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kytea · 5 years ago

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The True Nature of Deltarune

Deltarune Chapter 1 has been out for over a year now, and being the big UT/DR fan that I am, I’ve been slowly mulling over both games, reading many fan theories and putting together my own interpretation of what I believe the nature and goal of Deltarune will be. This will be a long one so grab some popcorn, put on your matpat hats and click to keep reading!

So what is Deltarune? Is it a sequel to Undertale? Is it a prequel? Is it an alternate universe? Is it the coming of age story of a bunch of teens? Is it a complex meta-narrative on the nature of video games?

The answer is yes to all of the above. And to begin delving into this we must first understand the creator of this game: Toby Fox.

I won’t toot Toby’s Fox’s horn too much, we all know how talented and hardworking he is, but he’s also very emotionally perceptive and empathic. His general disposition is reminiscent of avant-garde artists that push the boundaries of artistic creation in a medium.

Toby loves mysteries, and in the early version of Undertale there was an included file that disparaged hackers and went on to say that it’s difficult to add mysteries in games these days due to data miners and such.

Thankfully, this did not stop Toby from lovingly adding quite a few big mysteries to Undertale that have yet to be resolved. Knowing Toby and his strong desire to share his story, a story that according to him, kept him awake at night:

“For the past 3 years I've been waking up in the middle of the night unable to go back to sleep because I've been thinking about the scenes that happen in the game. Even though so many details are still hazy, I really want to show you the things I've been thinking about.That's really my only reason for making this game. If I don't show you what I'm thinking, I'll lose my mind.“

I don’t believe Toby will let these mysteries go unanswered, and it is here that we can begin to understand what Deltarune is about.

The Mystery of W.D. Gaster

Truly, the biggest mystery of Undertale is that of W.D. Gaster: former royal scientist, creator of the CORE and the Determination Extraction machine.

A player can go through the entirety of Undertale multiple times and never even hear word of Gaster’s existence. This is because all the events that pertain to him are hidden behind a value in the game’s files known as the “FUN value”. Outside of actually manipulating this file manually yourself, it is, to the average player, random. The FUN value can trigger multiple different events throughout the game, some of which include running into “Followers of Gaster” or even Gaster himself.

While the latter has nothing to say before he “boings” out of existence, the former Followers all tell an eerie tale of a scientist who fell into his own creation and was scattered across time and space.

But hold on. Time and space? Why does that sound familiar?

Ah yes, during the Sans battle he speaks about an “massive anomaly in the timespace continuum”.

And during this battle Sans says a lot of other cryptic things without context, for example, he laments not being able to “go back” somewhere. But where or when is he referring to?

He mentions how he and others were monitoring time-lines and their readings showed them stopping and starting, jumping left and right, and eventually ending. Who was he monitoring these readings with? This all seems incredibly scientific and sci-fi, I thought Sans was just a silly skeleton, is he some kind of time cop? (he does have a “badge” in his workshop) He also uses skeletal weapons known as “Gaster Blasters”.

What…? Gaster Blaster?

Okay, now we KNOW Sans DEFINITELY has some connection to this mysterious scientist W.D. Gaster, but what? Well, for starters W.D. Gaster is short for Wing Dings Gaster, a type of font that he also speaks in.

Who else is named after and speaks in specific font types? Sans and Papyrus of course!

Furthermore, in the concept sketches for Papyrus, Toby wrote and redacted parts of a message that says: “has a brother named comic sans and a [BLANK] named [BLANK]”.

Who is this mysterious redacted person and what is their relationship to Sans and Papyrus? The easy money is on a family member, and for sake of argument lets use the prediction most of the fandom has already concluded and accepted: that Sans and Papyrus have a father named Gaster.

So Sans and Papyrus have a long lost father that was a scientist. This explanation would begin to explain why Sans has a weapon named after him, and why he wanted to “go back” to some place or time, perhaps in an effort to save him from his fate.

