There are tons of jokes that appeal to internet nerds, and I often felt like Undertale was talking directly to me, like it knew what I was thinking. Undertale has to be a game, and that’s the key to its brilliance. That clever manipulation of gameplay mechanics adds weight to a story that couldn’t have been told in any other way or medium. That first berating from Flowey shaped the rest of my experience - I learned I couldn’t bank on a soft reset, so I had to tread carefully. Undertale expected me to have played RPGs before and played with those conventions in unexpected ways. Then Flowey, Undertale’s chaotic evil, fourth wall-breaking flower, tore into me for having the gall to abuse the power of the save state. Dialogue had changed to reflect that I’d seen her die. So I restarted without saving, as I would in any other game when I needed a do-over. But I made a mistake: I accidentally killed a monster in the beginning. For my first playthrough I took a pacifist approach, being as kind and merciful as possible as I searched for a way back to the surface. As a lone human fallen into an underground world that serves as a prison for monsters, I had my journey laid out for me, as most RPG protagonists do.