it seems that there's someone who wants to talk to you.
October 31, 2018 8:30 AM Subscribe
Toby Fox has announced a new project via the @UnderTale twitter account for Halloween. Spoilers abound, so beware...
The announcement instructs you to go to DeltaRune.com where a free game can be downloaded for Mac or PC. Is it the long-awaited sequel to UnderTale, or a prequel? What is the delta rune? Who is posting on the UnderTale twitter account? Could it be a certain fan-favorite secret character posting from the void? You'll have to play to find out.
The announcement instructs you to go to DeltaRune.com where a free game can be downloaded for Mac or PC. Is it the long-awaited sequel to UnderTale, or a prequel? What is the delta rune? Who is posting on the UnderTale twitter account? Could it be a certain fan-favorite secret character posting from the void? You'll have to play to find out.
Whew. That was a thing and a half.
As per instructions I will refrain from discussing the program for 24 hours for the sake of public safety.
posted by NMcCoy at 9:13 AM on October 31, 2018 [2 favorites]
As per instructions I will refrain from discussing the program for 24 hours for the sake of public safety.
posted by NMcCoy at 9:13 AM on October 31, 2018 [2 favorites]
I still have to play through Undertale. I just picked it up on my Switch a couple of weeks ago. This is a good reminder to play that game because I've heard such great things. This looks cool too.
posted by Fizz at 9:19 AM on October 31, 2018
posted by Fizz at 9:19 AM on October 31, 2018
Undertale is a game that exploded in popularity, to the extent that there was really a significant backlash against it, for becoming ubiquitous for a time.
Well let me tell you, despite people loudly complaining about "Sans Undertale" and stuff like that, it's still a marvelous game, the story is told with kindness and warmth, all the characters are wonderful, and if you play a genocide run you are a monster. Heh.
posted by JHarris at 9:34 AM on October 31, 2018 [8 favorites]
Well let me tell you, despite people loudly complaining about "Sans Undertale" and stuff like that, it's still a marvelous game, the story is told with kindness and warmth, all the characters are wonderful, and if you play a genocide run you are a monster. Heh.
posted by JHarris at 9:34 AM on October 31, 2018 [8 favorites]
I'm about to run the survey, and, 24-hour time request not withstanding, if the program ends up doing shady things I absolutely will report it here.
posted by JHarris at 9:36 AM on October 31, 2018
posted by JHarris at 9:36 AM on October 31, 2018
Are there Snow Poffs? That's all I care about.
posted by tofu_crouton at 9:37 AM on October 31, 2018
posted by tofu_crouton at 9:37 AM on October 31, 2018
I'm at work today, so I have not been able to download the "survey", which means I don't feel bad about reporting this piece of hearsay: this program apparently checks your Undertale save for certain details if you have downloaded it to a device with Undertale data on it.
posted by jsnlxndrlv at 9:58 AM on October 31, 2018
posted by jsnlxndrlv at 9:58 AM on October 31, 2018
That's annoying, because I've finished Undertale before, but on a previous install. Now I feel like I should go back and do a True Pacifist run, then starting over.
(I'll hint to people -- it doesn't actually seem to be a survey, and in fact, you probably should set aside a block of time for this.)
posted by JHarris at 10:14 AM on October 31, 2018
(I'll hint to people -- it doesn't actually seem to be a survey, and in fact, you probably should set aside a block of time for this.)
posted by JHarris at 10:14 AM on October 31, 2018
Everything JHarris said, plus I love the music, don't @ me, I don't care, I still run the treadmill to "Save the World" (one of the half-dozen final battle themes) on the regular.
Looking forward to whatever... this... is.
posted by cage and aquarium at 10:17 AM on October 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
Looking forward to whatever... this... is.
posted by cage and aquarium at 10:17 AM on October 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
BTW, something some people here might not be aware of, since it's part of Undertale's deep lore, and the tweets seem to be referring to, even though it might not actually matter to whatever this is--
There are hints in Undertale that Sans and Alphys had something to do, previously, with a character named W.D. Gaster. There are super rare instances in Undertale, determined by an internal variable named "fun," where mysterious things can happen in a game. Some of these refer to Gaster.
