Well, I figured out after a while that I was bothered by the game punishing you for fighting back. Like bitch, all these people are trying to kill me (the player character), and yet I'm punished for defending myself or fighting back? I'm treated as the bad guy? Yes obviously the Genocide Route is different where you deliberately go out of your way to kill everyone, but in the "ideal" route you're supposed to be this goody-goody guy who treats everyone with kindness when everything is trying to kill you. Fuck. Off.
The problem isn't just that, even, although it's apparent. The funniest thing is that the genocide route can be justified, purely based off what happens in the game - not only monsters are supposedly an initially hostile species of creatures, they are not above killing a child who has nothing to do with the ancient war they are still mad about. A person would be justified to defend themselves however they want in this case, since they're not the aggressor (Not even a provocator). BTW if this was to show the madness monsters slipped toward after being locked up underground, it would've been a cool narrative element, but Toby clearly wants you to feel bad for the monsters. Also a child killing big monsters in droves with a stick, lol.
Undertale pulls the "humans are the real monsters" thing, but tries to show people like Asgore and Alphys but they are more doing what they do out of desperation, while the game treats you like a irredeemable piece of shit.
*Tries to pull. One can actually show your opposing\negative characters as having motivation and reasoning behind their behaviour - best example in games I've played lately is Fallout 1, where the Master (Main villain), believe he'd bring people together through forced mutation, but ultimately created a belligerent race of infertile freaks. He even kills himself if you tell him about the infertility (provided you got proof), because it sends him into such a fit of despair, he decides that death is the only logical way of accepting his failure.
Undertale is not that deep. We are firstly given control over a child, so obviously their malice depends on our actions, but our character starts being mistreated right as they fall into the Underground. And in-lore - no matter which route we take, we're faced with hostility from almost everyone, even the main cast. So in the end, it seems like humans were right to fight and lock monsters away, since they are emotionally unstable and violent, while also posessing magic, flight, etc. (Very dangerous is what I'm saying).
Undertale is a game where you play as a lost child, likely no more than 10 years old, who is alone in a place s/he has never been before, completely separated from all of his/her family and friends. It is also a game where every single character tries to murder that lost child. Everyone is hostile to this poor kid, everyone tries to kill this poor kid. How the fuck am I meant to play a game like that and think "wow, what a lovely bunch of folks, they're just like Frisk's family"? Frisk surely has a nice human family back at home that don't try to kill her.
Exactly. I don't know which books Toby read, or how his life went, but he seems to have one of the most stilted understandings of empathy and diplomacy I've ever seen. His idea was to subvert right away, of course, but he chose the worst type of RPG to do that - which is a standard late 80's, early 90's one. You don't spare monsters there, you stop some end of the world happening by killing them all. His game has "episodes" (Themed dungeons), so he grasps the concept at least, but it doesn't work with his philosophical musings.
All I'm saying is: Is anyone surprised the dude donated to BLM?
If you read the plot, and see why monsters attack you, it's essentially - "White Guilt: The game".
EDIT: Can't quote this properly:
"Toby Fox seems to have a lot of ideas that sound neat but don't really mesh together because he treats his game like a fanfiction."
Because it is fanfiction, essentially - he just took stuff from games he liked, without even hiding it, and smashed it all together.
he's eternally Andrew Hussie's bitch.
