Who’s the [censored] in [censored]?
...well that was weird. Okay, let's try again.
Who’s the [censored] in [censored]?
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
What, I can’t even say “[censored]” or “[censored]” without it being a fucking spoiler?
Fine, whatever. This episode is going to have spoilers for [censored]. OH JESUS CHRIST.
HOW AM I GOING TO GIVE THE SPOILER WARNING IF I CAN'T EVEN GIVE THE NAME OF THE GODDAMN GAME?!
Serioule though, you guys, this video contains spoilers for Undertale,
a game that is quite seriously a game best gone into with as little knownledge as possible.
Go. Go play it. Even if you don't like jRPGs, even if you don't like pixel art, blah, blah, blah,
there are a hundred reasons to not do something cool. Consider it homework--
experiencing something that has a lot to say about video games and storytelling conventions.
Hell, it's better than reading the Catcher in the Rye, isn't it? Anyway.
Spoilers. So mane spoilers. You have been warned. Are you ready? I'm ready. Let's do this.
WHO’S THE FUCKING BAD GUY IN UNDERTALE?!
Well if you listened to my spoiler warning, hopefully you’ve played the game by now,
you already know that
[STATIC] SERIOUSLY. I’M WARNING YOU. YOU BETTER NOT BE WATCHING THIS IF YOU HAVEN’T
BEATEN UNDERTALE YET. JOSH, THAT INCLUDES YOU. Just... trust me, I won’t put dicks
in the video. [STATIC]
You already know that that the bad guy is Flowey. You remember Flowey--Flowey is the
first character you meet in the entire game. He’s the super helpful piece of shit who
introduces you to Undertale’s main mechanics. Of course, you later find out that there’s
way more to Flowey than meets the eye.
Flowey serves as a metaphorical devil on the shoulder, trying to convince you that doing
the right thing isn’t only boring, but pointless. Of course, should you decide to be the hero,
his discouragement culminates with him morphing into a fullblown demigod. Of course, should
you win and save the world and go back, you discover that Flowey is, in fact, not a demonbaby
flower of death, but rather the soulless essence of the son of Toriel and Asgore who’d been
injected with DETERMINATION, giving him the ability to SAVE and LOAD the world, just like
the player. But that’s okay, because in the end, you’re given the ability to redeem
Asriel-the-flower and save the world.
[static]
You idiot. Flowey? [STATIC] FLOWEY?! [STATIC] The bad guy of Undertale isn’t Flowey. It’s
[STATIC] Austin. It’s [STATIC] Chara. Me. It’s You. You know who I am. You think I
only exist in the genocide ending of Undertale? Hahahahahaha, no.
I am the Koopas you killed when you were a kid. I’m bandits. I’m
raiders. I’m every monster you killed walking in circles in Final Fantasy to grind levels.
I am the gaming conventions that trained you to advance at all costs. Get the experience,
money, kill everything in your path. That’s how you solve your problems. I. AM. YOU.
Jesus fucking Christ, shut up. What a diva. You know, I don’t know what he’s doing
here, to be honest, I didn’t even do a genocide playthrough. I chickened out. But anyway.
He’s right. If you’ve played the game at all and either done a Genocide playthrough,
which involves murdering every monster in the Underground, or you just watched a playthrough
on The internet, or, hell, just looked at a wiki, you know about Chara. Chara is the
first child to have fallen down into the underground, and if you go through the Genocide playthrough,
you get to meet them...or something like them?
So what the fuck is Chara? Well, this isn’t Game Theory, so I can’t tell you if Chara
is a ghost, demon, you from the past, or whatever-the-hell all the different in game explanations are.
But I do know what Chara is in a way that matters to you and me, and should make it
obvious who the actual bad guy is.
Because, okay, I’m going to level with you: it is Chara. I mean, if you go through the
whole game in the genocide route, Chara destroys the entire world in an instant, with or without
you. They have the power, and they do the worst possible things with it. And if you
want to bring the world back? Fuck you. It’s going to cost you your soul. And you’re
never getting it back. That’s some terrible, evil-as-hell shit. And yeah, I know the last
video I did was all about how evil didn’t exist, but Undertale is a universe where pure
evil, the kind that’s more of a metaphysical force of nature, definitely, totally exists.
So Chara is evil, and is definitely the Big Bad Guy. But if that’s the case, how come
you don’t even SEE this CHARacter unless you yourself act like the worst piece of shit
imaginable?
