Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26242189-20160605230949/@comment-27701762-20160606020545

Yossipossi wrote:

So, you seem to have gotten me stuck on that Chara bit. But might I add that Chara slashes directly at the screen, while the screen can also display Frisk's soul. Also, Chara has taken control over Friks, because in the battle menu you inventarilly slash at Asgore and Flowey. Once both died, it's most likely that now you no longer look through Frisk's eyes, but through your own. And, a similar thing goes for Flowey on a neutral run: He says "let them be happy." to the screen, in reference to Frisk. A fair point about the slashing the screen bit. But I will respond with the dialogue itself: "Let us erase this pointless world, and move on to the next." Now, "world" could mean two things: it could mean the world in its most literal sense, of destroying everything in the world of Undertale; or it could mean destroying the "game world" (which would then serve to solidify your claim). So then I raise the following question: assuming for the moment that it is the former of the two, what would it look like for the world to be destroyed in a game like Undertale, and not just that but destroyed by a single entity like Chara? We can think of several alternatives, but I contend that what we see is a good representation, and probably even the best given the way the game represents everything else.

If I understand correctly, what you are trying to get at is that Frisk's soul is destroyed in the process, and that the soul being sold is "ours" (i.e. the player's), which would then get around the problem I highlighted above. Likewise, the (presumed) intervention of Chara at various points at the end of the Genocide route to take control of the protagonist would suggest that they already control the soul, and thus don't need Frisk to sell it to them.

But if that is all true, then the post-Genocide True Pacifist ending doesn't make sense, since Chara takes over Frisk. We could make sense of it if the player and Frisk are essentially the same entity, so that "our soul" and "Frisk's soul" are one and the same, but then we wouldn't be able to use any of the lines from Chara as proof of their self-awareness.

And, I'll include Alphys because she most likely was involved with Sans' RESET study at one point.

But again, the SAVE/RESET system is not a mere gameplay element. I can fully concede your point that Alphys could know as much as you would like to attribute to her about the mechanic: she could know a tiny bit, or she could know everything about it. But what is key is that SAVE/RESET is just a set of terminology (terminology that is very familiar to us as gamers) beings used to describe the ability to manipulate time and timelines.

If I may, allow me to use another piece of media to illustrate the point: the movie Groundhog Day. Just in case you're not familiar with the movie, the basic premise is that the main character relives the same day over and over again, with everyone else performing the exact same routine (unless he intervenes), while he himself has knowledge of what he has previously experienced. Eventually the main character begins to understand the nature of what is happening to him, but as this knowledge grows we would not say that he is becoming aware that he is in a movie: the particular set of events happening to him are part of the plot itself, and so his living the same day over and over is "in-universe." The same is true of SAVEs and RESETs.

I'll digress briefly (in response to my capability of proving my point) by noting that something akin to this is essentially my job (though obviously not analyzing Undertale itself). I'm not particularly concerned with any specific set of conclusions. I just want to make sure that the argument for the conclusion is solid.