Both of these games have the same basic message and goal - to put a magnifying glass to violence in video games and...

Both of these games have the same basic message and goal - to put a magnifying glass to violence in video games and make you question why you play violent games. Which did it better?

Undertale because you actually had a choice in your actions

That's not what spec op's message was, idiot.
And I doubt undertale had a message at all.

Defiantly this. Spec Ops made it so "You could always just shut off the game" which was retarded. Undertale never forced your hand for Genocide and you had several opportunities to quit.

That being said, I don't think either were pushing that message you stated.

>"choice" boiled down to a shitty bethesda black and white morality choice
No fucking thank you.

>That's not what spec op's message was, idiot.

Yes, it literally is. What did you think it was about?

But it wasn't black and white. Neutral path was an option. If you killed nearly everyone but one person the game didn't treat you bad at all.

>its ok to play games where you beat the shit out of people and slaughter them
>OH NO YOU CAN'T RAPE PEOPLE IN VIDYA WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU

Can someone explain this meme to me?

It was about the horrors of war and how it unleashes man's most inner demons. You dumb nigger.
What the fuck ever made you think it was about violence in video games, by being a super violent video game? Wouldn't that just be hypocritical you stupid fuck? Use your underdeveloped undertale loving brain you goatfucker.
>kill everyone except one person
>this passes as neutral
Trash.

This

>b-but you always had the option of turning the game off!

>What the fuck ever made you think it was about violence in video games, by being a super violent video game? Wouldn't that just be hypocritical you stupid fuck?

Now you're just bitching for no reason. The game gives you choices with all varying degrees of grayness, despite how poor some of those are done.

>Use your underdeveloped undertale loving brain you goatfucker.
Oh you're just a shitposter.

>Now you're just bitching for no reason. The game gives you choices with all varying degrees of grayness, despite how poor some of those are done.
Good for it, and I can be a dick in fallout 3 "sometimes" too, maybe if any of the conclusions were sensible or coherent undertale wouldn't be a shit game for child hipsters.
Or maybe if the gameplay wasn't shit.
Or maybe if the visuals weren't shit.
Or maybe if there was anything good about that game aside from "m-muh decisions!" despite the fact only the far white and far black endings are noteworthy.
You should be the one reading nerd, this game was based off a book, not a book about the glorification of violence in books, but also a book about the glorification of war.

Depends.

I got it more from undertale because i like more earthbound-ish early final fantasy's wacky/colourfull characters.

My best friend got it more from Spec ops since he is more of a gun nut super into modern military games, in wich nobody even dared to ask if they were the bad guys.

Walt Williams, the lead writer, said it was meant as an attack on things like Call of Duty. There's a sequence in Spec Ops: The Line that is a direct riff on No Russian.

>Good for it, and I can be a dick in fallout 3 "sometimes" too
Except it's entirely different due to the length of the game and the Karma system/RPG progression put in place for Fallout 3.

>Or maybe if the gameplay wasn't shit.
>Or maybe if the visuals weren't shit.
All opinions. But disregarding this and getting back on topic, Undertale still had a choice in-game, whereas Spec Ops didn't.

Spec Ops, because it's not a game literally and intentionally made to directly appeal to children.

as much as fucking hate it?

undertale did it WAY better

it provided actual choices and called the player out on their actions in a slightly less cringey way

>It was about the horrors of war and how it unleashes man's most inner demons. You dumb nigger.
barely. it wanted to badly to be Heart of Darkness but just came across as embarrassing and heavyhanded

Unless you're Toby Fox, what makes you say that's how it was developed?

He's talking about how call of duty glorifies war by making it super cool and super badass.
The level of violence in call of duty games is minimal, they don't even have proper blood splatter. If he was making this an attack on violence in video games he should have picked doom or something, not a generic 'merica war game.
>Except it's entirely different due to the length of the game and the Karma system/RPG progression put in place for Fallout 3.
Same system, except it's easier to apply in a completely linear game and they still fucked it up.
>Undertale still had a choice in-game, whereas Spec Ops didn't.
That's because spec ops is a linear game and doesn't shy away from that fact. The pseudo-decisions are purely to make it seem like everything was avoidable to make your character's descent into madness easier to understand. It's not just generic "hurr decisions are cool so lets hamfist them in" bullshit like undertale.
Clearly not heavy-handed considering you fucking faggots thought it was about violence in video games.
Maybe it should have had the MC constantly going "oh no war is so bad", maybe then you faggots wouldn't misinterpret it completely.

both games are fucking shit
both of them have almost no good gameplay
and its all about "ugh so genius 4th wall break ecksdee"

i can sort of forgive spec ops because it had some points on the war side of things, but undertale is just a furry fag black and white morality meme game


meanwhile in 2001...

