#game developer analysis

[askagamedev]

Evening, Dev! An Advance Wars YouTuber I follow, Mangs, put up an interview of an ex WayForward contractor on the topic of the underperforming Advance Wars ReBoot Camp. I was wondering if you'd like to view it and give any thoughts. I'm always curious about your opinion on these things given your history and experience.

I watched the video. The opinion of the former employee gels with more junior employees I've worked with in the past - typically the perspective of devs who aren't privy to the decision-making process and lack the kind of context that's needed to understand the costs and benefits to the choices made. Here are a few specific thoughts I had on the various topics mentioned in the video.

Contract workers are often treated quite badly in our industry, especially those in QA. Contractors are the first to be let go, get little or no benefits for working, and are generally hired on through shell companies in order to protect the actual employers from liability. It's an unfortunate situation that's arisen from our legal system and extends far beyond the game industry.

Disagreeing with a major design decision like art direction is not at all uncommon. Leadership takes the responsibility on that one. I will be the first to admit that I've had my share of times where I disagreed with leadership and was right, as well as my share of times where I was dead wrong. I look back at the latter as valuable learning experiences.

I can tell that the person being interviewed doesn't really understand business because they'll say something vague about "record breaking profits" at the corporate level, but no solid information at any level below that. It doesn't matter that the overall company is profitable or not - each product that is developed still needs to justify its own existence via its accounting.

The pandemic, work from home, and return to office policies have affected the industry as a whole in many large ways. Publishing leadership sets the policy for the publisher, and studio leadership sets policy for the studio. My own publisher had different studios enact wildly different policies for work from home and return to office - one studio required all employees return to the office full time, while another only required two days per week.

It sounds like WayForward's engineering team and workflow faced a lot of challenges they had a hard time overcoming. I don't know whether this is because their team was shorthanded, lacked strong leadership, or just was always on the back foot and never able to stabilize due to a never-ending series fires that needed putting out. When everything is constantly on fire, it's extraordinarily difficult to get ahead. Remember, all tasks get prioritized. Fixing crashes is more important than adding new features like multiplayer or new units - crashes stop other dev team members from working, so the effect is multiplicative. I suspect that this was the root problem that caused the rest of the development to get caught in the development hell it sounds like.

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[blueskittlesart]

*sigh* thoughts on Nintendo's botw/totk timeline shenanigans and tomfoolery?

tbh. my maybe-unpopular opinion is that the timeline is only important when a game's place on the timeline seriously informs the way their narrative progresses. the problem is that before botw we almost NEVER got games where it didn't matter. it matters for skyward sword because it's the beginning, and it matters for tp/ww/alttp (and their respective sequels) because the choices the hero of time makes explicitly inform the narrative of those games in one way or another. it matters which timeline we're in for those games because these cycles we're seeing are close enough to oot's cycle that they're still feeling the effects of his choices. botw, however, takes place at minimum 10 thousand years after oot, so its place on the timeline actually functionally means nothing. botw is completely divorced from the hero of time & his story, so what he does is a nonissue in the context of botw link and zelda's story. thus, which timeline botw happens in is a nonissue. honestly I kind of liked the idea that it happened in all of them. i think there's a cool idea of inevitability that can be played with there. but the point is that the timeline exists to enhance and fill in the lore of games that need it, and botw/totk don't really need it because the devs finally realized they could make a game without the hero of time in it.

[tetheredfeathers]

One of the things that amazes me the most about the trilogy is how subtly Collins molds Katniss' mindset to a softer and more understanding place. And how does she do it?

Through Peeta.

Peeta is the embodiment of empathy, love, and kindness, which is one of the first things Katniss notices about him. He is the first person to deciphers the main goal of the games: to pit the districts against one another, as mere pawns to the Capitol.

Katniss imitates Peeta more than we think.

In the first book, when her ally Rue is killed, she finally understands that Peeta had figured it out before tepping foot in the arena. She begins to rethink her animal instincts that made her kill Marvel without a second thought, wondering what the games had made of her.

She understands, what she and had Gale refused to at the beginning of the book, when he says that killing a human is no different. But it is different, and this is a point of epiphany for her. She covers Rue with flowers to show that she is not a piece in their games.

Ultimately, this change leads to the final move with the berries that sparks the rebellion. It is Peeta's ideology of non-conformity and rebellion through non-violence that saves them both and leads their country to freedom.

Additionally, in Catching her demeanour towards the other victors is amusing to say the least. It is obvious that she has let go of her survivalist mentality, she gives the victors a chance (even the most extreme ones such as Cashmere, Glass and Enobaria ) to view them as they really are, setting aside the Capitol created image.

Peeta’s empathy and moral integrity underpin her actions and decisions as she leads the rebellion, she conveys that true leadership involves compassion and understanding, and not just strategy and strength.

Through Peeta, she learns to love more and to have more understanding for the people around her, whether it be her prep team or a career tribute. Peeta's existence is what primarily helps her survive and prevents her from adopting Gale's extreme realist approach to war.

Katniss is the apex of the love triangle, representing the middle ground between Peeta and Gale's liberal and realist approaches. However, she is unsure of her stance at the beginning of the first book.

“Not people,” I say. “How different can it be, really?” says Gale grimly. The awful thing is that if I can forget they’re people, it will be no different at all.

Throughout Mockingjay, Katniss often finds herself at odds with Gale’s strategies, especially when they involve potential civilian casualties. And even then Peeta is physically absent, his voice rings at the back of her head. Even in his semi hijacked state he manages to guide Katniss in his propos.

"Is this really what we want to do? Kill ourselves off completely? In the hopes that — what? Some decent species will inherit the smoking remains of the earth?”

Peeta brings out this sympathetic side, and so she symbolically becomes a neutral ground between Gale and Peeta's mindsets. She embodies the balance between a liberal and realist approach to war.

[dragonpropaganda]

you should talk about your thoughts on rw fanon (looking with huge eyes)

Oh god, there's a lot of major misconceptions have concreted into fanon, mostly around ancient society and ascension.

First things first! Ascension is not death! They are entirely separate things treated entirely separately by the text of the game. I can see where the interpretation is coming from, but it doesn't really align with how the text treats either subject. Five Pebbles may want to remove the self destruction taboo, but from his reaction to the rot it's clear that he doesn't want to die. Conflation of ascension and death only comes up as an offhand possibility that pebbs makes on iterator 4chan, when he's going into the possibilities of scenarios that even the other sliverists are doubtful of! (let me make clear that I am not a sliverist by any means)

Ascension is more of talked about as a form of transcendence, yeah? A Bell, Eighteen Amber Beads talks about their sitution as being "To have grasped at the boundless infinites of the cosmic void…", not as them seeking an end to life.

The beta dialogue goes into more detail, mentioning the "infinities of time and space" and the "boundless fractal planes of spirit and reality...", though this dialogue was cut and it's hard to tell how much it reflects the concept as in the released game.

As for the cultural misconceptions... there's A Lot to talk about, but the first that comes to mind is the common conflation of the five natural urges and the christian concept of sin.

