From Fear and Power to Guilt, Freedom, and Empathic Integration

Few video games make the player’s way of relating to other beings as important as reaching the ending. Undertale initially presents itself in the familiar language of the role-playing game: a child enters a dangerous world populated by monsters, encounters opponents, accumulates experience, and searches for a way home. Yet the game gradually destabilizes the assumptions behind that structure. The apparent enemy may be frightened, lonely, ashamed, grieving, or simply trying to protect someone. Violence remains possible, but understanding becomes another way of moving through the world.

Viewed through the Five-Stage developmental framework, Undertale can therefore be interpreted as more than a morality tale about violence versus pacifism. It can be understood as a developmental experiment. The game repeatedly places the player before five progressively more complex psychological organizations: fear and dependency; shame, anger, and power; guilt and moral regulation; freedom and autonomy; and finally empathy and integration.

The remarkable feature is that the game does not lecture the player about these stages. It makes the player experience their limitations.

1. Falling Underground: Entering a World Organized Around Fear

Undertale begins with a human child falling into the Underground, a realm inhabited by monsters who have been separated from humanity.

The player’s first psychological condition is therefore vulnerability.

The child does not know:

Who can be trusted?
What the rules are.
Who is dangerous.
How to return home.

This resembles Stage 1: Fear–Dependency in the Five-Stage framework. When survival and safety dominate psychological organization, the central question is:

“Am I safe?”

The opening encounters establish precisely this problem.

Flowey initially appears friendly. His friendliness quickly proves deceptive. Toriel, by contrast, provides protection, food, instruction, and shelter.

The developmental contrast is important.

The player must begin learning something considerably more complicated than:

Friendly appearance = safe.
Monster appearance = dangerous.

Safety must instead be discovered through relationship and experience.

Toriel becomes the first secure-base-like figure of the story. She protects the child and attempts to create a home. But even this solution eventually becomes developmentally insufficient.

Safety can become confinement.

The child must leave.

Thus Undertale establishes a principle that fits the Five-Stage framework remarkably well:

Development requires safety, but development cannot end with safety.

2. Flowey: Stage 1 Fear Transformed Into Stage 2 Power

Flowey represents one of the darkest possible responses to vulnerability.

His worldview can essentially be reduced to domination:

Kill or be killed.

If vulnerability is intolerable, the solution becomes power.

This represents an important Five-Stage transition. Stage 2 does not simply eliminate Stage 1 fear. It can become a defense against it.

The underlying architecture becomes:

Vulnerability → fear → refusal of vulnerability → domination.

Flowey attempts to occupy the powerful position so completely that he no longer has to experience himself as dependent upon another being.

From this perspective, aggression is not necessarily the opposite of fear.

It can be fear reorganized as control.

This distinction is fundamental to the Five-Stage model because apparently strong behavior may conceal a much earlier developmental organization.

3. The Underground as a Stage 2 World

The monsters themselves live within a collective humiliation.

They lost a war with humans.

They were defeated.

They were imprisoned underground.

They cannot freely return to the surface.

The entire civilization therefore carries themes of:

exclusion,
powerlessness,
resentment,
wounded collective identity,
longing for restoration.

This provides fertile psychological ground for Stage 2: Shame–Anger–Defensive Autonomy.

Stage 2 asks a different question from Stage 1:

“Am I strong enough to prevent others from controlling or humiliating me?”

The desire to acquire human souls and break the barrier can consequently be interpreted not merely as a practical political objective but symbolically as a collective attempt to reverse humiliation.

The formerly powerless want power.

The imprisoned want liberation.

The defeated want restoration.

This is one reason Undertale avoids simplistic villains. The monsters’ hostility toward humans exists within a history of injury.

The player gradually learns to ask:

“What happened to these people before I arrived?”

That question itself represents developmental movement toward empathy.

4. Papyrus: The Developmental Need to Be Seen

Papyrus initially appears obsessed with recognition.

He wants status.

He wants membership in the Royal Guard.

He wants admiration.

He wants to capture the human.

Yet his grandiosity is comical rather than cruel because underneath it lies something deeply recognizable:

He wants to matter.

Through the Five-Stage lens, Papyrus provides a relatively benign expression of Stage 2 validation-seeking.

The psychological equation might be:

Achievement → recognition → worth.

But the player’s relationship with Papyrus introduces another possibility:

Relationship → recognition independent of achievement.

The player does not have to humiliate Papyrus to move forward.

Indeed, refusing to reduce him to an obstacle allows another version of him to emerge.

The developmental lesson is subtle:

Worth does not have to be won through superiority.

That is already movement beyond Stage 2.

5. Undyne: Anger in the Service of Identity

Undyne represents a more powerful version of Stage 2 organization.

She is determined, aggressive, competitive, courageous, and intensely loyal to her people.

But this is precisely why Five-Stage analysis should not equate Stage 2 with “badness.”

