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inbarfink · 1 month

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I think a lot about the Concept of ‘choices that matter’ in video games. Like, in terms of what it is that makes a choice ‘really matter’, what do we perceive as a choice that matters or has a consequence, how do different games with different amounts of branching or non-branching storylines play with those ideas… Especially because Undertale is one of my favorite games of all time, and it has often been hyped as ‘a game where your choices REALLY matter’ and… honestly, I dunno if all of this hype was fully conducive to Undertale. Because the way it handles the concept of Video Game Choices is actually a lot more interesting and complex than that simplistic descriptor makes it seem.

Because Undertale actually has a lot of choices that ‘don’t really matter’! Lots of dialogue choices and silly little decisions that on a first playthrough seem like they’re some sort of moral choice or a branching plotline but end up always leading to basically the same result regardless of what you do!

And the game doesn’t really try to hide the fact that these choices are kinda 'Fake'. I mean, on a first playthrough a player might assume there’s gonna be some Massive Consequences for picking the ‘wrong’ drink on Undyne’s date, but the game’s narrative expects for there to be multiple playthroughs and pretty much every Choice that Doesn’t Matter is peppered with that Undertale brand of wacky character-focused humor that inherently makes the moment memorable. Papyrus leading Undyne straight to you no matter what you do is basically a cross-timeline running gag.

On some level I see this as a sort of gag that serves as meta-commentary about the expectations around Choices That Matter in Video Games. As in, a lot of games have their Moral Choices happen in clearly easily marked ‘this is a Moral Choice!’ moments within the story, while the actual gameplay (and any violence the player might cause as part of said gameplay) is basically entirely divorced from any element of narrative-branching and doesn't effect the story at all. Undertale basically entirely inverts this dynamic; the most important factor for which Route you’re own is how you handle your FIGHTs, and what seems like clearly-marked and obvious Moral Choices are just goofy insubstantial minor changes in dialogue.

But also… there is also a level where you must ask yourself ‘what does it mean when we say that these choices Don’t Matter’. I mean, it’s not like they didn't change anything about the game, the Player still made the character say that other thing, the choice probably led to an alternate piece of dialogue, probably a joke with a call-back at the end of the game… The line between a one-off joke and an actual story-changing moment can be a little blurry if you look at it too deeply.

For example, near the end of the Waterfall part of the game, the Player is given the choice to save Monster Kid even at the risk of having to face down Undyne.

Pretty much anyone who isn’t deliberately trying to be an asshole is going to rush to save them and obviously that includes the Pacifist Route Players. But you can actually leave Monster Kid to die without it 'mattering' in the sense that it wouldn't divert you from the Pacifist Route. Undyne saves them instead of you, and ends up with slightly less HP for her battle (which might Matter for Runs when you try and FIGHT her but obviously not in Pacifist Runs) and… by the end of the game, during the extremely happy True Pacifist Ending, they still clearly remember that you abandoned them and are upset by it.

So… does saving Monster Kid ‘matter’ or not? On one hand, choosing not to save them mostly just changes a few lines of dialogue but… these lines of dialogue kinda recontextualize this happy ending and the Player’s actions in general. Despite the True Pacifist Ending otherwise portraying the Player/Frisk as a kind-hearted and brave hero... they still did this undeniably cowardly (and perhaps even cruel) act to one of their friends .

Was running away and leaving Monster Kid to die a brief but significant moment of weakness that the Player regrets and has cost them what could’ve been the start of a lovely friendship? Or is that simply that being a True Pacifist was always more of a matter of pragmatism rather than ideals? Were they only acting as a Pacifist to get that promised 'Best Ending', and only Monster Kid has an inkling they are not as heroic or kind as everyone thinks they are?

And then there’s the Snowman ‘quest’.

A free healing item given early in the game, with your mission being to carry it along in your inventory for as long as you can without ever consuming it. The only reward you will ever see from it is a few lines of dialogue…

But for many, it is more than enough of an incentive to preserve the Snowman’s Piece. You can do whatever you want with the Snowman without it ‘mattering’ in terms of Ending or consequences. You could carry it through all of your adventures with care and kindness... or you could eat it while he can’t see you and then go back to him and tell him that you ‘lost’ it and then get another piece and eat that as well, you could eat it right in front of his face, horrifying him.

