Made a video. It's a fairly ambitious speculative analysis of the nature of Darkness in Deltarune, and W.D. Gaster's role in the narrative - just in time for Chapter 5!
For the oldheads of this blog, I view it as a kind of reboot of some of the oldest posts I wrote here, working through my thoughts on Deltarune's metaphysics and cosmology again with the new information we got in Chapters 3 and 4. If you even understand what I'm referring to, I'm deeply appreciative that you've carved out a corner in your mind for me.
I would be very happy if you gave this video a watch... and - assuming you like it - shared it around! Obviously it's not long before it will be rendered somewhat outdated by Chapter 5, but I view it as my final statement on the game as we currently have it, and I'd like it to enjoy its time in the sun a little, before the status quo radically changes again.
Gonna be a hopefully more succinct post from me than usual, detailing some evidence for a theory that came to me a while ago.
(Don't click off the post yet.)
To cut to the chase, I think Kris may have created Card Kingdom's Dark Fountain, and possibly Castle Town's Grand Fountain too. Below I'll discuss the evidence for why I believe this is possible and maybe even probable.
If this theory ends up not being true, I still think this post will have some value as a work of analysis, since Kris's connections to Card Kingdom have been fairly underdiscussed in the community, and I think they go well beyond mere coincidence.
"King on your side"
The foundational piece of evidence comes in Chapter 3, when Ramb says:
* Time flies... Seems like just yesterday you and that girl had everyone here lined up.
* Queen on her side, King on your side, Tenna in back... Oh, it was chaos, CHAOS!
* Heh, only kids like you two would take a laptop home just to play make believe.
* ... how is she, Kris? Are you two...? Well, it's alright. Everyone changes. 'cept us.
This is obviously an incredibly important piece of dialogue, because it contextualizes the previous Dark Worlds (and this one) as a heightened, supernatural continuation of a game of make-believe which the Dreemurrs and Holidays used to play together as children.
Taking into account the deliberately ambiguous identity of the girl, the fact that Kris and Dess (the Knight) are working together to create Dark Worlds, and the way Dess's shadow looms over this chapter in general, I personally think it's pretty clear that Ramb is referring to Dess here.
Now, a lot of people disagree with that and think the girl is supposed to be Noelle, and I think that's clearly the impression you're initially meant to have. But the way I see it, it's setting up a future recontextualization of this line, where you come back to it later with a better understanding of the nature of Kris and Dess's relationship.
There are some reasonable arguments you could make for it being Noelle - chiefly people tend to say that it's implausible Kris would be playing with an older kid like Dess. In response I'd point to the fact that Dess is shown to have a interest in make-believe, imagination and play - as demonstrated by her interest in ICE-E cryptid hunting - to a perhaps unusual degree for her age.
Also, the age gap between Kris/Noelle and their older siblings is likely not that big in the first place - certainly it was not big enough to stop them all from hanging out together, which we know happened frequently. In fact, it's repeatedly implied that Asriel and Noelle were also involved in this game, so it's less that Kris and Dess had some sort of secret game together and more that the Dreemurr and Holiday kids were involved with a shared fictional setting they liked to play in.
* HAHAHA!!! WHAT IS THIS COMPUTER WALLPAPER???
* What AGE did you and your brother draw this at!?
* Glad we didn't go to THIS Cyber World! Haha, what the hell?
* Hey, and in the corner, that's that cat thing from Castle Town!
* You know, the shop thing! The... cat... the stitch thing! Whatever.
This interaction in Chapter 4 reveals that Asriel's computer wallpaper is apparently a drawing him and Kris made together depicting the fictional setting of the make-believe game, with Seam in the corner. Seam, who's a Card Kingdom character, being singled out in this interaction may be further emphasizing the idea that Kris and Azzy were in charge of the "Card Kingdom part" of the setting.
* Dude, what's your favorite horror movie?
* Bet you like the one with the creepy doll…
* HUH? Your brother never wanted to watch them?
* What, was he like, oooo, I'll make the popcorn!
* Then just never came back?
* HAHAHAHA? What, was I right???
However, this Chapter 5 interaction hints at something important: whereas Kris and Dess were into dark and creepy stuff, Azzy was decidedly not, and Noelle could only enjoy it under Dess's supervision. And judging by the wiffle bat anecdotes, Dess sought to keep Noelle from the dark, to protect her from it.
* Wait! You're teasing me, aren't you, Kris?
* L-like when you told me ICE-E was real and eats kids...
* So Dess smacked you with a wiffle bat 'til you stopped lying.
Even though Dess seemingly earnestly believed that ICE-E was a real cryptid, she still smacks and scolds Kris for "lying" and involving Noelle by telling her that. With increased anecdotes of Kris and Dess in the past, along with their current day Knight-alliance, and moments like the 1225 maze in Kris's TV World and the hands which press against Kris's to push them back in the Final Prophecy room, Kris and Dess are increasingly being set up as having had a special relationship; though all four Dreemurr and Holiday kids played together and were good friends, it seems that Dess and Kris specifically were the most actively imaginative, rascally and interested in the dark, whereas Azzy and Noelle were more timid, obedient, and associated with light.
For this reason, my thinking is that Azzy and Noelle were in secondary roles with Kris and Dess (primarily Dess, I'm guessing) leading the narrative.
Even if you don't believe the girl is Dess, and even if you don't think Dess is the Knight, that's fine for the time being - regardless, Ramb's dialogue is clearly supposed to make you reconsider the nature of the first three Dark Worlds, and set up a duality between Kris leading King and the Card Kingdom forces, and a Holiday girl leading Queen and the Cyber City forces. This imaginary war between the two is likely the origin story of King and Queen's epic divorce, and the "chaos" that Card Kingdom once saw which Seam alludes to in Chapter 1.
So in the past, the Dreemurrs and Holidays used to have a shared make-believe world they used to play in. Kris was in charge of controlling King and the cards and toys - they were on "Kris's side" - whereas a Holiday girl was in charge of the the laptop and computer accessories. And now, in the present, Kris and a Holiday girl are again teaming up, literally bringing this make-believe game to life with the power of the Dark Worlds.
Isn't that a little conspicuous?
This present situation is clearly mirroring the past one, so what are the implications of Kris having been in charge of Card Kingdom? Is this just a meaningless detail? I don't think so. We know Kris's participation in the conspiracy runs deep enough to have them creating Dark Worlds. I think the implication is pretty obvious.
This actually makes sense of some pretty odd details, like: why did Toby write King to not have interacted with the Knight at all? People have been calling this a retcon left and right but Kris Knighters have, since Chapter 2, been calling attention to the fact that all mentions of the Knight in Chapter 1 are deliberately ambiguous and misleading.
* Historically, this land was ruled by the Four Kings, from CARD CASTLE to the East.
* But, recently, a strange knight appeared...
* And three of the kings were locked away.
* Once, all four of us ruled together, but when the Knight arrived, everything changed...
* By the Knight's will, I shall shatter your heart to pieces!
(Notice how it's never actually stated that the Knight directly carried out the events which occurred after the Knight "appeared"!)
Toby actually repeats this trick of misleading, ambiguous wording in Chapter 3:
I've been all alone...
Until now.
When the KNIGHT appeared...
The ROARING KNIGHT.
And I was told that if I keep you three busy,
I can have ALL the people watch me that I want.
(Exact same trick! "The Knight appeared, and then X happened.")
I still see people interpreting this as the Knight having talked to Tenna, but we know this didn't happen - we know that this was Kris. And if we pay attention to what Tenna is actually saying, we'll see that he never explicitly states that he met the Knight - only that he was "told" certain things on their behalf.
Furthermore, with Ramb's revelation, Chapter 1 actually gets recontextualized quite a bit, revealing a more personal conflict between Kris and King than was previously apparent. We know now that the Lightners which the toys of Card Kingdom worshipped weren't just random anonymous schoolchildren, but that the Dreemurrs and Holidays were especially important - even moreso now since it's their will bringing them to life as Darkners. King only manifests as King due to how Kris specifically conceived of and played with the spade king card in the make believe game. King's furious accusations of cruelty, his questioning whether Kris's intent is to laugh as they cast him back into obscurity - these interactions gain a whole other dimension with the context of King having a personal history with Kris.
And yet another dimension is added, one of intense dramatic irony, if it were to be revealed King is actually unknowingly talking to the very person who brought Card Kingdom back to life once more - the person he mistakes for the Knight.
Furthermore, King is like Kris in a number of ways. King likes to posture as a badass, with pointed displays of apathy which he uses to conceal his sillier, softer side. King is a parallel to Asgore, Kris's father, in much the same way that Queen is a parallel to Carol, mother to the Holiday sisters. And King is a massive Roaring Knight fanboy - not unlike the way in which Kris seems to have looked up to Dess, imitates certain behaviors of the Knight, and seems to be playing a subordinate role in a conspiracy headed by them.
Despite King's fanboyisms, however, Chapter 4 reveals that he doesn't actually know much of anything about the Knight.
* WHAT!? YOU met THE KNIGHT!?
* ... Aheh. A rare show of mercy, I suppose.
* With their full strength, you'd be SPLATTERED!! Hahaha!!
* ...
* ... What... were they like?
* Umm, they seemed a little...
* A little? A little what?
* You know. A little... y'know?
* A little WHAT!? DRAW A PICTURE, WENCH!!!
All he seems to know is what Jevil told him, which is that the Knight would eventually bring him great power via the glory of the Dark Fountains - a claim which is true regardless of whether Kris or the Knight created that Fountain (that pesky ambiguous language again!)
The matter of Castle Town
The Supply Closet Dark World is rather mysterious. Before Chapter 3, most people would have scoffed at you if you believed the Knight made the Grand Fountain, since Castle Town serves as a hub for the heroes, who are trying to stop the Knight. Generally speaking, the only group of people who tended to propose this were Kris Knighters.
Post-3/4, we are in a weird sort of halfway limbo, as is the case with many theories from the Chapter 2 era. We now know that Kris Knighters were right about the fact that the Dark Worlds were being made with the explicit goal of eventually sealing them, and that Kris is a double agent on the hero team. This, in combination with the fact that Card Kingdom is right next door to Castle Town would seem to make it plausible, if not likely, that the Knight just created both Dark Worlds, since the Knight is clearly not fundamentally opposed to the heroes' mission to seal the Fountains, as can be inferred from the fact that Kris is informed ahead of time where the Dark Worlds will be and instructed not to enter them without the SOUL (which is necessary for sealing them).
However, under the assumption that the Knight created the Dark Sanctuaries - as Ralsei pretty much says they did - they can't have created the Grand Fountain too, because Ralsei says that Gerson could not be brought back to Castle Town (implication being that the Grand Fountain is deficient for that purpose in the same way that Susie's Second Sanctuary is: the creator of the Dark World lacks a sentimental connection to Gerson while he was still alive). With this in mind, it seems unlikely the Knight created the Grand Fountain.
There is another candidate, however - the other Fountain creator in the conspiracy, Kris.
This makes a degree of intuitive sense, since Castle Town largely revolves around Kris and - more specifically - their SOUL. It's the base of operations for the heroes, who Kris is the leader of. And Ralsei, the only initial inhabitant of the Dark World, seems much more tied to Kris and the Dreemurrs than he is to any Holiday.
Narratively, this could also make sense of the fact that Castle Town and TV World are paralleled. Notably, the empty Cliffs area on the outskirts of the supply closet Dark World gets recreated in TV World; it seems likely that this feature of those Dark Worlds is relatively independent of creator influence, but one has to wonder why Toby wrote the two Dark Worlds to be tied in this manner.
Moreover, the Dreemurr living room which TV World is based on once functioned quite similarly to how the school's supply closet does now: back in the original make-believe game, the Dreemurr living room was a shared hub for objects from various locations, a kind of grand unified Dark World in a metaphorical sense. It is, again, interesting that the location of this hub world was chosen to be Kris's house, where they led the Card Kingdom objects, and now in the present, the new hub world is adjacent/connected to Card Kingdom.
I know a lot of people will resist this notion, though. Most people think Gaster created the Dark Fountain, and that anyone else doing so is implausible because of the fact that the Grand Fountain has special properties, and because of the existence of Ralsei, who said he had not met any of the heroes prior to the events of the game.
I don't think it's impossible Gaster created the Dark World, but I do think it's a little implausible given that it seems Gaster near exclusively interacts with the world (at least the "surface world") through proxies and indirect manipulation of agents. Kris is harboring the SOUL which Gaster summoned into the world, and Kris seems to have a uniquely important relationship to Gaster. Most people who accept that Gaster created the prophecy also accept that the Knight is a kind of proxy for him, the main agent for carrying out the prophecy, the literal generator of conflict; this also makes sense of the Knight's visual connections to the mysteryman sprite, like their stigmata hands and bitonal palette. But again - Kris is also central to the Knightspiracy, seems completely aligned with the Knight, also creates Dark Worlds, and also has special connections to Gaster. Who's to say that Kris is not a proxy in this way too?
In terms of explaining the special properties of the Grand Fountain, YouTuber Black Chestnut once proposed that the Grand Fountain is "pure" because it's in a barren room devoid of any theming or purpose besides storing other objects - which translates to a Dark World that is impartial and capable of housing any Darkner. I still think this explanation really checks out thematically and makes a lot of intuitive sense.
As for Ralsei, he is still deceptive about at least some things pertaining to Kris and his relationship with them to Susie and the Player - so at the very least I don't think his existence completely wipes out the idea that Kris could have created the Dark World.
If you're still skeptical, that's fine. Ultimately, the main point here, which I think is undeniable, is that TV World has ties to Castle Town, which establish significant parallels between Chapter 1 and 3. And trust me when I say that those parallels do not end there.
Piles of Chapter 1 parallels
Simply put, Chapter 1 and 3 are intensely linked. Let's illustrate the point by going over the many, many connections TV World has to the Dark Worlds of Chapter 1.
Symbolic callbacks
Chapter 3 frequently calls back to specific moments or events from Chapter 1.
At the start of the Chapter, in the couch cliffs area, both the "eyes blinded by darkness" puzzle and Card Kingdom's clock puzzle where the three heroes must step on switches reappear.
In the Boards, the appearance of HERO_SCARF is modelled after Ralsei's appearance in the first Chapter specifically.
In one of Tenna's quizzes, the Thrash Machine as it appeared in Chapter 1 is shown.
In the cut Board 3, the elevator ride to the top of TV Tower deliberately calls back to the elevator ride in Card Castle.
The Darkner roster
Chapter 3's Darkner cast overlaps with Chapter 1's to a notable extent.
Most obviously there are the Pippins, one of the main Darkners of this world, who originally come from Card Kingdom and were first introduced in Chapter 1.
The dust piles and wobblies of the Grand Fountain's cliffs area make a return in TV World's couch cliffs.
The Ribbick Darkners parallel the Rabbicks of Card Kingdom, and there's even a lone Rabbick in the Dark World hiding among them.
The Goulden Sams return from Card Kingdom with a pretty significantly expanded role. Along with the Goulden Sams there are also the Suilver Sams and the Goulden Sons.
C. Round was originally supposed to be included as a spinning wheel in the Boards before getting cut.
The Rudinns are also present in TV World in the form of the Flying Aces, though they've been consigned to Nowhere. They will be discussed later.
Overall, a little over 40% of the native Darkner cast in Chapter 3 originate in or have unmissably apparent ties to Chapter 1's Dark Worlds - a number that obviously increases if you count the cut C. Round, or Lancer and Rouxls.
To be clear, I don't mean to imply that the only function of these ties to Chapter 1 is to hint at Kris having made Card Kingdom. Chapter 3 is centrally concerned with the theme of memory and nostalgia, and calling back to the very first Chapter of the game is an effective way to communicate that idea for the players that have been following Deltarune for multiple years.
Chapter 3 is also serving as a conclusion to the "first act" of Deltarune's story, so to speak. The first three Chapters are united in being about Dark Worlds based on objects which were involved in the make-believe games of the Dreemurr and Holiday kids, with a more upbeat tone than the rest of the story that would follow. To this end Chapter 1 and 3 are bookends of this "act" and calling back the former makes sense; Chapter 3 also has ties to Chapter 2, as is apparent in Spamton's influence all over the world, and with Ramb, the second most important Darkner in the Chapter, being a plugboy from Cyber World (who also has a Maus in his shop) - even if a large theme of Ramb's story is that he was unable to integrate in the same way that other objects could. Chapter 3 even has some Darkners from Chapter 4, in the Mizzles (encased in watercoolers per Tenna's contract) and the Bibliox who guards the ticket to Nowhere.
But ultimately, I feel inclined to say that the Chapter 1 connections stand out as being more than just callbacks. It's not just that they're prominent - they feel distinctly meaningful. The Goulden Sams are allegories for Kris themself, who is also a "cage" that feels like an outsider. The Suilver Sams seem to pointedly imply a connection between Kris and the Vessel. The Pippins reflect Kris's nature as a cheater and gamist. And, of course, we need to talk about...
The aces and the tree
We need to talk about the Egg Rooms. Apparently no one except me finds it incredibly suspect that Kris's Trauma Tree - the tree we know they drew in therapy - just happens to be a Card Kingdom tree.
Why. Why the hell would the Evil Ass Trauma Tree be a basic block tree from Card Kingdom. Or maybe we have this reversed? Maybe we should be asking why the basic Card Kingdom block trees are Evil Ass Trauma Trees?
Either way the question remains of what narrative purpose this connection is serving. Because I have to assume that Toby didn't just make it this way for no reason. There's isn't any obvious reason why the tree Kris drew in therapy, apparently related to some repressed or erased memory, would be that block tree from Card Kingdom. Unless...
This is a trite observation at this point, but creating a Dark World is a little bit like creating art. You stab the ground in not too dissimilar a way to putting the tip of a pen down on a piece of paper. In Chapter 4, bladed weapons are even compared to pens, making this connection explicit. The Tree is tied to artistic creation; Kris draws it in therapy. After the process, they wash their hands - which ties back to them washing their hands before the creation of TV World. Could it not be that the nature of the Tree as an artistic creation, something which was drawn on paper, conveys something about the world in which this tree appears as a basic feature?
To put it a different way: Kris is positioned as the artist behind the Tree. The drawer. The creator. Are they not being positioned, then, by proxy, as Card Kingdom's creator too?
Look, I'm not saying this isn't weird. If you're asking yourself "aren't the trees just supposed to be the red blocks in the classroom??"... like, yes. That's certain. That's totally what the trees are. It's not clear why this tree Kris ostensibly drew in therapy sometime in the past is manifesting as like, a tree representing a red toy block.
Nonetheless the symbolism is relatively simple here: Kris's artistic creation (the Tree) is manifesting as a different, metaphorical artistic creation (the Dark World-ified red block). To me, this seems to be suggesting some sort of shared nature, and to me that shared nature seems to be Kris's creative capacity, literal or metaphorical.
We should also discuss the Flying Aces. Starting in Chapter 3, these get introduced as NPCs inhabiting the Egg Rooms, which had up to that point only been inhabited by Kris and the Man. As we learn, these are seven photocopied ace cards which Kris had individually colored in to try to use to cheat at cards with. This plan apparently didn't go well, and the cards were lost and forgotten about. As I've discussed elsewhere, this is an allegory for goners and is not only very important lore but specifically meaningful to Kris's character.
In particular, the Seventh Ace, almost certainly the same character as the blue Rudinn in Castle Town, feels particularly like a Kris allegory. When we were first introduced to them, they were green - Kris's signature Light World color, from the Dreemurr clothes they wear. The Rudinn's color "fades" into blue - the color that the Ace was painted in after being photocopied (the Secretary Ace in the Therapy Egg Room is always blue) - as well as Kris's signature Dark World color. And beneath all that, they are grey, monochrome, like the goner vessel created at the start of the game.
So here we again have again these narrative devices that are incredibly important to Kris's character and, as we've gotten well accustomed to now, these also oh so conspicuously happen to be Card Kingdom characters. Over and over and over again, Kris is tied to Card Kingdom, both in simple and superficial ways, and in deep, significant, often inscrutible ways! Could it really be that this is just coincidence? I'm really reluctant to believe that. I think Toby has to be trying to convey something here.
The piano
Okay, so I've saved the most tinfoil, conspiracy-brained piece of "evidence" I have for the last.
So in Chapter 4, if you get captured by Kris once in Holiday Manor and return to the kitchen to watch them from the vents, Kris will wander off-screen to play the piano for ca. 8 minutes. Below are the different sections Kris plays listed by the internal names used and the musical references they contain:
sevenfour (unknown)
quiz (Query?, Tenna leitmotif)
lancer_waltz (Thrash Machine, Acid Tunnel of Love, Lancer leitmotif)
shop (Shop 3, revealed in the Winter 2025 Newsletter as a track from Chapter 5)
last_prophecy (The Legend leitmotif)
prophecy (Hymn, Don't Forget)
Okay, so like, I'm not crazy, right? Kris plays:
Card Kingdom leitmotifs. (Chapter 1)
TV World leitmotifs. (Chapter 3)
Flower King leitmotifs. (Chapter 5)
General prophecy-associated leitmotifs like The Legend and Don't Forget.
You know what Kris doesn't play? Cyber World leitmotifs. Dark Sanctuary leitmotifs. No Queen, no Spamton, no SCC, no Gerson, no Jackenstein, no NOTHIN'. Just Lancer, Rouxls, Tenna, maybe Ramb.
Is this just a coincidence? Honestly, I don't think it is. I think this is just further reinforcement of Kris's special connection to Card Kingdom. The interesting thing is that there's also a Flower King track here. You could probably conjure some huge crack theory that Kris will make Chapter 5's Fountain based on that if you wanted... but you don't have to take it that far either. Flower King has an obvious personal connection to Kris in being their dad's shop.
In any case, I don't think this piano tidbit is the most important evidence presented in this post at all, but it's just one of those little things that make you think "man, a lot of the little details line up".
WHAT NOW??
So after everything we've discussed, do we have incontrovertible proof that Kris created Card Kingdom? No, of course not. In fact, I think there are very compelling arguments you could make for Dess having created it.
Take for example the fact that Card Kingdom is located in the unused classroom. That classroom (it is implied and emphasized by the game, via Alvin's drawing) was Gerson's old classroom.
And if we assume, as I think is reasonable, that the Knight created the Dark Sanctuaries, it means that Dess probably needs to have had a rather close relationship with Gerson, enough to have considered him a "loved one". Alvin's drawing is already conspicuous - it seems that it may well be setting up Card Kingdom and the unused classroom as a way to establish the relationship Dess and Gerson had, which would probably preclude Kris from having created that Dark World.
Many people have also noted Clover's similarities to Dess, tied King's grievance over being "left in the dark" to Dess's disappearance, connected the forest maze section to the 1225 maze, and so on. I personally don't find these points enormously convincing by themselves, but they're certainly worth mentioning and considering.
I'm sure you could make a fairly convincing post, structured like this one, detailing the evidence, thematic and literal, for Dess having created Card Kingdom's Dark World. But that would also be the default assumption. It's not really something most people need to be convinced of. The Knight creating the Dark World is the obvious surface level conclusion, that's what the game already implied. But I think the fact that you can make essentially as good a case for Kris having created this Dark World is interesting and telling.
I anticipate that some people are going to ask "what would be the point of this revelation, narratively speaking?" and I want to quickly defend the theory against the accusation that this would be a cheap or useless twist. Personally, there are two core reasons why I find this theory narratively appealing.
The first is that it would mean that Kris is more of an active participant in the conspiracy than many people seem to think. There's so much discussion of Kris's character that focuses on them as a pawn under the control of others, even a lot of speculation that they're even being blackmailed and guilt-tripped, that they're actually terrified and resentful of Carol and/or the Knight but unable to break free from their influence. But I think Kris is at their most interesting when they have some kind of personal stake in their actions. I think Kris is most complex when their actions are a result of their own will, even if they're done in collaboration with others. And really, think about it - what's more dramatically compelling: that Kris is this hapless pawn being moved around by the game's antagonists, or that Kris is suffering from internal strife, torn between two desires - to be honest and faithful to Susie on one hand, and, on the other, to carry out a plan they're personally invested in bringing about, out of loyalty and allegience to someone they've known for much longer, but may have a troubled relationship with?
(Gif by LinoOikl45887)
That's the second reason. I think it does wonders for the clearly narratively central relationship between Kris and the Knight (which is to say, Kris and Dess) to tie the current Dark World conspiracy to the old make-believe game they used to lead as children. It positions these two characters as having a special, complicated, personal relationship - less like a puppet and its master, and more like two autonomous agents that are responsible for their respective actions, even if there is coercion involved, and even if the power is slanted more towards one side. Messy, complicated people acting out of loyalty to each other, and from shared affinities and desires, instead of just brute force and compulsion.
Regardless of who created the Dark World, I hope to have demonstrated in this post that Card Kingdom and its Darkners are very strongly tied to Kris, in ways that are worthy of close analysis. I hope to have brought further attention to the old make-believe game the Dreemurr and Holiday kids used to play together. And I hope to have demonstrated the value of emphasizing Kris and Dess's relationship in analysis and speculation about the game.
Chapter 3 is odd. Conceived and teased ahead of release as a breaktime chapter of fun and frivolity, light on story and drama, this presentation conceals the fact that it contains more strange and inscrutable details than perhaps any other chapter in the game, not to mention the most elaborate installments to date of the Shadow Crystal Quest and Egg Hunt, and is only more dissonant for its constant assurances that nothing is wrong and everything is normal.
It is a pretty banal observation at this point to say that Chapter 3's strange atmosphere and structure is a reflection of Kris's inner thoughts - their memories, interests, fears. But perhaps the most disquieting element of Kris's TV World is the way in which immanent features of DELTARUNE - the story, world, and game - repeatedly manifest as structural motifs of this synecdochical Dark World. What's more, concentrated within it are more allusions to the enigmatic, demiurgic Gaster-shaped figure at the core of everything than in perhaps any other chapter of the game. Enough even for us to possibly sketch a vague image of what desires and motivations may lie behind that fallen angel - and, hopefully, to elucidate what his presence all over Chapter 3 may imply about him, Kris, and Deltarune itself.
THE THEATER AND ITS DOUBLE
One of the primary recurring ideas in Chapter 3 is a duality between an untouched, primordial world and a new one which was born from it – one altered, directed, manufactured.
The most fundamental evocation of this idea is in the very nature of the Dark World itself, as explained by the “camerathing” Darkner Shuttah, whose cryptic and esoteric dialogue can be hard to make sense of but ultimately proves extremely meaningful. Get familiar with this weirdo, because it is relevant to basically everything I discuss in this post.
* The couch cliffs, how purple and majestic they were.
* The dusty, the empty, such are the worlds such as those.
* Ooo la la. The purple worlds, you think they give the creeps.
* Tsk... You have seen not but that tempered by light.
* You should thank Tenna for brightening everything up.
* In the once upon a time, there was a land like purple cliffs.
* A frozen waste, watery basin, a metal desert.
* But, this theater was built upon that... and, it grew.
* Not everyone liked the change. Some people left.
* Of course, that was in the days of the black-and-white.
* There once was a great wilderness here! Yes...
* But, the world became the theater, and us, children of Tenna's contract.
* Those that did not sign the paper, set off for the far land and were forgotten.
* Now... only the legend old hermit still knows the way to the place.
* ... Kris? Do you not know him so much?
* Even the water spirits were put to the bottles and coo as coolers...
* A liquid contract... a waste of their natural figure. Ooh la la.
Shuttah speaks in riddles, but let’s try to parse what it’s saying. Shuttah says that preceding Tenna’s “brightening everything up”, there were “purple worlds”. It mentions the “couch cliffs” – referencing the opening area of Chapter 3, which resembles the empty cliffs area which Kris and Susie likewise wake up in after falling into the supply closet Dark World in Chapter 1. Shuttah makes the connection between these two areas clear when it says – “the dusty, the empty, such are the worlds such as those” – in both areas, dust piles can be found scattered about, and it seems that the reason behind their peculiar natures is their ‘emptiness’. The supply closet is barren, devoid of theming and influence – except, one assumes, for whatever objects Castle Town might correspond to. Similarly, it seems, the Dreemurr living room, abandoned and bereft of purpose, would’ve resulted in another barren Dark World, reflecting the broken state of the Dremurr family. That is, if it weren’t for Tenna (i.e. the plugging in and turning on of the TV). In itself, this information is interesting, but not necessarily super meaningful yet. The truly curious part comes when Shuttah says:
“A frozen waste, a watery basin, a metal desert”
I know this line made some ears perk up when playing through the Chapter because there was actually a theory before the release of 3 and 4 that TV World would mirror the theming and progression of Undertale.
An archetypal example of this theory, by u/Jackofriend
Most people dismissed this speculation as crack, and while TV World’s progression didn’t end up conforming to this pattern, it, as it turns out, was actually integrated into the narrative of the Chapter with Shuttah's lines here! The question, then, is of what narrative significance this connection is. It's not relevant to the experience of actually going through TV World, and it doesn't change anything about the basic fact that the Dark World would've been empty and reminiscent of Chapter 1's Cliffs if Tenna hadn't been there.
The only reason to establish this connection would be to further an idea or motif. Once Upon a Time (Before the Story, even) there was an untouched Undertale-like world - but upon that foundation, a "theater" was built, and it grew. Not everyone liked the change, Shuttah says, so they left. The only Darkners we know of that left are the Flying Aces, and it's a bit of a simplification to say that they "left" - rather, they were forgotten, and thus consigned to "Nowhere" - a paradoxical realm of manifested nonexistence, evoking the idea of a forgotten memory which sticks in the unconscious. You could interpret the dialogue to mean that there may have been other potential Darkners which were forgotten more permanently and had all traces erased - but in any case the point remains that everything in the Dark World of the Dreemurr household had to conform to the will of this new world, lest it be consigned to Nowhere and forgotten - in other words, erased. This is why the water in the Dreemurr household manifests as Watercoolers rather than Mizzles - within the diegetic logic of the Dark World, the Mizzles have been encased within the watercoolers to fit the TV theming - Tenna's theater.
Let's digress. The bulk of your time in TV World is spent playing Tenna's game show. It's made up of multiple "boards" in a top-down Zelda style video game which the Fun Gang is made to play. It's a pretty ordered experience, with many set goals you must fulfill. But here and there, cracks start showing. Go off the beaten path and you may find remnants of another experience which Tenna tries his best to cover up. Go backstage between the boards and you find Ramb, who informs you that the game show is a modified version of the "ORIGINAL game" - nothing but a "big ol' blasted line from A to B", in contrast to the free form nature of the original where "YOU decide what to do."
Boot up the original game - which is seemingly called 'MANTLE' - and you find that many of the enemies deliberately parallel the inhabitants of Hometown, most of which are returning characters from Undertale. There are even parts which allude to Undertale-exclusive events, like this room where killing a grey armored fish enemy leads to yellow lizards killing themselves - a blatant reference to one neutral ending of Undertale.
Ramb's description of a freeform original game with real, meaningful choices which is superseded by a linear adventure where you don't get to decide what to do is maybe the most on-the-nose metaphor for the relationship between Undertale and Deltarune in the game, with the former emphasizing the player's freedom of choice and the latter emphasizing their lack of choice. And once more, the culprit for the new world is the same - Tenna is positioned as the one who constructs a controlled experience on top of an Undertale-like foundation. Of course, the description of MANTLE as a truly "free" game with meaningful choices turns out to not be very accurate, arguably railroading you even harder into a Genocide Route-esque hunt for the Shadow Mantle. It could be that Ramb simply misrepresented the game to Kris, or it could be that the "someone" who Kris feels backstage with them (the same someone possessing the Mantle and in all likelihood the same person as dropped the pink-and-yellow Odd Controller you need to play the game) made their own adjustments to the structure of the original game, like Tenna. An allusion, perhaps, to the fact that Deltarune's Weird Route - the alternative to following the prophecy's script - itself restricts the player to some pretty specific steps they have to perform, arguably moreso than the normal route.
Lastly, the final evocation of a new world which was built on an old one is rather more abstract than the preceding two examples, and comes in the form of a speech given by the Forgotten Man. He tells you a far-fetched tale:
* ONCE UPON A TIME, THE WHOLE WORLD LOOKED LIKE THIS.
* DO YOU THINK SO?
...
* WELL, THE WORLD CHANGED. SOCIETY WAS DEVELOPED.
* THE EARTH WAS COVERED IN WATER, DINOSAURS APPEARED, AN ICE AGE,
* HM... ACTUALLY, THERE ARE STILL DINOSAURS... IS IT MIXED UP?
* IN ANY CASE, THIS ISLAND IS THE ONLY PLACE LEFT I CAN TALK.
* DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I'M SAYING?
These lines require a little more interpretation, but taking a broad look, it conforms to the same general pattern as the other examples. Once Upon a Time, there was a different world - a world which looked "like this". What exactly "this" would be isn't exactly clear; 8-bit? Green? Monochrome? But this line of questioning may be missing the forest for the trees: the world presumably bore a resemble to this corner of Nowhere. Evidently, this world that was has been erased, forgotten. Paved over to make way for a "changed" world, where "society was developed". How much meaning we can ascribe to the 'developments' the Forgotten Man describes or even his fable in general, which he readily admits is just an absurd story, I can't say... But it is important that we take note of this repeated pattern:
Old world. New world. Erasure and forgetting of the old.
The Forgotten Man is what bridges the gap between this pattern's significance to Chapter 3 and the rest of the game.
GUYS TRAPPED IN THE PAST
TV World is centrally concerned with the topic of nostalgia. In a sense, all the first three Dark Worlds are, as they're all manifestations of the same childhood game of make believe which the Dreemurrs and Holidays played with various objects from Hometown. But TV World is where this theme is most prominent by far, as not only is it the Chapter where the nature of the Dark Worlds and their relation to Kris's past is fully divulged to the audience, but it's also set in the location where the make believe games are implied to have been mainly played. Of course, it's also the location Kris grew up in.
The theme of nostalgia is embodied in the Dark World's central Darkner character, Tenna. Having recently been plugged back in after years of disuse, Tenna not only still mentally inhabits a bygone past but is also desperate to recapture and restore it. As the Chapter progresses, Tenna continually reminisces about the happy memories of the now broken Dreemurr family and displays an inability to reckon with the fact that those times are gone for good. In contradiction to these nostalgic inclinations, however, one of Tenna's other core traits is his desperation to stay cutting edge and relevant. Somewhat aware of his own outmoded nature, Tenna often copes by deluding himself about being "modern" and "cutting-edge", while privately despairing about airing only "the same old reruns", even being willing to make contracts and deals that harm or endanger others if it means he might be able to "plug in" and "become big" again. Tenna's crippling insecurity over his own dwindling relevancy and his fear of abandonment is the driving force of the character, motivating most of the actions he takes in Chapter 3. The tragic core of his story, though, is that these attempts to reinvent himself into something shiny and new are doomed to fail, as he remains firmly and immutably anchored to the past. His only hope, ultimately, lies in accepting that his world has changed.
Ramb, in contrast to Tenna, is totally disinterested in changing himself to stay modern and relevant. Whereas Tenna's concern is keeping up with the times, or simply indulging in the delusion that the times are static and unchanging and that there will always be a place for him, Ramb is a true-blue oldhead. He likes how it was in the good old days; none of these new developments can compare. If things are different, that's just a reason to dig your heels in, spurn the future, spurn change, and go back to the way things used to be. That's the basis of Ramb's hostility to Tenna's game; he resents Tenna's presumptuousness in thinking that anything he makes could be better than the old classics. No, Ramb knows that's not what Kris wants, Kris wants the ORIGINAL game - in reality, likely a dream-amalgam of formative video games Kris played and expressed themself through as a child. But as selflessly devoted to Kris and their wants as Ramb must think himself to be, this aspect of him is really more a reflection of his own experiences than any kind of special insight into Kris. Ramb is himself a product of Kris's childhood gaming experiences. An average plugboy from the Cyber World until Kris picked him out; like an angel chosen by their god, he was marked as special, colored in with experience. Eventually, though, things came to an end. Kris stopped playing with Ramb and he was left stranded in the Dreemurr household, away from his cyber-kin, unable to integrate with the rest of the living room objects, left with nothing but the meaning he once held to Kris to define himself by, alienating him from every other Darkner - grey and hardened on the inside, grey like a lifeless statue, or a photo of a bygone time.
The Most Hateful Pippins In TV World just spells out the connection to those not caught on yet:
And you know who else is trapped in the past? Like, literally?
These other guys, they have it pretty bad - still, I am inclined to give the "living in the past" prize to the guy who's literally been metaphysically consigned to the decaying memories of some nonbinary teenager. And, y'know, it feels important to just get this out of the way right now: this dude is Gaster. I don't know how or why, when there's another perfectly acceptable Gaster already in our story, but he is. He appears 'in-between' regular rooms (as the mysteryman in Undertale did) and he and all traces of him have been metaphysically erased from the world, including everyone's memories (which I've had to hear for a decade is technically not fully confirmed to have been what happened to Gaster). And the Seven Flying Aces that have set up shop in his Mancountry? There are actually only six of them.
Funnily enough, the Gaster we've become used to - the one that speaks to us in the black void every now and then - doesn't seem too fond of this other version (part?) of himself. On PlayStation, collecting an egg bars you from getting that Chapter's "COMPLETE WITHOUT ISSUE" trophy, and Gaster was even initially planned to mention it in his dialogue at the end of Chapter 4.
And if we need any further evidence that memory is an incredibly important and prominent symbol in Gaster's story we need look no further than the one major character who is unambiguously, brazenly connected to him - Sans. If there was ever a bad case of homesickness. When we meet him in Undertale, he's seemingly been multiversally stranded. Though his machine is irreversibly broken and he's given up on "going back", he evidently has not been able to forget, as the note on the back of that poorly drawn picture in his workshop testifies to.
I'm not sure I need to spell it out, but Tenna is clearly a Gaster parallel. A showman spinning a story for our heroes which some complain is too ordered an experience, too railroaded in comparison to an "original game" which served as its foundation, with everyone and everything that didn't fit that vision consigned to Nowhere, and the rest trapped in contracts that bind them to certain conditions.
What's maybe less obvious is that Ramb parallels Sans. This is made unambiguous in the fact that they share an identical anecdote where they make the same joke - but whereas Sans is quickly welcomed among his new peers, Ramb is shunned and unable to integrate.
In spite of Sans's easier time fitting in, he too is stranded in an alien world, seemingly working in a somewhat subservient role to some higher powers ("our reports"? "gasterblasters"?) and yearns, deep down, for a lost past; whereas Ramb deludes himself into thinking that going back is still attainable, Sans, in some sense, lets himself be spiritually defeated by the fact of his past being gone forever, only finding solace in pictures which have captured and preserved moments of a time now impossibly far away.
PICTURES OF THE PAST
Which takes us back to Shuttah. With everything we've considered so far, it perhaps shouldn't really surprise us that the camera Darkner is the most Gasterpilled thing on the planet. What are photos? Reality - light - captured, transmuted, by chemical or digital means, into a lifeless, illusory copy of itself; a moment mummified, plucked out of timespace, preserved in stasis. A frozen memory. A way of going back without moving an inch.
For a long time we wondered what the motif of grey meant in relation to Gaster. Shuttah answers it.
SHUTTAH - When its eyes snap shut, memories are made in grey.
It's about memory. The preservation of something which is gone.
The Aces in turn tell us what goners are.
COPIES ARE MONOCHROME,
BUT YOU COLORED EACH OF US IN WITH CARE.
Lifeless copies given life. Given experience.
Frankly, this should've been more obvious to us earlier.
Knowing this, we can look to other notable instances of grey and compare. An interesting thing that sometimes happens to Darkners is petrification; when they do not belong within the "will" of a given Fountain, Darkners turn into grey, lifeless statues. This makes a fair bit of sense when we consider that petrified Darkners literally belong elsewhere in time and space; when given form in a world they don't belong to, they can only exist as lifeless replicas of what they are supposed to be elsewhere.
And this photocopy metaphor has broader implications. The allegory the Aces present - mechanically copying something already existing and using it as a basis for renewed life - is exactly what Tenna does with his Boards, and it is, in a sense, what Deltarune is as a game. From the foundation of Undertale - its setting, designs, systems, expectations - something new and a little uncanny is created. Like the aces are colored in and made real through being passed off as authentic, we bring Deltarune to life with our "hope" and our experience playing through it.
