Perverted Sentimentality: An Analysis of UNDERTALE
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- Опубликовано: 29 авг 2016
- A short film about Undertale's themes and message.
I forgot to put arrows and circles in the thumbnail so no-one will see this, but it's too late to change it now.
My Twitter: / hbomberguy
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'meaningless trash that won't fill the hole inherent to the self' is my rap name
Man i really loved the track "You can not fill an internal void with something external" in your new LP. Keep up the good work!
"...how the puzzles in Hotland are very obviously training simulators for killing a human..."
wh-wha... what....
yeah that legit made no sense
You're shooting a bullet at an almost heart shaped arrow, and it breaks when you hit it. Exactly like the SOUL.
I just can’t get over the “clearly”
@@nathanlevesque7812 it’s funny because it actually does if you think about it for a second
@@ringer1324 Human souls move around. The puzzles have a static target that must be uncovered by rearranging blocks. It's only the non-humans that create obstacles in battles. So...no.
Ironic how Undertale's underlining theme is that loving something too much can be harmful, yet the majority of the fanbase are die hard, obsessive fans.
That's the irony of Undertale
"it's like pottery it rhymes"
The funny thing about the extremes of fanbases is that they never seem to understand the content they love so much
I still don't get how that's supposed to be the "majority" of the fanbase but I have literally never encountered anyone like that.
The "Loud" minority
"The ability to care is inherently good."
This line hit me almost as hard as "Despite everything, it's still you."
The first time I played Undertale, I killed Toriel because I didn't know what else to do. I got real sad about it and wanted to restart to see if there was another way to do it. Then Flowey immediately comes on and is like "I KNOW WHAT YOU DID" and I legit had to stop playing for like a week because it rattled me so much.
same, i thought you could lower her health to spare her like the other enemies
@@twideslauriers7875 wait... what other enemies?
@Benito Thambiraj i was gonna woosh you for that, but even i forgot the joke i was trying to make...
weak
I stopped playing after this
I thought this was going to be a criticism of Undertale's fandom. I'm glad you didn't grab THOSE low hanging fruits.
These sorts of videos are also always so bizarre to me. How the heck can people generalise that hard without feeling guilty about it? Yes people who where fans of Undertale did do bad and / or at least questionable things, but also I think that this isn't anything that they want. Like these people (for example that one person that apparently tried to put razor blades into something a content creator ate because of what they said about Undertale or whatever) clearly have actual problems that they should be helped with, but usually when people say "oh look at the Undertale Fandom" they really just dislike that there are so many people who care about something so much.
those aren't even low hanging, they're buried in the ground and somehow still attached
@@redtro8678 I mean I think all of that is in the past now, lets hope we are never this bitter again...
Same
It's been a hot minute since I watched this video, and I've changed a lot since I last watched it. One part that stuck out to me is near the very end, when you mention what happens when you part ways with Toriel. Its anticlimactic, like life. I dont think I really understood it then but I do now. I remember the last night of my acting class, Acting 4 to be specific, meaning I'd done 4 semesters of it. The number of people in class had dropped significantly, but there were a few people from my first class still around. It was the end of spring semester, at the end of summer I'd be going off to a four year college, since this was a community college I was attending through high school. I was 17, and I'd been going to school with the same people my whole life, and this was the first time that I'd be leaving behind a group of people I'd known for a significant period of my life. I'd still talk to my high school friends, sure, but a lot of my classmates were older than me, not just college age, mainly adults going back to college in their later years. One of my classmates, Patrice, was actually auditing the class as a senior citizen. She was much older than me but we got along great, and the night we went out to dinner as a class we were sitting at a table together talking. There was a lull in the conversation where I looked around at all my classmates, adults who had lived much more of their lives then I had but had treated me as a friend, as a person on their level of maturity and conversation despite the age gap. It broke down a lot of barriers of what I see friendship as now. But the main point I'm getting to is, when i looked around, i realized I'd probably never see most of these people again. People who i had grown close to, formed friendships with, had inside jokes with, they were just a chapter in my life. And i turned to Patrice and i asked her, basically, "is that how life is? You meet people and become close and then you just move on?" And she just smiled and said "yes". It was such a simple fact to her but it changed me. I thought friendships ended with some big... thing, a last hurrah or a parting of ways, when it's not just a result of drifting apart. But these were people who I was choosing to leave, and we were all acting like we'd see eachother tomorrow, as if nothing happened. I dont know why I rambled about this here, I just thought about it and I doubt anyone has read this far. I guess I'm just sentimental, because I ended a long friendship for the first time a couple days ago, and it's a lot of feelings. But that's life, people come and go and you cant cling to them forever. Sometimes you need to learn to let go
this is such a sweet comment :) we do have to learn to let go! even tho I would phrase it as "accept" to let go since I'm not sure we could ever learn to do so as a concept? idk if i'm explaining myself, I think we already have our brain so rooted in being socially connected and loving people and caring deeply that maybe letting go isn't something we can learn for good but more like something we keep relearning and relearning each time we accept someone we care about drifting away from us. anyway your story made me really emo i wish u the best
That was beautiful, sam
@@VirusesX01 wow, thank you 💗 I honestly didnt expect anyone to read this comment, and if they did I figured they'd just roll their eyes. Yours and Milla's responses mean a lot to me, thank you and happy holidays ^-^
I read through this all and I loved every second of it! It was a touching and heartwarming read. Thank you for sharing :)
I appreciate your comment tbh. I am not the most social of butterflies out there so when a long and close friendships of mine have started to drift off, it was difficult to move on. I can message them all I like but there are just moments where it's not the same anymore. We no longer have the same interests, we're in different places; our talks are shy and shallow, no longer having the same openness as before.
Reading this, it's a reminder that there will be great people who will come to our life, change it for the better, and leave. That's life.
Rewatching this, I have to say, I’d watch an Hbomb video about why he doesn’t like the idealogical implications of theory videos.
I would like one too, but I imagine it would go something like this ruclips.net/video/URo66iLNEZw/видео.html
@@changingyoutubeusernameisn7302 oh yeah, I'd seen that. Still, I just enjoy Hbomb talking about it in his own way, so I'd watch it anyway. XD
@@sambeckettcat True. I feel like a lot of Ellis-sphere watch one another's videos and try, sometimes a bit too hard, not to cover similar ground.
