Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-31536324-20190117214835/@comment-32182236-20190320161519

"In other words, Frisk is a fundamental building block of the universe when the HUD is active? That smells of a simulation. The default rules being replaced just like that does too. I mean, the laws of this universe can also behave weirdly, like, inside black holes, space and time can switch places, but that's at least given by math. There's no such relation between the overworld and the HUD in Undertale."

Nope! All humans have the HUD, not just Frisk! And anyone who's ever had the SAVE ability can see the entire HUD! Flowey demonstrates this!

The default rules aren't replaced. They're still there. It's just they're meaningless now. Allow me to explain why.

When a monster removes your SOUL from your body with magic, where is your essence? It's in your SOUL, hence why you control it. So all you can control is your SOUL. Tell me, how can a lone SOUL act using the overworld system? It just can't. MAYBE it can move around a little bit, but that's the limit. And you can't move your body, because you're controlling your SOUL, not your body. So, your entire interaction with the monster is based around your SOUL. That's your essence, that's what they aim for, and before the HUD, it could do absolutely nothing. So it was an easy kill! So easy, that they might as well already be dead, because it had no escape!

So the overworld mechanics aren't gone... They're just absolutely useless.

"And how are you sure it's not the HUD itself that takes the soul out? If that's the case, your theory falls apart."

So, we either have a theory with one basic assumption, or a theory that removes evidence entirely. I'll take the one assumption, especially since it would make perfect sense for predatory monsters to make use of this easy kill.

"And besides, if everyone who ever got their soul taken out died, then how exactly did this evolve? The dead do nothing and the suriviving have no physiological reason to develop this ability. There needs to be a gradient, not everything being either 100% ok or 100% fucked up. Evolution doesn't happen without a gradient. Unless it was a random ad hoc mutation."

And there was. First, it developed the ability to actually be able to move around (Finally!), and use that to just go back inside of their body, undoing the effect. (This is BEFORE the soul traits started having any effect. We were still at, say, a "proto-SOUL".) However, the monsters later countered with the battle box, entrapping the SOUL in that area, preventing it from leaving, allowing them to get easy kills again. So, next likely came the first remnant of the HUD-The "Flee" option. If the SOUL could make use of some magic, to create a tunnel out of the box, it could just escape the box, get back in its body, and get back to surviving!

But fleeing doesn't always work. Sometimes, the monster catches up in time. And what's the OTHER part of the survival instinct?

Fight or Flight

FIGHT is the next command added to the HUD. The strategy of just running away was working, but not well enough. And the SOUL couldn't just physically HOLD a weapon-It's pure essence, determination, and magic! So it needs another way to make use of weapons. But what if.. rather than HOLDING the weapon, it channels the weapon instead, making a somewhat magical recreation of the effect? (This is why you can fire an Empty Gun.) Humans naturally had weapons quite often-Animals are a thing too, you know. (Like snails and birds, for example.) And humans were still hunters. If they could just do that, they'd actually stand a chance against the monsters!

[Slash]


 * It's super effective!|

Monsters weren't adapted to actually BEING attacked. Their own food was magical in nature, and their only rival, the humans, had no real way of attacking them, since up until this point, they could just remove a human's SOUL from their body, and score a free kill, with no chance of a retaliation attack-At worst, the human just gets away. So, they haven't exactly evolved very much defense. ..Or offense, for that matter. And why would they? That requires more physical matter, and doing that would take away from how much of them is made of magic, and thus, their magical potential! And since this wasn't a classical "physical" attack, but more of a virtual attack, it couldn't even be seen!

Now, for once, humans actually had the edge against monsters! They could just dodge the monsters' attacks, go on and attack the monster BACK, over and over again, and eventually, they'd kill the monster!

The monsters obviously didn't want that. (Eat, survive, reproduce)

So, a new plan arose. You see, there's a little bit of a flaw in the system. If the SOUL is using its magic to perform an attack.. Then it isn't using magic to have a chance at fleeing the battle. So, that means a monster could very well put it right back inside of the box, as soon as that happened! And.. There's a second flaw as well. Magic is something that is very, well.. sensitive. Just a small change is enough to completely RUIN the intended effect! So, if there's still ambient magic being absorbed while the SOUL tries to teleport.. It can't! And the weapon connection is pretty close-range as well. The MERCY command was over at the right, so the weapons and FIGHT had to be on the left!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcjy1ynQ1tQ (Look! The human has their weapon on their LEFT [They're facing us, so our right is their left], despite right-handedness being the most common in our world! And the FIGHT command is in.. Their far left! It's the only place close enough to the weapon for the channeling to work!)

And THAT'S the dawn of turn-based combat! Now, the humans could only make one action at a time, before the monsters got to act with another attack of their own!

I might go over ITEM and ACT another time. But there's the basics.