Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26123021-20160211121249

tl;dr Enemies in the battle screen are colored after their souls.

So we all know that the battle screen is... "minimalistic". All basic enemies appear as a pure white sprite in battle, even those known for a fact to be another color.

There are a few exceptions to this. Most noticeably, Photoshop Flowey and Asriel, kind of. However, a few others also break this rule, if only slightly. Toriel has red eyes- though this is hard to notice apparently, it's definitely there. Try tilting your monitor, or take a screenshot/sprite rip and use the color picker or something if you can't see it. And Asgore's trident is of course red.

Now, when we think about this, these characters  all have something in common- souls different from that of a basic monster. Asgore and Toriel are both boss monsters, and Asriel/PS Flowey has stolen an assortment of souls.

Now let's look at the specific colors and see what they represent. Asgore and Toriel have a mostly white sprite, except for one thing which is red. This is similar to their souls- like a basic monster's, but posessing a small amount of determination which gives properties a little like a human's soul, which is colored.

Photoshop Flowey has human souls and nothing else. A screen or printed paper only needs a few colors for a full-color image. So imagine six base colors- the human souls. That's more than enough for a full, photo-color image. Photoshop Flowey happens to be the only such battle in the game.

As some extra evidence from Flowey.psd... When the human souls rebel against him, he flashes in rainbow colors. Like the pixels themselves are rebelling.

Now for Asriel. Six human souls of varying color. Countless identical monster souls. Asriel himself displayed in white. When the music kicks in, so do the rainbows. So before the intro to the music ends, Asriel uses a very familiar attack. One that he might have been able to do if he had ever lived to become an adult. He's testing his powers. Using only the monster souls.

So when he stretches his power out fully, and starts using the human souls, the rainbows begin. He is definitely focusing on the monster's souls, since they are the colors he himself is displayed in. The attacks incorporate both colors. In the second phase of the fight, the beams he shoots are rainbow, since the human souls are where he would get the most power from, and this is supposed to be his full power. However, it seems like they're not as neon as other human soul-related rainbows. Like white was added into the mix.

But wait, you might say. There's one more battle in the game where color is displayed on the enemy's battle sprite. Sans. His eye flashes from yellow to cyan rapidly. And when you kill him... What the heckity hell could that mean?

I present to you, my argument: I have no clue. But it makes sense that I shouldn't. Analyzing the files of the game shows that the Sans fight was added very late in development. In fact, right around the time that Gaster was also being added. So it looks like we'll have to wait for Undertale 2: Electric Boogaloo for any answers on that.



There's one last catch. Three exceptions to the rule. A few half-formed ideas could save the theory. Or could they? I have no clue.



Flowey. Undyne. The Amalgamates. Something with no soul and too much determination. A monster who could create her own. Other monsters that should have never seen that much.

Flowey might have just been originally sprited that way, since the black and white battle sprites were probably a thing before souls. But something without a soul might as well be invisible in battle according to my theory. It might just represent the lack of soul instead of the color of an existing one.

<p style="font-weight:normal;"> Undyne apparently has DT, seeing as she resists death and melts upon dying instead of instantly turning into dust. We really don't know how an ordinary monster could do such a thing. But the Amalgamates were artificially introduced to a fuck ton of DT despite being dying monsters. So when their bodies wanted to die, but the DT didn't want them to, they got stuck in some sort of horrible, painful...

<p style="font-weight:normal;"> Undyne is a healthy, young monster. And she knows Alphys. So I suppose artificially injected DT has no effect on the battle color of monster souls. If you understand what I'm implying.

<p style="font-weight:normal;">

<p style="font-weight:normal;"> Any thoughts? Is there a major hole in what I'm saying? There probably is. <ac_metadata title="Theory about enemy colors in battle that you&#039;ve probably already heard"> </ac_metadata>