@@changingyoutubeusernameisn7302 Ellis-sphere? This is a new one. I have no idea where these terms keep coming from, like when people were suddenly called "bread-tubers"
@@sambeckettcat All the various media critics that have popped up and distinctly pattern themselves after Lindsay Ellis (and are coworkers/RUclips Friends/maybe real friends I don't know I don't really any of these people's personal lives). Bread-tubers is just an awful word, it sounds like a variant of potato everyone agreed to stop eating in 1900 once they realized they weren't going to starve. Left-tube groups them by their political ideology, rather than their media criticism, which is to me a less accurate categorization. Yes, they're all some shade of leftists, but there's also a lot of leftists that don't follow this format, and it's just going to make problems down the line if someone conservative (or another non-left ideology) succeeds at this style.
the Game Theory bit actually fucking murdered me
Ohshit now hes locked into the neutral route
So, it's worth mentioning that Alphys isn't JUST shy and self-loathing about her hobbies, she's convinced no one will love her because she ran a laboratory where she was forced to take kidnapped, dying monsters, and try to form a human soul out of them. She's convinced she can't help people and SHOULDN'T help people because when she TRIED to save those monsters' lives, she inadvertently created the most terrifying things in the game, making those monsters suffer fates worse than death in the process. The biggest complaint I have in this game is that EVERY other character that tries to kill the character ASKS for forgiveness after doing so, and you have the CHOICE to forgive them, but Alphys is just GIVEN forgiveness for what is literally the MOST fucked up thing in that universe. I agree that she shouldn't be punished, and I would likely have forgiven her of my own volition, but it bothered me SO much that I wasn't given the choice to make that decision for my character.
Well, I agree that the True Lab arc was kinda underdeveloped but on that point of story the main character reloaded their last save to try saving everyone - so there is no point in giving the player that option.
@@VitaliyMilonov imo that's exactly the reason there IS a point. choosing to save everyone and to look past everyone's foibles, only to discover that one particular person's foibles are REALLY fucked up, would be an interesting opportunity for the player to re-examine their decision. personally I also would have forgiven alphys but that extra layer of complexity would have done a lot
@@BKSF1 Well, in that case you guys should be complaining about the whole game not giving the player an option to kill whenever it wants.
this is a really interesting hypothesis on the core message of the game. unfortunately, im gay and emotional and sentimental so i played the pacifist route and closed the game and never went back because i cried three times, so i took away something different. i know i sound like every high school freshman who ever centred their life around a piece of media, but undertale really did change my life, or at least my perspective on it. i learned to genuinely love and care for each of these characters because they're reflections of real people i know, as well as facets of myself that i might have loved or hated. because of that, i genuinely cared when they were hurt, and genuinely cared about doing the right thing and giving them a good ending. and in that game, the only way to give them their good ending is to commit yourself to mercy and kindness. if you choose hate, if you get fooled into it, you're fucking yourself over as well as the world around you. it shows that it's not irresponsible or weak to choose kindness; in fact, you arguably defeat the strongest and most frightening evils in the game through mercy. in the real world, maybe it's not going to be mercy for the antagonists, because the real world is more complex, but maybe it's mercy for the people you love. and the more people you genuinely care for, the more powerful that makes you, and the more capable you are of genuinely, actually saving the world. and you will always have the choice to choose kindness, even if nobody wants you to think it.
i agree with this comment but a game can have multiple meanings... hbomberguy was pointing out another part of it. undertale is what you said and also what he said too. fandom is good and ultimately a good vehicle for human connection and emotion, but complete obsession is unhealthy. undertale is also an excellent, emotional game with incredibly well written characters and themes. his hypothesis doesn't negate your experiences with the game, he's just making his own observations. thats critical analysis babey!
I want to see a video where hbomberguy properly roasts Game Theory
Perhaps a theory?
Game theory videos aren't worth taking all that seriously tbh. The toxic hate around that channel is the embodiment of everything what I find excruciatingly annoying about gaming culture
@@cuber3603 ye tbf I think hes fine for what he does its just someone trying to cover games from an interesting perspective whether the theories are correct or not never really mattered to me it was just a cool way of analysing certainty video games BUT MY GOD the people who like him act like he's a 5 head mega genius who can't be touched and the people who hate him seem just as toxic lol I know its kina just how the internet landscape is but Jesus his community's weird
@Nerd VS The world I think his deltarune theories were rather good, never watched Gaster though, he seems like that type of guy the game tries hard to make you care about and I'm not falling for it.
Yeah what is his beef? I don't quite get it.
While I understand what you're saying, I think this obsession in modern American-influenced culture with "moving on", always moving forward, never looking back, never lingering, never settling down, never *caring*, is just as sick when taken to the extreme as the opposite.
The ending with Toriel is a prime example. The character, Frisk, has finally done what they set out to do, they escaped from the Underground with their friends, why *shouldn't* they go and finally stay with goatmum, now that doing so isn't hindering them? Because in American culture, children are supposed to leave the parental home the moment they get any small measure of independence. In fact, parents often charge rent for their adult children continuing to live with them. Because family doesn't matter, basic fucking empathy doesn't matter, all that matters is moving forever on and leaving the past behind as if it had never existed.
The same exists in corporate culture. Finding a job you're good at and just doing it is looked down upon. You're supposed to always be trying to advance, to grind out a better position even if you hate it, to chase a dream of financial security justifying all the exhaustion *that will never come*. Because if you do otherwise, you're lazy, a layabout, unmotivated, an underachiever.
Well, fuck that. I'm staying with Toriel because I earned my fucking family.
Thanks for mentioning this, because it is essentially why I struggle so much with the world. Dunno if it really relates to the message of the video but still, agreed!
I saw it more as Frisk at that point wants to go home, to the surface. It's not that she doesn't like Toriel, but more she needs to get back to her home. In the pacifist ending, Frisk gets home, but stays with Toriel.
Though I agree moving on is an issue in American culture.
