Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to the Gaming Backlog Book club. We’re here to talk about Undertale, but before we get started, I just want to mention that Hollow Silksong finally has a release date in less than two weeks, and tons of mostly indie devs are delaying their games. If they had originally planned to release in September or right now. Mostly just to make sure their games get the attention they deserve outside of the vacuum that’s going to be Silksong coverage.

It almost seems like this is the indie version of GTA 6, so everyone’s just pushing their releases aside. Funny thing I came across. So the game Baby Steps, which we’ve mentioned briefly on this podcast, put out a really great trailer announcing their delay related to silksong that I highly encourage you to go watch. It’s just so good.

Very short too. Like 30 seconds. So worth checking just for the lapse.

[00:00:51] Speaker B: Okay, I’ll have to watch that. I haven’t seen that trailer. I’ll have to go check that one out for booby Steps because, yeah, that was a game that we were both interested in. When. How long have they delayed that for?

[00:01:01] Speaker A: I. It’s not. They. It looks like they’ve only delayed a couple weeks on their end, but many other games have pushed into closer to the holidays or into next year. So it’s kind of wild.

[00:01:13] Speaker B: I mean, Silksong was, what, in development for seven years or whatever?

[00:01:16] Speaker A: Six. Close to seven years.

[00:01:17] Speaker B: Six.

[00:01:18] Speaker A: Yep.

[00:01:18] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:01:20] Speaker A: Originally announced that a DLC turned into its own game, and then apparently the devs just had so much fun building it and didn’t look at the Internet that they just kept going. So kudos to them.

I think everyone would have appreciated some more information, but they just didn’t care about the marketing because they got so much money from the first game that I guess they’re doing just all right.

[00:01:43] Speaker B: Good for them.

[00:01:44] Speaker A: Yeah, lucky them.

Anyway, today is all about the early moments of Undertale. We will not be going into any spoilers and just wanted to chat about our first impressions. We’ll dive into some neutral route story details and spoilers once we finish that route in next week’s episode.

So I guess my first thought, right, you hear a little bit of the intro story in a cutscene, you get dropped into the underground. The flower that seems so friendly goes all crazy and attacks. That’s a welcome visit into this area, I guess.

[00:02:20] Speaker B: Yeah, he seems all nice, all sweet and everything. And it’s like, oh, just don’t make sure to touch all the.

The hearts or whatever like that drop down all the pellets that drop down.

[00:02:32] Speaker A: He wants you to get hit by his attacks.

[00:02:34] Speaker B: Yeah. I was like, all right, I get hit by it, and then he just turns all evil.

[00:02:39] Speaker A: An evil, vicious flower with sharp teeth. Yeah. I mean, what struck me right away was the. The right. This is a. You’re defending is bullet hell. So to avoid getting hurt, you go through these bullet hell, you know, gameplay moments. But the windows that the whole bullet hell thing sits in, it just seems so small. Right. There’s not a lot of room to maneuver. Even if it was, like, the full screen was just a bullet hell thing and you had more space or even if they just filled it up with more attacks, in that case, I don’t know why. I feel like I’m just, like, squinting almost to try to make sure I avoid attacks.

[00:03:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. It’s quite a small box that you have to do with. I have just first impressions of doing it. There have been. I’ve definitely been hit.

[00:03:29] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:03:30] Speaker B: But not just these attack, but, like, later on. Like. Yeah, my. My reflexes are not as good. Some of them come in kind of quick. Some are.

Some are also, like.

I’ll talk about one attack, like, later. That was like a little bit of a puzzle that I had. I had no idea. I was like, how do you not get hit by this? And then actually I watched a video just later, like, just some random walkthrough just to, like, up to the point where we’re up to. And I, like, saw the guy, like, do it and not get hit. And I was like, but I’ll talk about that in a little bit when we get there. But.

[00:04:02] Speaker A: Yeah.

Yeah, it’s a little difficult because they’re not.

[00:04:05] Speaker B: Yeah, you’re right. They’re not big boxes that you. You don’t have a lot of room to move.

[00:04:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Even if there’s not a lot of attack. I mean, I think the thing is that we’re both playing on some form of the switch, which doesn’t have the most precise joystick of all consoles. And so I feel like even if I knew exactly where I wanted to move, it was a little bit off, or I was a little bit off with calibrating my own thumb to the joystick.

[00:04:31] Speaker B: Go a little farther than you.

