Undertale (Part 6)

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

I've gone through the Underground, I'm battered and bruised,
but I don't have a single speck of dust on me.

(I’ve said it for the last 5 parts - if you haven’t played Undertale and don’t want to be spoiled, turn back now! In fact, the mere word that precedes the entirety of this part is a major spoiler. Avert your eyes if you refuse to learn about…)

Forgive mistakes... up to a certain point.

So you’ve gone ahead and showered them all with kindness. You proved to Goatmom that you could go out in the great big world. You were determined to go past the loud skeleton. You valiantly fled from the spear woman until she needed your help, and you helped. You faced the mercantile spider-woman and the most famous robot alive with the optional humanoid upgrade. Your trip ended with a true battle against a King with nothing left to lose, only for it to be topped off by a duel against a maniacal flower. Whom you ALSO defeated with kindness.

Where do you go from there? Well, after the ending of regular Pacifist, Flowey tells you what you may have missed out on in order to achieve the best ending. It involves befriending most major characters. Toriel, that’s done. There’s also Papyrus, Undyne and Alphys.

River Person makes backtracking easy.
Can I call them Charon? No? Aw.

How weird would Undertale be if it actually had a
fishing game, eggs to care for, stats on the Underground,
a crime-fighting minigame and an Annoying Dog detector?

To befriend Papyrus: come back to his house in Snowdin and talk to him, then check everything around his house and then in his bedroom, and then a dating sequence will be initiated. Yes, really. You can date a skeleton? Best game ever! The dating simulator has a whole bunch of useless options, but it’s not really a simulator. It’s mostly Papyrus chatting with you and thinking everything you do makes you even more enamored with him. Watch out Papyrus, or your ego will grow so big you won’t be able to leave the house anymore. This scene is pretty funny, but whatever happens, it ends with Papyrus explaining he isn’t romantically in love with the protagonist… but still gives them his phone number.

How are phone bills down in the Underground?
Probably not all that expensive.

From now on, you can call Papyrus almost anywhere in Snowdin, Waterfall and Hotland, and he will have either advice about the place or some funny comment to make.

I mean, sure, but is she ready to hang out with me?

To befriend Undyne: This cannot be done on even a Neutral route, because the killing of even a single monster will be nasty enough that she’ll refuse to have anything to do with you past your boss fight with her. Makes sense, she IS the captain of the royal guard after all, her sense of justice is powerful. How to find her on Pacifist? In Waterfall, look for the scary house that resembles a sea monster, it’s the home of the scary woman that resembles a sea monster. If you’ve befriended Papyrus already, he’ll be waiting in front of the house and will let you come in when she opens. No, she’s not salty because you saved her life… just a tad bit miffed, is all.

Undyne, you're a fish woman. You might want to
rethink that.

Papyrus leaves Undyne alone with the human child after challenging the fish woman to become friends with the human. That’s the only way she’d accept - she’s too badass to turn down any challenge! So at first she still seems to be rather passive-aggressive about her earlier defeat. I mean, she sure likes to point those damn spears at the child. However, from there she offers them a drink, then later teaches them to cook pasta in the only way she knows: The EXTREEEEEEME version! So extreme, in fact, it ends up burning her house.

Thankfully she takes it well, and says she’ll be off to live with Papyrus for a bit. From then on, if you call Papyrus at any point, there’s a likely chance Undyne will add her own two cents to the topic being discussed.

..She's talking about a garbage dump. It makes sense in context.

Go on a date and then kiss already!

To befriend Alphys: On the way from the MTT Resort to the Core, after she’s been befriended, Undyne will ask the player to bring a letter to Alphys’ lab in Hotland. So we do, and when Alphys reads it and opens the door, all she sees is the protagonist, believing them to be the one who wrote the letter. Oopsie.

And so, after some preparing, she takes the protagonist on a “date”, which devolves into roleplay between the protagonist and Alphys so that she can learn to express her feelings to Undyne, whom she has a desperately obvious crush on. And when Undyne shows up, Alphys spills all the truths to her crush. Thankfully, it ends with Undyne accepting Alphys as she is, and swearing she'll help Alphys in accepting herself, too.

Geez, Alphys, no need to be so dramatic.

