Undertale: Conclusion Solution

Before I begin, I want to do my due diligence and say There Are SPOILERS Ahead. Undertale is a game where you’d want to experience first before reading about it. Trust me on this. CAREFUL, SPOILERS AHEAD! If you haven’t played the game, or watched a playthrough, then I suggest the former over the ladder, but sometimes the ladder will have to do. So, let’s get this started.

I honestly didn’t think I had another Undertale post in me, but I shouldn’t be surprise because I would love to talk more about this game. If you haven’t already played the game yet, please please please go play the game. It’ll make what I’m about to share that much more powerful when you understand what’s going on.

I’ve experienced endings through the pacifist, neutral, and unfortunately the genocide. Even knowing the horrors of genocide, through that experience makes sharing this all the better.

I wanted a perfect ending, where you can save all the monsters, and the pacifist ending got you 99% there (as far as I know). There is one person you couldn’t save; Asriel. If you played the game, or read my previous posts, you’d know that Asriel is stuck within Flowey. When Asriel breaks the barrier in the pacifist run, he also releases the souls, but in that act, he will fade back into Flowey. A bittersweet ending if ever there was one.

After dwelling on this a while, and being mostly content with what I had, I came across a Tumblr blog that set out to change all that. It gave me a new ending, one I feel completely satisfied with. This fan-made ending left me on a far better note and I really want to bring attention to the blog for anyone else that wanted to save Asriel as well.

WARNING: It will pull at your heartstrings, so be prepared. Special note is the creator assumes the player to be a boy. I personally like Frisk staying neutral so I change references back to ‘they’ and ‘them’ mentally.

A Dreamer Reborn

That is a direct link to the blog where you can see everything. I’ll go a step further and point out some specific stuff.

The Choice

To get directly to saving Asriel, click to read The Choice. You can finally be satisfied with a happier ending in saving Asriel, but not without an equal consequence, which I am willing to take.

The Return

Upon his return, there’s someone Asriel will have to say goodbye to.

The Return, part 1

The Return, part 2

The Return, part 3 - this is a video

The Mistake

It doesn’t end there. Asriel will have to face one more challenge in order to truly leave the underground.

The Mistake, part 1

The Mistake, part 2

The Mistake, part 3

The Mistake, part 4

The Mistake, part 5 - This really explains the why of it all. Play the music at the top

The Mistake, part 6

The Mistake, Finale

Or if you’d like, watch a fan-made video of this fan-made comic ‘The Mistake’. It’s what brought my attention to the Tumblr originally.

Final Notes

Much like modding Skyrim, I realised I can do the same with story with the huge world of fan-made stories and comics. I don’t have to settle with what the original creator made, I can choose to change the story however I feel. Toby created a damn near perfect game, and would ask that he keep it as it is. I just wanted to add a personal edit to it for my own sake.

I do hope you get out of this what you want, like I have. It also wouldn’t hurt checking out everything the creator made for Undertale on their Story Archive page. Might I suggest checking out ‘Three Plates’ while you’re there.

Undertale: Tragedy Inheritance

Before I begin, I want to do my due diligence and say There Are SPOILERS Ahead. Undertale is a game where you’d want to experience first before reading about it. Trust me on this. CAREFUL, SPOILERS AHEAD! If you haven’t played the game, or watched a playthrough, then I suggest the former over the ladder, but sometimes the ladder will have to do. So, let’s get this started.

Springboarding off my last post, I still have thoughts about Flowey. Specifically, who is Flowey. These are my theories and interpretation of Undertale.

Reading theories, and other people’s thoughts (yes, I can read people’s thoughts. MWAHAHAHAH. Well, that’s what they get when they write them on blogs and such. Geesh) and I’m seeing a lot of correlation that Flowey is Asriel. Asriel died, however, and turned to dust, so how could Flowey be Asriel? If you read my last post, my use of ‘it’ would mean I think Flowey is not Asriel. Flowey is their own character. But Flowey is not not Asriel either. So let me explain.

When the first fallen child, Chara, died, Asriel absorbed their soul and went to the surface to bring Chara’s body back to Chara’s village. Asriel was attacked and instead of defending himself, took Chara back and died in Underworld. Specifically, died on the patch of flowers he loved most in the king’s garden. Of course this is how the monsters knew of this story and how they tell it on the way to the king in the neutral ending. In the genocide ending, you learn Chara committed suicide with the plan that Asriel would absorb their soul, leave Underworld and take 6 more souls to break the barrier. Upon carrying out this plan, Asriel couldn’t continue on with the plan and returned after being fatally wounded. He was just a child after all. Who could blame him? Point of this story is that Asriel died on the golden flowers of the king’s garden.