+
@@IanZWhite00 I'm not sure what about rejecting the societal mandate of capitalist alienation from being able to do anything but grind away at the next thing has to do with being afraid of change or reactionary ideas, but go off I guess.
@@IanZWhite00 Thats really dumb, the theme of undertale may be moving on, its rather stupid to thing that setting up the player character a nice life with a parental figure (because frisk is a kid) would be contradictory to any of the messages in the game
Can't believe I missed this video two years ago, but it's a very good analysis. Feels like Toby Fox offering commentary to a generation of young people that includes those who base a lot of their identity around the media/franchises they love, often to the point of minimizing real life relationships. Fox doesn't want to shame you for liking what you like, but he wants you to consider what you lose when you seek to wring every single drop of content out of it: how we fight if someone disagrees about liking a certain show, how people hound and harass creators and performers for "not doing it right", how we attach so much of ourselves to the media we consume that any attack on them or decrease in quality somehow reflects on us as people. In short: toxic fandom.
Consider one of the earliest TV-era mega-fandoms, Star Trek. Roddenberry's message is aspirational as all get out, and fandom of a show that preaches the virtues and possibilities of science, humanity, multiculturalism, understanding, and providing for all people feels like the most natural thing. If we all lived according to the tenets of Star Trek, it'd likely do a lot of good in the world. Yet since the dawn of the show's run, there are those who instead focus on being "better fans" than others because they can recite facts, figures, dialog, etc., digging so deeply, so obsessively, that it gave rise to the stereotype of the "trekkie" fan, which shuns inclusion and understanding in favor of gatekeeping and elitism. The toxic fandom perverts the original purpose.
And this can apply to any work which gained too much popularity.
People love the product, but not the message the author is trying to tell.
Yeah but remember, HE'S IN HIS LATE 30S HOW HOW JERMA WHAT IS YOUR SECRET
I couldn't bring myself to do anything other than a pacifist run. It just wasn't worth it emotionally or worth the effort. I got everything I could have wanted from that run.
I know I'm going to sound like a sadist but I mainly did the genocide run when I heard there were harder boss fights in them.
And being soulsborne fan I had to indulge. It was weird because being a fan of RPG's and such there was a twinge of satisfaction when I killed a monster and leveled up but all the while I felt guilty because I was doing this pretty much just to experience more of the games story and combat...
@@slothful2039 I think that's the intended feeling, honestly.
Maybe the real Undertale was the game we played along the way...
By far the line that hit me hardest in the game was "You can so you have to." It was the first in a long tike I've felt a game being 100%, undoctored honest about myself. I didn't like doing the genocide run. I loved the characters of the world. I didn't WANT to kill them. But I had to, because I could.
'Game Theory: A Measured Response' when
The true true TRUE ending of Undertale happens when you get the good ending, quit the game, uninstall it and never EVER play it again.
which is what i did
not because of this video or anyone
it's just i got bored after getting the good ending so i've never bothered playing it again
@@Codex_0613 gud, very cool of you.
To me Undertale was about Forgiveness and Empathy. It also seemed to be a bit of a criticism on how games often treat the lives of NPCs as disposable trash creating a lack of empathy in us, much like how flowey stopped empathizing with his peers and became this sadistic plant monster who never takes anyone's views into consideration, that is until YOU show up and do the pacifist run. Undertale showed me that a little bit of kindness can go a long way, and that showing love to even the evilest wickedest people can make a difference. I never really thought of your perspective though, it's honestly really interesting.
I think that kind of message really is perfect for a younger audience, for anybody older than that though I'd hope that you'd already have those qualities or understand that a game is a game. NPCs are for the most part disposable trash in games, but Undertale forces the point that each NPC in this game has a personality worth caring about (It affects the game).
Well I knew kindness was a good thing, but I was going through a moment in my life where I was feeling a little hopeless, like all my kindness was amounting to nothing. One of my friends had died of mysterious circumstances and I had assumed that they committed suicide, on top of that, many of her friends were VERY heartbroken about her death, and I was trying to help them cope with it, but it just felt like no matter what I did it wasn't enough. I should clarify that Undertale didn't stop me from being a psychopath, because I wasn't in the first place. No, undertale taught me that the kind things I do for others DO make a difference, that the little things you do for others don't go unnoticed. Even the simplest things like giving someone a compliment or a smile can make a radical difference in their lives and in the lives of those around them.
I'm glad Undertale was able to bring that understanding to you.
I really like your view of Undertale. I think it's a nice message, and one that I feel Undertale delivered well.
I'm sorry to hear about your friend - It's never easy to lose someone, and then have to be the comforting presence to others at the same time. I hope things are going better for you now, and I'm glad that Undertale gave you a little respite and showed you that what you do matters.
lack of arrows and circles on the thumbnail made me miss this continuously for 5 years.
You forgot to put arrows and circles in the thumbnail so I didn't see this for 7 years.
Other than Alphys actually being a *bisexual* dinosaur scientist, this video's pretty spot on.
Dukeofnachos I love how you bold bisexual like it's some sort of big deal.
I wanted to just put it in italics but that wasn't working for some reason.
They changed it, putting asterisks next to words like this >*/bisexual/* bold it.
I was gotta ask for a citation on that claim. Then I remembered Mettaton.
The thing that hit me the fucking hardest, that made me weep and sob like a baby, was Asgore’s little conversation when I reloaded a save to come back and fight again - I didn’t know much about the game, I knew nothing of the mega gaming and the way it played you, critiqued you; all I knew was that there was a “happy” ending where you didn’t have to hurt anyone.
So when I failed partway through my first asgore boss battle, reloaded the save to try again, and he paused to hit me with a “we’re really going to fight again? After all that” I was so goddamn heartbroken. It truly is an incredible work of art and frankly I wish I COULD wring every drop from it, to see all the clever and beautiful content hidden in ever line of code... but inherently, that is impossible, as the game changes itself based on what you do. Simply incredible.
@Nobody You Know One of the genuinely rare games where I wish I could play it again for the first time.
Okay, I like Game Theory, but that parody of him was pretty fucking genius and right on the money.
I have really love Game Theory, but I acknowledge that he has a lot of flaws and some truly terrible/hilariously bad videos. That parody was fucking great. I really like Matt's personality and actually prefer his stream to his scripted theories.
