122 Reviews liked by Van
Undertale
2015
Whenever something is released that strikes such a massive emotional chord with hordes of people (especially kids,) judging whether its popularity is somehow “deserved” is mostly a waste of time.
The real money is in figuring out why it means so much to so many.
First, there is a good video game here. While the more Tumblrcore elements of the writing probably won’t age well and the 1-bit enemy battle graphics start to strain pretty early on, there is so much game and narrative design here that exudes a warm, gentle sophistication. And the skeleton (heh) key to it all is the jewel-box scale. A JRPG party of one enables a simple user interface that avoids even a whisper of an “Equipment” screen and a battle system that is methodically pushed to its absolute mechanical limits. A soundtrack made of nothing but variations and arrangements of 20-odd melodies would be insufferable in a longer game, but here, it’s a perfect storytelling tool. (Listen to how the Hotland, Core, and Mettaton EX themes rearrange the same melodic material to form a progression that gets both more menacing and more, um, gay.) The scale also enables a very well-managed plot/cinematic universe, complete with industrial-grade meta elements, that rarely threatens to fly off the rails even as it rolls through the traditional JRPG beats and beyond. In short, Undertale is An Actual JRPG, and probably the best since Chrono Trigger.
Culturally, this game probably marked the beginning of the end of Millennial dominance of Online. But I think it will be remembered as a good video game as much as a cultural artifact, and the two are connected. The game’s thesis statement is pretty simple: Video games (and perhaps, by extension, other things) should be considered as something more than buffets of content to consume and systems to manipulate and maximize. To people who were raised by a certain type of Boomer and/or absorbed certain types of cultural messages to approach the entire world as a mechanistic system rather than a messy collection of fellow, flawed humans, this game is an extremely powerful tonic. Forget the fanfic, the symphonic concerts, the musicals – that’s the actual glue holding the fandom together. There are people out there who earnestly say that this game made them feel seen, heard, and even loved for the first time. I don’t think they’re lying. I think this is what they mean: it showed them a way of approaching the world they had never imagined, never even been able to imagine. As a child of Boomers myself, I can sympathize.
And even if you’re not wild about the aesthetics or the fandom, the act of releasing a JRPG (let alone a good one) that can be fully experienced in about 15 mostly leisurely hours should earn Toby Fox a Nobel Prize.
The real money is in figuring out why it means so much to so many.
First, there is a good video game here. While the more Tumblrcore elements of the writing probably won’t age well and the 1-bit enemy battle graphics start to strain pretty early on, there is so much game and narrative design here that exudes a warm, gentle sophistication. And the skeleton (heh) key to it all is the jewel-box scale. A JRPG party of one enables a simple user interface that avoids even a whisper of an “Equipment” screen and a battle system that is methodically pushed to its absolute mechanical limits. A soundtrack made of nothing but variations and arrangements of 20-odd melodies would be insufferable in a longer game, but here, it’s a perfect storytelling tool. (Listen to how the Hotland, Core, and Mettaton EX themes rearrange the same melodic material to form a progression that gets both more menacing and more, um, gay.) The scale also enables a very well-managed plot/cinematic universe, complete with industrial-grade meta elements, that rarely threatens to fly off the rails even as it rolls through the traditional JRPG beats and beyond. In short, Undertale is An Actual JRPG, and probably the best since Chrono Trigger.
Culturally, this game probably marked the beginning of the end of Millennial dominance of Online. But I think it will be remembered as a good video game as much as a cultural artifact, and the two are connected. The game’s thesis statement is pretty simple: Video games (and perhaps, by extension, other things) should be considered as something more than buffets of content to consume and systems to manipulate and maximize. To people who were raised by a certain type of Boomer and/or absorbed certain types of cultural messages to approach the entire world as a mechanistic system rather than a messy collection of fellow, flawed humans, this game is an extremely powerful tonic. Forget the fanfic, the symphonic concerts, the musicals – that’s the actual glue holding the fandom together. There are people out there who earnestly say that this game made them feel seen, heard, and even loved for the first time. I don’t think they’re lying. I think this is what they mean: it showed them a way of approaching the world they had never imagined, never even been able to imagine. As a child of Boomers myself, I can sympathize.
And even if you’re not wild about the aesthetics or the fandom, the act of releasing a JRPG (let alone a good one) that can be fully experienced in about 15 mostly leisurely hours should earn Toby Fox a Nobel Prize.
CoC is one of the most important games to come out in the true indie space. Outside of the great erotic content, it does manage to have a lot of interesting life sim elements and so many little hidden things. Although this stuff is part and parcel of the japanese eroge scene for decades, the fact that Fenoxo and crew had almost an convergent evolution is only a good thing and brought a very smart queer element to the sex game genre.
Seriously though, its great.
Seriously though, its great.