Deltarune Thoughts Post Chapter 5 Part 1: Initial Thoughts

Whew! What a chapter. It might be my favorite one so far, in some ways, though it's pretty hard to beat chapter two even still.

The gimmick this time around was a particularly positive surprise. Something about how it felt to control really reminded me of Dust: An Elysian Tail, if anyone remembers that one. Great game, great game.

Anyways, I'm sure I'll wind up having multiple parts to this. At least one on the incredibly wild Weird Route ("Side B" now, I guess) content. But for now there are some initial thoughts I really want to put to paper before anything else. Spoilers for everything in Chapter 5 from here on out, though it's been a couple of weeks so hopefully most people have had the chance to play through it blind if they wish.

Susie's Home

So... Susie's been sleeping rough. That was a pretty gut-wrenching reveal, even if it was foreshadowed pretty well.

I'd rather hoped that the room we saw a screenshot of was where she was sleeping, and she might well have lived there at one point. But not anymore, if so.

Whether Susie ran away, was kicked out, or simply lost her parents is completely unknown as far as I'm aware. Perhaps Noelle's own comments on running away lean towards an implication on a meta level that Susie ran away herself, but that's pretty weak evidence indeed.

I guess Susie's line "I mean, the only reason I'm here now, is 'cause..." being in response to Noelle bringing up the idea of running away also tilts in that direction, but again, not exactly concrete evidence one way or another.

Ralsei

I sure didn't see transfem Ralsei coming. Some did, at least a bit: Stuffed Alpaca has a video that goes into the topic starting at around 28:00. That video in particular argues very persuasively how the idea fits both in the normal Lore sense but also thematically. And now we have plenty of pretty direct evidence, of course.

It... is interesting that the topic didn't really get brought up in connection to the Mad Mew Mew fight, though. No reaction from Ralsei regarding the flirting, even? I suppose it's possible that Ralsei isn't aware of the trans-ness of Mad Mew Mew, but still.

A few people have also brought up the possibility that Ralsei could wind up some manner of enbie rather than outright transfem. Still trans, obviously, but that would be an interesting twist in a few ways, especially in how that reflects on Ralsei's relationship with Kris. The last title change using "they" to refer to Ralsei instead of the very consistent "he" to that point is slight evidence in that direction, I think, but nothing conclusive.

It's also interesting that Ralsei absolutely knows that Kris was the one who opened at least this particular Dark World. That Ralsei came out and said it with us there implies that they might think we're the ones doing it, but we can't be certain about that.

I'm confused about the Roaring being "the end of the story" despite it being the start of the Legend, but I'm not sure what to conclude from this observation just yet.

* The more darkness gets released, the closer...
* ... the closer the Roaring becomes. And, if it happens...
* ... I believe ... it will mean...
* The end... of the story.
--Ralsei

There doesn't seem to be any evidence to point to Ralsei knowing that Kris was the one who made any of the other Dark Fountains, but there's also not much reason to think they aren't aware of and/or believe Kris to have made them.

For my part I'm still of the belief that Kris was the one who opened the Chapter 1 and possibly Chapter 2 fountains, but I strongly doubt they could have been the one who made the Chapter 4 fountain. The only suspects for that one are really Carol and the Knight, given Asgore doesn't seem to know how to make them.

We were with them pretty much the whole time between the church scene and discovering the Dark Fountain, after all. For them to have opened it we'd need to assume they'd snuck out beforehand, opened the fountain in the room/closet they refuse to open for us, and then someone else came and cracked that door open to let it spread to the rest of the church. Which is rather convoluted.

The party does get some details about the original Dark World that got opened long ago and what they get does sort of imply that one was opened by the same person as the Chapter 2 Dark Fountain. Susie certainly interprets it that way, so I could see Ralsei wondering the same. But I think that's probably a red herring, given we know Kris opened the Chapter 3 Dark World and that's the one we got the Black Shard from.

and I'm sure I'll have plenty to write about that when I get around to it...

Jockington

Jockington... as far as I'm aware the only lines we get for him this chapter are a few lines he exchanges with Noelle about the king/queen vote thing and then the lines about beard growth that were teased/prophesied

* Haha, this Event is the trigger,<br /* For me to have the confidence, to grow facial hair.
* It's a defining, moment of my Adolescence!
* Oh no! I can already feel it, happening!
* I think I need to, Shave!
* But, my beard, was Grown. It cannot be Undone.

J: * Look, Noelle,! I'm, on track to be both King, and Queen!
N: * Oh, Jockington! Should've known with how popular you are!
J: * It's all because you, Always vote for me, Noelle! Haha!
J: * Thanks 1 million!
N: * ...
J: * Thanks 1 million, and 1!

I'm not really sure what to make of this other than "nothing of significance". These lines are not even especially scrambled, not compared to the nonsense we got last chapter. Or even the one before that. And there's absolutely nothing about how his few lines in Chapter 4 were about how he couldn't grow hair.

* 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!

Final Flowery Fight

At the very end of the Flowery fight, there's a final attack prompt against him and all the other flowers.

I'm not sure exactly what I picked up on that prompted it, but I impulsively decided to just let it pass.

Instead of describing the ensuing sequence in detail, I'll just link to this video of it.

I think I prefer this to what happens if you do hit that attack.

Frankly it's amazing how Toby can make a character so utterly, eminently annoying and then pull them into such an effective 180 so that by the end they're just as endearing.

The Code

It's pretty clear that Kris doesn't want us to get the codes, I think. We knew that from Chapter 4, even.