This isn’t a rhetorical question, by the way: I’ve been wrestling with this for weeks
now. How come you don’t fight against the actual villain of the game when you choose
the most heroic path of them all, where you save the lives of literally everyone, free
them from captivity, solve all their problems, and redeem the most tragic figure in the universe?
Wouldn’t the most heroic possible thing be to destroy the very definition of evil
itself?
What if I told you you’re actually fighting against Chara every time you don’t kill
someone in Undertale?
You see, Chara, or, if you’re following the instructions of Toby Fox, the creator
of Undertale and named the Fallen Child your own name, YOU, explains what they are if you
go through and complete the Genocide playthrough in its entirety. “HP, ATK. DEF. GOLD. EXP.
LV. Every time a number increases, that feeling: that’s me.”
Chara isn’t just a demon or a presence of evil, they ARE gaming convention. They ARE
the lack of empathy we feel for Raiders in Fallout. They ARE the mindless grinding in
JRPGs. They ARE the boredom you feel right before you close out of a game and decide
to attack the guards to see how much of a town you can kill before you die. They are
the completionist drive that will do everything and anything to expe rience every ounce of
game that exists. They are the frustration you feel when you can’t get past a challenge
and just want to [static] fucking kill Undyne. [static]
And this isn’t just metaphorical--it’s made very clear at several points throughout
the game that some very special characters suspect or even outright know that they’re
in a video game. Chara was the first Child to fall into the Underground--they’re what
came before you, before you experienced this world yourself. They are, in short, every
video game you’ve ever played up until now, that’s trained you that enemies are infinite
and disposable. Which means that every character you spare, every conflict you resolve peacefully,
every soul redeemed, and every time you forgo cutting the fucking shit out of FUCKING MUFFET
BECAUSE JESUS CHRIST I’LL BUY YOUR FUCKING DONUT GOD is quite literally a blow against
Chara, against the lack of empathy, the mass murder that we’ve all come to expect as
commonplace in our video games.
And the ultimate defeat? Redeeming the seemingly irredeemable, soulless Asriel, even as they
attack you relentlessly, threatening everyone that you’ve grown to love and attached to,
refusing to rise to the bait. That--that is the ultimate deathstroke to gaming conventions,
to our natural instincts, and to Chara.
Of course, the unfortunate reality is that, while you can beat Chara, and fight those
instincts to dehumanize, to destroy instead of resolve, to see everything there is to
see even though it may irreversibly harm both the inhabitants of the world and yourself,
Chara is never truly defeated. You’re just one resetted game away from falling to the
temptation and giving them strength.
Luckily, it takes even more determination to fully actualize Chara, having to murder
your way through all of the Underground. The game makes it so this CANNOT possibly be a
mistake. You have to mindlessly, coldly grind through an area, eliminating every monster
before moving on, maximising your EXP and LV, and you have to do this all the way through
the game, and beat some of the hardest fucking boss fights I’ve ever seen. Once you make
it through the Gauntlet and kill your Conscience--
Yeah, that’s right, Sans is basically a Nihilistic Jiminy Cricket.
--and then...it’s done. Your game world, through your dedication and determination
to do so, is forever tainted, marked with the blood of dozens of innocents. Then, ONLY
then do you get to meet the byproduct of your efforts: Chara. The personification of emotionless
achievement. Everything, at the cost of...everythin g. Congratulations, you made it all the way
to the end of Undertale having learned nothing. Or maybe you did. But it’s too late, your
knowledge comes at the cost of this Universe.
And sure, you can find a way to purge the game of this knowledge through some tricks
and tools, but it doesn’t matter. You know the truth. And at the end of the day, Chara
isn’t something that lives inside the world of Undertale--Chara is in all of us, all the
time. Gaining strength and refinement in first person shooters, MMORPGs, when we watch the
news and see tragedy and the oppression of the weak and feel nothing-- Chara is the cold
lack of empathy that lives inside all of us. The part of us who sees other people as numbers.
The beauty of Undertale is that you have the option of either fighting against the preconceptions
and gaming conventions that you’ve been trained to rely on, or you can, instead, decide
to argue with the game and say “No, I like the way games are.” You’re forced to see
the terrible consequences of your choices if you go that way, but the great thing is
that it’s never locked in until you commit to it all the way. You can always go back
and save the day. Or not. Who cares. it’s just a video game. Right? [static] right.
And that, that is the fucking bad guy of Undertale. It’s inside
us all the time, and it’s always watching. Thanks for watching.