I am finally playing Undertale in 2024 (Spoilers)
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Yes, it only took me 8/9 years (how long ago did this game come out again? 2015-2016 apparently?)
I didn’t play it to begin with because the sudden rush of hype on social media about it kinda… weirdly turned me off of it.
Yeah idk.
You clicked this bit just to see me say it, didn’t you?Anyway, I’ve been reading a bit of fic lately and I kinda just decided, hey, I have a neat new thing that can play it, so why don’t I just… finally do that?
This is the thread
I request that any spoilers be tagged appropriately in here, with blur tags or the spoiler syntax - note those don’t propagate outward to the fediverse, but this is more about keeping me from learning things I don’t know yet in this thread.
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I will say, I’m amazed how much of this has been unspoiled to me - I mean, okay sure, I knew of pretty much all the characters, I’d seen screenshots of [endgame] Omega Flowey, is that the name? but had no idea what it was tied to, and then there’s all the fanfic people have written
I had played the intro before, but kinda just left it at that.
So, today, after some trial and error, I have now passed Toriel, and actually just spent the last couple hours going through Snowdin and getting into Undertale proper!
Yep.
I had to stop for now since my handheld was running low on battery, but I’ve made it to Sans’ Waterfall checkpoint, but man this game has already given me plenty of laughs, I’m glad I’m finally giving this a go.
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I haven’t progressed further yet, but I wanted to post something about how somehow getting past Toriel was a struggle.
So y’all know the whole thing about this game is the potential for genocide or pacifism, right? Well, there’s a Froggit that talks to you in the Ruins a few rooms before you reach Toriel’s home which spells out the main ways to pacify monsters:
- By interacting with them, ACTing in such a way that they are happy and won’t fight anymore,
- or weakening them to a state where they don’t want to be fighting you anymore.
When you actually reach the battle with Toriel in the introduction, your first thought would be to try ACTing again. The game eventually tells you outright, this is not the solution. So what do you do? Well, if you were me, you went and tried to whittle her down, juuuust enough while hardly understanding whether the bit in the middle deals the most damage or the parts on the side (because is red more or less?).
And then the game scripts a high-damage attack to wipe her out completely, basically telling you, no, this is not how you do things either.
So now what?
I ended up trying to meta the battle for a bit, wondering, okay, do I need to get her to a certain state within a number of turns? What else can I do? I keep trying to just spare her but she just ellipses at me, I suppose I could just try to flee- oh it let me flee. I mean, not too surprised, it’s the tutorial boss , I guess I can go back to the bed and heal up- wait who is this sending dream messages to me.
I don’t think that was Gaster, this thing outside of the game’s reality that people characterise as talking in Wingdings… but I could be (and am probably) wrong.
Okay, so I guess I am the “hope of monsters and humans”. So there’s clearly something I’m missing. Is it to do with how Toriel starts trying to actively avoid hurting you when you reach low health? Do I just need to survive for some amount of time? What do? I guess I could just do non-actions (Sparing and the useless ACTs) and see how long I need to last…
And only then do those ellipses she does at me start to become something.
And only now do I realise, “Oh. I’m an idiot.”
Funny how it took me a few goes to realise that sometimes this game just needs me to sit there and take it in the process of doing ‘the right thing’.
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I’m probably going to end up playing some on the desktop as well, now. I wasn’t going to at first, knowing I’d have to repeat the progress I already had.
Well, I just realised, I don’t actually have to do that.
That said, you’ll probably see an update in the next day or so, as I’m back to work after illness today, and I will be taking advantage of the device on my break. As well, I’ve now figured out how to take screenshots on the Anbernic, so no more photos of a screen lmao.
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Well, two nights ago I made it into Waterfall Town! I caught a good glimpse of New Home on the way over, with the travelling companion who seemed to be trying their best to get me captured.
It looks very pretty.
I did manage to find an artifact, but somehow a dog found its way into my inventory. And then, of course, when I dumped it out, it then took the thing and ran.
Damn thing.
Well, after all the being-chased by the Guard trying to kill me (as if I don’t know who it is in the year of our lord 2024), at least I got to lay on the floor and feel like garbage.
(after literally being dropped into the garbage.)