There’s a hidden event in Undertale where if you reset after listening to Sans speak about LOVE and EXP in a pacifist route, and initiate the conversion a couple of times in a row, he’ll catch on by the expression your face that you’ve heard it before and will surmise that you’re a time traveller and give you secret code words to tell his past self.

This will lead to him giving you the key to his room which ends up just being a prank at first.

But then you find a key to the secret workshop/basement hidden behind his house.

Once you enter the workshop, you’ll find some blueprints written in symbols you can’t read (wing dings?) and a curtain covering a machine that doesn’t seem to be working, among other things.

Toby Fox tweeted a message regarding this machine a few days after Undertale’s release around the time people were figuring out FUN values and the secrets surrounding Sans and Gaster.

“You’ve all seen the happiest outcome. Neither of them could fix the machine, no matter how hard they tried. No one can.”

This tweet seems to imply that if the machine could be fixed that Undertale could have a happier outcome.

And this my friends, is the gateway to the nature of Deltarune.

Deltarune, according to Toby Fox, is a game for players that have completed Undertale. But what does it mean to complete Undertale, and I mean, TRULY complete it? Toby often expressed that he wasn’t happy with how people told others how to play the game, that it is best played completely blind. Having played Undertale blind myself, and having watched others do the same, the natural way the game is meant to progress is that first players will experience the Neutral Ending, followed by the Pacifist Ending, and Finally the Genocide ending. This is because the game cruelly plays against your expectations of how an RPG should work and this almost guarantees that you will kill at least one monster your first play through. As if the fact that the fight button is always the default position in battle isn’t enough, in the early parts of the game you are told that you may need to weaken a monster before you can spare them. This naturally brings to mind the systems of Pokémon, where you have the best chance to catch a Pokémon if it’s at low health. Well, if you try this during the Toriel fight, as most do, you’ll find that as soon as you get close to critical health, you’ll instantly kill her.

Poor goat mama..

Difficulty-wise, the neutral route is the most easy, because you can level up a little and gain more HP. The Pacifist route is a bit harder because your HP is lower, but with the experience you gain from the previous route, it should prove no problem. Finally the Genocide route is the most difficult because it takes a concerted effort that implies knowledge of the previous routes to kill every single monster.

So an ideal Deltarune player has knowledge of all three main routes of Undertale, and may have experienced or heard of Gaster.

Is this player you? If so, ask yourself, what would a “happier outcome” look like to you? And be honest. Many fans in the Undertale community have already answered this question in the form of fanworks. Some of the most common elements among them are as follows:  

1) Frisk and all the monsters are free from the Underground and living on the surface with humans.

2) Asriel is revived.

3) Gaster is revived.

4 )Chara is revived.

The revival of Asriel, Chara, and Gaster are the undisputed holy grails in terms of happiest endings that the UT community dreams of and creates endless fan works to explore the possibilities. Toby knows this well.

Using a speech pattern attributed to Gaster, Toby teased the release of Deltarune Chapter 1

“I LOOK FORWARD TO CREATING A NEW FUTURE WITH YOU.” stands out quite a bit to me as the prospect of a “happier outcome” is already tied to Gaster and Sans, now a “new future” is connected.

And when Deltarune released, and fans had a chance to play it, they found:

1) All the monsters are free and living on the surface.

2) Asriel is alive and well and living his best life.

3) A voice with the same speech pattern as Gaster (based on Japanese text) brought you to this world and attempted to give your own vessel before…

4)…a voice with the same speech pattern as Chara (also based on Japanese text) discarded it.

Right off the bat Toby seems to have given fans what they wanted, a perfect future ending. But as you continue to play, you begin to realize that this may not be the world you dreamed of.

First, while all the monsters are living on the surface, they aren’t the same people from Undertale, for example: Undyne has never met Alphys, and the amalgamates that went to live with their families at the end of Undertale are deceased in this world. And while Asriel is alive, it’s not THE Asriel we were so determined to save in Undertale.

