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inbarfink · 2 years ago

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Okay, so like, I love Undertale to bits, but it does often rub me the wrong way when people use it in comparison to games like OFF, which condemn the Player’s violent actions without actually offering the option for a Pacifist resolution, like “well, Undertale is Objectively Better because there’s an actual choice to be nonviolent so it can actually condemn the player in a meaningful way”.

Especially with OFF, I think. Cause while many people consider it a predecessor to Undertale, their themes and the way they relate to their “What the Hell, Player” moments are very different, I think. And this attitude of judging them purely on whatever they’re effective at making the player ‘feel bad’ about their actions is really reductive for what both games are trying to do with these kinda moments.

Like, in general it’s super frustrating when video game moments discussing morality and player-player character relationships are evaluated purely in the sense of ‘are these games justified in Making Me Feel Like a Bad Person’. That’s usually a super-reductive way to look at video game morality. And I really don’t think it helps the discussion to frame “What the Hell Player” moments as an actual personal attack or attempt to evaluate your IRL morality.

And specifically with OFF, I feel like it’s actually very thematically important that the game only has one ‘Route’ and that it is the ‘bad’ one. Because OFF, in my reading at least, is a game very much about narrative framing. Like, that’s the whole thing with the Batter not actually transforming as his Special Ending Monster Duckie Form.

The Batter didn’t change, our point of view did. When we’re controlling the Batter, it is his POV that we’re seeing the world through - and in his POV he’s just an ordinary guy doing the right thing. But if we take the Judge’s side, we’re also taking on his POV. And the Judge, much like any other victim of the Batter, sees him as some sort of monster.

And that’s like a huge theme in the game. While there’s probably no POV that makes the world of OFF like an actually good place to live, it is important to note we are viewing it through the perspective of someone who has already vowed to destroy it. I know a lot of people look at the difference between the Guardians as they are in the Room’s Chapter 4 and the Guardians as the Batter face them as a matter of a personal change between then and now - I think the matter of different perspectives also plays a part.

In the Room we are viewing Dedan, Japhet and Enoch through the eyes of an innocent child that is desperate for companionship and sees them as friends - in the rest of the game we are viewing them through the eyes of a man who sees them as obstacles in his holy mission and upholders of a world that must be destroyed. Neither of them can give a truly unbiased perspective when it comes to the Guardians.

And despite the game making it explicit that the Batter is as a puppet controlled by the Player - although the Player is the one who give the Player Character power - it is the Batter who manipulates the Player into aiding him on his mission by framing it in a way that is more palatable. Despite all the power the player supposedly holds, the Batter holds the power over the narrative framing, and that’s enough to let him take control.

That’s why there’s really no choice in the game but keep helping the Batter along his ‘Holy’ mission - him being able to influence our framing also means being able to influence the options we can see. It is the Batter who wants us to see a world where his violence and destruction is the only possible solution. And the point of the Judge calling out the Player for continuing along the Batter’s set path (rather than stopping the game and turning it off) isn’t just to Make the Player Feel Bad for doing what they need to do to, like, see the whole of this well-crafted story....

It’s to make the Player self-reflect. When did they first had the inkling that the Batter isn’t on the up-and-up? If (‘if’ bring the keyword here) it was all real, when would the point where continuing to aid the Batter would be morally inexcusable? By the point the Batter is beating a defenseless child to death it’s pretty darn clear that We’re the Baddies, but did the Player process any of the hints beforehand? Just how much sway did the Batter’s framing of the world and the narrative hold over the player? And how this is different and similar to how the Player normally engage with other narratives, especially other RPGs?

There is a reason, after all, why the Judge big speech at the end is also about how felt deceived and tricked by the Batter’s words. His feelings are meant to be a reflection of a Player’s on some level.

And despite ‘calling-out’ the Player, he does make it clear he also sees himself as culpable of aiding the Batter in his henious actions. The Player and the Judge’s situations are somewhat paralleled here.

And it feels very notable that the Judge starts out explictly addressing to the Player much more than the ‘Puppet’:

And by the ending of the game, although he does call-out the Player to, he’s got a lot more to say to the Batter as well.

I think it’s because he also underestimated the power the Batter had as a ‘Puppet’ of the Player, up until he realized how he managed to manipulate both him and the Player (although he still sees both himself and the Player at fault for falling for it and helping the Batter).