>i can sort of forgive spec ops because it had some points on the war side of things, but undertale is just a furry fag black and white morality meme game
i feel the opposite because at least undertale is self aware that it's a shitty meme anime game

spec ops played it completely straight with the "OOOOH WIHTE PHOSPHOROUS YOU'RE A MONSTER OOOOOOOOOOOH" and felt needlessly preachy because of it

considering the DEVELOPERS said it was about violence in videogames i'm not sure how we fags are wrong, fag

Maybe if your interpretations weren't consistently wrong you wouldn't have misinterpreted undertale as anything other than a shit game.

>Shoot this guy
>ok
>DUDE WHY'D YOU SHOOT THIS GUY LMAO

where did i say undertale was good? undertale being better than spec ops doesn't make it good

a really smelly turd is better than a not so smelly turd; but in the end, both are turds

Undertale isn't better than spec-ops. Atleast specops doesn't look like shit and play like a 2hu for retards. Undertale did nothing right except goat waifus and muh super deep morality where I'm either the angle of death or giving blowjobs to the final boss.

as stated before, there was a branching neutral path you could take.

i honestly prefer goat waifus and anime memes over "dude just turn off the game lmao" because it at least realizes it's a fucking game and "lol just turn it off" isn't a real answer

undertale is a shitty meme game but at the very least it understands and relishes that fact

spec ops takes itself far too seriously the whole time

They never said turn off the game, they said turn back, it wasn't aimed at you, it was aimed at your character. As the player you're obliged to live out your character's descent into madness.
IF ONLY YOU COULD UNDERSTAND SOMETHING SO BASIC AND SHALLOW, WITHOUT MISINTERPRETING EVERYTHING AND BEING A HUMONGOUS FAGGOT.

>doesn't realize "just turn back/turn it off" is being a humongous faggot
sure thing buddy

>Sup Forums now loves undertale

What happened?

There are like 9 variations of the neutral ending

Also there's a difference between a no mercy and a genocide run

like i feel that you've missed the point that's it a fucking videogame. it's interactive fiction. removing the interactivity part is the most retarded thing imaginable

a shitty game being slightly better than another shitty game doesn't mean people "love" it

stop trying to counter this 'argument' that nobody is making

the cycle completed its course and teens who hated it to be edgy went on to talk about how good FFVIII is

Both are honestly really great games for different reasons and stand above the horde of third person crap and indie turn based crap, respectively.

If I had to pick one, probably spec ops, just because I enjoyed the style more. OP's wording is just bait, I don't think they're anti-violence as much as pro-consequence.

I think it's more interesting looking at games that fail at deconstruction. I recently played Superhot.
It takes control away from the player, but in an annoying way. In Spec Ops, I would of used the phosphorus, even if it was a choice. In Superhot your character goes full retard for some reason not properly explained and it just pisses you off. Not to mention, the basic gameplay is weak as fuck due to shitty level design and a few shitty design decisions.

>Sup Forums is one person
> Before the launch
The thread isn't even praising Undertale you chucklefuck. It's saying it did one thing better than another medicore game.

>removing the interactivity part is the most retarded thing imaginable
You still play the game faggot, not every game needs a pretentious "decision making" system like undertale which completely substitutes actual gameplay and leaves nothing more than a mediocre "chose your own adventure" novel for preteens.

>You still play the game faggot
IT LITERALLY SUGGESTS YOU STOP PLAYING
STOP BEING THICK ON PURPOSE

I guess I expected a troll to stoke the discussion in an interesting way or something but this is boring and retarded, I'm out

Neither of those games do that. Spec Ops is more in line with MGS2, but less broad, while Undertale is more in line with Dark Souls, but less subtle.

It's not suggesting you stop playing, it's suggesting your character turns back.
There's a huge difference, you dumb fucking nerd.

>it's suggesting your character turns back
it really isn't but let's pretend it is, even for a moment
THAT'S STILL RETARDED
IT'S STILL SUGGESTING YOU CEASE PROGRESSION

>Both of these games have the same basic message and goal - to put a magnifying glass to violence in video games and make you question why you play violent games.

No it fucking didn't you god damn moron.

Undertale never bashed you in the head with "killing virtual characters is bad guyz :////". People have just reacted realistically to you being a genocidal maniac, they ran away and they told you that they absolutely hate you. They haven't even broke the 4th wall, not even Sans - they were either directly talking to Frisk, or they had a vague idea of the player's existence (as Chara), but not a full understanding. Not every action of an NPC directly correlates to some kind of meta-narrative message.

>IT'S STILL SUGGESTING YOU CEASE PROGRESSION
No, you fucking mongoloid. How are you literally this stupid?
How is anything that your character does "progress"?
There is no turning back from the path of madness and destruction, the game makes that explicitly clear by never giving you an out.

>Caring about an shitty Cave Story rip off

Don't say that.
Atleast cave story had gameplay and good art style.