CONSTRUCTED WORLDS
But... at bottom, it's not real, is it? As with the Dark Worlds, DELTARUNE is only "real" for as long as you're actively absorbed within it - or, perhaps more optimistically and sentimentally - for as long as you keep it alive inside your heart. But outside of your belief, your engagement, your hope? It's little more than a program, comprised of some assets and lines of code.
The parallels between the game of DELTARUNE and the experience of the Dark Worlds have been obvious to most since at least Chapter 2, but what makes Chapter 3 so interesting is that it introduces yet another layer to this recursive analogy.
* Today's "GAME" SHOW will be... A VIRTUAL ADVENTURE THROUGH TV DESERT!
* Each of you will use our CUTTING EDGE, PROPRIETARY CONTROLLER PADS...
* To control FANTASY VERSIONS OF YOURSELF in a world so REAL, you'll forget IT'S NOT!
Indeed, the bulk of the Chapter takes place in these fictional video game "boards". You could say we're "three layers" deep in fictional worlds. And yet, what makes these boards stand out in comparison to something like the Dark Worlds, as well as pre-Chapter 3 speculation about hypothesized "darker than dark worlds", is how clearly established from the beginning these are as *fake worlds* - even if Tenna says that you'll forget they're not. We always see our heroes on screen with controllers in hand, literally framing the action visually as artificial and second-order. Unlike the Dark Worlds - whose artificiality are initially treated with a sort of "wink, wink, nudge nudge" attitude (this one's for the Media Literacy Havers!) - Chapter 3 takes pains to firmly establish a clear division between the comparative reality of the Dark World, and the obvious unreality of the boards.
All the more interesting, then, that the presentation of the boards evolve in the opposite direction to the presentation of the Dark Worlds up until Chapter 3; whereas Deltarune has become more and more explicit about the artificial, contingent nature of the Dark Worlds, Chapter 3 progressively complicates this division in the boards between "the real" and "the fake" which seemed so clean and simple to begin with. As Kris (and you) go through the first board of MANTLE - which pushes the player into an imitation of Undertale's Genocide Route, where every enemy needs to be killed for your player avatar to become maximally strong - solace is taken in the fact that none of this is "real" and that you (and Kris) aren't truly responsible for anything that happens within this game; even if there is a spooky disembodied voice asking if you're having fun... But come Board 2, you may find an in-game avatar of Tenna, hidden off in one of the rooms, seemingly having escaped into MANTLE for a place to air out his anxieties in private. Is that really Tenna? Is that someone else playing as Tenna? Is that some sort of imitation of him spontaneously generated by the game? What is happening here, exactly? Progress further into the ICE PALACE, and things become more disquietingly real. You meet Noelle in the guise of the "White Cloak". You use her to open a door visually alluding to the often referenced headband Kris used to wear, and speak to that mysterious voice again before it grants you the Shelter Key. When I played this moment for the first time, a shock ran through my body and I briefly thought I had just gotten the actual key to the Shelter in the Light World - I had forgotten that this was all just "fake". Come next board, you're not just killing random enemies - you are (Kris is) killing digital representations of your (Kris's) friends. You go through a final dungeon, reminiscent of the basement of Queen's Mansion in Chapter 2 and possibly alluding to the site of some traumatic event in Kris's past, and after you cut down some Hometown-looking trees, you enter a digital recreation of the Shelter, fight the Shadow Mantle (with your "real" SOUL taking "real" damage), before your (second) player avatar simply exits the screen, causing Kris to drop the controller, terrified.
The boundaries are shattered at this point; it is clear as day that the divide is illusory. This is all a Dark World. None of this is real. All of this is real.
Remember that the boards are not just functioning as an allegory for the Dark Worlds, as the second-order "fictional worlds", but also, as we established at the beginning, an allegory for the games of Deltarune and Undertale themselves. This contradictory semantic layering achieves the effect of, again, tearing down boundaries.
Going into Chapter 3, it felt like the obvious thematic conclusion that the Dark Worlds werent truly real - they only appeared as such. Ralsei articulates this sensible perspective at the start of the Chapter. And yet the question the game actually seems much more interested in, especially with the coming of 3 and 4, is: what if they are real?
Light and Dark seemed like such fixed boundaries to us. Until the horror monster appeared on screen, killed the personification of "escapism" itself, and kidnapped a real person into the real shelter. Until the mystical fantasy prophecy was actually revealed to be the basis of the mundane suburbia's local religion all along. Until the game-logic of "equipping items" is forcibly imposed on Noelle in the real world. Until the Titan - bred from the deepest dark - appeared as an angel of light.
It's all real. It's all fake.
Of particular note this chapter are also its numerous ties to Link’s Awakening. This connection is immediately apparent from visual, musical and structural similarities in the Boards, which are clearly modeled after the old top-down 2D Zelda games. Though technically only one of the Boards is said to take place on an island, as Link's Awakening does, that setting is the most emphasized by the game; not only does Gerson single it out for his description of his variation of Chapter 3 as 'The Isles of Northernlight', but the MANTLE versions of the Boards also all play the same ambient sound effect of waves crashing against the shore. The name of the island - Kodakoda Island - is also an obvious reference to Link's Awakening's Koholint Island (along with the camera company Kodak for equally obvious reasons).
One especially transparent connection is the way in which the Sword Route's final battle against the Shadow Mantle alludes to the final boss of Link's Awakening against the Nightmares - shadowy beings formed from a kind of collective unconscious of the world, which can inhabit the forms of one's fears - in Link's case, previous bosses he has gone up against. The Nightmares of Link's Awakening are quite reminiscent of the deep dark creatures introduced in Chapters 3 and 4, like Titans, Unknowns and FRIEND, but more than that the encounter with the Shadow Mantle was carefully designed to evoke the final confrontation of Link's Awakening. They're both fought in blue underground areas, both antagonists have a pre-battle monologue scored with very similar ambient music, both bosses are simple all-black figures, and both fly and teleport around the arena with almost identical sound effects. And if there was any doubt as to whether this was all just a coincidence, the Spamton Sweepstakes page /romb/, which was used to tease the Sword Route and Shadow Mantle battle ahead of time, just straight up quotes the Nightmares. Not only that, but in Chapter 3's data, the music in the final area of MANTLE is titled "nightmare", with one earlier variation of BURNING EYES, "nightmare_boss_links" (as in, links awakening), making it especially clear that the track interpolates and remixes the boss theme against the Nightmares. If there's any major difference between the Shadow Mantle and the Nightmares it's in the outlook of the respective bosses - whereas the Nightmares are fighting Link to prevent him from awakening, the one controlling the Shadow Mantle seeks to "awaken" Kris further, longs to see their eyes "burn", and takes gleeful joy in the artificiality of the game.
For those unacquainted, the plot of Link’s Awakening revolves around Link’s gradual realization that he is trapped inside an artificial dream-world of a deity known as the Wind Fish, who slumbers encased within a giant egg at the top of Koholint Island. At first, Link and the player are led to believe that Link has stranded on a real island, but gradually, the true nature of Koholint becomes clear, both explicitly (the game's bosses allude to the island's contingent nature and eventually plead with Link to not awaken the Wind Fish), and implicitly (it may dawn on the player that many of the elements of the setting and plot mirror aspects of previous games, seemingly drawn from Link's own memories - one example being the game's love interest, Marin, who Link initially confuses for Zelda; the player may also question the general surreal atmosphere and dream logic Koholint seems to operate on). The ultimate goal of the game becomes about cracking open the egg and awakening both the Wind Fish and Link from their shared dream; a structure bearing obvious similarities to the sealing of the Dark Worlds, and what feels like a somewhat ominous portend of what the ending of DELTARUNE itself might entail. The Wind Fish himself speaks in all-capitals, and his dialogue carries an authoritative yet often poetic air, much like both Gaster and the Forgotten Man. Ultimately, he says, the dream of Koholint must end, but its memory can live on within Link, to be revisited any time as long as he doesn't forget.
One of the most underdiscussed and unsettling moments in the game for me happens in a missable scene near the end of the chapter. You won't have the opportunity to see the final parental lock puzzle if you've already claimed the Shadow Mantle and turned off every screen in TV World, but if you boot it up, you're greeted with this screen.
A perfect facsimile of Kris's Light World home. Inside the "fake game".
Continue through it and you'll suddenly pass back into the obviously 'fictive world' of the boards, before you eventually pick up the camera. Snap some pictures and its eye will reveal the reality lying underneath.
Take enough and the world crashes.
Grey, hissing static - and endless, empty strings of zeroes. At bottom, it's all dark. There is no reality or fantasy and certainly no hard separation between the two - there is only DELTARUNE. This world and its illusory boundaries are artificially constructed. It's what the Secret Bosses came to realize. And our heroes are marching, chapter by chapter, towards a confrontation with that inevitable truth.
THE KRIS OF IT ALL
There is a giant unanswered question at the heart of this essay. Why? Why is all of this present in Kris's Dark World specifically? Why is it Kris's mind that generates these constant subliminal allusions to the artificiality of the world? These parallels to the demiurgic creator at its root? What is Gaster to Kris?
Let's go back to the Egg Rooms.
For all their strangeness, the Egg Rooms were rather inconspicuous in the preceding two chapters. The description of the Eggs said: "not too important, not too unimportant", and we all took them at their word. It's really only in Chapter 3 that we began to have any comprehensible idea of what they mean. As we've discussed, they are in Nowhere - a metaphysical layer of reality which is the domain of all that has been erased or forgotten - but these are corners of Nowhere specifically modelled after Kris's memories, with deep ties to their childhood. After you've collected the third egg, Shuttah will remark:
* Kris! You suddenly look much more adult.
* What is it? Did you make the journey?
* Well, slow down! Let me get the picture of your youth!
* Kris! Our Kris...
Undoubtedly the most conspicuous addition to the Egg Rooms in Chapters 3 and 4 are the Flying Aces, also linked to Kris's past: to cheat at card games, Kris photocopied certain cards and colored their grey, monochrome forms in to pass them off as real. Eventually they got lost between the couch and forgotten about, and they end up manifesting here in Nowhere.
We've already discussed how this functions as veiled exposition about goners, the eerie grey creatures tied to Gaster. For example, it is quite likely that the strange striped bird in the Librarby (internally titled "normalnpc", in case there was any doubt about its normalcy) is an undercover goner, sharing a design with one of the Followers from Undertale.
Note this character's emphasis on "waiting" and deferring progress until later.
But isn't it just a little bit odd if these new characters, present only in the "Kris repressed backstory rooms", and deeply tied to their childhood, only exist to provide random exposition about... like, some spooky henchmen guys? And yet this is the overwhelming consensus. It just feels like something is missing. Again, why? What is Toby communicating here?
And isn't it an odd detail that the blue Seventh Ace (blue, always blue) mentions being small (like how Kris is noted to be small), but says that "knockoffs don't have the right to complain"?
And how about the fact that the Goulden Sams - the "cages" - make a return in Chapter 3? And not only them, but new variants colored blue and grey? And there seems to be uncertainty about which one is "original"?
Okay, there's no real point beating around the bush. I think Kris is a goner vessel. I think they were artificially created by Gaster to house the SOUL - a mutual SOUL, jointly created for both us and Kris. A SOUL which is a red heart, representing LOVE and CONNECTION - the bond which ties us to DELTARUNE, and holds the fate of the world.
I think Kris was "colored in", and passed off as a real human. Inserted into Hometown, and allowed to develop individuation and an autonomous personality through their experiences, and the relationships with the people that took them in.
This very good and incredible and lovely art was created by chubbidust
I think this is at the core of their identity struggles and their depersonalization; not only do they have to reckon with the artificiality of their world, as the Secret Bosses do, but even moreso than the other Lightners they're forced to confront that they are "false" - an artificial creation stuck with one purpose: to be the Cage.
I think this has the potential to explain and contextualize a lot about Kris that other theories can't really, such as their odd relationship to their own body, and the fact that, by all accounts, Kris's relationship with their SOUL has been strange for a very long time - certainly preceding "our" first arrival (for example, the wagon and cage having already seen many crashes, the bloodstain near it, the anecdote about them miming ripping out their heart as a child, etc).
But I know that many are gonna think this doesn't make any sense. There is entrenched fanon consensus around a lot of stuff with Kris and the Vessel. Perhaps the most prominent objection people will have is that the Vessel was made by Gaster to impartially house our pure, unfiltered will, and Kris is the opposite of that - why make this so complicated instead of just going with the Vessel as we saw them at the beginning of the game? And this is not even to mention the Second Voice.
I don't want to get too into the Second Voice since it is a topic we simply don't know anything about beyond there being another speaker in Gonermaker besides Gaster - but to put it lightly, I do not think the common proposed scenario of an intruding presence who forcibly scrapped the "freedom Vessel" (odd, given that Gaster seems otherwise strongly tied to fate, not freedom), thwarting Gaster (who apparently was powerless to stop this but also unphased and uninterested in expressing any sort of opinion or concern about this at any point), only to then bemoan that "no one can choose who they are in this world", actually makes any sense at all. The whole idea is a logistically implausible and thematically jumbled mess and I think we're better off just razing it to the ground and starting over from firmer foundations. We can't know precisely what's going on, but we can probably figure out which themes are being conveyed.
The opening sequence of Deltarune is a misdirect. We are led to believe that we will be creating a custom vessel with two stripes - alluding to Frisk from Undertale (one of the head options also strongly resembles them), who was for most of the game a very impartial player character that allowed us to make all sorts of choices while we inhabited them. But at the end, the vessel is discarded (for what literal, logistical purpose - again, we don't know yet), and another speaker bemoans that this isn't the sort of world where people get to choose freely. We play as Kris instead, and as we progress through the Chapters we learn that this world is in the grips of an all-encompassing prophecy which determines every major event of the game. We are given approximately ten trillion hints, in game and outside it, that this prophecy is linked to and probably created by Gaster, as the metaphorical author of the game. And we learn that the First Hero - ostensibly Kris - is the Cage.
I can hear the objection already: it being Kris is a misdirect - it's actually the Vessel, and the prophecy's roles are malleable. Without even getting into how the prophecy being malleable would kind of completely undermine the whole established point of it being all-encompassing, down to insignificant details, and that everything it says will come to pass - I have to ask, does "Cage" make sense as a descriptor for our custom-created freedom Vessel? Isn't the role of a Cage to... imprison? Constrict freedom?
So if the Cage is Kris - and it is - we should probably take note of the fact that it is described as being made of "parts". Kris is uniquely dehumanized by the prophecy. Susie is referred to by her gender and personality traits, Ralsei is referred to by his status and role, but Kris is only given emphasis as a (constructed) body to be inhabited.
Many people react to the idea that Kris is a goner vessel with a kind of kneejerk revulsion, and this is why it's actually a good twist. It feels like a suckerpunch - people have invested a lot in the idea that Kris is real, they're authentic, they have human parents and an unrelated backstory, they're an outsider, whose life was unjustly hijacked by a foreign force. What would it mean for Kris to have actually been created for this purpose all along? If the idea feels bad and tragic, it's because it is.
But this painful confrontation with artificiality is at the heart of the game - it is a microcosm of the reckoning that is coming to EVERY character. What does it mean for the Dark Worlds to be fake? What does it mean for the Light World to be fake? What does it mean for DELTARUNE to be fake? Did it all mean nothing?
Or was it actually real all along - and still is real - because you choose to believe that it is?
A META-HISTORY OF
UNDERTALE/DELTARUNE
2026 ONWARDS
Chronicling the development of Toby Fox's narrative universe
This is the fourth part in a series meant to be a relatively comprehensive, chronological list of important events in the development of Undertale and Deltarune.
Note! This post is a work in progress, and is being written at the start of 2026. As such it is extremely barren at the moment. The plan is to update this post over the next couple of years, with each new piece of information.
Links to the other parts in the series can be found below.
2005 - 2015
2016 - 2021
2022 - 2025
2026 ONWARDS
All posts in chronological order
--------------------------------------
2026
On January 2, Toby teased some dialogue from Chapter 5, including a line where Seam talks about the Shadow Crystals, leading to feverish speculation. He reiterates that the chapter is on track to release this year and says that translation is underway. [*]
On February 10, Toby says that Chapter 5 has been receiving polish and preliminary bugtesting, that the first draft of the Japanese translation is expected next week, and that heavy bugtesting across all consoles will happen once the translation is finished. [*]
On February 19, Pixar releases a trailer for the upcoming Toy Story 5. The next day, Toby quote tweets an upload of the trailer, stating: "Super excited this is finally announced. Can't wait for you guys to see what we have in store for you this time." [*] Almost certainly a joking allusion to Toby's Toy Story Tumblr shitposts from 2017 and 2019, and the resulting Woody Theory which posited that a Woody-like cowboy puppet Darkner would be fought as the secret boss of Chapter 3. Notably, while Chapter 3 did not have a cowboy secret boss, the theory was kept alive and given fuel in Chapters 3 and 4 with numerous mentions of a cancelled cowboy puppet show which Asgore used to love, apparently with flower-themed merch. The theory was also alluded to in the Mike Room, with the Zapper taking on the guise of "Cowboy Mike" and the green Pippins referencing the "friend inside me" meme. This context went over a number of people's heads, however, with many taking Toby's tweet as an earnest confirmation he had worked on the film.
On March 17, Toby announces that professional bugtesters have begun to familiarize themselves with the game, and that the Japanese localization is projected to be fully completed in April. Most of the development team has moved on to working on Chapter 6. [*]
On April 1, professional bugtesting of Chapter 5 formally begins.
Chronicling the development of Toby Fox's narrative universe
This is the third part in a series meant to be a relatively comprehensive, chronological list of important events in the development of Undertale and Deltarune. Links to the other parts in the series can be found below.
2005 - 2015
2016 - 2021
2022 - 2025
2026 ONWARDS
All posts in chronological order
--------------------------------------
2022
During development of Chapter 3, Toby comes up with the Sword Route, which had not initially been part of the chapter's concept. [*]
On February 10, Toby posts "random" concept art for Chapter 4. [*]
On May 17, Toby posts more concept art he made for Chapters 3 and 4, and states that development is going well, with more people being brought on board. [*]
On July 9, Toby tweets: "The way stories differ from life is the "ending." In real life, things just happen... there may be no exciting climax, no resolution, no answers. ... I'm helping someone move out and I poured 8 bottles of expired coke into the toilet, but when I flushed it nothing cool happened." [*]
On September 15, Undertale's seventh anniversary, Toby posts a status update for Deltarune. Toby expresses his happiness at feeling like Deltarune really came into its own with Chapter 2. Toby says that development has been tricky due to certain aspects of the next chapters that took some time to set up, but he expects things to go more smoothly with them out of the way. He says that while the intention initially was to work on 3, 4 and 5 simultaneously, they've mostly been working on 3 and 4. He then posts many screenshots and tracks from the upcoming two chapters. At the end, the Spamton Sweepstakes are announced, beginning on September 17. [*]
On September 17, the Spamton Sweepstakes are launched, a 24 hour Spamton-themed sweepstakes charity event, alongside a massive ARG, with the Sweepstakes site containing various hyperlinks to other hidden webpages with teases for the upcoming Chapters, along with new original writing and lore, for instance in the form of a fictional blog run by Noelle Holiday. [*]
On October 11, Toby Fox meets Yoko Shimomura, composer of LIVE A LIVE - one of Toby's favorite games - for an interview. Notably, in this interview, Toby mentions that a certain character from LIVE A LIVE, and the idea that a seemingly heroic protagonist could do something surprising and contrary to expectations, was a big influence on not just Undertale but especially Kris in Deltarune. [*]
On November 1, Toby releases the song Skies Forever Blue, along with a music video, as part of a collaboration between himself, Itoki Hana and Omocat. While not directly related to Deltarune (outside of a sound effect reused in Chapter 3), the song shares a lot of thematic DNA with Toby's video games. [*]
On November 20, Toby begins the UNDERTALE/DELTARUNE MAILING LIST, which would become the primary source of news about Undertale and Deltarune going forward. [*]
The Winter 2022 update, the first UT/DR Newsletter, is released. Toby says that since the Sweepstakes, Chapter 3 development has continued as normal, and obliquely teases: "You see, Chapter 3 was going to have 4 somethings and 3 (6?) other somethings. But I've reduced the 4 somethings to 3.5 and refactored how the 3rd other something to be shorter and less something-like, while still maintaining the parenthetical (something, something)… or something. Anyway, I'm swearing off somethings now!" [*]
Toby is likely struggling with how to structure the Boards, minigames and Sword Route at this point. A third Board set in TVtropolis was planned and fully programmed before being scrapped, as was a full cowboy minigame. [*]
On December 26, Toby posts sketches he made of Deltarune characters based on "animated classics", along with an unused sprite of Noelle he forgot to include in the Winter newsletter. [*]
2023
On April 1, the Spring 2023 Newsletter is released. News about Deltarune is scarce, with Toby saying that the focus is still on finishing Chapter 3, and that he hopes the translation process can begin very soon. Toby also announces an extremely rare interview with Kikiyama, creator of Yume Nikki, a major inspiration for young Toby, and he also puts out another song in collaboration with Itoki Hana, The Greatest Living Show, along with a music video animated by Bani-chan. [*] In a comment on the video, he posts his original English lyrics. [*] He also includes exclusive information for higher tier subscribers of the Newsletter, sharing an anecdote about console testing, and also stating that the cowboy segment of Chapter 3 was in danger of being cut, but that "that's how Cowboy Shows go". This caused a lot of speculation, leading to the birth of the "Woody Theory". [*]
On March 23, issue #1788 of Famitsu is released with an article by Toby focusing on his experience with RPGMaker as a kid. In it, he describes how those experiences have influenced his design philosophy, discusses a comedic-yet-tragic character named Roth who may have inspired Sans, and reveals that the name "Ralsei" comes from the protagonist of a game his older brother once tried to make, named "Ralse". [*]
On June 30, the Summer 2023 Newsletter is released. Toby gives an update on Deltarune, stating that the focus is still on finishing Chapter 3. He says that the TV World section of the chapter, which he considers to be the Card Castle or Queen's Mansion equivalent, is finally being made. He says that Chapter 3 will be a strange chapter, with a focus on gameplay gimmicks and frivolities, and he shamelessly lies about Chapter 3 being fairly light on story. Toby says that he's a little self-conscious about the chapter, but that Chapter 4 will be much more standard. Toby also posts an unused cutscene he made for Undertale where Sans confronts speedrunners, an unused song he made for a rhythm game, and an interview with Papyrus using fan-submitted questions. [*]
On September 15, Undertale's eighth anniversary, the Autumn 2023 Newsletter is released. Toby provides an update on Deltarune, saying that the Chapter is now playable from beginning to end, and that they've been reshuffling and redesigning some parts. Toby releases the song "Sneaking", since the section it was supposed to play in was cut from the game, but it would later be reused in Chapter 5 and the leitmotif it introduced repurposed for the Mikes. An Undertale merch drop is also announced, along with a collaboration between Toby and ZUN, developer of Touhou. [*]
On October 31, the Halloween 2023 Newsletter is released. Toby informs fans that Deltarune Chapter 3 is pretty much content complete, and shared an anecdote of a friend playing the chapter, noting that some bullet patterns were possibly too difficult; feedback which Toby proceeded to disregard. He says that being honest, Chapter 3 took a lot of trial and error to make, but he's confident that development of Chapter 4 will go more smoothly. He also announces that the paid release will now only include Chapters 3 and 4 to reduce the wait. Also included is an interview with the development team of Chapter 2. [*]
2024
On February 14, Valentine's Day, the Winter 2024 Newsletter is released. Toby says that Chapter 3 is being localized, and Chapter 4 is now the main focus, with some minor work being done on Chapter 5. He announces that an internal deadline has been set, but that he can't share anything from Chapter 4 except "this cup" and includes a gif of a Cuptain. Also included is an interview with Gigi D.G., concept artist for Undertale and Deltarune, where some art for Chapters 2 and 3 are shown off. As part of the newsletter, a gimmick is included where each recipient gets a randomized valentine's letter from an Undertale/Deltarune character, with an extremely rare chance to get a letter from the Forgotten Man, providing the first instance of dialogue from him and fueling feverish speculation about the identity of the recipient which wouldn't be resolved until the release of Chapter 3 next year. [*]
At some point this year, Toby decides to scrap an earlier idea he had for Chapter 4, which is to have the Dark Sanctuary be a giant nonlinear interconnected dungeon, like in Zelda. This was scrapped because Toby felt it damaged the narrative moments with Gerson. [*]
On May 16, the Spring 2024 Newsletter is released. Toby announces that development of Chapter 4 is going great and that more people have been hired, and gives a somewhat detailed account of what's left to do. Another QnA with Papyrus is also included. [*]
On July 30, the Summer 2024 Newsletter is released. Toby says that Chapter 4 is essentially content complete minus some polish, but that the release is still a ways away because of localization, bugtesting, and porting. He includes a section detailing exactly what is finished and how much is left. [*]
On September 1, the development team meets the internal deadline to have the main content of Chapters 3 and 4 fully finished.
On September 15, Undertale's 9th anniversary, the Autumn 2024 Newsletter is released. Included is another interview with Papyrus and Sans, a merch drop announcement, and a status update on the next chapters of Deltarune. Chapter 3's localization is in the checking phase, and a preliminary pass of Chapter 4 is being worked on. Bugtesting will be up next, and in September the development team switched over to Chapter 5 as the main focus. Also included in this newsletter is a section on Chapter 2's development with loads of concept art and unused music shown off, as well as an extra letter, written by Asriel about Chara. [*]
On October 21, Toby starts "roast chicken posting" on Bluesky. [*]
On October 31, Toby tweets that Chapters 3 and 4 are 100% coming out in 2025. [*]
On October 31, Toby posts on Bluesky a video of the Annoying Dog roasted chicken dancing with pumpkins, using sprites and music from the Jackenstein fight in Chapter 4. [*]
On November 15, Toby posts Annoying Dog roast chicken sketches which feature, among other things, Everyman from Undertale and Deltarune. [*]
On November 25, Toby announces public playtesting for the new game_change function which the GameMaker team had to help them with, allowing each Chapter of Deltarune to be its own unique game project. [*]
On December 19, the Winter 2024 Newsletter is released. Chapter 3 is being bugtested, and Chapter 4 is being translated. He shows small glimpses of the upcoming chapters, including 5, which remains the main focus of development. Toby says that development is going well. A new merch drop is announced, including a Seam plush, revealing their full design, and the Important Person's Shirt, which draws a parallel between Chara and Kris. At the bottom is another letter, this time from Noelle, reminiscing on the holidays and her sister Dess. [*]
2025
On January 1, Toby posts a tweet where Jockington reminds Deltarune fans that the game will be released this year. [*]
On January 6, Jockington announces that Chapter 4 is being bugtested. [*]
At some point early this year (or perhaps late 2024), Nintendo partners with Toby to have Deltarune be a launch title for Nintendo Switch 2. Toby decides to make a special secret area to try to capitalize on this, spawning the Mike room. It's conceptualized (in part at least) around the unique mouse control scheme of NS2, while relying mostly on microphone features for the other consoles. [*]
On February 3, Toby announces that translation and testing of Chapter 4 is winding down and that console testing for all chapters starts tomorrow. [*]
On February 9, Toby posts about showing his family and friends a minigame he's been working on for Deltarune (later revealed to be part of the Mike room), which is described as "a cry for help". [*]
The same day, Toby announces that a friend who's played Chapter 3 said that they miss Tenna, fueling speculation. [*]
On February 18, Toby announces that in addition to all the polishing work, Pluey still needs to be implemented. [*]
The next day, Pluey is implemented. [*]
On March 4, Toby says that it feels like they're "slurping the last drops of soda from between the ice cubes now". [*]
On April 2, during the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct, a trailer for the paid release of Deltarune is shown, featuring new footage from the upcoming chapters and announcing the release day to be June 5th, the Nintendo Switch 2 launch date. [*]
The same day, the Steam page is updated, showcasing new screenshots from Chapter 4 of battles against Gueis and the first Jockington prophecy room. Fangamer puts out a press release with a number of screenshots from the two chapters, including one where a Tenna statue is included in a border, giving fans the first ever glimpse of Tenna's design, which had up to that point been a subject of intense speculation. [*]
Also the same day, an emergency newsletter drops, announcing the price of the game to be $24.99, and expounding a little bit about version differences, assuring potential buyers that everyone will get access to Pluey. [*]
On May 9, a special Spring 2025 Newsletter is released, giving more detailed info on the release date, announcing and showcasing a glimpse of the (Sony mandated) trophies on Playstation 5 (and hinting at the special challenge of not completing any trophy). [*]
That same day, the Spamton Sweepstakes page is updated, adding the Silence ending and 14 new pages, mostly teasing Chapter 4.
On May 15, Undertale/Deltarune socials post a teaser video of the cliffs area in Chapter 3. [*]
On May 20, UTDR socials post a clip of a battle against Gueis, muting the clip to avoid spoiling the reveal of From Now On. [*]
On May 22, UTDR socials post a Shadowguy-themed shitpost as a teaser. [*]
On May 30, UTDR socials posted one of the Board quizzes, technically giving fans the first ever instance of Tenna dialogue. [*]
On the same day, an interview with Toby Fox dropped where he formally announces that no music written for Homestuck will appear in Deltarune, deconfirming the long-running popular fan theory that Penumbra Phantasm would be heard in Deltarune. [*]
On June 3, a special release day newsletter is released, where Toby thanks fans for waiting and advises people on how bugs and patches will be handled, as well as how to avoid spoilers. [*]
On the same day, the names of the entire tracklist of Chapters 3 and 4 leak.
On June 4, Gaster takes over socials again. Chapters 3 and 4 of Deltarune are released. [*]
In the credits of Chapter 4, Chapter 5 is announced to release in 2026.
On June 17, Toby posts about having feared before release that Tenna would be viewed as a budget Spamton, but that he's glad the character got such a positive reception. [*]
On July 26, a 24-hour event takes place where fans are allowed to submit their own 100-word message detailing a "memory" about Undertale, along with a custom dialogue portrait, to commemorate the anniversary of Undertale. [*]
On September 15, Undertale's 10th anniversary, the Autumn 2025 Newsletter is released. The 10th Anniversary Livestream is announced, and Toby shows off a scene from the Mike room in Chapter 5, though he also states that he is otherwise very reticent about sharing anything from Chapter 5, saying that he prefers to keep this one surprising. Toby gives an update on Chapter 5, saying that the early parts are fully done but the latter half remains to be worked on. The "direction" of the boss battles have been decided, and a number of attacks finished. Toby says that Chapter 5 was not without its hurdles, but that he thinks the most obvious ones are past. He doubts that Chapter 5 will be released in the first half of 2026. [*]
On September 16, Toby asks fans what the name for the fallen human should be in the 10th Anniversary Stream. [*]
"Gaster" wins the popular vote, but Toby elects to ignore this and on September 20 lies about "Togore" (a meme at the time) having been the most popular option by a massive margin, with "Chara" coming in second. He adds at the end, though, that names with "special effects" dont work in this system and so could not be counted as candidates. [*]
On September 20 and 21, the Undertale 10th Anniversary stream takes place, with many echo flower "Memory" fan messages shown off, a lot of new stream-unique content added to the game, and hours worth of commentary by Toby Fox.
On October 16, Toby posts Chapter 5 concept art of Susie checking Kris's hair for mites and fleas. [*]
On October 28, Toby shares an anecdote about a friend playing an unfinished version of Chapter 5. [*]
On November 4, Toby shares another anecdote from another friend, who asked: "What's the opposite of 'I miss Tenna'?". Toby clarified that this was a joke and that they liked the game. [*]
On December 19, the Winter 2025 Newsletter is released. At the very start, Toby enigmatically references a cut prophecy panel from Chapter 4 about "coldwater". He announces that the localization process has begun for Chapter 5, and that the chapter is more or less content complete, minus polish. He releases Chapter 5's shop theme, the only one he feels doesn't spoil the game, along with an additional Mike room scene featuring Tenna which causes quite a stir in the fandom. In addition to this, a lengthy retrospective on the development of Chapters 3 and 4 is included. [*]
Later that same day, the /thankyou/ page, introduced in the second round of the Sweepstakes, and which had featured an ARG where players could input their email to get special responses, was opened for inputs again after previous recipients got another email which only said "Another chance". Over the next day, previous recipients got new emails responding to new inputs, all of which sought to answer the question "How long did it take her to smile?", referencing the Chapter 4 Weird Route. Below is the response I got.
Continued in the next part, focused on 2026 onwards, where the rest of Deltarune's chapters were developed.
Chronicling the development of Toby Fox's narrative universe
This is the second part in a series which is meant to serve as a relatively comprehensive, chronological list of important events in the development of Undertale and Deltarune. Links to the other parts in the series can be found below.
2005 - 2015
2016 - 2021
2022 - 2025
2026 ONWARDS
All posts in chronological order
--------------------------------------
2016
On January 20, Undertale was updated to version 1.001. Among many general changes, Clam Girl's dialogue was updated to emphasize that while Suzy cannot be met today, she may be the reason why the human is here in the first place. Also added was a new interaction in Sans's workshop where after meeting Clam Girl, a poorly drawn picture can be found with three smiling people and the words "don't forget." written. The "grandpasemi" sound file was also added back to the game under the name "grandpatemi" and plays in an easter egg where you deny Temmie some Temmie Flakes. Fun Values were also fixed, allowing Fun Events to be encountered during unmodified gameplay. abc_1_2_3, a tts audio file initially encouraging dataminers not to spoil the game, was replaced by the same tts laughing glitchily, in a manner reminiscent of Gaster's soundfont in ENTRY NUMBER SEVENTEEN. Lastly, the so-called "demon texts" in the files were changed and received additions, with the first appearance of the infamous "humble servant" message, (much) later referenced in Deltarune Chapter 3. [*] [**]
Toby begins work on the first chapter of Deltarune. Initially, Toby plans the game to be an action RPG like Secret of Mana, but decides against this to preserve the pacifist system of Undertale. Toby also briefly considers at some unknown time having every character be a human in the Light World and only transform into monsters in the Dark World, but also decides against this to retain continuity with Undertale. Seeking other ways to establish sharp contrast between the Light and Dark World, Toby also considers having the Light World visuals drab whereas the Dark World visuals are not only colorful but get a graphical update, with a Chrono Trigger esque style, but also ultimately decides against this to keep the spritework and designs closer to Toby's skill level as an artist. Lancer is also initially planned (perhaps earlier, before Undertale) to be a Porky-like antagonist who you never really get to befriend. [*]
Toby considers giving "a character" (almost certainly Ralsei) a fire spell, but considers against it for Chapter 1. [*]
Toby comes up with the idea of removing Susie's ponytail and having Ralsei be in shadow for the first chapter likely sometime this year, but possibly also next year, as Toby would go on to say shortly after the release of Chapter 1 in 2018 that these were relatively recent ideas. [*]
Throughout this year, Toby hashes out the full plot of Deltarune. Having already decided on a card and board game theme for Chapter 1, he moves on to conceptualizing the main structuring ideas of the rest of the chapters.
He decides on a cybernetics and internet theme for Chapter 2. He also decides on having the secret boss of the chapter be a "real" fight against Mettaton NEO, or at least his body, and composes a "real" version of Power of NEO to this end, though he notes that he unfortunately never finished a version of the song he was fully satisfied with. [*]
Already having composed TV WORLD from Mettaton's theme last year, Chapter 3 becomes the television chapter and is conceived as a light-hearted break from the regular formula, with a wacky Mario Party board set up. Ghost Trick was still fresh on his mind, with its use of 3D being a standout, so he wanted a Mettaton-like TV character with a similar appeal, also taking inspiration from Mr. TV Dinnah from Little King's Story. [*]
A revived Gerson is conceptualized by this point, with a piano sketch for Hammer of Justice composed very early on in the year. [*]
At some point this year, Toby composes Checker Dance for Chapter 1.
At some point this year, Toby composes Chaos King for Chapter 1.
At some point this year, Toby composes Your Power for Chapter 1. [*]
In July, deltarune.com is archived on the Wayback Machine, with him.png updated to now display the text "THREE HEROES APPEARED AT WORLD'S EDGE", once again in all-caps Wingdings.
In August, deltarune.com is updated again, more subtly this time, with him.png instead displaying "THREE HEROES APPEARED TO BANISH THE ANGEL S HEAVEN". [*] Both of these updates to him.png indicate that the Legend or Prophecy was already conceptualized by July and August of 2016.
On September 13, Toby starts posting unused tracks from Undertale on his Tumblr to commemorate the game's first anniversary in two days. He posts an unused theme for Alphys, early versions of Spear of Justice and Undertale, a Metroid-style special track for beating the game quickly, and the track Dog Hole which would later be used in the 10th Anniversary Stream in 2025. [*] [**] [***] [****] [*****]
On September 14, Toby gets real for a bit and posts a little retrospective on Undertale and its popularity. [*]
On September 14, Toby also strongly implies that there will be no major content updates for Undertale. [*]
On September 15, Undertale's first anniversary, Toby has Undertale characters answer fan-submitted questions on Tumblr. [*]
On October 1, Toby posts about trying to learn 3D, which was later revealed to be part of his conceptualizing the character of Tenna from Chapter 3 of Deltarune. [*]
On October 31, the Undertale Art Book is released.
On December 6, Toby reveals for the first time that Bonetrousle and Heartache were composed in 2012 for a different game than Undertale. [*]
2017
At some point this year, Toby draws Tenna and decides on his name, having been calling him "Mr. TV Guy" up to this point. [*]
At some point before Chapter 1, Toby plans for Queen to be more of a sinister figure - "intimidating and cool" - than she ends up actually being after Toby writes dialogue for her (probably in 2019). Toby composes an intimidating boss track for her. [*] [**]
On July 25, Toby starts uploading funny spliced up edits of Randy Newman's You've Got a Friend In Me from Toy Story on Tumblr. He tags these as #toystory and also tags the first one with "i have no idea why i made this". [*]
In August, Undertale is updated a few times in rapid succession. Shortly after v1.05, v1.05A is pushed despite containing almost no changes to the game at all except the addition of "HE IS" in the previously emptied "demonx" part of the demon texts. A few days later, the game is updated to v.106, which again barely alters the game beyond fixing a few niche bugs, and undoing v1.05A's change to the demon texts. [*]
On August 15, Undertale is released for the Playstation 4 and Vita, introducing dynamic borders and the console exclusive "Dog Shrine" area which is accessed through the sink in Sans and Papyrus's house. The area's purpose is to donate gold to the shrine in order to unlock the majority of the game's trophies, which Sony mandates. [*] Along with this release also debuted Undertale's official Japanese localization.
On July 17, an Undertale Dynamic PS4 Theme is released, with a previously unheard track accompanying, which would end up becoming Before the Story on Deltarune's OST. [*]
On September 15, Undertale's second anniversary, Toby announces that the Alarm Clock has begun development and releases some dialogue for it, providing among other things the first mention of Rudy from Deltarune. [*]
In November, Undertale is updated to v1.08. Instead of demonx being empty, it now displays an ellipsis ("..."). [*]
2018
On May 23, Toby gets to meet one of his idols, the creator of Touhou Project, ZUN. They talk about various things and Toby learns that ZUN has played Undertale.
