Throughout our discussion of Undertale, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about identification. Frisk’s relatively neutral identity (indistinct gender, few discernible features) seems to prompt the player to identify AS Frisk. Frisk serves visually as a blank slate on which the player can find themselves. At least in my experience, it becomes difficult to identify WITH Frisk. They have incredibly little dialogue, and though they do sometimes have amusing or interesting answers to questions that hint at a sort of personality (e.g. “I have no redeeming qualities”) for the most part they are silent. Their personality is expressed only through their actions, which are dictated entirely by the player.
The way in which the player constructs the character of Frisk directly instead of identifying with Frisk’s existing personality interplays with the game’s morality to create a new dynamic. The fact that the game also contains so many “meta” moments also hints as this: the game means for you, the player, to play like yourself. Some of the appeal of video games is that their worlds are separate from ours. Rules and consequences of the real world don’t apply, so if you want to go on a crime spree in GTA, that’s fine. It’s what the game’s made for, even. But Undertale is different: although “fight” is an included option, the player is challenged and encouraged to play nonviolently, in the ways that they really would. The “act” and “flee” buttons open the door for actions that aren’t necessarily fun or heroic, but demonstrate realism of action.
In this framework, the harsh morality of the game makes sense. Video game players may be understandably upset that killing even one monster makes the true ending of the game impossible, but doesn’t this mirror reality? No one would argue that killing one person (and the monsters, capable of sentient action and frequently speech, are unarguably people) should be forgiven with no consequences. Although masked by a fantasy setting, colorful tone, and pixelated artwork, Undertale attempts to destroy some of the suspension of disbelief that comes with the normal game environment and instead force the player to play the game as themselves.
I agree that Undertale does a lot to try and make the Magic Circle that we've been discussing more permeable. This comes through especially with the purposeful crashes that Flowey causes towards the end of the game, as well as the tampering that he does to the save files. There's something slightly disturbing about the ability of any game to renegotiate where its own boundaries lie, and I agree with your point about this being a potent way of enveloping the player in the consequences of the game's moral system. It's interesting that Undertale gives diegetic agency to Frisk as a character in their own right (they have a reason for ending up in the underground world) while still hailin…
I think you make a very interesting point about how Undertale is better able to harshly judge a player for their choices. Since the game invites players to play as themselves, it seems much more justified in making moral judgments about the player. I would compare this to something like Papers Please. In fact, I think that that game does the exact opposite of what you're describing here with Undertale. Papers Please doesn't ever really do anything to judge what the player chooses to do, and perhaps that's because the player is put into the somewhat well-defined role of the inspector. The game knows that players aren't playing as themselves, so judging them as individuals existing outside of the game…