Gaster’s presence permeates Deltarune so thoroughly it would take awhile to point out every example, but it seems clear that he’s present in some form.

And Chara? You only need to see the ending cutscene of chapter 1 to know that they are around in a similar fashion as when they possess Frisk in the True Pacifist after a Genocide ending.

But their presence is also present in subtle ways. For example, if you attempt to play the piano in the hospital in Hometown and then speak to the receptionist, she comments that Kris’ playing isn’t the same as usual (Likely due to our control), but it seems that Chara may be good at piano. Interestingly, on the cover artwork for the official Undertale Piano Collection 2 book, Frisk can be seen holding a knife playing a key on a piano in the judgement hall filled with bones.

So for better or worse, what appears to be the original Chara and Gaster from Undertale are present in Deltarune, in some meta form or another. And maybe that’s the key: “Meta-characters”. After all, you yourself as a player are a “Meta-character”. You can ask the inhabitants of this new world questions that only someone with knowledge of a True Pacifist route would have, such as being able to ask Undyne about Alphys. Asking her this only makes sense if you yourself completed a True Pacifist route before playing Deltarune.

Ralsei, the lonely prince.

Toby being the trickster dog he is, he didn’t just give us 1 Asriel and call it a day, no he gave us 2.

Ralsei is quite clearly meant to be a version of Asriel because not only do they have similar or identical dialogues, but he was also was meant to look more like him before Toby decided to give him his Black Mage look.

There are even strong parallels obviously meant to create an emotional response and connect Ralsei to the feelings people had for Asriel in Undertale by giving the players the option to hug him.

Ralsei is quite the mystery on his own. And while he’s most certainly sweet and lovable, there’s undeniably some disconcerting things about him such as:

-Why does he know Kris and Susie’s names?

-Who did he learn the prophecy from? “Foretold by time and space” isn’t a good answer (or is it?).

-What did he say to Kris when the player SOUL wasn’t present in the prison?

-When he’s KO’d in battle, what does he become? Apparently he can still eat to regain HP when in this shrunken form.

Ralsei seemed to be under the impression that violence wasn’t needed in this world, but upon nearly being defeated by the King after mistakenly healing him, Ralsei says “This isn’t a world where kindness always wins, is it?”

The way he says this seems to imply he knows of other worlds and that they have different rules. Perhaps he comes from a world where someone being kind to everyone they met had great results?

There are definitely things that Ralsei is not telling us, whether this means he’s up to no good will remain to be seen, however, I would like to take this opportunity to make a prediction based on the previous understanding that the original Chara and Gaster are present in this new world in meta forms, and assert that Undertale Asriel, the final piece of the perfect ending puzzle is present in Deltarune in his own meta-character form of Ralsei. Perhaps the form he shrinks into when KO’d is one we know well...

There is that unused Flowey face...

Add glasses and a hat and...

but that’s just a game theory!

And I can't help but wonder about the dark heart on Ralsei's chest and this merchandise in the Deltarune section of fangamer that specifically features a quote from Undertale about the prophecy of Delta Rune (that turns out to be about Asriel in the TP ending, and Chara in the Genocide ending) "There is a prophecy. The Angel... The One Who Has Seen The Surface... They will return. And the underground will go empty."

It's also the Deltarune game logo

Because the merchandise is called Darkheart, it made me immediately think of the dark heart on Ralsei's chest, and having an Undertale quote about Asriel/Chara makes it all the more mysterious...

Regardless, in just the first chapter of Deltarune, the elements of the “happier outcome” connected to Sans’ machine are present. But how do they all connect? Well, let’s look at the other characters in Deltarune, starting with:

Lancer

Oh Baby Santa Claus, how we love you so. It’s hard to overlook how similar Lancer is to Sans. They’re both hilarious in their own way, both ride bikes, have similar color-schemes, both have a love for tomato-based products, and both have some scientific/engineering affinity (Sans and his workshop, Lancer and his “Lancer Industries”).

