Deltarune and OFF paralells with Friend as a character and role
its likely another big inspiration for friend was the character The Judge from OFF- and i wanna yap about it
as a quick aside before i get into my long ass explanation and why it think its pertinent to how it could've influenced friend, i just wanna quickly state that we know that Toby both likes and has drawn a lot of inspiration from OFF before.
Toby has stated before that one of the biggest inspirations behind Papyrus' beta design was the character of Dedan. if you look back on the snippet of papyrus concept art where we got the "has a brother names comic sans and a --- named----" lore drop, you will see his design and much more blunt/incel-y way of speaking lines up almost directly with how Dedan is present in OFF. also for OFF's recent remaster for steam Toby Fox offered to redo all the music for the game and even put Papyrus' musical motif in Dedans original theme.
all this to say, this game has been a notable influence on Tobys' work. This becomes all the clearer when you play OFF as even in the visual language of the UI and how environments look are very similar to the ruins.
OKAY INTO FRIEND-PARALELLS AND OBVIOUS SPOILERS FOR OFF (please forgive me if i misremember or forget anything as it has been a bit since ive played OFF but i have tried to fact check as i write this comment and i havent played the remsterd verion, only the original. so some things may have been changed between versions)
Judge is a smiling cat that seeks to watch over the main character, The Batter, throughout the game. It's his role to help guide you to achieve your goal of "purifying" the land and its inhabitants. you meet judge in the first room of the game where he greets the plays and asks for your name, which the character replies "the Batter". the judge disregards this and asks for the name of the one controlling the batter (calling them the puppet and puppeteer respectively), which i find draws alot of simularies to the create a vessel inro in Deltarune. Judge then declares he shall serve the player in their duty.
Judge is a character that has a meta understanding of OFF's world, telling us the player the controls and sometimes actively shutting the the batters attempts to speak to him, choosing to not address the vessel on the same level as the player. past the firs zone the judge will occasionally pop in to guide and help the player navigate the world and tells the player who the main 'bosses' of each zone are, that we need to purify.
in the second zone of the game judge tells us that he is looking for his brother Japhet, because they have gone missing. along the way in zone two we find lore in the areas library about a prophecy and that "the fire bird (who in a previous entry was said to 'light up the darkness') wept and such the bird became a cat and the cat, a tyrant", "he led a gale of ominous spirits rain upon his subjects; his madness blinding" and finally "the fire bird remained in waiting for the purifier, the one who would destroy him; for he knew what he'd done, was evil"- i think that Japhets section alone can draw alot of interesting parallels between both friend and the lighteners, the evil laying in wait for the one destined to destroy them and the madness they've spread across the lands inhabitants.
vv transcript of the multiple book page that make up japhets legend
(those shrouded in madness could also serve as a parallel to the goners as similarly to how we see the blue bird goners speech start to deteriorate in a similar way to the mad zone inhabitants)
vv speech deterioration & colour palette change in response to madness
an 'angel' that once was tasked with spreading light throughout their dark land falls to madness, taking on the form of a smiling cat that then infects others with its insanity; before being killed once the angel reemerges, bathing the dark land in light once again (before the player character, you know, murders them)
once meeting Japhet in his cat form he appears as a look-alike to the judge, our vessel attempts to talk him down form his madness before the fire bird reemerges from inside the cat.
after this the judge becomes alot more sparce throughout the game reappearing in the last zone. but before I get into that i want to touch on another character i believe also has some strong parallels that i,, admittedly know how to connect, but i acknowledge are there and that is with the games shopkeeper, Zacharie. after Japhet is 'killed' by the fire bird and the judge disappears Zacharie, who is depicted as wearing a frog-like mask thought the game, changes it to be that of the face of the judge. he will keep going as the role of the guide as if they are the same person, but will acknowledge in a later dialogue that he is just 'a replacement' and that its 'not his role'. just a little thing that caught my attention with the talks of replacing another in 'their role' but i didn't know where else to put this lol.
big spoilers for off but the end of OFF has making the choice of if we should side with the vessel in purification or the judge (who at this point has unknown motivations). the judge claims that the vessel is an imposter of the real prophecy. in siding with the vessel he turn on a switch bathing the lands in light, that subsequentially kills all its inhabitants therefore, in their eyes 'purifying it'. siding with the cat allows us to kill the vessel and he keeps the light on, thus keeping the lands in balance of light and dark
okay, the conclusion to this yapp fest is that i strongly believe that, similar to Watchifeild where we have evidence that toby liked the source material and that there is strong evidence to show that these peices of media may have strongly influenced that of characters, themes and symbolism used in deltarune. A smiling cat being alluded to spread madness and layer being responsible for being part of a prophecy where it takes the roles of bathing the world in darkness. juxtaposed with the 'vessel' that is being controlled by a higher power whose goal it is is to 'purify' the lands and bathe them in light.
I'm shocked I've seen basically no one talk about OFFs parallels to Deltarune especially since toby has mentioned before that it has inspired parts of his work in the past and is an important game to him.
but if in the end if this is just a way that people find out about and play OFF, honestly id be pretty thrilled since it is an amazing game that mor people should play :)
thank you for reading my yappening :D
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