It came off as immature to me, and I am not saying that from a stance of defending GT. It was like a rage-gasm born of jealousy(?) or right wing style ignorance therefore ridicule. Like a Trump name calling insult tweet....or campaign slogan..
See? I can do it too.
@@janNowa Completely agree; on the livestream he's just himself. He's talked about how the point of the theories is to get you to really analyze the content being put in front of you but in the theory episodes that gets a little lost. At least that's how I feel
I like how the video is 7 years old, and yet all the comments are new
I never played the game after that reset chat with flowey. I do think it would be nice if there was a continue option where you could just visit Asriel once in a while, because he's the only one who has to stay in the underground. He could give you updates on how the flowers are doing and it would be like having a facebook friend... in a video game... yeah, that's weird, but I don't care.
My name is Aaron and I spent embarrassingly long thinking the Aaron enemy was named after whatever you named your file.
This is easily one of the best videos on Undertale there is. It's a crime it doesn't have about a million or two more views.
ironically i think it was undertale's awareness of sentimentality and fandom culture that drew me into the game so much... and made people wring the content out of it. with lines like "don't you have anything better to do" it reminded me that just like all the media i've loved before, it will be an experience that will end, and i'll cherish it, fawn over the content, joke... then it will fade into memory. and there's always some sadness in knowing that you loved and thought about something so much at one time, but then spend years with it rarely coming back into your mind. there's sadness in enjoying something now but knowing that months or years from now it will be a memory and you won't feel the same.
... and i think that's what made everyone search and search for secrets, to enjoy it now whilst they loved it so much.
i feel like it was the natural story for an earthbound fan to make. a game in the same vein as earthbound but with the awareness of fandom and nostalgia, and probably an expression of toby's own melancholy when he remembers his own media obsessions.
but idk man..... i still love undertale... i'm commenting on a video about it in 2019
I would quite like to see or read an analysis in a similar vein on Earthbound (or Mother), in fact. There's something offbeat about its themes and presentation much like with Undertale, but the criticism often doesn't rise above the level of noticing that the battle grounds are trippy, dude.
I want to hear your thoughts about the ideological implications of game theory videos. That guy makes me uncomfortable.
From what I understand, the idea is that GT represents thought experiments, no matter how unjustified by the source material, simply for the sake of them existing. The more ridiculous the conclusion, the better. Potentially also involving the whole purpose of any of them being that they attract views and ad revenue.
But that's just what I understand. I might actually be very stupid.
Tommy Derp *But that's just a theory... A 'GAME THEORY' THEORY.
It's rare that I see Undertale content that actually has something original to say (and I say this as a huge Undertale fandom apologist). This is...refreshing.
same here, i've grown sick and tired of the same work i see (mostly fanwork that misses the point of the original or just misportrays the characters)
i love how toby knows how people are, as mentioned in this video, the fandom and its preverted sentimentality, and how we want to find out everything we can about something we love.
you know the maker of an undertale video has done their fucking research when they bring up 'the baby is you'. kudos lmao
hrngk homes tuc akjskf
I was subbed and got a notification for this video when it was posted, but decided to take your advice and wait until I had played the game before I watched. I finished the game 20 minutes ago on True Pacifist and then decided that I didn't care how fun a Genocide run would be, I couldn't make myself do it. How strange to hear my same thoughts spoken to me out of a 3 year old video.
Same here, after getting true pacifist, I don’t think playing it is something I’d ever be able to do again, not least of all because sometimes the soundtrack alone makes me weep 😝
This is interesting in the context of the Undertale fandom which to this day (2020) have distorted the original content and produced so many headcannons, complicated theories and analysis, fanarts and fanfics that when I sometimes see it I have no idea what these people are talking about. It does seem like they just can't let go of the game, but they don't seem to see it, or see themselves in the message from Flowey despite having analysed it from A to Z.
Because we are not here just for the game anymore. We keep the fandom alive because we like the fandom. It's not about the game, it's about the fandom itself. We are more fans of the fandom than fans of the game at this point.
I mean, just look at the shear amount of Alternate Universes, the structure of the multiverse, the bangers fanmade tracks, the fanfics, the comics, the animations, THE FUCKING ANIMATED SERIES...
This fandom is much more than just Undertale. Undertale is but a mere piece of it all.
There is no inherent problem with fanart and things of that nature, if someone enjoys making art of their favorite game, they should be allowed to do. Undertale in of itself makes it clear that being a fan of something isn't a problem, nuance is there
@@pablojimenezarjona4755Well, that just devalues the game that started everything, does it not? If the thing that was the foundation of what came after is nothing but an afterthought in the heads of the fandom hivemind, then what else keeps them together, other than mere shadows? Can shadows be an adequate replacement for the depth of the original?
This, of course, is not to say that the activities that make up fandom is bad, but that this nature inherent to fandom (that is, playing with shadows) can only lead to bad things (and these are something you might be familiar with, like the spiked cookie incident, or the doxxings, or the myriad of grooming incidents still plaguing the fandom spaces).
oh my god...PLEASE talk about game theory. Please
"I feel obligated to suggest another path would be better suited.
You're wracked with a perverted sentimentality."
CHILLS.
While I agree with hbomberguy here, I would say that Perverted Sentimentality isn't the only motivation behind how it was made. Here are a few:
1. Punking traditional morality systems as something that only really affects narrative, not gameplay.
2. Showing that completing games to the full (as a completionist or to just see what happens, not just because you want to play more, as Hbomb puts) actively harms your involvement, choices and immersion of that world.
3. Actively taking a stand and having a message in games. Many games try to be neutral (and fail). Undertale unbashly is a game for pacifists, and directly makes the Genocide route less fun, and wrong. You can agree/disagree with it, but that's the point.
You're 100% correct, though you definetly missed quite a few signs. I also think it's important to say that in order to 100% and see all content you either have to ruin your happy ending if you did pacifist first or literally delete your files, do a standard run again and then do the pacifist run if you did the genocide run first since the dev restricts you from a happy ending for choosing such terrible choices. If you knew all this ahead of time and did the paccifist first so you could do the genocide right after, Toby fox actually shows up several times in the story to directly ask "what are you doing", "why are you doing this", and "don't you have anything better to do".
