Undertale / Deltarune / Toby Fox Discussion

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gaysexenjoyer said:
Chara isn't even a person anymore. Toby has directly stated that the most apt name to give the lost child besides Chara is your own name.
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There's something to be said about making a character so up to interpretation that there's nothing definite about them in the first place. Chara discourse has never interested me because there isn't much of anything to work with. We don't know if they're really evil or just misguided, we don't know their backstory with humans, and we don't even know if they're a guy or a girl. Chara is basically a J.J. Abrams style "mystery box" with infinite potential and intrigue but no substance.

Chara served their function properly in the story of Undertale so I don't have any problem with it, but the story of Deltarune is going to need more concrete objective characterization in the future with its currently ambiguous characters (namely Kris, Gaster and Dess). I could see it going either way.
 
The Blue Room said:
There's something to be said about making a character so up to interpretation that there's nothing definite about them in the first place. Chara discourse has never interested me because there isn't much of anything to work with.
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The Blue Room said:
Chara served their function properly in the story of Undertale so I don't have any problem with it, but the story of Deltarune is going to need more concrete objective characterization in the future with its currently ambiguous characters (namely Kris, Gaster and Dess). I could see it going either way.
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I love the classic "Make the fans write the character for you!" method. :story:
It's genius, you don't have to do jack shit and retards will eat it up and claim they have amazing characterization even when they have no dialogue!
 
Bob Barbas said:
I love the classic "Make the fans write the character for you!" method. :story:
It's genius, you don't have to do jack shit and retards will eat it up and claim they have amazing characterization even when they have no dialogue!
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It's funny you mention this. The stream made me think about it and write up a huge textwall.
I'll refine it to it's key points though.

I actually think that the ambiguity is UNDERTALE's secret formula.
However, Toby didn't leave out anything important. All of the ambiguous stuff is just extra.
It's like a good bedtime story - it unleashes your imagination. This motif is referenced ingame and in the soundtrack.
Even back in the DEMO days, people were going wild with theories and expanded lore. The DEMO works as an independent piece - despite the ambiguity.

Toby openly revealed his magic on the livestream; constantly stressing the importance of people's imagination.
All you need is a solid framework and enough room for people to make it their own.

And the framework IS solid...
Despite UNDERTALE being riddled with annoying, cloying scenes that go on for too long.
Despite shoddy workmanship being frequently displayed in the final product.
Despite the team being filled with some very dubious characters.

It's a game that reliably delivers heavy blows.

UNDERTALE's focus on the "big ideas" and the feeling is what gives it it's punch.
Keep in mind that this is a short, very linear indie game that mustered the cultural impact of something like Star Wars.

I also think that this is the reason why UNDERTALE is (mostly) apolitical:
To avoid giving people an excuse to ignore what's in front of them and revert to discussing their boring, miserable lives.
 
The Blue Room said:
There's something to be said about making a character so up to interpretation that there's nothing definite about them in the first place. Chara discourse has never interested me because there isn't much of anything to work with. We don't know if they're really evil or just misguided, we don't know their backstory with humans, and we don't even know if they're a guy or a girl. Chara is basically a J.J. Abrams style "mystery box" with infinite potential and intrigue but no substance.

Chara served their function properly in the story of Undertale so I don't have any problem with it, but the story of Deltarune is going to need more concrete objective characterization in the future with its currently ambiguous characters (namely Kris, Gaster and Dess). I could see it going either way.
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Chara is basically everything and nothing. At this point, does it matter what it is? I don't think he even knows. If he had a plan for Undertale: New Beginnings, he scrapped it.
Bob Barbas said:
I love the classic "Make the fans write the character for you!" method. :story:
It's genius, you don't have to do jack shit and retards will eat it up and claim they have amazing characterization even when they have no dialogue!
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True. Especially when you have crackpot stuff.
 
Coolio55 said:
feeling is what gives it it's punch.
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Maybe the game isn't for me but I honestly never really felt many feelings playing it unlike some other people. (Besides maybe like "Aw, that's cute." every once in awhile.) I think it might play into why so many retards go to bat for the game so hard they're emotionally attached to it because it made them cry or something.
I honestly think the entire Asriel twist was kind of dogshit, probably a hot take. I didn't really feel much of anything and it doesn't help that a lot of context for why Flowey is the way he is is locked behind the Genocide route.
I really, really, REALLY don't get why so many people were so attached to Flowey/Asriel. Like for fuck's sake right outside of the castle you get a fucking lore dump regarding him before entering. That's like one of the worst ways to do it imo. Show don't tell and all that shit.
The game has a lot of problems and honestly it's kind of insane and lucky that it got as popular as it did. I got nothing against Toby so far and honestly it's cool that he was able to become a millionaire over this game. But boy Toby is... not a great writer from what I've seen. I can't comment on Deltarune yet as we don't have all of the information yet but Undertale has a fuckton of holes that make it hard to enjoy once you notice them.
Especially when you really get down to it and start to realize it actually might be DANGEROUS for both humanity AND monsters to return to the surface given how all it takes is a couple of souls to turn them into killing machines and there's all kinds of ways that could go wrong that I won't go into here that wouldn't require an inciting monster to lift a finger to acquire those souls hypothetically speaking. Honestly when you think about it the monsters are lucky as hell the humans didn't just genocide them given the potential threat they pose. And this isn't me headcanoning I made it up bullshit this is stuff I've gleamed from the actual fucking lore. So unless we believe every single monster ever is a goodboy who would never take advantage of this, yeah we might have just doomed humanity actually in the long run. Either that or the monsters just McFucking die due to the humans somehow and I feel like they'd probably be even LESS likely to survive a modern war with humanity for obvious reasons. :story:And from the ending stills I'm pretty sure it's at best a modern human civilization out there or at worst a futuristic one with even worse weapons. (And they couldn't handle humanity when they presumably had fucking swords and shields AND magic.)

