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Deltarune's been in the planning stage since 2011, before Undertale even. There's probably going to be a lot of stuff like this we'll find out over time.
There's a big one where the Switch port has a new Gaster Follower mentioning "Suzy" (intentional spelling) and mentions that the time you'll meet is fast approaching, and if you check Sans' workshop after this you'll find a picture with people you don't recognize with the phrase "don't forget."
Toby said some chapters would be shorter back in the 2020 dev update I think. With three chapters releasing in the next batch, I imagine at least one will be on the shorter side at maybe one or two hours.
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Edit: Wait holy shit, Queen knows King right? At the end they act familiar right?
The Dark World has to exist in some capacity prior to the Fountain opening, not just retroactively.
I was lowkey hoping for an episodic release for this reason, actually. Something to talk about with every drop.
The Dark World has to exist in some capacity prior to the Fountain opening, not just retroactively.
I wonder how the endings of the first two chapters will carry over when 3/4/5 are released all at once. Can't really hit us with something like "Kris is probably the Roaring Knight" when we can keep going right after.
I was lowkey hoping for an episodic release for this reason, actually. Something to talk about with every drop.
I knew about the other ones, mainly because when the Suzy/fast approaching thing happened I made the thread about it lol.
It's just crazy to me that basically all the weird/creepy stuff that wasn't explained seems like it was just set up for everything in Deltarune. Crazy foresight on his part.
Was snooping around, there's two weird filenames in the music folder. One is just "d" and it's one of the Side B route themes, but there's also just a "w". I can't place it because it just sounds like wind, but if that plays before d does, that would spell W D, and that would be very interesting.
Also for some reason the Bandcamp version of BIG SHOT is missing some chattering during the Undertale miniboss part at the end of the song before the loop, but it's present in the game's "spamton_neo_mix_ex_wip.ogg" file.
Also for some reason the Bandcamp version of BIG SHOT is missing some chattering during the Undertale miniboss part at the end of the song before the loop, but it's present in the game's "spamton_neo_mix_ex_wip.ogg" file.
but seriously; that line from the River Person in Undertale was definitely in reference to one of the two fun value events that can happen when entering the room he appears in Snowden; both of which tie to Gaster. There's the wrong number song, where the caller says they meant to call someone whose name starts with G; and this one:
You know I was trying not to overanalyze the fact that Chapter 2 came out on the 17th and the one Gaster entry we know of is number 17 but Toby doing stuff like this makes it really hard.Found on reddit
Gaster just seemed like remnants of a plotline he didn't end up implementing. People datamining and making hundreds of youtube vids to solve this that part was something else. I don't think that's really happened with a game before? It went full Pepe Silvia.
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Queen (or is it Spamton?) references the "darker, yet darker" line in the No Mercy route, though I think it's specifically "dark, so dark" there whereas Seam directly says the line after you beat Jevil in Chapter 1 and let them know.
That's literally what Gaster is yeah. There was supposed to be another skeleton named Grandpa Semi who was cut and that seemed to motivate the idea behind Gaster being a character literally removed from their universe and had their existence patched over where you have to manually tamper with the game to learn about him.
That makes a lot of sense considering Toriel mentions she got Kris a pair of red horns to wear then asks what happened to them. So that's almost certainly where Ralsei comes from. I'm not sure how much of that is going to be Kris's idealized form since there is a bit of a romantic undertone with Ralsei's scenes but it could also be learning to love yourself or something along those lines.
Queen and Spamton both reference it:
Spamton's line is a bit more questionable but he's still confirmed to have something to do with Jevil and Seam anyway.
Knowing that Toby is obviously a big Mother fan and likes playing with structure, I could see one of the remaining chapters being significantly shorter than the rest, think Chapter 6 from Mother 3 that is essentially a single (very emotional) corridor. This could be a way of getting to 7 chapters without bloating things up and taking a long time. I feel like I read somewhere that Chapter 2 was going to be the longest chapter, as well?
There's no reason it has to follow that structure though. When you're doing individual chapters its more likely they stand on their own.
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I don't think there's really a romantic overtone to them so much as Ralsei is seemingly desperate for Kris' affection and approval. Regardless of Ralsei's true origins he's still definitely a send-up to Kris' beloved older brother, which I think is because Ralsei is Kris' idealized self as the bio child of the Dreemurrs.
Which, come to think of it, the Darkners all have a physical existence in the Light World... you think Ralsei is actually Kris' toy horns?
