Why Undertale is bad

March 17, 2016 Opinion Opinion

In the heading "Direct text" The author expresses exclusively his own opinion, which may not coincide with the opinion of the editorial office. He is free to do this as you like and in any format convenient for himself. Everything is possible here.

Undertale unexpectedly for everyone became one of the main events of the past year. Created almost alone, Indie game in a couple of months, diverged with a huge circulation and won a myriad of devoted fans who pushed her in the first place in the vote for the best game of all time on Gamefaqs. Over time, the Western press also pulled up: on Metacritic Undertale equal to the average score with The Witcher 3 , Having overtaken even Metal Gear Solid V.

No less numerous opponents Undertale. They cry her cheap craft (as if it were something bad in itself), scold for a graphics that the eyes can be broken (deservedly, but this is clearly not the most important criterion), and claim that the game is obliged to appreciate the pretentious indie Games of the Western press and lovers of memes.

This, of course, is not so: the press licked and Sunset , sales of which are several orders of magnitude lower, and Borderlands 2 I just burst from the memes, but only special folk love did not wait. This is not to mention the "meme" games from Greenlight: over comic and ugly Bloodbath: Kavkaz Everyone laughed and instantly forgot her.

And Undertale – no. Is she really worth such high assessments?

Caution: Further on the text there will be spoilers from Undertale.

Non -stale ingredients

► The whole essence of Undertale in one screenshot.

According to my observations (based on multi -month reading of all kinds of discussions), Undertale fans are divided into two conditional categories. Some love her for kindness, for the characters with whom they managed to make friends, for cozy impressions (as I understand it, they are popularly appreciated Final Fantasy IX ). Others – for unusual game design solutions, for the fact that the game remembers everything after loading, for the breakup of the "fourth wall", and so on.

No longer, in the game all this is. Does this do her best game on the PC, or the best game in 2015, or the best for all the time? Of course not. Because the passage of Undertale, I remind you, consists of walking on an incredibly miserable, monotonous and ugly locations, of the stupid random battles, from the solution of stupid puzzles, as well as from endless jokes.

Everything else that is in the game is quantitatively fading compared to the above. All the way from the very beginning to the very last boss is despondency and suffering. And all the good things in the game are peaceful scenes with the participation of comrades, a certain comfort and, especially, unusual gamed decisions – is located either right before the final battle, or after it after it. Or optional, which, in fact, means that all this is most convenient to watch at the end of the game. For the best of the best, you must first get the whole game to the final.

► The game with the grace of Jack Nicholson armed with an ax is knocking on the fourth wall.

And Undertale does not give any incentive to do this. I write this text so late, because I finished it just the other day. When I started to pass Undertale in the fall, I was enough for two and a half hours, for which even the likeness of the plot did not get into it, at least some ties. The whole game up to the waterfall, which I reached, consisted of jokes (except for the first location – it consisted of unbearably intrusive guardianship). They told me that it would be different further – no, lies. Then there was everything the same. Empty locations, random battles, dull puzzles, eternal jokes.

Plot tie – think only! – Drinks on the player right in front of the last boss: the hero goes along a direct corridor, and the monsters do not attack in the battles, and for no reason tell him the background. And people praise this game for the approach to the narrative!

And in the course of the game, the details of the local manual are described by text windows hanging on the walls of the same linear corridor, according to which the player walks from start to finish. The most important information available only to pacifist ending is also presented in the same way. Only in the "genocide" path, important plot details are told by those characters who should.

► Life and death question.

And the fact that to understand the entire plot you need to go through the game several times, is not a plus at all. Especially considering how much Undertale is zealous of trying to blame the player – local characters directly emphasize that all evil from mantle, from the desire to gain more “Exp”. In general, this obsessive pacifist message of the game is so outrageous that I will dwell on it in more detail.

Jesus, Lennon and Gandhi enters the bar

Firstly, Undertale very persistently makes the player kill Toriel, then playing a feeling of guilt. Surviving twenty -six strokes under her attacks, during which she says the same “no” in different phrases is not serious. And it is not necessary about the fact that when the hero has little health, she misses – the player cannot know this, and she, for example, killed me. This is contrary to what the game teaches before – that it is enough to find a common language with the enemy, and he will agree to leave.

► unfortunately, this is true.

Secondly, the question of self-defense is acute. They beat you, but don't you laugh. To respond with good to evil is like maintaining evil, and therefore, from an ideological point of view of Undertale, I categorically do not like. To get a good ending, the player has no right to kill a single enemy. Neither pieces of jelly, nor ghosts, nor climbing out of scales to kill the hero, Undin. Because they, you see, are kind, and the hero, if he will answer the same, then immediately evil. Why is it not applied to the monsters this mocking “Kill or be kelled”?

Thirdly, the game does not encourage, but actually forces to go to the "genocide" ending. Not because it is “interesting to see what will happen if you kill everyone”, as Flouis says. Just such a passage is content. It is noticeably different from the usual and, even more important, allows you to more deeply understand two key antagonist characters. Skipping it means to abandon a significant part of the game, and to blame the player that he went to see that the author of the game put into it is the same lead as what he does Spec Ops: The Line. Its creators, I recall, said literally that you can not burn people with phosphorus, but just quit the game. Yes, and you can also not play the game and not play, the same will be the same.

► Some sprites are painted very well and contrast strongly with the rest (that is, with the majority).