For the record, these sequences have loads of laughs, I am just skimming because I don’t want this to be a gigantic article. I don’t do the scenes justice, you gotta see them for yourself. Past that point, after Alphys is back at her lab, she's nowhere to be found, but she has left a door unlocked in there for you, claiming she has unfinished important business to take care of. The human child can then step in that room (the one that previously masqueraded as a bathroom) to find… the True Lab.

The elevator crashes down and we end up in a scary decrepit laboratory. Screens on the wall tell a story of a creepy experiment involving sickly monsters about to die and turn to dust, and extracting Determination. Oh yeah, Determination is a measurable force that can apparently be captured or collected in this world. Alphys seemed to partake in these experimentations where the sick monsters were injected Determination to survive. Only problem is, it seems to be incompatible with them.

Where do all these speech bubbles come from?
What the f..............................?

It's... it's... incomprehensible!

Things went wrong. And as we explore the lab, we encounter more creatures that seem like bizarre mashups of monsters met throughout the Underworld. Those Gigyas things, that bird, this fusion of dogs… and somehow, THE DOGS ARE THE HOLES BETWEEN THE LEGS ON THIS THING. That’s the sort of Eldritch incomprehensible monstrosity that the most famous fantastic horror writers would struggle to describe. These things appear to break the game itself when you face them. You won’t always figure out what monsters they’re made from, but the Act prompts should be familiar enough to let you figure out how to spare each of them.

This venture through the lab forces the child to pick up four colored keys and insert them in the corresponding colored slots, which also causes encounters with the creatures, known as Amalgamates. They’re about to close in on the child when Alphys shows up and calms them down. She explains her entire situation. Mind you, there were also two particular screen entries that said Alphys tried to inject Determination into a flower in the Queen’s garden… which is also where the ashes of Asriel Dreemurr, Toriel and Asgore’s child, were buried…

I'll take "Innocuous phrases that cause instant panic"
for 100, Alex.

Leaving the True Lab takes us directly to New Home, with the elevator unusable, blocked by vines. There’s no way but forward. Getting to Asgore, we’re about to open with the fight… except before the first blows can even be dealt, an offscreen fireball strikes him, and in comes Toriel. Followed by most of the main cast of the game: Papyrus, Sans, Undyne, Alphys! All our friends are here! Nothing could ruin this moment! That’s when Papyrus, who’s stated to have been the one preparing this gathering, was informed to make it… by a little flower.

And that’s when they all get captured by vines. Flowey pops up, same old jolly self as ever, saying that he has been doing all this so he could “win” against you, the player. Because he is far too aware of his limited existence as a video game character, and if you win, you’ll leave. Psst, Flowey, let me introduce you to something: It’s called Replay Value, and Undertale has tons of it. On the opposite end of the scale, if you cheat the game in order to always win and never allow the player to, then the player will leave - and might not come back. AKA, your plan gives exactly the opposite results.

When Flowey tries to deal the finishing blow, the friends you’ve made throughout the story spar the attacks with their own, protecting you. They then throw out some words of encouragement, and most monsters you’ve Spared in random encounters also appear to boost you back to full health! However, in response to this. Flowey reveals his final plan: Absorbing the souls of all the monsters in the Underground. (See, this is why the real ending is unobtainable if you kill as much as a single monster down here: Without ALL the souls, Flowey couldn’t do this.)

Cut to a young goat child. Asriel Dreemurr, the child of Toriel and Asgore, is back in corporeal form after spending so long as a little flower. …Aww, isn’t he adorable?

FaceRig model by ScottFraser.
Now you can emote as Asriel too!

However, as he tries to call out to his human friend (the original fallen child), he reveals a new form for himself, a much more demonic one, powered by all the monsters souls of the Underworld. Final boss!

That... That is not the cute goatboy from earlier!

Not much can be done just yet, but your hopes and dreams let you reduce the damage you take or gain loads of special healing items. And the battlefield has gotten… blurry. God damn it, was this too much for OBS to record properly? Would you look at all those flashy attacks? It’s almost cartoony. And what else reinforces the cartoony feel of this fight? If you go down to 0 HP, your soul will literally pull itself back together and refuse to give up the fight.

Undertale: Now in Technicolor!

That's nothing, wait till he's-a firin' his lazor.

