Undertale: Narrative in Mechanics

When it comes to making meaningful decisions and creating impact, you can't get much better than Undertale. A game built around utilizing preconceptions about traditional RPG's to produce emotional response, Undertale instills humor and fun to keep you entertained throughout. It does the unexpected better than any other game I've played, and brings gameplay and narrative together in a way that epitomizes the term "narrative design." I want to talk about one aspect of the game that really shows off that synergy. WARNING: Minor Spoilers Ahead.

The Undyne fight is a fantastic example of using your game mechanics to tell a story. Undyne is a villain who has been harassing you for a good portion of the game up to the point you fight her, so we already see the great narrative practices of recurrence and comparable strength being used.

(Note: there are many ways to play through the game. This is one of many different approaches.)

As you progress in the fight, Undyne begins to weaken. Normally, a weakened state is communicated to the player through a low health bar, bloodied visuals, or, in the case of my favorite X-Men game, a flashing red overlay on the enemy. In this fight, however, the visuals are limited. And while a health bar exists, Undertale likes to make it somewhat meaningless when it comes to determining where you are in the course of a fight.

As Undyne weakens, she begins to test her resolve by promising to never give up. As she attempts to stay in the fight, her attacks come more slowly. They become increasingly easier to dodge. As she takes hit after hit, as she struggles to fight back against what she knows is defeat, her attacks become almost pathetic in their simplicity. You easily swat aside blows with the block mechanic for this specific battle, and hit back hard. Watching her attacks slowly crawl across the screen toward my waiting block made me feel a sincere sympathy for Undyne. She knew she was defeated, but she kept fighting. I felt this because the mechanics were communicating an enemy who had nothing left. The text didn't tell me. The ways in which the battle mechanics changed told me.

Using mechanics to communicate sentiment is a difficult practice as there is only so much you can do. But I encourage you to explore every action your mechanics afford you and ask how you can tell a story with those actions.