It is true that the negation of urges is mentioned by moon as an alternative method of ascension, but much of what we know about the culture of the people who the fandom calls the ancients (which makes discussion of the depths a mess but that's something for another post entirely) points towards the urges not being seen as shameful.

Even the first urge does not seem to be particularly scorned! Being a warrior is presented as a cause for bragging in the Shaded Citadel pearl, being comparable with being an artist and a fashion legend. The second urge, also does not seem to be suppressed. Multiple sources attribute some level of honour to parenthood! The aforementioned pearl also mentions Seventeen Axes, Fifteen Spoked Wheel as being a "Mother, Father and Spouse" without any hint of shamefulness. Nineteen Spades, Endless Reflections expresses pride about having progeny, mentioning it alongside their owned land and esteem among their peers.

After some peer review, an esteemed friend has told me to add a section on purposed organisms as well! This is not so much my area, so I might be a bit off on some things.

As moon says, the majority of purposed organisms were tubes in boxes, and that the primal fauna of the world are almost entirely extinct. A lot of the fandom seems to ignore the first part, and i can't say I blame them, but the evolution of the creatures is so much weirder than people think.

Concept art for the creatures has this interesting quality to it, where the organic parts of the creatures have an almost... melty quality to them.

In the concept art, the flesh appears as if it's almost defying the machinery to form an animal shape. It's as if it's conquering its own artificiality the way the foliage grows over the (stone, brick and concrete, not mostly metal as some think!) ruins.

Of course, it's hard to really tell how much of this reflects the finalised concept, most of the integration is much smoother in the game, in line with a seamless kind of biomechanical design. There was always an intention of biomechanical strangeness, as shown in this screenshot of the devlog before the term "slugcat" even existed!

That said, the melty nature of the concept art shows a level of wild change inherent the biomechanical nature of the creatures, as if they truly are the result of these "tubes in boxes" almost revolting against their own boxes.

and considering centipedes... some tubes may not have had boxes in the first place!

[atbussysparks]

People on tiktok infantilizing curly from mouthwashing and saying that him becoming crippled was his punishment. Killing u. With my teeth.

[rorah]

The mentally stable Dimitri Fire emblem 3 hopes.

It surprises me that there's still ppl claiming so, but then I remember we're talking about 3h interpretations and I have to make peace with it.

But that doesn't stop me from venting a little bit in this little space I have lol. Actually, it dries me and makes me feel bad to bring this up because I will have to talk bad about Dedue, and I don't want to talk Bad about Dedue. He's a genuinely good boy. But "Human" nonetheless, which means Flaws. I like Felix too but he's become some sort of a clown that doesn't make me feel too bad. I like Felix tho, In a different way.

Mostly talking about these two because the take that "Dimitri has better support system" baffles me because, technically, these two are his support system in HopesVerse. The persons who Dimitri relays on and seek solace/advice/support. The rest doesn't really tackle any of his personal struggles (aside from the Mage!Mitri frustrated dream, but that's out of the bad equation in our 'mentally unwell' set of pixels, and Shez only has a glimpse). Contrary, to Houses verse where the whole blue lions cast knew about his shit, didn't know what to do, but didn't leave either.

I tackled this topic with other person on Twitter who was (or still is) on board with this take and the phrase they used was They contained him better, which of course I agree and remarked that was exactly the problem. Contain him is gonna be contra productive. I used a water dam analogy, where the structure of such dam is damaged, and the pressure of water keeps accumulating. Causing a foreseeable damage for the dam itself and the surroundings. You don't need to be a genius to understand it, you need experience or knowledge for mental ill topics tho.

I really don't want to extend so much on here because it's mostly just, rant format more than a proper analysis so I just want to point out these two things in their support conversations.

First, Dedue. Encourage him to keep on the vengeful path. Which we know was the final goal of Azure Moon and if you payed attention to 3 houses message. The whole Vengeful argument was something Bad, to keep it simple. Despite Dimitri actively looking for answers/guidance for something that, in a rational state he can see clearly like vengeance will consume his life (also Shez and Felix called out this behavior). Dedue answer only encourage him to keep on that path, because he would do that 💔. Presenting 2 oposite views is a great formula for confusion and disorientation. Now, Dedue's role is primary SUPPORT, not guidance nor orientation. He will support his shit no matter what, and we are quite aware of that if played Houses.

Second, Felix. Felix is a special case. He is smart but also an idiot lacks A LOT of soft skills to actually be of help. He's the only one who knows in this verse about Dimitri having a mental issue. In their A support to say the least, so they don't close or solve anything. What makes it more worrisome is the fact that Felix conceals the issue as a secret.

"So try to keep that whole "removing their heads" thing in check, yeah? We can just call it our little secret."

this extract here makes me feel so unwell 😭help

The whole burden falls over him and his lack of skills and wisdom on the matter will be too much for him later on. He at least, will be able to recognize that the problem is beyond of his capabilities and will look for help. Felix himself has his own issues and journey where he needs to learn. He's forced to get pass beyond some of his angry teen behavior but hasn't completely get over it.

There is a lot more to tackle, but that requires more work and time. What are the topics some of you think is important to cover around understanding the Hopes verse resolution? Dimitri's route? something? Do you think the route without Byleth is better? With that being said, I would like to delve deeper into character analysis, and the role each played for the Lords too. That also requires to talk about the Byleth and needs a whole analysis on their own, which requires time (which i don't have much lol) To end this vent, I would like to encourage people to do a little research for the terminology they're using like "Support System". Who makes it up and how it operates successfully. The fact that ppl saying "he has better support system" only because he didn't go feral on the run alone is not entirely valid. A reminder that people can feel alone with or without people around them. And containing the issue within doesn't solve any problem. At best, it's presented later. At worse, it gets worse.

[devsgames]

On AI-Driven Conversations In Games

The AI gang really shot themselves in the foot by leaning so hard into capitalist exploitation angle, because now whenever they present a use of the tech that is actually moderately interesting the baseline reaction people have to it is just going to be hate because it's associated to AI in any way shape or form.

I mean, obviously I understand why people react this way, because most of the practical applications of AI are just a veil for replacing of labour and increasing profit margins for the executive levels. But I feel like nowadays you'll also just see a lot of people hating an idea because it's implicitly tied to AI in any way, despite the core conceit of the idea actually being fairly interesting. (Remember when Spiderverse used Machine Learning to generate some of it's incredibly labour-intensive frame-by-frame effects and then a bunch of people got mad because it used Machine Learning for that?)

People have been pointing to the use case of "what if you could talk to an NPC in a game and have their reponses generated via AI", and laughing at it like it's the dumbest suggestion ever, but honestly in my opinion I think that's the exact kind of system AI was practically designed for! To me that feels like an excellent application of the tech that is now just marred by the mention of AI in the first place.

Anyway, to ruminate on the concept a bit: I see that use of AI enabling a dev to fill out a world with more NPCs who help it feel more populated, as well as potentially give them incredibly varied responses that are more relevant to the NPCs immediate context of the game. I imagine instead of replacing full-on player choice dialog it would instead replace the throwaway barks of awkward and out of place open-world NPCs who look at you and say "I have nothing to say to you" and giving them something to directly say about your adventure or the context around them instead.

