I think it’s interesting how Toriel seems decently aware of Kris’s history of behavioral issues. I mean, I feel like “getting sugar from the car” was just an excuse to check outside after (she suspects) Kris escaped from the bathroom window. Kris has clearly been ripping their soul out and doing weird stuff since long before we entered the picture.
Also, I think it’s interesting that Kris left the front door ajar when making the foutain. Given the dialogue options with Undyne in both chapters (“hey there are these dark worlds popping up”), I think that they genuinely want to warn her about the problem before it gets serious (tho I also like the idea of Kris wanting some escapism as well).
idk. Reading a buch of fan theories, part of me thinks that Undertale’s meta-narrative with the player/SOUL stuff broke people’s brains. I feel like this time around that framework is being used to examine Kris’s mental health and trauma in a fantastical-ized fashion (like Cloud’s issues in FF7), rather than just simply regurgitating the same meta-point from Undertale of “oh wow you’re a bad person” or whatever plot-twisty nonsense like that.
Anyhow, I personally can’t wait for Susie to teach Toriel how to wavedash in order to beat Yoshi in a fight. Also, I can’t wait to see how awkward the inevitable Ralsei-Toriel interactions are gonna be. Chapter 3 is gonna be lit.
yeah I mean I think I agree with this except for the ripping their soul out part, because I feel like that was never necessary before the player enters the picture? I guess that’s something that’s still a little ambiguous about what the “soul” represents? in-game, it’s treated as the essence of humanity and the source of determination, but how come we never see susie or noelle’s soul in combat? the soul is also rather explicitly the player’s true avatar in the game, but does that mean that every other human character has a gamer somewhere manipulating them? I guess the idea is that kris’s soul is the only part of them that we actually control, but if that’s the case then I don’t think they had any reason to tear it out until we started using it to control them? it more suggests to me that kris is indeed frisk after all, aged up a few years, and still has an intuitive grasp on how this works that other humans lack because of that experience. maybe the events of the original undertale were not real but were experienced by kris in the form of a dark fountain episode that predates all of this.
any imo it’s still extremely ambiguous whether or not kris actually has malicious intent or not and honestly I hope that they keep it that way until the final chapter.
what’s interesting about potential ralsie/toriel interactions is that it seems that sometimes characters simply do not acknowledge ralsie’s existence. noelle barely interacts with him, and only privately wonders who it is that susie is talking to, presumably musing that it looks like asriel. there is at least one scene where queen is addressing all three members of your party but address them as “you two” as if ralsie was never there. it makes me wonder if he can control who perceives him and when, which is how he seems to always manage to stay out of trouble, never get kidnapped, etc. if this is true as I suspect he may just choose to remain invisible to toriel for the entirety of chapter 3, which would necessitate further exploration of who or what he is. it’s clear to me that he isn’t really a darkner like lancer or rouxls card because he never gets sick and turns to stone like they do in the cyber world. though tbh his explanation of why that happens seems a little a sus bc they aren’t by their native fountain in ralsie’s world either. and his explanation of the roaring is sus. ralsie is just sus! I don’t feel like anyone is talking about this! what is he hiding!
actually a neat thing about deltarune is that when you start fresh with no save file, the first time you save your game there is already a save present that’s just entitled “KRIS” that then gets replaced with whatever name you choose. this suggests to me that kris was already playing deltarune (or something like it) before we ever enter the picture? and then our intrusion overwrites their will.
The main reason I think that Kris has had the soul for longer than we’ve been playing the game is because of the cage in their room, where some of the flavor text implies that Kris has used it before to trap/harm their troublesome soul. I’m not sure what the soul precisely represents in this context, but I don’t think we’re playing by the same rules as Undertale — the lines between us the player and the player character feel fuzzier to me in this case.
I’m still thinking about the “create your vessel” opening to Chapter 1, which has very (very) obvious trans vibes. Like, idk, my interpretation of that scene is that it is Kris’s dream (possibly a recurring one), and that the choices we make reflect Kris’s desires. Kris wants to have a different body and life and such (duh), but feels tethered to this shambling, capricious meat puppet instead (cf. their horrified reaction to NEO Spamton dying after losing his strings). Still, even if their preferred vessel was rudely discarded, their new [name] couldn’t be taken from them.
