Future chapter discussion, Now with 10% more Catti and Jockington!
(CW / snow grave discussion)
I haven't gone on one of these rambling tirades in a long time. But I kinda fell out of deltarune for awhile. But chapters 3 and 4 are coming out real soon! So I have a reason to playthrough this 9 hour beast again!
Now I know chapter 3 is the one that's more reasonable to be excited for since it's the next one. But come on, look whose post you're reading. I'm gonna be hyped about the chapter with Catti in it. And that's all but confirmed right? You could say it could be another solo Kris and Susie chapter but this image on steam kinda gives it away for me:
That's chapter 4, it has the same floor pattern from the confirmed chapter 4 segments in the trailer. And it's referencing Jockington. And besides a single room in chapter 2. Lightners are only mentioned by name if they're actually there.
Like there wasn't a point in chapter 1 where the Top chef mentions Snowy or something. There is that one time where Ralsei shows that he knows where the empty classroom is in the light world, but Ralsei is probably the exception since he's just weird with stuff like that already.
continued under the cut:
Not to brag, but I actually thought chapter 4 would be the J/C chapter for a long time. I mean if it's going to be the church, then you gotta have the goth girl show up. It's right there. Although I don't know realistically why the two of them are going to be there.
So what is that going to be like? Besides awesome.
It's impossible to know for certain what's going down in chapter 4 since it takes place after the events of a chapter already we know nothing about. We don't know why there's a dark world in the church, if it wasn't opened by the knight then it could have been opened by Alvin, and assuming that this isn't the chapter where the entire town discovers that dark worlds are a thing, there probably isn't a sermon that day.
It's safe to believe that Susie's tactic of making everyone think that the dark worlds aren't real so this stays a thing between her and Kris, isn't going to work on J/C at all. Catti's into the occult, if there would be anyone to believe about some secret underworld it would be her.
I won't use her chapter 2 dialog about Noelle as evidence that Catti already knows that they exist since it's just a gag about her way of talking.
Short sentences, long pauses...
Only the most important details. Scattered between metaphors.
A poet's intent. Lost by the listener's own beliefs...
Search for meaning... At you're own risk.
She does weirdly over correct herself after mentioning Noelle walking among the dark. Like she said something she shouldn't have.
Maybe Kris gave her a weird look after she said to protect Noelle from the dark, and she's just clarifying. I don't think this is anything more then a joke.
The two of them don't seem to tag along with you for that long, because in the... One screenshot we have of gameplay after the presumed opening with Kris and Susie before Ralsei appears. They are nowhere to be found.
There could be a segment similar to chapter 2 where Ralsei and Susie leave Kris alone, and Catti and Jockington would take their places. Catti also really doesn't like Susie, to the point where Susie doesn't even want to be around her, she doesn't have that reaction with anyone else by the way. So that's probably why she isn't around in that screenshot.
Maybe Catti and Susie could grow to be friends in chapter 4? Or at least not hate each other. Depends on what history is there. Catti and Kris were friends, maybe she tried standing up for Kris? That's probably not in character for her at all, and we still don't really know how close Kris and Catti were. "Don't die.", we at least know Catti doesn't want Kris to die. And they studied the occult together. That's about it.
They could also be in antagonistic roles like Berdly and Susie were in their chapters. Maybe Jockington sides with the bad guy. Why? Maybe Jockington is really religious, probably not.
I use Jockington as an example because I can't see Catti willingly siding with the antagonist unless the chapter is more occult themed then just basic religious stuff. But Jockington is pure of heart so I can't imagine him being evil either. Maybe he thinks he's doing the right thing, but he's Jockington so he's completely wrong. Jockington gives strong Lancer vibes in their types of villainy.
So ever since chapter 2 any discussion about future chapters has a certain subject loom over it like a storm cloud. You know it, you might like it. The weird route. Will Chapter 4 have a weird route.
Probably not.
I could type all sorts of hypothetical situations to how the chapter's guest characters could turn to murder and how that's based in small plot details from already obscure characters. But I think a lot of people miss the point of the route.
The weird route isn't about brainwashing your friends into killing people. It's about the player getting desperate for control.
Deltarune isn't shy about telling you that you have no control over what happens in it's story. It's on the steam page, the second voice in the intro tells you that nobody can choose who they are in this world, and Susie tells you your choices don't matter shortly after that.
I think Susie represents this idea a lot actually. Time and time again you are shown that you can't control what Susie does. In chapter 1 she fights without you telling her to. You spend her entire fight against Lancer desperately trying to knock her down so she doesn't kill him. In chapter 2 she wills Ralsei and herself into having ACTs because she's getting upset with the sweet cap'n cakes fight taking too long. And anytime there's a dialog choice with her, you can pick anything you want but nothing actually changes.
And it looks like there's gonna be a rhythm game segment in chapter 3, and would you look at that. you can't control her there either.
I think Noelle is supposed to be Susie's opposite here. Her own desire/lack of control is a running theme with her. There are a lot of things in her life that she can't control, so she clings onto what she can. She likes being in situations where she's scared, but still has enough control to get away at anytime.
It's why she has the courage to talk to Susie in the Farris wheel at all, it's still scary, but she believes that she's dreaming and can wake up anytime, nothing she said will matter.
