Challenging the player
Like many, I consider myself a fan of Undertale and Deltarune. I think they're very lovingly-made, are excellent examples of video games as artistic media, and are very funny (except when they decide to be terrifying). I love that no matter what choices are made, the games become a very frank conversation with the person playing them, for as long as they choose to keep engaging with it.
One of the choices that needs to be made in every playthrough of Undertale, rather famously, is the choice of whether to kill or not kill. As the release trailer describes it, Undertale is a game "where nobody has to die." By default, the gameplay and narrative challenge the player to try to end each of the game's many encounters without either side being killed. However, the option to fight is always available. In each battle Undertale asks, "What will you do? Will you attack them?" And each time, the player must make a descision to answer that question. How the game will respond from there depends on what those answers are, and from this, dialogue is born.
Naturally, the game has a very different response to the player who decides that they will kill and kill and kill until there's nothing left. In the Extermination (or genocide) Route, the game's next question becomes "What will make you stop taking this path?" To a degree, it's a very successful dialogue. I've heard that many who attempt to play the route reach what is normally the boss fight against Papyrus, and find that they've hit their limit.
If the player chooses to continue the path, the game eventually asks a new question: "Is this you?"
And then, very famously, the route ends with a boss fight against Sans, who breaks the premise of every mechanic in the game, just to make the battle longer, harder, and more unfair for the player, with the explicit intent of frustrating them into giving up. At the end of his fight, he says the following:
"Because you can, you have to" is one of the two biggest conclusions that the game reaches in the conversation had with a player that plays through the entirety of the Extermination Route. Why else would anybody choose to do so?
I've never played the Extermination Route myself. Never wanted to, for multiple reasons, among them the sheer difficulty of the fights against Sans and Undyne the Undying (the game's other superboss) as well as just emotional attachment. But I've always loved that bit of dialogue from Sans. It's such a direct challenge to the completionist mindset that's common among people who play video games. After all, it's not like the game does anything to trick you into doing all of this, right? It's entirely the conscious choice of the player.
Fast forward to about a month after chapters 3 and 4 of Deltarune were released, when the nature of Undertale's Extermination Route became a point of discussion in a Discord server I'm in.
i dunno i thought it was sort of weird to the genocide's route message to be "you're kind of a bad person for wanting to experience the harder fights".
you could just as easily make that case for the normal route, though. why else play it if you aren't interested in seeing it. [...] "the content exists, thus you feel you must" [...] worked okay the first time, but i don't think that trick works again
At the time, I argued against the two that said this. But in the weeks since, I've given some serious thought about it. Before, I could really only see the difficulty of the bosses as a deterrant from continuing. And perhaps they still are, to some degree. But for some people, the difficulty of the fights is the incentive. Logically, I knew that all along, but somehow I never really thought to frame Sans's words in light of that context and how it comes across as a trick.
...
For weeks, my intent for this post was to end this preliminary rambling with calling the above screencaps a major misstep in Undertale's presentation, and then follow up with the next part of the post's thesis, that Deltarune's Weird Route (and, by the same token, Chapter 3's Sword Route) manages to overcome the stumbling block that the Extermination Route trips over. But as I continue to turn all these thoughts over in my head as I write them down, I come to realize something. Can it really be called a misstep in Undertale's conversation, when the player has already spoiled themself over part of what the Extermination Route demands of them? Likewise, is it right to claim the game is tricking the player by saying "Because you can, you have to," when Undertale was not expecting the player to intentionally seek out the superboss fights for the sake of fighting them?
The answer to both of those questions is, in my opinion, "no." Each of Undertale's conversations are meant to be with someone who engages with each part of the game blindly, not knowing any aspect of what happens ahead of time. If the player isn't playing blind, whether because they spoiled themselves or because it's a repeated playthrough, then they're not having the same conversation as the game anymore.
So I guess that whole angle's kind of a moot point.
I do still think Weird Route is a better execution of the conversation though. The fact that none of Deltarune's superbosses are exclusive to it is a major point in its favor. Seeking a new and dificult challenge is no longer a justification one can have for engaging with that facet of the game. Admittedly, Chapter 2 has the wrinkle of a mandatory 1-on-1 fight against Spamton NEO, but it's hardly impossible to set that up on the normal route as well, if you're determined enough.
The fact that Deltarune is split into chapters and being released episodically is another way it strengthens the conversation.
Chapter 4 marks the halfway point of Deltarune, and it's still very much not clear what Weird Route is leading up to. Over the course of the Weird Route thus far, the player severely injures Berdley, emotionally manipulates Noelle into being dependent on them, and gives Kris ample reason to openly despise them. And for what? Will Weird Route significantly change the ending? Or at all? And if it does, will it somehow make the ending better and more satisfying for anybody involved, the player included?
We don't know at this point.
So then why do it?
Why incite violence, misery, and abuse?
Chapter 3's Sword Route is also very interesting. It's inclusion has no bearing on Weird Route, beyond providing diagetic hints on it's existence (THE FORBIDDEN PATH BEGAN WITH ICE MAGIC). It's also not clear at first what the purpose of its inclusion is. Ramb claims that Sword Route is what Kris really wants: freedom. But the only thing it seems to provide in the beginning is an avenue to cause pixelated violence, and experience nightmarish imagery (I do not believe for a single second that it's a coincidence that GLACIER sounds so similar to Face Shrine). It's not until the end of the final session that the game reveals what the reward at the end of it all is.
Until the above line is shown, there's next to no indication that the Shadow Mantle is even obtainable in Chapter 3, let alone via this method. So why continue?
And even then, all the Shadow Mantle really does is make the chapter superboss a little easier. For those seeking hard fights, it's really to the player's benefit to avoid Sword Route entirely, ironically enough.
This, in turn, raises another question: What is collecting the Shadow Crystals even for, anyway? What will they accomplish if collected? Because we still don't know the answer to that either...
These games are endlessly fascinating to me. I can't wait to see what comes next.