Finished the new Deltarune chapter.
I forgot it was possible for something to be so painfully disappointing.
Long, disjointed rant incoming. I'm too dumbfounded to do a proper analysis or anything, I just had to get my thoughts out somewhere:
-Susie was character assassinated so horribly that it made me lose hope for the entire chapter and the future of the game. Chapters 1-4 built up an amazing character and I was eagerly awaiting to see how she'd further reflect on the prophecy in Ch5. What allowed her to make friends and finally open up and be herself in the first place turned out to be a restrictive fate that reduced her to a single, inaccurate role and a participant in a tragedy that was destined to come. We saw her gut reaction: destroying the glass, a promise to defy the fate it represented so she could continue going on adventures with her friends, but how would that impact her enjoyment of the lighthearted festival?
Turns out the writers completely fucking forgot about what happened in Chapter 4. Susie breathes a reminder to check the mansion for the code if they get the chance, after that the prophecy programming known as 'horrible writing' takes effect where she completely forgets about the terrible tragedy they made a big deal of in the previous chapter so she can hang out with her girlfriend. What about the prophecy where she finds love? Not even a blip on her radar. There is no acknowledgement that what she saw might have any bearing on her actions, which is baffling when the rest of the chapter makes everything else so blatantly annoying. You're left to your own devices and any explanation is putting more thought and effort into it than Toby Fox put into keeping Susie consistent.
The visage of cope that the bad writing is purposeful completely fucking shatters in the dark world when this impostor decides to throw one of Susie's remaining boundaries that she's had for 7 years now out of the fucking window because Noelle might like her wearing ribbons. What a fucking joke. All that talk of facing fate and bloodying her hands in defiance goes out the door so you can pretty her up for ~love~, which has replaced her remaining personality. Blegh. At this point I was praying that maybe Noelle was a prophecy plant, maybe the flower fucker was poisoning her, maybe there was something at the end of several hours of annoying gameplay and unfunny jokes that would make everything make sense. There was not.
-Only an entire chapter of beating around the bush of plot progression. God forbid Susie be smart enough to figure out that Kris was doing something behind her back, let's dumb her down and have a goofy, contrived scene out of a cartoon to handwave away Kris making the fountain without anyone seeing. No wonder they lobotomized Susie, she would've sped things up significantly. Sure, Ralsei can meaningfully interact with another Darkner and get to act like a hater, but before it gets too interesting and satisfying gotta make sure he continues enabling Kris and not confronting them about anything, put in a little annoying blushing sprite to scare the player into thinking they'll ruin another pair of characters with a godawful romance while you're at it. God forbid we develop the existing characters to the best of our extent after shooting ourselves in the foot with the turning to stone rule that prevents non-Ralsei Darkners from getting mandatory development outside of their dark world, let's introduce SEVEN NEW CHARACTERS whose sole purpose is running circles around the reason why Asgore is doing all this crazy shit.
-God, I don't even hate the flowers. Except Flowery, who I was cheering to die at the end. But it's clear that they only serve to pad out the length of this chapter in order to wait another year or five before ANYONE'S motivation is made clear so we know what the stakes are. Yeah, the Knight is kidnapping people, Kris made those fountains, Carol is investigating the bunker, why the fuck are they doing any of that? There are two chapters to go and we don't even know the main antagonist's motivation. It's kind of hard to care for the flowers as their own characters when all I want to do is probe them for answers about the main fucking characters. I don't want that to be my instinct. I want to care for the Darkners as their own characters like I did with the monsters in Undertale. I did for Lancer, but after he's served his purpose the game relegates him to someone helping Susie cover up his room to make way for a Lightner. After an entire speech from Susie in Ch3 about how no one's going to be left behind. Despite the game trying to say otherwise, the game and the player get more out of treating them as secondary to the Lightners than letting them have important moments after they've been used up. Why shouldn't I do the same to delude myself that I'm going to get something out of it for understanding the ones actually driving the plot forward?
-Even the platforming mechanic and secret boss didn't make me like the chapter. Maybe in a better chapter, but they just made me wish more effort could've been put into the writing than making Mad Mew Mew 2 (now with annoying bombs and a dating Sim parody that doesn't give you time to think) or a sudden mid-game genre change where the cancel button is the jump button. The acts were just as annoying and as much of a hassle.