And much like with Monster Kid, you can STILL get the True Pacifist Ending after doing that, all that would change is a few optional pieces of dialogue from the Snowman…

And a total recontextualization of the Player’s behavior and the ending. The Snowman sees the Player as a cruel and heartless person who is just pretending to be good so they can be liked - the way they acted with this immobile, powerless Snowman who could do nothing for them and their reputation reveals their true self. And he says their friends will realize that too one day...

Doing a True Reset on the Pacifist Ending is, by definition, a (almost) consequence-free action and yet it changes future Pacifist Routes immeasurably. Turning the Player into a Hypocrite doing the exact same thing they were trying to stop Flowey/Asriel from doing - trapping all of their friends into a time-loop so they can play with them forever while never actually letting them to enjoy freedom on the surface, simply because they are not willing to move on or put their friends' wishes and agency above their own. Nothing in the game actually changes, not one character can even suspect that you did something like that, and yet for the Player - this choice makes the entire Meaning of the game flip on its head.

Even the most famous and heavily-toted Big Consequence in the whole game - selling your soul to Chara after completing a Murder Route… mostly what it does is just… recontextualize the ending of the Game.

As a game, ‘Undertale’ is very much about the ways in which a Player engages with a game can radically recontextualize it. The huge chasm of difference between the Pacifist and Muder Routes is just the most literal example of it. But, in a way, even the tiny little Dialogue Options - where the lack of real choice and consequences is Obviously a Joke - matter. Because of the way they can recontextualize the Player Character’s behavior.

(Okay, maybe not this one, but hear me out…)

Do you trust Papyrus to not betray you, even after you spied on him with Undyne?

Do you have the integrity to admit you forgot something or got it wrong even when there’s no consequences for just lying about it?

Are you a hypocrite for trying to get Alphys to be truthful with Undyne only to then immediately turn around and lie to Undyne yourself?

None of these choices matter for the ending, some of them don’t even get, like, a call-back joke or anything, but… if you are engaged in this story as a narrative, if you are invested in these characters as if they were people, if you are honestly trying to be the best person you can be, if you are trying to self-reflect at the way you approach this game… even the silliest little dialogue option can suddenly be imbued with deep implications and you can make them matter.

Undertale is one of the best demonstrations of this concept, but this is absolutely not exclusive to it. For example….

‘Ace Attorney’ is pretty much as far away as you can get from a ‘branching narrative’ within the video game sphere. It is a heavily-linear Visual Novel where 70% of the time it won’t even let you talk to random characters at anything but the exact order it expects you to and any ‘Bad Endings’ are basically just glorified Game Over Screens. (... because this is the Internet and something something piss on the poor, I should probably specify that I am talking about ‘Ace Attorney’ because I love Ace Attorney and these are neutral descriptions of the game and not complaints. There’s nothing wrong with a game being linear.)

If there’s any Dialogue Choice in AA, it’s generally a very basic ‘right answer-wrong answer’ choice between Progress and a Penalty, or a total non-choice that just gets you to the same final result regardless. Except… Well… as we just talked about, getting to the same final result doesn’t necessarily mean a choice is ‘meaningless’, does it?

There’s actually a lot of great storytelling moments where Ace Attorney, despite its otherwise strict linearity, uses this exact sort of recontextualizing mindset I’ve talked about with Undertale to make choices with some really powerful emotional impact…. Even if technically, the ending is the same ending. It can be something as basic as ‘even if picking this Wrong Answer doesn’t get me a penalty, it still embarrassed my character and disappointed my friends/rivals and thus I feel bad for picking it’. Consequences as recontextualizing your character as more incompetent than they should’ve come across at that moment.

And then there’s moments like the iconic ending of ‘Justice for All’. That moment before Franziska bursts into the Courtroom with the case-making evidence and saves the day. The moment where it seems like Phoenix really is gonna have to pick between protecting his best friend and carrying out a rightful sentence.