But that’s not all, the door to Sans’ room is identical to the warp doors found in the Dark World that Lancer hails from, and Sans’ warp ability also makes the same sound effect as these doors as well.

Lancer is a member of the FUN gang (remember the FUN value?), that, as far as we know currently, has 3 other members besides himself: Kris, Ralsei, and Susie (with the possibility of Noelle and others in the future).

Speaking of Susie, her name (or a version of it) popped up in Undertale prior to Deltarune’s release when the game was released on the Switch. By speaking to the Gaster Follower “Clamgirl”, you can learn of a girl named “Suzy”, that you will meet her soon, and that “in life’s grand scheme, she might be why you came here in the first place...”

Upon receiving this dialogue, checking the drawers in Sans workshop will reveal a card with a drawing of 3 people smiling and the words “don’t forget”.

“Don’t Forget” is the vocal theme of Deltarune sung by Laura Shigihara, and the melody from the ending verse,“Don’t forget, I’m with you in the dark.”, is leitmotifed throughout the entire Deltarune chapter 1 OST. The connections between Sans, the FUN gang, Gaster, and by extension Undertale and Deltarune are quite apparent. Perhaps the actions of the FUN gang in the Deltarune world will have an affect on the FUN value in Undertale.

Based on all the evidence we have now, I am going to make a bold prediction:

Lancer is literally a younger Sans.

That’s right, Toby Fox made Baby Sans before Disney and Sega made Baby Yoda and Baby Sonic.

Deltarune’s Dark World is the past from the perspective of Sans and Gaster (or a recreation of it). How Lancer becomes Sans will likely be a very large part of Deltarune’s narrative, and once he becomes Sans, he will exist as a separate meta entity that can traverse different worlds, even if versions of himself already exist in some form there (similar to Ralsei and Asriel).

We’ve seen that if characters are exposed to elements that make it clear they live in a video game world, whether this be Determination for humans and Flowey, a time-space accident for Gaster, or a strange man whispering to Jevil, these characters become something wholly different, more powerful, and begin to become more similar to players with the ability to SAVE, RESET, or use abilities that seem beyond the scope of the game (e.g. Photoshop Flowey, Jevil’s ability to speak, etc). Undertale and Deltarune are video games about video games.

So if it is to be believed that Gaster is Sans’ father, and that Lancer is a younger Sans, then it stands to logical reason that whoever Lancer’s father is, that they must be Gaster.

No, not the King, there is another. A “Lesser-dad”.

Yes, Rouxls Kaard.

“GOD DAMNIT”

Rouxls Kaard, or “Rules Card”, or if you rearrange his name “A Dark Soul Rx”, wait, Rx as in prescription? As in a doctor? Dark Soul as in Mr. Darkness Gaster himself? Too much of a stretch? Maybe. Although you can’t deny they have similar appearances.

If Rouxls Kaard is Gaster, and therefore the father of Sans and Papyrus, then he’s undeniably similar to one of his sons. Rouxls Kaard seems to be quite passionate about puzzles, (despite not having a natural predilection to them). I could see Papyrus gaining an affinity for puzzles by being raised by such an individual, they both have quite flamboyant personalities. And let’s not forget that there are also hints that Rouxls Kaard may be inclined to creating scientific devices such as the “Control Crowne” he uses to control K.Round.

Hmm, controlling other people… sounds familiar to what we the player are doing to Kris… and who was it that was initially going to give us control of a vessel before we lost said control to Chara’s intervention? Control seems to play a big part in Deltarune doesn’t it?

Also, isn’t his manner of speech is reminiscent of a silly ye olde knight. Wait, wasn’t there a Knight causing trouble in the Dark World? Hm.

So something is going to turn Lancer and Rouxls Kaard into Sans and Gaster, respectively.

Now remember the CORE that Gaster built? This one?

It turns geothermal energy into magical electricity via an unknown means with one of the byproducts being ozone, which is corrosive and could potentially make someone very melty. This is what it looks like on the inside.