Instead of having the intern narrative designers be forced to write little barks and blurbs like "I have nothing to say" (which I understand narrative folks usually view as grunt work and hate writing in he first place), they'd be writing little prompts for that system instead. End result is when you talk to random farmer NPC #344 outside of town they say "Crop's doing well this year, here's hoping a dragon doesn't attack us" instead of "I've got nothing to say". I think on paper that's a genuinely good and interesting way to improve an antiquated open-world problem like that. Should it be helpful? Probably not. Would it be interesting? No. Would it be a little more flavourful than what we currently have going on? I think so!

It's not an AI shill fever dream, I can see exactly how it would work and I'd bet money that there's a studio doing something like it in R&D right now. I imagine it'd also probably be pretty adaptable between projects too, so the similar system could be applied to different areas of the world.

Should it be trusted to give the player directions or do any sort of leading that a narrative designer should do? Almost certainly not because it would be inconsistent and have too big a possibility window, and AI is nothing if not horrible at performing essential tasks that might block progress.

Should it be done with the tech as it is now? Hell no, unless you want to wait five seconds for every reply to be generated and for it to be tied to some server bank that's guzzling all of Arizona's water. Also it would probably need an internet conncetion to work, which is asking a lot for an open world game.

Should it be done by these studios who are more interested in using it to replace labour and make the end result cheaper to make so they can keep more profits off he top? No, and that's the real reason why the applications of this tech sucks - because spoiler alert they'd all love to save money.

Obviously this concept isn't doable right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if it ships in a game in some form within 5-10 years tops.

Again I get why at this point in capitalism there's almost no applications of machine learning that are easy to trust, nor should we ever believe studios are doing it for any reason outside of trying to make development cheaper. I just think when it comes to tech it's worthwhile to keep execution in mind separate from intent; Tech isn't implicitly evil, it's the system it's built under that is. :)

[justanotherfanfolks]

Ok, what is up with Vil and coming for this boy?!

[thelyingjoke]

having loadssssss of gonta and kokichi thoughts now...obsessed with them The Besties Ever.........

it gets me because their friendship is both about trusting Each Other. and trusting Themselves. like. in those summer camp interactions. it’s gonta repeatedly putting his trust into kokichi. because that’s his Friend. everybody else says that he shouldn’t. kokichi says that he shouldn’t. but gonta trusts him anyway. not because kokichi is tricking him. but because he’s using his own judgment. instead of following what others say about kokichi and what kokichi says about himself he instead looks at him from his own point of view…and comes to his own conclusion to trust him. and i think that is So Sweet. gonta’s a Lot more intelligent than he gives himself credit for!!! his own conclusion—that kokichi ends up always doing something to make people laugh—is accurate!! he can read him well! that’s where the trusting Himself part comes in. because he’s so convinced that he isn’t smart. that other people inherently know better than him. and yet, even when everyone tells him kokichi’s just trouble—he makes his own decision. he has faith in himself to put faith in kokichi. he is confident in this, which i think is so very important for him

they both kinda see something in each other that the others don’t!!! gonta seeing into kokichi’s better intentions where other people wouldn’t, trusting him despite everyone’s insistence that he isn’t trustworthy, including from kokichi himself. kokichi realizing gonta’s intelligence in a way that others don’t, despite others’ and gonta’s own dismissiveness towards that.

like…aughhhh i have so many thoughts but they aren’t entirely coming out into words correctly. kokichi doesn’t think he deserves a friend like gonta, if the utdp graduation event didn’t make that clear. he almost can’t believe someone could like him as genuinely as gonta does, to the point of accusing gonta of lying about being sad to see kokichi gone. and then in summer camp he keeps saying how gonta trusting him worries him. for kokichi it’s about learning to have faith in someone else to know when they want to hold faith in him. about having faith in himself to trust someone else. If that makes sense.

and then in the main game. It’s So Painful. because everything falls apart for them when they don’t have that. gonta had known what the motive video plan was and had agreed to it. but kokichi’s paranoia got the best of him, which led to gonta’s lack of belief in himself getting the best of him, and they didn’t work together again until chapter 4 at which point both of these issues had gotten Worse.

because the whole thing started with gonta now being so caught up in the need to protect everyone else and the belief that that’s all he’s good for. he goes with everyone’s distrust of kokichi and that’s exactly what kokichi uses to get him to do what he wants. while later kokichi becomes distrustful of gonta because during the trial, it seems like gonta is lying, and lying very well. I hope that i explained this in a way that makes sense my brain is foggy right now and i can’t seem to get the Exact Right words out

i just think they’re neat…i loveeeee the existence of the official non-despair AUs because they’re really cool insight. these two could be So Friends. basically i think they’re like this image:

[mssr-crumpled-paper]

Gale and revolution

Maybe a hot take and people might throw tomatoes at me but I can't get this out of my head after reading THG.

I found it really hard to relate or even sympathize with Peeta because for me, reading the books, Peeta didn't exist as a character outside of his relationship with Katniss.

But Gale, on the other hand, did.

It was obvious to me from the beginning that Peeta was a character made with the intention for everyone to adore him. And don't get me wrong, Peeta is great. Too great. Perfect and flawless like a sterile version of a human person. And I can only assume that since we're seeing him from Katniss's perspective, along with her very obvious crush on the bread boy, that he's very idealic in her mind.

Gale, on the other hand, immediately gets sorta dogged on in the narrative like 5 pages in. He gets mad at Madge for being more privileged, for being well-fed, well-raised, well-dressed, and all other well-verb'ed that he never got to experience. From the perspective of someone who grew up lower middle class, I related immediately to Gale first. He was flawed, and understandable, and real in the most uncensored way possible.

He was brutal, he was angry, and violent, and that made SENSE to me (not that it's not fucked up). Maybe it's because my country has only VERY RECENTLY suffered from American imperialism, but I understand completely his need for violence, retribution, and revenge. And considering this was written during the War on Terror, the kid to extremist pipeline allegory is not missed. In that way, Gale exists outside of the context of Katniss. Gale exists within the context of his people, systemic oppression, and a revolution.

Peeta however was none of that. He wasn't a revolutionary by any means (but of course he wasn't, he was a child). But he seemed almost lacking in that sense of community with his people. This may be because Peeta grew up fed, still. He ate bread, no matter how stale, and he only had 5 slips of his own name in the games. He's a compassionate person, very much so, but only insofar as his immediate surrounding. Peeta could be kind because being kind and passive doesn't cost him his family. It almost, but ultimately doesn't cost him Katniss.

Gale had to care for his own family, Katniss's family during the Games, and became the only other person providing hunted game for the district's market. He got his district out of the burning rubble. He watched family, and friends, and people he's cared about his whole life die in a fire. For a boy who's only know to hunt with his own two hands, how can one expect gentleness.

So when, inevitably, people view Gale explicitly and exclusively through his relationship with Katniss, it robs Gale of being his own character: a brother, a son, a victim, a revolutionary, a child. And I think that's a shitty way to view him LOL.

[old-skyguy]

Look.

Ace Attorney fandom.

