I'm a big fan of turn-based RPGs, which is diametrically opposed to my love of D&D. As was mentioned in class, many turn-based games result in long, boring stretches of grinding for experience where combat is uninteresting. I agree that Undertale does something interesting and unique in its ACT system, with the variant options prompting new, quirky bullethells or fun narrative flair. However, my critique of its system is this: Toby Fox designed fun minigames in the ACT system that are rewarding to complete, but they are ultimately not about the player's ingenuity and are instead about how clever Toby Fox can be. Now that's all well and good; bullethell dialogue puzzles are something new and interesting, but for me, they're not enough. Whenever I encounter unique combat systems like this, ones that are very designer-focused, I ask myself: what about all the choices you can't make? What about all the the non-choices, the choices you aren't allowed to make? The fun for me in Undertale would not come from petting Greater Dog; it would come from petting Vegetoid.
That was a weird sentence. Some games attempt to create these systems. Skyrim is a bad example; you can use any attack on any enemy, but there's nothing interesting about those interactions. Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a great game for emergent combat. Elemental, magical, physical, and modded combat allow for weird combinations that come closer to D&D than any game I've played. LISA: The Painful RPG is a typical party, turn-based RPG where the interactions are narratively interesting but mechanically uninteresting most of the time. However, in both of these games, and I'm sure others like Breath of the Wild, the focus is on the player's ability to solve problems like combat in their own way, rather than how the designer intended.
Now, while this is all well and good for gameplay, I'm sure you're asking the question: why? For one, it is just interesting to see how players can develop solutions that are antithetical to how the designers intended, or at least unanticipated. But in the context of an RPG, it is essential to ask why the players aren't allowed to do things. What players can do and can't do, especially in terms of ethical decisions, emergent narrative, and identification are essential: do we allow players to use their pacifist party member as bait, do we allow for combinations that could break the game to allow for new and interesting ideas, and do we give players with different identities different levels of agency? And what don't we allow? In combat systems and beyond, the willingness to allow for creative, wicked, and personal strategies reveals what systems in the real world we want to explore in our games. Understanding, then, what choices the players make with their limited agency can tell us about players, problem-solving, and relationships between players and mechanics. By broadening agentive possibility, researchers can learn more about why and how we go about solving problems. For me, this is essential, especially in games like Undertale that allow for these binary outcomes through a multitude of decisions.
What do you think we can learn from this? How could you see systems like this implemented in games? (My instances would be LISA, D:OS2, and BotW.)
I totally agree with your sentiment in the first paragraph that the Act system is a way for Toby Fox to remind us that he is funny and interesting. I also agree that the combat feels more like a mini-game then an actual game. When I play RPGs, which is often, I am most drawn to games with deep combats systems leaving room for skill-expression and strategy, non of which you find in Undertale. I was disappointed in how simple the combat is, and I hesitate even to call it combat, and think the game would be so much better with a different combat system.
Thank you for sharing, I agree with you that Undertale has many instances where choice is limited. For example, I found it very black and white in terms of the endings available, which are: Neutral, True Pacifist, and Genocide. You can only get the True Pacifist ending if you never attack anyone and only spare, bosses and small enemies included. You can only get the Genocide ending if you kill every enemy in the game. Any variation of these actions results in the Neutral ending. For me, this doesn’t give much choice while playing the game and introduces only three ways to solve the main character’s problems. Just like you say, it is much more interesting if different combinations exist…