In other words, I think that [name] overwriting the KRIS savefile does not reflect us colonizing Kris’s identity with our own, but rather [name] beginning to assert an identity beyond Kris.
Not sure how well this accords with the actual text of the game, but those are the ~vibes~ I’m getting for now.
As for Ralsei, I can at least understand why the Queen has trouble remembering who he is or acknowledging him. All her knowledge of the other characters comes from their search histories, but Ralsei has never used the internet and thus has no search history to be gleaned from. I can also understand Noelle’s deal, since when she’s not so utterly fixated on Susie she’s probably too timid to ask for Ralsei to introduce himself. (Berdly is the only character I don’t understand in this regard, really.)
Though yeah, still a lot of unanswered questions about Ralsei (like how did he get to the Librarby from the storage closet???). Still, while he might have a few more hidden dimensions to himself, I don’t think he (or any other known character) is “secretly evil” or whatever the edgy fan theories of the day are saying (fan theories tend to gravitate towards the darkest stuff, I’ve noticed (even if it would require breaking character)).
Anyhow, how many chapters before we see Noelle decide to create a dark fountain by herself in an attempt to use her magic to cure her father’s terminal illness? (Seems like an obvious set-up to me.)
I replayed Chapter 1 yesterday, and one thing I noticed when starting up Chapter 2 from a carried-over save is that it does the same thing. You end up overwriting a save file named “Kris” (not all uppercase, for some reason). Curious about the implications of this.
My current interpretation is that our name represents who Kris wants to be, which they are more at terms with in the dark world, whereas in the light world (where I think these these inter-chapter saves are made) they feel much more trapped in their role as Kris (see also how the castle town is named [our name]town, and not Kristown, and also the differences in the flavor text for Kris’s bedroom in both places).
Anyhow, I fought Jevil yesterday and somehow beat him on my first try. Really wasn’t expecting that, given how I never managed to be him before and I haven’t seen any footage of the fight in 2 years at least. Looking forward to actually fighting the superboss in Chapter 2 this time around, and also not absent-mindedly saving over my file after leaving the cyber world.
Anyhow, I just had a shower thought re:the mechanics of leaving the dark world: how is it that we can (now) just hop out of Ralsei’s dark world via the light pillar, but leaving the other two dark worlds required sealing their fountains? idk, I feel like this is a question that is really best left unanswered but is still gonna bug me until an answer is given.
Several snippets of text suggest or support the idea that “Undertale” is an unfinished/unreleased game Asriel made. This makes sense in some ways; the characters are all younger, matching the period in which Asriel was living at home working on his game. Inversions like Catty and Bratty being best friends instead of feuding rivals seem like appropriate changes from someone so soft-hearted. Toriel and Asgore’s separation is given a much more dramatic context and explanation, and in this scenario, Asriel places the blame indirectly on himself.
Some aspects don’t fit as well. Deltarune implies that Asriel probably hasn’t met Sans or Papyrus, and considering he put Kris’s friends (the monster kid and Snowy) in the game, you’d think he’d have put some of his own friends in, as well. Or maybe he’s making the game for Kris, as a way of dealing with what’s happening in their family? Thus the emphasis on figures like Undyne (who was just then replacing Asgore in the PD) and Alphys (who replaced the just-deceased Gerson in the school)? Then what of the skeletons, or the choice to reach an ending through maximum violence? There’s no answer; this is just a what if.
Chapter 1 is board and card games, while chapter 2 is the internet. Chapter 3’s gotta be TV then, right? TV commercials and yet more anime references seem inevitable, but what were the shows Susie flipped past during the sleepover? Any of those could give a clue as to what kind of environment we’ll be exploring next, and we know Undyne should be on her way to the house, so she’s likely to feature in the next one as well.
The channels on the TV that Susie flips through show a cooking show, a weather report, and a kaiju film. She also namedrops some silly horror films. Just going by that, I feel like we won’t have to worry too much about the next chapter retreading too much ground (though anime seems inevitable (though it could possibly be in the service of letting Undyne know anime is real (hmmmm…))). Regardless, what I’m most excited to see is the (hopefully horrifying) off-brand Yoshi from Super Smashing Fighters.
