The interactive nature of video games presents an exciting opportunity to tell stories in new and innovative ways. Unlike a book, which remains the same every time you read it, video games respond to the player’s decisions. You can replay a game again and again, each time unlocking new scenes, new mechanics, and new content. In Susan Sontag’s 1966 essay Against Interpretation, Sontag argues that excessive interaction with an artwork’s content results in the diminishment of its emotional impact. Sontag claims that the immediate emotional response to artwork, or its “sensuous surface,” is more valuable than any intellectual significance a critic may prescribe to it (9). Sontag wrote her essay in the age of video games like Tennis for Two and Pong, but modern games present an interesting lens through which to view her argument. Today, video games are often created to generate new content on repeat playthroughs. This design philosophy seems inherently at odds with Sontag’s stance on media consumption. Undertale, an Indie video created by Toby Fox in 2015, offers commentary on the way players interact with video games. Like Sontag, Undertale cautions that intellectualization of a text can dull the initial emotional experience of consuming it. However, Undertale is also a multifaceted game which must be analyzed in order to reach its most emotionally impactful conclusion. Thus, Undertale acknowledges that excessive interpretation can lead to apathy towards art, but also argues that interpretation is necessary and may heighten the emotional experience of consuming art.
Undertale has a simple premise: long ago, monsters and humans lived in harmony. War broke out between the two races, and the humans sealed all monsters away in an underground cave. The protagonist is a human child who falls into the Underground at the start of the game that must traverse the world of monsters in order to return home. Undertale puts a twist on this familiar premise by portraying monsters not as savage beasts, but as people. You can play Undertale like a typical video game, slaughtering monsters to level up and become more powerful. You can also choose to befriend the foes that you encounter. You do not have to kill a single monster to beat Undertale– in fact, you get the “good ending” by sparing every enemy you face.
Most modern video games have “save points,” where the player can save their progress in case they quit or die in-game. In many games, you can also “reload” a save file to re-attempt a portion of the game if you made a mistake. In Undertale, the ability to “save” and “load” the game is diegetic. Reloading a save file is literally a form of time travel in-universe. Undertale incorporates this mechanic into its plot through its primary antagonist, Flowey. Flowey is the reincarnation of a young boy who died under tragic circumstances. He has no soul, so he cannot feel love or empathy. He has been “reloading” the world he inhabits, traveling back in time with the goal of being intellectually entertained. At the heart of this pursuit is the desire to experience emotion as he did when he was alive. Flowey has no moral code; he lies, murders, and manipulates for entertainment. In imposing his own will on the world he inhabits, Flowey becomes the personification of Sontag’s thesis. Sontag argues that interpretation is an expression of dissatisfaction with the work; a desire for the text to be something other than what it is. In prescribing meaning to a text, audiences can interact with it intellectually while ignoring emotional content that makes them uncomfortable. This allows one to view emotionally evocative art as nothing other than content. Flowey’s relationship with the world he inhabits parallels Sontag’s definition of excessive intellectualization of art. Devoid of emotion and fueled by an intense longing for reality to be other than what it is, Flowey views the world of Undertale as content. This attitude has turned him into a (metaphorical) monster.
As previously mentioned, Undertale reacts to the decisions the player makes. If you choose to spare all the enemies you face, you get the best ending: the protagonist befriends everyone and the benevolent monster race is freed from the Underground. Undertale’s design encourages pacifism by making it fun to spare enemies. Each encounter becomes a puzzle where the player placates monsters through a series of playful interactions. Killing enemies, on the other hand, is boring, repetitive, and meaningless. To get the “bad ending,” the player must murder every monster in the underground. The game’s humor and whimsy are replaced with the tedious act of violence, interspersed with punishingly difficult boss battles which are often more frustrating than fun. The No-Mercy route sees the player treating Undertale as content, rather than as art. The player distances themself from the emotional significance of the violence they are committing with the intent of wringing every last drop of content from the game. The player’s willingness to do the No-Mercy route demonstrates what Sontag refers to as “the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone” (5). Perhaps you enjoyed –or even loved– Undertale the first time you played it. After having a positive emotional experience with the game, you return to it in hopes of feeling the way you did the first time. However, a second playthrough offers only a pale imitation of the emotional experience you once had. Undertale draws a comparison between the player and the antagonist, Flowey. You play the emotionally hollow No-Mercy route in the pursuit of new content, an attitude which Sontag specifically condemns: “Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art” (10). Like Flowey, the No-Mercy player views Undertale as intellectual entertainment, becoming apathetic towards a once-beloved game in order to justify the violent play style they now approach it with. This apathy is proof of Sontag’s argument. When you treat Undertale as content in the No-Mercy route, the game becomes dry, frustrating, and devoid of emotional substance.