I know why people don't like Turnabout Bigtop. I am among the people who dislike Turnabout Bigtop.

But I GET why people like the case. I'm not going to be one of those annoying people who just blindly dump on it because I hate those mfs too.

Thing about Bigtop isn't that it sucks. Thing isn't the weird grooming stuff (though that is a huge part of it). It's not that it could've been good.

It's that - in my personal OPINION - it could have been *great*.

I think it had the potential to be one of the best third cases in the trilogy. It had everything; a fun and goofy setting fit for a pretty dang goofy lawyer game - where the environment itself had jokes and quips and one-liners and mishaps and tomfoolery written all over it, it had the previous case introducing a very interesting and important plotline that gave background for one of the more well-loved characters while also introducing an equally fucked up and lovable new one who was a child forced into a shit childhood of naivete in a CIRCUS with another character who was very naive and childish - whose interactions could have been funny and cute and reflective of said shit from the previous case (seriously she becomes such an important character in the 4th case, WHY would they not include her in this one for some character development? How did they fuck up letting a CHILD explore a CIRCUS?? That would have made the interactions flow MUCH better).

They had a pretty good, sympathetic killer imo, a morally dubious victim, an asshole of a client (who was pretty flat admittedly in-game, but I like his weird, topsy-turvy reasoning for it in the anime. Also, I think Max being kinda a dick would have bode well for the themes of Farewell since most of his clients up to this point have been like...nice? Not nice, but sympathetic, but him having to defend someone who's innocent but a prick would have shown him that just because someone is an asshole, doesn't mean they deserve to suffer for it and that they have the potential to grow as people, which is almost a complete foil to what Matt was. Ultimately, I would have loved the contrast of them as clients and I think it would have also served as character development for Phoenix, especially with his low-empathy tendencies).

They just didn't think that far ahead. They just didn't execute it well enough. They just decided to make three of the adult characters fight for the hand in marriage of a teenage girl. (Bat's part of the story was actually kinda good if he was just YOUNGER, I think him doing that for Regina would have been a stupid thing someone in the circus would do to impress their crush. Damn you Ace Attorney and your weird treatment of underage girls!!)

It just flopped and that's ok.

Even though it kinda sucked, it can still mean something to me.

Also I'm a Moe Curls apologist. I liked him, shut up.

[askagamedev]

Has being a game dev affected your ability to suspend disbelief/become immersed when playing games that arn't your own?

Not really, but I've always had trouble suspending my disbelief and immersing myself completely in games. My brain has never been able to turn off "analysis mode" when playing games. Every game I've played since I was a student has been an examination of what the devs did, how they did it, and whether it worked. That's how I've always enjoyed playing games so it's totally normal to me.

It’s not unlike a stage magician seeing other stage magicians perform their acts. I admire the artistry and performance of the entire experience and I can think about the way that I would perform a similar trick, but I would probably never believe that the magic is real. 

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[blueskittlesart]

I've heard that while most people really really love BotW and TotK, some people hate those two for going open-world, and some people hate TotK specifically for something about the story. As the resident Zelda expert I know of, what do you think of those takes?

"something about the story" is a bit too vague for me to answer--if you look at my totk liveblog tag from back when the game was newly released or my general zelda analysis tag you may be able to find some of my in-depth thoughts about the story of totk, but in general i liked it.

the open world thing though is something i can and will talk about for hours. (I am obsessed with loz and game design and this is an essay now <3) breath of the wild is a game that was so well-received that a lot of the criticism from older fans who were expecting something closer to the classic zelda formula was just kind of immediately drowned out and ignored, and while i don't think it's a valid criticism to suggest that botw strayed too far from its origins in going open-world, i am more than willing to look into those criticisms, why they exist, and why i think going open-world was ultimately the best decision botw devs could have made. (totk is a slightly different story, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)

Loz is a franchise with a ton of history and a ton of really, REALLY dedicated fans. it's probably second only to mario in terms of recognizability and impact in nintendo's catalog. To us younger fans, the older games can sometimes seem, like, prehistoric when compared to what we're used to nowadays, but it's important to remember just how YOUNG the gaming industry is and how rapidly it's changed and grown. the first zelda game was released in 1986, which was 31 years before botw came out in 2017. What this means for nintendo and its developers is that they have to walk a very fine line between catering to older fans in their 30s and 40s now who would have been in nintendo's prime demographic when the first few games in the franchise were coming out AND making a game that's engaging to their MODERN target demographic and that age group's expectations for what a gaming experience should look like.

LOZ is in kind of a tough spot when it comes to modernizing, because a lot of its core gameplay elements are very much staples of early RPGs, and a lot of those gameplay elements have been phased out of modern RPGs for one reason or another. gathering collectibles, fighting one's way through multilevel, mapless dungeons, and especially classic zelda's relative lack of guidance through the story are all things that date games and which modern audiences tend to get frustrated with. for the last few releases before botw, the devs had kind of been playing with this -- skyward sword in particular is what i consider their big experiment and what (i think) became the driving force behind a lot of what happened with botw. Skyward sword attempted to solve the issues I listed by, basically, making the map small and the story much, much more blatantly linear. Skyward sword feels much more like other modern rpgs to me than most zelda games in terms of its playstyle, because the game is constantly pushing you to do specific things. this is a common storytelling style in modern RPGs--obviously, the player usually needs to take specific actions in order to progress the story, and so when there's downtime between story sections the supporting characters push the player towards the next goal. but this actually isn't what loz games usually do. in the standard loz formula, you as the player are generally directly given at most 4 objectives. these objectives will (roughly) be as follows: 1. go through some dungeons and defeat their bosses, 2. claim the master sword, 3. go through another set of dungeons and defeat their bosses, 4. defeat the final boss of the game. (not necessarily in that order, although that order is the standard formula.) the ONLY time the player will be expressly pushed by supporting characters towards a certain action (excluding guide characters) is when the game is first presenting them with those objectives. in-between dungeons and other gameplay segments, there's no sense of urgency, no one pushing you onto the next task. this method of storytelling encourages players to take their time and explore the world they're in, which in turn helps them find the collectibles and puzzles traditionally hidden around the map that will make it easier for them to continue on. Skyward sword, as previously mentioned, experimented with breaking this formula a bit--its overworld was small and unlocked sequentially, so you couldn't explore it fully without progressing the narrative, and it gave players a "home base" to return to in skyloft which housed many of the puzzles and collectibles rather than scattering them throughout the overworld. This method worked... to an extent, but it also meant that skyward sword felt drastically different in its storytelling and how its narrative was presented to the player than its predecessors. this isn't necessarily a BAD thing, but i am of the opinion that one of zelda's strongest elements has always been the level of immersion and relatability its stories have, and the constant push to continue the narrative has the potential to pull players out of your story a bit, making skyward sword slightly less engaging to the viewer than other games in the franchise. (to address the elephant in the room, there were also obviously some other major issues with the design of sksw that messed with player immersion, but imo even if the control scheme had been perfect on the first try, the hyperlinear method would STILL have been less engaging to a player than the standard exploration-based zeldas.)

