Planned All Along: Undertale (Part 7)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7

(Spoilers: The finale of the story has been described in Part 6. This here is a collection of secrets, gimmicks and other fun stuff about Undertale, followed by my final words.)

As the previous… er… 14,000 words indicate - Christ, that was a long review - Toby Fox’s programmed marvel Undertale contains more content than one player is likely to ever see. There are paths you won’t see unless you persevere, details you’ll likely miss out on, and even more bonuses in the code, in the debug mode, when you actually cheat through… Let’s go through a few things I found out by myself while researching information on this game, to make sure I was getting most facts right.

Okay, so first off: This game keeps track of your progress through the Underground thanks to the various save points, but did you know that it’s basically all they do? Let me explain. You save so that you don’t have to start over from the very beginning, that much is simple. The saving spots serve more as respawn points than anything else. But the game seems to be constantly keeping track of everything you do during your playthrough, even between saves. If a character has a long monologue at some point in the game and you die before saving after that monologue (because those tirades tend to be from bosses), then the character will skip some of that monologue on the subsequent tries.

That's what you get if you come back to fight him again
after defeating him twice already.

The game will also often keep track of when and where you close the window. Flowey’s early-game comments tend to reflect these decisions. I remember killing Toriel accidentally, resetting, and being told by that sociopath of a flower that I reset because I felt bad. Undertale hardly ever forgets. As for Sans, if you reload to the previous save point multiple times after hearing his judgment in a Pacifist run, he might eventually give you a special item… Similarly, on No Mercy, he keeps track of the number of times you lose against him (up to a point) and will even acknowledge if you reopen the game before the fight against him, after you've beaten him, if you're trying to kill him again.

You have a split-second chance of seeing that happen.

Even the smallest details and unlikeliest protagonist behaviors are accounted for. As an example, if you wait as Toriel told you to after she gave you a cell phone, she will indeed call every five minutes… which includes a short story where her phone is stolen by the Annoying Dog and she eventually manages to get it back. Similarly, in Toriel’s house, if you keep going downstairs before Toriel goes there to blow up the exit to the Ruins, each time she will catch you to bring you back upstairs, making up increasingly silly reasons why she doesn’t want you down there, until she gives up and just brings you back upstairs in angry silence. It should be impossible to die in her fight as her attacks deliberately avoid you if you’re low on health. But you can still get hit and die, and if it happens, she has a special battle sprite, an expression of shock for the child she just accidentally killed.

Now, see all that attention to detail and apply it to:

-Every area;

-Every major character;

-Every gameplay mechanic, whether it’s the cell phone, the ACT commands and even some items;

-And the ending.

"Yep. Right in front of you, no less. That's not even 1%
of how evil I could be if I wanted."

Fox added such an incredible amount of detail that you’ll be amazed if you take some time to think about it. He even accounted for some unique challenges a player may have set for themselves. As an example, near Snowdin, a snowman will let you take a piece of itself in the hopes that it will see much of the Underworld while in your possession. You might wonder why it doesn’t melt away and disappear in Hotland, but let’s not worry about that. If you get to the end of a Neutral run with it, not only will Sans comment on it, but so will the snowman if you talk to him after reloading the game! If you eat the snowman piece right in front of the snowman, however, it will call you out and consider you a real jerkass - even if you're in the postgame of True Pacifist and literally just saved Asriel and freed all the monsters from the Underground.

That's nothing. Papyrus will play dead if you ask him to.

Other items have bizarre relationships with the game: Keeping Toriel’s slice of pie up until the fight with Asgore and eating it in front of him will make him so sad it’ll permanently lower his attack and defense. The spider bake sale is a surprising Chekov’s Gun moment where one such pastry can get you out of trouble against Muffet. The Stick, the first weapon, is surprisingly versatile and leads to a lot of hilarious moments if you keep it and use it in major battles. The Last Dream, an item created with the Dream ACT option during the fight against Asriel, stays in your inventory if you don’t use them all in the final boss fight, and can even be sold at the Temmie village for a high price.

One of the most fantastic moments in the game is the gimmicky duel against Mettaton EX. Everything you do in the fight matters audience-wise. Ate that burger you found in the trash? You lose viewers. Mettaton’s high-end food, bought at the burger joint in the MTT Resort? BIG VIEWERS! The moment that takes the cake is when Mettaton asks you to write an exposé about him - so many things can happen depending on what you do. Mention any of his body parts? He’ll comment on that. Insult him? He’ll snidely remarks that the exposé is about him, not about you. Rude. Speaking of, do you type in a curse word? He’ll say this is an all-ages show, then he’ll try to bloodily murder you again. Type no letters? He thinks you’re so awestruck you’re speechless. Write a gibberish wall of text? He’ll be impressed and thankful… but won’t understand what you said.