At some point this year, Toby starts working on TV Land, a composition which could serve as a possible replacement for TV WORLD, being more focused on the leitmotifs he's since come up with for Chapter 3, but he scraps the track after hearing an unenthusiastic response from a friend. [*]
At some point this year, Toby composes Black Knife, the boss theme of the Roaring Knight. [*]
At some point this year, Toby composes Lost Girl from Deltarune. [*]
At some point this year, Toby composes Ferris Wheel. [*]
In July, plush designer Eyes5, Toby's old friend from the Homestuck days, is commissioned by Fangamer to secretly design a Ralsei plush, and is given both the dark and light sprites of him. She doesn't know what the character is called and takes to calling him "What" and later "Ham", the latter being Fangamer's code name for the character. [*]
On August 6, Itoki Hana releases the song "74", written and arranged by Toby Fox, the first of many collaborations between them. [*]
On September 15 (in Japan), Undertale's third anniversary, and then September 18 (worldwide), Undertale was released for the Nintendo Switch. In place of the Dog Shrine, a new exclusive boss fight against Mad Mew Mew was added to the game, utilizing the joy-cons as a special gimmick. Along with this, a new Fun Event was added to the game, where at fun value 81 during the Pacifist epilogue, Clam Girl will transform into a goner and inform the human that the time they will meet Suzy is "fast approaching", before vanishing. [*]
On October 30, Toby announces that something is happening. Shortly after, Gaster takes over the official Undertale Twitter account. [*]
Gaster and Toby tell Undertale fans to return in 24 hours. Something new is being made and they'll need our help with it. [*]
On October 31, Halloween, Gaster announces the creation of Deltarune, and SURVEY_PROGRAM is released to the world. [*]
On November 2, Toby posts a Twitlonger written October 4 where he reflects on the first chapter of Deltarune and what his plans and vision for the game are. He states that Deltarune takes place in a parallel world to Undertale, and that there will only be one ending. He also explains that while he has done some songs and "written the whole story", progress for the rest of the game past Chapter 1 is 0%, and that if he's to have any hope of finishing the game he'll have to assemble a development team. [*]
2019
In February, to coincide with the release of Chapter 1 for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation on the 28th, Toby updates Deltarune.com to have an FAQ, where he clarifies that while Deltarune is a "different world that might even have different rules" compared to Undertale, that doesn't mean there won't be any connections. He reiterates that there's only one ending, and in response to the hypothetical question "Then doesn't that mean nothing I do matters?", he says that "there's something more important than reaching the end". [*]
Toby begins work on a script for the entire plot and mandatory dialogue of Deltarune.
Toby starts properly writing for Queen and ends up deciding on making her a more humorous and silly character, altering the tone of Chapter 2 in the process. [*]
Toby comes up with the character of Spamton, taking from an earlier concept he had for an email character named the "Mad Mailer". He decides to blend Spamton's quest with his previous idea of a real fight against Mettaton NEO, culminating in the fight against Spamton NEO. [*]
At some point this year, Toby composes Berdly for Chapter 2.
At some point this year, Toby composes Giga Size for Chapter 2.
At some point this year, Toby composes Sandy Board for Chapter 3. [*]
In February, Toby gives an interview with Nintendo Life where he discusses Deltarune, talks about his 2011 dream, his 2012 attempts at developing the game, mentions deciding against giving a character a fire spell in Chapter 1, and teases Susie's healing magic subplot in the next chapters. [*]
In March, Toby begins development of Deltarune past the first Chapter in earnest with his dev team, but the vast majority of the initial dev work is spent on investigating engine alternatives to GameMaker. [*]
On April 19, Toby reveals an Annoying Dog design made for Chapter 2 which he decided against using. [*]
On June 12, Toby says that he has 50 songs past Chapter 1 at various stages of completion. [*]
On June 12, Toby says that he is slowly writing and drawing out the bosses, bullets, cutscenes and characters of Deltarune. [*]
On July 6, Toby relays an anecdote of him recently reading out some of Deltarune's main scenes to the devs working on the game with him, and says that it's the most fun he's had in a while. [*]
On July 6, Toby's plan is still to release Chapters 2-7 all at once after the whole game is finished. [*]
On September 4, Sans gets added as a Mii costume in Super Smash Bros Ultimate. [*]
On September 15, Toby teases the Annoying Dog city easter egg in Chapter 2 of Deltarune. [*]
On September 15 (Undertale's anniversary), Toby gives a small progress update on Deltarune, stating that the design of the game and the specifics of what will happen are going really well and that he's confident in the game he has written in his notes, though he alludes to certain aspects facing "hurdles". He says that while he wants the game to be excellent, getting it into peoples' hands as quick as possible is also a priority for him. [*]
On September 15, Toby releases an earlier, slightly sped-up mix of WELCOME TO THE CITY, along with an image of Cyber City, as a teaser for Chapter 2. [*]
On September 15, Toby releases the track Lost Girl along with an image of Noelle wearing her Dark World angel dress as a teaser for Chapter 2. He says it's Noelle's theme, but then corrects himself and says it's the sort of track that plays all throughout the game, regardless of whether she's around. [*]
On September 15, Toby also releases an as yet unused variation of Lost Girl, along with as yet unused Susie dialogue portrait sprites. Toby captions it: Of course, that's not the only version of that song. Lots and lots of things happen. I just hope you can be friends with everyone someday. [*]
On September 15, Toby posts pictures of concept art he drew of Susie, which would be turned into sprites for Chapter 2. [*]
On September 18, Toby posts another one of his #toystory edits on Tumblr, with Randy edited to say "and as the years go by, I will never die". On September 23, he posts the infamous "friend inside me" edit. [*] These would go on to garner a lot of attention around 2023 with speculation about a cowboy-themed boss in Chapter 3, most famously with Spookydood's Woody Theory. While Chapter 3 would eventually come and go without a cowboy boss, it did contain numerous mentions and allusions to a cancelled cowboy show which Tenna states was Asgore's favorite. With Asgore poised to play a prominent role in Chapter 5, the theory was kept alive.
2020
On February 26, Toby tweeted: "If you ever wonder what I'm doing, I'm vibrating rapidly and working on my game. Every year it doesn't come out I shake more. I don't want it to take too long, but after a few more years I can clip into the floor while doing an ollie and earn tons of points, so it's not all bad" [*]
On May 13, Toby tweeted about a Ralsei shirt released by Fangamer depicting Ralsei surrounded by plants and flowers: Ralsei shirt!!! He's always getting mixed up with flowers, isn't he ... (that hasn't happened) [*]
Some time in May, full development of Chapter 2 begins in earnest, using Chapter 1 as a base. [*]
On August 2, Toby tweeted: No matter how long I work on this game, so far the feeling of "I have to make this!" "I have to see this through to the end!" hasn't subsided at all. It might even be getting stronger. It helps things are going well recently. [*]
On September 15 (Undertale's anniversary), Toby gives a major status update on Deltarune, which had also been published in Famitsu some days prior. In it, he shares four screenshots from Chapter 2 and goes into detail on how development of the game has been going. Toby says that months prior, he completed readable outlines for every chapter in the game, including first-pass dialogue for almost all the cutscenes, along with examples of music, and asserts that he largely spent the last 2 years since Chapter 1's release writing, composing, designing and drawing for the game. He says that while certain details remain hazy for him, the general flow of the narrative along with all major events and battles are now clear, and he's happy that he spent so long planning out the game while alternative engines were being investigated, because he thinks what he's come up with in that time will make the final game much better. He also believes that content-wise, Chapter 2 can be completed within the year, but bugtesting, porting and localization will remain. [*]
On September 15, Toby released a winter-themed excerpt of the dialogue he wrote for the as yet unreleased Undertale Alarm Clock app. [*]
For Undertale's 5th Anniversary, an orchestral concert playing the game's soundtrack is held. At the end, some Deltarune tracks are played by Toby on piano. [*]
On October 31, Toby says that Deltarune Chapter 2 is easily one of the silliest things he's made. [*]
On November 24, Toby shows off the giant toilet-shaped toilet in Cyber City. [*]
2021
On January 21, Toby states that Chapter 2's development is going well. [*]
On March 15, the Xbox port of Undertale is essentially shadowdropped. This version of the game includes a "Dog Casino" which Sans runs, in place of the Dog Shrine or Mad Mew Mew fight. [*]
On April 17, Toby once again reiterates that development of Chapter 2 is going well and shares an anecdote about a friend trying a beta version of it, with them stating their favorite character is Berdly. [*]
On July 20, Toby yet again reiterates that development is going well and shares another anecdote of a friend trying a beta version. [*]
At some point this year, Toby composes It's TV Time! for Chapter 3.
At some point this year, Toby composes The Second Sanctuary for Chapter 4. [*]
On June 18, Temmie draws a sprite of the Annoying Dog climbing, later used in Chapter 4, which sort of looks like a roast chicken. [*]
On September 15, Undertale's sixth anniversary, Toby along with some friends at Fangamer streamed a playthrough of a special build of Deltarune Chapter 1, featuring a number of changes to the game, mostly jokes and easter eggs. Before the stream began, a bunch of unused tracks were released, including variations of School, Character Joined, Chaos King and the Legend, along with unique tracks like a theme for the Checkboard area, a Fountain theme, and an unused piano sketch for an animated intro which was infamously supposed to feature all the game's bosses along with the Knight on a big staircase. At the end of the stream, Deltarune Chapter 2 was announced to be releasing within 2 days. [*]
On September 17, Gaster takes over Deltarune's twitter again. He praises us for having done excellently to perservere in these difficult times, and summons the second chapter of Deltarune. [*]
On the day of release, Toby posts another status update for Deltarune. He explains his motivation for releasing another chapter of the "demo" to be in part due to the difficult state of the world (this was during the COVID-19 pandemic), and in part because he found that it's very difficult for both the creator and fans to go so long without a release. For this reason, Toby changed his planned release sructure and is instead aiming for the paid release to include the first five chapters of the game, instead of the full seven. Toby states that with the new people brought on board, Deltarune can no longer be called a solo project, but he still tried his best to communicate his vision, designing and writing everything. Toby says that in many ways he believes Chapter 2 to be one of if not the biggest chapter in the game out of all the ones he has planned. [*]
On September 19, Toby says that his head is spinning from the response to Chapter 2, and says that the next chapter will be very silly too. [*]
On September 23, the Deltarune demo on consoles is updated to include Chapter 2 as well as Chapter 1.
On September 28, Toby posts concept art (?) of Ralsei wearing an "obedience badge" with dog ears. [*]
On the same day, Toby says that he's happy that people are beginning to view Deltarune as its own thing, instead of centering its connections to Undertale. [*]
In September, the game Get in the Car, Loser! is released, and Toby writes flavor text for a special item "from another world", referencing the Halloween Pencil from Deltarune and providing what seems to be a story about Kris and Susie.
On November 26, Toby says that he was uncertain anyone but him would even like Spamton, and that he's surprised by his massive popularity. [*]
On December 25, Toby posts some hand drawn sketches of Deltarune characters. [*]
Continued in the next part, focusing on 2022 - 2025, the development of the next two chapters of Deltarune which would culminate in the game's paid release.
Chronicling the development of Toby Fox's narrative universe
These posts are meant to be a relatively comprehensive, chronological list of important events in the development of Undertale and Deltarune. This was initially conceived as one post, but it got so long that I had to split it into multiple parts, and I might even have to split it up further in the future. I also plan to update these posts to account for new information that will inevitably be revealed. Don't forget! that reblogs don't include edits made to the post, so you'll have to check the originals to see any updates.
Below are links to other parts in the series.
2005 - 2015
2016 - 2021
2022 - 2025
2026 ONWARDS
All posts in chronological order
--------------------------------------
2000~
At some point when Toby was a young child, he and his older brothers discovered RPGMaker 2000 and began using the software to create their own games. Toby appeared in one of the games his brother made as a green mage, and its main protagonist, named "Ralse", would later have his name cribbed when Toby was coming up with Ralsei for Deltarune. [*]
2005
On March 26, in perhaps Toby's earliest surviving Starmen.net post, he posts Ness's Halloween Spontanza, an EarthBound fanfic about "old man Giygas". It's basically a load of nonsense. [*]
On March 27, Toby, at age 13, releases Arn's Winter Quest, a winter-themed EarthBound romhack, on Starmen.net. One of Toby's first forays into what could be called game development, it (if nothing else) spawned the "I'm Old!" injoke. [*] The hack was well-regarded on Starmen.net, at the very least enough to have people creating strategy guides for it two years after its release referring to it as a "popular rom hack". [*]
2006
On September 30, Toby creates a post titled "Manegg" on Starmen.net, with an image attached - a sprite intended for the romhack PoeTrader.smc, named after a fellow Starmen.net user, that never ended up getting made. In spite of the conspicuous title, teenage Toby says it's not worth asking about. [*]
On May 6, Toby posts a piece titled "Debug Menu" on Starmen.net. Its an evocative little drawing of what seems to be Ness fighting a personification of the debug menu within EarthBound's internal workings. The meta theming prefigures some of what Toby would do later in his games. [*]
On July 6, Toby posts a joke thread with the title EarthBound Hidden Mysteries - Theo? where he plays the character of an EarthBound dataminer who purports to have made a shocking, scary discovery of an unused entity in the game files, which he calls Theo. The image links on the post are broken, but Theo is described as a disembodied face (at least after the dataminer manipulated the original image). The dataminer speculates about what Theo might've originally been, whether Giygas's first phase, Dr. Andonuts, or a secret PSI ability, which would apparently have summoned a "CAT". Notable for being a very early instance of Toby coming up with an idea that pretty straightforwardly prefigures aspects of Gaster. [*]
2007
On November 3, Toby posts an EarthBound fanfic to Starmen.net, titled Ness's Halloween Bashareeno, or alternatively Ness's Bangin' Hot Halloween. This evocative but somewhat abstruse piece of writing appears to detail an interpretation of the confusing predicament presented near the end of EarthBound, involving Giygas, the Apple of Enlightenment and the Devil’s Machine. In the fic, Giygas seemingly becomes aware of his own place within the fictional narrative and game program of EarthBound, and realizes that he himself is Ness, and possibly every other character. The violent, incomprehensible descriptions of Ness-Giygas transcending his embodied form as he eclipses the strictures of time and space, along with the musings on a potential “higher entity with true free will”, very much seem in retrospect to be portents for Gaster and his role within Deltarune. [*]
2008
On November 4, Toby, age 17, releases Radiation's Halloween Hack, also known as Press the B Button, Stupid! or simply the Earthbound Halloween Hack, on Starmen.net for the Halloween Funfest. The many, many ways in which this hack prefigures the imagery, symbolism, themes and narrative of Undertale and especially Deltarune deserves a post all of its own, but the Halloween Hack is perhaps best known for being the origin of the most popular track in the entire series, MEGALOVANIA. An accompanying document Toby made detailing the development of the hack, containing musings about its narrative and themes, is preserved here.
2009
On January 11, Toby submits radiations holiday hack (also known as peepee.exe) to the Starmen.net Holiday Funfest. Not actually an EarthBound hack but rather made in RPGMaker, this game is more akin to a playable shitpost, though it elaborates slightly on the Halloween Hack's narrative and continues Toby's exploration of meta themes. [*]
In April, the same month Homestuck is launched, Toby joins the MS Paint Adventures forum, marking the beginning of his involvement with the comic. He would go on to post "bad piano covers" on there, capturing the attention of the comic's author Andrew Hussie and getting him recruited into the music team in December, with Toby initially reaching out to Andrew through a private message. [*] [**]
2010
Toby becomes friends with Andrew Hussie and gains a reputation in the Homestuck fandom during his time as a musician for the comic.
In February, music composed by Toby for Homestuck is released to the public for the first time with the Homestuck album Midnight Crew: Drawing Dead.
On October 14, Toby releases The Baby Is You on the MSPA forums, a crude 14 minute album about Homestuck character Dave Strider giving birth to his friend John Egbert. Not really relevant to anything but I thought it should be mentioned. [*]
2011
Toby resigns as moderator of the PKHack forum on Starmen.net to focus on his Homestuck work. Toby eventually assumes a leadership position on the Music Team.
At some point prior to Undertale's development, Toby moves in with Homestuck creator Andrew Hussie and begins development of the game in his basement. [*]
On January 5, Megalovania is covered for Homestuck and released as MeGaLoVania. [*]
Suffering from a fever, Toby has a dream at some point this year about an ending to a video game. After waking up, he decides he wants to make this game he dreamed of into a reality. This would eventually become Deltarune. [*]
On July 9, Toby tweets: "The edge of the shadow, where reality and dream meet." Likely teasing Penumbra Phantasm, an infamously planned but never finished Homestuck track. For a long time widely speculated to be Deltarune-related because of thematic similarities, but this is somewhat dubious. May relate to the dream Toby had this year. [*]
On August 22, Toby posts on Tumblr:
" ＡＴ ＂ＳＨＡＤＯＷ＇Ｓ ＥＤＧＥ，＂
ＳＨＡＴＴＥＲ ＴＨＥ ＴＷＩＬＩＧＨＴ ＲＥＶＥＲＩＥ｡ "
in response to an ask about Penumbra Phantasm. [*]
On September 2, Toby was the first person to like a post by a Wingdings-themed joke blog. [*]
2012
In January, an EarthBound fan album is released, including tracks which had been made by Toby Fox. Among these is Fallen Down, later used as Toriel's theme in Undertale. Also included is Megalo Strike Back, which would become a popular song in Undertale's fandom. [*]
On April 1, Toby releases a Yume Nikki fan album he composed, titled made up yume nikkis. It includes waltz of seccom masada and its chiptune variant, which would later be repurposed as the Forgotten Man's theme in Deltarune, along with a track called amphitheater, referenced in a (previously unused but since patched) Bibliox ACT option in Chapter 4 of Deltarune, indicating it might be included in a future Chapter's soundtrack. [*]
Digital artist Kanotynes posts custom playing card designs in March. [*]
Toby comes across them in April, [*] and decides he wants to make an RPG using those designs. He asks Kanotynes if he can, and gets consent. [**]
Kanotynes had also posted drawings that same month which feature suspiciously FRIEND and Kris Deltarune looking characters... but this could just be a coincidence. [*]
By late April/early May, Toby has already created sprites for Lancer, and written dialogue for him and Jevil. [*]
He composes Heartache as "Joker Battle", Nyeh Heh Heh as Lancer's theme, and Bonetrousle as the main battle theme. [*] [**]
Ultimately, development of this game doesn't even get past a single playable room before being put on ice. [*]
In October, "sans." is committed to the Sburb game engine as part of the sample project, and a bit later "April 2012" from Deltarune is as well. [*]
On October 15, Toby posts the unfinished track "patient" on his tumblr, originally intended to be used in Homestuck. This track would be remade and repurposed for Undertale as Another Medium (a title referencing the Medium from Homestuck). [*]
In December, Toby hits the random button on Wikipedia and ends up on a page about arrays. This inspired him to begin game development again. He began by programming a combat menu, inspired by Shin Megami Tensei, and developed the story of Undertale around it. [*]
At some point in 2012 or 2013, Toby composes Undertale's Snowy, likely originally for the Tundra biome in Starbound. [*]
2013
Toby brainstorms ideas for Undertale. Conceptualizes a "karma system" which he ends up not implementing. Comes up with the Blue SOUL platformer mechanic. Comes up with Orange/Cyan attacks. Comes up with the idea of the final boss attacking you in the menu. Comes up with Toriel. Comes up with dating the bosses. Comes up with "Memmaton", the "hot robot". [*] [**]
Toby uses a random name generator website to come up with "Napstablook" and "Asgore". [*]
Asgore is initially conceived as an intimidating silent type, but Toby makes him goofy after thinking of his friend Reid from Fangamer. [*]
Toby comes up with Papyrus (originally called Times New Roman), basing his initial design on Dedan from OFF. Initially conceives of him as a basement dwelling neckbeard type, but changes this to make him more likable. Around this time, also comes up with Sans and another character who Toby censors - very likely either Gaster or Grandpa Semi. [*]
Toby comes up with Undyne, initially conceiving of her as a goofier-looking "anime fish". [*]
Toby comes up with Dr. Alphys, initially conceiving of the character as a man, as more of a mad scientist type, and having him be responsible for magical technology in the Ruins.
Toby, at some point, plans a boss fight against "Grandpa Semi", likely related to the skeleton brothers since SEMI is a font. By the time of Undertale's final release, almost all information about Grandpa Semi would be expunged from the game and never mentioned publically by Toby.
At some point, Temmie draws the intro cinematic to the game. Initially, both Toby and Temmie think she's drawing illustrations of the main character's backstory. But, mistakenly, Temmie only draws one stripe on their shirt instead of the two on their in-game sprite. It's unclear exactly when, but at some point later, Toby goes back to these drawings, already planning "certain things", and decides to capitalize on this fortunate accident.
In February, Toby jokingly reveals the project on Starmen.net under the name "UnderBound 2", and shows off a number of WIP screenshots. Flowey is shown and his description references FACE from NES Godzilla Creepypasta, later cited as an inspiration for the character. The track Enemy Approaching is also included. [*]
In April, Toby takes screenshots of the game where the menu displays the name "CHARA". [*]
On May 9, Toby posts a track on Tumblr which sounds suspiciously like Tenna's theme. [*]
In May, Toby teases Undertale during a meeting with fellow Homestuck musician "Jit", playing Enemy Approaching and MEGALOVANIA. [*]
In May, Fangamer streams an older, WIP build of the Undertale demo. [*] Later that month, Toby releases the demo to the public. In the demo's files, information about future bosses and characters can be found, including Papyrus, Sans, Mettaton, Alphys, Asriel, "Undine" and Grandpa Semi, who was initially supposed to call your cell phone ordering a pepperoni pizza, like happens in one of the Fun Events of the final game. [*]
On June 24, Toby launches the Kickstarter campaign for Undertale, including its demo (containing the part of the game set in the Ruins and ending shortly after the Toriel boss fight), with the game projected to release in Summer 2014. Marketing mostly features assets from the Ruins, but also Sans and Papyrus, and a shadowy silhouette of Asgore. Toby emphasizes the meta elements, stating that fourth-wall breaking concepts such as LV and Saving are integrated into the narrative world, and also highlights the sparing mechanic, additionally promising that the game's bosses can be befriended and dated. Toby writes as a short plot synopsis:
A long time ago, two races ruled peacefully over the Earth: HUMANS and MONSTERS. One day, a terrible war broke out between the two races. After a long battle, the humans were victorious. They sealed the monsters underground with a magical spell.
In the year 201X, a small child scales Mt. Ebott. It is said that those who climb the mountain never return.
Seeking refuge from the rainy weather, the child enters a cave and discovers an enormous hole.
Moving closer to get a better look... the child falls in.
Now, our story begins.
Toby sets the funding goal at 5000 dollars, with an Extended introduction manual ($7500), Macintosh port ($10000), and Secret Boss ($12500) as stretch goals. [*]
Undertale's Kickstarter campaign reaches 200% funding in 10 hours, immediately meeting the first two stretch goals. Toby starts cooking up additional goals. [*]
On June 25, the Secret Boss stretch goal is met and Toby announces a $17500 stretch goal where Magnolia Porter will make additional monster designs for the game. [*]
On June 26, Magnolia Porter's stretch goal is met and Toby announces that at $20000 backers will get patches and wallpapers, and at $25000 they'll get exclusive soundtrack remixes. [*] Monster Kid is among the first designs Magnolia creates.
On July 3, the $25000 goal has been met and Toby announces the Undertale Alarm Clock app as a reward for $32500. [*]
On July 10, the Undertale Alarm Clock is funded, and Toby announces a $37500 goal where backers get a PDF showcasing Undertale's production art. This would eventually become the Undertale art book, released in October 2016. [*]
On July 17, the Art Commentary booklet is funded, and Toby announces the final stretch goal: $45000 for an expansion to the Undertale universe, in either the form of comics or a sequel game. Of the latter, Toby says: I can't tell you anything about it. Its very nature is shrouded in darkness. Ha ha ha. [*]
This is to say that by July of 2013, ca. 13 months after the initial conception of Deltarune and 7 months after the initial conception of Undertale, we have proof that Toby has already decided that Undertale and Deltarune will share a narrative world.
On July 24, Undertale's Kickstarter campaign comes to an end, with over $50,000 in funding. Toby thanks his backers for not only making this game possible, but also ensuring the future of its narrative world. To commemorate the successful campaign, Temmie draws teaser art featuring Flowey, Toriel, Napstablook, Sans, Papyrus, Monster Kid, Undyne, Alphys, Mettaton and Asgore. [*]
In July and August, Toby creates what seem to be sprites or concept art for Susie. [*]
Susie's initial conception came shortly after Toby played Phoenix Wright for the first time, and Toby thought of her as being like Maya Fey - a small, cute, sassy companion. [*]
In one of Toby's "oldest text document[s] about Deltarune [he] can find", Susie is mentioned to rest her chin on Kris's head. In 2025, Toby mentioned that he's happy that even though this hasn't happened in the game, everyone intuitively understands it as true (referencing its common appearance in Krusie fanart), proclaiming that he "won". [*]
At some point this year, Toby composes the melody of Rude Buster. [*]
At some point, Toby draws concept art for flashbacks to Asriel and Chara spending time together, for the climax of the Pacifist route's final boss. [*]
2014
On February 3, Toby says that he just found out that someone else is making a game that sounds "VERY VERY similar" to an idea for a non-Undertale game he's had for 2 years (which we now know is Deltarune). Likely referring to Omori, which was announced as part of a Kickstarter campaign later in April that year, and which also features a mysterious, depressed, knife-wielding protagonist, and a plot structure split between dreamworld adventures and life in a mundane American suburb. [*]
On February 7th, Toby posts a fansong made for the character Noisemaster from the comic Cucumber Quest by Gigi D.G. [*] Toby later remakes and repurposes this theme to be Mettaton's boss theme. Gigi, for their part, would work on both Undertale and Deltarune as a concept artist. [*]
On February 18, Toby posts a joke tweet thread about Luigi "getting the sack" because of Nintendo's biggest financial failure happening during the Year of Luigi (2013). Notable for suspicious similarities to the motif of erasure and forgetting as explored in Gaster's and the Forgotten Man's stories in Undertale and Deltarune.
On February 21, Toby says that Undertale is nearing 50% completion but that progress may slow down as he's becoming increasingly busy with schoolwork. He indicates the game might have to be delayed. [*]
On May 3, Toby graduates, and begins full-time work on Undertale. Also, a Korean translation of the Undertale demo is officially released. [*]
On June 21, Waterfall is nearly content complete, and Toby begins work on Hotland, the final major area of the game before the endgame. Teases the tracks Quiet Water and Spooktune and shows off sprites of Monster Kid. [*]
On August 15, Toby posts another Cucumber Quest fansong, a boss theme against the Nightmare Knight. Would later become a mainstay of deranged Knight speculation in the Deltarune era, which itself would be somewhat vindicated when the Roaring Knight's eventual leitmotif would sound not too dissimilar to this track's melody. [*]
By August 31, Toby has gotten a lot of work done on Hotland and the CORE, and teases some things from them. [*]
On October 30, Toby gives a small status update and says that he's been working on time-consuming parts of the game. Hopes that by the end of the year, a rough draft of the full game will be finished and playable, and that work will have begun on Asgore, the final boss. At the end, he teases that there might be more beyond the final boss and "ending". [*]
On December 7, a friend of Toby's replies to a tweet on his old personal account, referencing an idea he had once about a player character that develops their own agency. Clearly prefiguring Chara and Kris.
On December 18, Toby finishes creating the Asgore boss fight and announces it on Kickstarter. He once again teases that there might be something more to Undertale after its "ending". [*]
2015
On January 15, Toby puts Undertale on Steam Greenlight, along with a new trailer for the game. [*] [**]
On February 22, Undertale has been greenlit on Steam, the Alphys date has been finished, and Burgerpants has been created and added. Toby teases that he still, incredibly enough, has some bosses and areas left to make, along with "a certain path =)" [*]
In April 2015, Toby draws what he calls the "first ever sketches" of Noelle, Ralsei and Susie. [*] Puzzlingly, this is in spite of having shown screenshots of files from 2013 labelled "susie" and "susies".
Toby creates concept art of the main characters of Deltarune, and titles the file simply "THE FUN GANG". Toby would later publically post it in 2018, but cover up certain parts of it for fear of spoiling the game's plot points. Later, in 2025, he would reveal more parts of the image following the release of Chapters 3 and 4, and presumably intends to do so again in the future. [*] [**]
Toby writes rudimentary dialogue and response options for Ralsei, which he would in 2018 remark accurately reflected how people ended up feeling about the character. [*]
On May 30, Toby teases that the Genocide Route is almost fully complete, except for one boss fight, likely Sans. [*]
On June 30, Toby reveals some heartbreaking news: you can't marry the robot. [*]
On August 22, Toby announces that Undertale will be released on September 15 that year. He excitedly says that the game may be better than "just alright", based on the impressions he's gotten so far. [*]
On September 8, a week from release, Toby puts out the now-iconic release trailer, featuring the Hotland vents for the first time. [*]
On September 15, Undertale is released.
On the day of release, Toby tweets an answer to those asking what to name the fallen human: "Your own name" (if you can't think of anything else) [*]
Undertale's release features a number of allusions to Deltarune, mostly through vague elements of Sans's backstory, "unused" files in the game's data such as "room_gaster", where ENTRY NUMBER SEVENTEEN can be found, and through the game's Fun Events, which were intended to be rare events dependent on an internal random number generated at the start of a playthrough; however, Toby messed up the code, accidentally spelling the word "fun" with inconsistent capitalization, leading to the events not being accessible except through manipulation of the game. Despite this, Gaster is discovered by dataminers almost immediately following the game's release, leading to many years of speculation and fueling an active and passionate theorizing community. [*]
On September 19, Toby responds to a fan inquiry, with a cryptic teaser involving Sans's broken machine.
On the same day, Toby responds to someone asking about Undertale secrets and a potential boss fight against Gaster.
On September 24, Toby says that he almost included an enemy with an "I'm Old!" text bubble in Undertale (an inside joke from his old EarthBound hacks). Possibly referring to Grandpa Semi or Gerson. [*]
On October 5, Toby responds to some fandom controversy in-character as Sans, but notably has him almost quote a Gaster follower, saying that "it's rude to talk about people that are listening". [*]
At some point in the second half of 2015, Toby composes an early version of Deltarune's TV WORLD using Death by Glamour as a base. [*]
In early December, the Deltarune.com domain is registered, and fansite with that domain is politely asked by Toby not to use it, resulting in them changing it to dreemurr.com. [*]
On December 8, some fans notice him.png on Deltarune.com, a darkened image of all caps Wingdings stating: "THIS NEXT EXPERIMENT SEEMS VERY VERY INTERESTING", but it goes largely unnoticed otherwise. The next day, someone archives the page on the Wayback Machine. [*]
On December 31, Toby thanks his fans for all the support he received in 2015, but says that lately something has left him with a "burning, inexplicable feeling", something whose "very nature is shrouded in darkness", and that in 2016 it would be nice to start something else.
Continued in the second part of this post, detailing development from 2016 to 2021, on the demo of Deltarune.
WHAT IS THE POINT OF DELTARUNE'S SHADOW CRYSTAL QUEST?
A lot of people think the Shadow Crystal quest will be instrumental to "subverting the prophecy". From my observations, when people are working out how they think the rest of the game will unfold, they tend to conceive of the Crystal quest as being more or less analogous to the Pacifist quest in Undertale. You can complete the game normally, get an unsatisfying ending, and then if you go back and complete some missable tasks you can get the "happy" or "true ending" instead.
This is not a totally unreasonable take. We've seen throughout these chapters that recruiting every Darkner often nets a more favorable outcome, even saving some characters from their potential demise. And the Crystal quest centers around facing seemingly insurmountable odds, with Seam, the quest-giver, becoming progressively more hopeful that fate may not be decided with each powerful foe brought to heel. One of Toby's recent teasers even hints that the power of the Shadow Crystals may in fact be Determination, described in Undertale as "the resolve to change fate". Gerson urges the heroes not to put so much stock in the prophecy's exact words, and Susie comes out of Chapter 4 resolved to struggle against the fate that's been written for her. It almost seems like a foregone conclusion that there will be some happy ending where we and the heroes defy fate.
But... more and more, I'm beginning to doubt this notion, personally. So with this post, my goal is to rain on everyone's parade. I'm here to say: no, actually, we won't just change fate, because that's boring and it goes against the themes of the game.
I know many people will be resistant to that notion, but please hear me out.
The first and simplest point I want to make is that the existence of a true, happy ending would be a retread - and a boring, predictable one at that.
One of the very first things Deltarune establishes about itself is that it is a thematic foil to Undertale. In Undertale, you are god of the world and get to make choices freely, with your Determination bending the world towards whatever your desired ending is, whether that be a "happy" or "evil" one. This makes a lot of sense for the narrative of that game; Undertale is in large part a metatext about branching path choices, the dissonance between player freedom and structured narrative, absorption in and attachment to fictional universes, etc. Deltarune is also about these things, but it's approaching it from the opposite side. Whereas Undertale highlights video games' tendency to offer the player agency and the opportunity to carve out their own power fantasies, and how that can coexist or conflict with narrative priorities, Deltarune, like the Earthbound Halloween Hack, emphasizes the fact that all narrativization is ultimately pre-decided, and that the only "freedom" away from the hand of the author is to step outside the bounds of the narrative itself - into Nowhere.
Toby has long been intrigued by this theme of narratological fate, with it playing an especially prominent role in his early EarthBound fanfiction projects; it can be traced to ideas explored in Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid 2, a formative game for the young Toby Fox.
Now, I'm not here to say that Toby hasn't grown at all from his somewhat juvenile teenage perspective, where his reaction to this conundrum between choice and fate in video game narratives was to contrive a "big joke on the player". But I also want to point out that if a story about fate has you simply disregard it because you don't like it, does that story have any bite at all? Or is it like all those other games which young Toby describes as "making you feel so empowered when you're really not choosing anything"?
The reason why defiance of fate worked in Undertale is because your "happy ending" was counterbalanced by the game's awareness of your alternative timelines. The game asked: "what does your happy ending matter where there are hundreds of other timelines where these characters are suffering? What makes this ending realer or more meaningful than the other ones you've played or seen?" Ultimately, it left you to answer that question. By contrast, it is rather hard to conceive of how a Deltarune where the bad stinky ending can just be undone by fulfilling the right conditions wouldn't just be a straightforward execution of the standard wish-fulfillment video game narrative tropes which young Toby was so tired of. Ask yourself, is the version of Deltarune where you just need to collect X many McGuffins to trivialize the prophecy, formally speaking, any different to any other "True Ending" quest you've seen a billion times before?
Structurally, it doesn't really pass the smell test either. Undertale's Pacifist ending could feel earned in part because an unspoiled player was unlikely to fulfill all the conditions of the pacifist route on their first go. Even a player on LV 1 was likely to miss some of the optional dates before reaching the end. Contrast this with Deltarune where - yes, the secret quests are missable, sure - but most players with any serious investment in the story, especially with the current release structure, are playing through each Chapter sequentially on their "main pacifist save". The wait between Chapters affords anyone who cares to plenty of time to find and complete all the secret optional quests before moving on, assuring that the vast majority of players, at least until the full game is out, will never even get the opportunity to see fate unfold before their eyes because, apparently, they've already fulfilled all the conditions towards getting a happy ending. It doesn't really matter that Toby's initial plan was to release all the Chapters at once; ultimately, part of the issue is that we're already familiar with Toby's tricks from Undertale. Toby expects most players to be on pacifist (and tries to railroad you onto that path harder than he ever did with Undertale) and he expects most invested players to snoop around for secrets as they're playing. There's no way around the fact that just doing Undertale again has huge diminishing returns.
But you know what doesn't? Using people's expectations from Undertale against them. Getting people to hope against hope that the ending can be changed, getting them to think of it as a foregone conclusion even, before revealing that no, that just won't work this time.
Back in Chapter 1, riding high off our victory against Jevil, Seam warns us that one day soon:
And you know what? I have yet to see this particular gun fired. At this point in the narrative, Susie and most players are still convinced that they can outrun fate. And so is even Seam themself, funnily enough! The reveal of the full extent of the prophecy in Chapter 4 may have spooked us a little, but most are pretty sure we've still got this. So why would Seam say this (and think Doylist here!), that we will realize the futility of our actions, if that's not something we're ever really gonna get the opportunity to feel? Remember that this is Crystal quest exclusive dialogue. Toby, through Seam, is saying: you may feel pretty invincible after defeating that Secret Boss. But when all is said and done, you too will understand Jevil's perspective.
You may think this is cringy, nihilistic hogwash. Bear with me! I promise I'm not suggesting Deltarune will go pure grimdark. But I think we may need to consider that fate might actually mean fate, in the game with fate as its central theme.
Maybe you're wondering by now: if Deltarune really does just have one ending and it's this unavoidable tragedy, what's the point? What's the point of Seam becoming more hopeful? What's the point of Gerson urging you not to stick to what the prophecy says? What's the point of Susie's naive hope? What's the point of the Shadow Crystals?
Let me start by addressing Susie. Most players are fully, 100% aligned with Susie when she rejects the power of the prophecy at the end of Chapter 4. From what I can see, the general opinion is that Susie is the game's true protagonist and from now on it will center mostly around the player and her working together to resist the fate that's been set in stone for them, using the power of friendship and hope and anime. It's not hard to see why, of course. Most people don't want an unhappy ending for their blorbos. It would just be too sad. So screw what the prophecy says.
That's all well and good, but might we also consider that Susie is being a little naive? I mean, of course she is, Ralsei says as much, but maybe this naivety won't just be completely, unconditionally rewarded? If you've read literally any tragedy you should know that a hero rejecting the power of prophecy is definitely not a surefire sign that the impending tragedy will be prevented. Usually, actually, it's a sign of dramatic irony. In ignoring or even trying to prevent their prophesied fate, the tragic hero usually ends up inadvertently bringing it about.
Are there any signs that Susie is being too naive? Well, let's look at how her perspective has been presented by the game.
Susie is undoubtedly the least informed of the story's main characters. Kris is in a conspiracy with the Knight and possibly Carol, Ralsei knows the entirety of the game's events and the "rules of this world", Noelle senses that something is up with Kris, even Asgore is actively investigating the Dark Worlds, and almost every character has some degree of knowledge about the backstory with Dess's disappearance, the shelter and the Angel's religion and prophecy. Almost everyone - except Susie (and us, to an extent). This makes her a perfect player analogue, but it also means that it's hard to put much stock into her opinion, when even we know a bit more than her. And not only is she ill-informed, she's sort of slow on the uptake and often neglects to ask some pretty crucial questions (such as: "why the hell is there a Dark World in Kris's house", or "hey, this local religion's prophecy sounds awfully like our adventures"). In Chapter 4, she starts taking things more seriously and tries her best to do some detective work, but one can't help but feel that she's mostly serving as a red herring exposition machine. We should take it as a clue that the Knight just laughs at her when she speculates about its nature.
But okay, the extent of Susie's knowledge isn't really what's important here, it's her outlook and attitude, so let's look past what Susie specifically says and instead pay attention to how Susie feels and orients herself towards the world. There's no doubt that the game treats Susie's hope and self-assuredness as a positive, admirable attribute. It enables Ralsei to start self-actualizing and treating himself as an actual person who deserves his own wants and desires. It helps Tenna get over his predicament and move on from his past. Her passion and reckless assertiveness is presented as the antidote to many of the story's ills.
And yet, there's also a subtle, yet ominous undercurrent to her naivety.
* The Roaring Knight...
* Whatever they are, they're making these fountains...
* But... is that really a bad thing...?
* Since they started showing up,
* Everything's gotten a lot more interesting, hasn't it...?
Of course, Susie loses this ambivalence about the Knight next chapter, turning firmly against them, but it's, I think, pretty telling that Susie initially feels sympathetic towards their actions. You may think she's gotten over this, but...
* An ending, huh...
* ...If I could choose… I guess...
* I wouldn't have an ending!
* It's just better if stuff just... goes on forever, right?
The funny thing about this interaction is that it's right before Gerson says that Susie wields the pen of hope which can counteract the dark which threatens to wash across the whole world. Many, understandably, interpret this as meaning that Susie is the only hope against the Roaring. But - things going on forever? A story "burning bright and black"? "Burning up everything"? This is itself the language of the Roaring. The impulse to continue the story forever is precisely what motivates Berdly, Noelle and Susie to almost cause the Roaring in Chapter 2. King's bitterness over being cast away and Tenna's desire for his show to continue forever are their main motivating flaws and what the Knight used to recruit them to its side. Susie describes the Knight as someone who wants to "see everything burn".
What do we make of this seeming contradiction? Well, I think part of it is that Gerson actually positions Susie as someone who can only use her white pen of hope after the ocean of ink has spilled across all the pages - so, maybe not as much of a contradiction there as we're thinking.
But either way, Susie's perspective is ideologically aligned with the Knight's seeming goals, of course culminating in the Roaring, which has thus far been presented as a pretty bad thing! So I think we can at least say that Susie's naivety and hope is limited. Which is something I expect she'll have to confront, especially since acceptance has been such a big theme of the game so far, especially where the antagonists are concerned. Acceptance of change, acceptance of things ending.
Gerson himself is often interpreted as someone staunchly opposed to the prophecy, someone who thinks that stories can be changed. So it's natural to think that the wisdom he imparts to Susie is that she should simply dab on the prophecy, right? Screw what it says!