So when people say that botw was the first open-world zelda, I'm not actually sure how true I personally believe that is. I think a lot of the initial hype surrounding botw's open map were tainted by what came before it--compared to the truly linear, intensely restricted map of skyward sword, botw's map feels INSANE. but strictly speaking, botw actually sticks pretty closely to the standard zelda gameplay experience, at least as far as the overworld map is concerned. from the beginning, one of the draws of loz is that there's a large, populated map that you as the player can explore (relatively) freely. it was UNUSUAL for the player to not have access to almost the entire map either immediately or very quickly after beginning a new zelda game. (the size and population of these maps was restricted by software and storage capabilities in earlier games, but pretty muhc every zelda game has what would have been considered a large & well populated map at the time of its release.) what truly made botw different was two things; the first being the sheer SIZE of the map and the second being the lack of dungeons and collectibles in a traditional sense. Everything that needs to be said about the size of the map already has been said: it's huge and it's crazy and it's executed PERFECTLY and it's never been done before and every game since has been trying to replicate it. nothing much else to say there. but I do want to talk about the percieved difference in gameplay as it relates to the open-world collectibles and dungeons, because, again, i don't think it's actually as big of a difference as people seem to think it is.

Once again, let's look at the classic formula. I'm going to start with the collectibles and lead into the dungeons. The main classic collectible that's a staple of every zelda game pre-botw is the heart piece. This is a quarter of a heart that will usually be sitting out somewhere in the open world or in a dungeon, and will require the player to either solve a puzzle or perform a specific action to get. botw is the first game to not include heart pieces... TECHNICALLY. but in practice, they're still there, just renamed. they're spirit orbs now, and rather than being hidden in puzzles within the overworld (with no explanation as to how or why they ended up there, mind you) they're hidden within shrines, and they're given a clear purpose for existing throughout hyrule and for requiring puzzle-solving skills to access. Functionally, these two items are exactly the same--it's an object that gives you an extra heart container once you collect four of them. no major difference beyond a reskin and renaming to make the object make sense within the greater world instead of just having a little ❤️ floating randomly in the middle of their otherwise hyperrealistic scenery. the heart piece vs spirit orb i think is a good microcosm of the "it's too different" criticisms of botw as a whole--is it ACTUALLY that different, or is it just repackaged in a way that doesn't make it immediately obvious what you're looking at anymore? I think it's worth noting that botw gives a narrative reason for that visual/linguistic disconnect from other games, too--it's set at minimum TEN THOUSAND YEARS after any other given game. while we don't have any concrete information about how much time passes between new-incarnation games, it's safe to assume that botw is significantly further removed from other incarnations of hyrule/link/zelda/etc than any other game on the timeline. It's not at all inconceivable within the context of the game that heart pieces may have changed form or come to be known by a different name. most of the changes between botw and other games can be reasoned away this way, because most of them have SOME obvious origins in a previous game mechanic, it's just been updated for botw's specific setting and narrative.

The dungeons ARE an actual departure from the classic formula, i will grant you. the usual way a zelda dungeon works is that link enters the dungeon, solves a few puzzles, fights a mini boss at about the halfway point, and after defeating the mini boss he gets a dungeon item which makes the second half of the dungeon accessible. He then uses that item in the dungeon's final boss fight, which is specifically engineered with that item in mind as the catalyst to win it. Botw's dungeons are the divine beasts. we've removed the presence of mini-bosses entirely, because the 'dungeon items' aren't something link needs to get within the dungeon itself--he alredy has them. they're the sheikah slate runes: magnesis, cryonis, stasis, and remote bombs. Each of the divine beast blight battles is actually built around using one of these runes to win it--cryonis to break waterblight's ice projectiles, magnesis to strike down thunderblight with its own lightning rods, remote bombs to take out fireblight's shield. (i ASSUME there's some way to use stasis effectively against windblight, mostly because it's obvious to me that that's how all the other fights were designed, but in practice it's the best strategy for that fight is to just slow down time via aerial archery, so i've never tried to win that way lol.) So even though we've removed traditional dungeon items and mini-boss fights, the bones of the franchise remain unchanged underneath. this is what makes botw such an ingenious move for this franchise imo; the fact that it manages to update itself into such a beautiful, engaging, MODERN game while still retaining the underlying structure that defines its franchise and the games that came before it. botw is an effective modern installment to this 30-year-old franchise because it takes what made the old games great and updates it in a way that still stays true to the core of the franchise.

I did mention totk in my opening paragraph and you mention it in your ask so i have to come back to it somehow. Do i think that totk did the gigantic-open-world thing as well as botw did? no. But i also don't really think there was any other direction to go with that game specifically. botw literally changed the landscape of game development when it was released. I KNOW you all remember how for a good year or two after botw's release, EVERY SINGLE GAME that came out HAD to have a massive open-world map, regardless of whether or not that actually made sense for that game. (pokemon is still suffering from the effects of that botw-driven open world craze to this day. rip scarlet/violet your gameplay was SUCH dogshit) I'm not sure to what degree nintendo and the botw devs anticipated that success, (I remember the open world and the versatility in terms of problem-solving being the two main advertising angles pre-release, but it's been 7 years. oh jesus christ it's been SEVEN YEARS. anyways) but in any case, there's basically NO WAY that they anticipated their specific gameplay style taking off to that degree. That's not something you can predict. When creating totk, they were once again walking that line between old and new, but because they were only 3ish years out from botw when totk went into development, they were REALLY under pressure to stay true to what it was that had made botw such an insane success. I think that's probably what led to the expanded map in the sky and depths as well as the fuse/build mechanics--they basically took their two big draws from botw, big map and versatility, and said ok BIGGER MAP and MORE VERSATILITY. Was this effective? yeah. do i think they maybe could have made a more engaging and well-rounded game if they'd been willing to diverge a little more from botw? also yeah. I won't say that I wanted totk to be skyward sword-style linear, because literally no one wanted that, but I do think that because of the insane wave of success that botw's huge open world brought in the developers were under pressure to stay very true to botw in their designing the gameplay of totk, and I think that both the gameplay and story might have been a bit more engaging if they had been allowed to experiment a little more in their delivery of the material.