The secrets start as soon as you write in a six-letter name for the save file - characters whose name have six letters or less will refuse to let you use their name, as an example. Other entries will have different comments. Entering AAAAAA will prompt a response. Here, look:

I could spend a long time discussing other special elements this game has, but let’s end for now on the ending phone call from Sans. As I told you, Pacifist/True Pacifist and No Mercy are the most common routes, but there are TONS of special comments he can add. The first part of his testimony depends on who you kept alive and who you killed (note he won’t do this if you killed Papyrus). Sans will comment on whether you kept the Snowman Piece, whether you ever used healing items, whether you wore the lamest equipment through the whole game, or whether you’ve saved even once during your playthrough. No healing items, with bandage, at LV1? Sans will congratulate you on beating a challenge.

All in all, she seems pretty happy.
Guess there's no crime anymore in the Underground.

Then it all depends on everything you did. Spared Toriel and all other monsters, but killed Asgore? She replaces him as sovereign of monsterkind, then appoints Papyrus in the Royal Guard (where he does nothing but water flowers). Befriended Undyne? She left the Royal Guard and became a lab assistant and a gym teacher. Befriended Alphys without seeing True Lab? She’s working on a way to free everyone. Killed even one monster after befriending Undyne? The fish woman will be angrier than you’ve ever seen her, swearing revenge on the child that betrayed her.

Spared Toriel, but killed a few monsters, and spared Undyne? Toriel becomes ruler and sets up a human-loving policy but Undyne leads a rebellion against her, forcing her back into the Ruins. If Undyne is dead, she resigns peacefully upon learning the human child did kill monsters. Sans’ comment will also change a lot depending on whether you spared or killed Papyrus.

Nah, actually it's worse than it's ever been.
But people like to laugh at the guy in charge if he's a
constant source of entertainment... even if he's making
the place into a horrible world to live in.
Oops, this is turning into political commentary.

If Toriel is dead, Undyne becomes the new ruler. That ending implies you killed enough monsters to make her set up a policy to kill all humans that show up in the Underworld. That one also changes whether Papyrus is still alive. If Toriel and Undyne are dead, Mettaton takes over the Underworld and changes it into a twisted world bound to his ego and whims. All he needs is blond hair now. If Mettaton is dead but Papyrus is alive, he becomes the new ruler but he does pretty much nothing; Sans has to take all the decisions. If all monsters that can rule are killed, but all regular monster citizens are still alive… the Annoying Dog takes over as ruler. Otherwise, if you also killed a few enemies, there is no ruler at all. If you aborted the No Mercy route in Hotland, Alphys successfully evacuated everyone (she probably hid them in the True Lab) and they elected her. There’s even a bonus message if you hacked the game - Sans will know.

(And I never even got to talk about W.D. Gaster!)

Of course, on Neutral routes, Flowey’s comments will also change quite a bit, and most comments are supposed to help you reach the True Pacifist ending.

And, um… I guess that is all now. So many Neutral routes!

Final words: Well, this may be ranking as one of the best games I have ever played! Of course, knowing the Undertale fandom, I will probably end up crucified for my more nuanced opinion of it, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.

The concept is milked for all its worth, with awesome
interactions between the player and the enemies, and a
lot of variations for the soul's abilities as well.

Okay, so let’s get the gameplay out of the way first: It’s a unique idea to combine RPG elements and a Bullet Hell to avoid enemy attacks. It’s a twist on regular RPGs where your best option to avoid hits is only to hope your opponent misses - here, your avoiding skills have to be good. But, on the upside, you can technically beat the game without ever getting hit! Yes, even during the final boss battles! However, monsters make no effort to avoid your hits (well, aside from one guy). Then again, the point of the game is to NOT hit them, no?

The puzzle element of the battles is quite interesting. The ACT commands can sometimes be puzzling unless you study each enemy’s behaviors, through both the ever-present Check command (which often helps in figuring out the puzzle) and the various comments you can possibly see adjoined to that enemy depending on your current route. You still have to avoid bullets when they attack. It’s also interesting to see how enemies interact when they appear together in a fight. One big challenge in a Pacifist run is to Spare every single enemy, and not make them flee instead. All in all, it’s a brilliant system, not one for everybody, but definitely interesting and unique.

