To repeat something I said to Gourry, what if , when opening Duck Game for the second time you'd get a message that says "You, player. Please stop playing Duck Game. So the ducks can finally be at peace." You'd laugh.
Undertale does the same thing, except it is actually serious, and considers this as Very Important, and players genuinely see this as powerful.
Sorry but 2 dumb. And I don't like the implication that continuing playing makes you a badman.
The game is still good overall, don't worry Cid
Sure, I'll take a stab. Undertale and Duck Game are extremely different works, and lumping them together because "they're both video games" or more widely "they're both fiction, they're not real" doesn't sit well with me.
Not being able to empathize with fictional characters in general is... something I cannot understand. You care about flesh and blood people you meet in real life, right? Well, how about people you only meet over the internet, but maybe only meet in person once or never? How often do you hear people saying things like "I thought I liked you but I actually just liked my mental image of you"? How much can anyone say they really know their grandparents, or great grandparents, compared to a mental fiction of what those people were like? How about historical figures? How about historical figures going further back where some amount of fiction is undoubtedly worked into the history? How about going back to mythical figures who may or may not have existed but probably had some base in reality, unless maybe they didn't?
The line between reality and fiction in people's minds is not really all that clear. I prefer to err on the side of caring about people and empathizing with them, and I find value in doing that whether or not they are "real."
On another axis, fiction has creators, media is a communication between the author and the audience. Duck Game's creator doesn't ask that you take Duck Game's characters seriously and care about them. That is clearly communicated through the tone of the game. Toby Fox does ask, implicitly, that you take Undertale's characters seriously for maximum enjoyment. That is also clearly communicated through the tone of the game! Maybe not case by case, he surely is thick skinned enough to care about individuals or groups not doing so, but if *no one* took the game seriously and cared about the characters, you have to imagine he'd be unhappy. So no matter how you slice it, there is a Definitely Real Person being slighted there, if only at an expected and atomic level.
Hmmmmmm
I agree with the first part of your post, but I feel that the question here is not : "Is caring about fictional characters fine?" (the answer is: yes) but : "Is not caring about these fictional characters fine?"
I mean, if Duck Game told you to stop killing ducks:
- Some people would stop killing ducks because they truly care about these mean ducks (That would be you and Gourry)
- Some people would still like to kill ducks because Duck Game is fun and these ducks are... JUST... MERE... DATA, but they would then experience weird cognitive dissonance because the game would tell them they're super jerks (That would be me)
- Some people would not give any shit about what the dev's point is and whether it matters (That would be Djinn and very probably Zenny )
TBH, I do find it interesting that the game goes "If you truly care about these characters, then never replay this game, just move on" and if players like me have to be ignored, so you guys can have something like that, then k it's not a problem.
Something else bothering me though.
I would agree that in this kind of game, characters are an extension of the mind of the dev, and if you choose to hurt these characters, you are dismissing the dev's point of view. Fair point.
In a regular game, your only options are: playing along with the game, or closing it and doing something else. Go with the game or get out.
Undertale gives you an additional nihilistic option of destroying everything, and then it directly chastizes you for using it. It's very... crazy defensive? And immature? It feels like Toby Fox playing Genesis God, with the ability to kill ingame being the metaphorical apple?