The skeleton brothers in Undertale are named Sans and Papyrus, both, of course after the fonts that they speak in. Well, W.D. appears to stand for "Wing Ding," and in the few instances of text we have from the character, he does in fact speak in a Wingdings font. Alphys' experiments with injecting determination into monster souls appear to build on Gaster's previous work, and it's possible that, when Sans talks, in the Genocide ending, about how "they" noticed some entity playing with the timestream (possibly Flowey), resetting things indiscriminately, the "they" includes Gaster.
All this information was gleaned from the Undertale Wiki.
posted by JHarris at 10:22 AM on October 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
There are hints in Undertale that Sans and Alphys had something to do, previously, with a character named W.D. Gaster. There are super rare instances in Undertale, determined by an internal variable named "fun," where mysterious things can happen in a game. Some of these refer to Gaster.
The skeleton brothers in Undertale are named Sans and Papyrus, both, of course after the fonts that they speak in. Well, W.D. appears to stand for "Wing Ding," and in the few instances of text we have from the character, he does in fact speak in a Wingdings font. Alphys' experiments with injecting determination into monster souls appear to build on Gaster's previous work, and it's possible that, when Sans talks, in the Genocide ending, about how "they" noticed some entity playing with the timestream (possibly Flowey), resetting things indiscriminately, the "they" includes Gaster.
All this information was gleaned from the Undertale Wiki.
posted by JHarris at 10:22 AM on October 31, 2018 [1 favorite]
Having finished it --
Everything was great about it EXCEPT the very last scene. What a great way to kill my enthusiasm for Chapter 2, toby fox. (More details will follow when those asked-for 24 hours are up, but man, I feel like warning people away from it now.)
posted by JHarris at 10:33 PM on October 31, 2018
Everything was great about it EXCEPT the very last scene. What a great way to kill my enthusiasm for Chapter 2, toby fox. (More details will follow when those asked-for 24 hours are up, but man, I feel like warning people away from it now.)
posted by JHarris at 10:33 PM on October 31, 2018
And can I just say that the new Home arrangement that weaves in Deltarune's main "Friendship/Don't Forget" motif is fantastic.
Aside from a few suspicious inconsistencies, this appears to be chronologically after Undertale; the monsters are on the surface, characters have aged/died, etc. relative to Undertale's time.
Asriel is mentioned in a context that implies he's not only alive but aging (going off to college), but notably offscreen, and I don't think there's any proof he's not a flower.
Kris is a near anagram of Frisk, and has Chara's shirt, and a red SOUL like the two of them do. Frisk is not mentioned anywhere that I've found. At the end of Undertale, Chara is hinted to be physically reanimated in some form by the empty coffin/mummy wrappings. My hunch: Deltarune takes place in the genocide->reset->true pacifist timeline?
posted by NMcCoy at 6:44 AM on November 1, 2018 [1 favorite]
Speculation and Spoilers:
Aside from a few suspicious inconsistencies, this appears to be chronologically after Undertale; the monsters are on the surface, characters have aged/died, etc. relative to Undertale's time.
Asriel is mentioned in a context that implies he's not only alive but aging (going off to college), but notably offscreen, and I don't think there's any proof he's not a flower.
Kris is a near anagram of Frisk, and has Chara's shirt, and a red SOUL like the two of them do. Frisk is not mentioned anywhere that I've found. At the end of Undertale, Chara is hinted to be physically reanimated in some form by the empty coffin/mummy wrappings. My hunch: Deltarune takes place in the genocide->reset->true pacifist timeline?
posted by NMcCoy at 6:44 AM on November 1, 2018 [1 favorite]
I'd like to comment, but I don't want to spoil those who haven't finished the game. NMcCoy's post is perfect. If someone could post instructions on how to hide text like that, I would really appreciate it. I tried looking in the FAQ, but it's not there.
posted by domo at 7:50 AM on November 1, 2018
posted by domo at 7:50 AM on November 1, 2018
I found it! It's the details tag.
I think the key is in the prophecy of each game.
Gerson in the first game says:
"Oh yeah... The prophecy.
Legend has it, an 'angel' who has seen the surface will descend from above and bring us freedom.
Lately, the people have been taking a bleaker outlook...
Callin' that winged circle the 'Angel of Death'.
A harbinger of destruction, waitin' to 'free' us from this mortal realm..."
