Thread:Mabian/@comment-4383275-20160827050912/@comment-27701762-20160828023845

Oobooglunk wrote: The problem arises, however, that if Toby's true intent was indeed to link EarthBound and Undertale, he may be liable for a lawsuit. The only thing preventing that from happening is the veil of vagueness that currently separates both of those games. We can never know what Toby truly intended, nor would it be in his best interest to intervene in this discussion: the longer people keep talking, the more publicity his game gets. Therefore, any evidence we gather would have to be derived from a series of incredibly subtle clues. I've been trying to find a way to respond to this in a way that makes it purely digression, but unfortunately it touches on several important subjects.

To begin, interpretation is generally a business where you never get 100% certainty about whether you have arrived at the truth or not. So I agree that we are working off of very subtle clues, and that unless Toby explicitly confirms or denies the theory (and you are right that, if the theory is true, he may face trouble if he explicitly confirms it), we will never be absolutely certain of its veracity.

That said, we are not at a loss. Through the use of various clues, we can become more and more certain of Toby's intentions. We can, essentially, work to read his mind on this issue. And if we can be 30%, or 50%, or 70%, or 90% sure that the theory is true, then that is a significant jump from 0%.

But attaining certainty requires a method. Often interpretations are incorrect not because they ascribe a simple explanation to something vastly more complex, but because they do precisely the opposite. "Subtle clues" are dug up and twisted around to confirm a theory, even if a much simpler explanation exists. Knowing what to dig through and how to put things together is of prime importance, as otherwise we are just left with a mess that can and will be formed and reformed in a near-infinite number of ways.

An important part of this method is knowing what things should look like if the theory as a whole is true. Usually one of the most helpful things we can do is posit something that should be true alongside the theory in question. So without bringing in our knowledge of the rest of the game and its universe, if Sans is indeed Ness, what else should be true about the universe that we can then check and verify. Of course, doing this is incredibly difficult, as it is difficult to approach the medium without all of our knowledge.

But a corollary is knowing what the evidence that already exists should look like given that the theory is true. Subtle clues should not be so subtle that they do not look like clues at all. If a clue can only be understood in light of pre-existing theory, then it is more likely that the clue does not actually exist.

You have a point! However, the badge is not the sole piece of evidence linking Sans to Ness, It's not just "a badge," it's "a badge in a world that looks virtually identical to that of EarthBound." By process of elimination, this can only be the Franklin Badge. And who has the Franklin Badge at the end of EarthBound? Ness. But we haven't engaged in the process of elimination. All we've done so far is use one piece of evidence to describe another, which is where arguments get twisted.

To genuinely engage in the process of elimination, we need to begin with all the other reasonable possibilities for what the badge could be. Only once we have shown that those possibilities cannot be the badge in the drawer, or at least that the Franklin Badge is significantly more likely, can we legitimately say that we have engaged in the process.

But more importantly is the significance. Let us assume for the moment that it is indeed the Franklin Badge. As I mentioned before, what evidence is there that Toby put the badge there so that people would make the connection that Sans is Ness, rather than the connection that he is making a slight nod to a game franchise that he loves?

Courage revives Ness upon death (" decided to return after summoning all the courage and energy he had") and is studied scientifically, just as Determination is (see MatPat's video). The revival mechanic doesn't really tell us much.

And while both are studied scientifically, that still doesn't give us any indication that they are the same thing. Especially since the scientific study of courage is a minor line at the end of Earthbound, while the scientific study of determination is a central plot point.

None of which still answers the major differences between courage and determination, since they do not appear to operate in any mechanically similar way, aside from the revival. Courage plays no actual role in saving, and since the concept of saving is central to the world of Undertale, this difference is incredibly important. Unless you recall that while saving in Earthbound your father offers you some words so that you become more courageous, the two terms have more important differences than they do important similarities.

Monsters made of dust did, in fact, appear in the Mother games. Specifically, in the first game (Mother, EarthBound Beginnings, etc.), there is an enemy called a Dust Ghost that does not attack the player at any point until it is about to die. Likewise, in Undertale, monsters do not seem to have an innate desire to attack the player despite doing so in order to save their own skins. The Dust Ghost also existed around a century prior to The War of Humans and Monsters, during which time it may have grown into many different forms. After all, being made of dust, it is not bound by the laws of evolution or metamorphosis if it wants to change its shape. I recall this point that you made. On the first part of it, the claim still doesn't get us anywhere. It does allow that Undertale takes place in the Mother universe (a slight crack in the explanation is that ghosts in Undertale are incorporeal, and thus cannot be harmed, meaning that if Toby is indeed working off of the Dust Ghost as a sort of blueprint, then the ghost enemies in the game should be vulnerable as well), but doesn't actually explain that Sans is Ness. In other words, it could be the case that Toby intended for Undertale to take place in the Mother Universe, but still be the case that Sans is not Ness. Preventing Sans' fight from being impossible is certainly a utility of Karmic Retribution, but the way it never reduces the player's HP to zero parallels the "Guts" stat in EarthBound: if the player has a high Guts stat, an attack that would normally kill them will leave them with 1 HP. And defeating Sans while your health is draining is impossible, like you said, but since the fight is scripted, the player's health is drained to 1 before the final hit in order to increase dramatic tension and make a greater spectacle of the final hit. It still leaves open some holes. For one, staying at one HP is not restricted to the drain from KR. Other attacks that would normally do damage will cease to do damage if the player is at one HP. The bones that appear on the menus in the latter half of the fight will take the player down to one HP, but will never kill. This seems to be more about the difficulty of the fight than reflecting the mechanics of Earthbound.

