Undertale - Pet dogs and date a skeleton!

spoiler for spoiler and also for lorge image

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my homestuck ass:

 

Spoiler: SURVEY PROGRAM

I was about to start a new thread when I saw this had been recently updated, but honestly, using the old thread works best. Because it's so obviously a related game.

I did one of my rambling google docs about it all, choc full of completely random screenshots.

Some major comments I want to share:

The game does not appreciate if you try to name your vessel or its creator as Gaster, and flips out in similar ways as Undertale did.

Kris = Frisk, minus the F. Press F to pay respects.

The reflection in the mirror, the narration says It's only you. This isn't a Frisk-and-Chara situation, if that narration isn't lying to us. (At least, not until the end. But that still might not be Chara but The Strange Knight or even Gaster.

Based on the enormous number of differences - they're on the surface, old friends don't know each other, absolutely nobody mentions a war with humans...... I'm thinking this is an alternate universe or dreamworld, related to Undertale in the same way that LOZ:OT or LOZ:MM are related. Or like KH: Chain of Memories, or Twilight Town in Kingdom Hearts 2. This isn't a sequel in the pacifist ending on the surface, this is something Else. And Ralsei gave the impression that saving the world will involve making friends. Possibly guiding others to make friends, too.

There's another strange theme about choice going on, with parts of the game insisting as loudly as Chara ever did that we're not in control / we don't get to choose. The character making contact and guiding us through character creation, presumably Gaster based on speaking style, insists we don't get to choose what sort of person we are. Susie, when she's bullying Kris, makes a similar comment about choice. And yet the story - at least the mostly pacifist playthrough that I did - involved Susie making the choice to switch teams, the choice to practice ACTing so she could allay Lancer's fears that we and his dad would kill each other...... and, yet, the ending featured Kris very literally not under our control, but someone else's, awkwardly puppeted into tearing out their soul and locking it away. (If they start the next chapter as a day like any other, following through on promises to Susie and Sans to go to the dark world or visit with Sans' little brother, but doing it without their soul... what's that going to cause? *worry*)

 

Spoiler: deltarune

AAAAA WHAT THE FUCK????????????????? DIDN'T EXPECT THAT ENDING AT ALL
okay now that i've gotten that over with. the game is weird, and the parallels are even more so--asgore and toriel are seperated, asriel is the main character's older brother. gerson was a monster/human relations historian. the game offers you a character creation menu, but discards the result, telling you that no one chooses what they are in this world. instead, you take control of a character called kris, with an outfit similar if not identical to chara's, and lead them through this world. it's a turn-based RPG game and you have an actual party, instead of it just being you, and the character menu reflects this, but it's fairly similar to undertale; i'd say the gameplay is easier, but i'm not entirely sure. i think i might have been able to go back to a locked area and unlock it; i'm not sure what that would have done, though, and the end sequence of events didn't leave me choice in the matter, so it'd have to be before i fought the game. nothing in the game was particularly surprising, except for the end sequence, where after getting home and going to bed the character

Spoiler

sleepwalks, tears their soul out of their chest, and throws it into a cage, then summons a knife and, for the first time, turns to look at the camera, with red eyes and a visibly manic grin.

unrelated: i LOVE susie. Horse Dragon. sharp teeth. pointy friend.

 

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who is chara, in this? a passing spirit who decided to possess kris? a leftover from a genocidal timeline, trying to destroy everything? has this happened before?
and people upthread are right--the dark world feels fake, like a childish copy of undertale. something fishy is going on here.
also, i didn't notice this til someone pointed it out--kris makes almost no choices by themself. they're a player avatar, despite very clearly being their own person, and some characters comment on your talkativeness if you chat with everyone. HMM.

 

Spoiler: dark world monsters

theyre a bit like children's doodles arent they? very simple, very colourful

 

Spoiler

I still haven't been able to play the game, but I pointedly avoided playing the genocide run, and I think it's probably going to be kind of the same there.
I'm actually kinda wondering if it will turn out to be some kind of non-canon Halloween special like the Dream Daddy cult ending was supposed to be. That could also be fun, but I don't think Toby is that sort of troll.

 

Spoiler: Deltarune

”you don’t get to choose who are in this world”
But it looks like Asriel chose to be Ralsei

 

God the foolish games news outlets didn't follow toby's 24 hour rule

(I know that in the games news world the first you are the better the clicks but i just think it's a corny move on their part)

 

Spoiler: Toby tweet link

Toby on twitter talkin about how he's been sittin on Deltarune files since 2012

 

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This game feels like it's supposed to feel off.
Not just incomplete in the sense of "the story needs more chapters", but in the sense of "something about the whole world is wrong".

