Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27907368-20160428221757/@comment-27701762-20160504080548

GetYourFix wrote:

We know how hot trash he is at identifying motivation within people. Similar to the TP Route, he may be projecting into the protagonist what he wants to see. His end goal is to share a body with Chara again and not use the god-like power they'll have. He just wants share a body with his best friend and have some that understands him. He just wants to live - and he’d hope to see that kind of “DETERMINATION” in his best friend. So I'm going to try doing the same thing here: breaking down the parts and skipping over some parts.

This point here sets off a series of alarm bells in my head. There are certainly examples where Flowey states something about the protagonist that is shown to be false later on in the game. But there is an important leap being made in drawing the conclusion that we cannot trust any statements which are not contradicted. In this particular case, all he is saying is that the protagonist's determination overrode his, which is restating his earlier line but not adding in the specific trait of determination. Since the rest of the game seems to pretty clearly tie together the power to save/load with determination, what about the game gives us a reason to doubt Flowey at this point? If we cannot trust Flowey even when the game seems to be supporting the thing he is saying, then at the same time we need to remove any evidence which we at any point draw from Flowey's lines about the nature of the game, on the grounds that he is either wrong or lying.

I'd also like to make the difference between "saving" and SAVING. SAVING is what occurs in the TP final boss, while saving is what we do at the star things. The uppercase, man. The uppercase may mean something, but there are two very important issues:

1) "SAVE" is mentioned at other points besides the final boss fight in True Pacifist. I can provide a list if you need it.

2) The action options are already capitalized. So we now have to contend with whether the option is capitalized because it is significant, or because it needs to conform with the style already in existence (note that if we just assume it is significant because it is capitalized, we now suddenly need to throw in a lot of instances where "save" is mentioned by characters who always speak in caps).

As with "determination," I'll make the same basic claim: there could be a significance, but we're assuming several things in offering a grand theory to explain the difference. We need to make sure that these assumptions are justified.

However, this discussion of capitalization of particular terms seems to be getting us rather off-track. Perhaps it would be better to save such discussions for another time.

Think of it this way. What we see at the end of TP totally negates the saving and loading and resetting mechanic. Saving, loading and resetting in a battle occur after the SOUL shatters, which doesn't happen during that fight. Our HP reduces to a tiny tiny amount, but the SOUL will not shatter. Have you ever wondered why Asgore kills us? It may be because he expects our SOULs to refuse like every other human SOUL he's encountered. I wanted to step in here because there is a problem with your explanation. While we certainly experience these processes when the soul shatters, they are not exclusive to "dying." Not only do we load the game back whenever we quit and restart the game, but the ability to reset is actually not tied to death, but specifically requires us to be "alive." Of course, resetting is a weird mechanic, since to a large extent it seems to be a power that is only present in the player (and Chara? as Chara?).

Half of these traits could hardly be true if they gained EXP. I'm going to point out a few other facets of the Asriel battle that are unique. When struggling against the Angel of Death, you "Can't move your body". This follows Asriel using "HYPER GONER" and "purging the timeline". Some pretty interesting dialogue goes on here. I wanted to step in here again: one thing that is missing is that the progression of events is as such: - Asriel says "It's time to purge this timeline once and for all!" - Asriel uses the Hyper Goner attack. - Asriel says "...even after that attack, you're still standing in my way...?" - Asriel transforms

Asriel is noting that we have survived the Hyper Goner attack. So the conclusion you reach that our physical body is gone seems to not be justified. Especially since we are able to move the SOUL freely inside the bullet box, as normal, so there would be no way of making sense of the line if our physical body really is gone.

So my view on the above issues is that they are distinct from the original discussion. Obviously there are connections between lots of concepts in the game, but we need to focus on one thing at a time.

Anyway, there has to be a triumvirate. We know as a fact that we possess Frisk's SOUL. Chara tells us that our determination and human soul awoke them from death and tells us that we killed everyone and pushed the world to its edge. So, Chara is out of the picture when it comes to determination and DETERMINATION. I agree that there are three entities, but the heart of the issue is how distinct they are. There is definitely a pretty clear distinction between Chara and Frisk: there's a weird connection between them, but they are definitely two distinct entities. But the lines between both the player and Frisk and the player and Chara are incredibly blurry. There are only a few tiny references to the player as an entity, and even those are ambiguous about the player's role. But I feel like I'm just stating something that you're already aware of.

If we're following the dogma that all Determination comes from Frisk, what can we say for the Genocide Route? Where is that determination coming from, merely one room away from Chara? Frisk is the recognized hero of the TP route and it's strange that they would still be determined after their SOUL is shattered dozens of times by someone they consider a friend. So for the questions, the dogma would say that the determination is coming from Frisk, or perhaps more appropriately "the protagonist." Since determination in general is the drive to keep going and overcome obstacles, the determination being exhibited in the Genocide route is the same determination being exhibited in the True Pacifist route, but the difference is how that determination is channeled.

The latter half has confused me. I think what you're getting at is why would Frisk feel determined after being killed over and over again by Undyne and Sans, whom Frisk considered to be friends. But if that is what you're trying to say, then there would be two responses. The first is that Frisk would be experiencing the same type of determination that we as player would be experiencing, or that Flowey would likely have experienced when he did his own Genocide runs: the desire to keep going in order to know what happens. The second, and I think more important, is that from the "standard" narrative view Frisk hasn't befriended Undyne and Sans prior to a Genocide run. Following a True Reset no character remembers anything (with the exception of Chara), which includes Frisk. When Frisk goes on the Genocide run, it is intended to be seen as a fresh or fairly fresh world. So when Frisk gets killed by Undyne/Sans, these characters do not register as friends to Frisk. They do to us as players, but the dogma is that Frisk is the character with motivations, and we are mostly just playing the role of that character.

If we're to accept duality, Why would Frisk be determined in the genocide route? More so, why does re-fusing only occur in the pacifist ending? Game mechanics change, the changes in TP being impossible to ignore.

So I think the above addresses the first question. The second question is a unique mechanic, and the dogma has no inherent way of dealing with it. But does that mean we need a complex philosophical explanation about the relationship between these three entities of Frisk, player, and Chara? Not at all. Again, I'll offer a narrative interpretation:

The key to the power of saving and loading is that it is tied to determination: the being with most determination has complete power over the timelines. So when we go up against Asriel, we no longer have the power to save and load. So what would happen if we die? Since Asriel's goal in the fight is to defeat us so that he can reset the timeline (hence why he keeps trying to destroy our SOUL and seems surprised that we stay alive), if he prevails then the outcome is that the game is automatically reset to a new game. Toby could have done this, but since the fight is so difficult to survive, it would make the Sans's pre-special attack a walk in the park in comparison to how much effort we would need to go through to get back to Asriel. So Toby needs to change the mechanic such that we never die. Obviously, the mechanic does not only solve this problem, but also gives the fight part of its unique flavor. But in all of the other battles there is a narrative way to allow for the player to just reload (even the Photoshop Flowey fight, since he sets up Flowey's intentions at the outset as someone who wants to savor the process of killing the protagonist over and over again). There is no way to maintain the integrity of the story and allow the player to just reload in the Asriel fight (my guess is that there is a bit of fracture, since I'm supposing you can quit the game during the fight and reload, but this would be a case of expediency: the choices would be either to allow that, or to forcibly reset the game).