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rionaleonhart) wrote2018-11-05 08:04 am
rionaleonhart) wrote2018-11-05 08:04 am
Entry tags:
Don't Forget.
I've been thinking about Deltarune and player/character agency.
A prominent theme in both Undertale and Deltarune is agency. Undertale is about having agency; whether you choose to be peaceful or violent, that choice has significance because you could have done something else.
Deltarune is about a lack of agency. It opens with a character creation sequence, but you don't get to play as the character you've created because 'no one can choose who they are in this world'. Susie asks you a question and cuts you off before you can answer it, because 'your choices don't matter'. Everything is pushing you towards a pacifist playthrough - Ralsei repeatedly asks you not to fight, there are no ineffectual ACT options (again, you're presented with a lack of options) - and, if you do choose to fight, the enemies flee; you can't kill them. In Undertale, you could choose to spare or kill enemies, and that influenced the outcomes you could get. In Deltarune, that choice only exists on the surface.
Even smaller choices are negated; you're invited to design a boss, but it's blown up before you can fight it. Refuse the prisoner's invitation to 'play a game', and you'll be told you're already playing. If you get the key to the cell, go up to the cell, and then try to choose not to open the door, you'll open it anyway. Only the most minor choices (do you buy a doughnut from the bake sale?) are actually in your control.
Whose agency is being overridden, and by whom? It's suggested that you as the player are overriding Kris's agency; you overwrite their save file with your own name (it's explicitly, unambiguously your name this time; the game asks you for a character name and for your name separately, and your name is the one that's used for saving), and the soul they rip out and cage seems likely to be yours. Plus, of course, there's the obvious fact that to some extent you're always taking away the protagonist's agency when playing a videogame. So is this a game about how we take over and control the actions of videogame characters, and what that means for those characters? That's an interesting concept.
In that case, though, why are our choices as the player also being overridden? When I say 'don't open the door' and the door is opened anyway, is that Kris struggling against me for control? Or is someone else playing us while we're playing Kris?
Perhaps I'm overthinking this. Perhaps it's more of a commentary on the illusion of choice in videogames, or even on helplessness in general. Deltarune shares Undertale's sense of humour, but I feel it lacks Undertale's sense of optimism.
A weird challenge you're faced with, if you're trying to make a game with the theme 'your choices don't matter', is how to make that theme clear to every player, when most players will just play through once and never know what would have happened if they'd made different choices. I never tried to kill enemies in Deltarune; I only know you can't actually kill them because I looked up discussion online. I suppose that's why we need points - the character creation, Susie's interruptions - where the game explicitly tells us our choices don't matter.
I'm so curious to see where Deltarune goes with this.
A prominent theme in both Undertale and Deltarune is agency. Undertale is about having agency; whether you choose to be peaceful or violent, that choice has significance because you could have done something else.
Deltarune is about a lack of agency. It opens with a character creation sequence, but you don't get to play as the character you've created because 'no one can choose who they are in this world'. Susie asks you a question and cuts you off before you can answer it, because 'your choices don't matter'. Everything is pushing you towards a pacifist playthrough - Ralsei repeatedly asks you not to fight, there are no ineffectual ACT options (again, you're presented with a lack of options) - and, if you do choose to fight, the enemies flee; you can't kill them. In Undertale, you could choose to spare or kill enemies, and that influenced the outcomes you could get. In Deltarune, that choice only exists on the surface.
Even smaller choices are negated; you're invited to design a boss, but it's blown up before you can fight it. Refuse the prisoner's invitation to 'play a game', and you'll be told you're already playing. If you get the key to the cell, go up to the cell, and then try to choose not to open the door, you'll open it anyway. Only the most minor choices (do you buy a doughnut from the bake sale?) are actually in your control.
Whose agency is being overridden, and by whom? It's suggested that you as the player are overriding Kris's agency; you overwrite their save file with your own name (it's explicitly, unambiguously your name this time; the game asks you for a character name and for your name separately, and your name is the one that's used for saving), and the soul they rip out and cage seems likely to be yours. Plus, of course, there's the obvious fact that to some extent you're always taking away the protagonist's agency when playing a videogame. So is this a game about how we take over and control the actions of videogame characters, and what that means for those characters? That's an interesting concept.
In that case, though, why are our choices as the player also being overridden? When I say 'don't open the door' and the door is opened anyway, is that Kris struggling against me for control? Or is someone else playing us while we're playing Kris?
Perhaps I'm overthinking this. Perhaps it's more of a commentary on the illusion of choice in videogames, or even on helplessness in general. Deltarune shares Undertale's sense of humour, but I feel it lacks Undertale's sense of optimism.
A weird challenge you're faced with, if you're trying to make a game with the theme 'your choices don't matter', is how to make that theme clear to every player, when most players will just play through once and never know what would have happened if they'd made different choices. I never tried to kill enemies in Deltarune; I only know you can't actually kill them because I looked up discussion online. I suppose that's why we need points - the character creation, Susie's interruptions - where the game explicitly tells us our choices don't matter.
I'm so curious to see where Deltarune goes with this.
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(Anonymous) 2018-11-05 07:43 pm (UTC)(link)Undertale did a lot of very cool things which largely are to thank for its popularity (beyond the regular such as enticing characters etc): the ability to be a complete pacifist, new game+ being built into the story, the game reacting to decisions made in prior loops. And, in a way, its success with that is also a sort of failure, not so much on the game's part but on the fandom's part. You HAVE to play it in a certain order, make decisions in a certain order. How DARE you not have a full pacifist playthrough etc. It takes the really interesting situation of so much player agency, and through that fandom osmosis, the player can also lose that agency. It's really interesting.
