But wait, there's a twist! Subversion is a word that's often thrown around these days. And when that happens, it typically loses meaning. But in simple terms, it is when the audience expects a certain thing to happen because of previous experiences, but then something else happens. Subversion is neither an inherently good or bad thing, though it's often misconstrued as being good, or clever. Twisting or breaking expectations and throwing cliches and tropes out the window does not give you a free ticket to greatness. Put it this way: cliches and tropes are cliches and tropes because they work. Very well. If you're going to throw out time-tested methods of telling a story, then you'd better have something just as good, if not better, up your sleeve. So as you can imagine, most of the time subversive ideas and experiments just don't work. Creators can often be so fixated on the destructive (“I hate this cliche/expectation and I want to twist it!”) that they forget to be constructive. To do their job. To tell the story they want to tell (“I have this great idea that the cliche/expectation doesn't fit, so I will subvert it.”). It's like going on a diet and deciding to cut out all carbs without understanding what carbs do for your body and what you plan to replace it with. Undertale Rules Undertale is an example of good subversion. It is an RPG, specifically a JRPG, a sub-genre heavy with tropes and cliches. But Toby Fox, the creator of Undertale, didn't approach Undertale with a mind to just undercut all established cliches for the sake of subversion. No, he was constructive. He had a story to tell. A point to make. He toyed with the audiences expectations but crucially replaced them with something good. Not just new for its own sake. Turn-based combat? How about a bullet-hell interface? Oh, and rather than fighting random encounters just for the sake of gaining EXP and LV-ing up, why fight at all? And this is the key point: while Undertale makes a point of morality, of deploring violence and pointless death, it has a wonderful alternative up its sleeve. It is subversion at its finest. And the finest subversion makes you question the established rules. In Undertale’s case, it does make you look at JRPGs as a whole and think. Am I really the good guy if I'm carving my way through hordes of characters without a second thought for who they really are? Can I really have a clean conscience if I have killed innocents? Oh, and I'll give you a hint: in Undertale, EXP and LV don't stand for “experience” and “level”. To be clear, Undertale does not stand opposing RPGs. It is not a rebel. To bend and break rules, one must know the rules. And Undertale is full of love letters to the genre. Look into Toby Fox’s history and you’ll see a man rich with the DNA of JRPGs such as Mother and Earthbound. This makes sense: in order to twist the established expectations of a genre, one must know those expectations inside and out first. And it's not as if the game is one big subversion on JRPGs: some things still remain in place. You can still buy equipment that improves your attack and defence. Random encounters in the wild still ‘feel’ like they always have. There's still a smattering of room puzzles here and there. Even in a game as different as Undertale, not everything is or needs to be different. On the contrary, following some of the rules can heighten the impact of the subversive elements when they do happen. Take the shops, for example. You can buy stuff and talk to shop owners as normal. But when you try to “sell” to the shop owners, in almost all cases the shop owner will say something like: “why are you trying to sell me things? I'm a shop, I do the selling!” Which is a perfect microcosm of Undertale’s wonderful subversive elements: it happens in a moment of the game where all seems normal, and the twist makes sense and makes you think. Yeah, why would a shop let me sell things? Projection Mapping There’s something else that gives this retro 2D game an unerring sense of realism: the characters. Not just the ones you interact with, but your own avatar as well. As is typical, your character is a silent protagonist, and so weakly defined that not even the gender is specified. This is all deliberate of course - Undertale isn’t the first RPG to give us a personality-free character so we can project our own personality onto them - but what Undertale does is just that little bit different. You see, Undertale does indeed tell it’s own story, but it’s meta-narrative is also a meditation on the nature of games and the people who play them. Undertale is all about making your choices have weight, so it will directly reach over your character and address you, the player, and question your choice. This is especially true if you play what is known as the “Genocide” run, where you essentially play Undertale as a normal RPG: kill everything you can, level up, collect bigger and better equipment. The game makes the bold move of making you feel like a terrible person. The music gets distorted, all humor drops out of the narrative, the streets are desolate and what few characters you do interact with will call you out as a monster. Battles also become much, much harder. It really does feel as though the game is actively pushing back against you. As it should: it stays true to its core of making you question the nature of RPGs and making your choices matter. If you are going to play Undertale like a normal RPG and kill for the sake of acquiring EXP and LV, you will face the consequences. Ah, but why would Undertale make you feel stronger if it was a bad thing? Why give out EXP to increase your LV at all? Well, when you receive judgement from Sans, the meaning of those terms become clear. EXP means “Extermination Points”, and LV is you “Level of Violence”. And if you have carved a path through everything that moves in the Underground, expect Sans’ judgement to be very cruel indeed - the hardest battle of them all. It will stress you out. You will think it’s impossible. You consider quitting. In short, you will feel as bad as the character you’re acting. Git Gud to Get Good And that’s something I’ve seen a few people take note of. Of how the pacifist path, while not without its challenges, is easier than the path of evil. It flies in the face of the narrative that most games, books and movies take, that the path of evil is seductively easy while the path of good is harder but ultimately more rewarding. Why is that? What is the message that Undertale is trying to give us as a result? I don’t think that there’s any solid answer beyond the one you interpret, but for me it fits perfectly with the theme of Undertale skewering the norms of RPG gameplay and narrative as we mentioned before. Let’s be honest here, is it really easy to be evil? Is being good so hard? No, says Undertale, not if you have determination! I think this is why Undertale resonates so deeply with so many people. While on the genocide route the game seems to actively hate you for it, on a pacifist run the game rewards you. The story opens up, with sub-plots and character building becoming richer the nicer you act. Look out for the family of rocks (yes, rocks) in Snowdin. If you’ve been good up to that point, the family will be outside playing and the father will comment on how he feels something good in the air today. But kill just one character, and the children are sent inside, and the rather comments that something doesn’t feel quite right today. And all of those sub-plots and mysteries that the game throws up can only be fully understood on a pacifist run. What are those hidden cameras for? What’s that mysterious door near Snowdin? What’s with the flowers in Toriel’s house? It’s all there for you, and they are the payoff you receive for the pacifist run. Compare the final challenges of the pacifist and genocide run for the best comparison. The climactic battle with Asriel in the pacifist run, while challenging, is built purely for fun and pulling at the heartstrings. You can’t lose this fight - literally. The music is exciting. The attacks are colorful and awe-inspiring, and the denouement is satisfying and emotional. By contrast, the fight with Sans on the genocide is cruel, stressful and will kill you multiple times. This is the game actively throwing up a wall to stop you: it wants you to do the right thing by giving up. Power through, and no satisfaction will be awarded to you in the epilogue, only a jump scare followed by 10 minutes of a black screen and the sound of a howling wind that you have to sit through in order to reset the game. Undertale stacks everything in favor of those who do good, and you have to admire it for that, rather than taking the usual “easy but bad path or difficult but good path” approach. It’s a game that makes you feel good for being good. And the more you think about that, the more you’ll fall in love with that philosophy. In the third and final part, we'll look at how Undertale's simple visuals teach us about trusting the audience. No, really.
0 Comments
|
Off the ShelfHere I share my ideas, musings and advice on the writing process. I also analyse some of my own writing for examples to show how I work. ShowcaseHere I will show off of some of my favorite good and great stories, gushing lovingly over why I adore them and why you should too. I will also show you the other side of the spectrum: bad examples of stories and what we can learn from them.
Archives
January 2019
Categories |