Undertale – An RPG Video Game that Reflects Social Issues in Our Society

Undertale became an internationally loved game – not only for its unique mechanics, fun interactable characters, and fourth wall breaking scenarios, but because it has become one of the few games that has a diverse pool of social issues that reflect our society.

By: Paola Molina 1-22-2020

Back in 2015, I was browsing YouTube for something to watch. I am subscribed to some YouTubers that play video games, because I love exploring new games. So, I clicked on a video titled, “Show Some Mercy” by the YouTuber Jacksepticeye. I thought “meh, why not”. It’s a long video, so maybe it might be an interesting story-oriented game (I LOVE games that have a narrative). Right off the bat, as the game started, it caught me by surprise. I was very confused but intrigued at the first scene of the game. What looked like a fun and lovable game suddenly turned dark in a matter of seconds without warning.

A friendly looking 8-bit flower who talked about friendliness pallets, sharing, and helping you suddenly called you and idiot, had a twisted way of looking at the world, and wanted you to die? As confused as I was, I took confusion as a good sign. Maybe this game was going to have a deep story, twists and turns, and unpredictable characters. I was right. As I continued to follow this YouTuber and his journey to completing this game, I kept falling in love with the game, and I anxiously tuned in for the next episode. The story was so captivating, the characters were so uniquely developed, the dialogue was so entertaining, and the ending was sooo mind blowing. While I thought Undertale was a phenomenal game all the way around, I was also taken back by some social issues that this game put out there – issues that are not very common in mainstream games, much less designed to be in main characters positions.

The Numbers

Before talking about some of these social issues and why they were important for me, I will give some basic facts about Undertale and play mechanics. Its 2019 and, because this game is so popular, maybe the majority of this audience already knows about Undertale, but just to be sure (since this is such a great game and people should play it without spoilers) I will advise that there are some details about characters that I think kind of spoil the feel of the game. So, if you haven’t heard about the game PLEASE play/watch it! It will be worth it! Without further of due, lets have a good time!

Undertale is a 2-D, 8 Bit, Indie RPG Game released on Sep. 15, 2015 on Steam by the developer Toby Fox. On the page Kickstarter, it was advertised as an RPG game under development with a goal of $5,000 on June 2013, but in a matter of a few hours its goal was already met, having 200% of funding done in 10 hours and by the next month, it gathered $50,000 where Toby ended the Kickstarter (Kickstarter). Truly a very successful game that drove many people to donate in such a short period! Some of the characteristics displayed in this game were:

Story Driven
Choices Matter
Humorous/character rich story
Emphasis on dialogue
Game Awareness
Amazing Soundtrack

Upon its release, it became even more successful. By July 2018, it had an estimated 3.5 million players on Steam alone (Orland). Reddit user IagoLemming also puts this numbers into context by comparing Undertale’s sales to triple A game companies and revealing that this indie game had as much success as mainstream games in just the span of a few months. Check out his numbers here (https://www.reddit.com/r/Undertale/comments/4auo3n/putting_undertales_sales_numbers_in_context/).

YouTubers aided its popularity, and it blew up on this site. People (including myself and people who I know played it) loved the game’s goofiness, characters personality, puns/jokes, choices, ability to go in deeper to the story (there are secrets in the game files that you can discover), originality, and breaking the fourth wall. Just take a look at Google Trends and how, as soon as it released, it spiked the searches! P.S. Notice the other spikes after 2016. In Oct. 2018, Toby release a similar game called Deltarune and more recently (Sept.4^th) it spiked again possibly because the beloved character called Sans (you’ll know why he is loved so much if you know the game) in Undertale was debuted to be included in the game Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

The Story

But enough of numbers! On to the story. When you open the game, you are introduced to a crash history course of this world. You are told the following:

“Long ago, two races ruled over Earth: HUMANS and MONSTERS. One day, war broke out between the two races. After a long battle, the humans were victorious. They sealed the monsters underground with a magic spell”

Then it cuts off to an image of the mountain Mt. Ebott in year 201X. It shows us a bob-haired kid reaching the mountain tripping and falling with the text, “Legends say that those who climb the mountain never return”.

Your character then wakes up in a bed of flowers and without much instruction you follow the only path that exists. Next thing you know, you find a flower named Flowey that welcomes you and says that it will show you, “how things work around here” *wink* *wink*. The screen changes and you are no longer visible, but only a heart appears. Flowey tells you that heart is your SOUL. You can increase the strength of your SOUL as you gain LV, which stands for LOVE!

