This author says that Undertale's "moral absolutism" lets you experience *real* good and evil in a game in a way that your Bioshocks and your Lasts of Us could never match Which is so utterly headass I'm like actually seriously pissed off
-
-
I would personally say part of the trap of Undertale seems to have been the fandom. The fact that you *can* spare the monsters and get their point of view through great effort & sacrifice isn't the issue, the weird bit came in from the fandom arguing it is like a moral necessity?
1 reply 1 retweet 10 likes -
Replying to @loudpenitent @arthur_affect and
Undertale as I understand it isn't about the weight of killing so much as "you have literally godlike power, you have the potential to go the extra mile to ensure everyone lives. Do you do so?" Which is an entirely artificial conceit with no resemblance to reality!
2 replies 4 retweets 14 likes -
Replying to @loudpenitent @arthur_affect and
Like that doesn't work if you envision the player character as a terrified child. It's as much a conversation with the player as the arbiter of their world. Compare to the true ending of Nier Automata, where the characters effectively *directly appeal to you* for deliverance.
1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes -
Replying to @loudpenitent @arthur_affect and
And if you say yes, you step in, *literally fight the credits*, and help the praying characters save the beloved cast members from the tragic, pitiable fate their own actions produced. Because you care. But that's only possible for the *player*. The very "humans" the cast worship
1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes -
Replying to @loudpenitent @arthur_affect and
And this is an interesting conversation, but it's also implicitly a metaconversation. It's breaking the laws of the fictional reality - the players have never before been explicitly acknowledged as forces - for the sake of emotional catharsis and hope.
1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes -
Replying to @loudpenitent @arthur_affect and
Which is a great beat! N:A does it beautifully! But it has nothing to do with black and white morality or this weird moral sense the author is talking about. Taro, May his name be feared, even said he didn't feel this like...erased all the blood on the characters' hands.
1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes -
Replying to @loudpenitent @arthur_affect and
He permits 9S and 2B a happy ending because they have suffered enough, and the players have the power to give them what they wish for - but he also says all that anguish was a natural result out what they *did* to each other and others.
1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes -
Replying to @loudpenitent @arthur_affect and
Like this is very much a relationship to fiction you see in two places. Fan works and games, in one case due to parasocial investment and in one agency. But games give you an absurd amount of agency, compared to real life. It's certainly not a more comprehensive morality.
2 replies 1 retweet 8 likes -
Replying to @loudpenitent @arthur_affect and
I think the author is mistaking the sense of *power* and *joy* they receive from works like Undertale where there is an answer that leads to vicarious happiness with a sense of moral clarity. Moral heroism often *doesn't* feel good in the moment, even if it does in the end.
2 replies 1 retweet 12 likes
Yeah I've been talking a lot about Orwell the past few days and he wrote an essay about the "tragic sense of life" that I think a lot about (it's ostensibly his deep dive into why Tolstoy hated Shakespeare so much and particularly King Lear)
-
-
Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
It sounds silly to accuse smart educated adult people of this But it is very common in all of us, I think, to have that kneejerk response that "Hey if you the author made this happen, that means you *wanted* it to happen You made these people suffer, and that makes you evil"
2 replies 2 retweets 19 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
This is literally Tolstoy and Shakespeare Tolstoy, for whatever reason, specifically fixated on how much he hated King Lear And he thought the play made Shakespeare a *bad person*, that only someone with a "degraded moral sense" would set it up so Cordelia dies at the end
2 replies 3 retweets 17 likes - Show replies
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.