Lots of blues of varying hues with white accents. Kinda reminds me of Rouxls Kaard and the other “card” people’s color schemes.

What a coincidence! Oh and apparently the layout of the CORE can be re-arranged or something:

"I work at the CORE. The inside is a maze made of swappable parts... That means we can shuffle the layout at will." - Hotland NPC

Almost sounds like a sliding puzzle…

Finally, Gaster is referred to as “The man who speaks in hands”, likely due to his Wing Dings font that contains a lot of hand symbols, however, it isn’t a stretch to also apply that epithet to Rouxls Kaard, after all, the Rules Card speaks in hands as well. Hands of cards.

Susie

Can’t forget Susie. Unfortunately, there’s not much we can say about how her role in all this will play yet. If we are to believe that the “Suzy” that Clamgirl references is Susie, then it’s clear that she’ll be key, perhaps as a catalyst for all the big changes some characters will need to undergo...

I will say that I think it’s interesting that toby specifically has a character in Hometown comment that humans are made of blood (and implying the monsters are not),

and Susie says:

“Everybody bleeds, right?”

From our understanding of monsters in Undertale, monsters don’t bleed, they turn to dust. But, maybe Darkners can bleed. If we believe Sans is a Darkner, it may explain this:

It could be ketchup. It could be a Darkner thing. Lancer does mention blood casually. But if only humans and Darkners bleed, then why would a monster like Susie say “everybody bleeds”?

So what is Deltarune you ask? I think it’s:

1) A story about Sans, Papyrus, and Gaster’s past and future. We get to experience their past in the Dark World, and speak with their future selves in the Light World. But these future versions of Sans and Papyrus may not be as far into the future as the Sans and Papyrus we meet in Undertale. Remember, Sans had an Ice-E’s crossword in Undertale? Ice-E’s-P’E’zza is a restaurant in Hometown. Papyrus may also be younger than he was in Undertale because Sans, an adult who runs a grocery store, thinks a teen like Kris should hang with his little brother, and it would be “weird” if he were there with them.

2) A story about post-Undertale Asriel, Chara, and Gaster. Asriel/Flowey maintains his new form as Ralsei thanks to the power of the Dark Fountain. He now lives in what is/was Sans’ childhood home. Whether he knows this or remembers the events of Undertale is unknown, but it is my belief that he holds a deep connection to the Asriel we all wished to save. Chara resides within Kris in a similar manner as they did at the ending of a UT True Pacifist Ending after surrendering the red SOUL to them in a Genocide ending. Does this mean that Kris’s body or “vessel” is Frisk? This seems to be heavily implied by Kris’ outfit taking on the same color scheme as Frisk’s UT shirt while in the Dark World.

3) A coming of age story for a bunch of teens. Kris, Susie, Ralsei, Noelle, Lancer, and all the friends that may join on their adventures are still people regardless of what grand meta narrative is at play involving the nature of their reality. They still need to go to school, fall in love, and worry about growing up and going to university. Noelle will undoubtedly play a large role with Toby’s tease of her as “Lost Girl”, and considering how attached most of the community has already gotten to these characters, it hurts my heart to think about what may befall them as they try their best to live their lives. Does this mean Deltarune’s world is doomed? I hope not... but those save file screens sure are creepypasta...

“IT WAS AS IF IT WAS NEVER THERE AT ALL.”

4) A story about video games and the control (or lack thereof) we have over them. It’s quite clear that we, the player controlling the red soul, is able to influence this new world based on knowledge from Undertale that should have no barring. For example, we can name “Onionsan” who has forgot their own name. One of the options is “Onion”, but why? Is it because we know their name is Onionsan in Undertale? How do we even know if that is actually what this version of them is really named?

Deltarune is so close to the perfect Undertale ending we wanted, but it’s just a little bit wrong. Would it hurt to force Undyne and Alphys to meet and fall in love? To get Toriel and Asgore back together? To make Bratty and Catty friends? If you were given the option in game to do it, would you do it? What if it made their lives worse…? I believe that the fact we are able to influence inhabitants of Deltarune with our Undertale knowledge may have some unforeseen consequences, and perhaps, be what begins this whole situation in the first place. (Paradoxes are the best time travel stories!)