I honestly don't know how to process all the Gaster focus.Queen and Spamton both reference it:
Spamton's line is a bit more questionable but he's still confirmed to have something to do with Jevil and Seam anyway.
It feels so fanfic-y, there's gotta be a twist.
Honestly it feels like him playing Gaster completely straight would be the biggest twist he could do because everyone's expecting some kind of subversion.
Glancing though this thread and I don't think I have it in me to do these negative runs. Same goes for Undertale.
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I mean yeah kinda
The idea of Deltarune giving way to characters from Undertale feels so weird and, like, innately disappointing to me.
Sans is obviously gonna do something, even before his explosive, game-defining popularity took off he was clearly positioned as one of the most important characters and most pointedly the one with the most amount of mystery surrounding him, but the idea of one of the big payoffs of Deltarune being "finally, we know Sans' deal!" is something that'd just kinda nettle me.
I'm not really sure how to subvert Gaster other than keeping him mostly off-screen and only acting through the superbosses like Jevil and Spamton.
Hard to say as of now, but kind of? I could see it being a long winded happy ending alternative to Undertale's more tragic characters, though I really hope that's not the plan. All the fanfic vibes feel intentional, as well as the inverted game title and mystery goat boy.
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Playing through the game, I can grasp a possible reason behind the story of the game, although I'm pretty sure there will be more elements showing more possibilities in the upcoming chapters. To begin with:
* In chapter 2 we can see that Kris is their own person and us (the SOUL) is disrupting him somehow. Can be in small things (not being able to play the piano) or more serious things (forcing them to turn Noelle into a killer). Furthermore, the whole shenanigans with removing the SOUL shows that Kris has some agency over their actions (or the ability to subvert the SOUL). Despite the SOUL-less persona seeing more violent, we know that Kris themselves are harmless: they had friendships with people, interests and relationships, even if they were a bit creepy. More importantly, we know Kris loves his brother and misses him.
* Also, Ralsei starts showing signs that he knows more than he's letting on. Since his existence he lived alone in his own kingdom, yet knows many unique things about the Dark World and its fountains. Furthermore, he is aware of what *should* be happening based on his reaction to Susie being uninterested in Noelle's room in the "Side B" story. Whenever we go see Susie while Ralsei and Kris are alone, he is also seen finishing telling Kris something when we switch control back. He is also keenly against opening Dark Fountains, in a very uncharacteristic way. That's not taking in consideration how he is immune to the petrifying effect of being away from a original Fountain or that he can move between Dark Worlds, and more importantly, knows the real world school's rooms.
Personally, I think Ralsei is an idealization of Kris: Not of their brother Asriel, but of themselves as a monster, or a Dreemur, something that as a human child they never had (a parallel to Chara in Undertale). Ralsei being so affectionate, a friendly person who bakes and all that sure seem like both what Kris would want to be, and a friend Kris would want to have. As the Knight, Kris creates Dark Worlds to create settings where he and his friends can live adventures and run away from the real world (like Kris' problematic family). Ralsei's job there is to ensure the story goes as they want: they are heroes having adventures. Ralsei may be aware of the player, and tries to be as friendly as possible to ensure the player acts as he and Kris want.
I am confident that Gaster is involved somehow, since there's too much smoke for no fire, but I don't think he will ever be addressed properly in the story but more as an arc that drives it: My impression is that Kris' powers to create Dark Fountains may be connected to him somehow, and Gaster is not pleased with having such power used like that. So he decides to involve a third party, the player, as Kris' SOUL to manipulate the story and show that "You can't decide who you are in this world" and break Kris/Ralsei's control over the Dark World, alluding to Gaster's own connection to darkness and making them be unable to continue having their adventures of creating new worlds and being different people from who they are.
* In chapter 2 we can see that Kris is their own person and us (the SOUL) is disrupting him somehow. Can be in small things (not being able to play the piano) or more serious things (forcing them to turn Noelle into a killer). Furthermore, the whole shenanigans with removing the SOUL shows that Kris has some agency over their actions (or the ability to subvert the SOUL). Despite the SOUL-less persona seeing more violent, we know that Kris themselves are harmless: they had friendships with people, interests and relationships, even if they were a bit creepy. More importantly, we know Kris loves his brother and misses him.