[00:04:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Or you don’t stop right on the dime, like you would expect to sort of. Yeah. I mean, hey, you just kind of adapt to it. But I think that’s gonna be part of this experience overall, is you get hit.

[00:04:45] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:04:46] Speaker A: They don’t call it bullet hell. For nothing.

[00:04:48] Speaker B: No, no. Yeah, you. You will definitely get hit.

[00:04:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Otherwise, I mean, I have a bunch of kind of just single bullet list type funny moments that I thought were really interesting. When you’re going through the. The ruins area at the beginning, right. There’s a rock that starts talking to you and just wants to do its own thing.

[00:05:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I had that. That was part of my notes. It’s just a talking rocket, doesn’t want to be pushed.

[00:05:14] Speaker A: Oh, you want me to move over there? Okay. Oh, you wanted to stay there. Yeah, I got a lot of. No major laugh out loud moments, but I got a lot of chuckles out of many different things in here.

[00:05:26] Speaker B: Yeah, there were quite a few.

[00:05:27] Speaker A: There’s also, you know, there’s very clearly a. At some point near a save point, there’s a piece of cheese on a table and it says something about a mouse building up the courage to go get the cheese or something like that. And so you can interact with the mouse hole and it just starts squeaking at you.

[00:05:44] Speaker B: Yep. Which is a little squeak. And the cheese is like stuck to the table because it’s been there for so long.

[00:05:50] Speaker A: You want to try to go encourage this mouse to go get its cheese. You know, Come on.

There’s also, at some point. So I, you know, part of this is, right. Any kind of tips or tricks if you’re just getting started. And at some point I fought a pair of enemies that. Two different types of enemies at the same time. I don’t know if you had this encounter or not because it was just one of those random encounters, but one of them, when you use the check action on it, it says it looks evil, but probably just because it’s with the wrong crowd.

So if you do something to get rid of the other one, whether that’s kill it or use actions to spare it, you can then get rid of that one enemy and then get rid of the.

The evil one peacefully if you want to. Which is pretty funny.

[00:06:33] Speaker B: Okay. I had a couple. I had a couple just like dual battles.

Some.

Some I took out, I attacked and then a couple of them I was able to. I like. One of the enemies was like. I think it was called like a win sum or whatever, where it’s all like sad or whatever. And I just. I did check and I can’t remember what it says, but you did check and you just like kind of slightly cheer it up or you say something to it and it’s just like, I can’t like just runs away.

So then I only have to do one but yeah, it’s. It’s funny that you can check and you can do like. There’s like a bunch of different things later on there’s like some dogs, you can pet them, you can do whatever sniff. Which was funny.

[00:07:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I like all the.

[00:07:14] Speaker B: Little things that of the way to avoid potentially battling them. And the thing is you have to do it enough to then there you can spare.

[00:07:22] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. The creature definitely some creativity here and a lot of inventiveness in terms of just finding so many different ways to go through the sparing action.

I mean in comparison. Right. So if you. If you actually fight or attack them, it’s not as simple just attack. And it means similar to how avoiding damage is bullet hell, if you attack, you have to. You basically just have a. I mean what’s the best way to compare it? Like in the old school, I don’t know if they still do it. I haven’t played Madden in years. But in the old school, Madden doing a field goal or a punt where you have to basically just line up the bar going left and right and hit it in the center. The more closer to the center you get the. The more damage you do.

You also have.

There’s your. Your level here is not actually the LV stat that you have is not actually your level. It’s your level of violence.

So the higher your level is, I mean of course it just translate to you are a higher level, you do more damage, but it’s basically how much intent to do to kill you have. Which is a funny meta approach to it.

But yeah, I mean I guess there’s also just in general. Even in just the tutorial ruins, this game is quirky as hell. And I’m definitely here for it.

[00:08:40] Speaker B: It is. Yeah, it’s very quirky. It’s funny dialogue, weird, unique characters.

But yeah, say quirky and yeah, I’m here for it too.

[00:08:52] Speaker A: I mean even. Yeah the tiny minor details. So in your bedroom, in Toriel’s house, even just turning off the lamp in your bedroom changes the tone of the music and makes it darker.

And you can sit there for as long as you want, but it, you know, just passes some time. Things like sans with his type joke zingers that he’s thrown out all the time.

[00:09:13] Speaker B: This is so ridiculous.

[00:09:16] Speaker A: It’s. Yeah, it’s like bad dad jokes or pun jokes and they are.