Toby Fox said that Deltarune was the game he originally wanted to make, but whether it was too ambitious or time consuming, his idea evolved into Undertale. Now that he’s creating the game he always wanted to, I believe that he will connect everything we know about them together and resolve the mysteries, after all, Gaster has been waiting for this chance.

And maybe, with a little luck and determination, we can create a new future with a happier outcome. If I’ve learned anything from Undertale, it’s that you must hold on to your hopes and dreams, because dreams are the goal of “Determination.”

#undertale #deltarune #spoilers #sans #papyrus #gaster #asriel #chara #frisk #kris #toriel #sans undertale #theory #the true nature of deltarune #noelle #fun gang #susie #toby fox

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synthient · 5 years ago

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The Key to Understanding Deltarune: The Halloween Hack

So we’re currently in the middle of a 4000 year content hiatus

Which is unfortunate, because ever since the big iconic Halloween-day surprise demo drop, my brain has been rattling a baseball bat against the inside of my skull and chanting “CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT”

Undertale was like candy for the thematic analysis side of my brain. I still wake up in a cold sweat some nights going “fun value......he put a quantitative value on fun.....numbers going up.....”

I am desperate to know what kind of themes Deltarune is going to tackle. Can you effectively predict that from one (1) 3 hour demo? No. Does my brain care? No.

Which is what lead me to the wonderful world of intertextuality, or examining how a media text is shaped by other media texts

It started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this with me doing a playthrough of EarthBound, the video game that Toby has cited as his biggest inspiration for Undertale

That was fun & interesting (the “throwing away an emotionally engaging experience to grimly make Numbers Go Up” thing feels a lot closer to home after trying and failing to get the sword of kings), but it didn’t provide much insight into Deltarune, specifically. It wasn’t enough. I needed more. I was willing to dig into literally any intertext (except Homestuck, which no force on this earth can compel me to read :) )

anyway thats how I ended up playing Toby Fox’s high school fangame

And somehow (sorry Toby) I walked out of there with an unironic theory (a game theory....if you will....): Deltarune is Toby’s adult reexamination of the Halloween Hack.

What is the Halloween Hack?

You know that thing where, like, people take the engine of a Pokemon game and edit it so there’s a new region and a bunch of new fakemon, and also There’s Swears Now

In 2008, Toby Fox entered a contest on an EarthBound fansite for the best Halloween-themed EarthBound hack

In one sense, reducing the Halloween Hack to a “bad romhack with swears” is a little bit of a disservice. There are some glimmers in there of a really affecting, thought-provoking game, and you can see some of the early blueprints of what would later become Undertale (“do video game ‘monsters’ really deserve to die” is a major theme, and the character of Dr. Andonuts was effectively split up into Alpyhs, Asgore, and Sans)

But it’s also. very much a fangame made by a 16-year-old.

You can read a basic summary of the Hack here. High school-age Toby wrote two pretty extensive analyses of his thought process behind the game. I’ll be referring back to them a lot, and I’d highly suggest giving them a read--Toby’s been so famously resistant to making any Word of God statements about Undertale that it’s kind of fascinating to see him being so candid

an extremely long and rambling examination of How This All Relates To Deltarune

The Halloween Hack opens in the town of Halloween Twoson. Twoson is one of the cites in EarthBound, and here it’s been painted orange. and there’s pumpkins now

See, high school Toby had...a bit of a chip on his shoulder. In the Making Of notes, he explains that he was frustrated that “most people generally thought I was just ‘another funny guy’”. So he designed the opening of the game to seem unoriginally close to the original EarthBound--like “a regular, funny, lazy hack”--to lull players into a false sense of security before the horror elements set in.

