Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27997069-20160317174518/@comment-28064260-20160401062201

GetYourFix wrote: I think that making it a character without history removes depth from Flowey/Asriel's characterization and would have made a lot more of his dialogue nearly irrelevant to the Player.

I see Chara as symbolic, honestly. The dust-lust didn't come from nowhere - there is something that precedes it. Creating a novel character in-game that progresses during Frisk's timeline would convey that the Player starts off in game as truly innocent which is... untrue.

Chara's corpse and omnipresence refers to a fall from grace that all humans have had. Even though Chara is pushing up daisies, there is always the seed of hatred and cruelty that waits to be watered. Making Chara the literal "fallen" child is telling. You're describing the worst-case scenario, where the meta-writing is so bad that it completely fails. When done right, it's just another depth and a more direct set of connections.

Players are judged by their choices, so I don't see how assuming their innocence at the start is a problem--the game already does this.

I do see the symbolism of Chara, but to me that's just a bonus, something that makes the game a bit more poetic. This isn't really needed to hit players the way genocide does.