But if you look a little deeper into it, it's a tad more complicated.
* Hmm! The prophecy! A very nice fairytale, that...
* Well now, a fairytale is a pretty little thing.
* Ain't it nice to believe a glimmer here and there...?
* I jus' think, those words shine a bit too bright.
* A path so blue, it's all you can see.
* So I say... why don't we go between the lines?
* It's darker there... Geheh... geheheh!
Right. So as we can see, Gerson's viewpoint isn't exactly that the prophecy just sucks. It's nice to believe a glimmer here and there. But staring at it too long can also blind you, so what's Gerson's avenue for subverting it? It's not to erase the words, or replace them, but to go between the lines. That its to say: to read between the lines. To impose your own interpretation and viewpoint on the text. And to go between the lines, there need to actually be lines to go between, yeah?
* The words on a wall called you a hero.
* ... Whatever you end up being, I'm sure it'll be tremendous.
Again, not a flat rejection of the prophecy! Gerson just advocates the freedom to interpret things differently. The words say you're this, but maybe you're something else. It's notable, I think, that Gerson focuses on the symbolic, the descriptive. Gerson doesn't focus on actions or events, what Susie is said to do, but instead focuses on what the prophecy designates Susie to be.
My impression of Gerson is that he basically has an unconditionally celebratory view of hermaneutics (and Becoming more broadly).
Once the question that haunts post-mythic consciousness — that of the seemliness of religious symbols — had been asked, the ancient texts were, in their pristine form, no longer acceptable. Then interpretation was summoned, to reconcile the ancient texts to “modern” demands. Thus, the Stoics, to accord with their view that the gods had to be moral, allegorized away the rude features of Zeus and his boisterous clan in Homer’s epics. What Homer really designated by the adultery of Zeus with Leto, they explained, was the union between power and wisdom. In the same vein, Philo of Alexandria interpreted the literal historical narratives of the Hebrew Bible as spiritual paradigms. The story of the exodus from Egypt, the wandering in the desert for forty years, and the entry into the promised land, said Philo, was really an allegory of the individual soul’s emancipation, tribulations, and final deliverance. Interpretation thus presupposes a discrepancy between the clear meaning of the text and the demands of (later) readers. It seeks to resolve that discrepancy. The situation is that for some reason a text has become unacceptable; yet it cannot be discarded. Interpretation is a radical strategy for conserving an old text, which is thought too precious to repudiate, by revamping it. The interpreter, without actually erasing or rewriting the text, is altering it.
Susan Sontag, "Against Interpretation"
He doesn't seem much for essentialism and teleology. A perfectly admirable view, except for the fact that he's in a story, and stories - insofar as they are stable and comprehensible - are characterized by exactly that, which is kind of the whole point of the game's occupation with fate, really!
So there's a conflict here. Gerson's view is positioned as wise and admirable by the game, and yet it's also incomplete because there's clearly some value in a story having at least a temporarily stable being, right? To reinterpret, like Gerson urges, there needs to be a coherent story to reinterpret. And if the point of the game is to allow players the freedom to reinterpret, it needs to actually tell its story for us to do so.
Changing "fate" with the Crystals isn't meaningful freedom at all - it just means following another fate, every bit as pre-decided as the one in the prophecy. The main difference, really, is that a happy ending would narcotize most with easy, shallow contentment; hardly something which incentivizes creative interpretations of the text.
Toby, as Gerson, may believe that everyone deserves the freedom to tell their own stories, and to have their own perspective on the stories that others tell.
But here's the thing: Toby has his own story to tell, too.
For the past 3 years I've been waking up in the middle of the night unable to go back to sleep because I've been thinking about the scenes that happen in the game. Even though so many details are still hazy, I really want to show you the things I've been thinking about. That's really my only reason for making this game. If I don't show you what I'm thinking, I'll lose my mind.
I HAVE SOMETHING
SOMETHING I WANT TO SHOW YOU
SOMETHING
I THINK YOU WILL FIND
VERY
VERY
INTERESTING
If you ever wonder what I'm doing, I'm vibrating rapidly and working on my game. Every year it doesn't come out I shake more. I don't want it to take too long, but after a few more years I can clip into the floor while doing an ollie and earn tons of points, so it's not all bad
AFTER ALL
YOU AND I,
WE HAVE BOTH BEEN WAITING
SUCH A VERY LONG TIME.
SO TO BE HERE
FINALLY
ON THE VERGE OF CONNECTION
IS
QUITE
EXCITING.
I don't want anyone to burn out waiting for this... But... we haven't burned out making it yet! Actually, the opposite!! We're on fire!! A lot!! Ouch!!
ONCE MORE
I THANK YOU
FOR YOUR PATIENCE
IN THESE DIFFICULT TIMES.
YOU HAVE DONE
EXCELLENTLY
TO PERSEVERE.
I understand what it's like to have to wait before you can talk about something.
...because I was waiting.
BUT
IT
IS STILL
WAITING.
HOW MUCH
LONGER NOW...?
MY
DELTARUNE.
And it's a story which was born from an ending.
In 2011, when I was away at school, I got very sick. I ended up having a terrible fever and couldn’t get any medicine for it, and while I was sleeping I had a vivid dream about the ending to a game. Since then… I felt like I had to make the game with that ending.
I have to make what I saw in my dream. I don’t even know if it’s particularly good, but I have to do it…
Toby worked backwards from this dream. He contrived characters and a plotline to bring it to fruition. Getting to show it is the whole reason Deltarune exists at all. And I don't know if you noticed, but we haven't seen the final prophecy yet. Toby is trying to preserve its impact. Because we're gonna see it. We're gonna see the dream. In fact, us getting to see his dream is the crux of the narrative; it is, put simply, Deltarune.
But I still haven't answered the question. What's the point of the Shadow Crystals, then?
* Treasure? There is no treasure... only experience.
The point is experience.
Ask yourself. Do you not feel the same, ultimately?
Rewind back to Chapter 1 and consider. Did you embark on the Shadow Crystal quest to change fate? Was that even an inkling in your mind? Or did you do it because you wanted to? Because it seemed intriguing? Because it seemed... fun?
That's why you're searching for them, aren't you?
The SHADOW CRYSTALs...
Do you honestly think it'll get you what you want...?
... no, part of you is just... enjoying this, isn't it?
Because it meant something to you, to prove to yourself that you could? Because you got to spend a while longer with these characters and this world? Because it gave you assurance that, truly, you did everything that you could do? That you reached the absolute?
It has no special powers. However, in order to attain this item, you became much stronger!
Because the harder the challenges you faced, the more you felt accomplished. The more your eyes lit up.
* Don't have a long face, now. We all knew nothing would come of this.
* But it was fun... to pretend it might, for a little while.
* Thank you.
And even if you didn't accomplish everything you thought you could... Even if the change wasn't very big in the end...
* Hmm, a treasure, is it? Here, why don't you take it?
* Well now... suppose there ain't much after all.
* But even if your path don't lead nowhere...
* Least you got some exercise goin' down it. Geh heh heh.
* (For some reason you felt healthier to a minuscule degree.)
* (Your Max HP increased by 1.)
You felt a little better. Because...
Deltarune is a game about Connection, absorption, the experience of playing it. What you give it is what you get. And what Undertale's Pacifist route and the Crystal quest do have in common is that they are rituals of devotion. Far from undermining the narrative and its fate, they serve to crystalize your love and faith for this secondary world you belong to. And so;
DELTARUNE
GLOWS BRIGHTLY
FROM YOUR HOPE.
What is Deltarune? What isn't Deltarune? A survey program. Lines of code, some assets, audio files. Words on a wall. Inert and meaningless until you make it not be.
(It’s a strange letter. It’s more or less completely illegible…)
(But, if you squint your eyes, and, you squint your heart…
For some reason, you feel you could understand it.)
Which is why the diegetic author-figure, almost certainly responsible for creating the prophecy, does not chide you but rather looks on in awe as you threaten to defy fate.
INCREDIBLE.
I FELT IT THERE SHINING.
YOUR POWER.
There is no contradiction. Because from the start, the Crystal quest was never characterized by a hostilty towards the story being told and always, conversely, by how far you were willing to go to actualize Deltarune in your mind and your heart. It was never about collecting some silly crystals. Oh, to be sure, Seam will cook up something interesting for us. It will lead to something we will "quite enjoy". But these rewards, whatever they will be, are formalities almost, as are the Crystals themselves, retroactively added as they were from Chapter 2 onwards mainly, I have to imagine, to serve as a reward structure for the quest. The Crystals provide such an intriguing mystery that we almost forget that they are post-hoc, pats on the back, Deltarune's acknowledgement of the effort you put in, but they've never been the impetus for said effort. Any player who collects the Shadow Crystals was always going to do what they did regardless of what they got out of it, simply on the basis of their determination.
* This is a dream that grows with love and care.
* Don't be afraid to dream!
So will the Crystals change the ending? Of course they will. How could they not? The path you took to collect them fundamentally altered your experience with the game, led you to a different outlook, to a new understanding. You gave it your all and dared to hope that something would come of it. And hope isn't dependent on outcomes. Hope simply exists for itself, as Deltarune does, sustained by your power and will in the face of sheer oblivion as long as you don't forget.
(Much of this post was inspired by the opening parts of the Deltarune essay Life Advice. I hope I still had something novel to contribute to the topic, but I urge anyone who enjoyed this post to also check out ana's work.)
This is gonna be a shorter post than usual from me; I just wanted to air out some quick thoughts I have on the Last Prophecy. Of course, right now we aren't really in a position to confidently reach any secure conclusion about what the Last Prophecy is, but I do think we can establish some basic facts about it and rule out some things which it probably isn't. This way, we can come to a rudimentary idea about what to expect, and we'll be better equipped to suss out what it actually is should we get substantive new information in the next Chapters.
THE LAST PROPHECY IS THE LAST PROPHECY
Obvious, maybe, but it's worth stating. The Last Prophecy is the ending of the prophecy, which is to say that it's one of the very last events that the prophecy accounts for. An unused variation of the prophecy states "FOR TO SAVE THE WORLDS, WE LAST OF ALL SAY", which further emphasizes that these are some of the very last lines of the prophecy. It is likely that "ONLY THEN, WILL THE WORLDS BE SAVED" is the very final line in the prophecy. The Last Prophecy probably happens right before, concurrently with, or right after the prophesied banishing of the Angel, given that we know from Ralsei's summary that the saving of the worlds centers around banishing the Angel's Heaven. Ralsei speaks of the Last Prophecy synonymously with the "one ending" which Toby has teased multiple times when talking about Deltarune.
THE LAST PROPHECY IS A TRAGEDY
The Last Prophecy is described as a tragedy in the prophecy. This could simply be a fancy way of communicating that it's a sad event, but I'm inclined to take the specific rhetoric here more seriously. A key feature of most classic tragedies is that they are, seemingly at least, preventable. Frequently, in fact, tragic heroes are given prophetic information about the impending catastrophe, which leads them to try to prevent it. However, because of the hero's hamartia - a tragic error, usually resulting from a lack of information - they unwittingly bring about their own downfall. By the end, both the audience and the hero are liable to judge the events that have unfolded as a kind of cruel joke played by fate itself (often embodied by some specific god(s)) and the callous injustice triggers cathartic feelings of sympathy and mourning in the audience. All this is to say that Susie knowing about the Last Prophecy might be a significant part of the prophecy coming about, and that fate will likely be playing cruel tricks to make it inadvertently result from whatever actions she takes.
THE LAST PROPHECY IS THE FINAL TRAGEDY
"THE FINAL TRAGEDY" only unveils "WHEN ALL HOPE IS LOST FOR THE TALE". This is significant context, because it tells us that this ending will follow a series of unfortunate events which will likely distill feelings of hopelessness in both the heroes and the audience. The end of the world seems all but inevitable, but then a final option presents itself, involving some terrible event needing to happen in exchange for the saving of the worlds; this option, however, is no cause for celebration, and judging by the way Ralsei speaks about it, the cost may be so great that the victory is pyrrhic at best.
THE LAST PROPHECY IS NECESSARY TO SAVE THE WORLDS
The Last Prophecy is not arbitrary and does not happen in isolation. It has a specific causal relationship with the saving of the worlds, and is in fact the only option the prophecy presents for that to happen, at least given the events which previously transpire in the prophecy. Ralsei, however, thinks there might be another option to save the worlds, seemingly involving kindness, but it would require early intervention to change the course of the prophecy.
THE LAST PROPHECY IS A CONSCIOUSLY WILLED ACTION
Tumblr user duxarcana translates the unused variation as "If (one) intends to save the world(s)". This gives us the important information that the Last Prophecy involves something which the heroes must consciously decide to do with the specific intent of saving the world.
THE LAST PROPHECY IS IMMEDIATELY INTUITIVE
Susie does not look at the prophecy for more than a few seconds before destroying it, and takes no time to interpret its possible meanings. This suggests that the prophecy does not use vague or ambiguous language but instead bluntly states what happens in such a fashion that its meaning is immediately clear.
THE LAST PROPHECY IS EXTREMELY BAD
It cannot be emphasized enough: the Last Prophecy is insanely, catastrophically terrible. It's so bad that Ralsei, whose purpose is to be the Lightners' guide and to follow the events of the prophecy (a purpose he takes very seriously), attempts immediately to subvert the prophecy and guide it towards a different path. It's so bad that Ralsei is having a Chapter-long panic attack throughout the Dark Sanctuaries and hyperventilating and crying to Susie about the prospect of her seeing it. It's so bad that Susie's immediate instinct is to smash it with her fist in rage and panic.
THE LAST PROPHECY IS ABSURD
The Last Prophecy isn't just bad, it's apparently also kind of ridiculous.
Susie says:
* You're worried about THAT!? Seriously!?
* ... this stupid prophecy?
* Like something like that would happen.
[...]
* Why wouldn't you laugh?
* It's just stupid.
Susie's obviously indulging in some pretty wishful thinking here - she has good reason to believe that the prophecy should be taken seriously - but her reaction nonetheless speaks to an absurd quality of the Last Prophecy. Susie has a hard time seeing how things could possibly get that bad. The scenario just doesn't really make sense to her, so she laughs at it, and finds the idea that it would happen 'stupid'. Obviously, Susie is pretty scared, deep down. But she uses the outward absurdity of the scenario the Last Prophecy is presenting to discredit it, in an attempt to ease the worries of both herself and Ralsei. This tells us that the Last Prophecy is something of a twist - it's not something you'd expect to happen, and it's hard to predict how things could develop in that direction.
THE LAST PROPHECY INVOLVES THE GIRL
The Last Prophecy first appears in the Second Sanctuary, right off the heels of prophecies about the Girl:
"AND LAST, WAS THE GIRL.
AT LAST, WAS THE GIRL"
"LOVE FINDS ITS WAY
TO THE GIRL."
The fact that a prophecy about the Girl involves her coming "last" also suggests her ties to the Last Prophecy.
Ralsei is particularly concerned about Susie seeing the Last Prophecy. In isolation this doesn't tell us too much, because Ralsei is likely aware that Kris already knows the prophecy (which we also know because Kris plays music from future chapters on the piano, including a piece internally titled lastprophecy). That said, it further contributes to the feeling that the Last Prophecy is narratively tied to Susie specifically. It could also have to do with Noelle, if we take "love finding its way to the Girl" to be alluding to Susie's love interest (alternatively, if we take Noelle to be a candidate for the role of the Girl).
THE LAST PROPHECY IS WHY RALSEI HAS BEEN ACTING STRANGE
* I'm sorry, Kris.
* I'm sorry I didn't say the whole prophecy at first.
* I just
* I thought if I said something different
* If we did something different
* If we were just kind enough
* Perhaps by the time we got here... it would change.
In the 1-2 era, it was widely agreed that Ralsei behaved suspiciously. Ralsei reveals here that the reason for his being so reticent to share certain bits of information is that he was trying to prevent the Last Prophecy. This tracks with some of the things he said in Chapter 1:
* This world is full of all kinds of people, Kris.
* In the end, how we treat them makes all the difference.
* So let's try our best to get by without FIGHTing.
* If we can manage to do that...
* I believe this tale may have a happy ending.
* Otherwise, I fear that...
* ... you may not... find the result favorable.
Ralsei's advocacy for a pacifist playstyle is here explicitly tied to Ralsei's desire for a happy ending. For whatever reason, he believes that using violence is the sort of thing that would bring the Last Prophecy about.
* Kris...
* Perhaps I shouldn't have been so hard on her.
* ...
* But, I just worry that if Susie is too eager to fight...
* Then...
* Well, let's just be kind to her, OK, Kris?
Again, Susie seems to figure heavily in Ralsei's thoughts about the Last Prophecy. He really doesn't want Susie to use violence. Pretty uncharacteristically, he snaps at her a bit in Chapter 1 over her eagerness to fight. He feels bad about being hard on her, but he's especially worried about her using violence. Ultimately, he falls back to his general rule: "let's just be kind".
Advocating for a Pacifist playstyle is not the only thing that Ralsei does in an attempt to prevent the Last Prophecy. He says "I thought if I said something different", which seems to be alluding to the fact that he gives the heroes a modified version of the prophecy in Chapter 1, which neglects to mention the Roaring, the Titans, the Knight, and the Last Prophecy. It's quite possible all of these things factor heavily into the Last Prophecy taking place. Ralsei seems to be afraid of 'speaking these things into existence', and it appears that he believes if he successfully prevents the heroes from knowing about them, he stands a better chance of steering the prophecy away from these things. Ralsei's refusal to talk about the Knight at all until the end of Chapter 3 is particularly strange, and even in Chapter 4 he's still advising the heroes not to worry too much about it.
* … If it's any consolation…
* I don't sense any immediate danger.
* If the Knight's only goal was to hurt people…
* They would have acted sooner, right?
* For now, let's make sure no one else gets taken.
* … Susie…
* I understand how you're feeling, but…
* We… have our own advantages, too!
* The Knight only seems to show its face in the Dark World.
* If we can just seal the Fountain over to the right…
* Then… it'll at least… buy us a little more time.
* … until we… have to face our difficulties again.
And at the end of Chapter 4 Ralsei seems very panicked about the Knight creating a Titan. It seems as if the Knight creating the Titan confirms to Ralsei that his actions have been in vain, that the prophecy hasn't been changed and they're still en route to the calamity awaiting them in the Last Prophecy.
THE LAST PROPHECY IS A TRAGEDY FOR THE LIGHTNERS
Ralsei's arc throughout Deltarune's narrative involves him coming to value himself, his autonomy and his own identity. But this necessitates starting from a position of not valuing himself at all. This is perhaps most clearly on display in Chapter 3, where Ralsei tries to urge Susie not to care about him too much, and tries to convince Tenna that caring about his own desires as opposed to the needs of the Lightners is selfish. It's clear to me, then, that the Last Prophecy is not about Ralsei dying, or the Darkners being permanently sealed away, or anything like that. Ralsei simply would not care this much about that - his primary concern is and always has been the Lightners. If the Last Prophecy were about the Darkners going away, he would simply do what he did in Chapter 3, and urge Susie and Kris to forget about him. I also find it unlikely Susie would seemingly think the Last Prophecy is an unthinkably absurd scenario which none of them would let happen if it was something as predictable as the Dark Worlds needing to be sealed away - something which Ralsei has been clear about from the very first Chapters. I get that Susie is slow on the uptake, but like, c'mon.
THE LAST PROPHECY IS SOMETHING SUSIE THINKS THE HEROES WOULDN'T LET HAPPEN
Susie (thinks she) knows her friends, and she (thinks she) knows that they would never let whatever happens in the Last Prophecy transpire. This suggests that whatever act the Last Prophecy describes likely involves a callousness that we wouldn't expect from the Fun Gang.
THE LAST PROPHECY REPRESENTS AN END TO THE HEROES' FRIENDSHIP
Following some confident posturing, Susie gets pretty morose after seeing the Last Prophecy and says to Kris:
* Hey, Kris...
* ...
* Can I tell you
* ... a stupid dream
I have?
* ...
* No matter what
* I... want to keep
being friends
with you and Ralsei.
* When the sun
comes up again...
* I want tomorrow
to be the same
as yesterday.
* And the next day
* To be just the
same as that.
* That in the end
* We can always go back
to the way things were
before.
* ...
* You don't have
to say anything back,
Kris.
* I...
* ...
* I know...
* You're thinking the
same thing
* ... aren't you, dumbass?
The placement of this monologue here suggests that whatever Susie saw in the Last Prophecy has her worried that her friendship with Kris and Ralsei might not last forever.
THE LAST PROPHECY HAS A DEDUCIBLE RHYME SCHEME
The prophecy regularly employs an AABB rhyme scheme.
And wouldn't you know it, in the Last Prophecy we read:
AND THEN. WHEN ALL HOPE IS LOST FOR THE TALE
THE FINAL TRAGEDY UNVEILS.
TO SAVE THE WORLDS, THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY.
[ Prophecy panel shattered ]
And if you have any doubt, the unused variation seals the deal:
FOR TO SAVE THE WORLDS, WE LAST OF ALL SAY:
From this we can deduce that the Last Prophecy ends on an "-ay" sound, rhyming with the words "say" and "way".
Here's a list of possible candidates:
ASTRAY
AWAY
BETRAY
DAY
DISMAY
GRAY
LAY
PAY
PLAY
PRAY
PREY
SLAY
STAY
It could also be a word that imperfectly rhymes with "way".
We can also deduce that the Last Prophecy is likely somewhere in the range of 7-10 syllables long.
THE LAST PROPHECY PROBABLY DESCRIBES THE DREAM WHICH SPAWNED DELTARUNE
Toby Fox has spoken multiple times about the fact that the inspiration for Deltarune came from a fever dream he had in 2011 about the ending of a video game. We don't definitively know that the Last Prophecy was the subject of this dream (for example, the Last Prophecy could hypothetically come to pass in Chapter 6, opening the way for the actual ending which was the subject of the dream, or there could be a postgame with a different ending like in Undertale, etc.), but it would make a lot of sense if it was. The Last Prophecy (the "one ending") being conceptualized first and the rest of the plot having been written backwards from it would tie very neatly into the fatalistic themes of the game, and it introduces a very interesting metafictional parallel between Gaster - whose Deltarune is "still waiting" while the other characters try in vain to resist its coming - and Toby, who's been waiting for more than a decade to depict the dream he had, but may have grown attached to the characters he only initially conceived of as pawns to fulfill the original vision he had. The tension between the inevitability of the ending and the struggle to hope that things can change would be a living part of the text itself.
In recent months, a certain reading of Deltarune has been steadily gaining popularity within the community, particularly here on Tumblr. This reading has a pithy name: ‘Krissociation’, a portmanteau of ‘Kris’ and ‘dissociation’. Its analysis is premised on a denial of the player’s diegetic existence, and thus a denial of any overt, not-purely-allegorical metafictional elements within the narrative. It explicitly refutes the idea that Kris’s relationship with the SOUL is characterized by a supernatural possession, and instead presents it as a person’s relationship with their “alter”, terminology borrowed from the discourse of dissociative identity disorder (DID).
The relative popularity of this reading is one that I’ve found interesting and, perhaps more to the point, quite frustrating, because it’s so obviously deficient, and yet it still somehow manages to catch on to some fundamental aspects of this relationship between Kris and the SOUL which the average, mainstream understanding continues to neglect.
This post is not intended as a systematic takedown of Krissociation – I don’t believe that’s actually needed. As far as I’m concerned, Krissociation doesn’t even manage to get its feet off the ground, because denying the overt metafictional elements of Deltarune’s narrative is, to put it a little dramatically, interpretive violence of such magnitude that it immediately disqualifies anything that could come after it. To me, the metafictional elements are so self-evidently a core part of the diegesis that any reading which denies that has automatically failed the most basic condition for gaining a useful understanding of Deltarune, which is presumably the goal of any analysis of its narrative.
Instead, my goal with this post is to independently analyse Kris’s character and how they relate to the SOUL (that is to say, to us) in order to make sense of the biggest questions pertaining to that relationship, such as how exactly they utilize us and how we utilize them, what the nature is of our control over them, how Kris and us are connected to things like the Shadow Crystal quest, the Egg hunt and the Weird Route, and, most important perhaps, which one of us is really in control.
But first, we need to take a look at our relationship with another vessel.
THE HUMAN IN UNDERTALE
In the introductory sequence of Deltarune, Gaster fashions a vessel based on our feedback. Keen-eyed players might notice a conspicuous detail about this Vessel, which is that their topwear always contains two stripes, calling to mind the player character of Undertale, in opposition to both Kris and Chara, who wear a shirt with only one stripe.
Lest you believe this connection is merely incidental, Toby has doubled-down on it with the single-stripe Important Person’s Shirt, a piece of merchandise which is listed under both the Undertale and Deltarune brands, alluding simultaneously to Chara and Kris’s clothing.
The double-striped shirt of Undertale’s protagonist, meanwhile, is sold separately as the Human Shirt and listed only under the Undertale brand.
Given, then, that the vessel is made to remind the player of Undertale’s protagonist specifically - and that the Vessel is discarded and defined in opposition to the game’s true protagonist, Kris - having an understanding of Undertale’s protagonist might, conversely, help us demarcate what is and isn’t going on with Deltarune’s.
In Undertale, your vessel is a human; the Human. The nature of the Human and their relationship to its two identities ‘Frisk’ and ‘Chara’ is and always has been one of the most contentious and knotty topics of discussion in the entire series. Suffice it to say that this post is not equipped to definitively solve the issue of Frisk and Chara, nor do I really think such a thing is possible, but I do want to establish a basic, functional understanding of the Human for the purposes of our analysis.
All else failing, the most important thing to understand about the Human, especially in relation to Kris, is that they are pliable.
Most often you’ll see people discussing this in terms of the Human being younger than Kris is, and thus more impressionable and willing to follow the guidance of the SOUL. This is a cute and relatively harmless idea, but I think it tends to paper over how strange the protagonist of Undertale actually is. The level of control we have over them, especially outside the Genocide and Pacifist Routes, is pretty staggering. Guidance is one thing, but we can mold the Human into either a friendly, benevolent tree-hugger or a ruthless killing machine with barely any resistance or preference for either shown by the Human. Notably, the fallen human - Chara - was presumably the same age as the Human that we control is during the events of the game. We know that Chara was extremely willful and set on their path, and we can see that in practice on the Genocide Route (more on that later), so it is clearly not the case that any child this age would unquestionably follow our directions.
We can say, then, that the Human is fairly unnatural in this regard. They don’t seem to be driven by any will of their own, they don’t show much in terms of disapproval or preference when we make them do things, and we are kept in the dark about any potential backstory which could help elucidate their ‘true’, independent personality.
Of course, this is actually not at all unnatural in story-driven games and JRPGs, which often have protagonists with deliberately ambiguous personalities and backstories which exist mainly for the player to project themselves onto. However, since Deltarune has introduced another protagonist to the series, one who decidedly does not fit this mold, and is contrasted with an empty vessel manufactured for us to inhabit - a vessel which is, again, symbolically aligned with Undertale’s protagonist - we can no longer take this fact about them for granted. We are forced to view Undertale’s Human as rather peculiar in their willingness to be our vessel.
The how of that is ultimately not what's important. Whether you believe that the Human is just an unusually impressionable kid, or that they suffer from amnesia, or that they only came into existence at the start of the game, the end result is the same: the Human is pliable. It is ours for the molding.
Except in one regard.
It’s not entirely true that the Human has no will of their own. The Human is moved by one distinct will – one which is inherited from the fallen human.
In a missable moment early in the game, the Human makes a rare display of autonomy and performs a concrete, significant action on their own. When Toriel tells you to go back to your room before her boss fight, you can actually comply with her demands. If you return, you can direct the Human to the bed to go to sleep. When you do, they have a dream, or a vision – the same one they have whenever they die:
And the Human gets up from bed. They refuse to sleep through to the next day. They refuse to let Toriel seal the Ruins.
And the reason why is clear: it conflicts with the purpose they are compelled, or rather determined, to follow: to be the future of humans and monsters, to set the Underground free. The Human harbors the seventh SOUL needed to break the barrier. They have been chosen by fate – willed into existence by it almost – to resolve the history of humans and monsters. To see the prophecy fulfilled. They must confront Asgore, who beckons them away from sleep, from death.
That is the only true purpose the Human has.
Incidentally, it is also your purpose as a player. It is how you “win” the game. And it is derived directly from Chara, the fallen human. It’s their memories and their will which drives the Human forward.
Notably, in one of the scant few times the Human expresses themselves, they reminisce about Chara’s experiences:
Again, it doesn’t really matter what you think is happening here – whether the Human is Chara’s reincarnation, or revival, or whether they’re simply being possessed by their ghost. But it is clear that Chara is a living force within them – on all routes.
On the Pacifist Route, Chara’s will is given expression in a rather abstract way. The Human makes good on the ultimate goal of their plan - to free the Underground - and, in the process, saves their best friend. Asriel, who seemingly spotted Chara’s determination within the Human, ultimately emphasizes the distinct individuality of the Human from Chara, and in response, the Human christens themself with a name of their own: Frisk. The child comes of age, Pinnochio becomes a real boy, the monochrome copy is colored in with care. And the Human stops being our vessel. The curtains close and Flowey implores us: let this world go, this new future which is embodied in Frisk, this future you made happen with your will, your determination, your power, let it retain its independent existence, let it be “the end”.
Of course, a good player doesn’t let that happen. It’s on the Genocide Route where our relationship to the Human becomes clearer. As you systematically kill every monster in the Ruins, you awaken something which had been lying dormant within the Human. Much later, having fully completed their transformation back into Chara, they reminisce:
At first, I was so confused.
Our plan had failed, hadn't it?
Why was I brought back to life?
These lines are incredibly important. Chara says – speaking about the beginning of the game – that they were initially “so confused” after having been “awakened from death”. Their experience was continuous with their previous life – one of the first things they think of is their plan and how it failed.
It’s important to note that Chara is not talking about the player’s killing spree in the Ruins having awakened them. Chara mentions that separately:
You.
With your guidance.
I realized the purpose of my reincarnation.
Power.
Together, we eradicated the enemy and became strong.
No, it’s clear that Chara is referring to the very beginning of the game, after the player “calls their name” and inhabits the body of the Human in the flowers. In fact, Chara’s awakening is a very deliberate parallel to a certain other character who awakens from death in a bed of flowers:
I remember when I first woke up here, in the garden.
I was so scared.
I couldn't feel my arms or my legs...
My entire body had turned into a flower!
The game eludes any easy logistical answers as to what has happened and why. Only the broad strokes are clear: the power of us, the player, awakened Chara from death, who then inhabits the body of the Human – a human with a red soul, which Chara says belongs to the player, and Flowey likewise calls Chara’s “stolen soul”.
This human, who possesses Chara’s spirit and memories, can then be molded by us throughout the game. The actions we guide them towards determine their disposition towards the world.
(You tap the dummy with your fist.)
(You feel bad.)
(You hit the dummy lightly.)
(You don't feel like you learned anything.)
(You sock the dummy.)
(Who cares?)
(You punch the dummy at full force.)
(Feels good.)
This highly impressionable nature might have something to do with Chara’s “confusion” and professed aimlessness near the start of the game. Why had they been “reincarnated”? It seems the player is there to answer that question.
On the Pacifist route, you direct the Human towards actions quite unlike their past self. As the route progresses, they more frequently take actions of their own accord. Through your guidance they become the sort of person to never hit Undyne with anything but a pretend blow in their duel, regardless of how you choose to attack. They become the sort of person who can actually stir Asgore’s conscience during their battle, firmly telling him to stop fighting. They become the sort of person to smile when fleeing from a battle. And at the very end, as their final act of separation from both the player and their past self, they take – or perhaps reclaim – a different name from Chara: Frisk. In overcoming their past identity, they also help Asriel reach a fuller understanding of his best friend, allowing him to move on from his grief and hopelessness, which was largely centered around the presumed irreplaceability of Chara.
On the other end of the spectrum, you can guide the Human towards an accelerated, demonic form of their past identity in the Genocide Route. Though it’s correct, as Chara says, that it is us who guide the human in this direction, it is equally important to note that the impulse towards the Genocide Route was already latent within Chara, and that it is only something we bring to the surface.
My best friend's favorite number is nine.
It's because
there isn't a number that's higher.
9. 99. 999. 9999.
If everything gets high enough,
You become invincible.
Nothing can hurt you anymore.
Nothing can hurt anyone anymore.
They were the one that picked up their own empty body.
And then, when we got to the village...
They were the one that wanted to...
... to use our full power.
Chara was already very attached to the idea of becoming all-powerful. They were already a hateful, even callous person – probably the product of a whole lot of hurt and abuse themself. We can speculate about sympathetic traits they may have had in their time alive but if Flowey is anything to go by, those would’ve been burned away in the process of death and (soulless) reincarnation.
So by the time we guide them to slaughter the Underground, there aren’t any inhibitions left to stop them. They know what to do and eagerly play along. Hell, they start dictating the terms of the route to us. They take over narration, they inform us of how many and who to kill, they abort the route when we fail to meet their demands. We rub off on each other.
Fundamentally, Chara and us are aligned, and this is the root of our special connection. It’s why Chara is our player character. Their desire for power is analogous to the JRPG player’s conditioned impulse to increase their stats, a behavior naturally emergent from the game’s mechanics. Beyond this, Chara’s determination to fulfill the prophecy, which I believe the Human’s recurrent dreams of Chara’s dying moments testify to, is analogous to our desire to see a “satisfying ending” to the game.
And when we get either one of those “satisfying endings”, the truth is revealed that the player was never in full control of the Human, not any more than they control us.
The Human simply allowed themself to be guided by you. Even something like the Genocide Route is, as a potentiality, fundamentally immanent from the Human’s own nature.
But how is this relevant to Deltarune?
THE HUMAN IN DELTARUNE
The most notable fact about Kris is that they are not impressionable in the same way that our human vessel in Undertale is.
This is not just an arbitrary fact about Kris - it stems from their specific circumstances: Kris is an angsty, rebellious teenager who both has strong desires of their own and is also caught up in the machinations of others – but most importantly, they were aware of the nature of the SOUL preceding their possession and are deliberately using its powers in service to their own ends. This is completely unlike the situation in Undertale, where we take control of a mysterious vessel containing the confused, impressionable soul of a reincarnated child, who allows us to mold their personality. Unlike Undertale, that is, except for the Genocide Route, where some similarities start to show.
In the Genocide Route, Chara begins to develop their own plans which they dictate to the player, not unlike how Kris uses the SOUL to achieve specific goals. Kris’s forceful resistance against the player throughout Deltarune’s story feels like a deliberate mirror to Chara’s hostile reactions to the player disagreeing with them upon the fulfillment of a Genocide Route. In this regard, Kris and Chara are quite similar – they are willful and meticulous planners with specific ends in mind.
Somehow, I still occasionally see (even after Chapters 3 and 4!) the misinterpretation that we are wronging Kris by inhabiting their body, and that they are completely opposed to our control over them and in a constant state of discomfort and terror. This frankly does a disservice to Kris's character, who would probably overcompensate with some scary anime villain laugh if they heard this idea about them put to words.
It is clear throughout all of the Chapters not only that Kris is by and large more aware and prepared to handle us than we are them, but also that they frequently have no issue with how we choose to pilot them. They develop a deep and earnest bond with Susie (and eventually Ralsei) despite the fact that we are in control of them during practically all of their moments together. They often play along with gags or silly things we make them do and even improvise plenty on their own.
When Kris doesn’t like how we’re controlling them, they typically let us know. Not only does Kris act on their own more than Undertale’s Human does, but they also subvert our commands which Undertale's Human rarely, if ever, does. Our inhabiting their body seems to involve them needing to follow our commands in some sense, but Kris is aware of this and cleverly finds ways to work around it.
If we make them say something they don’t like, they’re liable to drown it out with a cough or yawn, or deliberately alter the delivery to subvert our intentions.
Sometimes, Kris’s opposition to us goes beyond mere distaste or disagreement – sometimes our interference risks ruining some plan of theirs, which necessitates urgent intervention.
Other times, their emotions get the best of them.
And yet other times, Kris acts against us simply to keep us at arm’s length.
Of course, at the most pivotal moments, Kris goes beyond petty disobedience and simply rips us out of their body to ensure they can act uninhibited.
And of course, this can only be a temporary measure, because they need us for the Dark Worlds, as their mysterious caller highlights.
Note that four chapters in, we still don’t have any indication that Kris will die without their SOUL or anything like that – in fact, we’ve seen quite a lot of speculation in that direction explicitly undermined by Chapter 4! Now, it’s still totally plausible that Kris needs the SOUL to live, but my point is that this is not something the game highlights at all, which speaks to the fact that Kris lets us inhabit them for other reasons than self-preservation. We are useful to them.
So, in this sense, Kris’s control over us is quite overt and easy to see. Not only do they know plenty about how we operate, allowing them to predict our actions and deliberately interfere when we’re not aligned, and not only do they control when we inhabit their body in the first place, but they are also in direct contact and working with the individual responsible for the Dark Worlds which we spend the bulk of these games going through, and at times they even take on the responsibility of creating them on their own. Our experience of the game is heavily structured by all of these factors.
But this begs the question – aside from these very overt displays of control, are we at least free agents when we’re inside Kris’s body? We may be externally caged by Kris, but are we at least free to choose whatever we want, according to our own wills and desires, within those parameters, regardless of how Kris chooses to resist us?
Well, even here the answer is, in fact, NO! We are NOT free to act however we want. Our range of options is still very much limited! But in what way?
In some regards, the actions we’re able to perform seem constrained by the simple fact of how the game works. For example, we can only view the world through a top-down perspective. We can typically only damage monsters to the point where they flee, unlike in Undertale where we can kill them. Certain fixed events seem like they must always take place. Insofar as there’s anyone to blame for these things, it would presumably be Gaster.
This only gets us so far, though. Because other times, our range of possible options doesn’t seem backed by the same kind of necessity. For instance, take dialogue or inspection options:
These seem rather arbitrary – and in fact, they’re often quite presumptuous. Who’s to say wanting to hear more from Pizzapants is a “lie”? I personally know someone who I think would take issue with that judgement. And who’s to say that I want to say those specific things to Susie?
Well, I’ll tell you who.
It's what they call "you."
Yes, there’s really only one candidate for who would be the operating factor whenever a choice suddenly takes a clear disposition. It’s not Gaster, it’s not some AI in the “DEVICE”, it’s not a third entity, it’s not even Toby. It’s just Kris.
But how come, then, that the things you say and do sound so unlike Kris to those who know them best, like Noelle? How come Kris resists your choices sometimes, if they’re in control of which ones are presented in the first place? How come you sometimes get options which only seem relevant to the player, like talking to Sans as if you know him already?
Well, Toby has graciously already provided us with an answer.
It’s because Kris is us. And we are them. We don’t always act in perfect concordance. But we are in their SOUL, and we are one, for now.
This may seem strange. Isn’t the whole point of the SOUL and Kris’s relationship that they are distinct?
Well, to a degree, yeah. But to a degree, the point is also precisely the opposite. Even when we have different desires and goals, we’re chained to each other, and we influence one another. We are learning to become Kris and Kris is learning to become us. The result is internal strife.
Take for example, this scene by the lake. Kris and Susie have been battling with the Knight since the previous night, come within a hair’s breadth of failing to prevent the apocalypse, and were given a glimpse of the grim fate that is awaiting them at the end of the road. The town is quiet, and staring across the dark waters with your best friend, a prompt suddenly pops up:
The very appearance of the prompt cannot be taken for granted. The fact that it only triggers after minutes of waiting communicates something about the person you’re inhabiting.
The outcomes are even more telling:
Kris subverts both choices, but steers them in the same direction. Make them say it and they will – with their mouth closed. Kris isn’t apathetic to the bond you’ve formed with Susie over the course of the game. They have a burning desire to tell her “the truth” – but they know they can’t. So they find the compromise – they say it without vocalizing.
Direct them to drop it, and they can’t. Instead of saying nothing, they literally verbalize the word “Nothing”, out of the blue, which Susie sees through. It's clear, then, that the urge to say something is coming from them.
This provides us with a good clue for how the dialogue and choice systems work. The prompts are heavily influenced by Kris, but they’re not necessarily what Kris consciously decides they need to express. They’re sort of like intrusive, or spontaneous thoughts. Whenever external circumstances produce a choice for your vessel, a prompt is fired up but not before passing through a kind of Kris-filter first (and remember that Kris is influenced by your inhabiting them!) which produces a list of plausible Kris-like things to say or do.