I want to clarify the game is absolutely not terrible at all. I've absolutely seen worse games and worse writing. I'm just saying it's definitely not perfect by any means and people do kind of oversell it sometimes.
 
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gaysexenjoyer said:
These motherfuckers are pronoun policing over Chara now
View attachment 7974892

How starved for content do you need to be where this is the kind of stuff you need to argue about?
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it's funny, i've seen people refer to chara as "she," frisk as either "he" or "she," and kris as "he" but it's usually only ever kris they get mad about. like, what's the logical thinking here? if you refer to someone as "they" offhandedly, they must be nonbinary? or that all the humans are nonbinary since none of them have clear-cut pronouns? in fact, why does the usage of "them" have to mean nonbinary specifically? it's like the bizarro version of /v/ schizos who try to get into a screaming match with you if you refer to a guy as "they" without really thinking or caring about how you're using it.
 
Cryogonal2 said:
it's funny, i've seen people refer to chara as "she," frisk as either "he" or "she," and kris as "he" but it's usually only ever kris they get mad about. like, what's the logical thinking here?
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Frisk is ambiguous enough that it could go either way, and Chara is only slightly better off because the design looks slightly more feminine. Conversely, everything about Kris screams “teenage boy”, so those people have to enforce their rules the hardest against him.
Cryogonal2 said:
in fact, why does the usage of "them" have to mean nonbinary specifically?
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Well, why would you refer to someone who you know is male/female as “they” instead of just saying “he/she”?
 
Scream Aim Fire said:
So, bit of a left turn; who's everyone's favorite character? Mine's Asgore, though I kinda like Gerson as well.
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In Undertale, Asgore was by far my favorite. I remember trying to spare him for like 2 hours straight lol.

In Deltarune I'm not as sure but probably Susie. In chapter 3 I named myself ASS and when I saw Susie did the same thing I knew she was cool.
 
My memory from 10 years ago is hazy but I do remember that I didn't mind Alphys. Was surprised to learn that people hated her enough that they made an Alphys removal mod. Probably Burgerpants
 
It's always "the character is whatever you want it to be" up until retards take fandoms hostage and have meltdowns if you interpret things differently. Shippers and troons ruin the experience for any theory crafting or fan interpretations, genuinely.
Scream Aim Fire said:
So, bit of a left turn; who's everyone's favorite character? Mine's Asgore, though I kinda like Gerson as well.
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My favorite characters were always Asgore and Toriel. I just wish that the series was more honest about Toriel's flaws, because I think that while I like her compassion, her self righteousness makes her interesting to me too. Asgore is just a great character all around. A good dude but deeply flawed and tormented by his choices.
I also really love Papyrus, I can never get enough of the guy.

In Deltarune my favorie is Kris and Susie. And Kris is the reason I really warmed up to Susie. They're both so charming and wholesome.
 
Scream Aim Fire said:
So, bit of a left turn; who's everyone's favorite character? Mine's Asgore, though I kinda like Gerson as well.
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Gerson in Deltarune is fantastic. Spamton's neat, but he's just a funny little salesman and not a super-serious character, to me. Seam is probably my second favorite.

For Undertale, Undyne and Papyrus. I'm probably one of the few people who dislikes Mettaton, and not because of the troon shit; I just don't think his antics are funny.
 
Scream Aim Fire said:
So, bit of a left turn; who's everyone's favorite character? Mine's Asgore, though I kinda like Gerson as well.
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But seriously, I think Papyrus/Asgore for UT and Gerson/Susie for DR. They're very likable characters.
 
I’m probably the only Tenna fan in existence who isn’t a fujoshigger. What I thought was just gonna be another bog standard Tumblr design turned out to be a surprisingly compelling and well thought out character. They found a good balance between comic relief and serious, and he was entertaining enough to make Chapter 3 not feel like total filler.
 
my penis is on fire said:
I’m probably the only Tenna fan in existence who isn’t a fujoshigger. What I thought was just gonna be another bog standard Tumblr design turned out to be a surprisingly compelling and well thought out character. They found a good balance between comic relief and serious, and he was entertaining enough to make Chapter 3 not feel like total filler.
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Shame he dies unless you go pacifist
 
Bob Barbas said:
outside of the castle you get a fucking lore dump regarding him before entering. That's like one of the worst ways to do it imo. Show don't tell and all that shit
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I agree this part was incredibly cringe and took me out of the game immediately. I was like okay this is just the creator of the game exposition dumping at me because he couldn't figure a way to do this organically. Not good.
I did feel feels about Asriel and the fight though. "Sad evil" in general tends to affect me deeply for some reason.

Favorite characters: Asgore and Papyrus.
Asgore should be the real hero, imo.
 
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