Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27997069-20160317174518/@comment-25634462-20160327121957

Mabian wrote: Lunasmeow wrote: I mean quite simply the Completionist Effect. The portion of our will/persona/desire to complete everything, mixed with our curiosity. The part that is willing to do whatever it takes.

Chara isn't *dominant* until you decide to kill everything in a genocide route. Chara only *begins* to come to power from your desire to win battles in the neutral route that you describe as the first playthrough. But as Flowey says in conversation with him, once he had tried to do things differently enough times, "he began to wonder what would happen if he killed everyone" this is put into the game specifically to trigger your subconscious and make you start to wonder what would happen, just in case you don't play the game enough times to wonder about it on your own like flowey eventually did, like anyone eventually would if they could only play the game time and time again. After all, you can just "reset" and bring everyone back is what you reason to yourself. Except this runs into the exact same problems I already outlined.

Given that Chara's already established personality is sadistic bordering on malevolent (or perhaps clearly within the camp of malevolent), the only connection between the player and Chara is through the Genocide route. The curiousity to see what happens triggers Chara's reawakening, but is not a representation of Chara in any way, except insofar as the growth in power causes Frisk/the player to distance themselves or become more bloodthirsty. But the curiosity and drive to complete everything is completely distinct from Chara. Not necessarily. When you play most games that allow you to name a character, they tend to come with backstory. That doesn't stop you from "becoming" them from the poin tyou named them onward, which I already mentioned in my earlier post. Chara's backstory is as such, but as one can see by playing the different routes, CHara (from the point where we actually enter the story) starts off pretty neutral (see the narration) and doesn't go twisted and evil until we start the genocide route as shown by the red text.

If we're going to use the game's dialogue, then we should make sure that we have it exactly right:

In the case of Flowey's curiosity, that line is only triggered once you've already done everything necessary to complete the Genocide route, except for killing the final boss. It's far too late at that point to serve as a subtle hint at what you should. The only time that Flowey encourages you to kill everything is if you complete a Neutral route with some kills, spare Flowey and get told not to kill anything, then complete another Neutral route with some kills, then spare Flowey and get chastised for only going halfway. That part is indeed my error. I've made so many playthroughs that I'd forgotten that. However, for those who play the game over and over? They aren't going to get the True Pacifist route every time. Those are the people who will try different things to see what happens, get several different Neutral routes, and get the hint from Flowey so the point still stands even though I accidentally used the wrong Flowey quote. Also, should you keep playing, eventually you will get enough Neutral endings to see this, which is why Flowey begs you to not reset the world in the TP run. He knows what will happen if you do, because he did it himself. He just doesn't tell you that he did it until the Genocide run. But he still knows.

Chara notes that the various stat increases are them. Which includes gold, attack (ATK), and defense (DEF). But these things increase even when enemies aren't killed. Even setting aside the increases to attack and defense, since they are not increases to the base stats, gold certainly goes up no matter what you do. Yet why is Chara not brought back in a Pacifist route? Gold is not a stat increase. It is a held item. That's like claiming that more money raises your intelligence. It's ludicrous. (ATK) and (DEF) are stats, but as you pointed out only the actual base stats which go up only from levelling. Additions due to equipment don't count as that is physical, and the menu even takes the effort to show this unlike many games where you tend to just have one stat number that changes as you level and/or change equipment. Thus this premise is flawed.

While we're still on the subject of "what Toby expected of the players," you say that playing the Genocide route is an inevitability, which serves as evidence for your point. But this certainly isn't inevitable, since there are plenty of people who refuse to harm their favorite characters. And your initial response may be to say that Toby is designing the game around the players who do take this route rather than just everyone, but that response would be invalid. Flowey has the line about certain sickos who want to see what happens but are too chicken to actually do it themselves, so they observe someone else doing it. So a response to those who want to know what happens without harming the characters is built in. Which then raises the question: where is Chara for these players? If Chara is the representation of a completionist mentality, then for a significant chunk of players that mentality is absent, creating a huge fracture in the attempt to make Chara some representation of the player's will. In other words, if Chara is meant to represent some part of the player, then for that segment of the population the representation breaks down. Since Toby was aware that there would be people who wouldn't take that path, why build an entire narrative around everyone taking that path? The genocide run is an inevitability, so long as you keep playing. Eventually you'll get bored and either quit the game or try something new. Similiar to that 65% statistic from the trials to see why people do evil things if they have an authority figure to blame. Only those who quit can resist. If you keep playing (like Flowey was forced to since for him it wasn't a game, but his life) then you WILL end up going past your morals. People like to talk about the things they'd "never do" but the power of the mind to rationalize things is immense. Just look at reality. Look at when people have "extreme circumstances" how quick they are to call it an exception to the rule. Just as Flowey says, it's only an excuse. You get bored enough, and you'll try ANYTHING just to experience something different.

True, it isn't 100% inevitable, because as stated, you CAN quit, play a different game, go outside, etc... but I figured that much was a given that I didn't need to explain.

As for what is Chara for "those" players who aren't completionists? See above where I talk about how Chara was neutral until the genocide run. Chara's BACKSTORY wasn't, but for the time where we are Chara and not the story they had to begin with? Chara was.

Remember, I never said that Chara was representative of the Completionist mentality, but that Chara was us. I said that the completionist effect  is what would cause you to MEET Chara, but that it WAS Chara. (At least, I don't think I did. I'll have to go back and re-read to be sure. I was pretty tired when I responded before and may have mis-typed.) Whether you only have the neutral Chara or the dark, twisted, red text Chara is totally dependant on the Player.

You say that Undertale is deep, which means that it has all sorts of hidden meanings within it. But that is begging the question. By what accounts is the game "deep?" How deep exactly? If it raises questions, for instance, about the relationship between player and video game characters, does that mean that we have a reason to question everything? The surface explanation of everything going on here - that Chara was a rather sadistic human who sacrificed their life in order to bring about the destruction of humanity; that Chara is somehow reawakened and is able to start taking control if the player begins a Genocide route - fits perfectly fine with everything else in the game. Other parts of the game already chastise the player and attempt to drive home the bigger questions the game is certainly raising. So jumping through these hoops to turn Chara into some representation of the player's will to complete everything at best adds nothing to the message which hasn't already been hammered home, and even runs the risk of confusing the narrative and thus harming any message that is meant to be brought out. So what is the value being added here? This entire line of thought hinges on what you said at the end. "So what is the value being added here?"

This line of thought is flawed. Information, no matter whether it is information in a game, or information in the real world, is not dependant on what "value" a person assigns to it, nor is it dependant on how confusing it may be. There are countless examples of information that to most people has "no value" or is so confusing and counter-intuitive that it is incredibly difficult to understand, vastly more difficult that what I've outlined here. The supposed "lack" of value and the difficulty to understand it does not in any way invalidate the information. Also, just because something explains one thing, doesn't mean it can't explain another as well. Anything that is "deep" game, book, movie... Is going to be good on the surface for those who are just watching. But it will be deeper for those who look.

The Matrix wasn't "deep" to me. It was simple. Until I found out that most of my friends couldn't understand what the hell was going on with the man in the room with the tvs who told Neo that he was just a program, one of many. Inception can be a good movie for those who don't understand it, just flowing along. That however does not in any way invalidate the deepness of the film or its ending for those who can understand it and take the time to think about it.