Fourthly, the game, generally speaking, is difficult. Survive in the hellish Bullet Hell, having the first level and miserable 20 HP, is not pleasant tasks. And, generally speaking, the combat system is far from the strength of Undertale. Yes, it can be praised for originality, for an individual approach to the attacks of each enemy, but no one will advise playing under the gameplay, and this says a lot.

Fighting here is not tactical, as in other jrpg. No, fights in Undertale are “feel for the overcoming of teams or intuitively a way to get the enemy to leave” or “survive thirty moves under the attacks of the boss”. There are no value in random battles, they are an obstacle to comfort or plot, emphasize the right. And the desire to pump up his life – especially in the light of the fact that monsters attack the hero and try to kill him – is fully justified.

And since I was talking about what almost no one praises the game for, let me return to our four main components of its passage again. And locations, and random battles, and puzzles are not just the best sides of the game, it is complete rubbish. Humor is understandable, subjective thing, but its fans of Undertale, as a rule, never put in the first places in the lists of its advantages.

Laughing

► In a second, the light will go out, and the path will have to look for a touch in the dark. Horror, not gameplay.

However, almost everything in Undertale – diverse jokes and hokhma. Sans and papyrus are exclusively comic characters (well, Sansa has a couple of serious scenes, but this is rather an exception to the rules). The waterfall seems gloomy by the location, Undine pursues the hero … and almost every clash with her rests on a completely comical monster-resort. Alfis is a very, so to speak, life, but she is also comical with her awkwardness. Random battles? Yes, the same thing: the stretching head of the dog, flying on the biceps outside the screenshot, is a tsundurot, which is not that you wanted to bomb you, all the jokes, this is all the jokes. They are cute, but this is by no means a breakthrough of the century.

And all these breaks of the "fourth wall", in fact, is also just Hokhma. Perhaps everyone except those who are already busy with the previously discussed reproaches of the player. Most of the contents of the game set the templates only in order to then destroy them and surprise the player at a certain moment. Why all the fights are monochrome MS Paint? Yes, so that the player saw the color "Photoshop" of the final boss and was stunned. Why are you introducing your name at the beginning of the game? Yes, then to find out that you are Hitler, and be stunned. The game remembers your solutions even after loading, but what does it do with them? Just reminds that he knows what you did last summer, so that you are stunned. And so on.

► Another example of the amazing depths of the gameplay under Undertale.

Therefore, I sincerely do not understand how to take it seriously. Good ninety percent of the game is either Hochma, or preparations for Hochmams that will play later. Even if some of them turn out to be witty, each will have a dozen much less funny, and their number begins to tire very quickly.

Fabula rasa

As for a serious plot component, then it is generally not so bad (the very idea that your hero looks like a conditional Hitler and, if you help him, in Hitler and turn, is entertaining), but ..

Firstly, its presentation, as already mentioned, is no good.

Secondly, the mechanics of obtaining endings are incredibly stupid. There is no system of the hero’s moral character in the game: the pacifist who accidentally crushed one pudding, and Hitler, will receive a neutral finale, for some reason the same pudding missed for some reason. This is absurd. The need to SlotoNauts Casino cut out all the monsters without exception in random battles is completely not justified by anything, and this reproach in the final of the ending of genocide, which, they say, is all for the sake of the "Expa", it is completely out of place.

Thirdly, Undertale in gameplay successfully parodies the JRPG genre stamps, but in the plot it dives with her head in the same stamps. A bunch of entities, the resettlement of souls, alternating control of one body with different souls and, of course, self -confidence and overcoming difficulties as the basis of the hero’s power is only part of what we have already seen, and more than once.

► Undertale is a comedy, but there is nothing worse for the comedy than to be unsuccessful.

And if you summarize what Undertale is, according to standard criteria, it will turn out that the graphics from the category of “Break your eyes”, the music is good, the gameplay is bad, and the plot is not enough, and that is not without flaws. Yes, Undertale's main merits lie in a completely different field, but you can’t turn a blind eye to the fact that, as a game, it is generally mediocre? What can be 10/10 with such an inevitable gameplay?

* * *

I treat Undertale moderately negative. I sharply disliked her from the very beginning: both obsessive custody, and all the local humor caused me a sharp rejection. And then the gameplay began to interfere: long labyrinths, boring puzzles, random battles, complex bosses.

But after the finale, the good final began. It was possible to calmly walk, without constantly crashing into puzzles and unnecessary battles. I sincerely liked the scene in the house of Undina, because the Humor there was a visual for once. When the characters began to chat with each other, discuss something, tell stories from the past-then finally it became clear what comfort fans of the game were talking about. It is a pity that before it was necessary to go through eight hours of despondency and suffering.

Another problem is connected with Undertale: it is very difficult to perceive in isolation from the hype, which was raised around it. Without this hype, almost no one (including me) would not say about the game: Indi-Girl is now a lot, and I am sure that the canons of the genre are laughs in a huge number of them in one way or another and the fourth wall breaks, because because Their authors can afford to show off. Undertale is praised as a revelation, as a brilliant deconstruction of the genre – I see in it a number of good ideas, employees, for the most part, for the good of the next jokes.

To play Undertale, of course, is worth it: suddenly you will like local humor or, for example, battles, and then your path to the most interesting moments will not be as painful as mine. Undertale really has several wonderful ideas, and it is really kinder and more comfortable than many Jrpg. But call it the best in anything, I certainly would not.