But It Refused

Dying with an extra life now plays the whole UNDERTALE game over before you get back up:

1. The world darkens, the game's music and sounds fall silent. A red SOUL softly appears over your body.
2. The SOUL cracks apart, right there on your corpse... and shatters. The shards freeze in the dark.
3. But it refused. The shards fly back together, the SOUL reforms in a white flash, and the words type in, character by character.
4. Only then do you come back to life, while Finale swells from its 0:58 crescendo and carries you to the end of the track. An optional aura can cycle the colors of the 7 SOULs around you until the music gently fades out.

The sprites, the font and the sounds are taken straight from UNDERTALE's files, not redrawn.

Triggers

The sequence plays whenever the game brings your character back on death:

• Dio's Best Friend
• Pluripotent Larva
• The Seekers of the Storm revive equipment
• The shrine blessing and Seeker's self revive (these two can be turned off)

The respawn is held until the words are on screen (about 8 seconds, configurable), protected by the same no-game-over rule as the vanilla revive.

Settings

Everything lives in one section, in-game with Risk Of Options (optional) or in BepInEx/config/com.orz.butitrefused.cfg:

Finale and the break sounds follow your in game volume settings (master, music, effects).

Notes

• Works in singleplayer, and as the host in multiplayer (the revive delay is decided by the server; as a client in someone else's lobby you get the vanilla revive).
• Risk of Rain 2 ships with Unity audio disabled, so the music plays through the Windows audio stack (NAudio, bundled). On Linux and Steam Deck this goes through Proton; if your setup somehow stays silent, the visual sequence still plays normally.

Credits

• Toby Fox: UNDERTALE, the track "Finale", the SOUL sprites and break sounds, and the original "But it refused." moment. This mod is a non-commercial fan tribute; all UNDERTALE material belongs to him. The bundled audio is a short excerpt of Finale plus the two break sounds, not the soundtrack.
• Mod by Orz.

Stay determined.

Changelog

1.8.3

The scene was measured against the original frame by frame, and the original turned out to be simpler than what this mod was doing.

• The SOUL now splits in two, stays split, trembles on the spot, then snaps back together on the same sound it broke on. It never bursts into shards, so the shard burst, its sound and the white flash are gone: none of them are in the original scene.
• "* But it refused." now has its "*", the letter spacing of the real dialogue font, and types in at one character every two frames, like the original.
• Every pause is the measured one, and the text now appears at the top of the screen, above the SOUL.
• The SOUL sits on the character whoever you play. It used to latch onto the first thing it found on the model, which on some survivors is a weapon, a cape or an effect, so it drifted off the body. It now follows the character's actual meshes.
• The SOUL breaks and reforms on the same spot instead of sliding to the center of the screen.
• The sequence now lasts about 9 seconds instead of 8, because that is the pacing of the original. DurationScale still shortens it.

1.8.1

• Slimmer package again: back down to the three DLLs the mod actually needs. Same fixes as 1.8.0.

1.8.0

• Fixed the whole scene being silent (no break sounds, no Finale) since 1.6.1. The mod mutes the game's audio for immersion, then read those same, now muted, volume settings to scale its own sounds: it was muting itself. It now uses your real volume settings, captured before the scene starts.
• Finale now follows the game's music slider only partly, so the scene stays audible even if you play with the music turned down. Music at zero still means full silence.
• The SOUL color aura after the revive is now enabled by default.
• Errors from the audio playback thread are now logged instead of dying silently.

1.7.1

• Slimmer package: removed three Windows system DLLs that NAudio never actually loads (registry helpers). The package now contains only the mod, the two NAudio libraries and the bundled audio.

1.7.0

• The bundled music can now be replaced by your own file in the plugin folder; a full copy of Finale starts at the 0:58 crescendo automatically.

1.6.2

• New icon: the broken SOUL, mirrored from the real sprite for a symmetric crack.
• Shorter package description.

1.6.1

• Finale and the break sounds now respect your in game volume settings (master, music, effects) and are loudness matched to the base game's music mix (the OST master was much hotter, about 7.5 dB trimmed).

1.6.0

• Full immersion: the game's music AND sound effects are silenced during the whole sequence. Sounds come back at the respawn; the game music stays low under Finale and returns when it ends.
• The aura got a real presence: an immune-style shimmer tinted with the SOUL colors directly on the character, plus a much stronger light. Its lifetime now runs on its own clock, fully decoupled from the audio player, so it holds until the planned end of Finale no matter what.
• New setting: MuteGameSounds.

1.5.0

• The break now follows the pacing of the original scene: the crack still happens early, on the body, but every step (crack, shatter, stillness, reform) keeps its dramatic breathing room (about 8s total).
• Fixed the aura fading out after roughly 3 seconds: the remaining music time was read from the MP3 reader while the playback thread was using it, which could report a nearly finished track. The mod now tracks the remaining time with its own clock.

1.4.0

• The SOUL now cracks and shatters while it still sits ON the body, with the world faintly visible behind; the shards then fly back together at the center of the darkness. The drift to the center is gone.
• Fixed the aura disappearing after a few seconds: Unity was culling the light as soon as combat lights (muzzle flashes) appeared. It is now a forced pixel light and holds until the end of Finale.
• Aura brightness default raised to 2 and slider extended to 6 for bright daylight stages.

1.3.0

• "But it refused." now types in character by character, like the UNDERTALE text writer.
• The SOUL break (crack, shatter, reform) is much snappier.
• Music can no longer stack when two deaths happen at the same time: any surviving playback is force stopped before a new one starts.
• The SOUL aura now reliably holds until the very end of Finale (it no longer depends on the body staying the same), and it is disabled by default.
• All settings now live in a single options section.

1.2.0

• Full "But it refused." scene: the SOUL cracks, shatters into shards that freeze in the dark, then the shards fly back and the SOUL reforms in a white flash, exactly like the original moment.
• All visuals and sounds are now the exact UNDERTALE assets: SOUL sprite, broken SOUL, shards, dialogue font glyphs, and the two break sounds.
• After the revive, a glow around the character cycles through the 7 SOUL colors until Finale ends.
• Finale and the aura now end with a gentle fade instead of a hard cut.
• New settings: break sounds volume, aura toggle and brightness.

1.1.0

• The SOUL and the "But it refused." text now use the exact UNDERTALE pixels (real sprite and real dialogue font glyphs).
• The SOUL follows the corpse as it falls instead of staying frozen at the death spot.
• Finale pauses with the pause menu and resumes when the game does.
• Finale cuts immediately when you die again: the next refusal starts in silence, and a death without a revive no longer leaves the music playing.

1.0.0

• Initial release.
• Fade to black + determination SOUL + "But it refused." sequence on every revive (Dio's Best Friend, Pluripotent Larva, DLC2 revive equipment and shrine blessing, Seeker self revive).
• Finale (a short excerpt starting at its 0:58 swell) plays while the game music is ducked, then restored.
• Risk Of Options integration (soft dependency).