In DeltaRune, the three(delta) heroes are supposed to save the world by restoring the balance of light and dark. Then there's this, from the deltarune.com site archive in the wayback machine. How long has Toby been planning this?
posted by domo at 8:46 AM on November 1, 2018
My harebrained theory
I think the key is in the prophecy of each game.
Gerson in the first game says:
"Oh yeah... The prophecy.
Legend has it, an 'angel' who has seen the surface will descend from above and bring us freedom.
Lately, the people have been taking a bleaker outlook...
Callin' that winged circle the 'Angel of Death'.
A harbinger of destruction, waitin' to 'free' us from this mortal realm..."
In DeltaRune, the three(delta) heroes are supposed to save the world by restoring the balance of light and dark. Then there's this, from the deltarune.com site archive in the wayback machine. How long has Toby been planning this?
posted by domo at 8:46 AM on November 1, 2018
It's been 24 hours now. What follows is heavy spoilers, but it's spoilers for one approach to playing the game. I didn't even bother to try a genocide route or whatever. A lot of the game's events seem like they'd play differently if you tried killing everything. Most of this has to do with the very long ending sequence, which annoyingly you can't save during so be prepared to sit down for awhile. I don't yet know how to use the details tag, so it's all in plaintext, please scroll down past this comment if you haven't played yet unless you don't care about SPOILERS---
- At the end it's plainly revealed that this is a Chapter 1. What form the rest will take is still unknown.
- The game is an alternate timeline from original Undertale, in which the monsters were always above ground. I spoke to everyone, in the surprisingly large town (of which more will probably be seen in later chapters), after the end of the game. There's lots of funny references to the original game not having had happened. Sans is there but claims not to recognize you. He still has his laid back and jokey personality, and his font-speaking quirk. Papyrus is in their house and won't come out. Sans and Toriel don't know each other.
- The personal events of the game world are different too. Asgore and Toriel are still apart. Asgore runs a flower shop and seems to be on hard times. When Kris visits him, he acts as if he hadn't seen him for some time. No hint, that I've seen, is left of what caused them to break up. He has seven colored flowers under glass in his workshop. You can get flowers from him to give to Toriel, but she seems to despise him.
- Undyne is a traffic cop, but doesn't know Alphys. Alphys appears to live in an alley.
- There seems to be a bit of drama with a couple of incidental characters, whose names I forget, but they're the reindeer characters. One of them is the girl who almost lets you join their team in class before the main game, and the other is her father, who is in the hospital with some serious issue. In dialogue with these characters, it is revealed that there *is* still a divide between humans and monsters in this world. The girl reindeer, as a kid, was scared of a "human under her bed," which Kris once pretended to be to scare her.
- There is a cemetery south of town with a number of characters buried there, including Gerson, the turtle shopkeeper from the original game.
- At the very south of town is a pair of locked doors leading into a hill, around which the hum of machinery can be heard. The music cuts out in this area, so presumably it's important.
As for the main game itself, I enjoyed that part. Susie is a fun character, and her coming around to not being a violent jerk is handled well, if a bit cartoonishly. Lancer and Resemi (is that how you spell it) are great too. The story is thematically similar to that of Undertale, although with an actual villain at the end. I think this section (which is really the meat of the game) is presented to introduce the new game system, which is very good and shows that they've worked to improve it. The strategy is deeper (in that there is strategy now), there's multiple possible characters, and the major new kind of puzzle, involving entering card suits and "swapping" them, is interesting and difficult enough to make people think without being so hard as to be a roadblock to progression.
Everything about the game is nice except for that at-the-end cutscene, where.... (really heavy spoilers here 'cause I'm not yet sure how the details tag is used):
Kris, asleep, moves around, eventually they get up in a jerky-like way. They stand in the middle of the room in a zombie-like pose, then (apparently still asleep) reach into their own chest and pull out the red soul heart and throw it into the cage in the room on the wagon. Then, now awake apparently, they pull out a knife and show a wicked smile. THEEND.
This seems to be playing into some of the Chara/Frisk stuff that was part of the endgame lore (some of it kind of obscure unless you played a Genocide game). My opposition to it is ~~ I didn't play Undertale to play a Genocide game. I hate the Genocide path and all of its events. If Deltarune is going to force players who hate that kind of stuff into it then consider me not participating full stop.
