So, if you haven’t played "Undertale," this is part of the article where I join the hype train and tell you that you should. It’s a fun and relatively short role-playing game that’s fantastically written, and it’s also one of the funniest games I’ve ever played. The greatness of "Undertale" goes beyond humor, though; it also serves as a critique of the Machiavellian notion of conquering Fortuna, and the Nietzchean Übermensch.
Spoiler Alert: This article spoils all three of the three possible endings of the game, so if you haven’t played through them yet, you should probably do that first.
Now, before we dive into "Undertale," let me refresh your memory on what that philosophical jargon means. In his writing, Machiavelli attempts to dismantle the ancient understanding of Fortuna, or the idea that humankind’s best efforts will always be limited by our circumstances. Machiavelli didn’t believe that Fortuna was something that people had to accept, and so he argued for the conquering of Fortuna through force ("The Prince" is then a guide for how a ruler is to overcome Fortuna). At the core of Nietzchean philosophy is the concept of the Übermensch, or the “Overman.” The Übermensch is a man who exerts his will to power over all those around him, dominating them so that they serve his purposes. Nietzsche came up with the Übermensch in response to Modernism’s failure to prove the existence of an objective morality, and conceptually, the Übermensch represents the idea that in the absence of objective morality, all that matters is how much stronger one person’s “will to power” is compared to another’s (or to paraphrase Plato, justice becomes the advantage of the stronger).
Getting back to "Undertale," Machiavelli’s concept of Fortuna is represented through the concept of DETERMINATION, which your character is filled with any time they visit a save point in the game. You discover at the end of the Genocide route that DETERMINATION is what allows you to reset your timeline to your last save, and you have a conversation with Flowey, who used to be able to reset time in this way before your character came along. This ability to reset time is the ultimate method of conquering Fortuna, but the game shows the negative consequences of this ability when it tells us Flowey’s story.
Flowey was a flower injected with DETERMINATION by Alphys, the royal scientist, and it came to life after being injected. This flower contained part of Asriel’s soul, a monster who was the prince of the underground, and he was brought back to life as a sentient flower. Flowey was rejected by his mother and father, Toriel and Asgore, and his isolation led him into a deep depression, causing him to commit suicide. But as Flowey neared the brink of death, he realized that he didn’t want to die, and then he reappeared back at the beginning of his life as a flower. He then realized that he could reset his own timeline by bringing himself to the brink of death, and after a while, he began to use his ability to manipulate people, developing sociopathic tendencies. His ability to completely conquer Fortuna led him to a state of moral depravity, and he lost the ability to see people as anything but tools for his personal gain.
The Nietzschean Übermensch is also shown through DETERMINATION, as the ultimate realization of the Übermensch’s potential. Nietzsche’s Übermensch was able to overcome most human limitations through his will to power, but even he couldn’t overcome death. DETERMINATION allows your character to persist beyond even death, and when combined with your character’s domination over the lives of the monsters on the Genocide route, your character becomes a Übermensch beyond what Nietzsche could have believed possible. Of course, this is not without its costs; at the end of the genocide route, it is revealed that your character has been playing into the schemes of another since the beginning. Their name is Chara, and ever since they died in the underground, they have been plotting their revenge. By going through the underground and killing every single monster, you help realize their scheme, and after destroying the underground, they are released. Chara then confronts you with a question: do you want to destroy the entire world? Of course, if you tell Chara that you don’t want to destroy the world, they will reveal that you have long since forfeited that option. The only choice Chara leaves for you is the option to reset your timeline, and proceed through the underground once more, as Chara respects the strange sentimentality you hold towards the world. (Interestingly, even Chara, the embodiment of destruction, suggests that you take a different path, as it might be better for you).
DETERMINATION and its associated will to power beyond death has other negative effects as well, which are seen in the True Lab along the Pacifist route. In the true lab, you discover that Alphys has been performing experiments with DETERMINATION, injecting it into monsters so that they might persist beyond death as well. In the lab, you see that DETERMINATION is actively harmful to a monster's being, causing them to physically melt, with some melting together to become Amalgamates. The monsters, who throughout the game are shown to be very kind and nonviolent, cannot exist alongside DETERMINATION, and in this way, "Undertale" makes its final critique of Nietzschean morality: The will to power is actively destructive towards kindness, generosity, and goodness, and it is impossible for these things to exist within Nietzsche’s amoral framework.
*Flowey/Asriel is able to survive containing DETERMINATION because of Asriel’s soul bonding with the flower that was injected. The flower’s physical form is stronger than a monster’s body, and so DETERMINATION will not destroy it.