Undertale and Sontag agree that treating art as content reduces its emotional impact, but they have different philosophies on the role of interpretation. In the “good” ending, the player frees their monster friends from the Underground. Achieving this ending requires the player to be an active participant in the game’s narrative. If you approach Undertale without thinking critically about its anti-violence messaging, you will probably kill enemies as you would in a typical video game. Undertale has 93 “neutral” endings, where some enemies were killed and others spared. These melancholy, inconclusive endings encourage the player to reset Undertale and replay it nonviolently, a message which must be interpreted to be understood. On a repeat playthrough, you are rewarded with new scenes, befriend new characters, and ultimately achieve the emotionally resonant “good” ending where the monsters are freed from the Underground. If the power to reset the game represents excessive intellectualization of art in the No-Mercy route, here it represents positive and beneficial analysis of fiction. Therein lies the difference between Undertale and Sontag’s attitudes towards interpretation. Sontag believes that interpretation reflects an arrogant desire to alter the text. Her essay portrays all interpretation as an obfuscation of the evocative, emotional nature of art. She goes so far as to claim that interpretation “destroys (art); it digs “behind” the text, to find a sub-text which is the true one” (Sontag 4). Undertale contradicts Sontag’s argument by proving that analysis of subtext can reveal beautiful and evocative thematic content. It is only through interpretation of the text that the player accesses Undertale’s most emotionally compelling conclusion. The player who appreciates only the “sensuous surface” of Undertale would miss the emotional catharsis of the good ending.
The good ending of Undertale allegorically represents a beneficial interpretation of fiction, but actual analysis of Undertale’s subtext is also emotionally impactful. Sontag recommends that we analyze art through a descriptive lens. She says that art analysis should focus on describing immediately obvious characteristics rather than digging for deeper meanings (Sontag 8). A surface level description of Undertale’s themes and imagery reveals humor and a touching story about the power of friendship. These obvious takeaways are part of Undertale’s “sensuous surface.” Deeper interpretation of Undertale’s subtext reveals details which make this surface level content much more compelling. For example, nostalgia is a prevalent theme in Undertale that must be interpreted to be understood. All major characters in Undertale are afflicted with a deep dissatisfaction with the current state of their lives, and for many, this dissatisfaction is manifest in a longing to return to the past. One such example is Toriel, a motherly character who offers her home to the young protagonist at the start of the game. She provides respite from your perilous journey, but the player must leave Toriel to advance the story. Your departure upsets her greatly. She insists that the Underground is dangerous, and the only way to avoid certain death is to live with her forever. Much later in the game, it is revealed that Toriel is grieving the loss of two dead children. In keeping the protagonist in her home, Toriel was doing more than simply being an overprotective mother– she was attempting to recreate the happy life she once shared with her family. It is never stated that Toriel longs to return to the past, or even that she is grieving the loss of her children. These defining traits, which add so much pathos to the character of Toriel, must be interpreted to be understood. The theme of nostalgia connects Toriel to other characters who face similar predicaments, and moreover, connects the characters to the player. The player’s resetting and replaying Undertale can be construed as a form of nostalgia, as you do so to return to a game that you enjoyed in the past. Additionally, Undertale’s music and art are inspired by videogames from the early 21st century. Undertale invokes nostalgia in the player by reminding them of older titles, such as Earthbound and The Legend of Zelda. Interpreting the thematic significance of nostalgia clarifies character motivations, connects disparate parts of the game, and makes the player feel personally connected to Undertale. This interpretation does not, as Sontag says, “deplete the world in order to set up a shadow world of “meanings” (Sontag 4). Rather, analyzing Undertale’s subtext makes the surface level messaging, imagery, and story more emotionally impactful. If one were to follow Sontag’s advice and examine Undertale only descriptively, all of this evocative subtext could be entirely disregarded.
Susan Sontag’s 1966 essay Against Interpretation argues that treating art as content reduces its emotional impact. 49 years after Sontag’s essay was published, the indie game Undertale would provide similar commentary on the nature of players’ relationship with video games. Although Sontag and Undertale explore similar themes, they differ in their stance on interpretation. Sontag believes that critical analysis of art is inherently prescriptive, and that it undermines the emotional significance of the work. Undertale, on the other hand, embraces interpretation wholeheartedly. Undertale’s player must analyze the game in order to experience it in its entirety, as the “good” and “bad” ending both cannot be accessed by playing passively. Moreover, the thematic significance of violence, nostalgia, and apathy towards art can only be understood through analysis. Excessive intellectualization may lead to seeing art as content, but Undertale proves that engaging with subtext may reveal moving themes and ideas which could have otherwise gone unnoticed.