The Great Undertale Experiment

This past Monday I played Undertale to completion in two sittings. It took me approximately seven hours to get through the game. For those of you who don't know what Undertale is, it's an indie RPG made by Toby Fox with the help of a few other people. It has been widely praised since its release and has accrued quite a massive fan base. When these types of games blow up I tend to ignore them, because I often find myself disappointed by the hype. However, in the case of Undertale I found myself profoundly interested within the first few minutes.

Around the time of the game's release I watched a video of the first hour or so on the video game website Giant Bomb. Not knowing anything about the game I wanted to check it out. I watched the entire video and got a grasp of what was happening in the game. In case you can't tell I'm being purposely vague here. It took me a while to get to the game, but when I did I was hooked, as I previously mentioned. On my first playthrough I got to the end of the game and it was possible for me to view the game's "true ending," which I did. Many video games do this, and I often find it annoying. It's normally frustrating, because you have to do a very specific set of tasks in order to see the best possible ending and the game doesn't let you know what those are.

Due to the fact that I had seen the advertising for Undertale, and the first hour of gameplay I was able to discern the path to the true ending. I absolutely loved playing through the game, and the ending is something that will stick with me long after other games I've played recently fade from my mind. Despite that I felt like I cheated myself out of discovering the true ending of Undertale naturally. I wondered how someone playing through the game with little to no knowledge would fare. Would they be able to do it? How quickly would they lose the ability to see the true end?

I reached out to a friend who I knew would be interested in the game. I made sure he knew nothing of the games marketing and hadn't seen anything about it. He agreed to let me watch him play through the game, which he would be doing completely unaware of the games mechanics. Below I will document my failed experiment.

If you're intrigued by this then I implore you to go on steam and purchase Undertale. You can play through it relatively quickly, and I think it's a truly worthwhile experience. The writing is excellent, and the gameplay mechanics are fairly unique. If you're not interested in playing the game, or just really want to read about the experiment, then please continue past the game's logo below.

I'm going to spoil the game's mechanics, and tell you how to get the true ending. You have been warned,

The basic plot of Undertale is simple. Long ago there was a war between humans and monsters. The Humans drove the monsters underground and created a barrier to seal them inside. The Monsters have been living underground since then, and are trying to make the best of it. You play as a human who falls down a hole in a mountain only to find that they are now trapped in the land of the monsters.

The steam page gives you a similar brief synopsis, and also has a list of bullet pointed features. It lets you know that you can date a skeleton, see a bunch of dogs, and hug a volcano. There are many bullets, but the first one states that killing is unnecessary. This is the key to Undertale. So, someone who stumbles across the game on steam will have this message implanted into their brain before they even boot up the game. For me it was taken a step further, because I watched that video of the first hour of the game.

Like many old school RPGs, Undertale has random encounters. You'll be walking around when all of a sudden you'll be pulled into battle. All you see in front of you is your enemy, and four options to choose from. In order from left to right they are FIGHT, ACT, ITEMS, and MERCY. Almost every turn based RPG I can think of has a fight command, which is generally the best way to start any combat scenario. In Undertale when you choose FIGHT a bar appears on screen and a white cursor moves back and forth on it. The closer you stop it to the middle the more damage your character will dish out.

Next up we have what is actually the most important command and that is ACT. In order to properly explain it I'll need to use an example. Let's take an enemy you fight a little way into the game. It's a deer that has been decorated by some local teens, and it is upset about it. IF you go into act, you'll be given a few more options. The first one will always be "check," which lets you see the attack, defense, hp, and a brief description of the enemy.  The other options are enemy specific, but in the case of the deer you have the options to decorate or un-decorate. If you decorate you can add more to the deer's burden. However, if you un-decorate it enough it will become thankful. Whenever you meet the requirements to make an enemy happy their name will become yellow. This means that you can go to the   MERCY command. Under MERCY you can either spare or flee. When an enemy's name is yellow you can spare them, which will make them leave the fight. You get zero EXP from this, but will receive some money.