It’s impossible to lose against Asriel Dreemurr. ...It does take a lot of the epic out of the fight when you know you can’t actually lose it. Thematically, is it justifiable? Definitely. Just a wee bit of a letdown in difficulty, though. Even then, the best you can do is constantly spare him, then use Hope and Dream in the ACT menu. Eventually he calls all of his power in an attempt to end you, but it’s still not enough, so he moves on to his true final form: Asriel, Absolute God of Hyperdeath. I mean, wow, this is a Saturday morning cartoon villain title. And it’s understandable: Outside of this grown-up look he gave himself, he’s still actually just a kid.

Someone should parody that and have different motifs appear
in the wings instead. Plaid, duckies, Spongebob, whatever.

His attacks are still flashy, but this time you can only struggle if trying to ACT. That is, until the text boxes seem to lose faith… before regaining a bit of hope, and when we return to the fight, the ACT command has been turned into the SAVE command. And from it, you can access the lost souls of the friends you’ve made on the way! Each one of them uses attack patterns they’ve displayed in their own fight, but that’s not what matters - all that matters now is to use various actions in the ACT command in order to bring back these lost souls’ memories. Hug Toriel, remind her of your pie preferences. Crack bad puns at Sans. Reassure Alphys. Spar with Undyne.

One chuckled, the other groaned. A third soul inside Asriel,
a woman, started laughing uncontrollably.

At 00.0000000001/20, I am pretty much dead.
Yet I keep reaching for you.

The attack patterns aren’t even all that difficult, either. Before you know it, the lost souls have recovered, all six of them. And with this, you suddenly get to call out to try and save a seventh person - Asriel himself. Despite his pleas, despite his desire to “win” against you, his willingness to keep you around forever in this “game”, the human child keeps reaching for him. Even after Asriel unleashes an insane attack that takes away the FIGHT, ITEM and MERCY options and leaves the player’s soul with literally one billionth of a Hit Point (geez, talk about breaking the scale), he can’t bring himself to end this. You keep trying to save him and he eventually admits that what he’s doing is wrong.

I forgive you.

And this makes him end his own game and revert back to young Asriel. He apologizes a final time and, with all the souls of the monsters within him, he calls forth his immense power to break the barrier leading outside. The human child, Frisk, now comforts him a bit before Asriel goes. Dammit, I promised to myself that I wouldn’t cry this time! Mission failed, again!

After Asriel is gone, Frisk wakes up among his friends from the Underworld. Everyone has been restored. And on this, they are ready to walk up to the surface. See the outside world again.

But even if this game is about to end, that doesn’t mean there isn’t much else to see. You can take as long as you want before actually getting to the ending. You can visit all the way back from here, Asgore’s castle, to the Ruins, and most NPCs will have new dialogue for you. You can freely spend an hour or two re-exploring this whole world to see what monsters now have to tell you.

Welcome to your new Overtale.

And on this, we can cross the barrier, which brings everyone outside to see the sunset for the first time in forever. After much of the cast leaves to explore this large open world, Toriel wonders if the protagonist will stay with her. You can accept or refuse. If you accept, you are officially adopted by Goatmom and given nightly deliveries of pie. If you decline, you still get a nifty photo of the major characters all together.

Maybe it’s Sans’ chance to become a stand-up comedian. Hopefully the human audiences aren’t too marrow-minded. And if he’s talented enough, he could recite Hamlet! “Alas Poor Yorick” would be awkward, but imagine the other famous soliloquies! “Tibia not to be, that is the question!”

I have a weird feeling that there’s a skeleton laughing his butt off in another universe right now.

"But I really wished you wouldn't.
Everybody is happy now.
You'd be taking that away from them.
And make me into a psychopath again.
So, please, don't reset everything."

Although, if you reopen the game after this ending, you hear from Flowey again, who begs you not to do a True Reset of the game. This will erase everyone’s memories, bring Flowey back to the sociopathic self he was, and erase the good moments you’ve had. Oh, believe me, If I were to True Reset this game for the second time, I guarantee you that my next playthrough will be True Pacifist again. Part of me feels like I wouldn’t like the Genocide route at all anyway. I promise I will never play this game as anything else than Pacifist. Goodbye, Asriel.

And, well, that should be the end of this review… but wait, what about my final words?

Oh, simple: It’ll be in Part 7. Bonus!