Deltarune Thoughts Post Chapters 3&4 Part 1: The Knight's Identity

So! Deltarune has been out. I posted my thoughts and predictions going into the new chapters' release, and there's certainly been plenty to think about since!

This whole series is going to have heavy spoilers for the contents of Deltarune up through Chapter 4, so if you're avoiding those please come back to read this later!

Enough that combining everything I'd like to say really wasn't going to work out as a single blog post. So I'm breaking it up into a few parts. I'm not yet sure how many it'll wind up being, but I've already got enough for at least three different posts, I think. So I'll focus on tidying up what I've written so far, to start with.

First and most importantly of what I wanted to talk about, though:

That Stupid Egg

Seriously that egg in chapter 3 was completely insane. I managed to get it blind, but pretty much by accident. I sure didn't think that was what would be at the end of the path I got to by deliberately running into one of the spotlight enemies!

The egg in chapter 4 was way less difficult. The secret boss quests in either chapter certainly were.

It was neat that the remote enemy right next to the jail hints towards the path a little. I'm not sure if I'd have found the secret my first play through if that wasn't there.

Okay, with that off my chest onto the main thing I wanted to include in this first post.

The Knight's Identity

So apparently "The Knight" AKA "The Roaring Knight" and "a strange knight" is one particular character rather than a role a given character(s) can fulfill. I think we can assume that the Knight opened at least the fountain in the library, then. At least for now - given the size of the Knight's role in chapters three and four, it would have to be a pretty major fake-out for Kris to have been that particular "knight". I'm still not sure about the "knight" from the first chapter, though, for reasons I'll get into in my next post in this series.

Of course, despite the surprisingly major on-screen appearances we got in these latest two chapters, the Knight's identity is still very much an open question. It's just a different question than the one we had been discussing beforehand.

First of all, it's pretty obvious that we're supposed to think the Knight is Dess to some extent. Antlers, bat, ambiguous connection to the darkness, etc.

I'm also pretty sure the "UNUSED" dialog in the files is still Dess, though. Could also be the vessel, still, but we've yet to see any evidence that it has a mind of its own. The only potential foreshadowing for such a reveal as far as I've seen has been a brief line from the Rabbick outside the last of Ramb's original games. It claims to have seen "Kris" go past, possibly having dragged Ramb away. But there's all sorts of things that could have been in reference to, so it's not much.

My working theory at this point is that the Knight is somehow a "piece" of Dess with the UNUSED speaker being another "piece". This would mirror what apparently happened to Gaster, according to his followers. And there's obviously some sort of connection between the two, even if we don't yet have any details of what that actually is.

Alphys might work faster. But the old Royal Scientist, Doctor W.D. Gaster? One day, he vanished without a trace. They say he shattered across time and space. Ha ha... How can I say so without fear? I'm holding a piece of him right here.
-- Gaster Follower 2

We can be pretty sure someone is acting as the Knight, at least. If nothing else they're apparently wearing a "helmet" that they can take off to reveal... something. Something that Kris doesn't want to let us know about. And since we don't have any reason to believe Kris is working with the Vessel on top of the rest of their already massive web of potentially-conflicting trucies, the only other major candidate I can think of would be Carol, Noel's mother and the town mayor.

(The image of the Knight began to fade into your mind.)
(The image changes... the helmet begins to come off.)
(Suddenly, you tried extremely hard to picture Jockington.)
-- Result of trying to picture the Knight.

Carol being the Knight would be... interesting? I guess? She does have a pretty fearsome reputation, judging by what Alphys said about her in Chapter 2. And the Knight does seem to have been spotted skulking around her house, though that could also point towards the Knight being Dess and/or in league with Carol. Plus Carol was almost certainly the person who was on the other end of one or both of the calls Kris was on in Noelle's house.

It's because of the mayor, there... there...
There isn't any crime.
Makes me wonder if she even needs the police...
Or if they're just... g... getting in her way?
-- Alphys

The balance of the evidence weighs against Carol being the Knight, I think. But there's nothing conclusive ruling it out.

This is only tangentially related, but it's notable that Ramb confirmed outright not every Darkner would have even the opportunity to recognize the Knight - only those that "saw" the fountain being opened, whatever criteria determines that. I think that could mostly have been concluded based on Queen's words at the end of Chapter 2, but it's good to have it made explicit.

But... I saw. I saw you make it, you know. The Fountain.
--Ramb