AWKWARD ZOMBIE

That never happens for "no particular reason". The most prominent examples are Your Best Friend and Undertale (the song), and Your Best Friend is used in relation to Flowey/Asriel, while Undertale is used in relation to the deeper story. There's also things like ASGORE containing parts of Heartache, which is only natural, too.

Yeah and like Riku said, it's to create a cohesiveness within the soundtrack. bodaciously every composer for a movie/show/game does it. Legend of Zelda? Check. Shadow of the Colossus? Check. Okami? You get the idea.

I really would prefer not to consider it all to be for the sake of nostalgia.

Other than that, you make a convincing argument.


I mentioned that there were exceptions that make those particular tracks sound better.
Don't even try to argue that Dummy! having the exact same melody as Spider Dance or the normal battle theme just being a variation of Dogsong (which at the same time is exactly the same as Tem Shop) is "natural" or "part of the deeper story".

Dogsong is a variation of the normal battle theme because it is a battle theme. And Tem Shop is just meant to sound silly, and Dogsong would obviously be a good choice for that,

Dummy! being similar to Ghost Fight does make sense, but you're right, its similarities to Spider Dance do kinda lack sense. However, I do think both songs are different enough from each other to stand out on their own.

Also, I think it's pretty cool how Song That Might Play When You Fight Sans contains parts of Nyeh Heh Heh! as well as Gaster's Theme.

... Dummy and Spider Dance don't have the same melody? At least as far as I can tell, they're pretty unique songs. Dummy and Ghost Fight have the same melody, but they're also bodaciously the same song with minor changes, and that's because they're both fights against a ghost with different tones. Specifically, Ghost Fight is slower and a bit more whimsical because Napstablook is Napstablook, and it comes back as Dummy much faster and serious because the Dummy is furious.

And Dogsong is a variation on the battle theme, because it's the battle theme... for a dog. Tem Shop is a variation on it because it's a shop run by Temmie, who is a normal enemy and thus is represented by the normal battle theme otherwise.

Like, they all tie into each other because that's... how music works for a consistent experience. Similar themes are used for similar things. It's one of the key ways to reinforce when things are similar, especially at times when it's trying to be implied and not directly said. All these things have a direct connection to each other, and that's reflected in the music.

I have no idea what you're complaining about, because of all the games to get upset that the same thing is getting used repeatedly, you picked the one where every variation has a different tone and theme and isn't simply repeating the exact same song for multiple situations.

I'm on the side of considering it makes a cohesive soundtrack.
I do have to point out that "Ghost Fight"/"Dummy!" do have part of "Spider Dance", or the other way around (0:25 in "Ghost Fight", 0:30 for "Dummy!", 0:33 for "Spider Dance").
And I personally find "Spider Dance" to be quite lazy: the pattern it starts with, is repeated 3 times, before doing something else. It has a variation in the instruments, but I don't find it effective with the instruments chosen (only very "retro" chiptunes).

i just finished true pacifist

holy fucking shit

that was the best anything in any game i've ever played, no joke.

my plan pre-playing the game was to do a genocide run after this and then doing whatever i had to do to un-corrupt the pacifist ending (Because fuck Chara i'm not letting the dick control me just because i played a third of the game), but i just...i can't do it, man. Just resetting the save file would take a whole lot of willpower, and i don't think i could get through the ruins.

Got this game on Friday and spent the whole weekend playing it. Honestly one of my favorite games of the year(which isn't saying much considering how little games have been coming out, but still).
I played having no idea what this game was, I just knew it had a lot of hype built up around it. I first did a neutral run, I think at least. Then I did the true pacifist, and finished with genocide. I played the game for a total of about 20 hours and bodaciously about five of those hours, minimum, was spent on the boss fight with Sans. Is it bad that by the end of that boss fight, I felt no guilt for killing him? I've never played too many JRPGs in the past, so a bullet hell to that degree was new to me. I've never felt a larger burst of happiness than when I finally won the fight.

Yes they do, listen to them again. Similarly, Spear of Justice has the leitmotif from the Ruins music for seemingly no reason. Another shared leitmotif I don't really like is how two of the dating tracks and all of the shop themes are basically remixes of Snowy/ Snowdin. I know it makes sense since the first date is in Snowdin, and the first shop as well, but I wish the other shops and dates had other themes, maybe taking leitmotifs from other tracks.
Apart from that I really enjoy the shared leitmotifs. They add to the cohesive storytelling through a different medium. Some of them are also pretty subtle, such as Gaster's theme in STMPWYFS, Alphys' theme in the True Lab music, or Burn in Despair! using You Idiot's leitmotif.

Also Aquabat said nothing about Dummy and Ghost Battle being the same lol

I was just pointing that out as another instance of good leitmotif usage.

I'm kind of afraid to go through this thread and accidentally see spoilers or something, but I just wanted to mention that Noffletoff and I really got into Undertale after we played through the demo.

I can't believe that we accidentally killed goat mom, omfg I was about to burst into tears. And so we immediately reset the game, BUT OH MY GOD NO WHAT THAT FLOWER THING KNEW WE KILLED HER AND THE GAME KNEW WE RESET. I was terrified.

But yeah! This game is cool and fun, and wow it's so great that it's so popular.

I can't believe how many people didn't listen to the frog

I can't believe how many people are being uppity elitist snobs about a choice/accident made in a video game

and let's not forget that another frog told you that sometimes you might have to fight a monster and 'almost defeat them' to make them not want to fight

and that the game surprises you with a scripted one-hit-kill critical hit

Mild comments made in jest are elitist? okay


That happens all the time though. With every nonboss monster.


That only happens in Genocide
Unless you're referring to the critical hit that happens if you hit Toriel repeatedly

You're forgetting that one of the tag lines of this game is "Can you show mercy without fighting or running away...?"