Remaining unexplored secrets: during the adventure part of the game, there is a path you can't go down because you must know the order of the floors in the castle at the end. I haven't gone back in and checked that route yet.
posted by JHarris at 10:24 AM on November 1, 2018
- At the end it's plainly revealed that this is a Chapter 1. What form the rest will take is still unknown.
- The game is an alternate timeline from original Undertale, in which the monsters were always above ground. I spoke to everyone, in the surprisingly large town (of which more will probably be seen in later chapters), after the end of the game. There's lots of funny references to the original game not having had happened. Sans is there but claims not to recognize you. He still has his laid back and jokey personality, and his font-speaking quirk. Papyrus is in their house and won't come out. Sans and Toriel don't know each other.
- The personal events of the game world are different too. Asgore and Toriel are still apart. Asgore runs a flower shop and seems to be on hard times. When Kris visits him, he acts as if he hadn't seen him for some time. No hint, that I've seen, is left of what caused them to break up. He has seven colored flowers under glass in his workshop. You can get flowers from him to give to Toriel, but she seems to despise him.
- Undyne is a traffic cop, but doesn't know Alphys. Alphys appears to live in an alley.
- There seems to be a bit of drama with a couple of incidental characters, whose names I forget, but they're the reindeer characters. One of them is the girl who almost lets you join their team in class before the main game, and the other is her father, who is in the hospital with some serious issue. In dialogue with these characters, it is revealed that there *is* still a divide between humans and monsters in this world. The girl reindeer, as a kid, was scared of a "human under her bed," which Kris once pretended to be to scare her.
- There is a cemetery south of town with a number of characters buried there, including Gerson, the turtle shopkeeper from the original game.
- At the very south of town is a pair of locked doors leading into a hill, around which the hum of machinery can be heard. The music cuts out in this area, so presumably it's important.
As for the main game itself, I enjoyed that part. Susie is a fun character, and her coming around to not being a violent jerk is handled well, if a bit cartoonishly. Lancer and Resemi (is that how you spell it) are great too. The story is thematically similar to that of Undertale, although with an actual villain at the end. I think this section (which is really the meat of the game) is presented to introduce the new game system, which is very good and shows that they've worked to improve it. The strategy is deeper (in that there is strategy now), there's multiple possible characters, and the major new kind of puzzle, involving entering card suits and "swapping" them, is interesting and difficult enough to make people think without being so hard as to be a roadblock to progression.
Everything about the game is nice except for that at-the-end cutscene, where.... (really heavy spoilers here 'cause I'm not yet sure how the details tag is used):
Kris, asleep, moves around, eventually they get up in a jerky-like way. They stand in the middle of the room in a zombie-like pose, then (apparently still asleep) reach into their own chest and pull out the red soul heart and throw it into the cage in the room on the wagon. Then, now awake apparently, they pull out a knife and show a wicked smile. THEEND.
This seems to be playing into some of the Chara/Frisk stuff that was part of the endgame lore (some of it kind of obscure unless you played a Genocide game). My opposition to it is ~~ I didn't play Undertale to play a Genocide game. I hate the Genocide path and all of its events. If Deltarune is going to force players who hate that kind of stuff into it then consider me not participating full stop.
Remaining unexplored secrets: during the adventure part of the game, there is a path you can't go down because you must know the order of the floors in the castle at the end. I haven't gone back in and checked that route yet.
posted by JHarris at 10:24 AM on November 1, 2018
(OH and be sure to talk with Burgerpants in the ending -- he's got some of the funniest lines.)
posted by JHarris at 10:33 AM on November 1, 2018
posted by JHarris at 10:33 AM on November 1, 2018
The details tag is:
less than, "details", greater than, less than, "summary", greater than, the text you want displayed, less than, backslash, "summary", greater than, text you want hidden, less than, backslash, "details", greater than.
It looks like this:
posted by domo at 11:37 AM on November 1, 2018
less than, "details", greater than, less than, "summary", greater than, the text you want displayed, less than, backslash, "summary", greater than, text you want hidden, less than, backslash, "details", greater than.
It looks like this:
the text you want displayed
text you want hiddenposted by domo at 11:37 AM on November 1, 2018
Unfortunately, I do think...
