~We're... getting stronger

[zarla]

I SPENT THE PAST FEW DAYS PLAYING DELTARUNE CHAPTER 2 AND BOY THERE'S A LOT GOING ON IN IT I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE TO START

I typed up a bunch of random thoughts on Tumblr so I'm just going to reproduce them here to save my wrist some work, haha. There are SPOILERS in here for the whole thing, including the alternate route (Snowgrave).


[...] I'm still trying to sort out my thoughts about it, I like literally just finished the alt route a few hours ago which just gave me a whole bunch of new info to try and sort through, haha. I’m going to need to sit down and really think about it for a while before I can start spinning things together effectively.

BUT ANYWAY, FOR QUICK SPOILER-FREE THOUGHTS CHAPTER 2 WAS REALLY GOOD AND I LIKED IT MORE THAN CHAPTER 1 TBH I loved the expanded mechanics and the new sense of depth to everything, it gave a much clearer picture of what Deltarune is going to be than Chapter 1 I think. I think I was also more open to it this time since I was prepared for it going in - I got totally blindsided by Chapter 1 and had no idea what was going on or what it meant or if it was a sequel or what, but this time I knew what the deal was so I could just take Chapter 2 on its own merits. Loved the characters and the enemies and the bullet patterns were all really cute, loved it. It all felt really cohesive.

I’ll just do this as a list because I don’t have the energy to really get in-depth with a lot of it at the moment.

• I’m really suspicious of Ralsei. I was suspicious of him before but I’m really suspicious of him now. It’s weird he can walk around in other dark worlds without turning to stone, that there’s a room for Asriel in the Queen’s mansion and not one for him, and VERY weird that he knew exactly what Kris had to do in the real world to bring the other darkners back into the dark world. How did he know that. Also he looked cuter with his hat.



• Spamton is great and creepy, I was able to do his battle first try! Which was way better luck than I had with Jevil lol. Although, today I went to try and do it again just to check, and I spared Jevil my first try. :O So maybe Jevil got rebalanced? I dunno, it just seemed a lot easier all of a sudden. ANYWAY, SPAMTON IS GREAT



• Spamton has to be ghost related but i’m not sure how yet, I assume Mettaton due to the form and the wings and the name and the recurring Neo motif in his theme, but there was also general ghost motifs in his theme as well and some things don’t add up. It did look like you find the disk in Mettaton Neo’s discarded body, and Seam says it might have belonged to an old Lightner. A lot of ghost connections. What if Spamton is Dess’s ghost



• Love Queen and the Tasques, goes without saying I’m sure, all the enemies were so cute. Loved checking on Lancer in my items.



• Hugely pleased with the ramped up gay and also Noelle is precious



• Kris opening the fountains is an interesting twist. I wonder if they opened the first castle town fountain or not (also, no one else seems to see the castle town door?). It’s weird because there was a door connecting castle town to the card world, and there was no door to the cyberworld. But somehow Ralsei knew how to get there anyway? How did he get there? How could he tell. Ralsei’s up to something. I do not trust him.



• Susie’s the best



• The Snowgrave route is really creepy in a different way than the murder run in Undertale which I’m very intrigued by, I want to see where that’s going. There are interesting parallels you could draw between Kris controlling Noelle and the player controlling Kris, but again it’s something I’ll have to think more about before it becomes something more coherent. Something something “strength” being achieved by giving up control to someone else, blocking out what they do, just doing whatever they tell you, something something



• lol berdly died lol kris just shoving his body in a closet



• The Flowey TV at the end is also intriguing, I wonder if Flowey is the one forcing Kris to remove their SOUL and do stuff. I wonder. Kris moves so jerkily without your control and also it seems like it takes a lot of time for Kris to get enough strength or control to move to pull the soul out in the first place. There’s the puppet/string connection that Spamton highlights, but also when he says that even when all the strings were cut, he wasn’t free. It could be that taking out YOUR soul just leaves Kris open to Flowey’s control instead. I dunno. Lot of questions.



• Also strange that Kris deliberately opened the front door and turned on the TV before opening the fountain. And that they take their SOUL out pretty regularly, apparently? Toriel doesn’t seem that bothered by Kris spending a ton of time in the bathroom with the water on, anyway.



• So Kris opened the fountain in the library at the end of chapter 1, then also went and ate all the pie. Then Kris went out and slashed Toriel’s tires (presumably) and possibly ate all the sugar in her car before opening the fountains. I wonder if there’s a connection between sugar and Kris pulling your soul out to do whatever.



• Ralsei says darkners turn to stone when they’re in a world that’s not their own, Onion says they hear a song from the ocean they can’t remember but they’re sure they’ve heard it before (Mother 1 nod, I see you!):

• Just gonna throw this out there.



