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flightworks2018-11-21 03:34 pm
feralphoenix) wrote in flightworks2018-11-21 03:34 pm
On Chara & Frisk as RPG Player & Protagonist Allegory
another rehomed essay due to Whatever's Going On With Tumblr. this was originally posted here.
this is something that i talked about on twitter last week and think is worth writing about in a little more depth here, so:
last week toby made some tweets about moon: remix rpg adventure and ways that its concepts helped inspire undertale despite that he'd never played it himself. there's a lot that you could talk about/analyze about the comparisons between those games, which i'll leave to someone who is familiar with or has actually played moon (i have not). the tl;dr version as relevant to what i want to talk about is that moon is a game that's designed to make rpg players think about rpg mechanics and conventions in a different light, i.e. "actually this thing i thought was ubiquitous and had accepted as normal is kinda screwed up upon second examination".
there's a lot of ways in which undertale does this with rpg mechanics and conventions, obviously, but i want to talk about chara and frisk because.............. i always want to talk about chara and frisk.
the more i think about it, the more convinced i become that the game mechanics relationship between chara and frisk is supposed to be a metaphor for the relationship between a game player and a traditional "silent" protagonist (or a protagonist with choosable dialogue).
rpg protagonists, even silent ones, usually have some form of canon character settings and personality. but because of the game structure, you are able to make them act in ways that completely contradict that canon personality. when you do this, you as the player are overwriting their personality, either with your own or at your whims.
wrt player-and-protagonist separation, tumblr user inverts once used link from the zelda series as an example, and he's a really good one so i'm going to borrow their comparison here. link has a canon identity and personality and he usually has a big world-saving goal. but whoever's holding the controller can ignore the fact that link is supposed to be a kind, brave young man with a strong sense of justice, and have him fritter away his time on minigames and attacking chickens instead of going to defeat ganondorf and save zelda. breath of the wild is a stellar example here because of its mind-boggling array of available distractions from the main quest. jokes about link faffing about still regularly cross my dashboard and twitter timeline. (case in point)
many essayists have already pointed out that chara seems to operate like a typical rpg player or protagonist; i like to link to gaytreasure's essay where they propose chara as morally gray/not good at empathy and misunderstanding the genre they're in, parsing monsters as the "good guys" they need to save, humans as the "bad guys" that must be destroyed, and themself as the main character who's supposed to fix everything a lot because it's good. to that i'd also like to add eevee's writeup here (cw for mention of pet death) where she points out that chara's behavior in returning to the surface while bodysharing with asriel, and specifically bringing their own corpse along, is very rpg player-ish: they are definitely out there to do some murders but they specifically wait for the enemy to attack first before they try to respond with lethal force.
if chara is an rpg player, then that makes frisk the character they're playing as. what happens to a silent main character when their player insists on playing them in a way that's completely out of character for them? the answer that undertale poses is grim: frisk fucks off in no mercy because this isn't something that they would do, because there's no room or leeway for them to exist in light of what you're having chara do with their body right now. chara's narration switches to first-person to reflect this, and flowey identifies that chara has "stolen" their body and soul.
on the other hand, the good ending for frisk is the one where the game acknowledges that they and chara are two separate people. the other characters learn their name, and they get to leave the underground in the land of happily ever after, where finished stories get to rest.
you, the player of undertale, the person sitting at the computer or console, are playing as chara, the protagonist of undertale. chara, meanwhile, is "playing as"/guiding frisk, the main character of undertale. frisk is chara's interface to the world of undertale, whereas chara is ours; frisk is just an npc to us.
this relationship is complicated by the fact that chara is a traditional rpg player/protagonist who has just been confronted with the total failure of Normal RPG Logic and is questioning everything they thought they knew, and is therefore following your instructions in hope that you'll give them answers. your play style therefore goes on to affect what chara learns from this experience and whether frisk is allowed to exist at all.
we don't get much input from frisk wrt their thoughts on this complex dynamic and their overall situation. we do get to hear a LOT from chara, though: on what they, as an rpg protagonist, think of us, their player (their "partner" whom they will listen to for the most part but will not hesitate to dunk on under very specific circumstances; they have a few more servile lines for dataminers that could be genuine or sarcastic).
we know how they, as an rpg PLAYER, feel about their journey in either ultimate ending: in the no mercy speech they explain how you've taught them that their purpose is to gain power. in the oft-overlooked post-pacifist conversation with flowey, we learn from him that chara worries for and loves the game's cast (one of the first things flowey does is reassure us and chara that everyone is okay), and that chara progressed through the game wanting to keep the underground safe from flowey's control (which is a story objective that a lot of players forget about).
(flowey also brings up that chara's power is now the only thing that can endanger the happy ending, and because he too understands game player mentality, expresses that it wouldn't surprise him if we have already gotten the happy ending and true reset before. wanting to relive an emotional journey and see a happy ending over and over is pretty common rpg player behavior, too.)