...that the timeline is post-genocide. The early deltarune.com webpage in Gaster's font stated that "Three heroes appeared to banish the angel's heaven".Think about the differences in this timeline. No one has close bonds with anyone else. A lot of the characters seem lonely. Kris is living alone with Toriel. There are no other humans even though the town is above ground. The road out of town is closed off for no reason. Asriel is alive, but away at "college". Wouldn't this be Chara's idea of heaven? He can't change people's essential natures, including his own. He can only create what he knows. I bet the town bears a striking resemblance to Chara's original town on the surface, mixed with places from the underground. I wonder how many of these new "heavens" he has created with Frisk's determined soul? How long till he gets bored with this one?
posted by domo at 12:25 PM on November 1, 2018
So:
<details><summary> Visible text <\summary> Hidden text <\details>
The visible text becomes the spot you must click on to make the hidden text appear. No on-screen indication is given that the visible text is clickable, so you must draw attention to it in some way to make it usable.
posted by JHarris at 1:03 PM on November 1, 2018
<details><summary> Visible text <\summary> Hidden text <\details>
The visible text becomes the spot you must click on to make the hidden text appear. No on-screen indication is given that the visible text is clickable, so you must draw attention to it in some way to make it usable.
posted by JHarris at 1:03 PM on November 1, 2018
(With forward slashes though.)
I spent way too long trying to anagram ROUXLS KAARD before trying to pronounce it. (It's roux as in sauce, so this goofball is the rules card, not even part of the game components proper.)
In Undertale, Frisk has a fixed name, and it's revealed that you're actually naming Chara, the "fallen child", the first into the underground.
I didn't play Undertale to play a Genocide game. I hate the Genocide path and all of its events. If Deltarune is going to force players who hate that kind of stuff into it then consider me not participating full stop.
Even in the true pacifist path, in which Chara doesn't make themself known directly, you learn of their history with Asriel, and (quoted from the wiki)
(honestly I wouldn't put it past Toby to have the true path involve cross-save shenanigans with Undertale, a parallel "world" where your choices matter a great deal.)
Interesting tidbits from tvtropes :"Most returning players would probably either play neutral or Pacifist, out of habit, and nothing seems wrong with this approach. Then you try for No Mercy - and Susie refuses to actually kill anyone, and any defeated opponents merely run off with no EXP gained." Also ,"an astute player will notice that they can move the teared out SOUL while it is in the cage". Maybe in this game, you're the player/SOUL guiding (and with the power to redeem) the yellow and green shirted creepy slasher kid, rather than the one with the chance to corrupt the inverse purple and blue shirted kid counterpart.
Very wild speculation, based on the fact that you "wake up" from the dark world in a room full of mundane versions of all the cards /chess pieces /checkers you've just encountered - maybe the "underground" is a manifestation of Kris's troubled psyche, where light and dark have gotten out of balance recently (in favor of darkness), perhaps due to the kindhearted brother Asriel's absence (I believe an npc notes that Kris is creeper then usual lately); and Ralsei, the kind and peaceful anagram who looks like Asriel (to Susie's apparent shock) is the lingering influence of said sibling in Kris's mind? And the ending song is a vocal arrangement of the game's theme provided by Laura Shigihara, notable for providing the vocal theme of To The Moon, a game about going into someone's mind to influence their thoughts/memories, and "don't forget, I'm with you in the dark" is perhaps a sentiment expressed by supportive brother Asriel and his psychic echo in the darkness of Kris's thoughts, Ralsei. We know that Toby makes his choices very, very deliberately, after all...
posted by NMcCoy at 4:22 PM on November 1, 2018
More thoughts:
I spent way too long trying to anagram ROUXLS KAARD before trying to pronounce it. (It's roux as in sauce, so this goofball is the rules card, not even part of the game components proper.)
In Undertale, Frisk has a fixed name, and it's revealed that you're actually naming Chara, the "fallen child", the first into the underground.
I didn't play Undertale to play a Genocide game. I hate the Genocide path and all of its events. If Deltarune is going to force players who hate that kind of stuff into it then consider me not participating full stop.
