Movie Analysis Undertale - 1248 Words

On September 15th, 2015, game developer Toby Fox released Undertale, which tells the story of a human who falls down a cavern and enters the Underground, home of the Monster race. Searching for a way home, the human travels through the Underground and, along the way, encounters a wide range of characters. There’s the lazy-bones skeleton, Sans, his eccentric brother, Papyrus, and Undyne, the human-hunting captain of the Royal Guard. This is Undertale in a nutshell, but we’ve yet to scratch the surface of this multi-layered monster of a game. A key element in the game’s design, as well as one of its selling points, is its claim to be the only RPG where players don’t have to kill anyone. The â€Å"combat† is a turned-based, bullet-hell system of dodging where players are provided with four options on their turn: Fight, Act, Item, Mercy. This setup is standard RPG fare, but players are told early on that sparing monsters via Mercy is the right thing to do. Whereas most RPGs that involve monsters, demons, etc. are founded upon the notion of killing, Undertale is a direct rejection of players’ expectations of combat in the genre. Players’ decisions in battle significantly impact the game’s outcome. Like many RPGs, such as Fallout 3 and the Deus Ex series, Undertale contains multiple endings which, depending on the player’s action, unfold differently and provide different in-game experiences. If players avoid killing monsters, they are offered the chance to complete side quests and