Noelle also is into looking for glitches in video games, pushing them as far as they go until they break, finding things in a game's world that should be impossible. And through you doing the same thing in the weird route, you don't allow Noelle to go through her intended character arc. She stays a pushover the whole time and does everything you tell her to do, the thorn ring probably helped a lot here too. When the player calls out to her in Spamton's fight she's drawn to it like a magnet, and instantly follows the player's orders. She gets the route where you can actually change what happens. It's fucked up, but you made your choices matter through any means possible.
This is also my explanation for why I think [Hyperlink Blocked] is the word "choices" being censored. "YOU AND THAT [Hochi Mama], YOU'VE BEEN MAKING CHOICES". If he ever said the word choices without getting censored please let me know.
You have no control over Susie, and you have way too much over Noelle
And while we will see if chapters 3 and 4 have weird routes. I think thematically it fits for this route to be more Noelle centric. It requires less mental gymnastics to justify Noelle being special with her connections to the game's central theme and her inability to stand her ground against the player. Then trying to justify how Toriel and Catti, people with much stronger wills and little to no connections to the theme of control, will start killing people because Kris said so.
But then again, before chapter 2 came out If you told me you could convince Noelle to kill people with a magic ring and enough persuasion, because the game's theme says so. I wouldn't believe you, So I don't know.
I guess... Catti thinks her family isn't goth enough and uh... Can't control that... Oh and Toriel... She's... divorced... yeah... Doesn't really hit the same as Noelle's missing sister and terminally ill dad. Maybe we just don't know enough about them yet. And this route is all about going against what should be possible, so you all can point and laugh if I'm wrong. I at least know that I'm right about friend inside me absolutely not being a thing that's going to happen... I hope...
Also, I don't know if we're seeing Papyrus in this update. This screenshot of Sans correcting you about something doesn't inspire confidence.
I swear this is all set up for the ultimate joke that deltarune's Papyrus is a baby or something and Sans is acting the way he is because, "What do you mean you want to meet my baby brother, fuck off. Come back tomorrow". It would explain why Papyrus knows what green grass is but not the sun. He was a baby the last time he saw the surface.
Hey look at these!!! I decided to throw my metaphorical hat into the metaphorical ring and try to give some of these dorks walk sprites. They're kinda rough around the edges but I think they turned out pretty good for only being around an afternoon's amount of work. I gotta say though each of these feels like they have their own story of how they were all uniquely a pain in the ass to make.
SNOWY
Starting with everyone's favorite deltarune character, Snowy! Holy hell! How I hope to never make a sprite for this dork ever again! In a game full of relatively simple character designs this dude just stands out as a beacon of complexity. He's just so weird man.
Now actually I completely forgot that he already had a sprite for him facing to the left in the game. (It's only used twice in the whole game). And I really didn't expect him to be that uh, flat?
Yeah, I don't know I guess he got hit in the face with a frying pan or something.
MONSTER KID
This little charmer was easier to sprite by several orders of magnitude. One of the reasons why is that 30% of their directional movement sprites were already done. And the reason I say only 30% of its done is because the one used in game is uh...
... Just the sprite that's used when they're sitting at their desk in class. Seriously! Thats their walking sprite! When MK and Snowy run away from Susie at the bunker, they just slide out of there!
Now to be fair they're gone in like half a second so it's pretty hard to notice if you aren't looking for it and its also probably why the spriters didn't feel the need to give them walking animations yet. but whenever I see this scene used in a theory video about the bunker I always chuckle.
But still, it was very helpful to have a sort of jumping off point for making their sprites. Since I wasn't just going to reinvent the wheel and draw them a whole new face. But I did need to give them a new body though, since I doubt monster kids body is a perfect cone from every angle.
CATTI
Now the thing is that there many very talented pixel artists that work on deltarune... Toby fox is not one of them.
Now I only mention this because with the fucking 2 sprites, that catti has in the game there is a pretty clear difference in artistic ability between them.
One sprite of her in her work uniform with shading. And one sprite of her sitting at her desk that uses flat default MS paint colors. Thats all I have to work with.
So, assuming that god is good and that the sprite that doesn't look like pixel barf is the one that more accurately represents her design. I used that to reference the color of her earrings and eyes. Along with her head sprite, since again, don't need to reinvent the wheel. Especially since I don't imagine her face shape completely changing once she changes her clothes. But I did add some shading since I though it looked nice.
After I had the head done, I decided to sprite... well, the rest of her. I sorta skimped out on the front facing body. And just made it a heavily altered version of Catty's. I only did that because every other member of the family pretty much just has the same body. And since shes related to them I thought it made sense to not make her some weird outlier to the rest of her family. Contrary to what Catti may tell you in game.
Making the directional sprites felt like pulling teeth. Once I had the down sprite done the up sprite was a piece of cake but oh man. The horizontal sprites. yeah uh, that's... probably not what that sprite is going to look like in deltarune.
Her head shape was tough, I didn't know if she had a prominent snout, or if her head is just completely round like it is when looking at it from the front. But after messing around with it while listening to the entirety of RV pine's fanmade chapter 3 soundtrack. I finally got something passable.
But that's about it, I guess. I know I just got done complaining about how these were super-duper hard to make and stuff. But it was pretty fun to make these.
