Some Kind of Wonderful

It's no secret I think Undertale is a masterpiece of gaming. The storyline, the NPCs, the attention to detail. It's nothing short of brilliant. The gaming community seems to agree. For once I feel vindicated.

I've been a fan of the RPG genre since before I understood how to play them. I'd get wrecked in Might and Magic by the AI programming of 1991. It took till Zelda (A Link to the Past) before I figured out how to properly adventure. And then was sealed forever by Final Fantasy VII (yeah, VI was better, but VII happened at the right time in my adolescence).

I still suck at Might and Magic. Also Warcraft, Starcraft, Mario, any FPS...well, honestly all games.

Anyway.

I'm worried that our man Toby Fox will be forever judged against this Undertale game. And that's not fair. Yes, it's an amazing piece of work. It's going to be tough to top.

Can he do it? Sure. No doubt.

Will it happen? Now that's the 64000G question. But I think a huge percentage is up to gamers.

We're all going to have expectations from here on out that it's going to be damn near impossible for Toby Fox to do new things. We're all expecting another Undertale, right? Branching storyline. Consequences based on actions. Let's call it, "Undertale 2: The Surface".

I mean, why change a formula for success (coughCall of DutycoughHalocoughGears of WarcoughMaddencough)?

We all love it when a new game steps brilliantly out of bounds from its predecessors and makes a completely new statement about what games can be.

But only that first time...

The Legend of Zelda, amazing.

The Adventure of Link, mostly hated.

Super Mario Bros., saved the video game industry.

Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA), panned.

The Matrix, sci-fi masterpiece.

The Matrix 2 and 3, OK, I can't really defend these.

What I'm advocating here that there's going to be changes in the next games Toby Fox makes. And we should go into these games with fresh minds, and fresh ideas, not expecting to see the same things over again, even if we want to.

After all, aren't the changes and the new concepts what we fell in love with in the first place?