Well isn’t that sweet you may be thinking. Flowey asks you if you want some love, and it is willing to share it with you. According to it, LOVE is shared by “friendliness pallets” and asks you to capture them. So far so good – cute game, cute character. Things turn dark when you catch the “friendly pallets”. Your health suddenly decreases to 1, Flowey has a killer face, and says in distorted text, “You idiot. In this world, is killed or BE killed”. He surrounds you by those pallets, that clearly hurt you, and with gigantic text says, “DIE.”. *phew* That is such a bizarre intro, no? My thoughts exactly. Another character eventually comes to rescue you and offers you a place to stay with no worries of being hurt again. Your character, however, decides to explore the “Underworld” against this character wishes because you need to find your way back home. You move on to the new adventure that is the world of Undertale. Here you have the following tasks:

You have to get out of the underground
However, the underground king, Asgore, has an agenda of releasing the monsters. He needs human souls to complete the ritual. Since you happen to be the last soul he needs, he will actively try to kill you.
You have to get pass the monsters who are trying to kill because of the king’s wishes.
But, you can choose to go the pacifist, the neutral, or genocide route.

The Mechanics

Unlike any typical RPG, were you must kill or destroy enemies to level up and progress to the “happy ever after” ending, Undertale takes that idea and spins it. It questions this way of playing and gives the decision to the player: do you really want to kill the monsters in this world? They are real living creatures, with families – people that love them, do you really need to kill them? It really plays with your conscious, but Toby builds the game in a way where he gives you the option to play an RPG with hurting anyone. That being said he still gives you the mechanism to really do destroy the monsters you come across. Thus, every action you take will have consequences and it will affect the ending.

If you decide to take the pacifist route, you get to converse with the enemy and try to get them to be less hostile. Keep in mind that the enemy will still try to hurt you, but you simply have to dodge their attacks. Once they are no longer a threat, you can “spare them” and the enemy simply leaves. To converse with the enemies, you have to choose the ACT option in the interphase and from there you are met with fun actions you do to the enemy. Some of those options include flirting, cheering, hugging, flexing?, encourage among others. Not all actions will calm the enemy, so you must do some trial and error, but what I want you to get the most of this experience is the fun, original, goofy, and amusing dialogue you get from the enemy. The responses you get make you chuckle and the peculiar characters like Tsundereplane (an airplane that takes on the tsuendere personality – a Japanese anime characteristic that shows that a character is cold, but secretly is not) or Napstablook (a shy, insecure ghost who cries and is constantly putting itself down). All in all, it makes the player see a different side of the “enemy” and makes you want to be friends once you know they are not really scary or threating.

As for the genocide route, you literally have to kill every living creature you see without having second thoughts. This type of gameplay is what you would typically see in any general RPG game, where you kill enemies to advance, but Undertale makes you think about this concept differently. It plays with your ethics and questions the player’s actions for hurting creatures that are living and breathing. BE READY FOR SPOLER ALERTS HERE! When you kill Muffet, a spider miniboss you encounter who dissolved in the wind when she dies, a spider comes to check on Muffet’s body. When the spider realizes she is not there, goes back to get a flower and leaves it at her death place. Maybe as I am writing this, you don’t feel it as heart wrenching as I did, but when you play the game, the environment of the game really does make you feel like you are heartless, and that you hurt someone that was special to another being.

Another factor that is interesting in this game is that it knows a real living human being is playing meaning YOU! Whatever choices you make, the game will remember, and some characters will not hesitate to point that out to you. For example, if you play the pacifist route and then do a re-run and play the genocide route, some characters let you know how terrible of a person you are in that you pretended to be nice in the beginning and now you come back to kill monsters (interesting right!). This game really messes with you whether that is in fun ways or ways that make you think and reflect on your actions. I mean even when you go to the game’s website (https://undertale.com/) and click on the “About” page. As you scroll down, read all the info, and then try to go back to the home page, Toby gets rid of the back button in the page and you cannot go back using the webpage’s menu. You can still go back using your windows back arrow (don’t worry you are NOT trapped forever) but how unique is it for a developer to engage and mess with its players!? I won’t spoil more, but you should go and play it, and even see some YouTuber’s break down the secrets and details like these so that you can see why it is such a well-thought-out game.

Social Justice Issues

As I alluded to in the beginning of the blog, Undertale is full of social issues ranging from LGTBQ presence to experiencing parent fights. I think this is a part that makes Undertale special compared to other games. It is a part that it is not talked a lot about. Yes, the story, the mechanics, and the way the game interacts with players is phenomenal, and I thank Toby for making such a great game. But I also want to thank him from bringing some of these social issues to the front stage and not keep them in the shadows. Here are some of the examples I’m talking about.

First, lets talk about your character. Your character is pretty generic. There is no clear distinction between if it is a girl or boy. It has a bob shape hairstyle, with a stripped sweater, and blue pants. I perceive this design choice as a way to give the players a chance to identify with the character. Because the character is so generic, it can give the player the sensation that it is him/her or at least connected in some way. The character’s name, food preference, or lifestyle is not forced on you. You can make those choices yourself. Race, gender, sexuality preference, etc., where you come from, or who you are as a person, it doesn’t matter – this is your story. This is so important because it welcomes players and makes them feel like it can be them. Some video games that have diverse characters already as their protagonist are great, but sometimes they can limit certain players, or they don’t find a connection. Undertale fills in that gap and gives you a blank character model in which you choose how to fill the spaces.

