// KOTAKU — GAMING
11 Songs That Were Not Played At The Undertale Determination Symphony, In Increasing Order Of How Batshit It Was Not To Include Them
Last night, I attended the Undertale Determination Symphony concert in Kansas City at Kauffman Center. It was pretty fun! A lot of people came donning very good cosplay, the audience was enthusiastic and respectful, and the music was nice. I’ve voiced quibbles with these sorts of concerts before, namely around how musicians don’t seem to be given enough time to rehearse them, and I did hear a bit of that this time too. But by and large it was a really pleasant experience. I was delighted to see how into “Megalovania” the conductor, who I don’t think has ever experienced Undertale prior to this, was. That dude was jammin’.
However, I’m sorry to say I’m here to complain again. Not about the music, which was enjoyable and well-arranged and well-played. Rather, about the lack of certain musics. I want to speak to whomever it was that programmed this thing; the person that picked the songs for this concert and then put them in the order they were in.
I don’t want to be mean! This concert was lovely! But the song selection and order left me extremely confused. It started off fine! “Once Upon a Time,” ‘Your Best Friend,” “Fallen Down,” “Ruins,” “Home,” “Heartache,” “sans,” and “Snowy” all proceeded in the order one would expect them to. Chronologically, through the game.
But then, things started to get a little goofy. We skipped absolutely everything to do with Papyrus and went straight to “Snowdin Town,” then “Waterfall,” then “Memory” for some reason. There was a fantastic rendition of “Bird That Carries You Over A Disproportionately Small Gap,” followed by “Dummy!” and, inexplicably, “Temmie Village” and “Spooktune,” two songs that did not need to be played by a symphony orchestra for any reason. We did get “NGAHHH!!!” and “Spear of Justice” in roughly the right spot, but then we leaped over the entirety of Hotland to do “Spider Dance” and “It’s Raining Somewhere Else,” then straight over Core to the finale of the game: “Undertale,” “Small Shock,” “Bergentruckung,” and “ASGORE” to close Act 1. I won’t detail Act 2 in the same way but it was similarly chaotic, reaching back to the parts of the game missed before in a rather scattered way before the True Ending boss battle music kicked in. It ended, correctly, on “Megalovania,” thank God.
There were probably good reasons to put songs in the order they were in. For instance, if you try to do the soundtrack in order, there’s not really a good, clean finale for Act 1 of a concert, nothing huge to end on. So I respect putting “ASGORE” there, it was a great end to the act. I can get over the wonky ordering. And I can also get over the idea that certain songs were inevitably going to be left out, because we cannot sit here for three hours and play the whole thing. But the choices of what to skip were baffling. Several songs were not played at all that I am completely floored did not appear, when stuff like “Temmie Village” and “Spooktune” and the not-even-in-the-game “Song That Might Play When You Fight Sans” made it in.
Here’s a list of 11 songs that were not in Undertale: The Determination Symphony, in increasing order of how bewildered I am that they did not make it in.
I assume this wasn’t included because it has the same melody as a bunch of other songs in Undertale (it’s literally just the main Undertale theme), so I’m not really upset by it, but I just love this jazzy remix and if you have room to play “Memory,” which is just a music box version of “His Theme,” you have room for this.
Again, I’m not too hung up on this; it’s the battle theme for “Hard Mode” which is literally just some enemies in the Ruins and doesn’t encompass the full game. But it’s a cool, perky little theme, and would have gone well as a bumper to “Enemy Approaching” (more on that shortly).
I promise this is the last one I don’t feel super strongly about, but I do think this key-changed, piano version of “Ruins” would have made a fantastic segue into a proper finale encompassing the true ending songs.