Regarding your second paragraph there, I don’t think anything about sans (and, by extension, Papyrus and [REDACTED]) needs to fit neatly into that theory. sans, being sans, could easily find his way into Asriel’s version of Undertale — I mean, his storefront is literally Grillby’s place from Undertale with the name scratched off, so even if the Azzy’s unfinished game is just a twee meta-joke I don’t think it’s off-limits for sans.
Oh, and while I remember it, the virovirokun virus enemies first appear after the arcade machine (so a while after we see Noelle get captured) but before we fall down to the city and team up with her, so I don’t think their presence is related to Noelle’s dad. (I just took them as references to niconico and computer viruses (the librarby needs to update their firewall imo).) On the other hand, I think the other health-related enemy does appear after we first team up with Noelle (though I forgot what it even is lol).
Oh, and while I’m thinking of Noelle — the calendar in the room the queen gives her, where every month is December and every day is Christmas — I’ve heard someone guess that that’s there because she searched for “December Holiday” repeatedly. December is implied to be the full name of her sister Dess, and it’s fairly clear that something tragic happened to her. Given that Noelle searched for her name over and over, it’s more likely that Dess went missing rather straight-up dying (perhaps she went missing in the dark world somewhere in town (like the bunker)). My only issue with this theory is that, between Dess and Rudy and her mom, it almost feels like it lumps too many future plot developments onto the Holiday family (counterpoint: there’s still 5 more chapters).
Speaking of things going missing, I recently checked out the Undertale page on TCRF and found out that nearly all of the Gaster-related content on that page had mysteriously disappeared. Apparently (according to the talk page) it was removed on the basis of it just being extremely ephemeral, and thus technically not unused. tbqh I can’t think of a more fitting fate for that information.
Finished chapter 2 yesterday, what a delightful game. Noelle, the Queen, and Spamton were of course the highlights, I loved pretty much every interaction involving any of them. I love that Toby built an entire series of puzzles around the premise that Noelle is terrified of mice.
I didn’t know what to do with Egg so I just put it on the pile of eggs at San’s.
Currently puzzling out what the fuck Ralsei is exactly. Seems pretty clear he’s Kris’ brother, based on the dialogue from the guy at the grave and the fact that he’s the same species are Toriel. He’s presented to be the “prince of the darkners” but he can go between worlds freely, unlike the others, and can use magic and all that biz. He never goes with you back to the light side but it’s by choice, where he just doesn’t enter the portal. Also, a friend noted that nobody seems to talk to him besides Kris and Susie, which I’d have to confirm.
Loved this little story bit:
Yeah, a wonderful game, as always. I don’t have the heart to do the genocide route, but I am curious if it gives more information on the story.
Consistently got a good laugh at anything involving The Original Starwalker.
Are you in love with my adorable love interest Noelle?? Are you going to steal her away from me and leave us both miserable and unfulfilled??? Are you going to cuck me, your best friend??? After what we’ve just gone through together you’re gonna just DO ME LIKE THAT???
Are you IN GAY LOVE for shadowverse twink Ralsei?? You gay bro??? That’s cool if you are but you gotta tell me and the game right here and now if that’s the case.
So I selected 2 of course because I want Susie and Noelle to be happy but I suppose now I gotta gay date Ralsei
Just finished playing chapter 2, catching up on the thread and so, late quote:
It’s worth noting that we don’t know whether that’s actually true. The queen’s the one who says all lightners can do it but she only ever saw Kris create her fountain. So she might have assumed it’s a lightner thing when it’s really a human thing. Especially since she brings up determination, which, if this worlds still obeys Undertale’s rules, monsters don’t have enough of. As for Berdly, he was interrupted before he could try it and was only following the queen’s assumption.
after renewing my professional bed inspector title I wonder if it’s a bit much for the darkners to track all of these bits just to surprise and delight me with trivial recall. or for the programmer to put them there. I opened up my save file to fix my name and saw thousands of rows containing only zeroes
I could not help myself from Watching The Videos forever but I find this channel’s excitably conspiratorial investigations voiced through TTS very charming
I adore how it’s deliberately difficult to tell signal from noise with Deltarune. I hope some things never come into focus
