I have a question about a troubling possibility that has occurred to me about a video game, namely Undertale. The game is a deconstruction of RPG games, and ones of the endings is reached by murdering everyone in the game. This ending, called the genocide run, is truly difficult to achieve, due to the way that many of the character beg and plead for the lives; not just with the character, but with the player as well. There’s another weird thing which happens in this route, where your character mentions that the character's soul does not exist, and explicitly makes it clear it is the player’s soul driving things.
After killing everyone, the game world is destroyed, and the game displays a blank screen rather than any kind of menu. This remains even after resetting the game.
There is no way to replay it, as everything is gone; however, if you wait for ten minutes on the blank screen, the game will offer to restore the world in exchange for your soul. You have no character (since the entire world is gone, character included); and the game repeatedly breaks the fourth wall, and has some weird lines where your character says they don’t have a soul but the player does, all of which raises a very troubling question: when people accept the game’s offer to restore the world in exchange for their soul, what happens? Is it possible for people to actually accidentally sell their souls by doing this?
Given the game was released in September of 2015 and was an immediate success, shortly before things started getting really creepy and weird, it seems like it could explain a lot if even just a small fraction of the people who played it did in fact accidentally sell their souls.....
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branchandroot
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Date: 2023-03-20 04:14 am (UTC)After killing everyone, the game world is destroyed, and the game displays a blank screen rather than any kind of menu. This remains even after resetting the game.
There is no way to replay it, as everything is gone; however, if you wait for ten minutes on the blank screen, the game will offer to restore the world in exchange for your soul. You have no character (since the entire world is gone, character included); and the game repeatedly breaks the fourth wall, and has some weird lines where your character says they don’t have a soul but the player does, all of which raises a very troubling question: when people accept the game’s offer to restore the world in exchange for their soul, what happens? Is it possible for people to actually accidentally sell their souls by doing this?
Given the game was released in September of 2015 and was an immediate success, shortly before things started getting really creepy and weird, it seems like it could explain a lot if even just a small fraction of the people who played it did in fact accidentally sell their souls.....