people keep wanting to dig deeper and deeper into undertale, its metatextuality becomes an all-consuming force in which all themes of undertale have to be about undertale because undertale is about undertale, but no!!!! the game has things to say about stuff other than itself and i’d argue that its only interested in itself as a metaphor for much more material themes. it juxtaposes treating the game as a lived in world full of characters versus treating the game as pile of content not to say “treating games as piles of content is bad” but as a metaphor about why living out our, like, actual lives as strictly instrumental is bad.
readings of it being exclusively or even primarily about fandom or the way we interact with games are so limiting. It's such a loving and emotionally honest game and reducing it to a snake eating its own tail makes me sad.
readings of it being exclusively or even primarily about fandom or the way we interact with games are so limiting. It's such a loving and emotionally honest game and reducing it to a snake eating its own tail makes me sad.
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@FreewheelinGamer I don't know what this means but that's a funny cat picture thank you
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admittedly i was a little bit talking out of my ass (which have a bad habit of doing and was why i deleted the comment).... but yeah i was defeinitely thinking of Daniel Mullins (i've only played BitBuddy, which i hated). i think in the vein of The Stanley Parable there's also Dr Langeskov and The Beginner's Guide... i was gonna say Doki Doki Literature Club but then i realized that i havent played much of that game either..........
i think i was operating on the general notion that its much easier to deal w art which doesn't make you reflect on your actual life (in this case, games insularly about games) leading it to be popular??? anyway sorry for being dumb and self-important at the same time
i think i was operating on the general notion that its much easier to deal w art which doesn't make you reflect on your actual life (in this case, games insularly about games) leading it to be popular??? anyway sorry for being dumb and self-important at the same time
--looks at string of "DELETED-- oh shit what have i done
@fweged
Lol it's cool, happy to talk about it.
I do think that games are really good at being "about" games though, Mother 3 a little bit and MGS2 and Undertale a lot, three of my biggest all-timers, are definitely "about" games though use their statement about games as metaphor for something bigger. That wouldn't be such an effective means of communication if games weren't good at talking about games, but so many games are really shallow in how they approach that fact but get treated as bigger than they are because they are saying anything in that pretty formally cool manner.
Lol it's cool, happy to talk about it.
I do think that games are really good at being "about" games though, Mother 3 a little bit and MGS2 and Undertale a lot, three of my biggest all-timers, are definitely "about" games though use their statement about games as metaphor for something bigger. That wouldn't be such an effective means of communication if games weren't good at talking about games, but so many games are really shallow in how they approach that fact but get treated as bigger than they are because they are saying anything in that pretty formally cool manner.
VERY TRUE!
Truest fucking shit ever. It's unfair to say the metatextual stuff is just "omg I'm in le videogame!" There's clearly a lot more nuance. It's more about character slowly realizing their world is limited and being tampered by a forces slightly beyond their understanding. The flower monologue at the end of the genocide route really is a lot more than just a fourth wall break
like their assumptions about the mechanics of the game are treated as scientific experiments not just "oh I know that you're a player and this is a save state" etc. the only character that gets close to that is Flowey and even then it's not that explicit
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