Ended up watching this video for the first time 7 years later.
After the Plagurism essay, and having googled Chara's phrase "Perverted Sentimentality" as it's such a good one and Chara is one of my 4 fave chara-cters in the game.
Glad to see there were essays that cpatured the game's message and meaning so well even in 2016,
For a number of years the fandom really seemed to have lost itself, so much Fanon of Sans "remumahing you're genoihsidez" as Dustdustswaptrustspongshift Sans uses infinite stats and unlimited Gaster Blasters to kill Chara who definitely was the one who made all the choices for the player as the story is black and white binary options without nuance oh yes sireee,
The game of telephone disorted the game's overall percived message for many years to the public,
A brilliant multi layered metanarrative about a morally gray cast of characters got very defaced by many for a long time,
It'a nice to revist videos from longer ago where people had a pretty accurate analysis in key messages or such.
And thankfully, in more recent years there's been more healthy pushback and parody of that perverted sentimentality and reduction of this game's message.
We're getting more great nuanced analysis and theories and essays than ever thanks to people like the Deltacast,
And we're getting a bunch of great fancontent, including more faithful and respectful ones such as Undertale Nihilism be teased and trailered with what seems one of the best portrayls of Chara.
And Yellow has released after 8 years and is phenomanal and mostly stays true to Undertale's core aspects while being a brilliant and original much grander large scale take on the series as a fanmade prequel.
And all those memes mocking Sans Fangames, and there being stuff like that genuinely powerful Snowdin animation of Sans.
It's nice to see we're returning to proper nuanced analysis of this series more often,
And this was a nice old video to see.
As, Undertale, in large part, is a commentary on ravonous passionate fandoms like it ended up gaining.
We all just became Flowey in the end, didn't we?
I think what helped a lot were some of the themes present in Deltarune. Themes that helped bring back to light the more important messages of Undertale, as highlighted in this video. Deltarune has a lot of symbolism in it for escapism, which is closely tied to fandom. The roaring especially noting the "overuse of escapism", or the "overuse of fandom" in a way.
I learned recently that you should under-boil the pasta and then finish cooking it in the sauce so the starch thickens the sauce and the sauce gets into the pasta. It's really good.
i never trust myself enough to under-boil it properly
Thank you pasta knowledge man.
I always cook my pasta Al dente.
This entire reading of Undertale just slots in so neatly when given the context that Toby Fox was making this game while being deep in the sauce that was Homestuck. He was part of the music team, and the demo of Undertale being unleashed on the public in 2013, with the very peak of Homestuck mania being just 2 years before that. Maybe it's a bit gauche to bring up real world circumstances in media critique, but boy, it's just too easy to point at that entire situation as evidence to back up this video.
I just keep coming back to this video and just how wonderful a reading this is of Undertale
there are a lot of recent comments considering the age of this video
RUclips's algorithm is spying on me. Was just thinking about undertale recently and how much I enjoyed it.
the default setting for comments on this video seems to be "newest first" instead of "top comments". weird.
yeah, it's strange... nothing big undertale related has come out recently so why it's being recommended to people is beyond reasoning.
You completely lost me after the six minute mark because I spent the rest of the video wondering how long you had that plate of spaghetti in your drawer.
If I didn't already think very highly of you, the Game Theory bit would have done the trick. Also please rag on Lootcrate forever.
ITS A $40 DOLLAR VALUE
"excuse me sir can I buy a taco with this"
"that's not money what is that"
"value"
"oh ok here you go"
“Oh I’ve played Undertale, no need for spoiler warning.”
*forgets I only did one play through and never saw half of Undyne’s and Alphys’ character arcs*
“Fuck.”
when he said Asriel's name is just Asgore and Toriel combined i felt my third eye open
"I've seen your kind, time and time again. Every fleeing man must be caught. Every secret must be unearthed."
"Such is the conceit of the self-proclaimed seeker of truth."
"But in the end, you lack the stomach. For the agony you'll bring upon yourself..."
In a universe two steps forward and one to the left hbomberguy made a video essay about Homestuck
i’m rewatching so much hbomberguy
I think on a real-world level, this is a good message --- that love expressed in certain ways can be unhealthy. But I also don't think the message should be used as a reason to discourage people from engaging with media in the way they want to. If it brings someone joy or makes them feel accomplished to explore everything that a game has to offer, that's okay, and if they get joy out of going back and playing it regularly, or making fan content or theories about it, they shouldn't be shamed for doing that. The fact that Undertale gives you choices inherently means there's no wrong way to experience it, and I've heard so many horror stories about fans trying to judge people for how they choose to play. That kind of thinking, imo, is one of the most unhealthy ways to love a game, because it betrays the spirit of playing and letting people discover what they have to offer for themselves.
Games and other forms of media can resonate with different people for all kinds of ways. And life can be hard. So as far as I'm concerned, as long are you're feeding yourself and taking care of your responsibilities and not hurting anyone, what you choose to do with your free time is up to you. While the moral issues that arise in Undertale do have value and should be considered, at the end of the day, the characters are just characters and the world is fiction. So if you decide to do a no mercy run so you can see the different sides to these characters and feel the accomplishment of beating Sans, more power to you as far as I'm concerned. The no mercy route, imo, deserves to be experienced to the fullest by the people who can stomach it. It's sad and miserable and makes you feel like trash, but if it didn't exist, I don't think Undertale would have made the impact that it did. The ability to make those choices and interact with the game on such an intimate level is, I believe, a big part of why it carries such an emotional weight and speaks to people in a deep, personal way.
Honestly, having seen hbomb's video on Fallout New Vegas, it's kind of astonishing to think of just how impactful the genocide route is. You kill until nothing remains, literally emptying the world you likely already experienced and came to love. There is no lesson except "you are now a monster," but it draws people in anyways to such an extent that they push past the tedium of getting through it in the first place. It never outright tells you that's a path you can take, but a story was built into it anyways
@@matthewbrooks5470 Yeah, I think that's part of what makes the genocide route so great. It's specifically designed NOT to be fun, to the point that the only real reason for doing it in the first place is curiosity. Because the player wants to figure out what happens. And by the time the player hits the more punishing fights like Undyne and Sans, they're in so deep that even if it feels like an absolute chore, they don't want to give up.
