Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26006155-20190403163405/@comment-32182236-20190416220048

Anyways.. There's a statement I missed in my response to your response to my response to Chapter 3.

The statement where you say that it's not if Frisk reset, but how they reset.

You claim it can't be as easy as reloading a save point.. But what if it really IS that easy and simple?

If you never saved in Undertale, and you LOAD, you're brought back to the start of the game. So a RESET very well could be loading a "null" save.

But of course, we have to ask a question:Why? Shouldn't a null save either do absolutely nothing (no reference time to go back to), or put you in a literal void of nothingness (No data=No objects)?

When Flowey reloaded, first learning about this ability, he ended up back at the garden. Back at his "save point".. Despite the fact that he never saved. So, it's quite likely that once you first gain the ability to S/L/R.. A "reset point" is created-A place that you'll return to if there's no save point found. Resetting is just erasing said save point, and then loading the null save. And erasing save data is possible-Omega Flowey does this to OUR save file.

Not only that, when we reset, everyone will still act the same way as if we reloaded. Flowey will remember us, Toriel will get her de-ja vu moments, and so on. If we went back in time, this shouldn't be the case, because we'd be seeing their past selves. But if we reloaded, bringing everyone back, which is how Sans describes the resets ("cause even if we do... we'll just end up right back here, without any memory of it, right?"-Sans), then this is exactly what we should expect.

So the evidence points to resetting being nearly identical to reloading. We're not sending Frisk back in time, we're reverting the world back to how it was when Frisk first fell, just like with reloading.

...But is that the full story? No. But we're not going back in time, either. Why don't we ask someone who's been (ab)using the reset ability for a while? Our best friend Flowey should help explain things!

YOU still have the power to reset everything. Toriel, Sans, Asgore, Alphys, Papyrus, Undyne... If you so choose... Everyone will be ripped from this timeline... and sent back before all of this ever happened. -Flowey

Flowey describes the True Reset as bringing everyone from one timeline to the next. And indeed, this is what happens, because every reset, our FUN value changes. The value which determines whether certain random events happen or not.

So perhaps we were both wrong. Frisk isn't going back in time, and Frisk isn't resetting the world.. They are literally ripping apart the timeline, and bringing everyone into a new one, without any memory.

Perhaps this gets Asriel's statements about purging the timeline to make a bit more sense as well.