "good" at heart, and what the player character can do.

@beachthunder: It kinda works out alright at the end though, Mettaton is happy with the new body and the amalgamations look messed up but are actually quite alright, as far as dead monsters go. The only real mistake Alphys does is to not tell anyone what she was doing until the end. And I guess it's to show how it's not shameful to admit when you make mistakes like that.

Edit: Oh, I forgot that Flowey is her huge mistake too. But not everyone knows about Flowey.

@audiobusting: That's a kind of moral pragmatism that the protagonist is not afforded. Plus, I'm not really sure that I agree that any of those things are really good -- even if Mettaton is stoked, I don't know that everyone is stoked about Mettaton.

Hunh. This game sounds pretty interesting. Maybe not as simple as "you can not kill stuff" would make it seem.

@julius: I mean the game judges you for murdering monsters, but it doesn't hinder your progression in any way. It lets you know that someone like Sans doesn't appreciate what you did and it lets you know that there is another path through the game. If you don't kill that many monsters Sans does try to give you the benefit of the doubt even though taking one life is considered important by the game. Honestly it's refreshing to see a game that treats killing with any sort of gravity at all. Most games deal with killing in purely pragmatic or congratulatory terms with characters either directly benefiting from or ignoring murder. If there is a system to punish the player for killing, a la MGS3, the judgement is usually in the form of a psychological effect or a some blown out boss fight. In Undertale, if you do not go the genocide route, the "punishment" for killing is facing a sort of Peter at the pearly gates who weighs your sins and your achievements as though your path through the game effected real people. The game questions your actions, but does not actually punish you for them and that's an approach that I've never seen before.

@beachthunder said:

The thing about Alphys is that...

She didn't hurt any living monster in her experiments. She was given the bodies of monsters that had "fallen" and she injected them with DETERMINATION. They didn't turn to dust and instead persisted. They eventually opened their eyes and came back to life for a while, before melting together due to their inability to handle DETERMINATION. She literally gave them their life back. You can go back after the ending and see that they (the fusions) are quite happy with their families.

@julius Undyne is not trying to kill you 100%. She is not a murderous monster. Want proof? Here is the proof. What do you think happens when you refuse to give her a fair fight? Watch video and see her reaction. She wants to prove to you that monsters are strong and capable of fighting humans on equal footing because it is known (through the story) that monsters are no match for humans.

@julius: I am hella fucking stoked about Mettaton.

I played the game my own way and I'm pretty happy about it, I only spared papyrus because sans told you he was cool, and sans was the only decent character, he was pretty straight up and he confronts you, but doesn't fight you because he knows it's pointless and tells you to judge yourself, so I did.

I was gutted I didn't get to kill alphys, and alphys is the reason that I had no issue killing undyne. Fuck toriel, should have yielded way earlier, I was leaving whether you liked it or not, the king was obviously a shithouse, if you deny me the option to mercy you at the start then why should I show mercy at the end? Mettaton was a pain in the ass and gave me no reason to mercy it either.

I also spared every monster in a normal encounter where possible, but some just died in the next hit so meh.

It's a game, don't let it railroad you into certain morals, because the characters weren't so good themselves.

That part didn't make me feel guilty, just annoyed; I expected more subtlety from the inevitable "judge the player" part. Instead I got a weird tirade from the author's stand-in that I kinda didn't agree with? Shut up Sans, nobody asked what you think.

So, I'm assuming we can go ahead and talk spoilers without worrying? Okay cool.

When I got to Sans, I had only killed Toriel (putting me at level 5). When Sans judged me, he didn't actually. He just said the think about what you had done, and to be honest with yourself on if it was justified.

...Then I reloaded that save to see if it changes, and it does. At the point he says "well, you're higher than level 3, so you clearly killed SOME people on purpose. But, it might have been in self defense. I don't know. Wasn't there. Just, uh, don't do that, okay? Help me out here. Cool, thanks."

Basically, I didn't feel that Sans really lectured you that much. And I got the sense that Sans only really gets mean about it if you kill his brother, which is pretty reasonable.

Yeah, necro sorta but this seems the best thread to put my thoughts on the subject! And its open spoilers so that helps.

So, the more I've thought about undertale, the more I realize, even if this requires I make the argument that authorial intent does not make other interpretations of a work incorrect, the only correct ending is..seeing all the content. All of it.

Yes there is a good ending..but you can reset it, can't you? And, essentially, it is not the 'final true end' in any sense. No, that belongs to the post-genocide pacifist run. As far as the furthest possible time-line the games ending shows us, that's it. That is, in essence, where the game is meant to end up on the final, final cycle. As talked about, when you repeat every possible option until you exhaust them, the end result is the death of everyone and the game holds up to that idea.

Which makes me appreciate this game way more then I used too..but only in a kind of snarky "Oh you thought it was a story about one thing Happyiness and friendship and...? No, really its a story of the inevitable success of a mass murderer, and the death of all life in the game's universe, human and monster alike.

Which puts it up there with the most grim of grimdark true-ends every put in video game form. Brilliant.

Of course, as I said, I may have to make the "authorial intent does not invalidate individual interpretation argument to have this point stand up. But since I believe that to be true, if only for me. Man for all the hate undertale gets..its secretly the most brutal depressing game ever.

In terms of the game's timeline it probably ends with the Genocide route. The idea is that after the Pacifist Route ends you decided to put the game down as "The Player" and let the character live in peace. If you as "The Player" decide to be a completionist and see what happens when you kill everything you fall under the influence of Chara and eventually go on to other RPG video games to continue to see those numbers go up as you kill.

Okay now this is gonna get real stupid but stay with me here. I think that the "authorial intent" behind the ending is one's individual interpretation. Like, some people will never get anything but the neutral ending. Their individual interpretation is that the neutral ending is the "one true ending", because that's where the game ended on that particular save file. If someone keeps resetting and getting the other endings, the "one true ending" is whatever state they leave the timeline in.

In other words, there isn't a "one true ending", because it's whichever one the player wants it to be. That was my take on it, anyway-- something where player choice actually matters.