* Also, Ralsei starts showing signs that he knows more than he's letting on. Since his existence he lived alone in his own kingdom, yet knows many unique things about the Dark World and its fountains. Furthermore, he is aware of what *should* be happening based on his reaction to Susie being uninterested in Noelle's room in the "Side B" story. Whenever we go see Susie while Ralsei and Kris are alone, he is also seen finishing telling Kris something when we switch control back. He is also keenly against opening Dark Fountains, in a very uncharacteristic way. That's not taking in consideration how he is immune to the petrifying effect of being away from a original Fountain or that he can move between Dark Worlds, and more importantly, knows the real world school's rooms.
Personally, I think Ralsei is an idealization of Kris: Not of their brother Asriel, but of themselves as a monster, or a Dreemur, something that as a human child they never had (a parallel to Chara in Undertale). Ralsei being so affectionate, a friendly person who bakes and all that sure seem like both what Kris would want to be, and a friend Kris would want to have. As the Knight, Kris creates Dark Worlds to create settings where he and his friends can live adventures and run away from the real world (like Kris' problematic family). Ralsei's job there is to ensure the story goes as they want: they are heroes having adventures. Ralsei may be aware of the player, and tries to be as friendly as possible to ensure the player acts as he and Kris want.
I am confident that Gaster is involved somehow, since there's too much smoke for no fire, but I don't think he will ever be addressed properly in the story but more as an arc that drives it: My impression is that Kris' powers to create Dark Fountains may be connected to him somehow, and Gaster is not pleased with having such power used like that. So he decides to involve a third party, the player, as Kris' SOUL to manipulate the story and show that "You can't decide who you are in this world" and break Kris/Ralsei's control over the Dark World, alluding to Gaster's own connection to darkness and making them be unable to continue having their adventures of creating new worlds and being different people from who they are.
I mean it could be pandering or it could just be like...this is something he wanted to do with the character since he started implementing the Fun events.
I think that's fine, personally.
That's not subverting Gaster that's just continuing to do Gaster things by keeping him in the margins where he was to begin with. Except it's actual margins instead of trash margins, I guess.
They give you options to lean away from the romantic undertones, but you have to ignore the entire text of the chapter to not see it as a possibility. The whole chapter is built around a Noelle, Susie, and Berdley love triangle, while on the snowgrave route you can insert yourself into that mess. So much of this world is build around a fair, with the Ferris wheel scene and carnival games really driving that home. That makes the swan ride a very clear reference to a tunnel of love. You even get your picture taken with just the two of you. Then at the end when Susie asks about who you'd want to take to the festival, if you select Ralsei she comments something like you having a funny look on your face and how it was just a question. The other options being Noelle and Susie, one of which we know is a potential forced romance in Noelle.
All of it is easy to overlook, but it's there if you lean into it. And the boat ride really wants you to lean into it.
And yeah, since at this point we know that Darkners are tied to physical objects in our world I think it's pretty clear that Ralsei is Kris's horns. But a lot of this depends on how much of their personality is their own vs. them being solely tied to their owners personality. Like one reason I'm not fully on board with Ralsei being Kris's idealized self is because Ralsei is clearly male whereas we haven't seen anything that points us to Kris wanting to be seen as a certain gender. I think that alone points to Ralsei being his own being. Like, you can name onionsan Ariel II and I don't think he has any qualities that are deserving of that from what we know. It just feels too obvious, especially if the alternate route is taking away someone's agency.
I'd argue that one of the central draws of Deltarune is the eeriness of seeing all of the Undertale characters seemingly being completely new characters with no connection to the first game whatsoever and a large part of Ralsei's mystery is why the heck he looks like Asriel. The recurring imagery of Kris with a knife draws entirely upon Undertale imagery too.
I don't think that Deltarune's pay-offs will be completely within Undertale's umbrella but I don't think they'll really be completely separate either.
I'm not sure the two are meant to separated like that.
Kris possibly having (something close to) a romantic relationship with an idealization of their older brother is a tad too creepy. I don't see Toby ever going there. Now, Kris having a romantic relationship with an idealization of themselves would make some interesting parallels with how lonely Kris probably felt. Furthermore, Ralsei's gender is not something I can see defining he's not tied to Kris: For all we know, his idealization could simply be "Be like my brother", so both as a monster and male.
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Adding to this, I think Kris might only be able to take the SOUL out after dark. If they have a problem with what we did to Noelle it would explain why they couldn't act on it while in the Dark World but had no problem once they left.
Yeah that's a good way of putting it. Even with the inherently ambiguous nature of Kris' gender, Ralsei could still manifest as "being exactly like my brother." It wouldn't necessarily have to do with how Kris views themself.