IMO Undertale is genius, because the majority of games just give you mindless enemies to fight and they don't force you to think about the lives you're destroying --- the lives of characters who have personalities, families, and dreams of their own. Some people criticize the game as though it's message is that you shouldn't defend yourself, but that's not it at all. The point is that if you're a being in an inherently more powerful position than your opponents and literally CANNOT lose, don't you have a responsibility to show them mercy? For that matter, in the genocide run you're confronted by Papyrus who literally refuses to fight you, and if you choose to kill him anyway, then obviously that is going to be framed as pretty darn evil. And the game makes it all incredibly personal with its elaborate fourth wall breaks, making it clear that it's not the character making these kinds of cruel choices, but the player.
But I just hate when people act like it's some kind of moral failing when someone chooses to experience the game this way. It's MEANT to be experienced --- that's why it's there. It's there to make you think differently about how you interact with Undertale and games in general, and yeah --- it may not FEEL good, but that's the whole point of it.
Very very good comment
If you rearrange the letters in Henry Jenkins you get "HJonmberjuy
Your comment got me so bad🤣🤣
Undertale is now quite old. I remember going in for my third playthrough of Undertale to try the genocide run. This will be the only time a game has given me pause and made me realize that I don't have to complete everything. After all, the good ending is the best ending for all my favorite characters. Why would I want anything else and do I need to relive those memories?
harris, i love your videos and this is a great one, but you're wrong on the most important point.
undyne doesn't hate anime!! she thinks it's awesome!! she seems to completely believe alphys's accounts of "human history" based on anime and nearly has a breakdown when alphys says that anime isn't real!!
after a suggestion from a friend, i played a peaceful playthrough of Undertale. Upon completion the first thing i wanted to do was play again but with a different route. As soon as i tried to start again, i got the message from Flowey mentioning that if i were to play again, it would put everyone back into the same position they were in before i started playing. I've never had a game hit me with something like that and because of this, i could not play the game again.
10/10 would never play again
Even though Undertale is my favorite game, I didn't want to play it anymore and you just made me understand why.
"I like the star wars prequels and you have to love me for it"
FUCK
I find it's legitimately ironic how a game that says that being a fan of anything is fine but going too far isn't a good thing has a horrendous fandom that went too far
JG JG Well, it proves the point.
A content creator can't really be held responsible for what fans do, though. So that's not a very fair example. I highly doubt he's dictating his fandom to be like that.
KyoSohma2211 Well of course he isn't responsible for what his fans do, I never said it nor did I even imply it. The point is that he attempted to send a message to people, but people some way or other went against his message by obsessing over the game. His attempt to do something ended up having the opposite effect over what he wanted, which is the literal definition of ironic. In fact if he wanted his fans to act that way then it would be his desired effect and I'd be wrong to call it ironic.
What did it do?
*grabs megaphone* EVERY FANDOM IS LIKE THAT
I know this video is 2 and a half years old but I really would like to hear your thoughts on game theory
just replace every mention of flat earthers with Matpat in his measured response video and that's pretty much it
A game wanting you to stop playing it is weirdly the theme of a lot of good games, that’s basically the last cutscene of Minecraft after you kill the ended dragon
And even other media: 1979's"The Neverending story" (the novel not the rather unfaithful adaption) by Michael Ende (fitting name) centers around boy who both figuratively and literally gets so absorbed in a fictional story that he literally forgets about himself. The infamous "Neon Genesis Evangelion" is very critical with it's own fandom and obsessive anime fandom in general in the final story twist. Even my favorite show as a child "Löwenzahn" (basically imagine a misture of "Dora the Explorer" and "Bill Nye the Science Guy" with real actors) ended every time with the main character breaking the 4th wall by turning to the audience and telling them to turn off the TV.
@@noradrenalin8062
It's kind of ignorant to judge the player for rejecting the horrific reality he lives in.
@@noradrenalin8062
Continuing this theme, the player isn't necesserily a person whose doings would do good for the world that's why he's better be left playing the game than be encouraged to do anything better than that. There are a lot of Floweys out there that should remain under ground.
@@noradrenalin8062
But that leaves us with a question: what would stop Flowey from following Frisk and others to the surface?
@@noradrenalin8062
In any case, I hope the upcoming Deltarune will cover this question, at least metanarratively.
What do you think?
I played through Undertale once. I got the good ending and really didn't think much more about it. I didn't even know about all the endings possible until much later when talking to someone else about the game. The game was so impactful to me that I just couldn't bring myself to start a new game after the game itself asked me not to.
When you love Hbomberguy and The Game Theorists simultaneously
dab3303 they're not really exclusive. Hbomb might dislike game theory, but you don't have to agree with him. For example, dark souls 2 is still hot trash.
I, too, thrive on irony
yes, i was also 14 years old at one point too
Hi I’m two years late but this is a very thoughtful approach to the game and actually made me realize things about the game-and my personal reaction to it- that I hadn’t before! Very well done!! :D
I want for my girlfriend to play it, but thought of clicking on Undertale and pressing that True Reset is jarring.
its ok its a video game the message is art and stuff but if you hit restart nobody gets hurt
You could buy another copy of it. Or if you own it on steam there's a way you can have another copy of it.
@@graysonl9483 can I? On the same steam account?
What route did you choose?
I’d say that even if you did a true reset, if you and her play together you could go back to where you were before.
Brilliant analysis of this game. It's funny how many people hated the game only for it's fandom when the game itself is being critical to fandoms.