There is presence of LGBTQ representation and sexual preference. In the game, you meet various key monsters that have issues showing their true romantic feelings. The biggest example in the game is the continuous struggle of Alphys, referred to as she, talking to and impressing Undyne, her crush who is also referred to as she. Alphys is very shy and insecure about herself, but desperately wants Undyne to like her and constantly tries to impress her. Some other characters notice Alphys’s feelings and encourage Alphys to pursue her love for Undyne to the point where Mettaton, a robot created by Dr. Alphys, asks them to kiss. As you progress through the game you get to experience the growth in their relationship which eventually turns into a romantic one. You get to see them going on dates, and on the end credits, you see Undyne give Alphys a kiss on the cheek. Another love story that you see is between two male guards. The guards have secret feelings for one another, but they have always kept quite even though they worked next to each other daily. It isn’t until your character intervenes and tells them to tell each other how they feel, that they both realized that they had the same thoughts. There are a few other examples, but I want to outline how important it is to show this. Games are including more and more diverse characters specially those who represent the LGBTQ community. Not only are they being included, but they are taking important, front stage roles. It is great that games are becoming more diverse and breaking negative social stigmas about sexuality and identity! But Toby takes this a step further. He SHOWS you the stories about these LGTBQ characters. He doesn’t just say, “here is a homosexual couple”, he shows you their lives, thoughts, and feelings. I think he does this to break the stigma about what goes on with homosexual couples, and doesn’t try to hide it, but show the world that this is what normal love is like no matter their preference are. It is also a reflection of our society and how we are becoming more inclusive and open to showing love/affection despite people’s sexual preferences.

Another interesting story that I saw within this game is the issue of separated parents. In the game there is King Asgore and his wife the Queen Toriel. After their child tragically dies, the two drift away from each other and separate because Toriel disagrees with Asgore’s belief of wanting to get revenge for his dead child. It is more complicated than that, but just a gist. Anyway, you get to see their tense interactions and how Toriel thinks Asgore is terrible, she tells him, “You pathetic whelp. If you really wanted to free our kind… You could have gone through the barrier after you got ONE SOUL… Taken SIX SOULS from the humans, then free us all… instead just waiting here, meekly waiting for another human to come” (Undertale). Later, in the game Deltarune, Asgore sends flowers to Toriel much to Toriel disgust, she says, “Oh, Kris[name of the main character]…? Flowers? For Your mother…? How sweet…… these are from HIM [Asgore], are they not …Err, well, worry not, Kris, I will…find some place for them” (Deltarune). We know that this special place is the garbage can because when you walk to the bin, your character says that there is a pleasant floral scent coming from it. It made me think of why Toby would want to write carefully written dialogue about their relationship status and why even dedicate time for us to see their quarrel. My theory on this is that Toby wants to openly talk about social problems that people face. In this case, the problem is divorce or separation of parents. I think Toby wanted the player to see that these situations occur, whether it is to monsters or humans, and that it is okay to talk about them rather than just pretend it is not there. With Toby’s characters there are all kinds of problems. Like I said the insecure lesbian doctor, the depressed ghost, etc. This was different though because Toriel and Asgore’s marital problems are right in your face. But, I do not think Toby wanted to show this a negative, gloomy reality of life, rather, like I said, this game reflects our society – its virtues and problems. Thus, I think he wants to highlight the importance of acknowledging the issues and talking about them.

So why is all this important? Like I mentioned, many games are starting to include more diverse characters. But while this is a great step forward, many of those characters stay on the sidelines or we do not get to see their lives. Undertale wants to get rid off all stigmas and has created an experience that can be inclusive of all people whether they identify in the LGBTQ community, have a difficult situation due to family, or have emotional barriers. Undertale tells the stories of these stations in depth and wants them to know they are not alone, life may throw you unannounced surprises, but there is a brighter side of life that we can focus on. More games should aim to take this kind of route. Showing the stories of disenfranchised communities invites players to see the real world with different eyes and can make them interested in knowing more/helping those communities. This also helps these communities in that their voices are being heard, and that society acknowledges their aches and is willing to hear them out. Not to mention that it also invites you to be a leader by challenging how we play RPG’s. Toby Fox’s design of Undertale believes that you can and should be able to explore your own path – not a pre-constructed way of playing a game that works by killing/destroying creatures that you haven’t had the chance of knowing. Undertale completely changed the way I look at games and society in general. I was taken by surprise as I saw these social justice issues on display, but I am glad I was able to experience this. It made me appreciate game developers who use games as a megaphone to speak out about issues that people do not typically talk about. I know this is the bigilion time I have said this, but please play the game and experience the gift to humanity that is Undertale! It is truly a masterpiece of a game!