Two interesting things there:

“Lazily, unoriginally close to the source game” sounds an awful lot like the Dark World segment of Deltarune

Halloween Twoson looks very visually similar to Hometown

Toby’s description of Twoson also sounds pretty Hometown-esque:

The main impressions of Twoson that I wanted to give the player were: It's funny. It's a nice fall day outside. The person hacking this game is ridiculously lazy. It's a nice place to live. If you look at it a little closely, it's kind of claustrophobic.

And when does the horror kick in? When the player descends into the underground tunnels beneath the city.

The “horror” in the Halloween Hack is, however, Pretty Not Good.

There’s a whole lot of the flavor text narrator (put a pin in that one) insisting “this is so scary. you’re so scared. your hands shake and your head throbs because you’re so scared.” There’s also a thing where the battle text keeps going “the shambling zombie BITES your HEAD OFF!!! (you lose 15 hp).”

I think the True Lab sequence in Undertale is a decent demonstration that Toby’s come a long way since then (and that Honey We’ve Got A Storm Coming :’) ). But you know what the Hack’s style of horror reminds me of?

My first thought when I beat the demo and saw this stinger was “this looks like an intentionally shitty creepypasta.” Now I wonder if it’s lowkey adult Toby poking a little fun at teenage Toby

The Halloween Hack is a game about railroading. It’s Spec Ops The Line before there was Spec Ops The Line.

According to Toby:

The main theme of this game is the lack of choice. There is really no choice in this game. From the moment you start to the moment you finish, you're destined to kill Dr. Andonuts. There are two endings, but they both eventually end up the same way. It's all a big joke on the player.

You know why there isn't a choice there? Because you already chose to make Varik go into the door. You already chose to go forward. The only real choice, as Varik realizes at the end of the game, is to stop or keep going. By "stop" he means "turn off the game," and that's all you can do. Anything you play is your own fault for playing, and that's the only real choice you can make.

Interesting? Yeah. A little obnoxious? Also yeah.

That’s one of the criticisms people had of Spec Ops. "The atrocities we commit when we feel like we don’t have a choice” is an intriguing theme, but “~the only way to win is not to play~ [the game I worked hard on for the express purpose of people playing it]” isn’t a very satisfying conclusion.

Undertale, in direct contrast to the Hack, is all about choice. It earns the right to guilt you for the No Mercy Run by giving you every opportunity not to go through with it.

But even Undertale plays a little with the concept of railroading--you can’t stay with Toriel; you can’t spare Asgore in any of the neutral runs; you can’t save Asriel.

Now Deltarune seems to be returning full-on to the Hack’s “your choices don’t matter” premise. But it’s going to need to find something more insightful and satisfying to say about it.

Which makes me really curious about this:

If the Hack has a secondary theme besides railroading/lack of choice, it’s The Soul-Crushing Impact Of Internalized Homophobia.

The tragic antagonist, Dr. Andonuts, destroys his own life trying to repress his gay desire. He retreats into a dream world made of his neuroses and trauma, and he’s inevitably Otherized and murdered by the player. He’s something of a dark version of Alphys, who “disappears” into her lab without ever meeting and getting support from Frisk, Papyrus, and Undyne.

Undertale takes an opposite approach to its lgbt themes--the Underground is a utopia where homophobia and transphobia don’t exist. Everyone respects Frisk’s and Chara’s pronouns. Alphys finds solace and healing in her relationship with Undyne.

It’s a heartwarming growth from the despair in the Halloween Hack. And it’s a vision that’s been deeply meaningful to a lot of people. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no value in exploring issues of homophobia. 16-year-old Toby tried to do that, but...wasn’t exactly at a point where he was equipped to handle it with a ton of sensitivity and nuance.

(There’s. There’s a boss battle where you fight the physical manifestation of Andonuts’ gay repression. It’s a crotch. You fight a crotch.)