Interestingly this is one of the fandoms that has spiraled a lot into this very thing that the game was trying to tell them about. They wanted more of the game so they made a bunch of alternate universes, some of them based on one of the fan universes and combinations of them.
these kinds of media seem to have the polar opposite effect of their intended message (Evangelion, I'm looking at you)
Honestly, I feel the hate that the UT fandom gets is overblown. If you love something, you're allowed to create fan work of that thing; the game itself presents the nuance of this, toxic devotion is not the same thing as making fan art. Sometimes the fandom can get toxic... like every other fandom. I really don't think it matters in the grand scheme of things
I don't think the game was warning us not to be fans or create fan content. In fact, Toby himself worked with a lawyer (or team of lawyers, I'm not sure if I should be using plural there) to make sure the fans could do as many creative endeavors as possible while still protecting his copyright, licensing rights, IP, etc. He was warning us not to become so obsessed with anything that we lose ourselves in it or it starts to negatively affect our lives. I was right in the thick of the fandom, and I never saw anyone complain about never seeing their non-UT-fan friends anymore or saying they isolated themselves from their family. The AU combined with other AUs isn't unhealthy obsession, just inspiration and creativity that maybe got put out for all to see a little sooner than it should have. And honestly, some of those AUs are really cool and unique ideas of their own, sometimes better fleshed out than the ones they combined in the first place! So long as creating and/or consuming those fanworks doesn't completely overtake your life, that's not the kind of obsession Undertale was maybe warning about (emphasis on MAYBE because there are many messages you could read from Undertale, but Toby's never specifically stated which ones he meant to put in AFAIK).
I love hbomberguy and game theory.
They are different things that are enjoyed for different reasons. I don't think anything is wrong with that.
Tbh I found hbomberguy because I started with game theory. I didn't start youtube knowing all the smaller amazing channels. I started with things that were popular and worked my way backwards. I think most people do this.
I know this is a controversial statement.
So the only fyi is that I'm 35 and never claim matpats theories are gospel. I just enjoy both.
I just enjoy simple surface ideas and complex deep ideas. Both have their own value.
🤷
remember when hbomb used to make 15 minute videos? 😭
Wild that a game about the dangers of fan obsession has one of the most explosive fandoms in media history, which has at times been horribly toxic, and caused enormous stress to the creator. People loved his game about how loving a game too much can hurt people so much that they hurt him.
It's not a shocking revelation, toby fox made this game with every intention of it having a toxic fandom.
It includes every trope that tumblr/reddit users loved back then.
Hell, he even made sure of plagiarizing music and advertising his game as "made by a single person".
@@harunocaleon5786 I mean, does that really mean he intended for the fandom to be toxic, or could he maybe just have liked those tropes? He seems to have genuinely just enjoyed tumblr, not everything about it was bad
@@aoifemcandless-davis226 I doubt it.
@@harunocaleon5786 That's really stupid, there is no reason to be that unreasonably uncharitable. He just made a good game that a lot of people like, some to the point of toxicity. There is no reason to believe that this weird mastermind plot you're talking about actually exists. the music isn't plagiarized either
I did an almost full genocide run after getting a perfect pacifist run on my first playthrough. I was so obsessed trying to find a way to help Asriel that I went to do something insanely dumb, because I cared so much about the characters. But then sans came and... wow, what he said. Yeah it was true, even on my first run I was exploring every single nook and cranny, but, going to that extreme, it wasn't worth it? I felt fucking horrible the entire way, and sans being pretty clear that, what happened next would be irreversible and terrible... I got to the end of the fight after 15 attempts, almost as if, looking for penitence, to get chastised, and when I got to the point I could kill him? I just... closed the game, I reset. I felt I had to make up for what I done? And did a run where I was a jerk to everyone without realizing it was because I wanted to be punished, it's nuts. After it I did my actual final run, a pacifist one, and left everyone happy (except that one character cause damn you game let me save him!).
It's ridiculous, these are just, lines of dialogue and sprites, but they made such a huge impact on me, they feel so real that, I couldn't even do something that would "harm em forever". They ain't actually real but, they have done a huge, real impact on me, and most of my friends, and that, is real enough for me? At least reason enough not to want to harm fictional characters that helped me on rough moments. I don't think I'll be opening Undertale again, and I'll treasure the experience I had with it, and the friendships I formed meeting new people thanks to it. I guess I'm content enough now drawing the characters, discussing with friends theories and how we identify with certain characters and how much they mean to us (cause Dr Alphys is the best, srsly), I guess it means this all meant something real, something worth it, so yeah, thanks Toby Fox for creating such a fantastic game. Also thanks Hbomberguy for making such a good analysis of this.
When you pulled out a plate of spaghetti I could suddenly smell spaghetti and I thought my brain was melting but actually it was just my flatmate making spaghetti and my brain is fine.
Well that was a roller coaster.
[smokes cigaret]
“ *The Baby Is You?* I haven’t heard that name in years. “
God. It's been so damn long since I took Undertale seriously, just too many years of shitposts and only ever seeing fan-content and having done a genocide run that i have yet to properly fix. Watching this really made me feel al those things I felt back in 2015 when I first fell in love with it. I don't know if I should even bother trying to play again, after this.
Luckily the fandom is making great improvements gradually in recent years.
I heavily reccomend checking out all the youtubers who make up the Deltacast group,
People like Andrew Cunningham, Dorked, HalfbreadChaos, JaruJaruJ, Shaayy, etc.
They give fantastic faithful nuanced disecetion of this franchise often.
And many great fanprojects are being made.
There's a fantastic Animation simply called "Sans" on RUclips that portrays him accurately,
Upcoming Fangames like Undertale Nihilism look fantastic and are faithful yet transformative,
Undertale Yellow is one of thr best fanprojects ever released period,
Bits N Pieces was a fantastic remaster mod even if tragically cancelled.
And I hear so many good things about the fancomic Inverted Fate.
And with the next offical chapters of Deltarune approaching next year,
Things are looking incredibly bright and promising.
This was the best Undertale video I've ever seen. Ever since I got my pacifist ending I'm fighting the urge to play again.
Resist. I have been called out as silly for mentioning I won't touch my file again after the perfect ending because replaying would mean betraying the characters. But I agree with hbomberguy - caring about this isn't a bad thing.
(Also Sans knows you reset and I couldn't face the shame ^^)
I struggle with the possibility of genocide
hearing you say the word homestuck makes me flinch
nice profile pic
bruh same
It feels really strange to have a game downloaded that I will never play again... but when the game said I should respect it by not playing it again. . I listened.
And maybe that's really strange of me for being emotionally attached to fictional characters, as my conversations with other gamers I know have pointed out. But hey... i am happy with my choices. And I left the game on a good note that allows me to look fondly upon it when I remember my playthrough.