[00:09:22] Speaker B: There’s also his brother Papyrus thinks that he’s Papyrus the most evil evildoer. Then I don’t know the challenges in the forest. Once you’re out of the ruins and in the forest. Some of the challenges I just was. I left at some of them. It’s just the dialogue between them.

He leaves like, frozen spaghetti, and then later on is like, did you eat all my spaghetti? I was like, no, I left home. He’s like, thank you.

[00:09:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, definitely. Clearly written in a specific way. I mean, I think no other detail besides just the general ineptitude. But they do remind me a bit of Team Rocket, I think they’re called from Pokemon.

[00:10:05] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:10:06] Speaker A: Like, just, like, can’t pull off anything to save their life at some point. Also, just. I don’t know why I expected Sans to be more of, like, an evil genius type when he just kind of seems like this bum that’s just hanging around.

[00:10:18] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:10:19] Speaker A: Which is changing. Entertaining. Change of pace. I guess the one major sort of frustration that I had is so if you go through a puzzle, right, and then you. There’s not a checkpoint immediately after that, so no save point. Then you end up having to repeat the puzzle many times if you end up getting killed in a battle soon after.

So, you know, we. We both, I think, got through until the entry, like, actually entering snowed in town. So you get to the inn and the shop, and that’s where we both stopped off here. But at some point, right. There’s the.

The sliding ice area, and you had to click on all the switches to be able to open the bridge or the door or whatever. So I had to do that, like, five to 10 times. That’s before fighting the large dog, because I ended up dying to that dog a handful of times in the bullet hell sections.

[00:11:09] Speaker B: And then what, with the dog in the armor?

[00:11:12] Speaker A: Yes.

[00:11:13] Speaker B: Okay. Because there was a couple fights with dogs. There was the armor.

[00:11:17] Speaker A: Oh, yes. No. Yeah, that’s the one I’m talking about, the one in the armor. So I ended up having to repeat that puzzle, like, five times. And I finally realized, okay, I’m just gonna backtrack all the way back to the save point just to not have to do it again. So it got a little frustrating, I would say, to just keep repeating things. Like, it would have been nice to have some form of checkpoint or save after a puzzle before a fight. Obviously, you can’t just literally thing with save points, but throw us a bone.

No pun intended.

[00:11:42] Speaker B: Yeah, no. Yeah, I had that, actually, with that dog. I spared it. I like pet. I kept petting it and playing with it until a point I got really happy and excited, and then it gave me the. I can Spare it.

[00:11:54] Speaker A: Yes. I ended up doing that too. But for. I was. I guess I was tired or whatever at that point. And I ended up just like losing in his bullet hell multiple times in a row.

[00:12:04] Speaker B: It took me a while.

Because early on there’s a thing of sand saying, like, oh, my brother has strong attacks. Papyrus has strong attacks. Like his blue attacks don’t do any damage to you. Just stay still.

I was like, okay. So I was like thinking that just for him, like, oh, I’ll fight him at some point soon enough. I didn’t realize that any blue attack you see, if you stay still, it doesn’t hurt you.

[00:12:27] Speaker A: Right.

[00:12:27] Speaker B: Of any character. It took me a little bit to figure that out.

[00:12:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I think because somebody mentions that, right? Yeah, Sans mentions that. So I think I was just like, blue attacks. What are you talking about? And then I put the two or two together. But it’s still. I mean, knowing it and executing it are not the same. You know, you can still. Because he’ll alternate white, blue, white, blue, or multiple blues and then a white right after it. So you have to still have to kind of let go of the stick or stop moving really fast after you’re moving to dodge something. So it’s. Yeah, it’s not exactly the easiest thing just because you know what to do.

[00:13:04] Speaker B: No. So the one I was talking about earlier, the fight that this was one I died at a couple times I was against the two dogs. It was like Dogamy and Dog Essa and they have like the two axes that come down. And I didn’t know where to go. I was like, where do I go to not get hit?

[00:13:21] Speaker A: Yes, I know what you’re.

[00:13:22] Speaker B: By either of these. But then I watched just randomly someone’s walkthrough and. And the guy goes. So they. When they first come down, you go all the way down to the middle because they stop in the middle. Then you can move all the way to the side, to the right, and you don’t get hit. And then you move all the way back to the middle. Like your heart’s on the bottom of the bullet hellbox, and that’s how you avoid getting hit.

[00:13:42] Speaker A: I was like, oh.

[00:13:42] Speaker B: Cause I died to those guys.

Yeah, probably like four or five times. And then I’d have to go back to the little checkpoint above, which luckily wasn’t too far. But yeah, it took me a little bit to figure out how to get past those.

