Appreciating Undertale is appreciating its commitment to encouraging empathy from the player at every step of the experience. Think back to your first run through the game. Did you actually spare or kill every enemy? Your answer is almost certainly no, and if you did accomplish that, then you went out of your way to achieve it. On a casual run, the Neutral path is what most players will follow because on top of the Pacifist and Genocide routes requiring you to go out of your way to trigger them, a player will try sparing enemies the way the game promised they could instead of killing them. Learning what makes each monster happy requires engaging with them, but it’s not so much about the difficulty of reaching their good side as it is about showing empathy to characters that you would typically have no reason to care about. You can end a battle like any other RPG, and you probably did at some point that first playthrough. It’s convenient, it’s familiar, and it just works.

It’s a proven fact humans instinctively show empathy towards others, especially those we consider our equals, but that all seems to change when we play choice-driven games. In a game with multiple endings, for example, we know the story changes for whichever path we take. We also take for granted that none of our actions will carry over into subsequent playthroughs.

If we are unconcerned with the possible consequences of choosing a darker path in games where we could easily avoid them, then perhaps we haven’t been given a reason to treat the game’s world as if it’s alive. In reality, we all do our best to live a moral life since we understand the positive effects of such choices. We learned that because we were surrounded by positive influences. That is why Flowey is the only “evil” character in Undertale. Asriel lost his empathy after being turned away by the humans in his world, and he had no one to remind him why “KILL OR BE KILLED” is a false narrative until Frisk entered the picture.

Giving the player consequences for their actions that last beyond one playthrough is intriguing, but there’s a reason games often avoid it. Sans notes the player’s determination to see everything the game has to offer “not out of any desire for good and evil, but just because you think you can, and because you ‘can’, you ‘have to.’” In other words, a completionist attitude clashes with the nature of permanent consequences in a game. That’s not to say completionists are wrong for looking at games as vessels for interesting content. Some games that offer different choices, like Fallout 3 or Skyrim, arguably learn more towards discovery and rewarding curiousity. If the player’s choices locked off content forever, then curious players may stop playing the game altogether. That’s why starting fresh on subsequent playthroughs is the norm, because the developers often want players to see everything they created. Plenty of great games were made with that mindset, so it’s a totally valid approach, but I hope Undertale encourages other developers to focus on removing that gap between the player and the game.

The empathy I cultivated for the monsters made the Genocide route incredibly difficult to stomach. I went down that rabbit hole because of that completionist instinct, meaning I treated Undertale as a game instead of a living world. The resulting experience shook me to my core not just because of what I did, but the consequences that accompanied it. The world itself is erased because there’s nothing else to do. Was it time for me to move on? Not just yet. I decided to restore the world by selling Frisk’s soul, forever tainting future Pacifist runs.

I was already impressed with Undertale’s dynamic narrative after my first Pacifist run, but the Genocide ending cemented Toby Fox’s debut as an all-time favorite. A game that responds to player choices long after you expect it to. It comments on the consumerist heart in completing games and how that can affect our perception of the product. But most of all, it is brimming with faith, hope, and love for humanity, asking us to express more empathy and optimism in our personal lives. As such, I think it’s only fair to end this by asking any readers to consider one thing you’re struggling with. Whatever it is, I know you can turn it around. I have faith in you and I hope that by hearing this, you are filled with DETERMINATION.