Even in the true pacifist path, in which Chara doesn't make themself known directly, you learn of their history with Asriel, and (quoted from the wiki)
Asriel admits at the end of the True Pacifist Route that Chara "...wasn't really the greatest person." Asriel states that Chara climbed Mount Ebott for an unhappy reason, and adds that Chara "hated humanity".I think even if we take only the events of true pacifist as Undertale Canon and Genocide as an off-the-rails "what if" story, Chara is still a troubled individual ultimately and intentionally responsible for the war between humans and monsters. In short, Deltarune isn't forcing the player into that kind of stuff any more than Undertale did in pacifist, and the final scene may just be a revelation to the pacifist-route players that, unlike Frisk in Undertale, all is not well/as it seems with Kris, and there may be some sinister influence at play. I wonder if it may be the intro narrator, even - "no one can choose who they are in this world" is strongly reminiscent of Flowey's nihilist "in this world, it's kill or be killed" speeches. And I wonder if the "true path" in Deltarune will similarly involve going against and ultimately refuting this game's belabored negative philosophy about "this world", "your choices don't matter".
(honestly I wouldn't put it past Toby to have the true path involve cross-save shenanigans with Undertale, a parallel "world" where your choices matter a great deal.)
Interesting tidbits from tvtropes :"Most returning players would probably either play neutral or Pacifist, out of habit, and nothing seems wrong with this approach. Then you try for No Mercy - and Susie refuses to actually kill anyone, and any defeated opponents merely run off with no EXP gained." Also ,"an astute player will notice that they can move the teared out SOUL while it is in the cage". Maybe in this game, you're the player/SOUL guiding (and with the power to redeem) the yellow and green shirted creepy slasher kid, rather than the one with the chance to corrupt the inverse purple and blue shirted kid counterpart.
Very wild speculation, based on the fact that you "wake up" from the dark world in a room full of mundane versions of all the cards /chess pieces /checkers you've just encountered - maybe the "underground" is a manifestation of Kris's troubled psyche, where light and dark have gotten out of balance recently (in favor of darkness), perhaps due to the kindhearted brother Asriel's absence (I believe an npc notes that Kris is creeper then usual lately); and Ralsei, the kind and peaceful anagram who looks like Asriel (to Susie's apparent shock) is the lingering influence of said sibling in Kris's mind? And the ending song is a vocal arrangement of the game's theme provided by Laura Shigihara, notable for providing the vocal theme of To The Moon, a game about going into someone's mind to influence their thoughts/memories, and "don't forget, I'm with you in the dark" is perhaps a sentiment expressed by supportive brother Asriel and his psychic echo in the darkness of Kris's thoughts, Ralsei. We know that Toby makes his choices very, very deliberately, after all...
posted by NMcCoy at 4:22 PM on November 1, 2018
On the other hand, "don't forget, I'm with you in the dark" could be taken as a very creepy line, and the song ends with an ominous deceptive cadence.
posted by NMcCoy at 4:33 PM on November 1, 2018
posted by NMcCoy at 4:33 PM on November 1, 2018
Reading around reveals that the path I mention leads eventually to part of a key. I found one other part of it in the game and there's a third part to be found (in the early shop, but later on). Once assembled, there's a secret fight against a strong optional boss, but it doesn't seem to be very story-line significant.
Really though, all that stuff about Chara and Gaster and such were not why I played Undertale. I have little interest in exploring along those lines. I like sweet and funny games ultimately about self-betterment and helping others, not pseudo-intellectual games about timelines and SOULs. Every time someone said "SOUL" in Undertale I cringed a bit, souls are terrifically overplayed gameplay and storyline gimmicks, nearly up there with "corruption," and it looks like I've got a lot of cringing left to do if I keep going with this. You guys, if you enjoy it, go ahead, that is not my sort of thing though.
posted by JHarris at 8:04 PM on November 1, 2018
Really though, all that stuff about Chara and Gaster and such were not why I played Undertale. I have little interest in exploring along those lines. I like sweet and funny games ultimately about self-betterment and helping others, not pseudo-intellectual games about timelines and SOULs. Every time someone said "SOUL" in Undertale I cringed a bit, souls are terrifically overplayed gameplay and storyline gimmicks, nearly up there with "corruption," and it looks like I've got a lot of cringing left to do if I keep going with this. You guys, if you enjoy it, go ahead, that is not my sort of thing though.
posted by JHarris at 8:04 PM on November 1, 2018
Finishing up a thought I forgot to follow up on in my earlier comment, and more speculation
In Undertale, Frisk has a fixed name, and it's revealed that you're actually naming Chara, the "fallen child", the first into the underground.