ONE FIGHT WAS LITERALLY A QUIZ SHOW

Kinda wished this place had real food now.
It'd be less boring to walk through.

The game is also unique compared to other RPGs in its immense amount of cutscenes. Damn near every single screen on this long trip has plot relevance, whether it’s a quick talk with a character, a save point, or anything such. There are two downsides to this: First, this applies mostly to the Pacifist run, the one where all the characters can frequently interact with you. As a result of this, the Neutral and No Mercy routes will invariably have rooms that feel useless or filler since no story events happen in them… usually because you killed whatever character was supposed to have a role there. Second issue is that it makes backtracking quite annoying since you travel across many screens that no longer have a purpose - their story events are long gone. Thankfully, backtracking is minimal, made easier with River Person, and if you know how to get True Pacifist, then you might not have to backtrack much at all!

One of the only few challenges in No Mercy.
Daaaaamn, Undyne.

The difficulty is rather unequal depending on the route you take. No Mercy gets laughably easy as you gain Levels and only two or three opponents present any kind of challenge; a lot of bosses get in the way to buy other characters more time or try to convince you to stop on this path, through kindness and personality. It’s said that a lot of No Mercy players give up because they can’t bring themselves to hurt Papyrus, the second major boss in the game! Similarly, No Mercy forces the player to seek out encounters, which is necessary to stay on that path, but definitely a chore. Overworld puzzles are also turned off, which tends to make exploration pretty bland.

Sure, everybody's trying to kill you, but at least
you're not killing them back!

On the opposite end, Pacifist puts the protagonist in danger for the entirety of the playthrough, with your job being to become buddies with everybody and avoid all the attacks that come at you. Since you can’t brute-force and punch your way through encounters, they can be much longer to complete. This leads to interesting puzzles, in battle and out of it, and adds quite a bit of length to the time needed to beat the route. And with all major characters alive, the story is strong and features a lot of cutscenes, even if some later areas tend to feature an annoying number of elements that break the flow (like Alphys’ constant calling of the protagonist and posting to social media).

No Mercy is a route about showing the best of others in a desperate situation and how you shouldn’t let violence guide you. Pacifist is a route about showing the best of yourself in a desperate situation and how there are far more advantages to solving things peacefully (even if you can act like a bit of a jerk). Both routes are about the consequences your actions have in the short and long terms, and the entire text of the game is permeated by this moral.

The very first decision in the game has consequences!

Obviously, the main decision you’ll have to take in this game is whether to kill or spare enemies, and the plot changes dramatically from there, but every decision you can make will impact the game, sometimes in unexpected ways. On Toriel’s pie question, early on, pick an option, then reset and pick a different option on your next playthrough and she will ask if you wouldn’t prefer the one you picked… on your first playthrough. Undertale hardly ever forgets. And as far as No Mercy is concerned, it doesn’t forgive, either.

Every path is a story of its own, It’s up to you to decide what you want to see happen. Just be wary of the multiple secrets in the game’s coding, as many secrets you may just stumble upon entirely by luck, and sometimes not even notice!

And what would be the interest in playing this game if it wasn’t backed by a strong story carried by well-developed characters? Each and every single one of them is loveable, sometimes in spite of their quirks, sometimes because of them. They make you want to carry through, and the off-the-wall comedy of the adventure is yet another reason to keep playing. How many jokes have you missed out on? How many memetic lines have you spotted? You won’t know unless you try all the paths! (Which you shouldn't, but... there's always the Internet to seek out those little gems of rapid-fire comedy.)

The graphics are fantastic, I personally like whenever special effects are added to some of the boss battles or in the overworld - the "barrier" room where you fight Asgore is stunning, and of course I couldn't go throug h this without mentioning some VERY special fights like (pfft, no, still can't take that name seriously) Photoshop Flowey or Asriel Dreemurr. As for the music, it's unique in that it utilizes a complex web of call-backs and motifs between tracks, and every major song of the game has the perfect tone. The soundtrack is so beloved that most of the major tracks have been remixed or given lyrics, and can be found all over YouTube.

The secrets, the programming quirks, the comedy, the endearing characters, the paths, the endless replayability if you dare kill once in a while… all of these factors contribute to making Undertale one of the most beloved video games of the decade… of all time? I don’t know. Maybe it’ll eventually get there. Maybe it’s already there. My point is, you need to experience this game. My description of the paths doesn’t do it justice. Play it. As soon as possible. It’s awesome.

Now, if you’ll excuse me… This was long and I need a break.