I think the main point here is to try and make the Player think more critically about the narratives they engage with. In many ways, the Batter is the concept of the RPG protagonist dilluted to its logical extreme. He was literally brought into existence just moments before the story started, and his only purpose in life is to defeat all the bosses, ‘finish’ all of the areas and then just turn the game OFF. That’s also why siding with the Batter is considered the ‘canon’ ending of the game, in this allegory it is the ending that correspond most to Regular Player Behavior.

It’s trying to make you think about how different POVs and narrative framing can be used to change the way we view a story. If the Batter can skew the lens we view the story enough so that it makes us side with him… how other forms of media, and in this case espacially other games can convince us that the protagonist’s actions are justified and heroic? Is there some ignored angle in this and that game, some ignored ‘Judge’ of sort, that would totally reframe the supposed morality of the story?

I think that’s the main thing, or at least one of the main things, one is supposed to get from OFF. Not just a blanket sense of guilt for all the made-up pixels you killed in this game or other games, but an invitation to try and examine the stories you play from more angles, and think more of the narrative tricks that can be used to justify morally dubious actions. For this to work, the game has to work in tandem with the Batter and his POV for the most part. And because of all of this, I believe OFF’s lack of a ‘moral choice’ system does not take away from its central points and actually helps them. The only choice comes when the Judge barges in and offers a counter-narrative to the Batter.

Undertale, in contrast, is a lot more about Player Actions and Player Agency. Like, Chara and a Murder-Route Player have essentially a reverse dynamic from the Batter and a Normal Ending Player. With the Player convincing the Player Character (?) into the viewpoint that the world exists just to be drained of Content before turning it Off and moving on to the next one.

Undertale is more about the Player having power, and not just in the Unkillable Time God sense, in the sense of the power to reframe and change the narrative. Both the Undertale Pacifist and Murder Route has an element of going ‘off script’ of what the game story ‘expects’. Like, the Normal Ending is the only one where the the Player just does what was expected of them and engage with the game world in the same way all the other characters do - that’s just why it only exist to try and convince you to go on one of the other routes.

The Pacifist Route is about the Player using their Aforementioned Unkillable Time God Powers to break away from the world’s general resignation to violence as the answer and proving to everyone a peaceful resolution is possible. The Murder Route is about the Player engaging with the world like… an ordinary RPG basically (as long as you’re heavy on the grinding) and in the process twist the entire narrative into something much darker. The narrative isn’t tricking you into it, if anything, the narrative is subtly nudging you to the Pacifist Ending.

If Undertale comes off as a more effective ‘condemnation’ of the Player than OFF, that’s probably because compared to OFF Undertale is more about what the Player does and the Player’s actions. I still don’t think it’s a very productive to paint it as, like, trying to Shame you. It just makes things far too unnecessarily personal in a really weird way, and it also kinda isolates discussion of the game’s mortality to only how justified it is within the game’s own context - without any acknowledgement of what the game’s trying to say in a larger context when it makes the characters so darn lovable and makes it so heartbreaking when they die.

Both in context of how we can try and take the game’s ideals into the real world....

And how it relates to other video games. And I mean, Undertale isn’t just about whatever violence in video game narratives is really necessary - that’s absolutely part of it but also, it’s about how Players engage with video game narratives. And whatever looking at them as just challenges to be one by getting the Big Number....

or challenges you need to 100% complete and drain every single secret from

can take away from what makes a good story actually work.

There’s a reason why the in-universe ‘morally correct’ to play Undertale is to experience the True Pacifist ending once and never open it again. (I dunno if I’ll say the Message of Undertale is ‘looking up all kinds of different minor options and content mining always ruins the magic of stories’ and if it is it’ll be a very funny case of a game’s fandom disproving its own thesis, but it’s certainly something the game wants you consider.)

Despite the obvious influence OFF had on Undertale and especially on it’s Murder Route, I actually think it might be more useful to compare it to Deltarune, at least once we see more of it and where it’s going. With both of these games exploring a very complicated power dynamic between player and player character and the player being robbed of moral choice and possibly forced to do bad things to advance the narrative - it might be actually a more interesting comparison.

#Off #undertale #undertale meta #undertale analysis #off game #you see on one hand I can't say I enjoy the story of Undertale LESS just because the fandom complied this big ol' lists of Every Single #Event Trigger in the whole entire game or something #but on the other hand there is something very impactful about going through the Pacifist Route #and KNOWING you won't be able to justify to yourself doing a True Reset #so you just try your best to do everything that you can and really experience the game to it's fullest before you have to say Goodbye to #all of these characters basically forever #and espacially after just helped Asriel agree to let US go and move on #the fact the game also pleads for us to go and move on does enchance the emotional power of the ending on some level I think

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