But these aren’t the only choices we get in the game. If we take a broader look, we can see that there are a number of optional decision paths we can take throughout. For example, we can collect the Shadow Crystals by seeking out strong – nearly impossible – enemies to battle. We can also exploit strange, glitch-like supernatural occurrences to hunt for “Eggs”, bequeathed by a strange Forgotten Man. Are these our will alone?
It doesn’t seem that way. As is revealed in Chapter 3, the Egg hunt is a deeply personal mission for Kris – far from an arbitrary decision stemming from our will, it seems that seeking out the Man is only something we can do because we are Kris. The Forgotten Island – the last place the Man is able to talk and the part where the Egg quest is properly “initiated” (with him guiding you to their locations in future and past) – is quite literally a materialized chunk of Kris’s unconscious.
The Shadow Crystal quest is not dissimilar. Before Chapter 3, many had already caught on to how the quest seemed tied to Kris’s personality specifically, with the circumstances of Chapter 2’s Secret Boss Spamton pointedly paralleling Kris’s. Spamton, like Kris, seems to have received gnosis of his own arbitrary yet deterministic place within the universe, and sought to combat his fate, pursuing “freedom” at all costs by augmenting his form into something more Powerful. For Spamton, this was the NEO Body, and for Kris, this seems to be the light inside their SOUL – us. And yet, the rude awakening for both lies in the fact that they remained chained – the NEO body is a puppet on strings, and the light, as Spamton says, is also a “Chain” for Kris's soul. When the NEO Body falls lifeless to the ground after you cut its strings, it’s a nasty reminder of the Faustian bargain that Kris seems to have made – one which shakes them to their core.
Where many went wrong in interpreting Chapter 2 was in their assuming that the “freedom” Kris seeks is a freedom from us, rather than a freedom which they hope to attain through us (though they presumably would like to be rid of us eventually too). Likewise, Kris’s negative reactions throughout the quest had many assuming that we are pressuring them into a quest they have no desire to be a part of, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, Kris takes important measures to ensure that the plan can be fulfilled correctly. For instance – Kris honors Spamton’s deal, meeting with him, and retrieving and delivering the disk alone, without giving the player any opportunity to botch his requests by taking Susie and Ralsei with.
As with the Egg quest, Chapter 3 – which can very much be viewed as “Kris’s chapter” – clarifies matters further. Again we have a character personally connected to and paralleling Kris expositing a whole bunch about the quest’s central motif: “freedom”. Ramb doesn’t mince words – freedom is the thing which Kris wants.
If what was happening with the Shadow Crystal quest wasn’t obvious already, the Mantle holder just spells it out for us. Despite being aware of a distinction between Kris on their own and Kris when they’re controlled by us, the Mantle holder positions the Shadow Crystal quest as something which Kris wants, something which is important to Kris’s plans.
But there’s one last thing we haven’t looked at yet. The clearest example, it would seem, of the contradicting wills between Kris and us: the Weird Route.
Yes, the successor to the Genocide Route, the part where the player gets to exploit a loophole in the game’s rules to break out of the cage the prophecy has placed them into, where the player gets to force different events to play out than those which are destined to happen on the main route, where the player finally gets to sublimate Kris’s will into their own and make some real decisions.
…Right?
I mean, look at how Kris fights back against it!
Obviously the Proceeds are the player’s will, and the other options represent Kris trying to talk you out of it, right?
Kris takes the opportunity to sabotage the Route and attempts to undo all of the damage you caused in Chapter 2 between Chapters 3 and 4 – isn’t that a testament to how clearly delineated “you” are from Kris?
Well, yes, except…
Except reading the Weird Route as totally separate from Kris and their will was always a bit strained. Look at who Spamton identifies as the instigator of the Weird Route:
Not the player, not the heart-shaped object, not “the Angel”, just you. Kris.
But a lot of people were content to ignore this, in part because Kris could never be culpable in any sense for something as horrific as the Weird Route, right?
And so a lot of people were pretty startled when the Mantle holder said this:
Even though the connective tissue between the Shadow Crystal quest and the Weird Route – that of “Freedom” – was ALWAYS pretty obvious, and set up from the very beginning.
Take a moment to consider this. Set aside the broader idea of “freedom”, which most players undoubtedly do seek (conditioned as they have been by expectations from Undertale), and ask yourself this: does it actually make any sense to view the specific actions which happen in the Weird Route as stemming solely from the will of the player?
For example, does it make sense as an organic expression of the player’s will that Kris would try to force a romantic relationship between themself and Noelle?
I mean, of course there’s a kind of brute logic to it – Noelle seems to be the one with the game-exploiting powers, but we are chained to Kris and their SOUL. Since matrimony is traditionally mystified as a union of souls (and since the practical purpose which has historically motivated marriage as a construct is the reduction of the woman to docile property), it makes some sense to have Noelle joined with our vessel in wedlock.
But is this something most players are consciously thinking about? Is marrying Noelle a strategic choice which players are actually making? Or is it rather the case that the Weird Route feels as if it unfolds almost on its own, often to the bewilderment of the player, who has maybe a vague idea of which direction to push things in, but is far from totally aligned with it in purpose – is in fact rather alienated from it by virtue of their continual surprise at the shocking developments which take place? (Observe how many people initially don’t “get” that you’re supposed to enter Kris again in the pivotal scene of Chapter 4’s Weird Route)
Then consider the fact that in the Genocide Route, not only was the basic undergirding motivation behind the route (the pursuit of absolute power) latent to the vessel’s own personality and will, but that whenever something not directly caused by the player happened, it had a readily identifiable diegetic reason – the vessel itself was responsible!
Okay, but Kris clearly is not on board with the Weird Route the way that Chara clearly is for the Genocide Route. I mean, that is indisputable. Kris is clearly in a lot pain during its events and they fight tooth and nail to sabotage you whenever they can. Don’t interpret what I’m arguing here to be a minimization of that – it’s an absolutely essential part of the route that Kris does not want it. In fact, the Mantle holder (again!) spells out exactly what is happening:
Pay attention to their wording. They don’t say that Kris loves the Weird Route, or that they want it to happen. They say that Kris specifically enjoys the fact that they can say to themselves that “it’s not really them”. In other words, the part which they “enjoy” is the idea that WE are doing the dirty work for them, and that Kris can wash their hands of it - even resist it.
But the unspoken implication is that it “not really being them” is something of an excuse. True, there is clearly a difference between what Kris wants and what we make them do in the route. But we and Kris are aligned in our pursuit of the ultimate goal: Freedom.
That is the narrative significance of Kris being scared to enter the shelter, that is the significance of Kris looking away as they kill their friends in MANTLE but continuing to play, that is the significance of Spamton saying that it’s Kris who tried to see to far, that it’s Kris who will be crying in a broken home.
It's conventional wisdom that people aren’t defined by their thoughts – especially not repressed, unconscious thoughts – but rather what they choose to act on.
In the Weird Route, you draw out and forcefully manifest Kris and Noelle’s unconscious.
“Snowgrave”, seemingly the memory of a traumatic snowstorm; the subconscious guilt over losing the person who mattered to you the most; the wish to become stronger, to overcome your fears; to eradicate that vulnerable part of yourself that you associate with the one you’ve lost, the part you may blame for not being able to prevent the bad things that have happened to you; the desire to have someone with you to tell you what to do.
Freedom; the ability to transcend destiny; becoming so powerful that nothing can hurt you anymore; asserting your autonomy on the world; the sublimated playful urge to hurt and destroy other beings; the conviction that the ends justify the means....
and, perhaps, an abandoned childhood crush (Take note of Carol’s call at the end of Chapter 4 - her odd, ominous support for a romantic relationship between Kris and her daughter, and Noelle’s memory of an awkward, “forced” ferris wheel ride in the past – there seems to be a history here).
These repressed drives are excavated on the Weird Route, lulled to the surface via a “trance”, carried out with dead-eyed, zombie-like resolve.
Are Kris and Noelle responsible? Of course not. They would never be doing this if it weren’t for you.
But it all comes back to the Important Person’s Shirt.
"The shadows come to dance, my lord,"
"The shadows come to stay, my lord,"
(Art used in this banner created by Avielsusej on Twitter)
Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows.
If you only knew how strange it is to be there.
[…]
When the lights go out in the room in which Lumiere's invention is shown, there suddenly appears on the screen a large grey picture, 'A Street in Paris' — shadows of a bad engraving. As you gaze at it, you see carriages, buildings and people in various poses, all frozen into immobility.
[…]
It is terrifying to see, but it is the movement of shadows, only of shadows. Curses and ghosts, the evil spirits that have cast entire cities into eternal sleep, come to mind and you feel as though Merlin's vicious trick is being enacted before you. As though he had bewitched the entire street, he compressed its many-storied buildings from roof-tops to foundations to yard-like size. He dwarfed the people in corresponding proportion, robbing them of the power of speech and scraping together all the pigment of earth and sky into a monotonous grey colour.
Under this guise he shoved his grotesque creation into a niche in the dark room of a restaurant. Suddenly something clicks, everything vanishes and a train appears on the screen. It speeds straight at you—watch out ! It seems as though it will plunge into the darkness in which you sit, turning you into a ripped sack full of lacerated flesh and splintered bones, and crushing into dust and into broken fragments this hall and this building.
But this, too, is but a train of shadows.
This mute, grey life finally begins to disturb and depress you. It seems as though it carries a warning, fraught with a vague but sinister meaning that makes your heart grow faint. You are forgetting where you are. Strange imaginings invade your mind and your consciousness begins to wane and grow dim…
Maxim Gorky, review of the Lumiere programme at the Nizhni-Novgorod Fair, transl. Leda Swan
In the opening sequence of Chapter 3, Ralsei finally takes a moment to give Susie – and the player – a broad metaphysical explanation for how the Dark Worlds operate. And as Gaster alluded to when he mentioned photon readings turning negative back in Undertale, Ralsei asserts that Dark Worlds form from the negation of the negation of light, allowing for sensation through the dark. “Another side” is reached through the filter of the mind navigating the indistinct darkness, with the imagined made manifest. And yet, the word Ralsei uses to describe this process is telling: it’s an illusion.
Disregarding some questions that Ralsei’s very individuated, phenomenological description poses (how do the spaces themselves transform if the worlds are illusory - and more importantly, how is the experience mostly stable and shared between those who enter a given Dark World?), it nonetheless adds new depths to this central metaphor of Light and Dark, a metaphor I already felt was layered and well considered.
To begin with, I want to articulate a reading of the Dark Worlds which had already been occupying some space in my brain but which this new explanation really solidified: the idea of Dark Worlds as allegorical for animated pictures.
WHY I OPENED THIS POST
ON THAT GORKY QUOTATION
By animated pictures, to be clearer, I am referring primarily to what we might colloquially call cinema. At first this might seem like a strange suggestion – why would the video game Deltarune be allegorizing cinema, specifically? Well, for one, I don’t think this is really a direct allegory as much as a curious subtextual wrinkle. It’s not the sort of thing where you just substitute one concept for another to unlock the Correct Reading (‘it was always about cinema all along!’) - no, rather, the connections between Dark Worlds and cinema are more on the grounds of their shared relationship to illusion and imagination, which is why I also want to make it clear that I’m viewing cinema here in a more general sense than the restrictive quotidian idea of “the movies”. Instead, I refer more broadly to that technology which, through the interplay of light and shadow, can conjure images beyond this world - a technology which is certainly relevant to the hybrid medium of video games.
The very first steps towards what would later be termed “cinema” were accompanied by a marriage of astonishment and fear. From a 1897 recounting of one female journalist’s childhood memories of magic lantern shows:
I am reminded suddenly of a long-forgotten childish terror of the Magic Lantern show. The drawing-room in darkness, the ghastly white plane stretching away into the unknown world of shadows. It was all very well to call it a linen sheet, to say it was stretched between innocent familiar folding doors, it nevertheless divided the known and safe from the mysterious beyond where awful shadows lived and moved with a fearful rapidity and made no sounds at all.
(Magic lantern shows, for those unaware, were a kind of proto-cinematic entertainment show which utilized essentially primitive slide projectors to display images of moving figures on a screen. Example here)
And the film medium as we know it today is no less wanting for popular associations with the concepts of darkness, illusion, fear and dream. I touched on these connections a little in the opening of a previous Deltarune essay of mine, titled the Magic Circle, but seriously, there is no end to the amount of writing on film I’ve read which my pattern-seeking brain has immediately tied back to Deltarune.
The cinematic experience is a recreation of this ancient practice of theatrical renewal and bonding in modern terms, except that the flames of the stone-age campfire have been replaced by the shifting images that are telling the story itself. Images that dance the same way every time the film is projected, but which kindle different dreams in the mind of each beholder.
With a theatrical film, particularly one in which the audience is fully engaged, the screen is not a surface, it is a magic window, sort of a looking glass through which your whole body passes and becomes engaged in the action with the characters on screen. If you really like a film, you're not aware that you are sitting in the cinema watching a movie.
The paradox of cinema is that it is most effective when it seems to fuse two contradictory elements - the general and the personal - into a kind of mass intimacy.
Walter Murch, In the Blink of an Eye
Okay, so what is my point here? Dark Worlds and Film do be kinda similar in some ways? Well, as I implied earlier, video games are a visual-temporal medium, innovations in part on the cinematic form itself which has integrated a further degree of immersion via interactivity. And though video games are not typically projected onto a big screen in a dark room the way movies are, I know that when I play Deltarune, the lights are off.
It goes back further than the magic lantern. In antiquity, cut-out figures were puppeteered behind a screen, their shadows creating the illusion of movement. For most of human history we’ve sought out ways to trick our sensory organs into experiencing that world beyond our everyday lives, into manifesting that which is bound to the cerebral through make-believe. And if there was anything I neglected to analyze when I described the Dark Worlds as analogous to the concept of the “magic circle” – impositions of the imagination on reality – it’s precisely this; the ways in which we convince ourselves, temporarily, that we really are in that fictive domain.
That’s the realization I had about the Dark Worlds. They function as a sort of rough allegory for the ways in which humanity has used technology to immerse themselves into other realities via illusion. But you’ve surely noticed a throughline; these illusions are not always just analogous to dreams, but to nightmares as well, and this power to make nightmares come real is what I want to primarily focus on in this essay.
MOVING POSTERS
In the Darker than Dark sequence that Chapter 3 opens with, Ralsei goes on at some length about how darkness is intertwined with fear. Given the relative absence of this theme of fear in the preceding two chapters, the fact that it occupies such a central role in this vitally important scene where we're finally given a formal explanation for what Dark Worlds are feels quite significant. Indeed, fear as a theme becomes much more prominent going forward, particularly in Chapter 4. This new preoccupation also recontextualizes some things that came before; the Sweepstakes blog post highlighting a young Noelle's "ICE-E sighting", wherein she supposedly catches the mascot winking at her, may previously have seemed like somewhat arbitrary bait for tinfoil theorizing, but can now be more properly understood as foreshadowing for the ideas being explored in the upcoming chapters.
Note how Noelle's description of ICE-E winking at her in the dark more or less directly prefigures Ralsei's explanation of how in the dark, "a chair can look like a monster... a poster can look like it's moving... your eyes can't see the truth anymore." Note also how both incidents illustrate this idea of the static image coming to life - the moving picture. Likewise, a chair changing shape is a de-familiarization of the inert and ordinary.
This specific incident with ICE-E may be even more relevant to the game's narrative than just simple groundwork for its themes; not only does ICE-E also make an ominous cameo appearance in Tenna's Doom Board...
... but the mascot is repeatedly referenced in Chapter 3's Mantle quest, specifically with the track BURNING EYES (in reference to Noelle's sighting), which is internally referred to as nightmare_boss (a connection to the infamous Undertale Fun Event).
(The level of psychosis this junior jumble can cause is certainly something to behold)
I've gone over in a separate post why I personally believe that FRIEND and the Mantle in Chapter 3 are the same character, but "nightmare_boss" is also a reference to the final boss of Link's Awakening, the inspiration having been made explicit even before the release of the chapters, with the Sweepstakes page "romb" which quotes the fight directly.
The Nightmares in Link's Awakening take on different forms throughout that battle, embodying the shadows of Link's psyche, the greatest threats he has faced with the player - including other bosses fought throughout the game and, memorably, Ganon, who never appears directly in Link's Awakening but which any player familiar with the Zelda series will have memorized the moveset of, as Link surely has through his multiple clashes with the demon king.
Previously, I've speculated that FRIEND may be a shapeshifter. If we assume that this core part of the Nightmares fight in Link's Awakening may be applicable to Deltarune, we find that perhaps the connections between the ICE-E sighting and FRIEND's introduction in Chapter 3 are more literal than one might initially image. An open question is why exactly FRIEND manifests in what seems to be Susie's room, from a chair, given that we've had little reason to suspect that Susie is acquainted in any way with this mysterious being, unlike Kris, Noelle and Dess. A possible explanation is that FRIEND can inhabit the forms of people's fears; if that's the case, ICE-E would certainly be a suitable vessel, given that the mascot is regarded as a kind of cryptid and internet urban legend known for its terrorizing effect on children.
THE FEAR-OF-DARK
If FRIEND can take on the form of individuals' specific fears, Titans are a sort of complimentary opposite force as embodiments of the abstract concept of fear itself. As Ralsei evocatively puts it: "It's the fear-of-dark. It's the bump-in-the-night. It's the shadow of the backside of your mind." Sounds very applicable to FRIEND as we see them appear during Ralsei's spiel in Chapter 3, but the Titans seem to be more general, more universal. They represent the feeling of fear itself common to all people. Where FRIEND is the perceived, Titans are the act of perception. This broad, universal tendency is illustrated in their single-mindedness: "They have no consciousness," Ralsei says, "they only exist to destroy." Blind destruction - an anxiety of the lowest common denominator.
A check description of Titan Spawn reveals that they are "shards of fear, found in places of deep dark", whereas checking a Titan reveals that it is "the fear of dark, which appears in many forms." Though this wording is a tad ambiguous, I choose to interpret it as meaning that Titans are just one form of this fear of dark; though it could be alluding to other types of Titans existing (and we do know from the Roaring exposition cutscene in Chapter 2 that that is the case), the word "titan" implies a very specific sort of being and we know that there are other creatures birthed by the deep dark that do not fit that bill; not only FRIEND, as previously discussed, but also other creatures we meet in the new chapters. In some of Chapter 4's many deep dark sections (where Titan Spawn and FRIEND also make appearances), stringy, serpentine creatures with only the internal title "Unknown" can be found.
A running theme of these types of beings is their black, monochrome palette, only distinguished from the foreground with white borders (and other times blending into pitch-black spaces, such as with Titan Spawn, Unknowns and FRIEND in Chapter 4, or the Mantle in Chapter 3).
But undoubtedly the narrative's main example of a deep dark being would be the game's primary antagonist, the Roaring Knight.
Not only is the visual design of the Knight in-line with other beings of the deep dark, but they literally look like a miniature version of one of the Titans from the Chapter 2 cutscene.
They also exhibit this glitchy, frequency-looking effect, shared by Titans and Titan Spawn.
Now, honestly, the soil might be a little too fertile for speculation about the "how" and "why" of this. You could come up with any number of explanations for how the Knight ties into being an embodiment of fear. Does Dess (who the Knight clearly is) represent a fear of Kris's; the spectre of a troubling, traumatic past coming back to haunt them? Does the Knight, as the game's villain and frankly a sort of self-conscious archetype of JRPG villainy, share the simple-minded malicious nature of the Titans? Maybe. But I want to restrain myself even more and just point out an intuitive, obvious, and well-supported connection: the fact that the Knight is the Roaring Knight. All else failing, the Knight has a clear and explicit connection to the Titans in the form of their role as the harbinger of (and perhaps the one destined to bring about) the Roaring, which will be actualized with the Titans' destruction.
THE ROARING NIGHT
Given the new information we received with these recent chapters, the Roaring is overdue for a reconsideration. A somewhat common interpretation from the first two Chapters of the game, and one that I held as well, posited that the Roaring was a sort of thematic endpoint of the idea of Dark-Worlds-as-escapism. If you're familiar with self-reflexive anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion, Paranoia Agent or Serial Experiments Lain, all of which touch on the topic of storytelling or constructed worlds, this will be a familiar motif - the increasing insularization of the stories' protagonists metaphorically and/or literally signals the threat of apocalypse as the line between fiction and reality, the personal and the universal, the self and the other, collapses. The metaphorical breakdown of social life is literalized as societal destruction. To put it in very simple terms: escapism brings about the apocalypse.
Now, over the course of the 1-2 era I became increasingly skeptical of the idea of Dark Worlds as pure escapist fantasies. While there is certainly something to the idea (and it's a very explicit part of the text in both Chapters 2 and 3), I became alienated with it when I started feeling more and more like it was an approach which encouraged a flattening, moralistic outlook on the story. Does Deltarune really just amount to a parable about how fiction is powerful, but you can't let it become too powerful? It felt platitudinous, especially if you're like me and have seen other works articulate this idea in what felt like a more considered, deeper way. This reading also felt like it was inspiring some especially facile takes on what the Dark Worlds are supposed to be. To this day, it feels like the consensus reading remains "Dark Worlds represent escapism via [X medium]", something which already struck me as both too shallow and too specific back before the new chapters came out, but which I now regard as essentially textually invalidated by Chapter 4. My feeling that there was something much richer going on is part of what inspired my first essay and now this one, where I've tried to articulate that the Dark Worlds are not, in fact, some easy concept-substitution allegory but a far more symbolically complex narrative device - that they were much less schematized than some people made them out to be and in themselves more akin to unstructured communal play.
So let's take another look at the Roaring, and let's pay attention to what we're told about it.
The sky will run black with terror
And the land will crack with fear.
Then, her heart pounding...
The EARTH will draw her final breath.
It was easy to miss before, but you certainly can't ignore the focus placed on fear here. The earth is anthropomorphized almost as having a heart attack or something.
When the LIGHT is subsumed by SHADOW
When the FOUNTAINS fill the sky
All will fall into CHAOS.
The TITANS will take form from the FOUNTAINS
And envelop the land in devastation.
The surviving Darkners, crushed by the darkness
Will slowly, one by one, turn into statues...
Leaving the Lightners to fend for themselves
Lost eternally in an endless night...
Is that your idea of paradise?
We now know that the Titans are specifically representative of fear - when the light is subsumed by shadow, the terror of the total, enveloping darkness is what brings about the world's devestation.
IF FOUNTAINS FREED, THE ROARING CRIES.
AND TITANS SHAPE FROM DARKENED EYES.
THE LIGHT AND DARK, BOTH BURNING DIRE.
A COUNTDOWN TO THE EARTH'S EXPIRE.
The fountains are "freed" - and the titans shape from "darkened eyes" (once again alluding to Ralsei's perspectival explanation of Dark Worlds).
The Knight...
The Roaring Knight...
...
The one who's making the dark.
The one who's trying to destroy the world...
... so that's our enemy.
I do feel that there is a sense in which the Roaring boils down to this basic fact: the Roaring is, simply put, an apocalypse scenario. It's Game Over. It's the player's failure state, the black screen which literally envelops the "world" of the game window in darkness. Like much in Deltarune, I feel like the trope is being self-consciously invoked and, at least partly, employed nakedly for the sake of storytelling value itself. Why is there an impending apocalypse in Deltarune? Because the story needs stakes, damn it. Don't forget - there is a diegetic storyteller in this world playing god with our characters.
But there's more to it than that, of course. The Roaring is, as the Chapter 4 track calls it, a Neverending Night.
Lost eternally in an endless night...
...If I could choose… I guess... I wouldn't have an ending! It's just better if stuff just... goes on forever, right?
Gah ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! Well ain't that somethin'. At this late hour, with the bells ringing out their justice. You choose eternity.
Can I tell you... a stupid dream I have? ... No matter what... I... want to keep being friends with you and Ralsei. When the sun comes up again... I want tomorrow to be the same as yesterday. And the next day... to be just the same as that. That in the end... we can always go back to the way things were.
There is merit to the perspective that characterizes the Roaring as escapist. In a way, it is just the logical outcome of the understanding of Dark Worlds as allegorically linked to the concepts of fiction and imagination - which they are. Dark Worlds empower narratives - personal and communal journeys, the playful animation of objects and ideas. If the Roaring is a night which never ends, the "story" goes on forever... Which, on some level, it has to, right? We're outside Deltarune's diegetic dimension of space-time and capable of resetting the story at our convenience. This fact was a core focus of Undertale's narrative, and I'd be very surprised if Deltarune neglected to comment on it at all. Ralsei says of the Roaring: "Is that your idea of paradise?", and Susie initially identifies with the Knight, regarding their actions as potentially positive; there is clear set up for the Roaring as temptation. Right now, it's hard to see why anyone sufficiently informed about what the Roaring entails would ever willingly choose to bring it about... nevertheless, there is a sense of thematic necessity demanding that exactly that will happen.
Let's not lose sight of the main focus of this essay, though - the Roaring is characterized by fear, by terror. There is a simple elegance to this fact which makes it pretty humorous that this subtextual aspect of Deltarune's Light/Dark distinction went unnoticed for so long - things, as it turns out, tend to be scary in the dark. Dreams happen during the night, but so do nightmares.
Fiction can serve as an escape, sure, but this dynamic cuts both ways. A coherent, meaningful experience of fiction as play and art relies on our tacit, unstated understanding that it's not actually real.
Emotional reactions may be strongly invoked but intellect and judgement are never completely submerged. The subconscious does not take complete charge of the film-dream as it does of the real one. Part of our mind remains unengaged in the fantasy. We know that the experience is unreal and in an important sense unimportant. We are freed from the responsibility of acting upon what we see and feel. Consequently, we can trace our reactions with a detachment which is unattainable in dreams and very difficult in any real situation of like intensity. We can analyse our dreams and our real experiences after the event. In the cinema we can observe our involvement while it is taking place. We enter the film situation but it remains separate from ourselves as our own dreams and experiences do not.
V.F. Perkins, Film as Film
And when fiction gets overwhelming we retreat back to reality.
It is revealing that the words a parent uses to comfort a child frightened by a nightmare - "Don't worry, darling, it's only a dream" - are almost the same words used to comfort a child frightened by a film - "Don't worry, darling, it's only a movie." Frightening dreams and films have a similar power to overwhelm the defenses that are otherwise effective against equally frightening books, paintings, music.
Walter Murch, In the Blink of an Eye
"Reality" might be boring by itself, but it is safe, speaking relatively... - not so with the realm of the imagined, its wonders and terrors. Without the ability to assume a distance...
Oh sweet rotisserie Santa! The nightmare IS become real.
It is one of the elementary human fears: the loss of distinction between the real and the imagined, not being able to impose order on your surroundings, the desertion of one's rational faculty - the very essence of human existence in the estimation of many a philosopher.
ATHENA - You hesitate to see before your eyes
someone in a raving fit?
ODYSSEUS - Yes, I do — if he were sane I’d not avoid him or hesitate . . .
ATHENA - But he won’t see you now, not even if you stand beside him.
ODYSSEUS - How will that happen, if he still can see with his own eyes?
ATHENA - His eyes see very well, but I will make them dark.
Sophocles, Ajax
We require an operating dialectic between the real and the imagined to imbue either with any meaning. The shadows can't dance without a light shining on the object. And absent the ability to demarcate, to order, to distinguish, we lose ourselves in neverending chaos.
For whatever nightmares the cinema stoked, reality ultimately remained intact. The train speeds towards the screen-window and yet before the impact - even as the audience shields its eyes in terror - the vehicle dissolves at the window's borders, rendering the former danger an inert geometrical form. Just a train of shadows.
Undertale delighted in hiding niche interactions and secrets for its players to discover, and one of the main reasons why discussion around it was so spirited was its resolute unwillingness to provide a clear meaning to many of its mysteries. In its wake were left an abundance of unresolved questions; many of which, as it turned out, served the purpose of setting up the next game in the series, Deltarune. There was W.D. Gaster, his strange followers and the tales of his experiments with Darkness, Sans with his breadth of forbidden knowledge and the strange objects in his secret workshop; of course, there was the archaic symbol of the Delta Rune, its true meaning lost to time.
But among the most peculiar and inscrutable of these was the mystery of what fans came to refer to as the “demon text”, a series of hidden messages buried in the game’s data under the label “demon”.
THE DEMON TEXT
(The information for this part of the post is mainly sourced from doge-w-a-bloge's Guide to the Demon Texts)
In the initial 1.00 version of the game, the demon text had four entries: X, Y, Z and R.
demonx: Part of this game's charm is the mystery of how many options or secrets there are. If you are reading this, please don't post this message or this information anywhere. Or doing secrets will become pointless.
demony: By the way, most of the seemingly unused text/files are used.
demonz: If you can find the in-game context for an asset, you can show it off. But if you can't, it probably means you haven't looked hard enough. Anything truly unused I'll probably post myself, later.
demonr: Living in a world like this, where people can simply cheat out the answers from the code... your impatience has REALLY damaged you, hasn't it?
On the face of it, there is nothing particularly mysterious about these messages: it’s a straightforward plea to dataminers urging them not to spoil the game online. There is little room for a diegetic interpretation; in fact, Toby in these messages acknowledges the distinction between those supposedly unused files which are still part of the story’s diegesis, and the actually unused files which have no bearing on the narrative. He describes the artistic philosophy behind his hiding secrets in his games, and also literally refers to himself uploading content online at a later date. Evidently, none of these messages are supposed to be canonical, and simply come from Toby himself.
That’s not to say that they weren’t still strange. Why were they labelled “demon”? What is with the accusatory tone of that last message? Why is it “r” – while the others are in the alphabetical order x, y, z?
Well, the questions were only beginning, because in version 1.001 the demon text got updated, with new sets of text: A, B, C and D.
demona: Greetings.
demonb: You have made yourself completely clear.
demonc: Understood.
demond: I, your humble servant, will follow you to the utmost...
These are a little more curious.
Now, it’s still somewhat possible to read these from the standpoint of Toby speaking to the dataminers. After all, these new messages are still located within the same script: “attention_hackerz_no_2”. Toby could be saying that by posting the messages online, the dataminers have “made themselves completely clear”, and that Toby is but a humble servant to his community, willing to indulge in their insatiable curiosity…
Still, the new messages are undeniably more ambiguous and evocative compared to the previous ones, and it’s no longer the clear, intuitive interpretation that these messages are coming from Toby himself. In fact, if anything, these messages sound like one side of a conversation we’re not wholly privy to. When the demon voice says: “you have made yourself completely clear”, followed immediately by “Understood”, they are repeating the same sentiment two times in a row, implying that something was heard between these two messages which is being responded to.
These new messages were not the only changes version 1.001 made to the demon text: a small part of the original text, demonx, still remained in the code, but was relocated near the naming screen outcomes – specifically, near Gaster’s placement in them.
In the next version, 1.05, demon text a-d were left unaltered, but a change was made to demon x – in the strings, the text was wiped out, leaving the variable empty.
The next patch, version 1.05A, contained absolutely no changes to the game at all except another small alteration to demon x – now, in all caps, it simply says:
demonx: HE IS
This was immediately undone in the next patch – 1.06, which released just a few days later.
Demon x was left empty until version 1.08...
demonx: …
...where emptiness was replaced with an ellipsis in the strings, indicating that there is still some presence there, just one that is electing to stay silent.
And that is the sum total of the information we have about the demon text in Undertale. It is rather esoteric and hard to make sense of. The first sets of demon text were straightforward, but with each new update, the demon text became more elaborate, introducing further hints towards narrative importance which in turn only gave rise to more questions, none of which were ever answered. Attempts have been made over the years to decode the significance of these messages, but few, in my view, have managed to reach any compelling conclusion.
But let’s address the elephant in the room: the most popular take on the demon text used to be that it’s Chara, and it’s not hard to see why – demon text a-d simply sounds a lot like them. Not only does Chara greet the player at the end of the Genocide Route in an identical way, and not only do they share the demon text’s formal mannerisms and verbosity…
...but they literally call themselves a demon, the only use of that word in the entire game.
With all this in mind, Chara being the one behind these messages seems at first like a very reasonable conclusion. They even call themselves our “partner”, which is sort of similar to the demon text calling themselves our humble servant. On the surface, an intuitive connection to make, given that Chara spends most of the game carrying out our will…
...until you remember that Chara calling themselves our partner really precludes them being a “humble servant” – and if you think that’s a stretch, you should remember that this idea of equal partnership is something Chara repeatedly emphasizes in the actual game. They back out of the Genocide Route if you don’t fulfill their conditions exactly. They erase the world anyway if you try to change your mind at the last second. They remind you that you’re not the one in control. The fact of the matter is that Chara just doesn’t follow us to the utmost.
And this is all overlooking the fact that Chara having a diegetic presence in the code is thematically just sort of… strange. The two other characters which Toby has definitively given a diegetic presence in the code, Gaster and Deltarune’s UNUSED, are very much defined by their existing in-between the lines of the game; they are lost, shattered, trapped. By contrast, it’s not clear what exactly the purpose of Chara being the demon text would be. It’s just too vague to add much besides further confusion surrounding their character.
I’ll just reiterate that I do think it is relevant that the demon text resembles Chara’s rhetoric, and that Chara calls themselves a demon – those facts should not just be dismissed out of hand – but I personally don’t think the demon text is literally being narrated by Chara.
But what does that leave us with? Well, the demon text seems to have some ties to Gaster, given that demonx was pointedly moved to just above Gaster’s place in the naming screen, and the fact that it was briefly made to say HE IS – I think we should all know by now that any mysterious and spooky fourth-wall breaking entity which is referred to with third person male pronouns is probably an allusion to Gaster.
Still, the text itself doesn’t seem to be from Gaster. While not too rhetorically dissimilar from his dialogue, Gaster has always spoken with all-capital-letters, and the only instance of the demon text using all caps is when it referred to someone externally in the third person.
Ultimately, the demon text remained an unsolved and frankly unsolvable mystery. There just wasn’t enough information to make much headway. Maybe (you might've been forgiven for thinking) it was never meant to be significant at all; maybe it was just Toby messing with some dataminers. With the lack of any meaningful progress towards figuring out its significance, the demon text was relegated to obscurity and forgotten by most theorists, who focused their attention on more pressing matters.
Until...
In a twist I doubt was on anyone’s bingo cards, demon lore brainrot made its glorious return with the advent of Deltarune’s third and fourth chapters, and it’s all thanks to this line – this line, which marks the first time since 2017 that Toby has acknowledged the existence of the demon text in any way, which confirms beyond the shadow of a doubt the narrative significance of the demon text, which solidifies an unambiguous link between it and Deltarune, and, in my opinion, finally concretely points to the existence of an independent non-Chara demon entity.
WHOSE SMILE?
The line is found as an option inside the vending machine in the Green Room’s backstage area, locked behind the S-Rank door. It’s a notably surreal bit of flavor text, offering a smile as a purchasable option for one point (even as it lists its price as “FREE”). If bought, or even if you have no points to purchase it with, it responds by smiling. The question of what the “it” in that sentence refers to isn’t entirely clear – the most straightforward interpretation would be that the smile itself smiles, though that's a patently tautological assertion which further contributes to the strangeness of the encounter.
In any case, one is compelled to wonder, especially with its connection to the demon text: what is prompting this option, who does this Smile belong to; who is at the player’s humble service?
Smiles are actually a major recurring motif across both Undertale and Deltarune, and have significant ties to multiple important characters. I’d say that on the surface, the character who is most prominently associated with smiles in Undertale is Chara. When their true form manifests at the end of the Genocide Route, their face is locked into a perpetual smile, probably their signature “creepy face” which Asriel remembers and comments on in the True Lab’s video tapes. And when Chara’s demonic personality starts taking over in the Genocide Route, the encounter pop up changes from an exclamation mark to a smiling face.
Flowey is also associated with creepy smiles, but I’d say that this can mostly be chalked up to Chara’s influence. Asriel looked up to Chara, and by the time he became Flowey, it’s clear he was actively imitating their mannerisms and violent worldview.
Chara and Flowey are not the only prominent smilers in Undertale, however. Another figure associated with smiles is none other than W.D. Gaster himself. Of course, the mysteryman sprite which most people in the community assume to be Gaster is, similar to Chara, permanently smiling. But Gaster’s most memorable connection to smiles is the infamous garbage noise audio file which plays in Entry 17’s room, titled mus_smile. The name here is significant, as on the surface, the audio has absolutely no relation to smiling beyond possibly the fact that it’s a garbled version of Muffet’s laugh sound effect. By giving it this title, Toby is very noticeably attaching a motif of smiling to Gaster, or at the very least to his experiments with Darkness, which would otherwise not be there.
There is also an unused room, room_water_prebird, or room 123, in which an unseen character inside the tall grass will ask the protagonist to do something about their friend, standing behind them with a creepy smile. If interacted with again, the NPC remarks that the friend has disappeared. This interaction could plausibly be in reference to Chara, Flowey or the mysteryman sprite – the specific wording of a creepy smile suggests a connection to Chara, whereas the fact that the room is unused and the friend disappears evokes the encounter with the mysteryman. Flowey also has a creepy smile and disappears if you notice him stalking you throughout the game, so it could very plausibly be him as well. And as we’ll see later, this encounter resonates curiously with a character in Toby’s next game.
Of course, there are other characters in Undertale which are associated with smiles. Sans’s face has also settled into a permanent grin, something which Flowey even calls attention to. And smiling comes up in several other circumstances throughout the game as well. This video by HalfBreadChaos gives a very thorough and comprehensive look at the motif of smiling across both games, but for our purposes in this essay, I want to focus on the motif of the eerie, unnatural smile in particular – and those are associated with Flowey, Chara, and Gaster specifically.
Looking at Deltarune, we once again see smiling come up as a signifier of creepiness, and, as in Undertale, particularly in relation to characters with some connection to the deeper mysteries of the game. Both Jevil and Spamton are perpetually smiling, and both of them give you items which are stated to smile at people who use them.
Kris also adopts Chara’s penchant for creepy smiles on at least one occasion, at the end of Chapter 1.
Smiles are further linked to fear through Noelle, who as a child was scared of ICE-E’s perpetually smiling visage, as well as electrical sockets, which looked like smiling faces to her – we see this replicated in Chapter 2, where an electrical socket will smile at the camera if you stand still around it for long enough.
But if there is any character in Deltarune defined by their smile it has to be this thing – DEVICE_FRIEND.
Most of the time, we see it simply as a hovering smile; other times as a black shape vaguely patterned after a cat. But it never, ever, stops smiling.
THE BACKSTAGE GAME AND DEMON IMAGERY
It’s precisely in Chapter 3’s backstage quest that FRIEND is properly folded into Deltarune’s narrative. When we attempt to play MANTLE, the original game which The Legend of Tenna is a modification of, we are prevented from doing so by our lack of a controller to play it with – until some off-screen presence leaves behind a controller with pink and yellow gamepads.
In MANTLE, we can come across FRIEND within pitch-black rooms on either side of the pyramid in the first board.
Elsewhere, a presence speaks to us with text which blends into the darkness, inquiring into whether we’re having fun, and stating that they’ll see us soon.
Later, in Board 2, we find a door decorated with demonic red horns, inside of which is another empty, pitch-black space where the same presence speaks to us.
Here, we find the shelter key – highlighted in pink, and later yellow text.
After Board 2, Kris seemingly tells Ramb that they can feel the presence of someone else backstage with them, to which he replies that that’s impossible. When we eventually enter the shelter with the key in Board 3, we confront the voice which has been speaking to us throughout the game, revealed to belong to someone presumably possessing the in-game avatar of the Shadow Mantle, which then battles us, summoning multiple grinning cats with pink and yellow eyes throughout.
After we defeat this mysterious voice and take the Shadow Mantle for ourselves, the vending machine will now list the SMILE option as being “SOLD OUT”.
While I want to postpone any detailed analysis of what’s going on in these games until a little later on in this post, it at least seems quite clear that the vending machine’s allusion to the demon text is strongly tied to whatever is haunting the game backstage.
The Secret Boss quest is not the only place where demons come up in Chapter 3. Notably, Dess's song - Raise Up Your Bat - references a crying demon heart. And the allusions to demons and demonic imagery don't stop in Chapter 4. Early on, during the Church service, you can have an interaction with Susie where she talks about a rumor that Kris and Catti tried to summon a demon together as children - this event had previously been referenced in Chapter 2, in flavor text about Kris unconsciously clicking on an advertisement for demon summoning classes, and in Catti mentioning how she and Kris studied the occult together.