Some of the hints in the Deltarune demo, however--the Toriel Has Become Catholic thing; the fact that Alphys and Undyne haven’t met and Mettaton hasn’t been able to transition; the potential trans implications of choosing a name only to have it discarded for an assigned one (“you can’t choose who you are in this world”)--make me suspect that’s one of the themes that Toby will try to revisit from an adult perspective.

The Hack is interested in the idea of the flavor text narrator as a distinct, intelligent entity, whose thoughts and goals don’t always align with those of the player character or the player.

The Hack’s narrator makes a habit of dictating “your” emotions to you (you’re scared; you can sense ‘the monster’ and you want to kill it; etc). The narration starts to seem more and more unreliable, until, as Toby put it, “The narrator starts talking to you personally...rambling about incoherent things.”

At the game’s turning point, you’re given a yes/no choice to kill Dr. Andonuts. Choose yes, and the narrator (mockingly?) calls you a good person, describes the murder you commit, and then narrates what appears to be your (or their? or Varik’s?) psychological breakdown. Choose no, and the narrator tells you that’s not a real choice and redirects you back to the yes/no box. If you press the b-button to try and opt out of the choice (the game’s unofficial subtitle is “Press the B-Button Stupid,” and doing so allows you to follow Andonuts into his dream world), the narrator starts to panic, although the game ultimately ends the same way.

Not to NarraChara Real, but NarraChara Real

The Hack is also interested in the idea of the player character as a possibly-unwilling puppet controlled by the player (who in turn is controlled by the railroading/their need to beat the game).

According to Toby:

As you approach someone you've never met that you're labeling as a monster, your body pushes you forward to kill him. What's funny is that it's not even uncontrolled, it's really just the force of the player's controller pushing that little bounty hunter into murdering Andonuts. You might not realize it, but Varik is almost dead, and yet he can't stop moving because you keep pushing those buttons.

The Halloween Hack is, fundamentally, a nostalgic meditation on an existing game.

It’s a little obvious to say, but the Hack isn’t a standalone game. It’s a hack of EarthBound.

Toby writes:

EarthBound dominated my childhood, shaped my preteen years, and played a large role in molding me into the offbeat pseudohippie I am today. It gave me a sense of humor. It helped me learn how to read. Its lessons served as a basis for my sense of justice and courage.

But at age 16, Toby’s feeling about the game that had shaped him were a little mixed. He describes “the staleness of a fifteen-year-old video game” as one of his motivations for making the Hack.

In Deltarune, he (kind of hilariously) has Alphys parrot his teen-self’s “staleness” line:

(I could write a whole meta just on the Mew Mew Kissy Cutie vs Mew Mew Kissy Cutie 2 thing)

Still, Toby’s nostalgia for EarthBound is essential to how the Hack operates. Earlier, I said there were glimmers of an thoughtful, affecting game buried in the “bad romhack with swears.” The most genuinely moving moment in the Hack, in my opinion, is the Onett sequence.

You wander though a faded, dream world version of Onett--the hometown from EarthBound--while a slowed down arrangement of the Onett music plays. Snatches of forgotten conversations appear on road signs. Various monsters from EarthBound follow slowly behind you, but don’t attack. The only battles are against creatures called “Remember Me?”

The EarthBound characters appear to recognize “Varik” as Ness, EarthBound’s protagonist--or are they recognizing you, the player, as the same person who played EarthBound once upon a time?

The one problem, of course, is that not everyone has played EarthBound. It’s a relatively niche game. The sense of remembrance and regret and loss in the Onett sequence is universal, but being shaped as a person by the specific video game EarthBound isn’t a universal experience.

But in the years since the Hack, Toby has created something with a wider reach than EarthBound. Something that can evoke that sense of memory and nostalgia in players. A familiar game that he can take apart, rearrange, and examine in an entirely different light.

He made Undertale.

And now he’s rearranging the pieces into Deltarune.

#deltarune #undertale #o and to clarify: i don't think the flavor text thing means that chara's evil #in fact i think deltarune's going to deconstruct that very reading of undertale #which is maybe a whole nother (hopefully much shorter) meta

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