This is perhaps one of the very few games I would name my favorite. I’ll be frank: most of the time I used to play game for kids like the Activision Kung Fu Panda game (which is average, for all the fond memories it gave me) and the most complex game I’ve ever played is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Most of the time I just play the current iteration of EA’s FIFA football (or soccer, if you insist on pronouncing the inferior choice). However, my experience playing Skyrim, which presents you the chance to be almost anything, including an amoral person. However it is missing something Undertale gave to me, the weight of the choices I’ve made. What kind of person my character becomes because of this choices with real and unreal outcomes.
UnderTale is a game by Toby Fox, a man whose first claim to fame is a fan-hack of Earthbound, a legendarily cult classic RPG game with surprisingly deep meanings. UnderTale, as a consequence of this first effort of his, becomes perennially linked, as an Role-Playing Game, to what is to many the pinnacle of RPGs. Toby Fox’s experience as a composer and a musician also greatly aided the game’s soundtrack greatly. He is after all the famed Radiation of What Pumplkin internet band, whose contribution includes the internet entertainment sensation Homestuck. This game is one of the proof of concept for crowdsourcing, where those interested in creative endeavors
His key-card song, of sorts, Megalovania also makes an appearance in the game. I, however, would not divulge to you when and for whom this magnificent rock song made in classic style played. Aside from the culture of spoiler-avoidance, UnderTale itself is a game best experienced without too much of its information divulged. It is best kept pristine, or the experience you’ll get from playing it, should you choose to do so, will be marred.
That aside, the essence of UnderTale is an RPG where you DON’t have to kill your foes. This is, understandably, rare in the environment of gaming with every action against the enemy being ones to destroy them in some way, excluding some children games (where even some still has this ‘destroy all foes’ mentality). Whether you spare your enemy or slay them is up to you. However, going the extreme in has their own rewards and downsides. Befriending them all will make them your allies, but slaying them all will lead to an ominous, almost horror-like atmosphere. Being someone who refuse to kill doesn’t mean you don’t beat them inches near their death, and killing a foe can be explained away with a reason. However, killing even one monster will be displayed as having a consequence heavier than just being nasty. After all, ‘combat’ in Undertale is not always a fighting situation as you learn more about the nature of the monsters. However you guide the little child with deliberately ambigous gender (tumblr would insist that they’re a non-binary person. The child is literally meant to be anything, including but not limited to that) in an underground world against a people his kind has sealed just for making them afraid. The myriad of ‘Neutral’ endings show the degree of each important figure you affected if you slay those they care for, creating a desperate yet ultimately less warlike nation, a nation bent on ultimate vengeance against humanity, or a dystopia.
Your choice, but always with their consequences. Yet above all, whatever choices you make.
STAY DETERMINED.