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It's the final part of the Undertale demo! In this, we realize what we now have to do, and head to the final confrontation, which I attempt to resolve in the most peaceful manner possible.
Please have a supply of buckets for tears on standby, and curb any temptations for extreme violence towards plants that this video might unexpectedly awaken in you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1bP0dUPdEA
Please have a supply of buckets for tears on standby, and curb any temptations for extreme violence towards plants that this video might unexpectedly awaken in you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1bP0dUPdEA
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Date: 2013-06-27 04:16 pm (UTC)There was an interview I read a while ago with the makers of You Don't Know Jack, well before it was a Facebook game, where they said that one of the most important things in making the player believe they were interacting with an "intelligent" host was to respond to inaction as well as action... something which not a lot of games do at all. In The Granstream Saga, it does exactly what Undertale does to you twice in a row at the start of the game - you're told "I'm going down to the basement, don't follow me under any circumstances" and just by a game saying that, you know that you're going to have to do exactly the opposite of what it tells you. So in a game built so much to subvert the expectations of a normal RPG, a reaction to staying in the long corridor and an option to stay with Toriel forever would have been... nice.
Now, this is the most difficult thing that I'm going to try to convince you of, but... I don't believe that Radiation intended any personal malice towards the player in performing that switch, nor tried to suddenly take away a game that they could emotionally invest in - while I do see exactly why it happened, the break in emotional investment during the Toriel fight is your own reaction. I reacted differently to it, specifically because I had reluctantly gone down a path that I hadn't intended to complete, giving me (and Xaq, too, by the sound of it) a massive feeling of guilt - exactly the ride of emotion that the author had intended the player to experience.
But I do understand the want to stay away from being made to feel like that - even though for me, being able to experience it in a group like this is a way to... heighten that experience and share it together.
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Date: 2013-06-28 02:43 am (UTC)And, this is the problem with an argument on different levels.... even IF he had properly sold the immersion in the Toriel fight (which as I said, could *absolutely* have been done well, it's not a conceptually flawed idea in itself), the fact remains that it's still a stacked deck; it's still a game designed to, as frequently as possible, make you love a character and then break your heart. That doesn't make it a bad game. It absolutely makes it not a game for me, though. I feel the same way about Quentin Tarantino movies. He's unquestionably an amazing director; I just don't enjoy experiencing the things that he's so expertly directing me into feeling. It's not worth going through all that suffering just to be impressed with how deftly he does it.
So...... MAYBE Radiation didn't deliberately intend to make the player feel uninvested.... but even if he didn't, he DID intend to make the player feel horrible, and...... well, that's ultimately the thing I never know how to put my finger on about sadism. The question I always ask myself about an apparent sadist is, "is this an actual sadist, or just a generous massochist?" Did Radiation intend to fuck with people as a power trip, or did he intend to let people have an experience he thought they would be glad to have despite how miserable it is? I think Moa is definitely in the latter camp.... from the sound of his twitter, Radiation is almost certainly a little of both.....
But the distinction is purely a matter of curiosity at this point anyway, because either way I have a hard time picturing this game bringing me more enjoyment than stress, if this is the tone he's putting so much effort into setting. The fact that you would describe this as something that you're seeking a way to *heighten* rather than mitigate pretty much confirms that we're having wildly unrelated responses to this game. (It also makes me envious of how much more you must have enjoyed Hatoful, if the miserable parts weren't just something you were willing to bear long enough to hopefully reach another scene with lasers and maid outfits!)