I like the idea that Deltarune is riffing on what Undertale did, as a sort of anti-choice mechanism. I suspect, like you, that being a pacifist in this run may become problematic: he's not going to pull the same thing twice, and I think he fully attends to play upon the expectations of his audience. I look forward to seeing how he does it.
That theme of choice versus a lack of agency in other games is also interesting. One thing that the Persona games do, starting with three, is they get the player to sign a contract agreeing that you accept the consequences of whatever choices you make, which I always thought was quite a cool thing. It's never really quite used to its potential: choice in this case is frequently more of a choice what you're doing on specific days, and when you want to do certain things that you have to do... your basically choosing your schedule for the main plot, rather than whether or not to do things. With the minor decision points (social links, stat raising etc), you can pick and choose what you want to do. But it never 100% delivers on that contract business... except perhaps the big choice toward the end of Persona 3, as well as the "true ending" of that game very much being a "this is what you agreed to accept". Again, though, that's really plot driven more than player driven.
I mentioned Unavowed on here a few months ago, right? I don't think I said much more than that it's a game where you control somebody who has spent a year possessed and murdered a bunch of people. It lends itself really nicely to this discussion, but that requires spoilers. I'll mention it anyway as I think it's unlikely that you'll play the game (and you can of course stop reading if you ever plan to).
There are segments of Unavowed that play very much with this idea of agency and lack thereof. Take the opening for instance: you choose the gender of your character, and you can take a choice of three professions. This, in many ways, is an illusion of choice: whether you're male or female, whatever your job, you're going to be possessed and murder a bunch of people. What changes, really, is potentially the relationship with certain members of your crew. (If you're a cop, Vicki's pissed at you because you did shoot her and leave her for dead. If you're a bartender, you murdered Logan's brother, but he's slightly more relaxed about it having a clearer picture than most of what had happened aka possession.)
Unavowed has a number of twists. Perhaps the most effective plays very much on expectations. Between cases, your character wakes up and wanders around the house, chatting to people and prepping for next mission. At one stage, you wake up in this very familiar way, and you don't get up. And then you do get up. And then the silent protagonist - the only unvoiced character in the game - starts to speak. And move. All without any input. They don't respond to your dialogue prompts. You've been possessed again - and it's very interesting (also fascinating to watch in blind LPs) because it uses the dynamics of a game very effectively. We're conditioned to expect our character in a game to respond to us, and it's very disconcerting when they don't. But that's the point, since that is exactly what the protagonist is going through - a total lack of control. It's far cooler if you see it in action.
(It also does some very Undertale things regarding name selection, for that matter.)
(If you're curious about the referenced moment: https://youtu.be/jsuJkjlfYOM?t=3034 It's really cool. I deliberately used a blind LP here to show the effect.)
-timydamonkey
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I know what you mean. It's a really interesting point that, in a way, the fandom has taken away new players' ability to choose. I wonder whether there's some degree of commentary on that in Deltarune.
I'M SO NERVOUS ABOUT PACIFISM. I'm so sure it's going to go wrong somehow!
It's great to hear the Let's Player's reaction! She's so thrown. It seems like a pretty cool moment to experience in context.
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One interesting thing I saw is that while the ending might not change, the consequences of your actions do seem to matter at least to some extent. Apparently if you don't manage a pacifist run (you and/or Susie scare everyone off the screen), the confrontation with King ends differently. So while you can't always make decisions on how to do things, the game IS tallying and keeping track of what you attempt/do not attempt, and it does have some consequences--like whether or not the residents of the Dark World hate you or are okay with you.
Also someone pointed out that when you're running around in the overworld after the funtimes adventures in the Dark World, there's, uh--apparently Kris has a ball of trash? And if you try to throw it away, the game tries to tell you that don't really want to and gives you the option again. If you throw it away, it's obvious that Kris gets... bitter. (Nothing as full out as what you see with the soul being torn out and thrown into the birdcage, but it's still implying that you, the player, are casually tossing away something from the inventory that Kris values, even if the player can't see the value in it as it's just labeled "ball of trash".)
Anyway, while I'm not afraid of a pacifist run, I AM concerned about how we're going to work out what's going on with Kris, because this isn't the first time they've been possessed by another soul so of COURSE they're upset.
In that case I have to wonder if it's really right as the player to... keep playing. Kinda like how Undertale gives you a hella guilt trip if you boot up the game again after completing a True Pacifist run.
But I also think Toby has a lot more up his sleeve, so I'm buckled up and ready to see where this crazy thing goes when he gets around to releasing it.
I'm curious, and I apologize if you've actually mentioned him before, but have you read up on the WD Gaster character at all? Because dude is seriously implicated to be involved in this particular game, far more than even in Undertale, and... Well, it's a bit of a rabbit hole if you go looking, because everything we knew of him was all datamined out of Undertale. But it's also super obvious that Toby is referencing/using him directly in Deltarune... so now the big question is: to what end?
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There's also a hint of sentiment if you drink the... I think it's hot chocolate? Someone in the town gives you a drink and mentions you used to drink it with your brother, and if you drink it from the menu it says your throat feels tight. I may be misremembering. In any case, I think we're more likely to be a villain than Kris is.
I know a little about Gaster, but I should probably read up on him in more detail if he has a larger role to play in this game!