Undertale is a heavily flawed game. The tales many fans of Undertale weave about its legacy and everything else about it have shielded the game from criticism for far too long. Undertale has become the sacred cow of the indie community, a legend above legends you might say. To be Undertale is to be the peak of video game writing, of innovation, of success in the face of insurmountable odds. It’s a cultural phenomenon as much as it is a game now. In the face of such universal acclaim, the landscape for critical thinking has little room. Undertale’s community isn’t exactly the most tolerant out there. Go to the official Undertale Reddit threads with your critiques and the police will find your corpse up the river the next day. The point is, don’t rock the boat, or they will rock your world (by stoning you) Now here’s the plot-twist, I’ve never actually played Undertale. Which is why I'm limiting my vitriol specifically for the story, an element of the experience that doesn’t require a playthrough. I busily researched lore. watched my brother’s playthroughs, hopefully that will be enough for you all. THIS WILL BE CONTROVERSIAL. Prepare for your deepest and most heartfelt conceptions of Undertale to be shattered. Here we go! PART 1: A Neutral path Undertale has a sizeable narrative problem, but that doesn't mean It crops up noticeably during the Neutral Route. The neutral run isn't necessarily fantastic compared with the Pacifist or Genocide but more so the fact that its simplicity offers the perfect tapestry to illustrate the truths I will discuss later. Neutral path begins like any other does, with Frisk falling down into the Underground. Your goal in Neutral is simply to get back home. The gameplay reflects that simplicity. Through snowy forests, volcanic fields, melancholic waterfalls, and technological nightmares, Frisk must endure to find her escape. So fittingly encounters with important deuteragonists are handled briefly. My educated guess is that this was done partially to encourage players to start again on Pacifist. Anyways, your journey invariably leads you to Asgore’s throne room, where your fate is decided over battle. The Neutral route shares the largest number of similarities to a typical fantasy RPG adventure. The larger-than-life stakes, the hostile world of peril, and the focus on survival above all else expose this story’s roots in classic fantasy tropes. I don’t have a lot to comment about the narrative in specific terms as there are little opportunities for this route to expand on the characterizations or develop interpersonal narratives. Sans makes appearances here and there, but not enough to play an important role. The others are either quickly disposed of or slide towards irrelevancy. Even the ever-annoying Alphys leaves little lasting impression beyond frustration. The main selling point of Neutral is found in its embrace of that simplicity. It is very reasonable to keep character development to a minimum here; the underground isn’t the most child friendly after all. Neutral route does the best job of generating a sense of realistic isolation. You are a lone child stranded in a warzone with no allies and little hope for survival. The limited interactions and dreary atmosphere set this story apart from the alternatives other routes attempt to convince you are preferable. Plus, Neutral exhibits the judgment system the best of all the paths. Who deserves mercy? Who merits the blade? There is a poetic quality to having a innocent child make such high-stake decisions. The numerous unique variations of the Neutral path are evidence of this success. You never quite know what’s going to happen until you go for it, and that’s what makes it work. So what problems do I have with Undertale’s narrative then? There are three main ones that pervade the fabric of the game. They aren’t exclusive to any route, or set of choices, but represent a serious obstacle to immersion. PART 2: Poor worldbuilding In Undertale, there are three dominating forces exerting control over the world. Magic, DETERMINATION and Soul. And the game refuses to consistently define any of them. After hours of painstaking research, I’m still not clear on the distinctions between these forces. Magic is an undefined power all monsters seem to get access too. Supposedly monsters are actually made up of this stuff as opposed to humans, who are composed of matter. What capabilities magic has is a matter of guesswork. Toriel can cast fireballs with magic, and some references suggest that monster attacks as a whole involve magic, but I don’t really buy that explanation. Many monster attacks are conclusively physical in nature, such as a frog hopping towards you, or a knight thrusting a spear. Some certainly are magical, but lumping the majority into this category would be grossly inaccurate. But that doesn’t matter, because magic barely gets mentioned anyway. For such a fundamental part of the world to be so poorly explained is frustrating. Nothing but lazy writing. Soul and DETERMINATION are even more confusing because they frequently step on each other’s territory. Soul is described as the core of any living being, the central point of life itself. Your Soul is what gets targeted during monster attacks, with your health representing the damage it takes. It appears that Souls are wellsprings of power, as fusing a monster soul with a human one creates a being of greater capacity. However, what that capacity is remains yet again undefined. They stop shorting of actually explaining anything. To understand the power of a Soul, you need to know what DETERMINATION is. It will take some effort to nail this down. To put it as simply as possible, DETERMINATION is the innate capability of any living being to exert their will upon the physical universe. Some believe this manifests through legitimate determination, as if willpower is some kind of latent superpower. A surface level analysis of Flowey should quickly prove this to be false, after all, his boredom with the timeline is a defining part of his character. Also we can conclusively derive that DETERMINATION is a substance with liquid form, because it can be intravenously injected via syringe. The true lab tablets describe Alphys siphoning DETERMINATION from the human souls in this very process. So, Souls have DETERMINATION yes? Then how could the monsters ever hope to accomplish anything waging war with the humans, when every single human on Earth holds the potential of time-line alteration? Essentially how it works is that the person or being with the highest amount of this mysterious power is entirely in control of the timeline, being able to decide on a whim to reverse time to any predetermined moment. And this power was somehow never abused by humans before? The only catalyst for its discovery seems to require a near death experience, which given the human condition, is not exactly the most uncommon occurrence. It is simply impossible to pretend that this power is rare when all six human souls held DETERMINATION. Yet another serious worldbuilding issue ignored by the larger community. Part 3: The Asgore problem The wise king of monsterkind, the savior of the underground, the eternal monarch, whatever you might call him, his character is royally messed up. Asgore is best described as a sorrowful killer, a creature bogged down by his own poor decision making. A monster caught between his aching conscience and his duty to his people. All of these traits would normally make fertile ground for interesting plot dynamics and intelligent story telling. However, under these circumstances, Asgore’s remorseful attitude instead does a disservice to the overarching mechanics of Undertale. I of course am referring to the LOVE/EXP system. Sans explains that EXP stands for EXECUTION POINTS. Gain enough of those and your LOVE increases. LOVE is another acronym for LEVEL OF VIOLENCE. The process of gaining EXP and LOVE increasingly distances you so that the more lives you take, the less repulsion with death you feel, leading to a greater willingness to kill again. So how does Asgore, the head of the original army against mankind, the monster willing to sacrifice innocent human children to further his own aims, the monster with greater personal motivation than any to despise the surface world, feel remorse at all? The entirety of Undertale’s credibility rests on LOVE’s irreversibility. Taking the life of another has consequences. Take enough, and your soul is irreparably damaged. According to Sans own words, Asgore has far crossed the point of regret. His murders spanning decades should be undeniable proof of his own advanced LOVE. This realization thoroughly disenchanted me with Asgore as a whole. His tragic backstory given at the end of Neutral run came across as hollow gaslighting as a result. If that was by design, then kudos to Toby for undermining his own moral arguments! (More on that later) That’s not even the only fault with Asgore. He is a weak-minded simpleton whenever the plot deems it necessary, but simultaneously a powerful and determined leader when spoken of by anybody. Nothing demonstrates this better than the Genocide route of the game.