The player gets to pick between the two options, but Phoenix never gets to say his choice out loud before Franziska comes running in... and yet… he, and the player, still made that choice. Even if no one ever has to experience the consequences of your choice, even if the rest of the world has no idea what Phoenix Wright would’ve chosen if the Miracle hadn’t happened, we know what we picked and that knowledge of the choice matters. Because of how we feel about this choice and what it says about our interpretation of Phoenix… and about us.

There’s also a bit of this ludonarrative device in ‘The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures’. During “The Adventures of the Runaway Room”, when you investigate the Omnibus for the second time and start finding things that… don’t quite fit together. When you’re finally starting to make progress with proving McGilded’s innocence, while also maybe starting to notice that something is… wrong with these pieces of evidence.

The unchanging linear narrative of the game is that Ryunosuke does eventually realizes McGilded's trickery, puts truth ahead of victory in court and yet, despite his effort and good intentions - the case still ends with a false Not Guilty verdict. And yet, the Player has the choice to... tweak the details.

There are several points where Ryunosuke can object, where he can call out the inconsistencies even though they help his case, where he can support Van Zieks in his accusations of tempered evidence... or he can not. Not necessarily intentionally misleading the Court as much as subconsciously trying to ignore the inconsistencies in the name of trusting his client.

And yet… in the end it doesn’t matter. Maybe Susato calls out the inconsistency instead of him, maybe Van Zieks does, maybe it remains uncontested but... no matter what you do, the case will end with a Not Guilty verdict (I mean, I guess you can deliberately fail the game but that will not progress the plot), McGilded doesn’t seem like he held a grudge (in the few minutes he had left to live), and a few cases later - Ryunosuke would always be punished for his part at this false verdict.

So it doesn’t really matter what Ryunosuke did back then? Does it matter if he did his best and called out every single inconsistencies or if he kinda half-assed it until he (and the Player) had to? He’s still going to suffer the same consequences down the line. And yet….

And yet, I think there’s something so powerful about giving us that option. About knowing that Ryunosuke, and we, did try and do something about McGilded's dirty tricks- even if it didn’t work. Or alternative, knowing that there was more that Ryunosuke and us could’ve done even if it was not nearly enough. Even if in the eyes of the game and the British Justice system there is no difference, the fact that we know what did and what we could’ve done can radically change the way the player feels about all of the later scenes concerning the truth about McGilded’s trial. It can radically change the way the player interpret Ryunosuke’s feelings about it as well.

Because even though the game itself keeps playing along with the same script regardless, that trial had irrevocable consequences for the Player.

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franzivonkarma · 2 months

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I desperately need people to understand that Franziska's whipping thing really isn't solely a silly character gimmick. Of course it is to a degree, just like Godot and coffee and Klavier and air guitar in court, but so often I see people dismiss Franziska's whipping trait as an annoying feature that adds nothing to her character and I cannot stand it. This is a bit of a rant and I touch on gender inequality and the way I see a lot of men treat her as a character a decent amount within this because I feel like the fact that she is a woman is actually very important to this element of her character, and her treatment is also a lot of the reason why I feel compelled to talk about this in the first place.

Firstly what you need to understand is that not only is Franziska a woman, she is also laughably young when she becomes a prosecutor. She's a 13 year old girl trying to hold the attention of a courtroom of mostly grown men and be taken seriously. It's no secret that misogyny does exist in the Ace Attorney universe of course (see: Godot), but aside from this, maybe it's just because I've been playing Ace Attorney Investigations recently, but she is just very small all around. It's a running gag in Turnabout Reminiscence that she is short, she's small, she can't see things Edgeworth can - although granted Edgeworth is definitely fairly tall, most estimates I've seen linger around 5'8-5'10 (around 170-180cm). And of course, she is only 13 here, she's not done growing, but it's at this age that she actually did begin to prosecute. Naturally, she'd often be underestimated, and we can see a strong desire to prove herself during Turnabout Reminiscence, even just to her father; I can only imagine that this would extend further into her trials as a young girl. Secondly, she's the daughter of Manfred von Karma, whom she idolises to a godlike status and who teaches her everything she knows about prosecuting, and also a lot about life in general - he's her father. There's a lot I could say about their dynamic, but I feel that much of it doesn't need to be said in this specific post if you're already here dedicated to Franziska enough to bother reading this post.