>If he was making this an attack on violence in video games he should have picked doom or something, not a generic 'merica war game.

He chose Call of Duty because that series and similar modern war shooters were the #1 most popular games among normies at the time.

motherfucker did you just compare undertale with dark souls

dark souls is cynical, depressing, and touches on the nature of death and memories and other deep shit

undertale is just peace and happiness

I havent played The Line, so I don't know how on the nose it is, but I don't really see the criticism that the fact you don't have a choice somehow invalidates any message. You still watch, and is affected by, movies even though you don't have a chocie regarding the actions of a movie character, and a movie can still portray guilt etc even if the watcher had no influence over it.

No they don't
Neither of those games have that as a message

not the shitty lazy 2D game made in 3 weeks

This

Spec ops was one step away from Funny Games for pretentious finger waving

>make a game to mock generic action war games and the people who buy/play them
>flops because people think it's just another generic action war game

>being influenced by something means its a ripoff
Undertale is not a ripoff of Cave Story. They are VERY different games. You would be closer to say its a ripoff of Mother 3, or even Shin Megami Tensei, and you'd still be wrong.

*3 years

Are you 14? You sound 14.

some crimes are more morally accepted in vidya/movies/fiction than others

a game about ripping random people's heads off will get much less criticism than a game about kicking puppies or punching pregnant ladies in the stomach even though murder is objectively worse than those things

>to put a magnifying glass to violence in video games and make you question why you play violent games
other way around. SpOpsline applied a video game narrative to america's foreign policy, embodied by the self-righteous moron with a compulsive need to play hero, to make you question what the hell the US forces have been doing in the middle east for the past thirty years

wow autism

If you honestly can't discern what a person is thinking or understand their intents unless they tell you directly, you might have actual autism. Tobyfox is very open with his community and he has never even tried to obscure his motives.

Well, usually the head-ripping isn't completely senseless. A murder with some underlying motivation may carry a harsher punishment and is a more severe act in general than kicking a puppy, but morally it's not clear cut which is worse. A murder can have a motive, while kicking a puppy is pure sadism. And to be fair, most games are not about senseless killings but rather about soldiers/gangster/people who kill as a part of their job. The games in which you are allowed to kill indiscriminately, like GTA, have faced a lot of criticism over the year.

it wasn't actually i'm friends with a close friend of Toby's

he really, REALLY hates what the fandom became

he never meant for any of this

Well it tries to deconstruct the drab military shooter genre that was so popular at that time by questioning the player's (not just the character's) engagement in the game. At one point in particular, it tries to make you feel bad for killing a large amount of what turns out to be civilians, but it doesn't really give you a choice in the matter, so that point is rather controversial. The game is also intentionally tedious so as to mock the tedium of these types of games, test the player's endurance, and to a certain extent be more realistic, so that point is controversial as well as it's seen as "being shit on purpose."

The "idea" though is that its drawing light to paradoxes in the mentality of the player for choosing to engage and complete this game, not for the choices you make. Sup Forums doesn't understand it's a criticism of that because they are so unaware that they embody it

This summary beautifully embodies why Spec Ops: The Line is literally art.

Spec ops forces you to do the bad thing and says "look feel bad about this".

Undertale doesn't force you to do the bad thing.

So undertale.

>actually had a choice in your actions
And the bad choice is pulls the "but you were never truly in control" bullshit if you decide not to destroy the world, so it's full of shit.

You still chose to do it, even if there wasn't any other option

>kill everyone except one person
>you get a """neutral""" ending where the remaining person tells you how huge of a shithead you are

I mean I guess

>You still chose to do it, even if there wasn't any other option
That's not what choice is buckaroo.

>just shut the game off

>To question why you play violent games.

Because they're fun.

There are choices in Spec Ops so subtle you dont even realize its a choice, how is that a bad thing? If you mean a choice to kill or not I dont see how thats a criticism. It doesn't detract from the game so I dont see how this is Sup Forumss big trump card against spec ops.

The fact you believe you have no choice but to play the game through and still complain about it shows that you didn't get it

>>kill everyone except one person
>>you get a """neutral""" ending where the remaining person tells you how huge of a shithead you are
Well you would have to not kill two people technically. Spare some rando AND sans.

>The fact you believe you have no choice but to play the game through and still complain about it shows that you didn't get it
I didn't play it because its message falls flat on its face when if you play the game it forces you to do something and then spend the entire game shitting on you for it.

If you replace the word rape with torture the arguments are the same and people have always vilified games about torture. From Manhunt to GTA V and Hatred.

Undertale dissuades you from playing the good ending by making the game tedious and worse to play. And even when you go for the bad ending it tells you you should feel bad the whole way.

It's a point. Perhaps the game isn't attempting to criticise you for the choices you make in that particular game, but rather for playing games like it in general.