[00:13:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I died to them maybe once or twice. And then I just got. I didn’t know that. That way to get through it. But I basically just got lucky and was able to.

[00:14:03] Speaker B: I attacked him.

[00:14:04] Speaker A: Worm my way. Oh, you attacked him?

[00:14:06] Speaker B: I attacked them. I took both of them out kind of quickly once, like if I was able to get like a attack right in the middle, it did quite a bit of damage and I was able to.

[00:14:14] Speaker A: Gotcha.

[00:14:15] Speaker B: Get through it.

[00:14:15] Speaker A: Okay. Not so bad.

[00:14:17] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:14:20] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, outside of that. So I think there’s some funny things once you do. Actually right before you get to Snowden Town, right, You end up having Papyrus has this giant booby trap on the bridge set up. And then he’s like, no, I just kill you too easily and takes him away. Just like you just come on in.

[00:14:37] Speaker B: My favorite one of his challenges or traps was the color grid.

The one where he’s like. He’s like, blue is water, orange will make you sweet. But if you’re sweet and then you go into water, piranhas will eat you. Yellow is electricity, and it’s like, pink is okay, purple is okay, blah, blah. He’s like, I’m gonna hit this machine and make it random and I don’t even know what it’s gonna be. And then it just turns to be a straight pink line that you just walk straight across. That actually got me to laugh out loud. I actually laughed at that. I thought that was. Cuz I was like really reading it, like figuring it out.

[00:15:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I was. I was committing all. All these details to memory. And then once I got to like the fourth color, I was like, no, this has joke.

[00:15:16] Speaker B: And then when he hits it and it’s just a straight pink path, I just was. I just laughed. I was like, okay, that’s actually really good. That’s funny.

[00:15:25] Speaker A: Once you get. So once you get into the town itself, I mean, right before saving off, I didn’t go much farther or walk into town much. But if you, if you go into the shop, I find it really funny that when you try to use the sell option, the shopkeep just makes a quip about other games having shops and then what you think of a pawn shop. That’s not true. So you can’t sell anything.

[00:15:45] Speaker B: Oh, okay. I didn’t even. I literally just got to the town and saved and that’s it. I haven’t even gone into the store. So.

[00:15:50] Speaker A: Okay, I just went into the. To the, to the. The shop there and then so at the inn next door. So here’s a pro tip for you. If you stay at the inn, it costs 80 gold, which is a pretty steep price comparatively to other RPGs but with the promise that you’ll heal above your max hp. That’s what the inn keeps kid next standing next to them says. And so rather than just transition to sleep and then going back to playing, it plays a kind of short tune while you’re. While you watch yourself sleep next to the room next door with three monsters in a giant bed snoring.

But the best part of all, the concierge says you look well rested, which is odd since you were only up there for two minutes because in real time you’re only up there for a little less than a minute or two minutes. And then she says, okay, I’ll give you a full refund. So here you go.

So you get. You. You basically get a full health recharge, which obviously at a save point you get a recharge anyway, but you get a little bit past. I don’t remember the exact number, but completely for free. I’m not sure if it happens on subsequent sleeps in the same inn or if every inn is the same, but that’s just a good little tip to know in case you want to charge up before a boss fight or something.

[00:16:59] Speaker B: Oh, that is a good tip to know. I actually probably will let next get on to play. I’ll go on and do that.

[00:17:06] Speaker A: I also just. This was more kind of general to the gameplay itself. I didn’t really notice the fact that it existed, mostly because I jumped straight into playing and I don’t think I ever even put it quit out of the game. I just put it in rest mode. I didn’t notice until an NPC or a sign somewhere so that you can add a border to your game that the aspect ratio of undertale is quite old school and doesn’t take up the whole screen.

Yeah, it’s really just a box. I think it’s probably 16 by 9 or approximately like that. Did you set up a background? Because you have to actually go. Go back to the main menu before hitting continue. So it’s not really easy to try out or swap.

[00:17:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I thought I had added a background before it started, but I guess I didn’t. And then when I saw that like there’s no like pause or anything, like there’s no way to get back to it. So I didn’t know how to get back to the main.

[00:17:55] Speaker A: You have to just save fully quit and close the game and then reopen.

[00:17:58] Speaker B: Fully and then re reopen it. I guess. Yeah, I can give it a try. But yeah, I had seen like when I first started the game up the backgrounds. And I thought I had set one, but maybe.