The king then declared war on the humans and set out to try and break the barrier. After getting some more human souls, he had his scientist look into unlocking the power. Something tells me he couldn’t bring himself to absorbing the souls so was looking into a different way to use them to break the barrier. The soul research turned up to be a dead end, however Alphys found that she could extract determination. This leads to an interesting topic. That link details the different heart colors and their virtue.

Why I linked that is because each of the souls the king had at the end was a specific color. Each color is linked to a specific virtue. The virtue that Alphys extracted was determination. The problem arises when you see that determination is red in color and none of the souls were red except yours. So where did Alphys get a hold of a soul with determination to extract? I believe from the first fallen child, Chara. Chara died and was absorbed by Asriel, but then Asriel returned and died in the king’s garden, spreading his ashes everywhere. Since human souls are said to persist after the death, Chara’s soul was probably there too for the king to find.

If this is all true, this brings up a series of assumptions like could Chara save and reload and restart the timeline. If so, would that mean they too lived a long repeated life like Groundhog day until they finally gave up and decided to kill themselves and couldn’t restart the timeline?

Also, does this mean that Asgore had all seven souls needed when he had Alphys conduct her research? If so, that means that Asgore decided against breaking the barrier by absorbing the souls. Perhaps to protect his people from being slaughtered by the humans or was too afraid of the power that killed his son? Either way, I think Alphys used up the red soul when extracting the determination, bringing the count back to six.

Getting back on point, Alphys was conducting research on determination which lead to her using it on the first golden flower. The very same golden flowers that had Asriel’s dust on it. We know from her research that determination melts monsters and combine them with other monsters. What about monster dust? How did Alphys give determination to the flower? If I were to do that, I’d probably use a spray bottle and spritz the flower with it. That would inturn get Asriel’s dust as well, merging him with the flower. But without his soul, Asriel couldn’t fully come back. Instead, the flower gained some of Asriel’s memory… along with Chara’s determination.

So, from my interpretation of Undertale, Flowey is just Flowey. Neither Asriel or Chara, but a combination of them both to create Flowey. This allows it to be a mirror to the protagonist. Taking on a reverse view of how the player interacts with the world. Depending on how you played, the game will determine which side of Flowey is released at the end of the game. Being kind and innocent will bring out the innocence of Asriel, but being malevolent will release Chara.

Undertale: Who's the bad guy here?

Before I begin, I want to do my due diligence and say There Are SPOILERS Ahead. Undertale is a game where you’d want to experience first before reading about it. Trust me on this. CAREFUL, SPOILERS AHEAD! If you haven’t played the game, or watched a playthrough, then I suggest the former over the ladder, but sometimes the ladder will have to do. So, let’s get this started.

I’ve been swept up in the Undertale craze and love it to bits. The characters, the story, how you can play the entire game and not need to kill anyone or anything, though some character’s try you on this. It’s the kind of game we need more of. There are a few problems though, mainly with story due to things being cut out, or vaguely explained (which I attribute to Toby letting us interpret the story how we want). Where there are gaps in the story, I tend to try and make connections. One character in particular, I have some questions and thoughts on. These are my theories and interpretation of Undertale.

Is Flowey the bad guy? It’s the antagonist definitely, but was Flowey really trying to hurt or rule Underworld and the surface?

To give a quick recap of who Flowey is, it’s a golden flower, the first to grow in Underworld. It was the king’s favorite flower. When Asriel died, his ashes fell upon this flower. Alphys, the kingdom’s scientist, was conducting experiments on a power called ‘Determination’. She was able to extract this from a human soul the kingdom had and used it on the golden flower. This gave a flower the will to live and become Flowey. This is how I understand it so far.

So what’s Flowey’s motivation? What is its end goal?

During the neutral ending fight, Flowey reveals that it needs a seventh soul to become god, and then show monsters and humans the real meaning of this world; It’s kill or be killed.