Further into Chapter 4, the prophecy and the Darkners which study it make multiple reference to a pointed tail. It’s called a tail of hell - one which some "poor children" followed at some point in the past, and which an Organikk attuned to the deeper truth of the dark warns us "must not be followed".
The imagery of a pointed tail from hell is a clear allusion to popular depictions of demons, similar to the door with red horns in MANTLE, though curiously, this tail is depicted in the prophecy glass as multiple interlinking circles (possibly alluding to the visual style of Cat Petterz). In an unused version in the files, we also see the tail with the pointed end that is referenced by the Organikk.
FRIEND also makes another appearance in the Church Dark World, where it is again watching you from the dark, this time blending perfectly into the black background. To spot it, you need to illuminate the sprite from underneath with the ripples from the bell or the footsteps, in a similar process to how the Mantle holder can be spotted in Board 1.
WHAT IS THE MANTLE HOLDER?
Now, having laid everything out, the sheer volume of new information related to this figure of the demon is enough to make anyone’s head spin, but I think if there’s one question that might help us make better sense of the demon lore, it's this one: are there one or two entities backstage with Kris in Chapter 3’s Secret Boss quest?
To begin with, I want to establish this premise: whoever’s influence causes the SMILE flavor text in the vending machine is the same character that is responsible for demon texts A-D – we can call this character the demon. This premise rests on the idea that Undertale’s demon text presented an unsolved mystery as to the identity of the speaker, and that that SMILE calling back to the demon text represents a continuation of that same mystery. To this I will add another premise, that the obvious visual signifiers for demons we see throughout Chapters 3 and 4, like the red horns and the pointed tail, also belong to this demon character.
Now, I’ll just come out and say it: It seems to me that the most intuitive option by far would be that the SMILE which is referred to by the vending machine belongs to FRIEND, given that they have never appeared to us as anything but a smiling face. Likewise, it just makes too much sense to me that FRIEND would be responsible for leaving behind the pink-and-yellow controller – we know they can phase in and out of existence from thin air, and they obviously have pink and yellow eyes. Leaving the controller behind for us would also certainly be in line with them addressing themselves as our servant.
However, there is fairly compelling evidence suggesting that the Mantle Holder and FRIEND are separate beings, and from what I’ve seen, this is actually the consensus opinion in the community. Let’s run through the evidence commonly cited for this conclusion.
To begin with, the Mantle has a different mouth, and a different laugh as well. They also seem to be associated with a motif of fire.
The encounters with FRIEND and the encounters with the Mantle in Board 1, while similar, are subtly different. In both of FRIEND’s encounters, they appear and quickly vanish if you stay in the room for long enough, whereas the voice in the other room leaves behind text which can be seen if the player character walks underneath it, and only flies off-screen if the player comes near it.
The Mantle summons FRIEND enemies in their boss fight which highlights a visual distinction between the two.
All in all, it seems like these discrepancies might be an attempt on the game’s part to distinguish between FRIEND and the Mantle Holder as separate characters. And if we do accept that the Mantle Holder and FRIEND are distinct entities, a massive wrench is thrown into the idea that FRIEND is the demon, because suddenly, the Mantle Holder is the one with all of the characterization and narrative gravitas – the Mantle Holder is the one whose hiding place is behind the door with the red demon horns, the Mantle Holder is the one who taunts Kris in dialogue and implies familiarity with them. And while the SMILE connection is not quite as airtight as FRIEND’s, we do still see them laughing throughout their boss fight, and encouraging Kris not to have a “sour face”.
All this is to say that I can envision two scenarios here:
Either FRIEND is the Mantle Holder, the lone presence haunting the Green Room’s backstage area, and thus the demon, or…
The Mantle Holder is a separate character, the demon, and FRIEND is simply some related entity which orbits around this demon.
While I don’t want to dismiss the evidence for the latter scenario, I personally believe that FRIEND is the Mantle Holder, and it’s primarily for this reason: differentiating between the two introduces quite a significant degree of redundancy to their characters. These are...
both spooky presences which are defined by their tendency to stalk the player in total darkness (cats are also famously adept at seeing in the dark),
they have both been observing our actions throughout the game,
they are both tied to the pink and yellow color scheme,
both tied to the shelter,
both are characterized as "nightmares" - FRIEND via Ralsei's Darker then Dark exposition cutscene in which they are presented as a monster hallucinated in the Darkness and brought to life by the dream-like Dark Worlds, and the Mantle holder through their music literally being titled "nightmare" internally,
and, finally, as we’ll see, they both have strong ties to the demon text and the demonic imagery in general.
But to elaborate more on my point, let’s take a detailed look at FRIEND themselves.
WHAT IS 'FRIEND'?
One of the notable things about FRIEND is that they are listed internally as a DEVICE file. If you're unaware what that means…
A QUICK ASIDE ON WHAT 'DEVICE FILES' ARE
Within Deltarune’s data, there are select files which use a different naming convention compared to the other ones. These have been dubbed the “DEVICE” files by the community.
Their names stand out from the rest for being in all caps and more formal or elaborate sounding than the normal file names. The names utilized are:
DEVICE_
PROCESS_
Both of these refer to internal “objects,” which is to say the actual “entities” or “processes” making up the game itself.
IMAGE_
These refer to the sprites which are placed on the “objects.”
AUDIO_
These refer to sounds which are heard in the game.
PLACE_
ROOM_
These refer to “locations” within the game.
This unique naming scheme, along with the fact that it's only used for menus of the game or sequences where Gaster speaks to you from the void, has led to the popular consensus that these files were diegetically named by Gaster, a conclusion that I for one definitely agree with. This is where FRIEND comes in: with the exception of the introductory sequence of the game, almost every one of these files correlates to a process ‘outside the bounds’ of normal gameplay, things like the save menu, the game over screen, the dogcheck error screen; FRIEND is the lone exception to this, as an in-game character which can be encountered during regular gameplay.
(As a side note, for whatever reason, FRIEND is not listed as a DEVICE file throughout Chapter 3, with all instances of it instead reverting back to the regular file naming conventions, and its name instead redacted by an underscore.)
ON FRIEND
In any case, the reason why I find all this so significant is that it makes FRIEND one of the few characters to have a diegetic presence in the code – a strong link to Undertale’s demon text. Furthermore, the fact that the ‘FRIEND’ title seems to specifically come from Gaster is another connection to the demon text, likewise tied to Gaster through the modifications of demon text X.
And I think the significance of FRIEND’s diegetic presence in the code goes beyond just how it ties back to the demon text or Gaster. I believe that the code in Deltarune actually has a diegetic equivalent in the form of “the Depths”, the primordial layer of reality underlying the worlds surface. It is from here which darkness spews out when the Fountains are opened; where the eternal night grows beneath the world basked in light; where hell’s roar bubbles from. Where Gaster can be found, where the UNUSED voice can be found, and where FRIEND can be found. I elaborated on this idea in another post of mine from before Chapters 3 and 4, if you're interested. But if I'm right about this, it means that FRIEND literally hails from Deltarune’s version of hell.
Does FRIEND have any deeper ties to demonic imagery? Well, there are a bevy of smaller potential connections you could mention, though admittedly none of them are silver bullets by themselves. For example, the Organikk darkner, whose “light-blocking mask lets them commune deeper with the truth of the dark”, sports a distinctive pink-yellow color scheme, warns you not to follow the tail, and, wouldn’t you know it, if you try to damage them they will briefly reveal that beneath the organ pipe mask is a dark face with demonic horns sticking out.
In the game’s data there is also this unused sprite of a large pink and yellow organ, which has these arrows jutting outward. While I couldn’t tell you what this is really about, it’s a suspicious coincidence that the arrows on this pink and yellow organ happen to look like the pointed tail. It also bears mentioning that in the Silence update for the Spamton Sweepstakes, the page rarecats, where FRIEND makes an appearance, links directly to the windows page, itself just a puzzle that redirects you to the lostwheretheforestwouldgrow page, which references the pointed tail. We see something similar in the game itself, where a pink/yellow Organikk (the only one with that color scheme in the overworld of the Second Sanctuary) provides us with the exposition about the pointed tail.
Something that might have crossed your mind as you've been reading this post is this question: if FRIEND is the demon, how come it doesn’t have horns, like the Mantle Holder? Why is it just a cat? Well, we should finally take a look at something we’ve been neglecting up to this point: the Mike room.
Now, it’s easy to dismiss the Mike room and its contents as nothing more than an extended gag from Toby. It has a very playful tone and is full of references to silly tinfoil theorizing by the community. I think it’s reasonable to not be very deeply invested in the mystery of Mike or anything related to it after Chapter 4.
However… I personally have a hard time dismissing the room entirely. For all the many jokes, it still actually is an unresolved mystery who and what Mike is, and where the idea of him even came from. Now, maybe that is the precisely the point - that’s neither here nor there. I don’t want to question whether Mike is still relevant or not. But the fact of the matter is that the room itself is not entirely devoid of legitimate lore relevance. Though the main joke of the Mike fight is the ambiguity about what it even is – with multiple fourth-wall breaking references to real theories people have had about the character – if you actually pay attention to what gets featured in the fight and the room, you’ll notice that it’s much more related to Cat Petterz than anything else. You interact with things in the room by using a mouse to pet it, the pink/yellow color scheme is all over the place, most of the attacks are related to cats, after the Mike fight is concluded it straight up transforms into a Cat Petterz minigame room, and the green Pippins even has this ominous line to say about FRIEND:
* I swear, you people see PINK and YELLOW and think, oh, a FRIEND!!
* Being a friend doesn't make you them YOURS! Those teeth, they BITE!
Now, you could dismiss all of these as mere jokes, but this is harder to do when the real IMAGE_FRIEND ends up literally showing up in BATTAT when you reach a high enough score. All this is to say that the Mike room should not automatically be disqualified when it comes to revealing information about FRIEND.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at the door to the Mike room. What is being depicted here, exactly? Well, it’s some sort of black form, with two triangular shapes jutting out from the top. On it, there are pink and yellow squares which resemble eyes. Given the Mike room’s many connections to FRIEND, and the appearance of pink and yellow on a black facial shape, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say this seems to be some sort of depiction of them, especially since we don’t have any other better lead on whatever this might be. Clearly, though, this would be FRIEND as we’ve never seen them before. In addition to the pink and yellow, there are also two other blue and purple squares, and on the bottom half there are two pairs of smaller blue squares on either side. Frankly, the form here looks more to me like some sort of spider. To be honest, I don’t know what the hell to make of it, but the really interesting part to me is that if we accept that this is FRIEND, what are usually cat ears in its design has transformed into what is clearly a pair of horns. And something about this makes sense to me, because if you recall from the Darker than Dark cutscene, a big point is made of the fact that when things get dark, forms become fluid because the eye stops being able to perceive things clearly. FRIEND is at the nexus of that cutscene, and we see them emerge from the shape of a chair into some sort of vague cat-resembling monstrosity. It would be intuitive to me, based on what we’ve seen, if FRIEND is some sort of shapeshifting creature, appearing as a cat sometimes while at other times taking on a more demonic appearance.
Lastly, I want to discuss a revelation I had - something shown to me which has been one of the major factors in convincing me that the Mantle Holder and FRIEND are one character, united in the role of the demon. I want to discuss what I believe to be the inspiration for this hypothetical character I’ve been discussing, the demon of Deltarune.
Let me take a minute to describe something to you, and you tell me whether any of it sounds familiar…
BARBAROI
The 1994 Japanese roleplaying game Breath of Fire 2 opens with the protagonist Ryu, a young boy, being sent to find his sister Yua, who has become lost somewhere in the outskirts of the village they are living in. After making your way past the forest which surrounds the village, you eventually find your sister, who was visiting the remains of a dragon which guarded the village many years ago from an invasion of demons that emerged from a hole in the mountain. After taking a nap, Ryu makes his way back to the village, only to find that his family has vanished, and all of its inhabitants have forgotten who he is. Banding together with a fellow orphan, the two run away from the village, only to be caught in a rainstorm. Seeking shelter, they enter a pitch black cave. The other orphan lights a candle, and descending further into the cave, the children see a pointed tail whose shape comprises of multiple linked circles.
Led by their curiosity, they follow the tail further in, and eventually reach a horrifying monster – a demon known as Barbaroi. The demon exposits about Ryu’s role as the Fated Child, destined to open a gateway to a world of darkness. The demon then knocks out Ryu, and is henceforth remembered as his deepest, darkest nightmare.
Skip all the way to the end of the game, and it is revealed that Ryu's home village was worshipping a religion manufactured by a false god, a devil figure cloaked as a benevolent savior, feeding off people's faith. Barbaroi is a servant of this false god. At the end of the game, you go back to where the story began, where the remains of the dragon blocks a gateway to the depths below. Finally unlocking the seal, you travel deep underground, where in utter darkness you at last confront the demon of your past, your greatest fear made manifest, proving that you are no longer the scared child you once were. Barbaroi addresses himself as your nightmare and adopts a playful attitude, enjoying the battle for its own merits and as a test for Ryu.
Now, I don't think I need to spell this out, but it seems quite clear to me that both the fight against the Shadow Mantle, and the imagery of the pointed tail is directly inspired by this character of Barbaroi. And, lest you think this stuff is just a coincidence, Toby has actually spoken before about Breath of Fire as an inspiration for Deltarune, and frankly it's just kind of obvious once you actually look into it. It literally has a town called HomeTown, and a base building mechanic where you recruit NPCs to your hub area which you progressively build up and expand as the game goes on.
The boss fight against Barbaroi is, as mentioned earlier, very similar to the Shadow Mantle boss fight. Both the Mantle holder and Barbaroi playfully taunt the protagonists with overly familiar tones, and allude to a traumatic role they played in their pasts. Both of them are referred to as nightmares. And both of the initial confrontations take place in pitch-black darkness.
Okay, so the Mantle holder is a Barbaroi analogue, and almost certainly the one whom the pointed tail belongs to. But as we’ve gone over by now, many of the demonic allusions, and the pointed tail in particular, are tied to FRIEND and the pink/yellow color scheme specifically. Not only that, but unlike the Mantle holder, FRIEND has been characterized as a large and monstrous or scary presence, such as on the Mike room’s door and in the the Darker than Dark cutscene, where Ralsei outright identifies it as a monster. Remember, this is quite abnormal, since monsters are an ordinary part of Deltarune’s world! For Toby to have Ralsei refer to FRIEND as a monster in the original meaning of that word, as a frightening, malevolent creature, feels quite significant. Finally, FRIEND has been built up much more throughout the narrative than the Mantle holder in isolation has; not only does FRIEND’s face appear as an easter egg in every chapter after the first one, including prominently in the Secret Boss quest of Chapter 3, alongside the Mantle holder, but the pink and yellow motif is absolutely all over the game. On top of this, FRIEND has a mandatory appearance at the start of Chapter 3, and shares a laugh with the Roaring Knight, the game’s main antagonist. This is the level of buildup you’d expect for a character with a narrative role analogous to Barbaroi in Breath of Fire 2, rather than the Mantle holder’s one optional appearance in Chapter 3. Hell, given that Barbaroi's voice is featured in the introductory sequence of Breath of Fire 2, FRIEND might even be the elusive Second Voice in Deltarune’s opening CONTACT sequence.
But okay. We’ve gotten quite deep into conjecture at this point. With everything laid out now, let’s take a step back and actually look at the implications of what I’m proposing here.
TO SUMMARIZE
What are the main tenets of what in Deltatuber parlance we might call my "Demon Theory"?
I’ve made many little connections throughout this essay, some of which I’m sure people might find more or less convincing than others. But there are five primary claims which I would say my theory makes:
Demon texts A-D, and X after its modification, are all diegetic in some sense, and spoken by a coherent being in the world of these games.
This same being is what’s responsible for the allusion to demon text D in the Green Room’s backstage vending machine.
This being is who the pointed tail of hell belongs to.
This being is closely linked to FRIEND and the Mantle holder and is probably either or both of them.
This being is heavily inspired by the character of Barbaroi from Breath of Fire 2.
So, we’ve established the “what” and “how” of Demon Theory. But I also want to take a beat and ask another question: why? What does it mean for the narrative for there to be this demonic entity?
THE DEMON AS NARRATIVE SYMBOL
To get at some of what I think this motif of demonic imagery symbolizes, I want to go back in time and reevaluate the very first mention of demons in this series.
Upon the player’s second completion of a Genocide Route in Undertale, Chara appears and announces themselves as a demon. As previously mentioned, this is the only textual reference to demons anywhere in Undertale, but it certainly leaves an impression and it even resulted in “the demon” becoming a popular moniker for Chara’s undead state or at least their embodiment at the end of the Genocide Route. I think this shouldn’t be ignored and the practical consequence of it is that the demon as symbol stands for something larger in the text of these games than just the hypothesized single entity which I’ve been discussing throughout this post. In this part of the essay I want to discuss what I think this broader narrative symbol signifies.
To begin with, demons in these games are summoned, or called upon. Chara calls themselves “the demon that comes when people call its name”. The voice in the demon text sounds like it is responding to being summoned, and then ordered to do something. Over in Deltarune, we hear about Kris and Catti apparently having attempted to summon a demon in the past. There is a clear motif here of demons only arriving after they’ve been sought out.
Secondly, demons seem to be associated with a higher level of awareness or influence. Chara as they appear at the end of the Genocide Route is the only character in Undertale who seems to have a direct awareness of the player. They understand how the game’s stat system works, and even have the ability to both erase the world entirely and restore it. The demon text, meanwhile, can only be found deep within the code of the game, and at one point referenced the many secrets hidden in the game (admittedly, this doesn't seem to be diegetic, but it's still associated with the demon symbol). And the demon in Deltarune, if my ideas are correct, similarly seems to possess a level of power that other characters (besides Gaster) simply don’t have. The Mantle Holder, for example, knows Kris and their motivations, knows about the player’s actions in previous Chapters, knows that the player is a separate entity from Kris, and is seemingly able to hijack and alter the MANTLE game. FRIEND, likewise, is listed internally as a DEVICE file, implying that it exists on the same level of reality as Gaster does.
Lastly, demons carry the traditional connotations of malevolence or evil. Though the Genocide Route makes a point of the player’s indifference, and Sans and Flowey posit your motivation to be beyond good or evil, Chara themself (or at least their ghost) seems to be more an embodiment of hatred and power at the expense of others. Not only as a coordinator and main avatar of the route where you literally kill everything, but also in what the actions of their past life represent: their hatred of humanity, their kill-or-be-killed attitude and their decision to choose violence where Asriel chose mercy. A similar assessment can be made of Deltarune’s demon. The Mantle holder is referred to internally as a “nightmare”, they taunt Kris about their violent urges and are associated with the Weird Route. Organikk warns us that the pointed tail must not be followed, and FRIEND is referred to as a monster and is implied to be malevolent in that conspicuous line from the green Pippins where he mentions how its teeth bite.
With that established I want to discuss an idea which I believe the demon motif broadly illustrates - that is, the idea of seeing too far, flying too close to the sun, curiosity killing the cat.
We see this idea somewhat alluded to in the first sets of the demon text, where we’re admonished for our impatience which, apparently, has "REALLY damaged us". A similar sentiment is described in one hidden message on the official Undertale website, left behind by Flowey, who similarly chides us for looking behind the curtain for secrets and warns us that we might find something we DON’T like.
What are you doing? Looking for secrets? Don't put your nose where it doesn't belong. Or you might learn something you DON'T like… Hee hee hee.
In the Genocide Route the player’s curiosity is emphasized – Sans and Flowey describe the player’s psychology as someone obsessed with discovering the consequences of all possible actions – a curiosity which “pushes everything to its edge”, as Chara later describes – much to many players’ dismay, as they try to restore the world they ended up erasing. In Deltarune, FRIEND is a secret which needs to be sought out in each chapter. It – and the Mantle holder – hides in the dark from the player. The Mantle holder congratulates the player on finding its “secret hiding place”. But, as the Sword Route and Weird Route illustrate, the hidden path is not always so pleasant. The children were likely motivated by curiosity when they followed the pointed tail, but as the Organikk ominously hints, this was likely a grave mistake.
Which leads me back to Kris, who was almost certainly one of the poor children who followed the tail. Kris has a special connection with the demon in Deltarune, and the Mantle holder expresses a disquieting level of familiarity with them. I think this special connection is embodied in an object that I’ve neglected to discuss until now: Kris’s red horn headband – one of the most prominent examples of demon-related imagery in the game.
From Tenna’s flashback cutscene, we know that Kris wore the red horns as a child, shortly before Dess’s disappearance. Toriel says that Kris wore the horns for a period of months but that at some point, they were lost and never seen again. Now, I personally think that Kris wore the horns both in an attempt to feel closer to their family and community, but also for a more specific purpose: to roleplay a character that they had invented with Dess for their make-believe adventures – the prince of the dark, Ralsei. If that's true, the red horns were not just a symbol of Kris’s desire to be close with their family, but also a sort of embodiment of their relationship with Dess specifically. At some point, a demon is summoned, and the two follow the pointed tail to the Shelter, at which point something terrible happens and Dess gets lost. Now, I’m deliberately being vague on the details, but I think that whatever happened, Kris came out of it with immense guilt, feeling responsible for the incident. I think that this is when the red horns – as an embodiment of Kris’s relationship with Dess – transformed from something of a positive symbol of Kris’s non-human side (the side of them that feels connected with monsterkind) – to a symbol of something far more negative, inhumanity in the ethical sense, similar to how Chara’s demon identity severs them from their ties to humanity, which can be seen in how monsters throughout the Genocide Route fail to identify them as human. Parallels between Kris and Chara are well established at this point, with their shared single-stripe Important Person’s Shirt, their red eyes, fondness for knives, sweet tooth, etc. And I think that this shared connection to a demon identity is one of the most important connections between them, maybe even *the* most important.
When the demon gleefully talks about Kris enjoying not having to take responsibility for the actions we’ve made them perform, it might as well be Kris’s guilt speaking to them – the demon horns that they wore as a child, the ultimate symbol of their lost past. Kris seeks freedom – from what, it’s not clear – freedom from guilt, from fate, from embodiment; whatever it is, it seems it can only be found in the blackest abyss. And when you stare long enough into the dark, you may find it staring back. Smiling.
=)
CONCLUSION
And there's that. Honestly, getting my thoughts on this out there felt like exorcising a demon of my own. I'm not usually the type to go for crackpot or tinfoil theorizing, so writing something this filled with conjecture was a bit of a challenge for me. Looking back on what I wrote, I don't really feel particularly proud of it... it sort of reads like the incoherent ravings of a madman convinced he's figured out the solution to the universe. Even though this post truly represents the best I think I can do at the moment with the available information, I still feel like we're missing something absolutely vital, and that half of what I've written is sure to end up wrong... but this has been my experience with Deltarune theorizing after Chapters 3-4 in general.
In any case, I hope this gave people some food for thought. Thanks for reading!
(The beautiful art for this banner was made by CursedMemes420 on Discord)
POST 3-4 EDIT
This following post was written before the relase of Chapters 3-4 and was intended as a comprehensive compilation of what I considered to be strong evidence for Kris being the Knight, along with rebuttals to common counterarguments. Obviously, we now know that the Knight exists independently from Kris, but the post still functions as a time capsule providing a window into a now-outmoded hypothesis, and helping to explain why its adherents believed it. As it turns out, a lot of the evidence was validated (with Kris and the Knight working closely, which very few predicted) and a lot of the counterevidence turned out to be invalid or in any case irrelevant, often for just the reasons stated in the post! If there's any lesson to take for speculation about the future chapters, it's that it's probably good to keep an open mind - had Kris Knighters been more willing to consider an alternative while still factoring in their established evidence, and had anti Kris Knighters been less hardline and actually listened to the points Kris Knighters were making, more people would probably have been able to see the specific outcome of Dess and Kris working together.
Okay, I didn't think I'd have to do this, but it turns out the new chapters of Deltarune are apparently an entire two months away still so we all have some time to kill. I'm going to use it to try to convince the last remaining fence-sitters that Kris is, in fact, the Knight, and hopefully maybe even convert some doubters.
The idea that Kris is the Knight has figured prominently in my other writing on Deltarune, such as my essay titled The Magic Circle, and my corollary speculation post about the metaphysics of Deltarune. To be frank, I think reading those two would be a much better use of your time, because I cover a lot of the evidence there too and utilize it to actually present an in-depth analysis of what the game's narrative is about. This post here will be purely lazer-focused on making the case for Kris being the Knight, presenting all the evidence I can think of and debunking the major counterarguments.
Let's begin.
THE POSITIVE CASE FOR
KRIS BEING THE KNIGHT
Kris creates a Fountain on-screen
This is the requirement for a character being the Knight and Kris is the only one who explicitly clears it – we don’t even have a reason beyond order of elimination to suspect anyone else at the moment.
Kris does it on the Weird Route too, and in spite of Ralsei having explained the ramifications
This tells us that Kris is extremely committed to making fountains and must have some strong reason to be doing what they're doing, something which takes precedence in their mind over potentially risking the lives of other people, including close friends and relatives. On the Weird Route, the risk they're taking is obvious, but I also want to remind people that on the Normal Route - if Kris isn't the Knight - they're creating a Fountain despite another active Fountain creator still being out there, which is arguably even more dangerous and morally objectionable; Kris would be risking omnicide here.
Kris planned the Fountain ahead of time
Between Chapter 1 and 2, Kris plugs in the TV which they later make the focal point of the Fountain they create. This existing as a plot point at all very strongly points to Kris knowing how the mechanics of Dark World creation work prior to Queen’s explanation. On top of this, them eating the pie just so happens to later give them the crucial distraction needed to be able to slash the tires and have Susie stay over. Then, at the beginning of Chapter 2, the narration (which is often aligned with Kris's thoughts) says that "it is not yet time to wash your hands" when you try to do so, further implying that the chapter's ending is already planned.
Kris generally seems to know a lot of stuff that they shouldn’t
For example, they know exactly what’s going on with our control over them, enough to be able to remove or block our control when they need to, and they're confident enough in their abilities that they taunt us about it, smiling at the camera and such. This meta-awareness could potentially be explained by their numerous connections to Gaster (for example, Monster Teen anxiously mentioning that something happened with Kris in relation to the Bunker). Kris also seems to know exactly how Dark Worlds are influenced by Light World objects, as seen in the following point:
Kris’s Fountain creation method is deliberately paralleled with the Knight’s in Chapter 2
Kris plugs in the TV and leaves it on to ensure that they become the Darkner villain - as it turns out, this is exactly what the Knight does with the laptop in the computer lab. Setting aside the fact that Kris is using the Knight's exact methods, how does Kris even know to do this? Kris does it regardless of whether you inspect the laptop and find out what the Knight was doing. How are they so confident about their ability to properly set up this Dark World, if they've never done it before?
Kris uses the Knight's weapon and tool of choice
Queen says that the Knight used a blade to create their fountain, and shows an image of an identical looking knife to Kris’s. Later, we see Kris use that same knife to create the Chapter 3 Fountain. Kris is also named after a type of knife, and is heavily associated with them in general. Toby laying it on this thick would frankly just be kind of dishonest if it didn't have any meaning.
Kris does not have an alibi for the creation of Chapter 2’s fountain
Kris was established to have done something mysterious and physically taxing with a knife over the previous night. Lo and behold, the next day, someone has used a knife to create a Dark Fountain. Just a tad suspicious, maybe? This is why a number of players figure out that Kris is the Knight well ahead of the actual reveal - because the game never gives a satisfying answer to a question it established (what was Kris doing last night?), while providing clear hints (the knife, the TV flavor text) which point towards the correct solution so its reveal doesn't feel contrived or like it's coming out of nowhere. Some Deltarune fans call Kris Knight "obvious" - but they're evaluating it on blatantly unfair pretenses. Kris Knight was surprising, you just can't expect to cash out an already-revealed twist for a second surprise.
Kris’s soulless scenes seem tied to Fountain creation specifically
Chapter 2’s ending seems very much intended to be continuous with Chapter 1’s, answering mysteries which the previous ending left us with. In both instances they use their knife to do stuff, flash their red eyes, and taunt the player.
Kris actually is a knight
Kris wears knight attire in the Dark World and Toby has referred to Kris as a “sword-wielding fantasy knight”. This is not a trivial point; many of Toby’s biggest inspirations, such as Illusion of Gaia and LIVE A LIVE, figure knights and knight-like imagery very prominently, so the symbology of knights in fantasy seems like something he's specifically interested in, including the fact that they are frequently heroic protagonists. And yet most other Knight candidates have no clear or satisfying explanation for why they would be dubbed a “knight”, and why Toby would be choosing that narrative archetype for them. Certainly none of them have the advantage of being a knight protagonist, which leads us to:
Toby is clearly interested in subversions of the protagonist and antagonist roles
Discussing the SNES game LIVE A LIVE, Toby said this (and I must warn the reader of some implied spoilers):
As far as individual chapters go, I really loved the “Middle Ages” chapter. After all the scenarios with atypical game protagonists, finally revealing a standard fantasy setting with a knight hero as one of the “final chapters” was such an excellent twist for a JRPG, and a perfect lead up to the actual last chapter itself. To think that our heroic knight of justice would end up like that… It’s the kind of wonderful betrayal of expectations that influenced me when I created UNDERTALE as well. You know, the thought process of, “to think the protagonist could actually...” Anyway, I don’t think I’m supposed to say any more about that. To be honest, if anything this LIVE A LIVE influence is even stronger in my current work, DELTARUNE. Not only is the story separated into different chapters, but the player’s character is also a sword-wielding fantasy knight, who may play another role than just a simple “hero”.
To be clear, (and again, spoilers!) Toby here is referring to a knight character who goes from being a heroic protagonist to the main villain of the game (whose title is "the Lord of Dark").
OFF, another big inspiration for Toby, features a playable character who is established as firmly separate from the player. As the game progresses you are invited to question their actions and whether you should truly be siding with them.
In moon: Remix RPG Adventure, the traditional JRPG hero turns out to be the game’s antagonist.
Metal Gear Solid 2 complicates the player’s sense of morality and desires with what the “game” pressures them into doing.
And in Toby’s own Earthbound Halloween Hack, the game constantly questions whether what you’re doing is truly “heroic” or right.
It's strongly implied the Knight did not enter the Dark Worlds they created
This is clearest in Chapter 2, where Queen says she doesn't know the Knight's plans and is just guessing based on their actions (which she also recorded via the laptop's camera). Instead, the Knight is implied (in the laptop flavor text, for instance) to have simply manipulated the room and that this is mostly how they exert their will on the worlds they create. This of course sheds new light on how we are to understand Dark Worlds and alters what we thought we knew about Chapter 1 and Fountains generally. And it's all perfectly consistent with Kris’s methods at the end of Chapter 2.
The Darkner bosses are corrupted by the Fountains themselves, not an encounter with the Knight
Even though the Darkner bosses so far purport to serve the Knight, something which has been repeatedly emphasized is that this is not because the Knight sought them out and convinced them to be their servant, but because the Fountains themselves had a corrupting influence. In other words, the Darkner bosses are generated by the Fountain as villainous servants of the Knight.
This is supported both by in-game evidence:
Queen wasn't always so… harsh.
No, she WAS! She just got WORSE somehow!
It wasn't 'til that DARK FOUNTAIN showed up,
That she started going into overdrive.
"Knight" this, "Knight" that, "Fountain" that…
Like, what does that Knight have going for it that I don't!? C'mon!!
And external evidence:
Timestamped Undertale 6th Anniversary stream, where Toby says the Fountain changed King
Kris being the Knight fits well with the storytelling subtext
Deltarune is loaded with subtext about the Dark Worlds being like fictional stories or dreams, and Kris being the Knight is a great fit for this because it implies that they are creating Fountains specifically to be sealed. Their connections with Ralsei (which I'll explain later) also imply that they are guiding/directing the adventures themself. This also opens up plausible speculation about their motivations, such as wanting to get stronger by leveling up or populating Castle Town.
Kris’s CD Bagel noise is the same glissando jingle that plays at the end of the scrapped animated intro
If you don't know about the scrapped intro, here's a timestamped link to the part in the 6th anniversary stream where Toby discusses it. Basically, a jingle which played during a part where the Knight looked down at the Fun Gang from atop a staircase was repurposed in Chapter 2 as a special jingle for Kris. Below is a comparison between the two (I'm not sure who made it, so sorry for not crediting!), and an illustration I threw together of how I imagine the scene looking like.
Kris is arguably the only one who makes sense for the scrapped intro
If the Knight was seen on-screen, even just as a silhouette and even heavily armored, it would reveal too much about their body shape and size to have it be a functional mystery, and it would ruin the “red herring” that it’s Kris in Chapter 2 (the sole exception being if the Knight was the Vessel). Not to mention that Tenna, who would be featured on the staircase, is not created by the Knight if Kris isn't the Knight, so their inclusion is very questionable. Meanwhile, the appearance of "dual" or "split" selves is a common trope in anime intros, so both LW and DW Kris being featured in the same scene would be understood as metaphorical by the viewer.
Ralsei has extremely suspicious ties to Kris
For starters, Ralsei is the same height as them, looks like a typical Dreemurr, and his name is an anagram of Asriel. It seems very likely because of his horns that Ralsei is Kris’s red horn headband, which represents Kris’s desire to be closer to their family and community. From this, it's a pretty intuitive jump to assume that Kris created him, and thus the Grand Fountain as well.
Ralsei initiates cutscenes in both Chapter 1 and 2 where the player looks away from Kris and Ralsei, and upon returning back to their viewpoints finds that Ralsei has been secretly speaking with Kris alone. Ralsei also seemingly lies in Chapter 2 about having “sensed a dark presence” when explaining why he arrived in the Cyber World - what this line implies about when the fountain was created does not make logical sense with the timeline (we'll get more into this later). All in all it seems rather likely that Ralsei is working for Kris, and has been tasked with keeping the player "on track" (but still invested).
Kris is heavily tied to Chara, Undertale’s morally ambiguous player character
Chara – like Kris if they’re the Knight – had an incredibly ambitious and morally questionable plan which they were working towards, and they also have a knack for taunting or rejecting the player with scary smiles and red eyes. Kris being the Knight seems like it’s continuous with the moral ambiguity which Toby clearly seems interested in exploring with his human protagonists.
Some features of the Fountain seem to point to them springing from Kris’s “will”
For example, the consistent emergence of secret bosses located underground with a shared origin story about being contacted by Gaster, where they learn about their lack of control over fate and their subordinate position to some higher entities, has a lot of parallels with Kris’s predicament, and their ties to Gaster. Is there some subconscious reconstruction happening here? I talk about this in my Magic Circle essay.
The question of the Knight is not presented as a whodunnit mystery.
So far, there’s been exactly one major candidate, and they’ve hoarded basically all of the evidence. The remaining characters are left fighting for scraps – the most popular non-Kris candidate is a minor NPC who happens to say some thematically relevant and evocative stuff and has minor ties to the Fountain locations. But there’s no reason in the first place to suspect that there’s anyone who knows about how Dark Fountains work other than the currently established characters, and even less to suspect they’d have the motivation to create them. We barely even understood who the Knight was and what they were doing until approximately two seconds before it was revealed to be Kris (and no, that’s not a red herring just because you say so).
COMMON ARGUMENTS AGAINST
KRIS BEING THE KNIGHT
“Any Lightner can create fountains!”
This is true, no doubt. The problem with this line of argumentation is that it does not suffice to dismiss the overwhelming evidence for Kris being the Knight. Kris is not suspected because they’re a Lightner, or even just because they create a Fountain. They are suspected because there are quite literally no other Lightners with any concrete positive evidence for them being the Knight except Kris. When push comes to shove, there’s just not a compelling reason to believe a more complicated alternative explanation for Kris’s actions other than the simple one that is them being the Knight. Occam’s razor says: give preferential treatment to those hypotheses of equal explanatory power which require less assumptions.
“Kris being the Knight is a red herring!”
You can feel that way, but this isn’t an argument. The idea that the Knight’s true reveal is coming sometime later is just baselessly assumed and used to cash out the red herring objection. Again, there’s nothing wrong with thinking that it’s true – it’s okay to have hunches and intuitions – but you can’t use it as an argument, because it isn’t one.
“Kris isn’t evil!” / “I just don’t want Kris to be an antagonist.”
Again, it’s hard to argue with feelings. It bears mentioning that we really don’t know anything about the motivations of Kris if they’re the Knight. We don’t know whether they’re an “evil” bad guy. Personally, I find it very unlikely, because Toby is typically in the business of writing sympathetic characters even when they do bad stuff, and Kris is already in a fucked up situation just by virtue of us controlling them. If Toby can make Asgore (of child murdering fame) sympathetic, I’m sure he can manage with Kris, and we’ll all be happier for it because conflict and ambivalence creates interesting stories.
“The Knight wants to cause the Roaring, and Kris clearly doesn’t want that!”
We actually know neither of these supposed facts. Our information about the Knight comes from King and Queen, who both quickly prove themselves to be out of their depth and not very knowledgeable about what they’re doing. Queen herself strongly implies she has never even met the Knight. All we know for certain is what the Knight has done – create Dark Fountains. As for Kris, whether they’ve done or said things which would indicate they don’t want the Roaring to happen, the fact is that with this much evidence against them, all their other actions are called into question. That said, who’s to even say Kris as the Knight wants the Roaring in the first place? Because their name is the Roaring Knight? That could easily just be a moniker for their storytelling purposes.
“When Kris dies, the Roaring happens! How could that happen if Kris was the Knight?”
More accurately, when the SOUL shatters, “the world was covered in darkness” (an obvious double entendre for the game screen going black). But assuming that the Roaring does happen, this doesn’t seem to contradict anything. I mean, Kris’s SOUL is the only thing that can seal the Fountains, and every chapter boss so far explicitly intends to cause the Roaring. It makes sense that the Roaring would happen if they were left unopposed and their Fountains unsealed.
“How does Kris know where to make the Fountains ahead of time?”
This is one of the few objections to Kris Knight I can genuinely respect. I mean, it is quite strange that Kris and Susie always end up going to where the Fountains are through pure accident (Alphys and Noelle respectively send us to the locations where they are, and Kris can't have known Susie would stay over). To explain this, I would point to the fact that Kris almost certainly has had an encounter with Gaster, and one of the main effects of being “Gasterpilled” that we see is having precognitive powers and being able to read “FATE”. This also explains Kris’s extremely contrived action of eating the pie in anticipation of Susie coming over (which is something, to be clear, we need to be able to explain regardless of whether or not Kris is the Knight).
“Kris just plugged in the TV to watch it while they ate pie!”
Disregarding the fact that this would be legitimately horrible storytelling, this is objectively false because Susie points out that the remote is dusty and hasn’t seen use in ages.
“Kris was just preparing a sleepover by plugging in the TV!”
So was eating the pie a part of it too somehow, or just a very lucky coincidence? How can this explain Kris making the Fountain on the Weird Route, and people’s often-cited idea that they are doing this in some bid to warn Undyne? Are we just fifteen-layer deep in coincidences here? This doesn’t seem likely, to put it mildly. There is no reason for Toby to make this a plot point other than to establish Kris knowing Fountain mechanics ahead of time.
“King and/or Queen didn’t recognize Kris!”
This is almost certainly because neither one have actually met the Knight. Queen strongly implies this in her dialogue, and it already seems likely from the fact that we don’t even know of any way to exit those two Fountains except by sealing them – Ralsei says as much. It seems much more likely that the two are, as Queen says, intuiting the will of the Knight from their actions, such as creating Dark Fountains in the first place, and from things like how they arrange the rooms and the Will they imbue the Fountains with.
“But the Japanese translation–”
Yes, King says “command” instead of “will” – except this is every bit as ambiguous as the English dialogue. The substance of the dialogue remains identical: King thinks he knows the will, or command, or goal of the Knight, and thinks he’s fulfilling it. Both lines retain the Biblical overtones, and there’s still nothing proving they’ve actually met.
“How does the Queen know to call the Knight ‘the Roaring Knight’ if they haven’t met?”
Another objection I can respect. There isn't a particularly clear answer for it, but my personal argument would be that Darkners seem to be generated with certain “inherited” knowledge, derived from a Fountain’s will. If you want to hear the in-depth case for that, you can check out my other essays mentioned at the beginning.