Kinda?
Like I'm not objecting to say the way Toriel or Alphys are being written, like they're characters we know but with completely different histories so it draws out new interpretations of their characters. We know Kris isn't literally Chara but the specific imagery of "creepy red-eyed kid with a knife in a green sweater" is deliberate, except all of it means something else here.
Deltarune is obviously trying to mess with our heads in how it presents these familiar characters but what I'd specifically object to is something like "oh my god, Sans Undertale was actually from Deltarune all along!" or something. Like, that the connections become textual and eat into the plot rather than thematic.
I mean I guess, it's just that since I'm latching pretty hard onto the connections between Ralsei and Asriel it's hard for me to think there's going to be actually romantic intent between Ralsei and Kris.
Even with Noelle's interest in Susie versus how Ralsei and Kris interact, both of which are kind of steeped in a level of desperation for their target, I feel Noelle comes off more... realistic? Subdued? Like that Noelle has a life outside of Susie, whereas with Ralsei it feels like every sentence out of his mouth is some attempt and getting in Kris' good graces. It doesn't feel like Ralsei just likes Kris, it feels like Ralsei is trying to insert himself as an important and trusted figure in Kris' life.
I am calling it now: one of the final conflicts of Deltarune will be Kris having to face his real self (in the form of his older brother and their relationship) versus his idealized self (Ralsei). So literally having to pick between his real world (facing the harsh reality) or his fantasy world. This will be extra hard because we are given all these moments to fall in love with Ralsei (as players!) even if facing your issues is the moral right decision.
Oh well I'm not concerned that's going to happen.
Obviously Toby wants us to connect things to Undertale but I don't think we're going to literally get the same characters. At worst I think we'll get Sans or Gaster or whoever being vaguely aware that the world of Undertale exists but there won't be any physical crossover.
The remix of Gaster's theme that plays at the beginning of Chapter 1 is called "Another Him" after all...
Not my discovery, but an interesting note about SnowGrave: when battling Spamton NEO, Kris is the one who calls Ralsei and Susie for help, but "you" (i.e. the player, the one making Noelle do all these awful things) is the one who summons Noelle.
Also interesting to note that the hospital bed previously occupied by The Warrior is now home to Shyren at the end of Ch2, and when you inspect her, the narration says it "looks like she's resting her voice." Could just be a reference to her role in Undertale, but thought it was curiously coincidental timing.
Yeah, given the way Ralsei acts so surprised and unprepared whenever you're nice to him, I'm inclined it's more of a "wow, you've never genuinely loved yourself" and honestly I think that's really powerful if true.
Also interesting to note that the hospital bed previously occupied by The Warrior is now home to Shyren at the end of Ch2, and when you inspect her, the narration says it "looks like she's resting her voice." Could just be a reference to her role in Undertale, but thought it was curiously coincidental timing.
Yeah, given the way Ralsei acts so surprised and unprepared whenever you're nice to him, I'm inclined it's more of a "wow, you've never genuinely loved yourself" and honestly I think that's really powerful if true.
Been looking through the script dump for extra stuff I might have missed. I really liked the dialogue for both choices near the start of the game before you enter the cyber dark world, and also the battle text for the popup enemy in particular since
Couple other things I noticed in there:
I think Toriel says a few different things if you call her at various points early in the game. It looks like you can call her after the scene with her and Alphys to insist that you are "normal" and also that you have a trash orb.
The box of chocolates can be eaten alone, with Susie, or given to Sans who will tease you about you giving him chocolates before deciding that you must be trying to return them, then he gives you five dollars for them.
- Kris looking up monsters instead of humans can also tie into how he feels revulsion looking at pictures of humans.
- Also the demon summoning ties into how you later learn about how he used to hang out with his goth classmate.
- Ralsei thinking he accidentally deleted the entire internet is cute
- Noelle just continuing to be gay
Couple other things I noticed in there:
I think Toriel says a few different things if you call her at various points early in the game. It looks like you can call her after the scene with her and Alphys to insist that you are "normal" and also that you have a trash orb.
The box of chocolates can be eaten alone, with Susie, or given to Sans who will tease you about you giving him chocolates before deciding that you must be trying to return them, then he gives you five dollars for them.
But like... we already have one. The exterior of Sans' store is the Grillby's from undertale.