[humornaut]

hi!! i’m a relatively new omori fan (a brainrotted fan, however, with 140 hours in the game so far… and 98% completion bc i lost to the recyclepath.. -_-) anyway, i love your analysis posts, you’ve clearly studied the details of this game very well!!

i was hoping to ask about the timeline of white space and headspace creation, if you have the time and would like to! my roommate and i played together and have tried to piece it together a few times over the four playthroughs we’ve done (two of each route), but there are still some details that seem contradictory to me. i’m sorry if this is obvious though!

so the transcript of the truth album says “you sink into a crevice in your mind… an empty white room” so i initially assumed white space was created on the day of the incident, in that dissociative state while mari was in the bed. you also see this in the sequence after three days left before going back into headspace where it’s sunny and basil in front of the door, then sunny in white space, then the manifestation of omori. of course, we’ve also been told “you’ve been living here for as long as you can remember”, but we can assume the “you” is omori instead of sunny, which makes sense if he was created in white space

however. in the lost library we see that sunny used to explore headspace during school, presumably before the incident, and daddy longlegs says “in the beginning, there only existed two... the dreamer and his room” and then “the dreamer grew weary of his room and created a door that led to many different worlds”, referring to white space and headspace, so white space existed first. so white space existed before the incident.

so then the white space reference from the truth album is maybe about the manifestation of omori, instead of the creation of white space. i think the outfit sunny’s wearing in the omori cut scene is also the same as from the day of the incident (the black tshirt & shorts). so presumably (before the incident), sunny used to explore headspace as sunny instead of as omori.

daddy longlegs then goes on to talk about black space, and how omori was created to let sunny “ascend to a blissful state of ignorance” and “forget himself” (this also prompts an interesting question of how sentient omori is — because he’s the protector (& knows enough to be willing to kill basil) but he’s also “ignorant of his own fabrication”, according to daddy longlegs, but i guess that’s another matter entirely!) black space was created in response to trauma, so that again supports the idea that omori was manifested after the incident.

so then white space. a place to survive but not to live. the black lightbulb is the repression of an idea, ie, the lightbulb was created after the incident. but sure, white space can exist without the lightbulb. my question then is, why did sunny need a place to survive before then? we could say that dissociation has always been his go-to reaction in stressful situations, and that’s why. but he was also in white space long enough to get bored of it, enough to conjure headspace.

we have a few vague clues that sunny & mari’s home life could have been bad, but nothing concrete. and personally, i’m of the opinion that his life being more or less ideal to begin with enhances the tragedy of the story (as well as him and basil having opposite tragedies, as i saw someone else point out — sunny’s being that he was already very much loved & cared for, so it’s worse when it’s taken away, basil’s that he never had that in the first place), but i guess that’s up to interpretation. other than home life issues then, just the stress of the violin? general developmental issues? depression? something else?

i’d be super curious to hear what you think (again, if you have the time)… thank you! :)

Hi there! Sorry about how long this took me, I've had a lot going on + I actually wrote a whole long response that took me like a week of on and off working, and then I accidentally shut off my computer and lost the whole thing :(

I want to start this off with a couple disclaimers: Omori intentionally keeps its timeline close to its chest (presumably to add to the game's feelings of unease and the mystery of it all) AND we see evidence throughout the game that during Omori's long development cycle, it saw multiple changes to its story that ultimately makes the game's timeline a little inconsistent in a way that doesn't really matter.

I think I don't really have to explain the first point to you, but it will be relevant when talking about Headspace, because the game doesn't even commit to Headspace being purely a dream, as there are plenty of indications throughout it that it could be something a bit more supernatural.

However, I do want to elaborate on my second point there, mostly because this is something that I've wanted to talk about for awhile, and what better time to bring it up than when we are talking about the timeline! So:

How Old is Hero Omori?

I swear this is an actually interesting question

It might seem silly to ask this, considering the game actually tells us how old he is in Headspace, but stick with me.

Based on this line, Hero (and presumably Mari) are 15 pre-canon, while the rest of the group turns 12 during the year of the album (except Kel, who would've turned 12 prior to Basil getting the album).

So let's take the time skip into account. When we first meet real world Aubrey, she says this:

After this point, the game tends to stick to the time skip being four years whenever it comes up. But this isn't technically true! Even accounting for the months after the incident that Sunny continued going outside for, the incident happened in October, while Sunny comes out again during the summer. Most likely, we're actually looking at around 3 and a half years, with Sunny coming back outside the summer that he would turn 16. Since we are presumably at the beginning of the summer, with Hero just now coming home from college, Sunny would actually be 15, at least during the main portion of the game, though once he's in the hospital, it appears some time has passed so that school has now started back up.

Why does this matter? Well, based on this timeline with Hero being 15 in the photo album, he should have turned 19 the January prior to the game's main events, and this is what most people see as canon. However, within the United States, most people, unless they graduate early or late, will leave High School the year they turn 18, meaning most people turn 19 during their first year at college (if they attend).

At first glance, this doesn't seem to be an issue, but we know for a fact that Hero has actually been away at college for two years, due to this interaction:

This is the second summer that Hero has returned from college! He should be 20! Now Hero is a bit of an overachiever, so it is possible that what is actually happening here is that he graduated early, but I doubt that due to what we know about how Hero reacted to Mari's death.

For that first year, even if Hero was technically going to school, he certainly wasn't excelling at it. By the time he gets to the state we see him in-game, he has maybe a year to a year and a half left of schooling. I'm really not sure that I can buy Hero graduating early, regardless of how well he does from that point on.

I also want to acknowledge that the game could simply take place ~4 1/2 years, rather than 3 1/2. There's no reason not to go with this, other than it would mean that the younger four are actually 17 during the game. You are free to believe this instead, but I am going to go into what I actually think is going here next.

We know that the characters got younger during development. We actually have an older version of the photo album, in which instead of saying that Sunny was turning 12, it says 13. Why did this happen?

Let's take a look at Aubrey's recollection of what happened following Mari's death:

For reference, this is part of what she says at the tree stump during One Day Left.

Her words here imply that she wasn't actually aware about how bad it was for Hero, and most of the fandom typically just leaves it at that.

But that's weird, right? Look at what she says. It seems like she did HAVE a reason for why Hero wasn't available, it was just incorrect. And what's more, this is definitely how Hero would've been after his year of very much not studying. There's no reason that Aubrey would believe that Hero reacted to Mari's death in this way unless it was true, especially since it is something that would later be true.

I also want to point out that Kel's talk in the cemetery in which he tells us how Hero reacted to Mari's death is entirely optional and disconnected from the actual main story cutscenes in the real world.

To bring this full circle, I also want to point out a mechanic that was added to the game VERY late in development:

You might see where I'm going with this.

Here's my theory. Originally, Hero would not have reacted to Mari's death with staying in bed for a year in a depressed state. Instead, he would've immediately become lost in his studies as a coping mechanism. However, when the team had the idea for the emotions chart, they likely realized that while happy and angry fit Kel and Aubrey's coping methods respectively quite well, Hero did not seem to fit sadness all that well at all.

In order to make Hero fit sadness, they change his story so that he stayed in a depressed state for a year, but they don't remove his original story of getting lost in his schoolwork. After all, they already had the writing and art assets finished and the game had already been in development for a long time. So instead of doing any major rewrites of the actual script, they simply add a single cutscene in the graveyard that doesn't seem to contradict anything that lets us know that this is how Hero reacted!

Then they had another problem. If Hero spent a year not caring about school, how would he have graduated on time? It would've been difficult even for an overachiever to do two years of schooling in one year. This is an easy fix as well! All you have to do is go through the very few instances of characters' ages being mentioned, and make everyone a year younger! It would've been a lot easier for Hero to catch up and excel if he had an additional year to do so after the incident with Kel! It also gives us another instance of a character getting overwhelmed and angry and pushing someone they care about, which we see multiple times! It works really well, and I like it a lot, but I haven't been able to unsee this change being made ever since the first time I thought of it. The minor line of dialogue about the hero sandwich that reveals Hero has been in college for two years would have been overlooked, since it doesn't mention his age, and likely would've been forgotten due to its unimportance. Aubrey's line, while wrong, can also still be explained away by her simply not being in the know about how Hero really reacted to Mari's death.