Toby's suggestion for what to name the fallen child is Undertale is "your own name", which is what the filename takes on. In Deltarune, it specifically requests the name of "you, the player", and that's what the filename takes on, despite your other "choices" being discarded. (I haven't started a second file yet to see what the game start process is for that, if it's no longer masquerading as a survey.) We have yet to discover who, if anyone, shares the name provided by the player.
The huge underlying theme of Undertale was "your choices matter", and this was emphasized by the game objecting to you resetting and starting over, and permanently remembering the choice of an extermination run even after a reset at the cost of your SOUL. In contrast, it sounds like Deltarune does not permit you to follow a different course in that way, and I strongly suspect that the inclusion of multiple save slots is to make sure the player has a low-commitment way to experiment with different choices and discover that facet of the game. I sense a theme of "inversion" relative to Undertale, with regard to the choices thing, the shirt color, the nature of the protagonist, the fact that you start on the surface with the familiar monsters from Undertale and find yourself "in the dark", confronting not any of the monsters from the first game, but creatures all based on inanimate objects (the scattered game pieces, playing cards, and dust bunnies, all of which could be encountered in a mundane form in an old abandoned classroom)...
Further support for "the underground world is in Kris's mind" theory - the inventory collected underground does not remain with you when you return (and in fact the UI is different: on the surface, the UI is the same as Undertale's); Kris has completely different clothing/appearance in that world, suggesting their arrival wasn't a literal physical one; the most salient cultural reference that I can think of for living playing cards is Alice in Wonderland, which involved a visit to a similar strange world with familiar things and people taking on a fantastical tone - "the places that you know seem like fantasy" - and then awoken from as a dream. (But of course our corresponding antagonist whose climactic confrontation catalyzes our return is the King of Spades rather than the Queen of Hearts.) If nothing else, I've thoroughly convinced myself at this point.
I feel like the tossing-the-SOUL-in-a-cage thing is Kris's dark side violently rejecting the player's agency - when separated, you control the SOUL and not the human, and that troubled dark side might be the one who's convinced that "your choices don't matter". Perhaps through the course of the game we need to teach them otherwise?
As for the three heroes, does anyone feel there might be an id-ego-superego thing going on there?
posted by NMcCoy at 8:26 PM on November 1, 2018
I like sweet and funny games ultimately about self-betterment and helping others
My hunch is that Deltarune will turn out to be such a game (especially in the "self-betterment" sense), and much like the Secret Lab in Undertale, the overt dark stuff (as opposed to Undertale's cryptic dark stuff with Gaster and the like) is in service of this end. But I certainly don't intend to argue that you're incorrect not to like a thing a like (the internet has far too much of that sort of thing already). I hope that Deltarune turns out to be a game you enjoy, and if it doesn't then I hope you do manage to find the game you wish it was elsewhere.
posted by NMcCoy at 8:40 PM on November 1, 2018 [1 favorite]
My hunch is that Deltarune will turn out to be such a game (especially in the "self-betterment" sense), and much like the Secret Lab in Undertale, the overt dark stuff (as opposed to Undertale's cryptic dark stuff with Gaster and the like) is in service of this end. But I certainly don't intend to argue that you're incorrect not to like a thing a like (the internet has far too much of that sort of thing already). I hope that Deltarune turns out to be a game you enjoy, and if it doesn't then I hope you do manage to find the game you wish it was elsewhere.
posted by NMcCoy at 8:40 PM on November 1, 2018 [1 favorite]
Toby has posted his thoughts on Chapter 1 of DELTARUNE, explaining several things.