Developmental stages contain adaptive capacities as well as limitations.

Stage 2 contributes:

assertiveness,
courage,
self-protection,
competition,
resistance to domination,
willingness to fight.

The developmental problem emerges when these capacities become the dominant way of organizing reality.

Then the world becomes:

winner versus loser,
strong versus weak,
us versus them.

Undyne initially understands the human through this structure.

The human represents the enemy.

But relationship complicates the category.

Once an enemy becomes a person, the Stage 2 binary becomes harder to maintain.

6. Stage 3: The Arrival of Guilt and Moral Responsibility

At Stage 3, the developmental question changes again.

It is no longer primarily:

“Am I safe?”

“Am I powerful?”

It becomes:

“Am I doing what is right?”

This introduces guilt, responsibility, restraint, obligation, reparation, and moral self-regulation.

Undertale makes this transition especially interesting because it takes one of the oldest RPG mechanics—EXP—and gives it moral significance.

In most role-playing games, increasing one’s level is unquestionably desirable.

More experience means more strength.

Undertale turns this assumption against the player.

The familiar reward structure becomes psychologically ambiguous.

What if becoming stronger requires becoming less sensitive to harming others?

Suddenly the player must confront the consequences of actions that ordinary games train players to perform automatically.

This is a quintessentially Stage 3 experience:

“Just because I can do something does not mean I should.”

The player begins regulating behavior according to an internal moral standard rather than immediate survival or victory.

7. Alphys: Guilt Without Integration

Alphys provides another particularly interesting Stage 3 figure.

She carries guilt.

She hides mistakes.

She worries about disappointing others.

She attempts to maintain an acceptable image.

This illustrates an important distinction within the Five-Stage framework:

Guilt does not automatically equal maturity.

Guilt can support responsibility and reparation.

But excessive guilt can also produce:

concealment,
self-condemnation,
avoidance,
anxiety,
paralysis.

Healthy Stage 3 development therefore requires moving from:

“I did something wrong, therefore I am terrible”

toward:

“I caused harm; therefore I need to acknowledge it and repair what I can.”

This distinction between punitive guilt and reparative guilt becomes important for later development.

8. Asgore: The Tragedy of Stage 3 Duty

Asgore may be one of the most psychologically interesting characters from this perspective.

He is not simply cruel.

Nor is he simply innocent.

He is caught between incompatible obligations.

He carries:

grief,
responsibility,
loyalty to his people,
moral discomfort,
political duty,
personal compassion.

He has committed himself to actions he does not seem emotionally comfortable performing.

This is the tragedy of Stage 3 when moral responsibility becomes bound to role and obligation.

The question becomes:

What happens when “doing my duty” conflicts with my deeper humanity?

Stage 3 provides social stability because individuals can subordinate impulses to rules and responsibilities.

But the same structure can become imprisoning.

Eventually development must ask:

“What do I actually choose?”

That opens Stage 4.

9. Stage 4: Freedom Becomes More Complicated Than Escape

At first, freedom in Undertale seems straightforward.

The human wants to leave the Underground.

The monsters want to leave the Underground.

Everyone wants the barrier gone.

But the story gradually complicates the meaning of freedom.

Stage 4 in the Five-Stage model concerns Freedom–Independence.

Its developmental question is:

“Can I become myself without being controlled by fear, shame, approval, or obligation?”

This involves differentiation.

The player increasingly becomes capable of refusing the game’s inherited scripts.

You do not necessarily have to:

fight because something attacks you;

hate because someone hates you;

obey because someone has authority;

kill because RPG convention says enemies exist to be defeated.

That is psychologically important.

Stage 4 is not merely physical independence.

It is the ability to say:

“I can choose differently.”

10. But Freedom Alone Is Not the Ending

Here Undertale intersects particularly strongly with the Five-Stage model.

If development ended with autonomy, the optimal solution might simply be:

Escape.

Become independent.

Leave everyone else’s problems behind.

But the most emotionally powerful pathway in Undertale moves beyond that.

The player becomes free and remains relationally engaged.

This is the transition from Stage 4 toward Stage 5: Empathy–Integration.

Stage 5 asks:

“Can I remain myself while fully recognizing the humanity of another?”

That is different from dependency.

And it is different from self-sacrifice.

The developmental sequence becomes:

Stage 1: I need you because I am afraid.

Stage 2: I must defeat or control you so that you cannot diminish me.

Stage 3: I must treat you correctly because morality requires it.

Stage 4: I do not need you to define who I am.

Stage 5: Therefore, I can finally encounter you as another subject rather than as an instrument of my needs.

This is where empathy becomes possible in its fuller developmental sense.

11. The Pacifist Route as Developmental Integration

The pacifist route should not simply be interpreted as:

Killing bad; mercy good.

That reading is too shallow.

Its deeper developmental structure is:

Can you remain in relationship long enough to discover the person behind the behavior?