Manfred's courtroom (and often, regular) behaviour revolves a lot around him taking complete control of the entire courtroom, with him even speaking over the judge, overruling objections he does not like and sustaining his own, and instructing witnesses himself. He also often snaps his fingers to direct attention to himself and his point. Franziska learns this, but how does a literal 13 year old girl follow her father in this regard? Well, by force. Whipping someone is a very clear way to get their attention. Not only the person it hits but the people around - whips cracking are loud, they take up a lot of visual space, and they also obviously cause harm to the person they hit. These are all things you can't really ignore - it forces you to look at her and pay attention to her and gives her control of the room exactly like Manfred. I've also been thinking a lot about the end of Justice For All in relation to this. She's lost to Phoenix multiple times and she couldn't beat him even once just to prove that she was better than Edgeworth as she so desperately wanted to. This brings me to another point about her use of her whip. While I think control is a huge aspect and is my main focus here, I think it falls more under the umbrella of Franziska's own perceived shortcomings. We also know that she doesn't believe she lives up to her father's genius, and that she consistently feels like she's walking in Edgeworth's shadow, she says it herself:

I think at least some part of the reason her whip is so important is because she believes she could very well be less than equal to others in the room in terms of certain traits. She sees her father as a genius, knows she isn't equal to him, and internalises this (whether she is actually less intelligent or not I personally don't know what I believe, I haven't played Justice For All in over a year and a half and I would have to replay it to decide my thoughts).

In having to be perfect, there are many expectations she cannot live up to, and this leads to many ways in which she falls short of what she believes she should be. By using her whip, again, she can account for her perceived shortcomings in other areas - control, her intelligence, her ability as a prosecutor. I think this last scene of JFA actually introduces us to the idea that Franziska is somewhat self-doubting in some ways and compares herself a lot with others, not just Manfred, but also Edgeworth, which we see more of in Ace Attorney Investigations during Turnabout Reminiscence, where we see her at 13 attempting to prove that she can "out-logic" Edgeworth for the entire case, and essentially, that she is "more perfect" than he is.

But to come back to her whip, control, and the end of Justice For All.

She is left with little of who she was before and doesn't know how to move on - everything she was taught to be from the moment she was born, she no longer is. She is 18 here, prosecuting for 5 years already and desperate to be prosecuting for even longer. As far as her life was set out, this was basically it for her - become a perfect prosecutor and prosecute perfectly just like Manfred - the ideal prosecutor in her eyes.

A Von Karma is perfect, but she is not - she lost, just like Edgeworth, whom she shamed for the same thing. She gives up her whip here, and I feel that it's truly symbolic of how she feels like she's completely lost control of herself, her life, her relationship with her father and most obviously her occupation as a prosecutor. How could she continue being a prosecutor when she no longer lives up to the idea of it that she's had her entire life? What use is her whip if she will not need to hold the court's attention any longer?

I'm sure a million other people have thrown their coin in the pot on this exact topic, and I'm sure many have said the same thing as me and many have said something different, but I needed to write my thoughts out about it because I couldn't stop thinking about her. This is one big reason why I feel like I see a lot of men who don't understand Franziska and see her as very annoying, gimmicky, and my least favourite - a "female Edgeworth." She is a woman who steals attention and space forcibly; both from characters in-game, and also from the player with her animations that take up time in trials and a lot of the visual space. Of course this makes her unpopular with a lot of men. I'm not saying that if you dislike her or the whip it comes from a place of misogyny, I am saying that I think her whipping trait is reduced to a stupid, annoying gimmick more than, say, Godot and his coffee, because a lot of people don't really care to see that there is intention behind it that reveals a lot about her character, just like how Godot's coffee problem is relevant to his backstory.

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