User of Ben 10 Fan Fiction Wiki and Pokémon Fan Fiction Wiki. Find my work at https://off-the-grounder.tumblr.com/my-works. Fan of other things as well, like Ace Attorney.
Man, the difference in like, clarity and convenience in the Mercy mechanic between Undertale and Deltarune is really kinda amazing sometimes.
Like, with the way Deltarune much more clearly tutorializes how to Spare, and then Chapter 2 adding a visible Mercy Meter so you can clearly see your progress and also indicate when Mercy isn’t possible. And they made Sparing when the name isn’t yellow fill a little bit of the Mercy Meter so it’s not technically a wasted turn AND you can technically brute-force your way through any encounter and still be a Pacifist.
And after all of this it’s kinda funny to think back to Undertale where you don’t even get told about Yellow Names until halfway through the RUINS and you just kinda have to guess which Bosses you just need to outlast and which have a unique mechanic (F to all the people who wasted all of their Gold thinking that’s how you spare Muffet) it’s kinda hard not to go kinda “Damn Bitch, You Live Like This” at your past self.
But on the other hand… like, it’s important to remmeber a lot of the obtuseness of Undertale Pacifist Mechanics is like…. maybe part of it was Toby Fox’s inexperience with game design, but a lot of it is very much intentional. Because being a True Pacifist in Undertale was a challange. And a huge part of that challange was like… figuring things out, finding the path to a peaceful solution even when it’s unclear, holding on to your hope that Mercy is an option and not giving in to the temption of easy violence even in difficult situations - and also, in the Asgore and Flowey fights, figuring out what is the situation when violence IS inevitable.
The mechanical unclarity of Mercy in Undertale plays directly into the feeling of defiance and, well, Determination that is in the center of the Undertale Pacifist Playthrough. Most characters in the Underground are not as gleeful about the idea of “kill or be killed” as Flowey is, but they’ve resigned themselves to that idea to some degree or another. Being a Pacifist is really about proving them all wrong, and so obviously it’s gonna be hard and unintuitive sometimes. Every time you’re stuck in a battle and none of your ACTs seem to you much good and you’re maybe getting frustrated and you know that a FIGHT will make it go much faster and easier… well, that’s the one of the challanges of the Pacifist Route.
And meanwhile, everything about Pacifism in Deltarune is much more clearly communicated and user-friendly…. but that’s also why it feels so off to so many people, y’know? There’s a reason why many fans waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop on the Deltarune Pacifist Run in spesific, waiting for some dark twist. In Undertale, being a Pacifist was a challange of going against the grain of everyone in the world - now in Deltarune it’s just Doing The Thing You’ve Been Clearly Told To Do, and it only gets simpler and clearer with each Chapter. And that just feels Wrong. Undertale already taught us that Doing the Right Thing is a challanging and frustrating process, so when it’s so easy, we start getting paranoid that maybe it’s not the Right Thing after all…