I'm not saying this is definitely what happened, but this theory does explain that one tiny little inconsistency that we see in the game. Could also be nothing though idk I'm not perfect

SO

The timeline of the creation of Headspace, White Space, and Black Space! The thing you actually asked about and care about!

It's a little difficult to actually place a lot of things here. Headspace is already so vague. We can use Daddy Longlegs' explanation as a general guide, but it's still difficult to figure out how it lines up with the between night cutscenes, as well as some of the other things.

What I can say is that Omocat has explained Sunny's dream worlds as a very real reaction to trauma that some people have. From this perspective, it would've always existed in some form.

In regards to the truth album line about sinking into the empty room, it's important to keep in mind that nothing there (unless I am super mistaken) implies that this is the first time that Sunny has been there, only that it is happening in that moment. In fact, I find the use of the term "sink" to be very interesting in this context, because very recently prior to the end of the photo album and the incident itself, Sunny had another very traumatic experience when he nearly drowned at the lake. This incident is also very important because many of the traumas that we see from Sunny in game come from this incident. He is still extremely scared of heights, spiders, and drowning by the time the game happens. I don't think it is out of the realm of possibility that White Space was initially created as a response to that, assuming that it didn't already exist for Sunny's entire life.

Next! Headspace, as I understand it, refers specifically to the dream world that Sunny created by merging a bunch of different dream worlds together in order to hide away Black Space, as told by Daddy Longlegs. What we see in the school day memory isn't Sunny exploring Headspace, rather it is just establishing that Sunny has always had a creative and wandering mind, which is why he was able to create Headspace as a coping method in the first place.

The "you've been living here for as long as you can remember" line can also mean many things! It can refer to Omori, as you said, or it could refer to Sunny always having White Space to some extent, OR (and I find this to be the most likely answer) that regardless of how long Sunny has actually had White Space, his repression of ALL his memories both the good and the bad mean that this is literally all he can remember!

All of this is to say: I don't really know. I'm really sorry about that, I've typed this up multiple times trying to come up with a satisfying timeline that I can actually point at evidence for. I believe that Sunny probably had access to White Space before the incident itself, but Headspace probably only became necessary to form out of his different dreamworlds and fantasies after the incident. He was always creative, so he always had creative dreams, but Headspace itself was almost assuredly a post-incident creation.

I apologize that this probably wasn't the answer you were looking for. There might be an answer in there somewhere, but I hope I've shown here how trying to come up with a definitive timeline for Omori can create issues.

[angeltannis]

Honestly fuck Debt or Alive for showing me a glimpse of how good Borderlands’ writing Could be

[justalittlestarguy]

Small Collection of Deltarune Musings

I see people constantly posting their Deltarune theories online so I decided to post mine in a corner of the internet.

Toby Fox & Deltarune's Origins

I feel like people when theorizing about Deltarune largely overlook how Deltarune came to be... it's enormously important to the timeline of events. We have to remember that Toby doesn't really compromise on ideas - I think it's a safe to assume that Deltarune of the past is largely still what Deltarune of now is.

Let's go over the facts real quick.

The idea for Deltarune came to Toby Fox in a dream he had in 2011 while he was at college. In the dream, he saw the ending to a video game and was determined to create it. Fox was also inspired by a collection of playing card designs posted on Tumblr by artist Kanotynes. Development of the game started in 2012, although it was abandoned before Fox created the first room.

(Source: Wikipedia page on Deltarune, cites a Nintendo article on Ch. 1)

We have to remember that Deltarune is the original. This is my core problem with people theorizing about Deltarune in the context of Undertale. While as an audience that is all we are privy to regarding Toby's world, we have to remember that Undertale came from Deltarune, not the other way around. If anything would refer to Undertale, that's either Toby messing with his audience or means something different in this context.

Deltarune is an AU to Undertale in one sense, but in many others, it's a prequel. I am in the full belief that Deltarune's events are before Undertale could ever happen. If Undertale and Deltarune were in the same universe, Undertale would 100% happen after it, but I don't think Toby was lying when he said that the events are largely unrelated.

In fact, I don't think Toby has ever once lied about his details about Deltarune. "They are connected in a sense" and "they are not in the same universe" can both be true at once. Toby is not even necessarily lying by omission, but moreso that as an audience we could not realistically grasp the timeline from a meta perspective. The only real outlier is "Deltarune is meant to be played by fans of Undertale" as expressly retroactive, and I think this is because Undertale fans will get something new out of his characters.

I think that the timeline largely explains a lot of factors that people theorize about and can't quite get to the bottom of, including...

W. D. Gaster

People talk about the fact that Gaster's fingerprints are all over Deltarune's narrative, and Andrew Cunningham went over all of Gaster's leitmotivic theories very well, better than I ever could. Like most Deltarune theorycrafting videos though, I got stuck on one line from the video, when talking about April 2012 (the song).

For April 2012... I don't know man. Even if Toby Fox crawled out from under my bed and handed me a ratified document professing that the quote here was 100% intentional, what would that really tell us beyond the fact that Gaster's theme has existed since at least 11 years ago? It would be interesting, sure, but not particularly insightful.

My liege Cunningham I must respectfully disagree. I believe that April 2012, if a real Gaster quote, actually tells us a lot about Gaster and why he's all over Deltarune. In terms of concrete information about plot details, the answer is small, but definitive. After all, Gaster escaping his confinement as "merely unused content that people love fan speculation over" would be quite interesting itself. We assume that he will show up, but aside from ANOTHER HIM, there's very little reason for him to.

...By the way, has anyone ever wondered why Gaster went unused in the first place?

I think people just think about it at the surface level. Gaster is unused, or died before the events of Undertale (or worse). He's got NPCs that refer to him in very vague ways, and he's a particularly hidden trinket of lore. When Toby anticipated people datamining the game, he didn't really hide his existence there all that much as some other things.

But if we remember that Deltarune was the original idea, that Undertale later springboarded off of, then I think that makes Gaster a lot more interesting. I don't think Gaster was EVER meant to be a part of Undertale's story in a major way. He's a Deltarune character that snuck his way into Undertale as an easter egg.

I do have a small shred of evidence to support this as well, with another character that gets explicitly mentioned in Undertale in a small capacity... Rudy, Noelle's father. ...At least in the alarm clock dialogue.

Rudy, similarly to Gaster, seemingly dies before the events of Undertale could ever take place, but still existed there. Largely, many of the characters are still the same or have counterparts in Undertale. Gaster being Ultra Hidden still had a presence there, and I think some of people's musings on connections to other characters have merit, but for the wrong reasons. (Being related to the skelebros with another font and Sans' machine are interesting notes, especially given that we haven't actually seen Papyrus in Deltarune yet...)

Chara & Deltarune's Release Schedule

I similarly think that Deltarune being a meta-prequel makes people talking about Chara also make sense. The idea of Chara and Kris being largely separate characters makes sense in a traditional story, and we largely lack evidence for it aside from a tease in Chapter 1. However, let's consider a new meta-detail: Deltarune's intentional release schedule.