I'll stop monopolizing the thread and give everyone else some space now.
posted by NMcCoy at 9:01 PM on November 1, 2018 [1 favorite]
I'll stop monopolizing the thread and give everyone else some space now.
posted by NMcCoy at 9:01 PM on November 1, 2018 [1 favorite]
I agree that this game is likely to “play out” in the same way as UnderTale. UnderTale had a lot of dark elements in the pacifist timeline too. I trust Toby. JHarris, if you’re worried about it, maybe don’t play the game until you hear good feedback? It can feel like a betrayal when things don’t turn out as you’d expect them to, especially with the things that you love. But this story isn’t done. We can speculate, but we don’t know where Toby is going with this.
posted by domo at 7:24 AM on November 2, 2018
posted by domo at 7:24 AM on November 2, 2018
I like that he was explicit that Undertale stands on its own, that this game is not trying to redefine the ending to that, that those characters are where they are and safe and won't be affected by this game's story.
if it doesn't then I hope you do manage to find the game you wish it was elsewhere.
That game, largely, was Undertale, played Pacifist. I understand, and even appreciate, that he doesn't want to just make that again. The world is full of grimdark violent games with questionable morality, and Undertale was great for offering an opinion and commentary on those. I think I'll probably follow this one along from afar, at least at first, until I can get a sense of where toby fox is going with it. In any case, I have my own game dreams to chase....
Anyway, I think Susie, Ralsei and Lancer are wonderful characters, and they deserve more adventures. Susie, particularly, is great.
posted by JHarris at 5:05 PM on November 2, 2018
if it doesn't then I hope you do manage to find the game you wish it was elsewhere.
That game, largely, was Undertale, played Pacifist. I understand, and even appreciate, that he doesn't want to just make that again. The world is full of grimdark violent games with questionable morality, and Undertale was great for offering an opinion and commentary on those. I think I'll probably follow this one along from afar, at least at first, until I can get a sense of where toby fox is going with it. In any case, I have my own game dreams to chase....
Anyway, I think Susie, Ralsei and Lancer are wonderful characters, and they deserve more adventures. Susie, particularly, is great.
posted by JHarris at 5:05 PM on November 2, 2018
Okay, maybe I'm crazy, but does the Spade King seem kind of, I don't know, a little bit Trump influenced? He is a ruler that jails his political opponents and openly blames/vilifies another peoples/"elites" (the Lightners). In addition, the Spade King's design is a mouth with a forked tongue in his gut/crotch just seems more Trump-like every time I look at it. I know Wikia says his character design was done in 2012, but that doesn't mean in the 6 years certain Trumpian traits and personalities didn't leak in.
posted by FJT at 11:22 AM on November 26, 2018
posted by FJT at 11:22 AM on November 26, 2018
I think it's more likely that Trump is like the Spade King, they're both of a type. Trump's even a bit more cartoonish, for at least the Spade King raised a son capable of empathy.
posted by JHarris at 9:31 AM on November 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by JHarris at 9:31 AM on November 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
OK, so regarding my thesis that Deltarune is about Asriel's absence, I had a nagging feeling that somehow Toby Fox had managed to work an Asriel-leitmotif-shaped-hole into the soundtrack. I kept hearing places where His Theme wasn't. I tweeted vaguely about that feeling I had, but didn't really follow up, second-guessing myself, worried that my assertion wouldn't make sense or stand up to scrutiny. In hindsight, I should have trusted that instinct a bit more readily, and followed up on it sooner:
Guess what happens if you overlay, without any changes to tempo or pitch, the 34th track of both the Undertale and Deltarune soundtracks.
posted by NMcCoy at 2:16 AM on November 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
Guess what happens if you overlay, without any changes to tempo or pitch, the 34th track of both the Undertale and Deltarune soundtracks.
posted by NMcCoy at 2:16 AM on November 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
Spend some more time messing with the various tracks, getting frustrated that I couldn't make Field of Hopes and Dreams match up with a slowed-down version of Hopes and Dreams; turns out that's because it matches up with a sped-up version of Hopes and Dreams. (Field is a nice clean 250 bpm; Hopes and Dreams is something like 170.75?) In hindsight, the fact that the game calls out the song's name specifically upon entering the area is a pretty good hint to pay attention to the soundtrack details. When synced up this way, the Don't Forget motif and the Your Best Friend motif appear simultaneously and in parallel, which is also interesting...
posted by NMcCoy at 1:52 PM on November 28, 2018
posted by NMcCoy at 1:52 PM on November 28, 2018
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posted by domo at 9:01 AM on October 31, 2018 [1 favorite]