10 Years of Undertale

Ten years ago feels like it was another life; I was studying for exams and writing essays in grad school, balancing grades with home duties and being ordered not to tell people I have chores. My older brother was doing medical residency in Philadelphia. Now he has a child, and I still have home duties.

In Undertale, a child climbs a mountain and falls into an underground world of monsters. These monsters want freedom and need a human soul to do it. Some want to fight, a few want to protect, and others would rather forget. You can choose to fight, you can be a pacifist, or you can choose something in between. Regardless, your actions have consequences.

Ten years ago, Undertale emerged from Kickstarter trailers and Homestuck (a web comic) team players, becoming an international phenomenon. We have fan sequels and prequels in game form, orchestral concerts of the soundtrack, memes, and even the desired title of “Tumblr Sexyman” for Sans (also a custom Mii avatar in Smash Bros.) Creator Toby Fox and his team seem to have it made.

Since the game has been out for so long, this review will have spoilers. I would recommend playing the game, given its value pricing of less than $10 on Steam. 

My Experience with Undertale

I went into Undertale knowing all the spoilers. This helped me understand how to stay on the Pacifist Route. I couldn’t and still can’t dodge bullets during battles, but I could spare monsters. If you undergo certain stages, you can improve their lives for the better. 

Even knowing what would happen, I cried when I reached the end credits. Nearly every character gets their happy ending on the Pacifist Route, and I spent a month or two getting to know them all. The journey towards mercy and freedom mattered more than the twists and turns of the plot.  

What Has Changed Since 2015?

The world seems much crueler than it was ten years ago. More LGBTQ media is coming out by the year, especially in comics and video games, but progress begets backlash. We've made leaps in combating overfishing, restoring coral reefs, and replanting forests. Making the world better, however, is an uphill battle. 

Toby Fox came out with another game, Deltarune, with the same characters (and new ones) in a different timeline. Newsletter updates show other projects, like composing songs for animation shorts, assisting in the development of the game Omori, and making cameos in We Bare Bears. He also sadly developed carpal tunnel syndrome and had to take time off game development to treat it. All sympathies to him because carpal pain is ouch. 

Despite his huge workload, Toby's taken the time to highlight fellow indie creators and encourage fan works. He has stated that selling fan merchandise is okay as long as one doesn’t mass-produce it or use the trademark; you can read his full statement on Tumblr. The same goes for creating games and songs that take inspiration from the original soundtrack. He puts it best:

“When in doubt, if handmade and few, it's OK. If mass-produced and machine/factory-made, it's not OK.”

Toby also supports the fan communities when they run into legal trouble. When other corporations try to erase such fan works as Undertale Yellow, he goes to battle for the fans and expresses his disappointment with a large audience (you can read my article about that battle here.) It feels genuine because it has been shown that corporations often concede when facing pressure from their clients. 

To top it all off, Toby is going to be in the Homestuck animated adaptation, playing the lead. How the adaptation will go is anyone's guess because I can't even follow the original webcomic. I’m still trying to understand the trailer and how to dissect it. 

What About the Fandom?

My experience with the Undertale fandom has been decent; I tend to talk to like-minded individuals about their opinions. Other people didn't have the same experience, for better or for worse, and we can't ignore their stories. 

Undertale emphasizes that showing mercy gets you farther than being violent. You can still be a jerk and a Pacifist in the game, so kindness is relative. Adjacent to that, being kind and merciful is a choice. We can choose differently.

A portion of the fandom missed the point of showing mercy and understanding to others, sending death threats after Let’s Players and fan artists, and "correcting" them on how they played or interpreted the game. Every fandom has a nasty segment, but due to the law of averages, the segment becomes larger if the fandom spans continents. As a result, Undertale entered the cringe era briefly. 

The thing is that Undertale is not just trying to impart that showing mercy leads to a better outcome. It also holds up a mirror to basic human cruelty and answers the question of why “the cruelty is the point” is even a thing.

Undertale Shows Why We Are Senselessly Cruel

One (very cool) friend adores the No Mercy route. Why? Because, as she has told me and other friends, the No Mercy route provides the most backstory and empathy for the characters whom the player-character seeks to destroy. Other players get invested in the Sans fight, which is exclusive to that route, and look up strategies for level-grinding and healing.  

The No Mercy route, to paraphrase a few Cliff's Notes, is where you choose to kill every monster in a designated area. To do so, you have to seek out monsters to fight by wandering around and killing until you hear a drone instead of the location soundtracks. The boss battles become harder with Undyne and Sans, and with new motifs to boot. 

The cruelty is the point in the No Mercy route. People complain that the level-grinding is boring, and you have to do more work to get fewer healing items. Because you are going on a murder spree, you can't expect shopkeepers to stay and provide what you need at a decent price. If you hurt people, they won't give you upgrades that can ease the journey. You can get different items exclusive to the Route, but most players didn't find them satisfying. 

Ironically enough, Flowey summarizes this mentality while the player character walks to New Home. He said he had woken up in flower form, panicked, and tried calling for help. Though he eventually learned he could move and found his parents, Flowey also found that he could reset time. Out of boredom and desperation to change back into Asriel, he tried different timelines to return to his body and free the monsters. Nothing worked, and giving his family a happy ending didn't satisfy him. While part of it is that Flowey lacks a soul, his original monster soul, the other part is that he's a traumatized eight-year-old. We players lack that backstory. So what’s our excuse?

Cynicism About People

A cynic could look at the overarching political disasters, the spread of disease, and the general cruelty all around us, and conclude that the game had little impact on the real world. Undertale, for all its meme status and Sans spread, remains a niche interest. And within that niche? Destructive movements like Gamergate have set the norm for social media interactions related to such media about kindness, compassion, and healing.

The real world also isn't as simple as Undertale. We don't come back to life after every violent fight, and some won't hold back. You can't show mercy on every occasion or to every metaphorical monster; sometimes you need to face them head-on and defeat them.

I'm more cynical, but I refuse to be a cynic. While I'm not nice or kind all the time, and I have sharp words for the people who got us into this real-life mess, I do my best to show kindness to others. Undertale is one of many games that helped with that, and the reason that I try to go for a pacifist route first when starting a new game, just in case. 

The world isn't merciful, but we can choose to make it kinder. When we drown out the voices clamoring for cruelty, we change lives bit by bit. Those impacts aren't quantifiable unless you are an expert in collecting that data, but the positive effect still exists. Fighting against cruelty makes the future kinder.

Going back to environmental improvements, we know how to clean specific ecosystems and restore them. People can choose native plants over grass in their yards, and install water sources if they don't live in an area with mosquitoes. Not every frog in a ruin will notice when you show mercy or skip their dialogue, but a frog will thrive when it has an environment with no toxins and plenty of water.  

Show some mercy. And stock up on healing items. We're going to need them for a long time.