It's not strange at all. It's an integral part of the human condition that has existed since the dawn of history. From ancient gods to fairytale heroes, we have always connected to mythological figures. They're an abstract representation of our own experiences, our own humanity.
Great video overall, but I just loved that you called the character “Brexit”.
I played through the game twice and got the good ending, and after Flowey told me about restarting and removing the characters from the happy timeline, I decided I couldn't do it. I'd have to buy it on another system instead of Steam.
the fact that the game doesnt have achievements kinda cements this idea, too. or is cements the idea that toby fox is not a programmer and probably doesnt know how to do that. either way, i always found that fact interesting. theres no reward for uncovering secrets other than the joy of finding them.
The game on console does have achievements, but they can all be gotten in one playthrough and don't require you to do any specific routes
@@futurevision7283 and that’s just because they’re required
@@futurevision7283 yea they are required for some reason and look at the names they are clearly jokes
@@destroyer4929 i know, they are an extension of Toby's anti-completionist perspective for Undertale, they don't require a specific route and just the bare minimum, plus a lot of jokes
You've managed to phrase what's so good about Undertale in a way I never could. And what's amazing - it's just one of the many, many, MANY powerful messages that can be found in this game??
When I first played through it, I mostly focused on the incredibly metatextual nature of it. Including pissing my pants when Omega Flowey first CLOSED THE GAME FOR ME. (it was about 2 am and I was home alone and a fucking game character knew it was a game character and decided to fuck with me, the player. what the FUCK.)
I got to play it once again, on a different computer (because I wouldn't dare disturb the perfect ending), and what hit me most was the sheer... empathy and compassion this game FORCES you to feel. It basically says, "yeah, those people are fictional. but what makes them /less real/ than you?". Undertale MAKES you consider the moral implications of your actions. It made me realise how little we can care about things we don't consider tangible enough. Yeah, they're just video game characters, they don't REALLY exist... but if you don't personally know any, I don't know, LGBTQ people, doesn't it make THEM feel not REALLY real? Isn't that a problem many of us encounter: that we find ourselves unable to empathise with causes that don't concern us in a personal way? Isn't this EXACTLY why alt-right groups exist? Because those people literally CAN'T imagine caring about anything other then what THEY privately know?
Man, I could go on and on like this, but I hope you already see my point. I love Undertale so much not just because of its great characters, or amazing story, or beautiful soundtrack, or clever gameplay, or anything like this. I love it because it forced me to THINK. To FEEL. It made me question some of my beliefs, legit made me question the fucking meaning and purpose of life and shit. And if that's not an astrounding thing - that a fucking RPG bullet hell game caused me to rethink my fucking existence - I really don't know what is.
Great video.
And I couldn't agree more with the Game Theory bits. It's just a money-making excuse that's pretending to be clever in a way that flatters people and builds trust through reassurance - right before a message from their sponsor. Much like how some ads tell a heart warming story followed by an endorsement for a company. Basically every Game Theory episode is the “bait” portion of an ad. They have a vested financial interest in telling you you not that just what you want to hear, but that you’re smarter for believing it.
He gave the Pope UNDERTALE though!
what a cool dude
I've been a sub of game theory for 3 years now. 1 out of 10 of their videos are really good. 5 out of 10 of them are completely awful digusting and even sell out. The other 4 are shitty.
But some videos can be really good!
I don't care for Undertale, but that jab towards Game Theory was too good for me to not leave a like.
Its good to like something.
Its great to be passionate about things.
But obsess on something too much and it might turn you into a monster.
"I have Better things to do..." Keeps watching Hbomberguy
That GameTheory scene was spectacular. Fell out of my chair laughing. Love your videos!
I finally accepted that I will never play Undertale and watched this video
I know it wasn't the main point of the video, but you've reminded me how mixed my feelings about Game Theory are. Certainly, I don't like what they've become, but I can't say I outright dislike them, because they did start out in a genuinely good place of trying to use video games to get people interested in and excited by science. So, meh. Good for them, making a livelihood, I guess?
*Manic laughter that steadily get louder as more and more picture of undertale AU Sanses fade in*
I think this message really sticks by knowing what the homestuck fandom was like up to this point, and still is like today. Homestuck, through its many flaws, is still a detailed and painstakingly created world, with more content, fan content, lore, and themes than could ever be unpacked. Fans srive themselves crazy trying to unpack every bit of it. It's good to be reminded to take a step back.
The mouse cheese on the table is about capitalism.
But thats just a theory
A marxist theory!
Awesome
How have I never seen this video before? You put my thoughts into words regarding the "anti-completionist" theme. I had also never really thought about what Undertale says about fandom in Alphys's character. Great video.
I'M HAVING A BABY AND THE BABY IS YOU
I'D BIRTH MY BEST FRIEND, IT'S TRUE
Yeah, I agree with this video. I did a blind neutral run, and then did a pacifist run, and will probably never touch the game again
I really like Yahtzee's review of Undertale. It's five words long, and perfect.
"Undertale is a good game."
When the MSPA forums banned fanart about pregnant Beta Kids. Toby responded with that masterpiece, The Baby is You.
And proceeded to get banned from the forums, despite musical contributions.
to be specific, he literally has the most songs in flashes by a decent amount and even gets a special thanks in the credits flash for it.
The ideological implications of game theory
I wanna see the video on the issues with game theory. Seems to me that Matt had become a bit of a cash grabbing trend following lunatic but the older videos like the legend of zelda hook-shot and practicality of Rapture where just fun nonsense that where engaging follow through to the overall conclusion.
Yeah when I beat it on True Pacifist ending, and opened the game out curiosity, and when Flowey told me that, it made me think about what he really meant, and that I should just move on. And I'm happy that I did. (Plus that boss fight was a bit draining.....)
The fact that so many people are still obsessed with Undertale and will attack any criticism of it just shows how many missed this exact point.
I can't get over how applicable this message ended up being to Undertale's fandom. People were really out here doing terrible things in the name of what they loved when "hey that's wack, don't do that" was all but written on the game itself.
The real crime is that that pasta sauce was completely devoid of any spices at all