BASICALLY THIS IS JUST A REALLY COOL REALLY MESSED-UP CONCEPT AND I LOVE HOW TOBY EMPLOYED IT??? UNDERTALE IS A GOOD GAME AND I LOVE THAT IT INVITES YOU TO THINK ABOUT YOUR GAMING HABITS IN NEW WAYS NO MATTER WHAT THOSE HABITS ARE
this is something that i talked about on twitter last week and think is worth writing about in a little more depth here, so:
last week toby made some tweets about moon: remix rpg adventure and ways that its concepts helped inspire undertale despite that he'd never played it himself. there's a lot that you could talk about/analyze about the comparisons between those games, which i'll leave to someone who is familiar with or has actually played moon (i have not). the tl;dr version as relevant to what i want to talk about is that moon is a game that's designed to make rpg players think about rpg mechanics and conventions in a different light, i.e. "actually this thing i thought was ubiquitous and had accepted as normal is kinda screwed up upon second examination".
there's a lot of ways in which undertale does this with rpg mechanics and conventions, obviously, but i want to talk about chara and frisk because.............. i always want to talk about chara and frisk.
the more i think about it, the more convinced i become that the game mechanics relationship between chara and frisk is supposed to be a metaphor for the relationship between a game player and a traditional "silent" protagonist (or a protagonist with choosable dialogue).
rpg protagonists, even silent ones, usually have some form of canon character settings and personality. but because of the game structure, you are able to make them act in ways that completely contradict that canon personality. when you do this, you as the player are overwriting their personality, either with your own or at your whims.
wrt player-and-protagonist separation, tumblr user inverts once used link from the zelda series as an example, and he's a really good one so i'm going to borrow their comparison here. link has a canon identity and personality and he usually has a big world-saving goal. but whoever's holding the controller can ignore the fact that link is supposed to be a kind, brave young man with a strong sense of justice, and have him fritter away his time on minigames and attacking chickens instead of going to defeat ganondorf and save zelda. breath of the wild is a stellar example here because of its mind-boggling array of available distractions from the main quest. jokes about link faffing about still regularly cross my dashboard and twitter timeline. (case in point)
many essayists have already pointed out that chara seems to operate like a typical rpg player or protagonist; i like to link to gaytreasure's essay where they propose chara as morally gray/not good at empathy and misunderstanding the genre they're in, parsing monsters as the "good guys" they need to save, humans as the "bad guys" that must be destroyed, and themself as the main character who's supposed to fix everything a lot because it's good. to that i'd also like to add eevee's writeup here (cw for mention of pet death) where she points out that chara's behavior in returning to the surface while bodysharing with asriel, and specifically bringing their own corpse along, is very rpg player-ish: they are definitely out there to do some murders but they specifically wait for the enemy to attack first before they try to respond with lethal force.
if chara is an rpg player, then that makes frisk the character they're playing as. what happens to a silent main character when their player insists on playing them in a way that's completely out of character for them? the answer that undertale poses is grim: frisk fucks off in no mercy because this isn't something that they would do, because there's no room or leeway for them to exist in light of what you're having chara do with their body right now. chara's narration switches to first-person to reflect this, and flowey identifies that chara has "stolen" their body and soul.
on the other hand, the good ending for frisk is the one where the game acknowledges that they and chara are two separate people. the other characters learn their name, and they get to leave the underground in the land of happily ever after, where finished stories get to rest.
you, the player of undertale, the person sitting at the computer or console, are playing as chara, the protagonist of undertale. chara, meanwhile, is "playing as"/guiding frisk, the main character of undertale. frisk is chara's interface to the world of undertale, whereas chara is ours; frisk is just an npc to us.
this relationship is complicated by the fact that chara is a traditional rpg player/protagonist who has just been confronted with the total failure of Normal RPG Logic and is questioning everything they thought they knew, and is therefore following your instructions in hope that you'll give them answers. your play style therefore goes on to affect what chara learns from this experience and whether frisk is allowed to exist at all.
we don't get much input from frisk wrt their thoughts on this complex dynamic and their overall situation. we do get to hear a LOT from chara, though: on what they, as an rpg protagonist, think of us, their player (their "partner" whom they will listen to for the most part but will not hesitate to dunk on under very specific circumstances; they have a few more servile lines for dataminers that could be genuine or sarcastic).
we know how they, as an rpg PLAYER, feel about their journey in either ultimate ending: in the no mercy speech they explain how you've taught them that their purpose is to gain power. in the oft-overlooked post-pacifist conversation with flowey, we learn from him that chara worries for and loves the game's cast (one of the first things flowey does is reassure us and chara that everyone is okay), and that chara progressed through the game wanting to keep the underground safe from flowey's control (which is a story objective that a lot of players forget about).
(flowey also brings up that chara's power is now the only thing that can endanger the happy ending, and because he too understands game player mentality, expresses that it wouldn't surprise him if we have already gotten the happy ending and true reset before. wanting to relive an emotional journey and see a happy ending over and over is pretty common rpg player behavior, too.)
BASICALLY THIS IS JUST A REALLY COOL REALLY MESSED-UP CONCEPT AND I LOVE HOW TOBY EMPLOYED IT??? UNDERTALE IS A GOOD GAME AND I LOVE THAT IT INVITES YOU TO THINK ABOUT YOUR GAMING HABITS IN NEW WAYS NO MATTER WHAT THOSE HABITS ARE