So I was just looking through some dialog from Deltarune Chapter 4, and I spotted a sneaky parallel that I'd never noticed before. Something that, if I'm right, is a massive hint for what's coming in the final two chapters.
To start with, let's look at Ralsei's dialogue near the end - where he talks about the Final Tragedy, how terrified he is of facing it, and his even greater fear of avoiding it:
* I... I want to. I want to believe again.
* I want to believe... it can change!
* That there isn't just one ending!
* But...
* What would that be...?
* If there was something else, what would it be...?
* And how do we know
* It wouldn't be something even worse?
At a glance, this looks like it's talking about the Weird Route - which may not be entirely wrong. But to explain why the Weird Route may apply, we need to look at a piece of Alphys' dialog, from much earlier in the game:
* The shelter... it's...
* A place for people to survive an emergency, right?
* But, ever since I've moved here, it's been... closed for some reason.
* It makes me wonder if... even if there was some disaster...
* Whatever's inside there...
* Might be worse...?
And if you read between the lines, these two pieces of dialog - from two different characters at two different points in the story - are saying the same exact thing: that the endgame we're building up to, the Roaring and the Final Tragedy and all that, are not the worst things we could have to face in this story.
It's been all but confirmed that the Shelter is the final dungeon, and Noelle's house the one before that. But the Shelter, in terms of Deltarune's story structure, has a few major quirks:
1: Every chapter boss in Deltarune maps to a different chess piece. But there are only six pieces in chess, meaning we're slated to run out.
2: Deltarune's plot outline is basically "Undertale in reverse". Chapter 1 corresponds to New Home, Chapter 2 to the CORE, and so on - all the way to Chapter 5 and its Snowdin-esque miniboss rush. But again, Undertale's main storyline only has six areas.
3: Lord of the Hammer, Gerson's written adaptation of the Prophecy, only has six chapters. It's not meant to - the story is, officially, unfinished - but according to Gerson, the original author was "swallowed up" before it was finished.
One broken pattern is just a broken pattern - but three broken patterns is a new pattern. One that tells us, in no uncertain terms, that one of the next two chapters won't be part of the structured narrative.
The obvious candidate for this role is Chapter 7 - but is that the real answer? Let's look at what we know so far:
According to Alphys, whatever's in the Shelter may be even worse than the Roaring.
According to Ralsei, the only way to stop the Roaring is to initiate the Final Tragedy - and averting that may lead somewhere even worse.
And according to the plot of Undertale, we've been hoodwinked - because it actually has seven areas, not six. The last area, the Final Lab, is only available if you've otherwise completed the game's True Pacifist route - I.E., beating it without killing a single monster on the way.
I've already covered my theory that we can save Ralsei in a pacifist run. What I didn't expect to find was that, if we don't, the story might just end in Chapter 6.
I've suspected since I first met her that Carol is Deltarune's answer to Undertale's Asgore - a grieving, broken person who has made some atrocious decisions out of pain. And even though she may not be our actual Chapter Villain, her obsession with Noelle's perceived safety makes her a huge obstacle in our quest to get a new party member.
But what happens after we beat Asgore in Undertale? Omega Flowey stabs him in the goddamn back, is what. A move that Deltarune is already familiar with, because the Roaring Knight has pulled this shit twice - and unless I miss my mark, the next time she appears will be the time she starts the Roaring.
In other words, the Roaring is going to start at the tail end of Chapter 6. And unless we can find some way to stop the Tragedy - if Ralsei goes ahead with sacrificing himself to become the new Angel - there will be no Chapter 7. The Roaring will be reset, and the world will be saved for the moment - but Ralsei will be gone, all the Lightners that the Knight took will be gone, and the shadow that lurks under Hometown - the root of everything that has happened - will keep growing until it becomes a calamity too powerful to be stopped.
That being said, I don't know that a Pacifist run is enough on its own. Beating the True Pacifist route in Undertale took a bit of additional homework - including a point where you had to intentionally backtrack to save a character from heat exhaustion. Similarly, getting into the Shelter will probably take serious dedication - the kind it takes to dig up every piece of a broken key, just to go play with a dangerous prisoner.
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