In my first play-through of Undertale, I killed Papyrus. He proved to be a constant nuisance from my first introduction to him and his brother Sans upon descending into the under-earth, to each of his tedious puzzles that interrupted my quest for freedom. Granted, he and his brother did provide some good comedic relief with their kind of Laurel and Hardy dynamic. They were fun to see on occasion and their brotherly love for one another was almost heartwarming at times.
Then came the fateful day. Papyrus had challenged me to a duel. Although I initially had tried to talk him out of it, a horrible realization dawned over me: this was a boss fight. The amount of Execution Points I would earn would surely increase my LOVE so that I may have a chance fairing against the boss fights of the future, and thus better my chances of winning the game. So from there I became set on destroying Papyrus, Exp in my eyes. When the option to spare him arose, I thought about how much of the game was left and how challenging it promised itself to be. My health and capability to do damage would ensure my survival in venturing across the unforgiving game world. When he pleaded for mercy, I thought of him as the agitator, whose character was reduced to quantifiable currency for game progression. If I wanted to win the game, I needed to kill him.
In the late game, upon entering King Azgor's castle, I encountered Sans, who berated me for killing his brother when I had every opportunity to spare him. The ethical decision that was presented to me was analogous to Bioshock, wherein I could either spare the little sister for a more wholesome narrative arc, or I could harvest the little sister for immediate gratification that would make navigating the hellish undersea labyrinth leagues more feasible. The game still had an ending, regardless what my moral choice was. The moral option in Bioshock (and similarly, I imagine, in Undertale) simply allowed for replay-ability in discovering every ending available to the player. Me sparing Papyrus wasn't so much of a moral decision as it was a subversion of the difficulty setting. By sparing him, the game would most likely increase in difficulty and offer a distinct narrative ending then if I had destroyed him.
First of all how dare you hurt my son Second, its interesting that you consider the difficulty of the game. Undertale's difficulty is a bit of a spook in that its not real. Every single obstacle the game throws at you can be accomplished with enough time. The only fight in the game that requires you to take damage is the Sans fight, and even then he can't kill you with that required damage. I think the thing that this post considers is time rather than difficulty. It isn't so much that you wanted an easier time later, your goal in killing Papyrus was to break my heart (and also cut down on the amount of time it would take to…
No! Not Papyrus! But in all seriousness, I think this points to how Undertale may (or may not) pose an ethical dilemma, while still being pretty black-and-white with our moral options: essentially, Undertale doesn't ask of us to discern and choose what we think is right among a set of nebulous options-- what is right and wrong is so obvious in the game, the question of what is morally right isn't even a question. Rather, by layering an obvious dichotomy of right (sparing) and wrong (killing) with another obvious dichotomy of what is more expedient (killing) and more difficult (sparing), it asks us to choose whether to act upon our sense of right and wrong at all-- or whether to…
It's very interesting that you mention replayability as a method of experiencing each possible narrative. While that is true, the game is self-aware (to a degree) of this ability. When I first played Undertale over a year ago, I had a similar experience as someone in class mentioned with Toriel. I was engaged in the fight with her, and my actions didn't seem to have any effect, so I started fighting her. I didn't want to kill her, I just hoped I could injure her enough to give in. But the last hit does several times as much damage as the normal amount, in a way subverting your ability to "play" the game's system. After I killed her, immediately mortified,…