When we played through Deltarune (known at the time as SURVEY_PROGRAM), we were left with two big twists. The first... the scene at the end where Kris seems to form a Chara-like grin with a knife, and throws our red heart into the birdcage. This is an obvious tease on Toby's part. There was little subtlety here, but it gave a lot of questions. The second is that THIS IS CHAPTER 1, not a demo.

Fast forward to the height of COVID, and Toby decides on a whim to release Chapter 2. This was...expressly NOT planned. Deltarune was meant to be in our hands in any close-to-complete form with the release of CHAPTER FIVE. So we are effectively given a peer into foreshadowing that wasn't even meant to be seen by us until we could continue further.

This is important because there are a few elements that Chapter 2 starts delivering upon but doesn't entirely go through with:

Kris as a "[Heart] on a [Chain]"

Anything involving the "Weird" route, straight up didn't exist in Ch. 1

A couple more Gaster-y details than Chapter 1

Spamton seemingly hints at the next few bosses

("WE DON'T NEED [Easels] OR [CRTs]"... seemingly implying our Ch. 3 Dark Crystal holder is a TV, and our Ch. 4 Dark Crystal holder is an easel [art related?])

("WE DON'T NEED ANY [Man, Woman, or Child] AT HALF PRICE" ...could mean a lot more, but seemingly refers to Chapter 5 in some way like the others, as he goes on about Mike afterwards.)

So what does all this mean for the Chara "reveal" at the end of Chapter 1? We were supposed to see it from the start, unlike Chapter 2, so where does that leave us?

Toby is intentionally setting an expectation.

I think Kris and Chara are related in more ways, but more explicitly, I think Kris' story is more pivotal to Undertale than one may think. We have to remember a few details about Chara.

1) Before Chara became everyone's favorite diagetic narrator, Chara was a kid who lived in a monster family. No more, no less. There's no reason to think Chara was insane before effectively escaping the narrative.

2) Chara still had a fascination with a few things in common with Kris. Knives and chocolate being a couple of them, and Asriel rounding it out. Asriel is Kris' big sibling, except a bit more literal this time compared to Chara.

3) Kris and Chara (as well as Frisk) are all intentionally non-binary or potentially agender altogether. Kris goes by they/them, and both Chara and Frisk never have explicit genders either, though that can be argued to be for other purposes such as character immersion (any/all).

4) Chara is a similarly deeply troubled individual as Kris, suffering from mental conditions that Toriel and Asgore are not very good at helping them get through. This leads to disastrous consequences when Chara takes their own life in Undertale.

So what does this mean for Kris?

I think many people assumed correctly when saying that Kris is Chara, but I believe it's more accurate to say that Kris IS Chara in Undertale, but with a new role.

Kris, Chara, and CONTROL.

We all understand at this point that Kris has a troubled relationship with autonomy, given that the player guides their actions during the plot of Deltarune. But if Kris is related to Chara, then we can ask a question - what do the two have in common?

Well for one thing, they both exercise a desire for control.

In a similar vein to Cunningham's video, I once watched a video talking about [Hyperlink Blocked] that was quite interesting, and I thought there was one theory as to what it was that doesn't get enough attention. (at around 50:50, I'm going to use some select quotes here)

Control Theory [...] Kris and Spamton both want control, and it makes sense that Spamton would offer this to Kris as a reward. [...] However, the one noticeable weak spot in this theory is in Snowgrave. You could argue that Kris is taking control of their life, but they are really not. If anything, they are robbing Noelle of her control, which isn't the same thing.

The line in question substituting Hyperlink Blocked in this context is:

"NO, I GET IT! IT'S YOU AND THAT [Hochi Mama]! YOU'VE BEEN [Making], HAVEN'T YOU! YOU'VE BEEN MAKING [Control]!! AND NOW THAT YOU HAVE YOUR OWN SUPPLY, YOU DON'T NEED ME!!!"

I respect Jabu's actual theory a lot on this one. [LOVE] in the context of Undertale makes a lot of sense and fills just about every quota. However, that's in the context of Undertale's terminology. We can't limit ourselves to just that. I don't think [LOVE] gets extra brownie points for just tying into Undertale, expressly for the reasons I've stated before. Deltarune's ideas came before Undertale's, and while some concepts are linked, they are not all the same. (See: the concept of a human SOUL and Determination not lining up either.)

Jabu has a point about Control, but only from a healthy mindset point of view. We have to consider the mindset and shoes of someone who lacks control.

Take... a controlling mother. One who lacks control over a lot of aspects of her life for one reason or another, and demands perfection from herself. One coping mechanism, no matter how wrong, is trying to seize the control over her sons. It's a way she can exercise having control over something in her life. It gives her room to have agency, even at the expense of her sons' agency. She could force her son to go to college, because she can't imagine any other path for him, and she never GAVE him a choice.

...Anyways.

This anecdotal example isn't just for shits and giggles. I really do want people to look in the shoes of someone who is deeply troubled by a lack of control and examine the Weird route with that in mind. Many people troubled by this go on to become manipulative people, or exercising their agency by using someone else's. In the weird route, Kris manipulating Noelle becomes his coping mechanism, and you enable their behavior with your actions.

So what does this mean for the normal route? Obviously it's at least a bit more healthy, and as a result I do expect (and look forward to) Kris butting heads with the player, not just as a way of coping or fighting back, but to wrestle control of the narrative for their own at some point. I don't think Kris becomes a villain in this context, but I do expect them to become an antagonist if the player is considered the protagonist.

All this lines up well for Kris, but then what is Chara? We know that Chara works through the player for the [Genocide] route in Undertale (its own "Weird" route) and that by the end Chara has taken full control away from the player. This is a Chara that never had the opportunity that Kris had to turn things around. This is a Chara fundamentally broken by their lack of control, and abuses it every chance they get once they do obtain it. And to top it all off, you hand it right to them at the end. They even exercise their control over the narrative with the creepy extra scene if you perform a Pacifist route on the same file as a Genocide route was previously completed.

...hey, isn't that similar to Kris' actions and Susie's actions that the player never has direct control over? Weird. Even expressly against the player's wishes too? Interesting.

Conclusion / TL;DR

The summation of my theorycrafting is built on the knowledge that Deltarune came first, and that Undertale builds off of this info, not the other way around. Many people theorycraft assuming the inverse relationship due to Undertale releasing first, but no one seems to ever step into the developer's shoes.

I believe this:

Kris and Chara ARE expressly related and not just for surface level observations - they both tell us something about **control**

Gaster is a Deltarune character that Toby knew would be important, but got scrapped for Undertale so it can tell its own story. He was left unused in Undertale because he was never meant to be an important part of it.

A lot of Chapter 2's foreshadowing is expressly information we are *not supposed to have* due to Deltarune's intended release schedule and for that reason is very volatile.

Deltarune is a meta-prequel to Undertale. Deltarune's ideas not only came first, but are the original, and if anything Undertale is a spiritual successor to what Deltarune will eventually become. As fucked up as that timing sounds.

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