-I was more excited for the egg room, the unused dialogue and the weird route than anything else. Even some interesting revelations this chapter were bogged down by the general quality and I ended up not caring at all. The egg room was fine, by the way. It was actually nice. I'm glad the forgotten man won't be here to be ruined by however they decide to bastardize this game with the next chapters.
-The weird route... Oh, the weird route. I get the people who only play this game for the weird route now. Susie felt more like herself in that version of the festival than she did in the entire normal route. The simple loop used for Noelle's monologue has become my most listened to song out of the entire soundtrack for Chapter 5. A cutscene where you have to mash buttons to progress to what is basically a disc insert prompt has become my favourite part of the chapter. Throughout the normal route the most I felt was haphazard hope, but I was smiling the entire time as I progressed through the weird route.
If you had told me I'd be feeling like this a week ago, I would've been shocked. As much as I was interested in where the weird route was going, I though the normal route was the meat of the game for a reason. Similar to the way genocide recontextualizes pacifist in Undertale, but ultimately you want to see that version of the story and leave these characters with a happy ending. Then again, Undertale actually cares about making its characters interesting and consistent in the neutral and pacifist routes.
Despite what I initially thought, Deltarune does not share this same philosophy. Not for Susie, not for Noelle. On the normal route they remain trapped in a relationship they had to butcher Susie to make happen instead of it feeling natural, where after optional cutesy dialogue disconnected from the main story and a lukewarm lesson to stand up for herself, Noelle is forced back into the depressing normalcy that is visiting her dying father and she'll presumably, finally visit the dark world again in the PENULTIMATE CHAPTER.
In the weird route, something changes. Something snaps. The glass of the prophecy appears broken and Noelle can go apeshit. The path to get there is horrible, but when being good just gets you more filler, it's fun being evil. Your choices feel like they matter. You're doing something you're not supposed to, but the music in cyber city almost feels triumphant, you get a harder boss fight because your actions have allowed the boss to take over that dark world, the characters are afraid of you instead of treating you as a tool and an afterthought, Noelle is actually interesting. For your efforts you're rewarded with feeling like it actually matters, as if you're actually seeing beyond the boundaries of the game.
Man, that sounds fucking evil, but it's how I feel. I wouldn't care that much if the normal route was written before Toby hit his head and decided to publish a first draft instead of a finished chapter, I would've just found it cool. However, since there are no do-overs, the only way for this chapter and the game to be redeemed in my eyes is if the normal route is intentionally bad to set up the b side. I know, when's the last time something was intentionally bad and had a good resolution afterwards? But it's my last cope, because honestly, bad writing turning the player into a villain sounds both cool and hilarious, which is more than I can say for most of the normal route.
-I'll use up the last of my ranting energy on the Sans thing. One of my earliest concerns about Deltarune was that it would retroactively ruin Undertale. Just in the back of my mind, the chapters were too good to make me think they couldn't nail the Sans twist that was probably coming, even if I hated the general idea. They shoved Spamton into the anniversary stream and that was concerning, but they kept to the game's emotional core and the worries subsided again. As with the rest of Chapter 5, the confirmation that Sans was in Deltarune first was half-assed and did nothing to change my dislike for the idea.
It just makes Sans a less interesting character for me. Instead of bonding with Toriel through their love of jokes and making a promise to a woman he only knows the voice of, and them recognizing and finally meeting each other in True Pacifist, it's Sans coincidentally finding the AU version of the Toriel he partied with while she was intoxicated enough to fall over and her child was trying to sleep. I still think he got off too easy for that.
I admit that this is more of a personal thing, even if Sans turning out to be from Deltarune was written in the most amazing way possible it would probably still have irked me. Doesn't help that I hated the rest of the chapter just as much though.
I don't ever even want to do a full replay of this chapter for my other saves, especially since I hear that you can't actually attack the flowers for a neutral run. I haven't even beaten the secret boss yet. Usually I like experiencing things in-game but it just isn't worth it this time when I can hack it in. I'm glad I decided to do the weird route myself though. I got the failed run first because I didn't realize you had to quickly select proceed, but as soon as I learned I immediately tried it out. It definitely adds to the experience more than just watching it.