"Spamton's line about communion clearly hints at Alvin Knight! Spamton has met the Knight!"
Spamton's line about communion is not referring to the Christian ritual, it's referring to Gaster (who Spamton reveres as some sort of deity, clearly). Let's look at the full context:
I USED TO BE NOTHING BUT THE E_MAIL GUY, NOW I'M THE [[It Burns! Ow! Stop! Help Me! It Burns!]] GUY!
[[Amazed at thi5 amazing transformation? You too can]] HAVE A [[Communion]] WITH [[Unintelligble Laughter]]
SOON I'LL EVEN SURPASS THAT DAMNED [[Clown Around Town!]]
BUT UNLIKE HIM I'M GONNA [[Shoot For the Sky!]] AND GET ON THE PATH TO ...
[[The Big One]]
I'LL GET SO. I'LL GET SO. I'LL GET SO. I'LL GET SO. I'LL GET SO. I'LL GET SO.
[[Hyperlink blocked.]]
SPEAKING OF [[Communion]]
KRIS, DID YOU KNOW THAT THE KNIGHT...
No, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to --
TOO MANY EXCESS VACATION DAYS?? TAKE A GOD DAMN VACATION STRAIGHT TO HELL
Spamton's "communion" is clearly alluding to his contact with the "someone" who also contacted Jevil. Likewise, "unintelligible laughter" calls to mind mus_smile, Gaster's signature audio track which is actually a highly corrupted version of Muffet's laugh.
As for what this is communicating about the Knight, it seems to be alluding to them being connected with Gaster - which is true under Kris Knight.
“Kris was scared of the Fountain at the beginning of Chapter 1!”
Since Kris is easily the prime suspect when it comes to being the Knight, it would be absurd to just take their actions at face value. To be frank, we don’t even really need to know what Kris was thinking here, because when a case is resting on as firm a foundation as Kris Knight is, odd behavior becomes something you work to try to explain or reconcile with all the other evidence you have; without the foundation destroyed, the hypothesis can’t be dismissed.
Anyway, the most reasonable explanation seems to me to be that Kris was goading Susie into entering the closet first, since she was clearly reluctant to. Kris can’t risk Susie not falling into the Dark World with Kris, so she needs to go first.
“Kris warns the Kings about the Roaring in Chapter 1!”
This one is subject to the same scrutiny as I described above, but this line has also been massively decontextualized and blown out of proportion; this is a very minor piece of dialogue where the Kings are vainly worrying about their jewels and diamonds and asking Kris about them, and Kris seems to dryly respond that their world is in danger – in other words, that there are bigger things to worry about than their jewels. It’s a cute little joke, and hardly debunks Kris being the Knight. Kris is just roleplaying the hero they’re supposed to be in the Dark World narrative (just as I think they ‘roleplay’ the Knight!)
“Kris warns Undyne about the Dark Worlds and the Knight! Why would they lie?”
Could it have something to do with the Chapter 2 ending where they stage a break-in and presumably lure concerned individuals into the Dark World? Concerned individuals like... the one Toriel called shortly before? I mean, it would be really convenient for Kris if they could guarantee a way for people not to suspect them of being the Knight if that’s who they actually were…
This is not to mention that we're the ones who make Kris say that to Undyne. We have to go out of our way to meet Undyne and pick that dialogue option. But either way, it evidently fits with Kris’s plans, so it makes sense that they wouldn’t strain to say it or something like that.
“Queen says that the Knight created the Fountain that same day!”
Past midnight is still on the same day. Remember that Queen is a computer.
Also, I just want to point out that if the Fountain wasn't created the previous night (regardless of whether it was Kris who did it), the Cyber World timeline seems extremely rushed and shaky. Did a whole rebellion against Queen really form in like, 30 minutes or whatever? And there are more issues with the timeline we'll get into in a second.
“How did Kris have access to the Library?”
The same way we have access to both the School and Library after hours (no one is working at either at the end of Chapter 2) – nobody seems to bother to lock the doors. As per Alphys, there’s no crime in Hometown, so maybe we shouldn't be too surprised.
“How did Kris walk all that way in zombie mode?”
We have no reason to be putting arbitrary limiters on what Kris can or can’t do when soulless, so this is just kinda making stuff up. Kris is doing anime leaps from windowsills; I think they’re fine walking a relatively short distance. In Chapter 1 they also do the strained zombie walk before they even rip the soul out, so this seems mostly to be a presentational thing.
“Why couldn’t Ralsei sense the Library Fountain if Kris created it the previous night?”
As I hinted earlier, Ralsei’s line is nonsensical. For what he’s implying to be the case, it would have to mean that the Knight created the Fountain in the time it takes for Kris and Susie to walk from the Supply Closet to the School’s exit (because we can hear the traffic jam outside, and we know the Annoying Dog went into the Dark World before us, still in the car) – a patently absurd proposition that doesn’t even seem logically possible, even assuming optimal timing. It would also mean Berdly and Noelle were in the room when the Fountain was created, which leads us to:
“Closet Knight!”
Black Chestnut’s video on Closet Knight is definitive as far as I’m concerned, he goes into great detail in explaining how and why it makes absolutely no sense at all and is riddled with holes.
IN CONCLUSION...
Kris being the Knight is a conclusion that is surprisingly marginalized in the Deltarune theorizing community for how intuitive, well-supported and repeatedly suggested by the game it is. In many circles, you tend to get shut down or labelled a "casual" who "doesn't understand the game" if you attempt to start a discussion about Kris Knight, or put forward ideas which are premised on it. If I'm allowed to pontificate a little, I can only imagine that this is because people are simply really attached to the idea that the Knight plotline is a whodunnit which will result in some surprise external villain for the Fun Gang. People have been daydreaming about boss battles against the Knight ever since the release of Chapter 1 nearly seven years ago; to speculative headcanons like that, Kris being the Knight is a rude splash of water to the face, so it perhaps is understandable that people would reject it as "not feeling right". At the very least, though, I hope that even if I haven't convinced you that Kris is the Knight, I have at least convinced you that they can't be so easily dismissed as a candidate.
Thanks for reading! This post is pretty long and I know this topic gets some people heated very quick, so I appreciate the show of faith in sticking to the end.
On the pale's connection to nihilism,
and their shared theological origins.
This essay contains spoilers for Elysium Corona Mundi; that is to say, the video game Disco Elysium (2019), as well as the novel Püha ja õudne lõhn (2013), better known as The Sacred and Terrible Air.
My interpretation is heavily informed by the analysis of the pale outlined in ghelgheli’s incredible Introductory Entroponetics. Though it is not strictly required reading for this essay, there will be resonances between the two, and I heavily recommend reading it to gain a better understanding of the pale as both a diegetic and thematic element in the storytelling of Elysium.
Introduction
This is where nihilism leads. It is no longer what could be, or what could not be. It is. [1]
So says Ambrosius Saint-Miro, Elysium’s final innocence, in the ninth and titular chapter of Sacred and Terrible Air, shortly after declaring an atomic war explicitly aiming to expand the pale across the planet’s (?) entire surface. The following chapters depict a world in the process of being wiped out. Nihilism succeeds, it seems – in what Ambrosius would have one believe was an inevitable victory. But though we know now where nihilism leads, one is conversely compelled to wonder: from where did it originate?
Here in our world, nihilism is often thought of as a phenomenon of modernity, a vague force that’s risen to prominence in an increasingly secular and existentially reflexive world. The pale is treated in much the same way by most analyses of Elysium; people suppose it to be an allegory for some offspring of our modern (or postmodern) world. Interpretations differ; some point to the above-mentioned conceptualization of modern nihilism, others might think of Mark Fisher’s concept of capitalist realism and hauntology, others still might have an extremely specialized (and limited) metaphor in mind like social media. Many combine and blend together these various readings to their liking, but most seem to agree on the fundamental point that the pale’s function as a narrative device is to communicate something about the cultural condition of modernity. While it’s doubtlessly right that the pale is used for such narrative purposes, what's at risk of being forgotten here is the fact that the pale is distinctly not a modern phenomenon in the universe of Elysium. In fact, it seemingly predates recorded history. How do we make sense of that fact?
To be clear: I'm not looking to explain what the pale is - you can read ghelgheli's brilliant essay for an attempt at that - what I wish to do is propose an explanation for how the pale developed through Elysium's history to encompass two-thirds of the world. To that end I will be looking at the pale through its association with the concept of nihilism, a connection repeatedly emphasized in the text, and to explore its historical character I will be delving into the thought of what was arguably its first major theorist.
Nihilism and Morality
Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life’s nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed beneath, masked by, dressed up as, faith in “another” or “better” life. Hatred of “the world,” condemnations of the passions, fear of beauty and sensuality, a beyond invented the better to slander this life, at bottom a craving for the nothing, for the end, for respite, for “the sabbath of sabbaths” [2]
Nihilism really became a *thing* in the 19th century with Russian nihilism, a radical socio-political movement grown from a milieu of moral and epistemological skepticism, seeking to tear down enshrined institutions and cultural values. While I don’t intend to explore the subject in depth right now, it bears mentioning that Elysium’s portrayal of Current Century nihilism as more of an organized political movement rather than the vague dispositional boogeyman that nihilism is so often conceptualized as today takes some clear influences from the history of the early nihilist movement in Russia; Martin Luiga’s Full-Core State Nihilist depicts the countercultural movement in the process of transition into state hegemony following Ambrosius’ ascent to power. Nevertheless, though lines were often blurry between nihilism and more radical political activity here in our world, by itself the former tended to lack a constructive side: it was a movement centered on negation above all. [3] The name ‘nihilism’ was popularized by Ivan Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons, where it was used to describe a disillusioned younger generation, and that sense of disillusionment is what has persisted in the image of nihilism to this day.
Eventually, Friedrich Nietzsche incorporated the concept of nihilism into his philosophy after hearing reports of the Russian movement, and it's arguably his interpretation of the concept which has really had the most influence both academically and colloquially. I won’t concern myself much with whether or not Nietzsche’s formulation is truly accurate to the historical character of the original movement; while he may have played fast and loose with the term, I do believe it’s his idea which ultimately reflects the core of Elysium’s nihilism.
Something Nietzsche held, in stark contrast to the understanding of nihilism as an exclusive phenomenon of modernity, was that it was not something new. Rather, it was only the most recent form of a far older idea. To Nietzsche, nihilism was immutably tied up with Christianity, and to what he called slave morality.
Nietzsche had postulated something of an (abstracted) origin story of morality. [4] He starts from the idea of two groups: haves and have-nots, masters and slaves, the powerful and the weak – and he traces the beginnings of morality to the concept of the “good.”
Well, what is good? To Nietzsche, the idea of the good begins simply as that which is synonymous with one’s nature. Or in more immediately intuitive terms, perhaps, what is good begins as what is good for oneself. A way of reflecting yourself in the world around you; all is good that is conducive to your own justice, your own benefit, your own power. This is to say that the concept of the good was affirmative, positive, constructive. The bad, by contrast, was an afterthought; it was simply a word to describe all that was not good, or worse yet hostile to that which was good. This affirmative morality was the domain of those who held power: indeed, its very conception was an act of power and domination. Their conception of the bad encompassed the character of those lower than them on the social hierarchy; the powerless and enslaved masses. Importantly, the condition of being enslaved was what was seen as bad – slavery as a social relation was not. And importantly, “bad” for the masters did not have any inculpatory dimension: people’s badness was not ontologically wrong, it did not call for punishment, it did not rouse one to righteous anger. Far from it; a predator does not resent its prey for being weak, after all.
Contrasting this, Nietzsche describes another sort of morality which takes as its basis the exact same content of that which is good in the masters’ morality; only, it no longer goes by the name “good.” This morality has reversed the traditional axes of valuation – but what was previously “good” is not just called “bad” now, either. The negative axis, which the masters termed bad, is substituted for a new concept: evil. The slaves, weary of life and helpless in fighting their oppressors, develop a deep-seated resentment for the masters which festers inside of them and can only be expressed through an imaginative capacity. It is thus that the slaves (in collaboration with a similarly impotent priestly faction of the masters) mendaciously turn the dominant morality against itself. Everything synonymous with their masters becomes evil: intrinsically, immutably wrong, and blameworthy. And its opposite – the good – is an afterthought: being good simply consists in not being evil. In this way, slave morality is premised on negation. This is Nietzsche’s (very truncated and simplified – because this essay can only be so long) psychological explanation for what eventually is crystallized in Christianity.
The idea of ressentiment is core; a hateful, vindictive, yet impotent desire for revenge. Also important is the promise of relief. Not only is satisfaction taken from the fantasy of one’s oppressors burning in Hell for eternity, but also in the idea of eternal reward, eternal rest, eternal peace. All that which one could not have in this life, bequeathed infinitely. Those are the engines which power slave morality for the next centuries. Though it achieves cultural victory with the coming-into-power of Christianity, Nietzsche describes these opposed modes of valuation duking it out on the battlefield of History for thousands of years; through different ages and societies, the dominant morality was invariably some uneasy mixture of the two. Slave morality is eventually perfected in the bourgeois class and achieves victory and dominance with the French Revolution, before culminating in its own self-immolation. The search for Truth uncovers the illusory quality of God – and from his rotting carcass, secular nihilism emerges like a butterfly from chrysalis, its theological shell cast off. While God and the afterlife may no longer be sustainable ideas, the rejection of the material world remains for the nihilists. Life-denial remains. That is the core of what nihilism is to Nietzsche - the drives turned against themselves, the will towards nothing.
On the supposed innocence of Innocentic Rule
What if a symptom of regression were inherent in the “good,” likewise a danger, a seduction, a poison, a narcotic, through which the present was possibly living at the expense of the future?
The desire for a unio mystica with God is the desire of the Buddhist for nothingness, Nirvana - and no more! [4]
How are Nietzsche’s ideas relevant to Elysium? We should be careful in applying them since, after all, Elysium’s history developed differently to ours. That said, it can’t have been too differently. Communism is a thing, along with its associated historical materialism, which means that the development of classes proceeded along more or less similar lines – from the specialization of labor, civilization is birthed in antiquity alongside class distinctions, slavery emerges from civilization's necessities, serfdom becomes dominant as slavery declines, the merchant class of the bourgeoisie comes into tension with the aristocracy, and finally the proletariat is born from the decline of serfdom. Likewise, we have evidence of slave morality: life-denial as virtue which secures a better afterlife, [5] the heaven and hell dyad [6] and the monotheistic god [7] are all ideas we see crop up from time to time. And, of course, overt nihilism becomes dominant near the end of Elysium’s history, a situation which Nietzsche viewed as a sort of end state for slave morality.
To get to the root of how slave morality might’ve developed in Elysium, it seems prudent to travel back to the beginning of its recorded history, to the Perikarnassian. Indeed, we find that 'Pius' is said to have invented the idea of the monotheistic god and the equality of all men before it; [8] a surefire sign of slave morality. Now, to be fair, the Perikarnassian and Elysium’s antiquity in general is shrouded in mystery, and it’s dangerous to presume too much about their beliefs. Given that 8,000 years ago is remarkably early for the invention of a monotheistic god compared to our world (where Judaism and Christianity only came to prominence ca. 2,500 and 2,000 years ago respectively) it may even be that this is an historical revision of some sort.
Regardless, Perikarnassianism is always emphasized as a theology, [9] and the one thing we can (with relative certainty) say they founded is the innocentic system. The true novelty of the Perikarnassian, thus, was the view of History as finite and teleological; the future no longer a ceaseless, unknowable onslaught on the present, but a distant destination, a promise. Potentialities erode; in the ecclesiastic view, events move along a fixed track. God has a plan and the innocence carries it out.
Let’s inquire into the name innocence for a second. What does it actually mean? Ambrosius has something curious to say about it in his speech to the citizens of the world: “I am innocent, and now you are too.” [10] What this connotes to me is a certain psychological function for those who accept innocentic rule. The Perikarnassian must have emerged from a society of widespread suffering, presumably abounding with slavery and other brutally pronounced forms of class domination, with no relief in sight. Unlike the communists of modernity, a working class revolution was literally unthinkable for the laborers of antiquity, since surplus extraction was absolutely vital for the functioning of ancient civilization. What is left but to reject the world and place faith in death itself? Such (I postulate) was the Perikarnassian zeitgeist; rejection of material existence. Nietzsche always emphasized that people can suffer through anything, so long as they believe that suffering to be meaningful. And I think this is precisely what the idea of the innocence provided: a meaning for one’s place in the world, in history. It said: you are okay. You suffer now, but that suffering is necessary. Your existence is not arbitrary; it is positioned on a path that is proceeding righteously towards liberation. The basic idea behind the innocentic system is that people defer responsibility for their own existence to an innocence, which redeems it as necessary (and thus innocent) by virtue of their own inherent necessity (thus innocence). I also believe (assuming that the Perikarnassian really was the first monotheist) that followers were assured that upon their own death, they would be reunited with God, and that the destination of History was a universal reunion in divinity, a perfection; in other words, I think the Perikarnassian faith developed Elysium’s first robust eschatology.
We know that the pale was first studied in Perikarnassian antiquity. But there’s something peculiar about the information we get: study of the pale only reaches back 6,000 years, 2,000 years after the Perikarnassian was appointed innocence. 2,000 years is a long time. We know that by the time the pale was being studied, it surrounded the Perikarnassian super-isola, even if its inhabitants were only aware of it to the west. [11] But did the same apply when the Perikarnassian was coming into power? My proposal is that the first major expansion of the pale was the result of the invention of innocentic rule. Through a rejection of material existence, and belief in its eventual end, possible futures were narrowed down, feeding the pale. In a world like Elysium’s where thoughts have extra-physical properties, it perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise if the first step on the road towards apocalypse was the widespread belief in its inevitability.
Nihilist Universalism
Our responsibility is thus much greater than we had supposed, for it concerns mankind as a whole. If I am a worker, for instance, I may choose to join a Christian rather than a Communist trade union. And if, by that membership, I choose to signify that resignation is, after all, the attitude that best becomes a man, that man’s kingdom is not upon this earth, I do not commit myself alone to that view. Resignation is my will for everyone, and my action is, in consequence, a commitment on behalf of all mankind. [12]
The nihilists of Elysium's modernity understand themselves to be rebels, breaking with the past in radical fashion. I suspect they’re really anything but. They are, rather, the culmination of the past 8,000 years of cultural development. Ambrosius Saint-Miro understood this fundamentally, and though we should be careful not to just take him at this word, I really can’t disagree when he positions himself as the inheritor of the innocences’ historical legacy. The widespread belief in an inevitable reckoning made it a reality; Ambrosisus was simply the one who ended up fulfilling that long-held desire.
I really think that in Elysium, nihilism should be understood as a latent principle pervasive throughout human history, present from its dawn and structuring most of its hegemonic culture as it develops into the perfected form that materializes at the end. It contaminates everything. Moralism seems like its opponent – the Moralintern talks of its duty to protect humanity from eschatologians, [13] and Mesque street nihilists talk of moralf*gs [14] – but really, they are united on the question of humanity’s future: there is none. The main difference is that the moralists believe that humanity already achieved its highest level with Dolorian humanism, whereas nihilists believe there to be one more step. The moralists enable the nihilists, because no one could be satisfied with the status quo they reify as humanity’s final form. By closing off alternative paths, they leave people with only the same choice as the ancient Perikarnassians: to reject the world entirely.
The line is likewise thin between communism and nihilism. In-universe theorists have framed communism as a secularized version of Perikarnassian theology, [15] and in our world similar comparisons have been drawn with Christianity and Judaism. The communist view of history is, if not teleological, then at least perilously close. It likewise dreams of future liberation, made inevitable by the laws of history. The difference is that in spite of its arguable origin in slave morality, communism rejects it. Communism conceives of a future beyond liberation. Its hope for the future is nearly limitless, the plans for a post-revolutionary humanity are too many to count, and it's all possible in this world, by ordinary human hands, if only we fight. [16] That is the difference; absolute negation is replaced by sublation. Communism isn’t the end, it’s a new beginning. As the ghost of Ignus Nilsen sums up: “Communism is the morning, it is jubilation!” [17] This is why Sola is actually, in spite of what some Yugo nationalists believed, a truly communistic innocence. Paradoxically, it was only by rejecting the innocentic system itself, undermining its credibility and power, that she could ever truly embody the revolutionary spirit.
One day, I was scrolling through reddit when I saw this meme posted on the subreddit r/nihilism, which I guess the algorithm thought appealed to me.
It’s a very simple, typical kind of antinatalist sentiment, but I found it illuminating. This is just suicidal ideation universalized. Instead of non-existence being preferable to one’s particular set of circumstances, non-existence is placed above existence itself. And really, this is what almost all organized religions amount to; it is the basis of slave morality.
I haven’t talked much about the ressentiment that so majorly factors into Nietzsche’s critique of slave morality and nihilism, but if we look at Zigi, Elysium’s nihilist par excellence, we see very well the consequences of a worldview based entirely on negation. Zigi’s attraction to communism extends only to its destructive potential, its utility in tearing down the middle class. Zigi’s not motivated by any kind of hope for a better world, only by his hatred for everything in it and especially those on the rung above him. As the text colorfully puts it, he wields the communist tradition’s numerous terms for the bourgeoisie “like a butterfly knife” [18] and before long is hallucinating Ignus Nilsen egging him on as he promises to rape and murder them. Zigi himself is not oblivious to his own motivations, at least not twenty years later; Ignus asks him, “Why have you been with me all these years if you don’t believe in communism?” and Zigi answers, “Because of anger towards those who’ve had it better in life.” [19]
Nihilism doesn’t discriminate. As we see with Zigi, communism can easily be bent towards nihilistic ends. So can fascism: Ambrosius comes to power by weaponizing nationalism in a similar way. [20] Nor are moralism or ultraliberalism or any other ideologies off-limits. Ambrosius understood that nihilism is anti-sectarian; people can find relief and comfort in anything as long as it's incubated in the warmth of memory. Maybe it’s the mass optimism of revolution, or the splendor of a royal parade, or the extravagance of boiadeiro movies, or the power of Dolores Dei radiating off the stained glass. “I don’t pretend to know what terrible beauty is to you. The secret to your heart.” [21] Ambrosius positions entropolism as the realization of heaven on earth, by swallowing material existence in its own memory. But is this right? When Zigi spouts Miroan philosophy, the narration tellingly informs us that the hall is filled with his “half-truths.” [22] One is compelled to ask: who will be doing this remembering? Who will be there to live in the past? Ambrosius certainly does not make a distinction between annihilation via the pale or via atomic explosion. Nihilism lays bare what apocalyptic faith has always been beneath the obfuscations: at heart, a desire to be unborn.
Death -- but for the universe.
List of references
1 Robert Kurvitz, Sacred and Terrible Air, Chapter 9. Group Ibex translation
2 Friedrich Nietzsche, “An Attempt at Self-Criticism”, preface to The Birth of Tragedy. Walter Kaufmann translation
3 Michael Allen Gillespie, Nihilism Before Nietzsche, pp. 140
4 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality (which the discussion of Nietzsche's metaethical theory in "Nihilism and Morality" is primarily drawing from)
5 “One should live virtuously in this life to live better in the afterlife…” (FAYDE)
6 “The passage between heaven and hell…”
7 “God is dead…”
8 “It’s said he *invented* God…”
9 “Perikarnassian theology…”
10 Robert Kurvitz, Sacred and Terrible Air, Chapter 9. Group Ibex translation
11 “The study of the pale reaches back 6,000 years…”
12 Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism. Philip Mairet translation
13 “Protecting it from ideological highwaymen and eschatologians…”
14 Martin Luiga, Full-Core State Nihilist
15 “It replaces faith in the divine with faith in humanity’s future…”
16 “All the other plans we had. To love. To colonize the pale…”
17 Robert Kurvitz, Sacred and Terrible Air, Chapter 16. Group Ibex translation
18 Robert Kurvitz, Sacred and Terrible Air, Chapter 12. Group Ibex translation
19 Robert Kurvitz, Sacred and Terrible Air, Chapter 16. Group Ibex translation
20 “An especially nihilistic strain of nationalism…”
21 Robert Kurvitz, Sacred and Terrible Air, Chapter 9. Group Ibex translation
22 Robert Kurvitz, Sacred and Terrible Air, Chapter 12. Group Ibex translation
Chronicling (almost) everything we know about the development of Robert Kurvitz's quasi-sacral object complex
This post represents an attempt to gather (almost) all the reliable public info we have about the broader worldbuilding of Elysium Corona Mundi (the series to which Disco Elysium and Sacred and Terrible Air belong) and how it developed over time into one place, presented more or less chronologically and in a way accessible to fans unacquainted with the, shall we say, more arcane lore of Elysium. In the original incarnation of this post, basically every sentence was scrupulously referenced; however, referencing is a major pain in the ass on tumblr, so instead I just have a broad list of sources at the bottom and if you want to inquire any further into a specific claim you can just message me.
I'll also warn readers that the sections discussing the Torson & McLaine campaign and the (currently cancelled) sequel to Disco Elysium contain potential (albeit relatively minor) spoilers for the planned plot of that game. The creators still hope to make that game one day, so if you want to go in totally blind, you know what to avoid.
UPDATE: This post has received substantial updates since the first version I published. A good amount of the information that has been uncovered about Elysium's history since I first wrote this is even harder to source than the original contents of the post. While I have tried to be as generous as I can with what I can share, there is also a limit to how much I am willing and able to state publically, and there are now large stretches of this post (mainly in the miscellaneous info section) which detail or allude to information not covered in any of the listed sources. This post was always intended as a handy guide for the public to know the broad gist of the information we have on Elysium outside the game, without people needing to do hours of research and be involved with the nichest corners of the fanbase – however, I implore those who are eager to learn more to do their own research as well. Those who want some pointers for specific bits of info can always shoot me a personal message on here.
Evermier
The first serious worldbuilding project that Robert Kurvitz embarked on dates back to at least the year 1997. It was developed with his childhood friends in Estonia, including later Elysium worldbuilders Martin Luiga, Argo Tuulik and Kaspar Kalvet, and went by the name Evermier. This was a medieval fantasy setting formed around a tabletop roleplaying system that Robert Kurvitz and Martin Luiga have referred to as “bootleg Finnish Dungeons and Dragons,” but which Argo Tuulik suspects was actually a Powered by the Apocalypse framework. The vast majority of the boys’ time with Evermier was not spent actually playing any campaigns, but rather formulating the setting and mechanics (both Argo and Luiga ended up never participating in a roleplaying session of Evermier). Argo splits the time spent conceiving Evermier into two broad periods – one he dubs “Evermier 1.0,” which stuck close to traditional Dungeons and Dragons – and one dubbed “Evermier 2.0,” where no tabletop campaigns were ever actually played and all the time was spent system-building. Argo estimates this latter period lasted some 2-3 years.
Scope creep quickly hit the project, with character sheets evolving into whole character books. Luiga alleges that that “the wizard book” was supposed to have 350 spells altogether, each with at least a half-page story about the spell, in prose, and that “about a healthy third of the book got done in the end.” Argo gives a different number, stating that early estimates for it had more like 900 spells, but agrees that two-thirds of each page would’ve been reserved for “juicy literary stuff” about the spell in question while the rest of the page was dedicated to stats, and says that Luiga and Kaspar wrote a lot of excellent stuff for these spells.
Argo says there were about twenty different schools of technology (such as “metallurgy” and “optics”), at least twelve classes of mages, and “so many” subclasses of elves. There was also a subclass of dwarf that, instead of being stocky, chubby and bearded like traditional dwarves, were veiny and more like “Russian miners.” When implementing necromancers, Robert “zoned in on this soul aspect,” which later became the basis for Elysium’s pale. Argo describes these necromancers as “hobbits, but with these little lanterns that guide spirits or souls from this massive fog.” Luiga places the invention of this “fog of death with whom some could communicate” as happening late in Evermier’s development and likewise considers it a primitive precursor to what would become the pale.
The worldbuilders spent a lot of time gearing up for an ultimate roleplaying session that never ended up materializing, but their artist friend Jüri Saks drew illustrations in anticipation of it, including character portraits. Luiga’s character was a “sickle-elf” whose class was called “saint.” This saint character was a handsome elf with small pointy ears and a neat little beard, who wielded two “light swords” (possibly katanas), and a crossbow called Crucifix on his back. The character was from a “grim northern land” and was a “religious lunatic type” who believed in a “grim, monotheistic God.” Argo alleges that Luiga related to this character so much that it almost became a part of his persona; he “developed this mode that sometimes when we were drinking he happened to slip in, where he would start judging people. I would like to say that it still remained within the boundaries of normalcy, but uh, unfortunately it didn’t.”
Kaspar Kalvet at some point played an archer character named Minor Mortifer (“Small Death-bringer”), and there was also a dwarf king named Fuirum Thundergate.
According to Luiga, the name “Elysium” was suggested by someone on the dragon.ee forums, but it took half a year for Robert to start seriously considering it. This was back when the setting was still a medieval fantasy world. Luiga and Argo both agree that the historicized Elysium as we know it now was born around the time when Robert decided to get rid of fantasy races, because – as Argo puts it – “they were kind of stupid.” With this decision, Evermier underwent a modernization process of sorts, an attempt to bring the setting closer to real life, where many other fantasy elements were stripped away in favor of more realistic representations of cultures, mostly in the form of nations. Argo says that many of the fantasy races transformed over the course of this process into the nations of Elysium – the dwarves became the nations of Graad, the elves became the great desert isola of Iilmaraa (formerly Armaghast, a nod to Dan Simmons’ Hyperion, still referenced to this day with Iilmaraa’s Erg desert), hobbits became an Iilmaraan people known as the Himi, the night-elves or star-elves (called the Nocturn back in the day) eventually became the nations of Seol, and the snow-elves became Katla (which apparently has not changed too much since the Evermier days, and whose namesake is the dragon in Astrid Lindgren’s novel The Brothers Lionheart). Among the first innovations of the new modernized setting was the concept of floating magnet trains, later described in Sacred and Terrible Air.
After the Evermier setting had been discarded, many of its ideas ended up being repurposed into historical periods within the new historicized Elysium setting.
The Elysium tabletop campaigns
Between the years 2003 – 2007, three tabletop campaigns were played in the then newly formed Elysium setting. These all took place in Revachol during the Current Century and featured Robert as dungeon master. The first campaign seems to have been called Soul Milton’s World Autumn, the second one Riget and the final one known simply as Torson & McLaine, or alternatively the RCM campaign. The first two were played at Robert’s old apartment in the concrete block project at Mustamäe, while the third one was played in the house of Luiga's dad, which the three later lived together in following his death.
Soul Milton’s World Autumn
Of the three campaigns, Soul Milton’s is arguably the one most shrouded in mystery as it stands. It took place in Revachol and Martin Luiga played the titular character Soul Milton. The character has been described as “one of the cornerstones of the Elysium mythos” and an “aspiring world-historical person.” By the time of the campaign, Milton seems to have become an amnesiac as a result of “suppressing his own mind to protect himself from his enemies,” and in this process apparently also adopted a disguise by “putting another skin on himself” (what precisely that means, we don't know). He was “very rich” and came from a well-off family, had a complicated and possibly romantic relationship with his sister and was a “politician slash businessman” who “wanted to be the innocence of consumerism.” As it turns out, the enemies who were chasing him were the Therriers of Elysium’s final innocence, Ambrosius Saint-Miro (a major figure in both Sacred and Terrible Air and Full-Core State Nihilist, to be discussed later), who Soul Milton met at one point. Saint-Miro apparently told him that “there has never been an innocence who is also not an innocence.” This encounter places the Soul Milton campaign firmly after the events of Disco Elysium, possibly in the late Fifties or Sixties. During this campaign, Argo played Soul Milton’s horse carriage driver, a man by the name of Elroy Quint Duval.
Also associated with Soul Milton are two other characters. Before Sacred and Terrible Air was conceived, Robert had planned to tell the story of Elysium in three books; one starring Soul Milton, another starring a character named Dister, and the third a character named Dallasz.
Dister, or Marius Dijsters, was an extraphysicist and published author hailing from Oranje. He was a son of diplomats, one of them the grand ambassador of Oranje on Iilmaraa. He seems to have been a significant enough figure to have an entire strand of thought – Disterism – named after him (mentioned in the inside covers of Sacred and Terrible Air), and like Soul Milton, he had an antagonistic relationship with Ambrosius (as made apparent by an incident where he was threatened by the innocence’s Therriers at age 25). He is also apparently involved in some way with Theo Van Kok (of Sacred and Terrible Air fame), along with a Paul Messier (presumably the husband of Disco Elysium's Joyce Messier), apparently the beneficiary of such prestigious titles as "Enemy of the Press '67" and "Worst Person of the Year '67." Marius Dijsters represented an evolution from an earlier incarnation of the character, named Jacob Dister, a mage-prodigy from late-stage Evermier who was, as per Robert, "low key the most powerful mage in the world, or potentially the most powerful one since he was still in his twenties." The name Dister was derived from a song of the same name by Metro Luminal, an Estonian depro-rock band.
Information is rather scant on Dallasz, but during the making of Disco Elysium, there were plans to repurpose him into another project, a comic book named Mercurio Dallasz and the Twelve Kojkos which was going to be illustrated by Aleksander Rostov. This project unfortunately fell through, but we know the premise: a band of kojkos under Dallasz’s leadership attempt to assassinate innocence Saint-Miro. This was presumably an Inglourious Basterds type affair.
Riget
“It’s better to die in the Kingdom than live in a shithole.”
This was the tagline of Elysium’s second tabletop campaign, Riget, whose name is Danish for “kingdom” and was taken from Lars von Trier’s mini-series of the same name. Once more, the setting was Revachol, but this time it was limited to a peculiar part of it: Le Royaume (French for, again, “the Kingdom”) a vast network of dungeons and burial chambers two kilometers beneath the city, housing ancient ruins and remnants (quite possibly of the Seraseolitic civilization mentioned in Disco Elysium), along with treasures such as bioluminescent plants which have adapted to living in total darkness. The stars of this campaign were three impoverished children, all between the ages of 10-12 and members of a gang named “Earthworms,” who decided to venture down into the catacombs in search of valuable artifacts to sell. At some point, these kids somehow found themselves unable to get out of Le Royaume, supposedly trapped underground by demons who sought to use the children as vessels to escape back to the surface. When this campaign was being played, demons were still a part of the setting and haunted the halls of the underground network, along with monsters – such as the armakhaan beast, also known as Lelo Lelo, a terrifying blind and flightless hunter killer bird which was a mix between the xenomorph and cassowary. As for whether demons are still part of the setting in any way; both Argo and Luiga's statements are too ambiguous to reach any firm conclusion. Argo does note that the concept of 'demons' connotes something subtly different in Estonian than the scary red guys in popular Western culture, and are more like a primordial evil.
In the campaign, Argo played a boy named Miron, whose nickname was ‘Sneaker’, while Luiga played Joschka, a crippled boy with a bad leg. During the campaign, individual roleplaying sessions with Robert were held where the players’ stories evolved in parallel without them being kept on the same page. Each of them would get info the others were not privy to: Argo’s was that Joschka is unaware of the fact that he’s not considered a true member of the gang; in reality, he’s an outcast generally considered a weird, creepy weakling, and was only brought on for his lockpicking and mechanical skills.
Eventually, the Riget campaign got quite far into “Lord of the Flies territory.” Near the end, Sneaker and the third boy (played by another friend) conspired to kill Joschka deep underground.
Torson & McLaine
The worldbuilders continued to refine the roleplaying mechanics they were working with for the campaigns. By the time of Riget, the basics of the Metric system had been introduced, with the now familiar INT, PSY, FYS, and MOT. But according to Argo it was the RCM campaign, known principally as the Torson and McLaine campaign, which was “the first mature cycle of Elysium storytelling.” It took place, once more, in Revachol – this time in a ghetto called Jamrock, named after a Damian Marley song, and was focused on the goings on in Station 51 (renamed Precinct 41 by the time of Disco Elysium), the RCM’s lone precinct in Jamrock. The campaign took large amounts of inspiration from the TV series The Shield and its depiction of corrupt police officers and the intermingling of gang warfare and state-sanctioned violence. A central concept was: the cops are a gang, and the gangs are cops.
The RCM campaign began on a sort of prologue session, wherein Argo and Luiga played characters named Antwone Novak and Trinidad Tranquile respectively, two junior officers newly recruited into the RCM. Antwone was a “petit bourgeois type,” whereas Trinidad was a young communist who had recently been given time off work due to excessive violence. Luiga describes him:
He worked at a meat shop that belonged to Carson Torsson, Mack Torson’s dad, and had a system of stealing from work in order to ‘adequately compensate for his labour’. He also liked to practice a crude type of critical theory in the vein of ‘this building has been made that large to humiliate me, to show off with a power greater than me, to scare me into submission’. And he had a system of smoking no more than five cigarettes per day to cut down on smoking costs — Kim’s single cigarette habit might be a distant echo of that. He had, I think, a 7 in PSY (at least 5) and 2 in INT and mediocre physical stats, the core system was pretty much set by then.
At the end of this prologue session, Station 51 became the target of a terrorist attack. We don’t know much about the perpetrators beyond them being “Church of Evil type guys” in Luiga’s words, but the dice was rolled badly and Antwone and Trini both ended up dying in a “horsebombing” attack, falling onto the bridge outside the station.
Map of Station 51, located in a repurposed steel mill.
Going forward, Argo and Luiga had to find new characters to play, and they ended up going with ones they had earlier conceptualized, half-jokingly, on one of their many walks around Tallinn from parties and other events, since public transportation was notoriously unreliable. These characters were Chester McLaine, played by Luiga, and Mack “the Torso” Torson, played by Argo. Torson was derived in half from Vic Mackey, the protagonist of the Shield, and half from Argo’s own personality. Argo says that Luiga put his own personality into Chester as well, but isn’t sure where the other half of that character came from.
The main plot of the campaign centered on a revenge operation against those who perpetrated the attack on Station 51. In the second session of the campaign, Torson and McLaine are involved in a church raid; though Argo takes care to mention that he doesn’t think this is the church raid mentioned in Disco Elysium, and that it’s not a Dolorian Church but rather the “Armed Church of Saint-Michelle.” Among the tasks of Torson and McLaine were gathering “guns and drugs” for the “big revenge operation.”
Mack Torson was an idiotic body builder, an admirer of Lieutenant John “the Archetype” McCoy, the Station’s resident mass murderer, and altogether “way too stupid to concentrate on the main plot and politics of the police station,” focusing his attention instead on matters like “how to get it on with the captain’s secretary and tattooing the word ‘Jamrock’ on his body hundreds of times over.” Chester McLaine was a little more perceptive, wondering about things such as “what the hell is going on with the armour maker or Nix Gottlieb,” but was still an all-around uncritical person who put a lot of stock into “loving the captain” and “being a communist memebot.” McLaine was also “a sword guy,” since at this point in the worldbuilding swords were still viable weapons, with guns being slow to reload. Torson and McLaine lived together, along with two other cops, Sundance Fischer and Elfboy Williams. “Elfboy’s thing was being the dexterity bro, in which he continually lost to McLaine, and Sundance’s thing was having a fat ass and cleaning his guns all the time.” Torson had a wife named Tessa Torson, and later in life both Chester and Mack would apparently raise adopted daughters, Tessa and Triss (whether these Tessas are separate characters or represent the same character at different stages of development is unclear; Argo and Luiga seem to contradict each other, unless there's something very weird going on).
Torson and McLaine both regularly abused their powers, as RCM officers in general were prone to do, and in their heads they were justified in doing so. A highlight of the RCM campaign had been sessions dubbed “the Ballad of Chad Tilbrooks and Émile Mollins,” centering on two junior officers who were ritually abused and exploited by the older members of their station, including Torson and McLaine. At one point, Torson and McLaine were also involved in an interrogation of a local religious figurehead which devolved into mutilation torture, which only the “bullet-lobotomized” officer Damien “44” Latrec called out for what it was (enthusiastically). The interrogation ended up being ineffective as the religious leader simply “retreated into a happy place inside his head.”
The Captain of Station 51, Ptolemaios Pryce, was immensely respected and glorified by its officers, whereas the station’s lazareth Nix Gottlieb, while also respected, was generally resented and found hard to tolerate for being “an absolute horrible cunt.” In spite of this, Nix Gottlieb was known to have a curious friendship with Pryce, talking alone with him in the Captain’s office long into the night. This fact regularly perplexed the officers of Station 51.
