So I finished my second play-through of Undertale last night. Shit was an emotional roller-coaster. I mean, literally. It's very rare for something to illicit and emotional response from me the way Undertale has. And really I just want to talk about it. I'm going to do it here because r/undertale is full of meanies who like the downvote button too much and the wiki chat is full of nothing but roleplay.
So, here we go.
Spoilers, obviously.
When I started playing, I instantly connected with Toriel. The one thing I noticed about the game was that all the characters felt incredibly real, despite the 8-bit sprites. It was just something about Toriel's actions and language that really connected with me. Maybe it's because I love that whole child-like innocence and motherly love kind of stuff. I had a bad childhood so that could explain it, but I'm not here to talk about that.
Anyway, I was incredibly sad when the tutorial ended and I had to leave Toriel. I didn't want to. I tried to stay as long as I could in her little house because I wanted to be with her. I even went to my room when she told me to. But the voice i my head forced me to continue and I had to eventually hug my goat-mother goodbye and leave her.
I then spent the entire game calling her after every scene. So much so that I'm even writing a fanfic about how many times I called her. But when I got to the end I was overjoyed to find out the king was a nice guy and missed his wife and would let me go and live with toriel. Then Flowey happened. I knew it was going to because I read a walk-through because at one point I thought Toriel was evil because of how she used words like 'pathetic", but the flowey encounter still messed me up anyway.
THen I did some reading and decided to plow through on True Pacifist and got to the end again in like 9 hours. I almost started crying during the asriel fight while trying to rescue Toriel's and Asgore's souls. I almost cried again during the Asriel scenes, even backtracking to his scenes in the garden, because it touched on more of that childhood stuff I talked about.
But I finally got my closure with Toriel. I got to live with her! That's something I wanted since the very beginning of the game. I even yelled at the computer screen when Asriel showed up to introduce the kick-starter backers. I thought he was going to reset the save again and I literally yelled out "Don't take this away from me, you fuck!"
But I should be happy, I got my closure.
But there's another thing that's really bothering me about Toriel and Asgoer, and it's left me sad for the entire day. It's really fucking me up that Toriel doesn't take Asgore back, and that they ultimately don't get back together, even after Asriel tells you to "Take care of mom and dad". Asgore is seen trimming the hedges outside of Toriel's school, so they reconciled to some degree. But the fact that they never got back together as husband and wife and lived together with frisk really tears me up. They might have though, I don't know because it's left open ended. Asgore could probably be living with Toriel but Toriel is the only seen in the credits with the human and giving him a slice of pie, so it only confirms that you live with Toriel if you choose to.
What makes this even worse are the video tapes in Alphy's lab and the trophy in Asgore's room.
It sounds corny I know, but Toriel and Asgore loved each-other at one point, but now it's gone. They were "Nuzzling champions", which heavily implies affection. And one of the tapes shows Toriel waking Asgore up with a camera and joyfully expressing how she's happy to be a mom. But here's where it gets really fucked up.
If you go back to where the game started and talk to Asriel he will tell you about the first human to fall down and basically, the first fallen human fucked everything up.The first fallen human hated humanity, as revealed by asriel. So they devised a plan to break the barrier, as mentioned in the tapes. They were talking about a recipe that called for cups of butter but instead used buttercups and Asgore got really sick.
After that the human and Asriel devised a plan and in a later tape it's revealed that the human poisoned themself so Asriel could absorb his soul and break the barrier. Asriel, at the starting location, revealed that he and the human both had controll over the monster's body when the soul was consumed. He said the human hated humanity and took the body back to the village and wanted to use the monster's body to destroy humanity. But Asriel took control and endured the human's attacks and made it back through the portal, where he died.
Toriel and Asgore lost both of their children and Asgore decided to declare was on the humans and would reap the souls of any human that came through, so one day he could become a god and destroy mankind.
Toriel though this was disgusting and divorced him, and after that, 5 more souls were taken. Now Frisk comes along and sets Undertale's story in motion, and once you get to the fight with Asgore he reveals that he never wanted to hurt anyone, and never wanted to wage war on humanity. He only wanted to give his people hope, and he wanted to be with his wife. If you spare him he offers to let you live with toriel but then flowey happens.
So basically the first human fucked everything up. And if it wasn't for him Toriel and Asgore would still be together and their child would be alive and I wouldn'tve been so fucking sad today. I would've been able to enjoy the closrue I got from the fact that my character got to live with Toriel.
...
Like I said. It's very rare for something to hit me this hard emotionally. This game managed to hit all the right buttons.