[00:18:06] Speaker A: Yeah, it gives you, like, three options and it applies a border background that adjusts. So the one that I use is one that called Dynamic. I’m sure the other ones are more static, just images. And the one I chose is called Dynamic. It adds a border background that adjusts based on where you are. So not things moving, but it’s a. It changes based on your environment. So I’m in Snowden currently. So it’s a bunch of. Basically a picture of a bunch of snowy trees.

[00:18:30] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:18:31] Speaker A: Kind of like. It reminds me kind of like how some people have those lights behind their TVs that adapt to what’s happening on screen to make it more dramatic. It’s kind of like that. So it. At least it doesn’t. It’s not really jarring against whatever you’re looking at in the game itself, which sometimes happens in these older remasters or ports of really old games and, you know, basically rereleases that are coming out now for switch or for PlayStation. So it’s nice. I did a good job with it.

[00:18:57] Speaker B: It’s another because in the intro episode of this I mentioned, I also started playing Earthbound, and I’ve actually played a little bit more of Earthbound as well. Earthbound is the same thing playing on Switch on the Super Nintendo app. On Switch, it’s a small, small little box, but you can add a little background around it. So I assume undertale took a little bit. Maybe it’s a little thing from Earthbound for that.

[00:19:24] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, possibly. I think I’ve seen it available on the Castlevania advance collection that I played one of the three games on. On Switch. I’ve seen it in. Actually, the Castlevania Requiem pack on PlayStation also has a similar. Maybe it’s a Castlevania thing, but. Or it’s just an old game. I know the Super Nintendo Classic has the same feature, if you want to apply it.

[00:19:48] Speaker B: Yeah. I was gonna say it’s gonna be an old game thing because if you think about it, all those old games that we played were all full screen. They were all like the TVs we had back then.

[00:19:56] Speaker A: Everything was screens.

[00:19:57] Speaker B: Yeah. They weren’t widescreen TVs. They didn’t come out till later. Yeah. They’re all perfectly square full screen, so.

[00:20:05] Speaker A: So with tracks. I mean, that had to be an influence on why.

[00:20:09] Speaker B: Oh, I’m sure they wanted it. Yeah. He wanted, like an old school.

[00:20:12] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:20:13] Speaker B: RPG and. Yeah.

[00:20:16] Speaker A: Well, let’s see. At least on my end to cap off our episode, I have a question for you, courtesy of Toriel. Why did the skeleton want a friend?

[00:20:26] Speaker B: Oh, is it because he was bonely?

[00:20:29] Speaker A: No, because she was feeling bonely.

[00:20:31] Speaker B: Bonely. Yeah, because she was feeling bonely.

[00:20:35] Speaker A: Some of the jokes make you roll your eyes and the other ones are just really entertaining. The ones that.

That aren’t obviously jokes and are just meant to be the personality of the character. Those are the ones that get me.

These, these forced, terrible jokes are.

[00:20:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I know, it’s just ridiculous. Like as you said with the Sans. With that. But on bum and those types of jokes. But like another at the beginning where it’s like you hide behind a lamp. I think I want like right at the start and sans serious brother’s like, look at the lamp. He’s like, it’s just a lamp. What are you talking about?

[00:21:07] Speaker A: He’s like trying to clue him off, but then not.

[00:21:09] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s just a funny. It’s funny dialogue. It’s. Well, so far it’s pretty. It’s well written, it’s funny.

I like the little quips. Little.

[00:21:20] Speaker A: Go stand by this perfectly, randomly, perfectly shaped lamp. It just happens to be in the middle of a snowstorm.

[00:21:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that. It’s called Snowden Town. Like it’s snowed in.

[00:21:34] Speaker A: Exactly.

[00:21:34] Speaker B: It’s just little things.

It’s fun.

[00:21:39] Speaker A: Well, next time we will be talking about the full playthrough of the neutral route, which has 80 something endings. And so I guess we’ll see which ones we end up getting.

[00:21:49] Speaker B: I was gonna say it’ll be interesting to see if we both get the same ending or different or. Yeah, for just the neutral route.

[00:21:54] Speaker A: I have a feeling it’s gonna be hard to come by, but I guess we’ll figure it out.

[00:21:59] Speaker B: Yeah, we will.

[00:22:00] Speaker A: Cool. So we’ll chat about neutral next time and then following that, we’ll go into the other two rounds.

[00:22:06] Speaker B: Yep, sounds good.

[00:22:07] Speaker A: Catch you next time.

[00:22:09] Speaker B: Great. Thanks everybody, for listening.

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