Deltarune Thoughts Pre-Chapter 5

Deltarune tomorrow! This post is mostly just to get some final predictions and notes down on virtual paper beforehand. Brief bullet points to start with:

• I think it's pretty much a given at this point that the Knight "is" Dess in some way.
• Same with the UNUSED text, I think, though I suppose it's a little less certain. That could conceivably be the vessel, but that seems unlikely for a few reasons.
• The second speaker from the character creator intro was either Kris or, maybe, Dess. I'd be pretty shocked if it wasn't Kris, though.
• Observation: the black knife is opaque, not clear... so it's not a shadow crystal. This is obvious and even explicit in the game, but I am really wondering about the significance of these two apparently distinct shadow-y, shard-like items.
• Why did the prayer book in Kris's house disappear? I assume that was the Bibliox which helps us along to the Forgotten Man in that chapter, but no matter what we do with that NPC the book disappears. Perhaps the book went to "nowhere", whatever that means...

The Woods

Something happened, probably around the bunker but maybe not, that's going to come to a head very soon.

The "maybe not" comes in part from the scrambled message we get in Chapter 4, which reads reads "Lost where the forest would grow, the children followed the pointed tail." Not where the forest was but where it would grow. This might be more evidence in favor of putting the point where Things Happened to the east of the school to match up with Ramb's game's room layout.

The trees there and around the bunker use the same sprites, but if one of the two places is only more recently forested it's probably the place near the school rather than the seemingly deep-in-the-woods bunker clearing.

I think the most likely place is still the bunker south of town, though. Perhaps the kids got lost in the woods east of the school and somehow managed to wander far to the south while trying to get home...?

Asylum

I do wonder about the use of the word "asylum" in the prophecy panel that reads "THE FLOWER MAN, TRAPPED IN ASYLUM". There's a few different ways that could be taken, given the word's definitions:

1. "A place of safety or refuge" is most straightforward, given it probably just means his shop. I don't think we really know enough about Asgore's feelings about his shop to determine if this is likely, going in.
2. "The protection, physical and legal, afforded by such a place as, for example, for political refugees)", meanwhile, could mean that he's trapped by the supposed help offered by Carol. This seems... almost already confirmed, frankly, though whatever scheme he's got going on is likely to crash into whatever Carol's is planning to some extent in Chapter 5.
3. "A place of protection or restraint for one or more classes of the disadvantaged, especially the mentally ill" would be... unfortunate. And is really the other option compared to #1 if this is supposed to be about his shop, specifically, rather than about his situation more generally. Similarly, though, we don't know enough about how he perceives his shop to really nail it down either way.

There's also the case that a synonym for "asylum" is "sanctuary", and we got a bunch of those in Chapter 4. Perhaps he winds up trapped in the church or something... the fact that the place is absolutely wrecked after Kris and Susie are done there is likely to have some sort of consequences at some point, too. But then, nobody's commented yet on the looted computer lab, and we'll see if Alvin is missing come Chapter 5, especially given there are supposedly decorations for the festival still in the church.

Tears and Rain

I have to anticipate that the "BitterTear" item will be at least somewhat significant. Only two of them can be had in the entire game so far, one by stealing it from a one-off enemy and the other by dumping a huge amount of money into a waterfall. Susie's reaction to it implies it's just rainwater, which is... interesting. Especially given how rain is clearly majorly symbolic already.

Even more interesting is that a rather hidden book features the quote, "And so wept the fallen star, making rivers with its tears. Then, slowly, from the bitter water, something grew. It looked like glass." This ties in so many different motifs it's kind of shocking. In no particular order:

• The bitter tear, so therefore the things connected to that including the rain.
• The shadow crystals, which have been repeatedly described as being glass-like.
• By the same token, the whole fourth chapter explicitly ties glass to the Prophecy at many points.
• Stars, which are connected to the save/load system and the titan fought at the end of chapter four. And both Dess and Asriel apparently had glow-in-the-dark stars on their walls.
• The phrasing that the fallen star was "making" the rivers even could tie it back to Spamton's Weird Route dialog, where he accuses Kris of "making".

I wonder if we'll get a recipe which requires one or both BitterTear items. Either option would be significant, in different ways.

LOVE and Determination

The obvious avoidance of the word "determination" in the script so far is clearly at least a bit of a meme to tease fans with. Perhaps it will dramatically pay off at some point, but I'm skeptical that would be this chapter. That seems like it would be more like a late Chapter 6 or even Chapter 7 thing, if it ever happens.

It's already clear that Deltarune is going to have some things to say about the concept of "love". Undertale certainly did, especially with its whole "love" vs "LOVE" thing. Given that Deltarune's core thesis seems to be somewhat orthogonal to Undertale's so far, even completely opposite in at least some respects even as they complement each other, it will be interesting to see how they differ.

The Weird Route will be the nexus of this, I think. For obvious reasons pertaining to the whole... Noelle-and-Kris relationship thing. And I think it's pretty much settled in the fan community that Spamton's snowgrave boss fight dialog's "making [HYPERLINK BLOCKED]" phrase is actually intended to be masking the phrase "making love"... or possibly "making LOVE". Or both, if Deltarune isn't planning on making that distinction explicit.

The Undertale Red & Yellow mod had some interesting things to say about that exact confusion. It's not the first Undertale fanwork to do so, and given we know Toby Fox consumes at least some fan content it's not impossible that Deltarune will comment not merely on the topic but on how further works have developed it.

I am... very much looking forward to seeing what Chapter 5 does with the Weird Route. It's been such an... incredibly effective experience thus far, and I doubt that'll change.

Grillby's

I hadn't really considered this something that needed to be said, but I've seen enough people make the opposing claim that I feel I need to.