But in that case, it seems like how Kris handled the Flower King dark world was pretty reckless, no? Maybe they just didn't know where in the shop the code was located, I suppose, and they had to open a dark world in the flower shop for some unknown reason. Probably in connection to Carol's demands on them...

I'd say it's pretty likely that the Knight didn't know the code's location, at least. Or (perhaps more interestingly) that the Knight doesn't really care about Kris/us/Susie getting the shelter codes.

We also know from Chapter 4 that Carol is definitely against Susie getting the codes. And if I'm correct that she has an inflated impression of our control over Kris she probably assumes we already have all the codes Kris has. Which might mean the purpose of this dark world was specifically for Carol to ensure "we" get the code via Kris getting it, and Kris failed to stop it.

I'm also curious what the "warning labels" on the golden flower packet are. Not sure if they'll become relevant, but Kris did wind up taking the flower packet, so it's definitely possible. And Susie promised to return to Flower King to take care of the plants, anyway.

Regardless, the code being 0915199X is itself quite interesting. The events with Chara in Undertale were set in 201X (likely their fall, specifically, but that's not confirmed... though it's not like their death would have been many years later, so probably still in 201X), with the only reference to the 90s being that the Dreemurs won the Nose Nuzzle championship back then.

September 15th, in the 1990s... I'm not sure the timeline works out for that to be when Dess disappeared. It kind of depends on when Deltarune is set, since at a minimum Kris and Noelle were old enough to react to and remember what was happening (and almost certainly be involved in some way).

Undertale was set firmly in the (probably far) future with a fakeout of it being set in 201X, so something similar is at least possible for Deltarune. I think that's pretty unlikely, though, given the tech level we see matches up pretty decently with more or less the "modern day" of the 2020s (or 2010s, considering how long Deltarune is being worked on for...), but interesting even as far back as the late 2000s. Putting the "present" in the late 2000s and Noelle/Kris in their mid teens means they would have been pretty young for most of the 1990s, but they wouldn't have had to be all that old for the above to be true.

Not the early 2000s, though. Putting the setting too early in the 2000s causes a number of problems, such as with how the Dreemurs' enormous CRT is considered junk despite it being a pretty solid TV by the standards of the early 2000s. Or even the mid-2000s, frankly, given Hometown doesn't exactly seem to be an incredibly wealthy place except for the Holidays. And in the early 2000s Noelle's personal flatscreen would probably have to be a plasma panel. Which, especially given the size, is frankly remarkably extravagant by the standards of even most "wealthy" families until later in the decade. Even her computer monitor would be fairly exotic, given widescreen desktop LCDs really only appeared in 2005 or so and required time to spread.

Of course, the easy option for what that date means is that it's just when Asgore and Toriel were married. That would also have the least further significance, though.

More significantly, I'm rather reminded of Spamton and his "favorite year" of 1997. I don't think it was technically ever confirmed whether the whole Mike Ditka 1997 "Big Shot" soda commercial connection was a deliberate out-of-universe joke or not, but I'd be shocked if it somehow wasn't. Would be a truly immense coincidence, and it seems the sort of esoteric joke that Toby Fox might enjoy. But that doesn't preclude there being some in-universe significance to 1997, too, and I can't possibly see how Asgore and Toriel marrying would be significant specifically to Spamton.

I'm kind of scratching my head what it would mean for Spamton's "favorite year" to match up with such an obviously significant date for Asgore, though. Best guess I have would be that's when Noelle really started desperately searching for Dess online due to it being when she disappeared after all? We know that manifested in part as clicking on "Spamton's" spam emails... but again, that pushes Noelle's age at the time a bit further up still.

Noelle's Age

In fact, let's try making some estimates of Noelle's age in relation to all this, to see if we can ground any other part of the timeline that way.

Let's say that Noelle, a particularly smart kid, started reading and writing quite early. Starting at three or four, achieving some sort of basic literacy in a practical sense by five. Not at a super high level or anything, but enough that she could navigate a 90s-era computer interface and get a (sometimes incorrect) gist of emails she received. We also have to assume that Noelle was more or less given total free reign to be on the internet at that age, which is at least a little odd but given everything else her family was dealing with I think it's not really out of the question. Especially since as controlling as Carol is, it seems to be in a "everyone must be safe at home" sort of way rather than a more direct "my kids must sit still and be bored except under my immediate supervision".

So if Noelle was poking around those spam emails in 1997 at no younger than five then the latest she could have been born is 1992. Which fits the constraints discussed above, I guess, but doesn't really seem optimal. The assumptions we've had to make about the manner in which Carol is so "controlling" means that either she was wildly different before Dess disappeared (possible, but more epicycles...) or somehow despite that tendency Noelle wandered out into whatever happened at the age of five. Maybe Dess was supposed to be babysitting Noelle or something...

Frankly, based on Noelle's blog post about those spam emails from the Spamton Sweepstakes it would fit a lot better to peg her age around 8-10 at the time she wrote the blog post and 7-8 in 1997. Which means she was instead born in either 1989 or 1990... slightly more plausibly old enough to have wandered into whatever it was that happened to Dess.

We know she's essentially in high school in Deltarune, of course, which puts her age somewhere in the mid-teens. 14-18, conventionally. At the high end of that range we'd be assuming she's a senior, which is plausible enough. Being born in 1989 or 1990 would in that case place the "present" as being in either 2007 or 2008.

That... works, more or less, with the technology on display in Hometown. But the aforementioned technological details make pushing the timeline any earlier increasingly deserving of skepticism. Any later makes it harder to justify the events of 1997 if the above-speculated connections hold, though, so either they don't or these estimates probably aren't too far off the mark.