• I spent a bunch of time getting the egg and putting it in Asgore’s fridge and NOTHING, DANG IT



• Noelle seems able to hear your voice as the player, or at least a strange terrifying voice that doesn’t seem to be Kris’s. My guess is the player, but if the TV really is Flowey, then maybe it’s him? Questions.



• lol throughout the snowgrave route i called noelle my murder girlfriend



• By the way you can do the Snowgrave route even if you’ve spared everyone up to that point. You can also start sparing people again right after Noelle leaves. Thus names like Murder run or Genocide run don’t really fit to me. Neither does weird run, weird implies something a lot less... dark? I think Snowgrave is the way to go here. Or alt I guess but that’s pretty vague, although people will probably know what you’re talking about.



• I CAN’T BELIEVE I GOT ROBBED OF PAPYRUS AGAIN well no I can believe that, part of me thought that might happen BUT I WAS HOPING



• The difficulty level was nice throughout, not too hard and not too easy. Close shaves, but nothing frustrating. I think I actually only died to Berdly and Spamton on the Snowgrave route, come to think of it. NO WAIT I died a lot to the teacups leading up to Spamton’s battle lol but that doesn’t count.



• There’s a lot you can make out of Spamton’s dialogue and I don’t have the energy to stitch it all together right now though, haha. What he says in the store about, what was it... a call for you, asking if anyone was there? And then in the Snowgrave route where he says you can call for friends all you want and they won’t answer? An Earthbound nod of course, but still. It makes me wonder where things are going.



• (There’s a second thing I want to tie to that but I’ll probably make that a separate post)



• Given that Toby said there’d only be one ending and there are routes where Berdly is alive or DEAD, I get the feeling we’re heading for a “rocks fall, everyone dies” ending more than ever. Or an ending where the world of Deltarune is destroyed and becomes Undertale, or something. idk. I’m just speculating.



• There’s an explanation for Kris’s saves now! Theories I had about it before are off-base now with new information, haha. So Kris has been saving in every dark world they create, which includes Castle Town. Well, if not them though, they saved over SOMEone’s file when they showed up there. I do wonder why the spade king and Queen didn’t recognize Kris though if they were the one convincing them to create chaos in their kingdoms. Although the video of the fountain being created DID say that there was so much smoke, you couldn’t see who was doing it. Maybe Kris was in disguise.



• Spamton says something very weird when he talks about the knight at his store, which makes sense if Kris was actually the knight. I can’t remember it exactly though right now.



• Spamton is really insistent on talking to Kris alone.



• It could be that Kris is exploring the nature of freedom/control with Noelle during the Snowgrave route since they’re struggling with that themselves. Although the closer glimpses of the player during that route (when she seems to hear you, the player’s voice) make that a bit fuzzy.



• It’s interesting that Noelle’s description says she freezes the enemy right off the bat before you do anything. Also she’s really hesitant and resistant about going to Spamton’s shop specifically it seems, and when she’s there she says something that implies “why did you bring me HERE” along with the odd line “there’s no one here, no one at all” and that it’s creepy and weird, but also nostalgic for her. I almost wonder if Noelle had something to do with Dess’s death (I assume Dess is dead from how everyone talks about her). Or if she believes she did, anyway. She could just be nostalgic for the scared feeling like she says to Kris later on a normal route, but I dunno. It’s weirdly specific.



• When you fight enemies down with Noelle, it always says “Noelle got stronger” even if Noelle doesn’t kill the enemy with her magic, even though I’m pretty sure her stats don’t change unless you get the ice kill.



• I remember when I played the first chapter I wanted to do a murder run immediately afterwards (that’s me! I’m still doing that!) and then as I went through I noticed I wasn’t killing anyone, no matter how hard I tried. They’d always heal themselves or run away until the game went the way it wanted me to, with only minor differences. To be honest, I found it kind of frustrating. It really did feel like control was being taken away from me, particularly because it presented the option and then did nothing with it. Why let me fight if it doesn’t do anything? Why harp so much on making good choices if I can’t make any other ones? What’s the point?



• Then in chapter 2, it turns out oh hey, fighting will make you lose recruits, and it’s like alright, that makes more sense. But still I felt railroaded into this sort of fluffy, feel-good kind of path. Even when I fought everyone off on a normal route, it mostly went the same except with a few different bits of dialogue. Again, it was weirdly frustrating. It felt like something was missing.



• And then, you get Noelle. And then it turns out you DO have a way to kill people, after all this time. NOW you have a chance to take control and stop doing what the game clearly wants you to do, and what everyone is telling you to do. You’ve found a loophole! YOU can’t kill anyone, but NOELLE can. There was a definite kind of contrary rebelliousness during that run for me, a kind of “you can’t stop me from doing this or ruining what you wanted me to do” kind of feeling, which I assume is meant to mirror how Kris feels all the time when your soul is in them. I didn’t see it as a need or instinct to level Noelle (no one in the game can even get levels through exp! There’s no point! No one’s important stats ever change except through equipment!), just a realization that you found a loophole in what you’re supposed to do - or who you’re supposed to be. Noelle’s just a tool for that, which Spamton even calls you out about in his final battle by asking if you want to “use” her again when you call for her.