This is what it looks like when you choose FIGHT.

Yes, I know I left out ITEMS, but it's not really important. You just use items to heal, there's nothing special about the command. Since all of these things take up a turn you'll have to defend against enemy attacks. This means that once you fight or act if the enemy is still in play you'll be transitioned to a defensive scenario. A box appears in the middle of the screen and a red heart is inside. This is the heart of the main character. Various white attacks will appear in the box and try to hit the heart. You have to use the analog stick to make the heart dodge the attacks. After a few seconds you'll be able to choose another action.

As with most RPGs you can level up, in this case it's called LV. So you need a certain amount of EXP to get more LV. This is where the game turns everything you know about RPGs on its head. You actually don't want any EXP, or you can't get the true ending. Near the end of the game a character judges you based on your actions. He explains that EXP stands for Execution Points, and that LV stands for Level of Violence. In order to see the true ending of Undertale you can't kill anything for your entire playthrough. I did this on my first way through, because I knew you could spare monsters. I just didn't know why I would want to do it.

This is where the final judgement happens.

This is where my experiment came in, but like I said it definitely failed. My friend started playing, and was a little way through the tutorial. The first combat scenario has you fighting against a training dummy. The game has you talk to it by using the ACT command. In the next room the first "random" encounter happens against a frog monster called a Froggit. My friend hit the attack command, and killed it in one blow. I didn't say anything when he did it.

A few rooms later there is a pedestal with a bunch of candy on it. A sign in the game says to take one. He took one, and then another, and another. When you take too much candy the stack falls over and the candy litters the ground. He felt bad about it and told me he wanted to load his save. At that point I could no longer hold back, because I'm a big softie. I mean shit, he felt bad because he took too much candy. Imagine how he'd feel if he got to the end of the game and realized he was executing innocent monsters. I asked him if he wanted to get the true ending, to which he replied yes. I followed up by asking him if he knew why he could no longer get it.

This is the Froggit in question.

At first he thought it was because of the candy, but I assured him it wasn't. He kept guessing until he said "I killed the frog." He then asked if he wasn't supposed to kill anything. I didn't answer, but he definitely knew at that point he shouldn't kill anything. I totally botched my experiment a few minutes in, but it was worth it.

I asked him why he attacked the frog, and he said it was because it attacked him first, which is actually not the case. When combat starts you go first. He attacked the frog first, but that's just because every RPG since the dawn of time has wanted you to kill your enemies. It's just the first thing your mind goes to. Does that mean we're all malicious killers? No, it just means that video games rarely have us question our actions.

He ended up playing all the way through the game without killing anyone and saw the true ending just as I did. From what I could tell he really enjoyed the game, which was cool to see.

There's something special about the way Undertale handles itself. Yes you get the "good" ending for not killing anything or anyone, but you totally can kill pivitol characters. You can strike down boss monsters and then they're completely gone from the game. It's cool that the game tries to give you hints so that you don't kill those characters, but it might not always catch on. Puzzling out the solution to resolve conflicts peacefully was often very stressful for me, but that made it more rewarding in the end.

It's probably a good thing I'm not a scientist, because I'd be super bad at keeping the experiment under wraps. I am still glad I tried it out though, because it yielded the results I wanted it to. I had a feeling that someone who was unaware would kill the first monster they met. It's funny, because even if he had figured out not to kill anyone else that one tiny frog would have kept him from seeing the true ending unless he started all over once he got to the end of the game. Instead of stopping him from seeing what I think is one of the best video game endings I've ever seen I had him restart before he got too far.

Undertale is special. Very rarely do I have so many emotions when playing through a game. I laughed out loud, smiled, and even teared up at one point. I tried my best not to tell you about any of the characters or scenes so that you could experience them for yourself if you haven't already. It's definitely not for everyone, but at the very least I think it's worthwhile to see the game's mechanics in motion.

Thank you for reading all about my failed experiment!