Is that Flowey’s end goal though? To me, it looked like it just took advantage of the situation. Before the protagonist showed up, Flowey had full power over saving, reloading and restarting. However, Flowey had trouble with two characters; Asgore and Sans. Sans caused his fair share of resets, and he could never get past the king. Since Sans is the hardest fight, it’s safe to say he never could get past Sans as well. So that pretty much means Flowey could do whatever it wanted minus leaving Underworld.

So, what did Flowey do? I can only assume that it experienced a literal sense of the movie Groundhog Day. Wiki link in case you haven’t seen the movie.

It’s unsure if this power affects the surface. My assumption is that it does. My proof is that after you finish the game under any ending and escape Underworld, you can still reset back to when you first entered. I guess it can be argued that you re-enter Underworld first and then reset, but then how would all the monsters get put back after the pacifist ending?

Spring boarding from that, I’m assuming that Flowey grew tired and gave up trying to leave Underworld. Instead, he just lazed about and talked with Papyrus, causing no trouble. This time, Flowey let the timeline go so long that the protagonist finally showed up, carrying in them more determination than Flowey. This higher concentration of determination overruled Flowey’s ability to save, load and reset.

When the protagonist showed up, Flowey tried to take your soul by tricking you into getting hit by its attack. Why did it do this? Because I believe Flowey’s end game is to just leave Underworld. Flowey had no motivation to destroy, to help, or do anything. Flowey is just an inanimate object given the will to live, and like any living creature, wants to be free. The way Flowey does this is with the only thing it knows; It’s kill or be killed.

So, is Flowey the bad guy in Undertale? My interpretation is no. The antagonist with an unfiltered view on life, sure, but not the bad guy.

Then who is the bad guy in Undertale? You can argue it’s Chara, but then who is Chara but just a manifestation of old RPG tropes about getting higher levels, stronger weapons and more gold. That would imply we’re the bad guy… but we are the hero here, right?

Undertale is a game that puts into question old tropes and tries to break you of the bonds of traditional RPG rules and storytelling. A game can be more than just mindless killing and one dimensional NPC’s that repeat the same line over and over again in a never changing world. The game breaks the fourth wall in order to free you of expectations.

From my look at the game, there are no good guys and bad guys. None of the characters are black and white… well, in battle they can seem that way, but when you talk to them and look at their actions and motivations, they are a shade of gray. Even you. I’m not even sure when monsters attack you that it’s an act of aggression, or just a misunderstanding. When you hug a volcano, it can’t help that the lava burns you. When a dog is jumping for attention, they can’t help that their size can be harmful to a human.

Flowey is an interesting character in Undertale. It’s linked to a tragic character, and one of the darkest periods of Undertale’s history. I’ll continue my thoughts about Flowey in my next post.

Undertale: Quick Review

Undertale hit at the perfect time for me. Many games and RPGs are stuck in a rut and teetering on being nothing more than a murder simulator. That may be a harsh look, but some games just point you to an enemy and tell you to kill them, and we as players don’t even question why. This game has been a refreshing look at the genre and the industry as a whole. There are some games that try and change it up, but Undertale hit it at the right time with the right mix of characters and story.

Suffice to say, I love Undertale. The quirky characters, the story that pulls at your heartstrings, the humor that doesn’t take itself seriously. It’s a gaming triple threat that quickly rose to top of my favorite games list.

You play as the unknown protagonist, an androgynous character that falls into a cave and find yourself in Underworld. Your goal is pretty simple; get back to the surface. Dangers lurk inside every crevice and I don’t mean dark caves and endless falls. You’ve found yourself in the land of monsters; long, lost and probably forgotten.

As you make your way through, you’ll come across characters with depth like Sans and Papyrus, a couple of skeleton brothers, or Undyne, the captain of the royal guard, or Alphys, the royal scientist. Each character you meet brings depth to the overall story of the game, even trash mobs that you randomly encounter. Or are you randomly encountering trash mobs? Maybe they are actively seeking you out. Who knows, and that's part of what this game does. Question the status quo.

Credit: PCGamer.com

Are your actions good or bad, and in whose eyes are they good or bad in? Do you attack someone, or leave them be?

The biggest question that this game makes you think is, what kind of person are you?

If you come from a long list of RPGs as I have, then I can do nothing but recommend this game to you. I value what this game has taught me and wish for you to experience the same. Even if you come out of it with no change in perspective, the amount of people it has influenced was worth the chance. I even started a Tumblr of a Charr engineer turned pacifist in Guild Wars 2 because of this game. So give it a try if you haven’t already.