• AND SHE COMES WHEN YOU CALL HER TOO HOW DOES SHE DO THAT



• Also interesting: when you call for your friends in that route to help you, they don’t come/can’t hear you, and Spamton says it’s your fault. If you call for your weapon though (Noelle) she comes almost immediately. You don't even have to call her, you whisper her name once and she's there.



• There’s a lot going on in the route is the jist, haha.



• I HOPE ASGORE IS DOING OKAY ;_; HE HAS TO BEG SANS FOR FREE PICKLES



• I also noticed that when Sans is like “oh you keep your flowers under glass huh, like that movie” Asgore is like “yes it’s... very similar to that movie” with a shifty look. The flower in Beauty and the Beast symbolized the prince’s life. Asgore what are you up to. Did you get up to murdering antics again. He DOES say he talks to the flowers a lot.



• I think the dark worlds are getting stronger, since in Chapter 1 everyone went home mostly fine, but in Chapter 2 injuries seem to carry over. Berdly freaking dies lol in the Snowgrave route, but also if you fight the Queen during that battle where Berdly has a wire in his face, he’ll eventually pull off the wire himself and in the process burn up his arm all crispy. Then in the real world, his arm is paralyzed! So things are definitely carrying over from one to the other.



• Queen has to be related to Susie’s mom issues. Ralsei says darkners are meant to serve Lightners and follow them and bring them happiness - darkners might be a kind of Silent Hill thing where they reflect what Lightners want or fear (Noelle wants her mom to love and prioritize her happiness over everything, perhaps, or is just afraid of how smothering and controlling she can be). Also sad that the Ambulance enemies show up right after you get Noelle. :( And Queen mentions Noelle making a lot of sad and strange searches - I assume searches about whatever illness her dad has or how to deal with grief or guilt.



• I thought maybe Spade King was Susie related thusly because he talks a lot about being a Bad Guy, but on second thought, his main motivation is resentment about being discarded and forgotten by Lightners and the people who used to give him purpose. Maybe he’s a reflection of Kris’s issues about Asriel leaving. Just speculating.



• For some reason I pictured Asriel as a like football bro due to all his trophies but it sounds like he’s just a wussy as Ralsei is lol. Which makes sense. Ralsei was always kind of worryingly accepting of the abuse you dish out to him, he’ll forgive Kris of practically anything (I gave him an S. Poison and he was like OW! I mean, uh, thanks Kris! Haha!), he’s so desperate for Kris’s validation and affection. Asriel seems to have a sort of similar tendency in constantly going to confession for KRIS’S sins and sobbing about them FOR you. I wonder if Ralsei is just Asriel’s dark world form in disguise, thus why he hid his face for so long from you and changed his name.



• (If Ralsei is Asriel in disguise then that makes his behavior towards his sibling PRETTY WEIRD tbh)



• Kris is such a weird edgy kid. I worry about them, haha. I don’t think it’s as simple as Kris being an antagonist to the player or the player being an antagonist to Kris. It’s definitely interesting that Kris is making the fountains and the player is the one sealing them (it specifically says its your soul doing it). At first glance, making more fountains does seem like it’ll plunge the world into darkness and chaos, but then again... Ralsei’s the one telling you that, and who knows. Maybe he has his own agenda. There was a lot in this chapter about how the dark world is better than the light one.



• If the dark world versions are meant to reflect the lightner’s souls or innermost desires or idealized visions of themselves, then Kris’s soul/desire/vision of themselves is... a corpse-blue dead knight. Bit worrying.



• Awful lot of scarves in chapter 2 that pushed for Ralsei to attack people. A lot of attack uppers for him. Even Spamton’s item is a weapon for him that mentions abandoning healing. I know Jevil dropped a weapon for Susie too, but I dunno.



• The fact you can fuse the Thorn Ring with a Pure Crystal (wherever that is) to make a creepy sword makes me think Noelle is going to come back again. Unless you’re supposed to get the thorn ring and then take it off her and abort the run at Berdly, which you could do I suppose. Still, it makes me think you and Noelle are going to keep going down that path together.



• (What if the Pure Crystal is frozen Berdly? D: Or even an item you get off of Noelle if you kill her?)



• Also very interesting that the ending credit theme is a glitchy version of the first chapter end theme. Don’t Forget was reprising constantly through the first chapter, but only showed up rarely in the second one. I only remember hearing a snip of it once, come to think of it, and I can’t remember where.



• Boy there was a lot of shipteasing in pretty much every direction, wasn’t there?

ANYWAY THAT’S ALL I GOT RIGHT NOW I’m going to keep thinking about it though.

I also posted this at dreamwidth. Comment here or there, don't matter to me!