Papyrus stops being an obstacle.

Undyne stops being merely an attacker.

Alphys stops being merely deceptive.

Asgore stops being merely a boss.

Even Flowey’s history changes the player’s understanding of what initially looked like simple malevolence.

The player’s perceptual organization changes.

The category:

enemy

begins breaking apart.

In its place appears:

person with a history.

That transition is central to Stage 5 empathy.

12. Why the Genocide Route Is Developmentally Fascinating

The genocide route creates almost the opposite developmental trajectory.

Instead of:

fear → power → conscience → autonomy → empathy

the player moves toward:

instrumentality → domination → desensitization → dehumanization.

Characters cease to be subjects.

They become:

targets,
EXP,
obstacles,
resources.

This resembles a pathological exaggeration of Stage 2 organization.

Power becomes the organizing principle.

The stronger the player becomes, the less relational the world becomes.

This creates one of Undertale‘s most powerful paradoxes:

Maximum game power corresponds to minimum relationship.

The world empties as the player becomes stronger.

That is psychologically profound.

13. The Three Routes as Three Developmental Experiments

We can therefore reinterpret Undertale‘s major pathways developmentally.

Route	Dominant organization	Developmental meaning
Genocide	Stage 2 domination	Others become objects
Neutral	Stage 3 mixed morality	Some relationships recognized, others sacrificed
True Pacifist	Stage 4→5 integration	Autonomy combined with recognition of others

This should not be treated as a literal psychological diagnosis of players. It is better understood as the developmental architecture embedded in the game’s choices.

The same player can explore different organizations.

That is precisely why the game is psychologically interesting.

14. SAVE and RESET: The Player Becomes Part of the Psychology

Perhaps Undertale‘s most innovative developmental device is that the player’s power exists partly outside the fictional character.

The player can SAVE.

The player can reload.

The player can RESET.

Normally these are invisible conveniences of gaming.

Undertale makes them morally meaningful.

This creates an extraordinary asymmetry.

The player can remember experiences that characters cannot necessarily remember in the same way.

Consequently, the player possesses something close to godlike power over the characters’ existence.

And the developmental question becomes:

What will you do when you possess power without accountability?

That may be the game’s deepest moral experiment.

Stage 5 empathy matters most precisely when domination is possible.

Empathy chosen because one is powerless is different from empathy chosen when one could exploit another without consequence.

15. The Most Important Developmental Transformation Happens in the Player

This leads to what I consider the most interesting Five-Stage interpretation of Undertale.

The main character undergoing development may not actually be Frisk.

It may be the player.

At first the player approaches the game using learned RPG expectations:

Monster.

Battle.

Experience.

Level.

Boss.

Victory.

But Undertale gradually reorganizes the meanings of these concepts.

Monster becomes person.

Battle becomes relationship.

Victory becomes understanding.

Power becomes responsibility.

Mercy becomes choice.

And eventually the player may recognize:

“The problem was not simply what these characters were doing to me. The question was what kind of person I was becoming in response to them.”

That is a developmental question.

16. From Undertale to the Five-Stage Theory of Games

This is also why Undertale offers such an important lesson for designing a Five-Stage game.

Its psychological power does not come from explaining psychology.

There is no lecture saying:

“You are progressing from Stage 2 to Stage 3.”

Instead, the mechanics create the experience.

A Five-Stage game could take this principle further.

Imagine that different emotional organizations literally produce different worlds:

Fear makes the world look dangerous.

Shame makes relationships competitive.

Guilt makes responsibility and rules dominant.

Freedom opens possibilities but risks isolation.

Empathy allows previously conflicting realities to coexist.

The developmental transformation would therefore occur not merely in dialogue but in what the player becomes capable of perceiving.

That is an important lesson from Undertale: the most powerful psychological theory in a game may be the theory the player never hears explained.

Conclusion: The Journey From Enemy to Other

From the Five-Stage perspective, Undertale can be understood as a developmental journey through progressively more complex relationships with vulnerability, power, morality, freedom, and other minds.

At Stage 1, the stranger is potentially dangerous.

At Stage 2, the stranger becomes competitor or enemy.

At Stage 3, the stranger becomes someone toward whom I have moral obligations.

At Stage 4, I become sufficiently differentiated to choose my own response.

At Stage 5, the stranger becomes a subject whose inner world matters alongside my own.

The genius of Undertale is that it does not merely tell this story.

It gives the player the power to refuse it.

You can dominate.

You can kill.

You can reset.

You can treat characters as disposable pieces of software.

Or you can become curious about them.

And that may explain why a visually simple independent game acquired such extraordinary emotional power.

Its deepest question is not:

“Can you defeat the monster?”

It is:

“Once you discover that the monster has an inner world, what will you do with that knowledge?”

Through the Five-Stage framework, that question represents the threshold between power over another and empathy with another—and perhaps the central developmental journey not only of Undertale, but of human relationships themselves.