The other characters are almost definitely different versions, but I think at least sans and maybe papyrus might be reality hopping from undertale. in UT there's dialogue about them "just appearing one day" how is that possible when the underground is sealed?
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I think this will actually be subverted in the sense that its not healthy to love an idealized version of yourself. Kris is not truly loving himself, he's loving a projection of himself as how he wished he was. Considering how attached players are to Ralsei, I think Toby is building a legit bridge where players WILL struggle with the idea that loving Ralsei (or what he represents) may not be the healthiest thing, and its hard to make this kind of message work in a game as players tend to remove themselves from the game setting. As things are, Kris has a desire to be like Ralsei and the players have a desire to be close to Ralsei, so both create a situation that is unhealthy.
Watch whatever chapter Catti goes to the Dark World it's just a big SMT reference.
Well I finished the alternate route. That was unsettling, to say the least. It will be interesting to see how this effects Noelle in future chapters. Berdly I'm guessing will be swept under the rug by just being declared to be in a coma and will sit in the hospital for the rest of the game.
The Snowgrave route seems far more fucked up than anything in Undertale. The fact that you are manipulating Noelle like that...Yeah I'm never playing that shit. I'm good.
I liked the idea that the comment about the closet being able to fit people in it means that Kris throws Berdly in there. Guessing he might be declared missing, not exactly known to be murdered but no one will check the closet.
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The idea of Berdley's dead body getting shoved into a closet and nobody noticing when he was last seen in the library strikes me as really weird.
If you go back into the computer lab Berdley's missing and the door's shut, implying Kris stuffed them in there right?
If you go back into the computer lab Berdley's missing and the door's shut, implying Kris stuffed them in there right?
You can't go back into the computer lab at all, I don't think. Certainly not on the normal route, at least. Normal route also has the "a large person could fit in here" line, incidentally.
Sans in Undertale had the ability to collect data of some sort from other timelines. If the version in Deltarune can do the same, he may simply be aware (at least in broad terms) of the bad stuff that can go down when a curious human pushes things too far. He strikes me as a little colder and more standoff-ish in Deltarune than he was for most of Undertale; perhaps he's on guard against humans behaving weird based on something he's seen.
I wouldn't completely discount the possibility of him being the same character at different points in time. Feels like there's a possibility of him being shuffled back and forth between two timeline-ending disasters: in Deltarune he seems to have adapted the remnants of Grillby's bar as his grocery store, and in Undertale he's got that paper with a crude sketch of the Fun Gang in his lab.
Toby's proven consistently super creative here, though, so I imagine he has something twistier in mind. My brain is screaming for a definitive answer and it may just not get one at all. Leaving gnarly loose ends can be a really effective narrative technique in its own right (see also: Annihilation and the other Southern Reach books) - the point of Gaster and co may be that something has been permanently lost and we can't ever get the full story.
FIY, you don't have to edit the game files to see the Gaster stuff anymore. A patch made them able to occur randomly, like finding the egg rooms in Deltarune.
My other potential reading of the "a large person could fit in here" line was that it could have been where an interloper (Light-world Ralsei?) hid while joining in on the Dark World session. I'm... semi-sold on the theory that Ralsei is the personification of Kris' lost pair of fake horns, given that he seems to follow most of the other rules of the Darkner characters, but he could also be a Lightner who has been sneaking into these sessions and sneaking away before everyone else wakes up. Ralsei wasn't present for sealing the latest fountain; perhaps he snuck out of the computer lab while everyone else was still absorbed. None of the potential candidates for "lightners who would show up as a goat person in the Dark World" really make sense under this theory, though, and it would seem cheap for it to be an as-yet-unmentioned third party.
Also, saying that giving Gaster more of a role would be pandering seems misguided to me. You have to remember Toby envisioned Deltarune before Undertale, and he didn't expect Undertale to be the smash hit it turned out to be. I think any Gaster stuff in Deltarune is just payoff to the seeds Toby planted in Undertale.
DELTARUNE Status Update Sept 2021
Doesn't sound like it's necessarily the longest chapter, but it sounds like future chapters will probably/hopefully be easier to develop.
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It's not necessarily Gaster's presence, it's more like, the idea of Deltarune existing as a vector for ideas in Undertale seems wrong to me.
Like, if I care about Gaster now it's because "oh my god, he's that character from Undertale." I know he's already involved and I know it's not gonna be something stupid like "the Deltarune universe was made by Gaster to save Asriel!" or some shit, I've just seen this kind of thing go wrong too often.