Eventually, at some point in the campaign, Torson and McLaine would come to the focal point of the story, when they make a shocking discovery: the reason for Pryce and Gottlieb’s strange friendship is that they are both members of the top-secret underground anarchist organization the Ultra, and not only are plans underway for a national liberation movement freeing Revachol from Coalition control, known as THE RETURN, but the two have set their sights on a much larger goal: world revolution.
The novel cycle
No more campaigns were played in the Elysium world after 2007, when the boys stopped playing the RCM campaign (with the story unfinished). Robert Kurvitz instead shifted his attention to writing a book in the Elysium universe. Eventually the plan became for it to be the opening to a cycle of novels, totaling eight altogether. We have the English titles of each book and their epigraphs, along with the order of the series, from a post by Kurvitz on the dragon.ee forums.
They are as follows:
#0
A SACRED AND TERRIBLE AIR
My heart will not rest until it rests in you.
- St. Augustine
#1
THE COUNTERMEASURES
What am I searching for in your dreams?
I am not searching. I am merely cleaning up.
- Christian Emmerich
#2
NO TRUCE WITH THE FURIES
Man-kind, be vigilant! We loved you.
- Julius Fučik
#3
MADRUGADA
It must be lit as dreams, by lightning flashes only.
- Witold Gombrowicz
#4
TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY NINE DAYS REMAINING
Evening brings the child back to the arms of the mother.
- Sappho
#5
COALITION WARSHIP
I don’t want to be in no indie shit. I want to be in the big ones. I want to be in the ones that matter.
- Mickey Rourke
#6
WE ARE THE WAITING
What remains, is longing for something completely different.
- Luis Althusser
#7
INDIFFERENCE
A great silence, some low pressure front is forming.
- Arvi Siig
Sacred and Terrible Air was eventually released in Estonian back in 2013, and after the success of Disco Elysium plans were made to translate the book into English. Rumor goes that this translation was very far along or even finished, but unfortunately all plans for releasing this translation to the public have been halted with the ongoing legal dispute.
Fortunately, dedicated fans have taken it upon themselves to translate the book into English for those particularly interested. The most successful translation by far is the one by Group Ibex, which still receives updates to this day.
Read it here.
Full-Core State Nihilist
Many don’t know that Sacred and Terrible Air is actually not the only written work predating Disco Elysium. Before even Sacred and Terrible Air was released, Martin Luiga wrote a short story later given the English title Full-Core State Nihilist, which was uploaded to the old ZA/UM blog. While obviously not as meaty a text as Sacred and Terrible Air, it deals with some overlapping themes and gives us our first proper window into the nation of Mesque, so important to the broader narrative of Elysium.
Full-Core State Nihilist was later heavily edited and uploaded to nihilist.fm, another blog site which many of the ZA/UM members were active on.
Finally, in 2022, Martin Luiga translated the Estonian story, basing his English version on the original ZA/UM blog version, and uploaded it to Medium. This translation itself could be seen as a third edit of the story, featuring new references to Disco Elysium.
(As it happens, I have also arrogantly taken it upon myself to create my own English version of this brilliant story, which combines elements from all three versions, and is an attempt to render the prose in slightly less idiosyncratic English, closer to the “house style” of Disco Elysium, while remaining heavily informed by Luiga’s own translation. I am not an Estonian speaker and this is just something I did for my own enjoyment.)
You can find Luiga’s translation here and my version here.
THE RETURN
In 2014, Robert Kurvitz pitched an idea to his friend and associate, novelist and businessman Kaur Kender, to turn the Torson & McLaine roleplaying campaign into a full-fledged video game for PC. The pitch proposed a 3000 EUR investment to produce a vision document, with design and artwork handled by Aleksander Rostov and Juri Saks, detailing the setting, plot, game mechanics and art style. In 2015, this document was finished, and by this time a provisional name for the project seems to have been settled on: THE RETURN.
This vision document reveals that the game was once planned to feature turn-based tactical combat. The plan was also for the player to create their own character from certain “archetypes,” each with different personalities, talents and appearances. Over time it became clear that these plans were too ambitious; by 2016 the archetypes had been narrowed down into a single character – the “disgrace to the uniform” Harry du Bois – and the prologue chapter of his story, set in Martinaise, was split off into its own game. This smaller project received the title that originally was given to the third novel in the planned cycle (which was almost certainly anticipated to center around the story of Precinct 41 in the year ’51) – NO TRUCE WITH THE FURIES.
UPDATE: In the period since the first version of this post, we've received a staggering amount of new information about the original The Return game, with three seperate Medium posts from Martin Luiga detailing the character-building and combat mechanics of the game, as well as a very detailed outline of the portion of the game which takes place in Boogie Street. Rather than summarizing the new information here, I will simply link the posts so you can read for yourself: ELYSIUM'S COMBAT SYSTEM - BOOGIE STREET RACES + AREA OUTLINE - BOOGIE STREET LOCATIONS. These documents feature a lot of new lore about the cultures of Revachol and broader Elysium, as well as factions like Ahura Mazda, the SKULLS, and even some lore about the Founding Party and the innocences Sola, Polycarp and Saint-Miro. Be aware that included here are inevitably some spoilers for the version of the game that was planned more than 10 years ago, though Luiga insists that there aren't any specific major spoilers for the main plot of the game.
No Truce became Disco Elysium and the rest, as they say, is history. But unlike many fans who view Disco as a singular statement that needs no further comment, the developers were far from done with the world they had created. The dominant internal view, especially among the original worldbuilders, was that Disco Elysium was merely a minor project to get ZA/UM’s foot through the proverbial gate. Work on the true game – the one they had wanted to create all along – could finally begin now.
As far as we know, the plot of the game would’ve stuck fairly closely to the events of the Torson & McLaine roleplaying campaign. The game was to open with an attack on Precinct 41, and the rest of the game would’ve been a revenge story of sorts. Players would assume control of Harry again, and this time his primary partner would be Jean Vicquemare, although there would be an assortment of other potential party members. The map would be at least four times bigger and set in Jamrock.
Plot points which would be explored in the sequel had already been set up in Disco Elysium – among these are Pryce and Gottlieb’s revolution, Le Royaume, Edgar Claire, and La Puta Madre. Cuno and Cunoesse would’ve featured as returning characters; not much is known about how Cuno and Kim would’ve been integrated into the game given how variable their endings in Disco Elysium are, but Argo says that he would’ve insisted on Cuno returning. With some recent info from Argo, along with his stated personal view that the Cuno ending of Disco Elysium was always the canon one to him, we can surmise that at least in Argo’s plans for the game, Cuno would’ve likely been integrated into the plot as a junior officer in Precinct 41. Meanwhile, Cunoesse was planned to reappear in THE RETURN as a leader of a gang of kids in Le Royaume, according to Martin Luiga.
Obviously, the characters of Precinct 41 would've featured heavily, and we'd be introduced to many familiar names which we were already given glimpses of in Esprit de Corps checks in Disco Elysium. One of these would be Lt. Berdyayeva, a superior of Harry’s, whose daughter Rada is Jean Vicquemare’s ex. Rada would feature as a prominent character and party member in the game. Another prominent returning character would’ve been Trant Heidelstam. One of the new faces we’d be introduced to would’ve been Roderiche “Hatred” Lacan, a special consultant for Precinct 41 and an absolutely raging communist. A character we know nearly nothing about except for the fact that he was conceptualized back in the tabletop days as a sort of joke character, but survived all the way into the planning stage for THE RETURN, is “Marivald the Merry Butcher” – what his role might've been, your guess is as good as mine.
UPDATE: In addition to the documents from the pre-Disco version of The Return, Luiga has also provided information pertaining to more recent plans for the sequel. Here I will also link the tweets containing these snippets of information, rather than attempting to summarize them in my own words - (1), (2), (3), (4), (5).
Pryce and Gottlieb’s goals in the game might've involved an attempt to unite several diverse groups with a common interest in an independent Revachol; this would’ve included the besmerties, the West Revacholian crime syndicates mentioned in Disco Elysium. Prominent among them would’ve been La Puta Madre, a Mesque gang leader and drug manufacturer, a man of such immense power that he has RCM officers tending his poppy fields in terror (his influence also seems to survive past the events of the game; he gets a mention in Sacred and Terrible Air). The Madre would’ve apparently been an attractive feminine-presenting man, impeccably dressed and wearing beautiful makeup; his gender-nonconformity a way of projecting power over the traditionally macho culture of Villalobos. The rival gang, Ahura Mazda, led by a gangster known as the Mazda, would’ve also featured prominently – Rostov recently released old concept art depicting one of their gang members.
There were more plans for the sequel that only came along after the development of Disco Elysium itself. Robert has talked about wanting to double down on events like the Mercenary Tribunal, handling big action scenes within the more closed literary format of the FELD dialogue system, hopefully allowing for even more variation than was possible in Disco's big confrontation. Another infamous idea was the inclusion of a second protagonist – a pregnant woman, about 5 months along. Kurvitz has mentioned this idea in interviews, saying that it would be "an incredible writing challenge" within Disco Elysium's internalized skill system: "It would be unbelievable to use our skill system to speak about the bodily sensations of having another organism inside of you, while you're in the setting and talking to another person." That said, the addition of an entire new protagonist is very ambitious indeed – it's not clear whether the idea would involve alternating perspectives of some sort, or a choice in the character creator of which one to go with, but Kurvitz made it clear that these would be entirely different characters, unlike many games which offer only a superficial choice between male and female playable characters. Kurvitz expressed some doubt about being able to include this in the game, but at least expected it to be integrated via an expansion post-release if not.
Locust City (X7)
After the Disco Elysium sequel was cancelled following the ousting of Kurvitz, Rostov and Hindpere, Argo Tuulik and Dora Klindžić were eventually tasked with conceptualizing a DLC expansion to the game which would feature Cuno and Cunoesse as protagonists. The story of the project which was given the code name X7 is best told in Tuulik's own words: https://archive.md/mbzN7.
On April 1st, 2025, an internal presentation of Locust City was leaked to the Disco Elysium YouTuber and influencer Jamrock Hobo, which can be viewed here.
Tumblr users parasolemn and revacholreverie are worth mentioning for their hard work transcribing the plot details glimpsed in the video: parasolemn's posts - revacholreverie's post.
Miscellaneous info
Argo and Robert have both hinted that there is a metatextual element to the overarching Elysium narrative. Whenever presented with readings or theories that contextualize the game as some sort of story-within-a-story, they act coy and refuse to give any clear answers. Argo outright offered an interpretation of the pale which presents it as what happens as the narrative starts “leaking out” of the head of a reader or audience member no longer actively absorbed in the world and said that “Elysium is a fictional world that is aware that it’s fictional.”
Apparently related to this aspect of the narrative, according to Argo, are the three satellites in orbit above the world of Elysium – Iikon, Zenith and Shakermaker – which have been there since “before the 8,000 years of recorded history” and before “the Polycarpeum event.” The satellites have only been mentioned in niche corners of the currently published materials, and the innocence Polycarp has only been mentioned in secondary materials, such as the artbook and the inside covers of Sacred and Terrible Air, leading to speculation about him being involved with the pale and the memory of his reign being wiped from history.
Also related to the metatext, again according to Argo, is a character known as “the Man Behind the Black Sun” – he gets one mention by the Paledriver in Disco Elysium, but curiously she seems to refer to it as the title of a movie that was released in Mesque during the revolutionary era, potentially a boiadeiro picture starring the actor Gabriel Buenguerro.
The magical elements of the pre-Elysium fantasy world morphed over time into what is called “extraphysics” in Elysium. The innocences, the pale, and “plasm” all testify to this supernatural aspect of the setting.
"Magpies" are not a real thing and were never a part of the original plan for the Elysium narrative. The concept artist who made the image from which the term was popularized has gone on record saying that he invented this idea himself and that it was taken from his own worldbuilding ideas. There is nothing to suggest that this was integrated into the game; Argo, Luiga and Kurvitz reacted with confusion at the mention of this concept and have affirmed that this is not a canonical part of the worldbuilding.
Both Robert Kurvitz and Martin Luiga have expressed a distaste for The Final Cut version of the game, as the new content which was added in this update was not properly group-edited like the original game. In particular the pair highlight two moments which in their view “violate the metaphysics of the setting” – one being the moment where the pale crosses different timelines in the Moralist quest, and the other being the potential existence of plasm getting validated in the ending of the Communist quest. The line “In dark times, should the stars also go out?” was planned for a long time and Kurvitz is happy that it made it into the game.
There are, in fact, eight Innocences in the history of Elysium. This makes for three more than are mentioned in the Greatest Innocence book in Disco Elysium. One of them, Ambrosius Saint-Miro, comes into power after the events of Disco Elysium and its planned sequel. Another one is shrouded in mystery and has been forgotten by most history books – this is the innocence Polycarp, who exists on the margins of the currently published material. There is thus one more Innocence who we do not know the identity of.
Some comments Martin Luiga and others have made suggest the possibility of either reincarnation, body-hopping or immortality being present in the setting. Specifically, a fan theory which posited that Dora Ingerlund, Harry’s ex-girlfriend, was in fact Dolores Dei herself, was highly regarded by Martin Luiga and apparently Robert Kurvitz as well.
Among the most mysterious characters in the setting so far are the trio Marat Sar, Ehs Eli Zair, and Ex Ilin Mar, mentioned in the inside covers of Sacred and Terrible Air and alluded to on occasion by Luiga. Rumor has it that these three may be above even the Innocences themselves in terms of influence and power...
At some point, according to Martin Luiga, Ambrosius Saint-Miro apparently constructs nihilist death camps, which Triss and Tessa (the adopted daughters of Torson and McLaine) end up in and eventually escape.
Kurvitz had an insanely ambitious list of projects he wanted to make in the Elysium universe before he was ousted from ZA/UM; "The last one I want to make, when I'm 50 or 60, that I want to absolutely go crazy on and throw out all commercial considerations and get this as conceptual as possible, is the tabletop setting. The working title for the tabletop setting is You Are Vapor. It will be a really, really, crazy pen-and-paper game."
Kim Kitsuragi is at least partially inspired by the character Misato Katsuragi from Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Jean Vicquemare is partially based on Estonian writer and musician Mait Vaik, along with Paul Banks of Interpol.
Ignus Nilsen has no set-in-stone portrait or reference, but Robert Kurvitz imagines Sami Sirviö of the band Kent for him, as he’s “the coolest guy ever”. Ignus Nilsen also roughly translates to “Fire, Son of Nothing”.
The name of Kim’s former partner, nicknamed “Eyes”, was Dominic. He would act as Kim’s Perception skill, and as has been popularly speculated, he took a bullet for Kim and died sometime before the events of the game.
List of sources:
All parts of Argo Tuulik's Human Can Opener Podcast episode.
Martin Luiga's Human Can Opener episode.
Martin Luiga's Medium account and other blog posts: Interview, 8 years ago..., Hello Fellow Worldbuilders, Correction, A Policeman In Revachol, Fuirum Thundergate (Substack)
Tweets by Martin Luiga: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Tweets by Argo Tuulik: 1
The dragon.ee post about the novel cycle
"Welcome to Revachol" on the devblog
"Outro" by Robert Kurvitz, featured in the official Disco Elysium artbook.
Disco Elysium, Sacred and Terrible Air, and Full-Core State Nihilist. Obviously.
Possibly more that I'm forgetting. Feel free to ask.
NO, THE VALENTINE'S LETTER
IS NOT FROM W.D. GASTER
On the supposed veracity of a 'quirked up' Gaster
A little over a year ago, Toby released a newsletter on Valentine's Day. It contained a bunch of cute little Valentine's cards from various characters across Undertale and Deltarune, randomly selected for individual recipients. The rarest one, however, stood out from the rest, and contained a lengthy letter from an unknown sender, seemingly addressing us as players of Deltarune. After a while, it was deleted from the official website. Naturally, people jumped to the conclusion that Gaster had sent it, and this hypothesis remains the most popular to this day.
There's only one problem: the letter isn't from Gaster, and I can prove it. Or get pretty damn close, anyway.
I'll keep it short and sweet. I've gone over every single piece of confirmed Gaster dialogue multiple times, and done the same with the Valentine's letter. I'll start by listing the key features of Gaster's confirmed dialogue up to this point, and then compare it to the key features of the letter writer. Then I'll expound a little bit on what I think we can take away from this whole situation.
Key features of Gaster's dialogue
Gaster’s dialogue is characterized by a very peculiar syncopated rhythm, with frequent and arbitrary caesura which is communicated either through short pauses in the rendering of dialogue on screen, or (double) line breaks. This is Gaster's key identifying feature. There is no consistent pattern tying the caesura/line breaks to any practical or grammatical feature (such as punctuation); it is purely arbitrary. You will sound like G-Man from Half-Life if you voice the dialogue with the appropriate pauses.
Sometimes, Gaster will split one line of dialogue across multiple “text boxes” (or any other equivalent) for extra emphasis.
Rarely, Gaster’s punctuation will follow a space. In both instances so far, it happened as Gaster was introducing a new chapter of Deltarune.
When speaking in Wingdings, Gaster does not use punctuation.
When speaking in a normal typeface, Gaster consistently uses punctuation, the only exception being one instance in the tweets preceding Chapter 1.
Gaster’s use of language distinctly tends to be either quite formal or lyrical.
While Gaster is usually perfectly coherent, he will occasionally indulge in philosophical musing, make leaps you can’t reasonably be expected to follow, or present bizarre notions (such as the “flavor” of pain, or the notion of “favorite blood types”, where C and D are apparently candidates; that said, Gaster might simply be testing how the player will respond).
There are certain words or phrases Gaster repeatedly comes back to: “VERY, VERY...”, “INTERESTING”, “WONDERFUL”, “EXCELLENT.”, “TRULY…”. Toby seems to rely on the first two phrases especially to make it clear to the reader that Gaster is the one who's speaking.
Gaster retains a serious tone and almost never exhibits humor or self-awareness.
In Japanese, Gaster's dialogue is spoken (very unusually) exclusively in katakana and kanji, with very formal language used.
In Japanese, Gaster's first person pronoun is 'watashi' - to the best of my knowledge, a common neutral way to refer to yourself in formal settings or to strangers. In informal/casual contexts, however, it apparently tends to only be used by women.
In Japanese, Gaster refers to the player exclusively with 'anata' - a formal neutral pronoun which is most often used in cases where the speaker doesn't know the name of the person they are addressing (in paperwork for example).
The only exception is in Entry 17, where "what do you two think" is translated with the pronoun 'kimi'(-tachi, the plural form). Kimi seems to carry some complex nuances - as far as I've gathered, the gist is that it signifies a superior position by the speaker, is socially acceptable when speaking to a subordinate (if you're a teacher or boss for example), can be affectionately used between close friends and family, but is otherwise typically seen as rude or condescending, especially to strangers or superiors.
"During the survey portion, [Gaster] uses “ware-ware” - a rather stiff way of saying “we.” He ends his requests with “kudasai” (please) and uses the polite endings desu/masu. He’s almost excessively formal, as this level of politeness is unusual in Undertale/Deltarune." (source)
The above points by and large do not apply to the text after the vessel is discarded, which is part of why people theorize it's spoken by a different person. This post looks at the differences in Japanese between Gaster and the 'second voice'.
Key features of the letter writer
The letter writer utilizes (single) line breaks which exclusively follow punctuation. Gaster’s arbitrary caesura is not present. You will not sound like G-Man if you voice the letter.
The letter writer says “DELTA RUNE”, whereas Gaster has only used “DELTARUNE”; this is, admittedly, not entirely consistent across translations.
The letter writer uses very idiosyncratic and/or shoddy punctuation, which Gaster rarely does.
The letter writer uses none of Gaster’s common words/phrases.
The letter writer comes off knowingly forgetful, aloof and silly – behaviors which Gaster has never exhibited in his dialogue.
The letter writer exhibits a fondness for riddles and paradoxical statements, something absent from Gaster’s characterization so far.
The letter writer is noticeably less formal and elegant than Gaster usually is, joking, meandering and rambling where Gaster is typically succinct and to-the-point about the topic at hand.
The letter writer seems easily excitable and uses exclamation marks at multiple points throughout the message, something which Gaster, heretofore characterized as reserved and calm, has done a total of one time.
The letter writer seems aware of the player, which is consistent with Gaster… and yet, the letter writer adopts an unfamiliar, questioning stance towards us and commissions our help, despite Gaster having already established contact with us ages ago and collaborated with us for two chapters now – on cordial, well-acquainted terms at that.
The letter writer does not have a clear objective in mind, whereas Gaster has been “patiently waiting” to put his plans into action.
The letter writer is quite blunt and judgemental, dismissing Valentine’s Day as “absurd” and remarking that the player (presumably, anyway) is “very odd”. By contrast, Gaster is reserved, unanimously polite, and only ever offers his opinions when he has something positive to say.
In Japanese, the letter is in a mix of hiragana and kanji (but slanted towards the former) and uses casual language.
In Japanese, the letter writer uses the first person pronoun 'watashi'.
In Japanese, the letter writer refers to the person being addressed with 'kimi' - not 'anata'.
So what do we make of this?
The Valentine’s Day letter is, at the very least, presented in such a way as to make the reader think about Gaster. This is mostly from contextual features of the letter – the letter being “strange”, its “illegibility” possibly referring to the Wingdings font, it disappearing and getting deleted from the website shortly afterwards, and, of course, the letter seemingly being addressed to the player, who only Gaster has been shown to be truly aware of so far.
While all of these are valuable considerations, it must be stressed that not only does the actual content of this letter contain zero substantive similarities to Gaster’s dialogue, it outright contradicts every significant pattern that’s been established so far.
The letter is clearly meant to evoke Gaster, and it would’ve been trivial for Toby to confirm that it was Gaster if he wanted to. Even with all the other patterns broken, Toby could’ve retained the caesura, or written it in katakana, or had the letter writer say “VERY INTERESTING” or “WONDERFUL” or any other common phrase of Gaster’s and this matter wouldn’t even be up for debate. However, Toby deliberately refrained from clearly identifying the writer as Gaster. Instead, he systematically cast doubt on that idea by making it, in every respect, completely unlike all other dialogue we’ve heard from him.
So I think the question to ask is: why would Toby even do this? If this really is just Gaster, why not make that clearer? Again, even if this is showing a “different side” of him, it still would’ve been the easiest thing in the world for him to prevent undue speculation about it being a different character. It seems tremendously implausible that in the already unlikely case of Toby doing a complete 180 on Gaster’s characterization, that he wouldn’t communicate that fact more clearly. If you think this letter is from Gaster, you have to basically ignore the fact that Toby is deliberately (because to imply that he's unaware of this would be absurd) posing a question about the identity of this letter which on first glance would seem to be from Gaster; you either have to assume that his doing so is meaningful (in which case it can't be Gaster), or that Toby is essentially doing this for no reason to trick or confuse the fandom.
I personally see no other plausible answer to the question of “why give us such good reason to believe that this isn’t Gaster” than… this simply not being Gaster. Or at the very least, not the same Gaster that we’ve previously spoken to.
Who could it be then?
The short answer is that I have no idea. But I think we can narrow down a list of candidates (presented here in no particular order).
#1 - It really is just Gaster
The first possibility is that this actually is just the same Gaster that we've come to know. I've made it clear how I feel about this scenario.
#2 - It's a shard of Gaster or a flashback
I personally am not fond of Gaster having some form of split personality, but there is at least some support for that idea in Undertale. Likewise I don't see why pre-shattered Gaster would be less coherent than shattered-across-time-and-space Gaster, but it's technically plausible. The benefit of these candidates is that they obviously go some ways towards explaining the Gastery aspects of the letter while also accounting for the dramatic difference in their characterization, but if you ask me, they come with considerable baggage.
#3 - It's the Secret Boss of Chapter 3 or 4
It would fit the bill. All caps dialogue, distinctive speech pattern, probably insane, connected to Gaster, and seemingly about to send you on some weird personal quest. This is the one my money's on. The only issue is that it might be too on the nose if they really are addressing us, the player, directly, and referring to the game of Deltarune (but remember - they say "DELTA RUNE", like the prophecy, or the symbol).
#4 - It's the Man behind the tree
Obviously this is assuming that the Egg Man isn't Gaster (and personally, I don't think he is). Handing you an Egg is a similar kind of mix between surreal and silly that characterizes the letter. The Egg Man seems at the very least connected to Gaster, so this would explain that aspect of the letter too. There's also the mirrored flavor text "Well, there is a man here" / "Well, there is not a man here", which is reminiscent of some of the contradictory repetitions in the letters - though, granted, that kind of language is also somewhat associated with the "someone" contacting the Secret Bosses, who I do think is Gaster. Let's move on before we get too confused.
#5 - It's Everyman
Everyman certainly has Gaster connections through his appearance in Undertale's True Lab, his status as a recurring easter egg in Deltarune, and his liberal travels between the Light and Dark Worlds. Other than that, we can't say much about Everyman (cards on the table - I think Everyman is the Egg Man). But he definitely isn't Gaster, and he seems semi-important, soooo... could be him! A combination of #4 and #5 would be my second choice behind a new Secret Boss.
#6 - It's FRIEND
Okay, I'm not even convinced "FRIEND" is a real character, but if you're not aware, there's a weird Spamton-like entity that briefly appears in Queen's basement in Chapter 2 which, oddly enough, is tied to Gaster via its internal filename, DEVICE_FRIEND. There are a ton of crackpot theories about this thing; I'm not particularly fond of any of them. But I haven't been able to come up with a very enticing explanation for the FRIEND phenomenon myself, so maybe it really is a new character, and the letter was their formal introduction. At the very least I'd say it's more plausible than it being Gaster.
#7 - It's the 'second voice'
Once you've accepted that the vessel was discarded by someone other than Gaster, this may seem like a tempting conclusion. However, there are a number of issues with this idea, namely that the SV does not speak in all-caps, uses kanji more frequently than the letter writer, and uses different pronouns. The same reasons that compel us to distinguish between Gaster and the second voice also compel us to distinguish between the second voice and the letter writer.
#8 - It's Dess
We know very little about Dess other than that she disappeared in what many assume to be a Gaster-related incident. The problem is that there's not much reason to believe this over the other options, aside from maybe the choice of the 'watashi' pronoun.
#9 - It's the "unused" voice in the code
Which many assume to be Dess. Again, not impossible, but I think this stretches credulity even more because there's quite a shift in characterization from UNUSED's scared helplessness to the letter writer's brash, loony arrogance. And while I'm not an expert in Japanese, from a quick glance it seems like UNUSED uses kanji with more frequency than the letter writer does. This post seems pretty informative re: what can be gleaned from the Japanese translation of UNUSED.
(Thanks @kitten-kokomo for the above two suggestions)
#10 - It's some entirely new character unrelated to all of these
This is possible, of course, but there's nothing to say about this scenario; if this is the case we couldn't have predicted it and we have nothing to work with at the moment, so we'll just have to wait. I will say, the Gaster connections make me think this is unlikely. We already have a bevy of potential Gaster minions.
SEMI-COHERENT MUSINGS ON
THE METAPHYSICS OF DELTARUNE
Exploring such topics as:
- "what are the Depths?"
- "what's with all the water references?"
- "why do Darkners know all that stuff?"
Chapters 3 & 4 are fast approaching, the time we have before we’re faced with an influx of novel topics for speculation is running out, and I still have some leftover thoughts on the first two chapters that I'd like to get out there in writing before that happens. These thoughts primarily center around the metaphysics of Deltarune’s diegetic world, and various discursive methods that might be employed to help elucidate its nature.
This will be a loosely structured collection of thoughts that draw heavily from philosophy, literary theory and mythology, so if you don’t like pseudointellectual ramblings this is your warning to close the tab.
All of the points made here will be ancillary to the premises I argue for in my essay titled The Magic Circle. You should probably read it first!
Crossing the Fountain – art vs. byt
Much of my Magic Circle essay is concerned with the almost magical way in which one’s experience of reality is mentally transformed when under the spell of art or fiction. Indeed, this is the source of the essay’s title, and what I argue Darkness in Deltarune represents. I wanted to illustrate this idea a little more.
In the essay, I quoted J. Huizinga’s Homo Ludens – in that book he's talking about games and play specifically, but one of his most salient observations is that play is undergirded by an impulse to abstract from immediate reality that is shared between many branches of culture, including all aesthetic traditions. Huizinga is not the only theorist who noticed that art (which I define to include games and play) is experienced as a break from ‘immediate’ or quotidian experience. Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky posited that art was a transformation of everyday life into its own seperate realm. In his analysis, he put forth an oppositional model between art and what the Formalists called “byt” – an evocative term which could be translated as “life,” but also evokes the way in which life stabilizes into predictable molds.
Within the realm of byt, we experience events causally – and causality, as David Hume famously noted, is at bottom arbitrary. Art, on the other hand, is constructed towards certain ends – it is teleological. In art, essence precedes existence.
In byt, there's material – paper, canvas, film reel, computer code. In art, there are (artistic) devices – stanza, perspective, montage, mechanic.
Byt produces recurring patterns and routines that threaten to turn us into automatons. Art de-familiarizes, jolting us out of the narcotic patterns of everyday experience by presenting us with novelty to reflect on.
Now, you may or may not find this model for understanding art convincing or all-encompassing, but I think it provides a useful idea for understanding Deltarune's metatext.
When we interact with art or fiction, we voluntarily undergo certain illusions. When I read a story, I condition myself to think that I’m reading something that actually happened. When I watch theater, I condition myself to think that the actors are actual people, and the stage is a real environment. When I watch a film, I condition myself to think that the camera doesn’t exist; that it is a window into a different world which is also somehow not of that world. And when I play a (narrative) game, I condition myself to think that I am not interfacing with a program, but a world of its own. Of course, these self-imposed illusions are in no way totalizing. There is always a part of us that remains aware of the artifice. But our experience qua art operates under these illusions – we might say that there is always a part of us experiencing byt too, but this part is marginalized when we’re absorbed in an aesthetic experience.
Some readers might be scratching their heads at what any of this has to do with Deltarune, so I'll make the connection clear: Deltarune itself explicitly formulates Dark and Light – obvious analogues for fiction and reality (or art and byt) – as separate worlds, existing in a similar oppositional balance. Darkness transforms everyday objects – the raw material so to speak – into narrative devices, like characters and settings. In Deltarune there is a dual-reality to everything that comes into contact with Darkness (or the power of art). Might we climb one step up the hierarchy and try to use something akin to this oppositional model to explain the ways in which Deltarune refers to reality from within its fictional domain?
For example, there is the uneasy fact that we are an active force within the narrative, instead of just an invisible spectator. Sidestepping the question of whether the force we’re embodying in the game is supposed to literally be us, the player, at the very least the characters can only understand us in more conceptual terms, as some sort of in-universe deity or anomalous entity. So there’s us – the player – and there’s the Angel – our in-universe embodiment.
So what about the character who contacted us – what about Gaster? In The Magic Circle, I discussed how the information we have about Gaster leads us to think that he exists in some sort of transcendent state as a result of his experiments with Darkness. From that, I extrapolated that Darkness was the fundamental substance underlying Deltarune’s reality (which we can fit into another binary: there’s Darkness, the magical substance that makes up the reality of Deltarune’s world, and there’s what the concept clearly allegorizes: the creative or imaginative capacity of human beings – which is what gave rise to Deltarune, the video game). Gaster’s “transcendent” state trades heavily on video game creepypasta tropes; he’s like a ghost haunting the code of the game. And as it turns out, Deltarune has explicitly made the move to extend its diegesis to its code with the inclusion of a character who seems to be stuck there.
If the code is a part of the diegetic world, we can extrapolate another binary: there’s the code or internal workings of the program, and there’s “the Depths” – a higher (or deeper) metaphysical layer of Deltarune’s world that transcends time and space. Worded differently, the Depths are what we get when the 'eye of the narrative' turns its gaze towards the code of the program.
To close off this section, I want to mention that in Shklovsky’s theories about art and narrative, he makes heavy use of a machine metaphor; he wanted to focus on the ways in which art was a constructed object abiding by its own internal rules. The specific word the Formalists preferred is “device”. In fact, one of Shklovsky’s most well-known essays is titled “Art as Device”. Just something to think about for you Device Theory fans.
Water, Darkness and Chaos as Symbolic Motifs
Water is everywhere in Deltarune. The magical worlds we explore are given form by “fountains” and “geysers”. Onion-san talks of ominous songs under the sea. Ocean.ogg briefly plays after we fall into the supply closet Dark World. And the source image of IMAGE_DEPTH, the background of the GONERMAKER segment, is apparently of an ocean. What gives?
The basic gist is that water has an extremely long and prominent symbolic history in mythology, and figures especially prominently in ancient creation myths. One of the earliest creation myths we have, derived from Enūma Eliš, a Babylonian poem of the 2nd millenium BCE, describes a primordial state consisting of nothing but two deities – Abzu, god of the freshwater ocean, and Tiamat, god of the saltwater sea; from the “comingling of their waters”, all of creation emerges. This is consistent with what we know of ancient near-eastern cosmology in general; they viewed the world as essentially like an air bubble. In the beginning, there was water. Unordered, chaotic, formless. Then, something happens to produce the earth and firmament, both disc-shaped, which separate this cosmic ocean into heavenly waters above the earth (the source of all rain), and lower waters of the deep (the source of all rivers, springs, fountains and geysers).
This cosmological account survives into the Biblical narrative. From Genesis 1:6:
and God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”
The ancient near-eastern flood narrative, which likewise is preserved in the Bible as the story of Noah’s ark, is made less arbitrary with this in consideration; its basis is not merely that drowning in a storm is a scary concept (though it certainly is) – the real symbolic threat of the flood is of a return to pre-creation chaos. The gates of heaven opening and all of creation coming undone. From Genesis 7:11:
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.
(Sound familiar?)
The idea of water as underlying all reality cropped up not just in religion and mythology, but also philosophy. Thales of Miletus, credited since Aristotle as the world’s first philosopher, famously believed that all of reality was made up of water. Thales and his philosophical successors are sometimes called material monists for their belief that all of reality was composed of a single ultimate substance – the arche from which everything originates.
Thales’s idea was no doubt influenced by the cosmological picture painted by mythology. Though not identical to the near-eastern accounts, the world of ancient Greek mythology is preceded by a state of primordial Chaos – a vast chasm, abyss, or emptiness. Though we in the present day might be tempted to understand Chaos as something like space, ancient commentators such as Pherecydes of Syros interpreted it as water. It was the fluid, formless and undifferentiated nature of water that made it such an enticing candidate for the pre-creation substance.
Chaos was also associated with darkness. Unambiguously born from Chaos are Erebus and Nyx – deified personifications of Darkness and Night. And this is a point of similarity with the ancient near-eastern accounts. From Genesis 1:1-3:
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
In short, the primordial state across world mythology tends to be that of an infinitely dark, chaotic ocean.
The parallels to Deltarune are obvious, and having tracked the symbolic history which the game is working with can, I think, lend us a better understanding of "Darkness" as it appears in the game. Needless to say, all of what I've discussed supports the thesis I laid out in The Magic Circle: that Darkness is the arche or prima materia of Deltarune, the underlying substance that its reality is made of. Likewise I think we can intuit what “the Depths” are – simply what in the Hebrew Bible is referred to as “the (great) deep”. A mass accretion of formless Darkness which sits below reality itself. Dark Fountains are formed when the fabric of reality is pierced, creating a gap from which Darkness bursts forth. And since Darkness is the “raw material of reality” so to speak, the Darkness forms a new reality within the old one. But too many holes in reality threaten to “burst the air bubble”, so to speak, and flood the world with Darkness.
I created the above diagram a while back, and used it in The Magic Circle - no doubt you'll notice the similarity between this and the earlier diagram of the Biblical cosmology. The funny thing is that this connection wasn't consciously intended at all; I was barely aware of what the Biblical cosmology was like when I made the first version of this image. That makes me feel like I'm on the right track.
I do want to make something clear; the world of Deltarune isn't necessarily a literal Biblical style air bubble, with a disc-earth and dome sky. The air bubble thing is just for the sake of visualization. I think the Depths are more like a different layer of reality, simultaneously "higher" and "deeper". It's not that there's literally a bunch of dark water under the ground; what Kris is really stabbing is, again, the fabric of "phenomenal" reality itself.
Another thing I want to note; these early mentions by Toby of concepts relating to twilight or the meeting of light and dark have long been a topic of discussion in the community. I want to formulate my understanding of what its significance is.
The first thing God does in the Biblical creation story is summon light. Light meeting the darkness is presented as a precondition to any further creation. Likewise, fiction (darkness) can not exist without an observer in reality (light). The meeting of light and dark is a fundamental condition of art; it can't exist without somone to "shed light on it".
It could also well be referring to the Roaring; when the distinctions between light and dark threaten to dissolve, that is when we must travel to the "edge of the shadow" (the outer boundaries of the dream, near where reality is), and "shatter the twilight reverie" (twilight: when only the sun's afterglow remains) (reverie: being lost in a dream).
On Darkner Knowledge
As established earlier, Darkners are teleological beings whose essence precedes their existence. That is to say, they’re created with an inherent purpose. This purpose is what Ralsei and Queen call “the will of the Fountain” – a guiding force determining the nature of the Dark World and its inhabitants, originating in the Fountain’s creator. In my Magic Circle essay, I used this fact to explain the behavior of Darkners, and why certain ones (like King and Queen) know things that they seemingly shouldn’t (like the fact that the Knight exists, and what their title is). On this latter part, however, I didn’t go into too much detail. Here, I want to elaborate on it a little by invoking an argument made by René Descartes in his Meditations on First Philosophy, known as “the trademark argument”.
(Don’t worry, I’m not actually going to get into the weeds of Descartes’ philosophy. It might be fun to talk about how Descartes’ idea of hierarchical degrees of reality, which consist of infinite substances, finite substances and modes, correspond to Deltarune’s Angel, Lightner, and Darkner hierarchy, but I don’t think it would unearth any particularly useful insights.)
The (very simplified) trademark argument goes something like this: God must exist, because I can conceive of God, his features (that he is an infinite and eternal substance), and the fact that he is altogether more real than I am despite me not possessing this degree of reality. The idea can’t have come from me, but it must have come from somewhere – consequently it must be that I have this idea innately as a sort of “trademark” of my creator.
Now, I very much doubt anyone who's reading this finds the above to be convincing evidence for God’s existence. Thankfully, we aren’t setting out to find out whether God exists or not. The God in this scenario – the Knight – is someone we know exists, and how the relevant knowledge is possessed really does require an explanation (unlike in Descartes' argument, where the notion that an explanation is needed for how we can conceive of the idea of God is dubious at best).
Of course, I don’t mean to imply that the trademark hypothesis is the only possible explanation you could offer. Obviously, you could posit that the Knight entered the Dark Worlds and imparted the knowledge personally. But to do this you’d have to deny the Kris Knight hypothesis, marginalize the religious subtext, assert that there’s no meaning to certain patterns between Chapter 2 and 3 (such as the main Darkner bosses being activated before the Fountain Creation), ignore the latent implications in Queen’s dialogue, among other things – and I’m not interested in doing all that. For the moment, the trademark hypothesis seems much safer, not least of all because it explains other mysterious details too.
Consider the fact that Darkners are aware of the battle system, and know how it works. Do we suppose that someone went around telling each and every Darkner the mechanics of the game? Or does it just make intuitive sense that Darkners would be created with certain ideas that are consistent with their purpose?
Granted, there is still some weirdness left over that we’d have to explain. For example, Darkners – most notably Ralsei but others as well – know about the player’s button configurations. We might be tempted to just chalk this up to the necessities of tutorializing, but the game calls attention to this by having Susie ask questions about it. The trademark hypothesis doesn’t explain why Darkners specifically would be stamped with this knowledge while the Lightners are left out.
The best explanation I can come up with is that since the Dark Worlds are created by Kris, and Kris almost certainly has forbidden meta knowledge imparted by Gaster, the Darkners likewise inherit that knowledge since Kris knows that the player will be controlling them when they go to seal the Fountains, and is aware that we will need some level of guidance.
Conclusion
All right, that’s pretty much everything I wanted to get out there before Chapters 3 & 4 release. Thanks for reading! I hope this wasn’t complete babble to anyone who’s not as knee-deep as I am in random literary theory and philosophy.
