Undertale's moral hypocrisy

Undertale tries to teach about non-violence, but how well does it do so?

Preface

Undertale is a 2015 2D RPG developed by Toby Fox. The story follows a silent child Frisk who fell into a cavern containing a civilization of non-humans and seeks a way home. The game is known for the turn-based bullet-hell style combat which turns every encounter into a minigame, the quirky cast, and metafictional narrative.

Progression

In the tutorial, the player encounters two characters: Flowey, who attacks Frisk and claims that the world operates on the "kill or be killed" principle, and Toriel, who teaches that the proper way to end combat is through dialogue.

During encounters, Frisk can either "Fight" the opponents or "Act" to perform a friendly interaction. After either, the enemy throws projectiles at Frisk, who has to dodge. Depleting an enemy's HP destroys them, while filling up an invisible appeasement bar allows you to have them leave. If Frisk loses HP, they die and the player has to reload.

After Frisk navigates through regions in a linear manner, King Asgore stands as their seemingly final opponent, who tries to take Frisk's soul to break the magical barrier that traps the monster society underground. After his defeat, Flowey reappears, attacks Asgore, and tries to take over all of reality. After defeating Flowey, Frisk escapes to the surface and one of many neutral endings plays out depending on optional achievements.

If Frisk has defeated no enemies through force and has performed certain optional interactions, the player is prompted to reload to an earlier point in time and a path to the true ending opens. After being defeated with the power of friendship, purified Flowey turns out to be Asriel, the deceased son of Asgore and Toriel. The barrier ends up being destroyed, and all major characters decide to familiarize themselves with the human world.

The ethical framework of justified self-defense

Be careful in the outside world, OK? Despite what everyone thinks, it's not as nice as it is here. There are a lot of Floweys out there. And not everything can be resolved by just being nice. Don't kill, and don't be killed, alright? That's the best you can strive for.
— Asriel

What the game is going for can be deduced during its prologue. However, it's not made apparent on the first playthrough, and the player is not always informed about it during an ending if they play naturally.

The game acts as a deconstruction of classic RPG games. The enemy encounters aren't simply monsters to loot, but are residents of the underground world. The meta-narrative has a strong bias against fighting opponents, because the enemies are contextualized as either playing around and being ignorant about the fragility of a human body, or having a personal motive for attacking Frisk.

The game is trying to say that the player must seek to minimize harm and resolve conflicts through empathy and compassion, rather than mutual violence. The pacifistic approach doesn't yield many immediate rewards, but results in the ending that the game identifies as definite.

There exists a secret ending if the player goes out of their way to seek out random encounters and kill monsters to the point where none remain. Doing so switches the narrative to a depressive tone where Frisk is portrayed as an apocalyptic force who ends up destroying the underground, and the game condemns the player for it by referencing it on consequent playthroughs.

Of note, the player can find historical lore pieces, including mentions of the war between humans and monsters, which resulted in the latter being sealed underground, Dr. Gaster's and Dr. Alphys's research on souls, and Asriel's death after ending up in a human village. Since the characters don't address it directly, how humans are seen by monsters is left up to speculation, though many monsters are under impression that Asgore will be their savior.

The hypocrisy

While the game is very optimistic in tone at the end, when analyzed through a strict lens, there are certain inconsistencies with the messaging, that I will point out directly.

Theory	Practice
Non-violence is preferred	The player isn't asked to pursue non-violence outside of a post-game hint regarding the true ending, that also only appears under specific conditions. The player isn't condemned for choosing violence until either close to the end where they are informed it's not desirable, or until they start to systematically kill all characters. There's no gray option of non-lethal self-defense, or a way to engage in actual dialogue, the player can only pick between attacking or enduring until the enemy stops attacking. No monster apologizes, is criticized, or suffers for trying to kill Frisk, including those who do so intentionally. The Genocide Route is deliberately made appealing for challenge-seeking players and is doable. Asgroe and the Photoshop Flowey bosses have no peaceful options, they can only be stopped by force.
Seeking empathy and understanding	Most encounters outside of bosses are gimmicky NPCs who the player can't learn more about outside of battle banters. Monsters don't try to understand Frisk, while the player is required to take bosses on a date. Some monsters don't attack Frisk due to a misunderstanding, but are hired mercenaries. Monsters don't stop attacking automatically if Frisk proves to be non-threat, the player has to additionally use a command to end the encounter. The historical background puts the monsters into a light of an oppressed group, but Frisk's status as the only human is held respectably only by befriended bosses. Monsters care about each other and live as friends and families, but a human child is generally treated as a plaything or an animal.
Actions have consequences	There are no changes to the towns after killing non-essential NPCs aside of disabling the good ending, unless the player pursues a bad ending. Cross-playthrough flags is just a matter of an extra save file and a savvy player would be able to edit it.
Toriel's portrayal as a benevolent figure	Her solution to keep Frisk safe is to avoid explaining anything and using force against them if they try to leave her home. Despite her disagreement with Asgore's plan, she tells him that he should have sacrificed humans deliberately instead of waiting for an excuse.
Undyne's portrayal as a dorky figure	She tries to kill Frisk on their first meeting while declaring them to be opposing justice by merely existing. Even after Frisk saves the monster kid, she sticks to her pointview until she endagers herself. Even after being aaved herself, she acts petty until befriended.
Alphys's portrayal as a helpful figure	As Mettaton reveals, him attacking Frisk was staged by her to appear heroic when "rescuing" him. She has performed unethical experiments on deceased monsters by fusing them into Amalgamates. Instead of informing families about the true nature of the experiments, she chose to seclude herself in shame. She's the one who created Flowey, but the game barely acknowledges that.

Conclusion

The player is criticized for exercising their right to retaliate, but the game neither explains why exactly is this wrong, nor provides an alternative other than altruistic friendship. The game doesn't really discourage from defending with force, until a standard ending where doing so is retroactively portrayed as morally wrong regardless of context. The player ends up taught not that lethal self-defense is wrong, but that raising a hand against those who try to kill you is wrong, which isn't a good lesson in reality. While the game seems to acknowledge in the true ending that it's not a realistic approach to resolve conflicts, it should had foresight to apply such realization earlier. Alarmingly, unlike the human, monsters face no repercussions for the countless attempts of blatant murder. Due to insufficient insight to how the monsters see humans, it gives an impression as if aggression is perfectly justified if it's done by their side.

The game's ethical commentary is overly simplified by binary choices and goofy characters. The good ending only being accessible by befriending enemies creates a false moral dichotomy where one option is objectively better than the other. Instead of giving the player agency of trying to resolve conflicts in more ways and letting them process the consequences, the inherit design nudges the players to conform to the author's philosophy, which in the real world can be too idealistic if not outright dangerous and unjust.

The game could be easily improved by not criticizing lethal self-defense in some cases, providing more gray-area options, and have the monsters hold accountability for their actions. The war backstory could also be greatly expanded on to provide context if the monsters feel victimized by humans.

The ethical framework has certainly greatly improved in the next game, Deltarune. Despite the similarities, it shows that neither side of the conflict is inherently better than the other, and enemies are nuanced and complex characters whose villainy is driven by trauma. While there's still bias in how the player should approach combat, violent options only make Chris scare the opponents away, and the peaceful options mainly provide additional scenes that are mostly inconsequential and can be treated as an achievement. The secret violent route also focuses on personal interactions instead of commenting on RPG conventions, and the player choices are consistently portrayed as unrewarding and disgusting.

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