It should also be noted (if I've understood you correctly) that the final attack does not reduce the player to one HP. Players tend to take a lot of damage dodging all of the attacks, and the scripted attacks at the end will not take you below one HP, but the scripted damage the player takes is only 36 points.

Sans' blood also may have turned to dust due to the effects of the Phase Distorter (notice how Undyne's and Toriel's innards are hollow when they are struck down). But the point you were trying to make is that Sans bleeds, proving that he is abnormal. If Sans's blood also turned to dust, then what he "bleeds" is indeed ketchup, returning us to the original problem that what appears to be something strange about the nature of Sans actually has a perfectly simple explanation.

I remember that. However, while Sans also "huffs" and "puffs" verbally, his sprite physically moves up and down with each breath. Papyrus' does not, which begs the question: what exactly is the deal with Papyrus? Is he just a skeleton, as the game implies? If so, how can he sweat? More on this below. I think the point was made somewhere in the original thread, but the response would be that Papyrus and Sans are not "just skeletons," but skeleton monsters. That is, monsters that have the bodily form of skeletons. As a result, they can exhibit certain qualities that mimic skeletons, and they can also exhibit qualities that mimic normal humans. To put it more bluntly, they can exhibit whatever traits Toby needs so that he can make jokes or accomplish some other task.

For example, Sans physically moves at the end of his fight, but the reason for that is to provide some indication that something about him is changing. It's a movement of the character that is supposed to draw your eye so you pay attention to Sans, and as he starts to fall asleep his breathing gets noticeably slower. Since there is no similar mechanic in Papyrus's fight, there isn't any need to provide additional physical indication that Papyrus is breathing heavily.

After looking it up for myself, I've found out that in ancient European folklore, revenants could come back for a number of reasons. If they were summoned back to life through sorcery, for instance, they would have their original, human soul, as mentioned in Gaijin Goombah's video, but not if they came back on their own. Some corpses were said to have come back as revenants naturally, if they are not exhumed upon death. This latter narrative would fit Ness' transformation into a revenant, as his corpse could not have been exhumed while he was in the Phase Distorter. That still, however, leaves open the question of acquiring a monster soul. It can't be courage/determination that keeps him going as with Flowey, because that resets the world itself, so Ness would return to where he last saved with his own body.

This goes back to the point about Sans and Papyrus breathing. Just what is Papyrus? The way I see it, some options are:

1. Reconstituted Starman remnants (like the Remnants seen in the EarthBound Halloween Hack)

2. A random skeleton who received some Starman armor from Sans and incorporated it into his "Battle Body"

3. One of the Eight Humans in reincarnated skeleton form

4. Someone/something else

We know that both Sans and Papyrus appeared in the underground suddenly and "just...asserted themselves," according to the shopkeeper in Snowdin. We also know that Papyrus doesn't know what the Sun is, making the third option unlikely. His limbs are also very stiff when he moves, and he does so unnaturally, much like a Starman. If Papyrus is a Starman, then that problem goes back to the issue of why A) Ness would be traveling back with a Starman, B) why Ness and a Starman would partner up, and C) why a Starman would turn into a skeleton. Given that Sans specifically says that "battle body" was made for a costume party "a few weeks ago," the idea that Papyrus is actually a Starman doesn't make much sense.

The response here would most likely be "then why does Papyrus have that symbol on his costume that looks just like the symbol on the Starman?" But that takes us back to the badge and overworld similarities: what is the evidence that this symbol is meant to indicate some deeper connection between Earthbound and Undertale, versus that it is there as a little nod to a game series that Toby loved?

It should also be noted that the line from the Snowdin shopkeeper is only that they just showed up one day. Not specifically showed up in the Underground. Given that the shopkeeper says right after that the town has gotten more interesting since then, the initial reading of the line should be that the brothers just showed up in Snowdin one day and asserted themselves. Not showed up in the Underground as a whole (which would be a really difficult thing for someone to verify, since the Underground is a big place).