1. Ralsei tells you you'll go back and visit his castle once you save the world. You never do. You can't. The shops in Castle Town never open.
2. Ralsei is very insistent on how your choices matter, but the ending is similar, with the only exception of who saves you and defeats the King (the village if you play Pacifist, Ralsei cause the King is tired if you don't)
3. Going back after completing an area never feels rewarding, and this feels intentional, and not like an oversight

This feels like a Normal Ending.
But the game treats it like you're supposed to treat it like a True Ending.
However, it also feels like it's supposed to feel like a Normal Ending, that it's not that Toby fucked up.

And god that is so uncomfortable and I think that is exactly what Toby was going for.

Spoiler: A thought I had

So, before you complete the game, when you copy a file Gaster/Mysterious Voice says they're mirroring the world. After you finish it, it just says "copying file".
Mirroring the World, huh?
And there's a lot of chess/checkers metaphors going on around there, right? And yes, there's also playing cards metaphors, but you know what this all reminded me of?
Alice in Underland.

If Undertale was Frisk's Adventures in Underland, then you could say that Deltarune is Kris going through the Looking Glass.
The Alice parallels feel intentional.
I think it's meant to be a mirror universe of some kind.
I don't know what kind, but I imagine Gaster is involved. And so is the Lab.

 

Spoiler

Yeah, I was pretty confused by why we didn'tgo back or deal with the knight or the second geyser or anything...

But didn't Ralsei eventually give in to Susie insisting she go home, and just help guide them to the exit? After Kris and Susie leave and return to the unused classroom, Susie decides they should return the next day. So I think her blooming feelings of friendship have got her deciding that maybe they WILL go and do the hero thing, after all.

Plus the prophecy hinges on them saving the world after it's been destroyed, and while things weren't going as they're supposed to, the light world seemed okay (if... off.) and the dark world's problems were mostly people being imprisoned or unemployed or whatnot, not the world itself being a featureless desert with cracked ground and bleeding black skies.

A Normal ending, not a true paci/geno, is very what this feels like. Like the fallen human raced to the finish to get themself freedom and didn't resolve the problems of the world they fled.

And now, with that hideous callback to the corrupted pacifist ending, with Kris getting puppeted to tearing out that human soul (and thinking back? I can't remember anything that explocitly says it's their human soul)... now there's something broken in future attempts. I think the metaplot is going to focus on the ramifications of that.

 

Spoiler: Delatrune spoilers, town walkaround

What's confusing to me, is Kris acts unlike their usual self and people notice it. From the piano playing, to the fact they're more talkative than usual, 'you're reading that card like you didn't write it yourself!'

However... there are emotions Kris feels even in this controlled state. When MK shittalks Suzie, they 'look annoyed'. When you drink the hot chocolate the diner 'your throat clenches'.

It's a bit... interesting and I don't know what to make of it.

My theory is Chara from our original world has replaced what is essentially a different Chara.

 

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I've seen people speculate that the soul is the player's, just like at the end of the genocide run - it could be just kinda assumed that the player, you know, did that.

 

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The thing that gets me is, I do believe the player is obviously a component of this. But even when the player is controlling Kris, 'your throat clenches when you drink the hot chocolate'... I don't know. It's a sentimentality reaction. It's weird.

I feel like maybe the player and original Chara are there and we're going to get something on that dynamic. Partnership.

 

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I don't really do much theorizing but Kris/Susie/Ralsei might be the first OT3 I've ever actually been interested in

 

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Chara/Asriel shipping discourse is going to reach its height now and I'm not strong enough.

 

Kris <> Ralsei 5evar.

 

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The part with reindeer girl and her dad really got me, though. I hope it is legitimately not something serious and he isn't just putting on a brave dad face....

Also reindeer girl/susie is cute af

 

http://charadreemurr.tumblr.com/post/179648212389/okay-im-finally-fucking-allowed-to-talk-about

this has a lot of fun and interesting tidbits about the game (deltarune not undertale) that i'd missed!

Spoiler

about that thing about saving over Kris' save - I remember reacting to that the first time and then completely forgetting about it. I wonder if something happens if you play through the whole thing without saving...?