Sans having arrived in the world of Undertale from the world of Deltarune isn't contradicted by the state of Grillby's in the two worlds.

Sans's store in Deltarune was probably called Grillby's before Sans set up shop there. He probably didn't set up shop there because it was called Grillby's, but rather because it was available.

I bet part of why he hangs around Grillby's so much in Undertale is nostalgia for the world he came from, though. Even if he really did "give up" on going back hard enough to completely forswear nostalgia about it (unlikely), that doesn't mean he'd give up all the friends he'd made while hanging around there.

Jockington

I don't even know, man. Something is massively up with him.

Supposedly he's going to grow a beard? That seems significant, not least because it seemed as of Chapter 4 that he... couldn't? Or something? Basing that on this:

For her, I go the big Church Match, as her Substitute Player.

For me, she Covered in Hair Always. We Do What, the other can n't!

And there's just... the deterioration in his dialog is frankly alarming. Literally nobody has commented on it so far, not even Catti.

I'm also pretty sure that the use of the word "trigger" in the Jockington teaser is a reference to Sonic '06. Which is a fascinating choice, given how that game is widely known for its bugs... and video game bugs are an important motif in Deltarune.

Haha, this Event is the trigger, for me to have the confidence, to grow facial hair

It could also just be one of the fake Japanese-isms that Toby's been including in the game, though, and simply that Sonic '06 had plenty of actual examples of literal but ill-fitting translations of Japanese terms.

And a kind of terrible script even in Japanese that needed at least a few more passes anyway, from what I hear. I can't verify that myself, though. That bit's probably less relevant, though.

Parsing Gerson's Chapters

I'd like to wrap this up by jotting down some notes on the interesting ways in which Gerson's chapter summaries differ from what's happening in Deltarune.

I have a sneaking suspicion that at some point it'll become clear that we're not merely looking at a journey which reiterates and diverges from the prophecy similarly to the in-universe "Lord of the Hammer" series. Instead, we'll see that said series will have itself massively impacted the perception of the prophecy, in-universe.

Stories, myths, and legends change as they get passed down from generation to generation. That was part of Gerson's point, I think. Part of why the game is proceeding according to the prophecy seems to be that people are deliberately pushing it to do so - but how much of what they think that entails came from their church books, versus "Lord of the Hammer"? That's probably different from person to person, I would think...

Anyways, those notes:

Chapter 1 The March of the Dark King. The heroes defeat the king and stop the dragon.

But Kris ensured Susie would join them, not oppose them... except they kind of wound up stopping her anyway? She did become a "bad guy" for a bit, and even her giving up her always-aggressive approach could count.

I've speculated before that Kris was the one who set things up so that they and Susie were the ones who wound up in the dark world. And I have yet to see anything that would really undermine that.

Chapter 2 The City of the Shining. The heroes do battle in chariots to save the Queen.

But the internet was down, so Queen "became extreme" and had to be the one stopped instead of saved. Did Kris do that? Carol?

There certainly was battle in "chariots", though, if you count the roller coaster cars.

Or maybe the traffic sequence, I guess.

Also the Spamton fight, which is interesting. The first chapter's summary doesn't mention Jevil at all, though, so...

Chapter 3, The Isles of Northernlight. The heroes travel among the islands and catch a glimpse of a lost land.

Tenna completely changed the games, which included a visit to the far north, including blocking the northern part of the map off completely. Was that part of Kris's deal with Tenna? Did Kris make Tenna change the game? That would rather conflict with assumptions people make about Ramb, especially regarding how much he is or isn't aware of regarding how the fountain was made.

Once again, this connects these summaries to more secret bosses, though in this case the sword route stuff rather than the crystal-giving boss directly. Perhaps that counts, given the mantle is realistically the way the vast majority of people will wind up having any chance of beating the Knight?

Chapter 4, The Trials of the Holy Hammer. A great smith gives the heroes a terrible weapon.

So that's Gerson, obviously. Once again, secret boss connection for the summary. Rather on the nose given that we only get these during said secret boss, admittedly.

I do wonder if the "terrible" there is supposed to be a pun, given the dual meanings of the word "terrible". The JusticeAxe certainly isn't a "terrible" weapon in the sense of being bad, given it's the best-in-slot attack weapon Susie can get, though that may or may not have been the case in "Lord of the Hammer".

The relevant part of the Rude Buster damage calculation is 28*11+1*5=313 for the JusticeAxe versus 21*11+5*5=256 for the only magic-boosting competitor, the Devilsknife. And for non-Rude Buster damage the difference is even greater, of course.

What I found interesting is that for any fight long enough to really benefit from that extra damage, I wound up preferring to stick with the AbsorbAx. That yields Rude Buster damage of 24*11+1*5=269. Not a huge drop in damage, for the amount of healing that nets.

I do wonder what the default weapon will be, for files that are started at Chapter 5. I'd figure the most likely option would be the AbsorbAx, given that's the only non-secret axe we get in Chapter 4. But if it's actually the JusticeAx that would be extremely significant in what it implies about how the story winds up going in our assumed "absence". Perhaps such files even start with a shadow crystal already received... I doubt it, though.

Chapter 5, The Field of Pink and Gold. The vast garden is charred in an inferno of jealousy.

None of the teaser images have given us much to go on about if there will be a literal "inferno", but given how badly we've left the previous dark world locations I don't think it's impossible that Asgore's flower shop won't last to the end of the chapter.

But as far as jealousy goes... there's obviously what Asgore will feel about Toriel getting with Sans. But there also seems to be, uh, just about all the kids and either Susie or Noelle, ultimately. Catti's clearly very Not A Fan of Susie getting close to Noelle, for instance.