True. I guess that brings up my legitimate irk with the game:

>Call the evil path "Genocide route"
>Don't even come close to genociding the monsters thanks to Alphys

Can tell you didn't even fucking play the game

>Which did it better?
This one, by actually doing so through gameplay

You're criticizing a game you didn't even play?

>Undertale dissuades you from playing the good ending by making the game tedious and worse to play.
I assume that was a typo for the bad ending?

>And even when you go for the bad ending it tells you you should feel bad the whole way.
Sans says to stop killing people when you get to snowdin but that's it.

refute this

The problem is that Call of Duty is actually fun and we'll paced as a game, and Spec Ops sold like shit, so I guess the message utterly failed. Not surprised the only people I know who praise it are indie humping faggots who think Metal Gear is just anime spy games with waifushit and bad stealth.

Where do you think you are?

Yea, spec ops' story is the entirety of why someone would play it and I know the story. It's a decent message among shitty shooters but forcing people to be the shitty shooter and then shit on them for it is pretty stupid

>Undertale dissuades you from playing the good ending by making the game tedious and worse to play.
You mean compared to the grind of Genocide?
>when you go for the bad ending it tells you you should feel bad the whole way.
Do bad things and people will tell you they are bad. What a fucking surprise.

> but rather for playing games like it in general.
Which is a dumb-ass criticism. Only mentally ill people can't distinguish the difference between Reality and Fiction.

>>Call the evil path "Genocide route"
>>Don't even come close to genociding the monsters thanks to Alphys
You do genocide everyone though.

If you think Call of Duty is actually fun then Spec Ops was not made for you

They are both different kind of story. The line have a clear defined hero, Walker, while Undertale have a self-insert. While you're just a spectator who can influence some pointless thing in Spec Ops until the end where you judge Walker, in Undertale you can influence a lot of stuff.

I'll say Spec Ops was better written. It is a very good story of a descebt into madness while Undertale is carried by unlikable asshole. For exemole, why would I care about killing Papyrus? Is entire personnality is that he make puns and make you waste time with shitty puzzlr. I could google "skeleton pun" and end up with a more likable Papyrus.

The game also almost never consider that you're killing shit because you're enjoying the combat. No, you surely must do it because you want to get your oevel as high as possible or because you want to know what will happen.

I haven't played MGS2, but this guy is pretty close-minded for thinking games can't be as viable a medium as any to convey higher concepts and complex themes.

The fact that games give us direct interaction with the material they present in actuality allows for another level of introspection.

>Which is a dumb-ass criticism

The argument is not that you think the game is real (which would take a pretty severe mental illness) but rather that games like it desensitizes you to violence, which I think is true in some respect if you couple it with all the shit you see on the internet.

>I haven't played MGS2

Don't worry, the guy who wrote that clearly hasn't either.

Do people seriously think Spec Ops is bad or is it just the typical Sup Forums "only say negatives and try to argue with detractors" meme? Because there is a lot of subtleties in the game's design that all work to support its overall goal and fuck with your head. Ignoring everything the game does gracefully just to say
>WOW IT DOESN'T LET ME NOT KILL PEOPLE
Is pretty dumb. In this context letting the player be passive would require an entire potentially unseen half of the game and wouldn't actually improve anything at all for the tone of the game. There is still a good amount of well designed and natural choices that aren't menu selections and are done through gameplay that all affect the endings.

Are you guys seriously just mad you were forced into a scripted sequence, like any other modern shooting game does? If anything you cant see how its potentially supposed to be like overly scripted and linear shooters for the sake of subverting expectations? I get a lot of people may genuinely not like this design choice but it reeks of Sup Forums contrarionism to me. It's like you guys think you outsmarted the "twist" and are going against it by saying "yea, well maybe I didn't want to kill them at all!" It's a fucking shooter, the natural instinct of a player is to put a crosshair on a target and make it dead. Given that player expectation what they did works.

Undertale because you could actually make a choice, and the gulf between the paths means that they all supplement each other well when looking at the big picture. The game mechanics also compliment the message, using damage avoidance as the skill set needed to progress in the game can be considered similar to other games like Theif, in which non-violent playthroughs are also popular.

>Where do you think you are?
Nice meme but there is literally not a single artistic medium in which "I already know the story so there's no reason to consume the work itself" is a valid sentiment.

Since Alphys had been watching you, she ran away and evacuated as much as she could before you got to her.

She eventually kills herself without Mettaton, Undyne, or Asgore to help her, and presumably the other monsters either die out or can't regroup enough to escape, but you don't kill them.

I choose neither.

Eh, what, through Chara 99999999999999999999'ing the screen? That's just a hard reset, there's no mention of anything along the lines of "oh yeah I know where that fat lizard took all the other monsters, I'm gonna blenderize those fucks", he just fucks with you and then you start it all over again.