It plays in the Ruins, Toriel’s home, the snow area in between the Ruins and Snowdin, and in Snowdin itself, while being noticeably absent from the themes of Toriel, Sans, Napstablook, Papyrus, and general battles. The motif is instead primarily heard when connected to the Underground- learning about the Underground, entering the Underground, and exploring the Underground in its various areas. The exception to this is Flowey, who quite literally has his roots all throughout the underground. The reason why I consider this theme the Underground theme and not just the Undertale theme is that a big part of Undertale, the characters, largely have the Underground theme absent from their own themes. Underground is certainly a lot shorter than “Once Upon a Time”, and the other motifs in the game have pretty short names like “Fallen Down” and “Memory”, so we’ll go with Underground for now. It’s clear right from the start that this is going to be a motif you hear a lot in this game, and I consider it to be the Underground motif. And then we hear it AGAIN in Flowey’s song along with Flowey’s little jingle. Then we hear the melody again in its most stripped down version in the menu. Here we hear a very basic version of the melody before entering the game proper.
![undertale waterfall undertale waterfall](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/35/ab/a3/35aba3621de574da03f21a985569be8d.png)
Undertale’s main motif and the one we will be discussing today is the first one the player hears, the main melody of the game’s opening “Once Upon a Time”. The way a leitmotif is used can convey a lot about a situation. That is why the “remixed in fresh and interesting ways that reflect the situation” part is so important to a good game soundtrack. I’m just saying, I believe there is a strong reason why Journey, which only has one leitmotif that reoccurs throughout every track of the entire game, is the only video game whose soundtrack has been nominated for a Grammy.īut if you’re going to have a strong theme that plays throughout the entire game, you need to make it so that the audience doesn’t get tired of that theme. So if you have a video game where songs loop over and over again in a particular area, and you have a leitmotif that is woven into many of the songs in the game so it appears in multiple areas, you have a perfect recipe for a memorable soundtrack. It’s been scientifically proven that if a person hears a piece of music over and over again, they are more likely to enjoy it (there’s a great video essay by Sideways about how this relates to pop music in movies called “When Soundtracks Repeat” if you want to check it out on YouTube).
![undertale waterfall undertale waterfall](https://i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-000525186585-6n0uvv-t500x500.jpg)
I think a large part of this boils down to a fact that many have pointed out about this soundtrack: most of the songs in the soundtrack revolve around a handful of leitmotifs that are remixed over and over again in fresh and interesting ways that reflect the situation. People genuinely love the soundtrack for this game, and there could be many factors contributing to this. A large part of it has to be credited to the memes wrought by the game and its score, particularly the Sans boss fight and Megalovania.
![undertale waterfall undertale waterfall](https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/aQ9bNy8_460s.jpg)
Now, there’s a lot of variables we could analyze as to why Undertale’s soundtrack is this popular.