Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26006155-20200107155350/@comment-26006155-20200116201856

Jacky720 wrote:
 * 1) You're making an assumption: "It takes a SOUL to generate Determination, not just a ton of Determination." So I'm noting that.
 * 2) You are filled with Determination when you SAVE. Not when you Load. And Flowey didn't know he could SAVE until he Loaded. So SAVE points must work differently for him.
 * 3) Asriel can't still feel compassion. But he can still feel respect, and he still has memories. So he can respectfully talk with Frisk, even if he can't be compassionate about it. Emotion is tricky.
 * 4) If Chara's SOUL is damaged so that it can't feel compassion, why is it repaired by memories both Chara and Asriel already had? Memories that apparently didn't do the job the first time around?

Wait, I'm going to guess.

You're going to say... "All of the other SOULs contributed during that scene, restoring Chara's compassion within Asriel."

And that, BlackfootFerret, is BS.

Oh. Yeah.

Flowey was able to feel all sorts of emotions when he first woke up.

Emotions that you don't need a SOUL for.

Fear is instinctual. Animals have it. And fear leads to anger. Emotion is tricky.

And, one more thing: It's not guaranteed that every person who played Undertale was familiar with the massacre in other RPGs. I would know. Thanks for the game reference about Compassion coming from the soul.

All through the Asriel fight, the love radiating from all the souls inside Asriel increases the more Frisk saves his friends and restores their memories.

A damaged Compassion center might be like a faulty spark plug. It doesn't fire normally.. but if you put enough extra charge through it, it might spring to life. So I do think that having all that extra love pressure building in his soul did contribute to finally healing Asriel/Chara's ability to feel compassion. So I guess I'm going to have to restore to B.S.

Fear and other emotions might be instinctual, but Asriel did have his compassion back even after letting the other souls go.

I think you'll find that the vast majority of people who played an RPG like Undertale have also played other RPGs before. Murder Hobos are also a thing in table RPGs like D&D. Someone would have to have been pretty sheltered to play Undertale as their first game.

But the game sort of tricks you into being evil at first, with Flowey's whole "Kill or be Killed" speech, followed by monsters attacking you. I remember several streaming saying they weren't going to kill Toriel, they were just going to hit her a few times... yet each blow gets geometrically more powerful, until the last one sudden takes out about 50% of Toriel's health! Undertale kind of tries to trick you into killing Toriel during the first run, so that you feel a surge of guilt all the rest of the way as you more forward.

I remember that first run, and I felt truly horrible afterwards. Which makes it that much more powerful when you finally get to meet Toriel again in the best ending. Undertale is able to make feel that they've been doing terrible things even if you haven't played previous RPGs.