Do you remember when I made a poll? Well I do! And I want to talk about it finally (it's gonna be a long one)
On Sunday, April 23, 2023 I asked tumblr a question: when, in their opinion, was Asriel Dreemurr going to make his first appearance in Toby Fox's Deltarune (other than any potential flashbacks, which Chapter 2 showed us can happen). I've always personally felt that his potential appearance is one of the most important things that the game is building up to (plus he's my favorite Undertale character), so I wanted to gauge the UTDR community's opinion on when (or if) they thought it was going to happen
After leaving the poll open for a week and advertising it on Discord and DeviantArt (for free, if I wanted to throw money at it I would've just blazed it) I got 85 votes + my own 86th (and I also got two new mutuals from it. Shoutout to @eggylad and @ranpulsar, follow them too). The options I presented were:
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
A potential epilogue chapter after Chapter 7
I think Asriel is dead in Deltarune
I think he's alive, but he won't make a live appearance in the game
(show results)
(There is an obvious weakness in the poll, in that it doesn't have an "Other" option. For some reason I was genuinely convinced back then that I'd covered every possible option, but looking back I was probably wrong, as, for example, whether or not he arrives might depend on what ending we get. Feel free to suggest other alternatives)
From day 2 of the poll I wanted to write an analysis of the results, and try and figure out what people who voted for each option thought. I didn't ask anyone about why they voted the way that they did, not even my mutuals, so obviously that's another weakness. But it's also an excuse for me to theorize on Deltarune, and if I'm wrong as to why you voted the way that you did, feel free to correct me
I'm gonna ignore the (show results) option in my analysis, which I hope everyone will understand. I also hope the 7 people who chose it won't mind either. Aside from that, the results break down as follows:
Chapter 3: 4 votes
Chapter 4: 12 votes
Chapter 5: 8 votes (9 if you count my vote)
Chapter 6: 6 votes
Chapter 7: 32 votes
Epilogue: 4 votes
Dead: 4 votes
Alive no show: 8 votes
As we can see, the vast majority of people agree with the broad assumption that Goatbro will appear in-game at some point, though they disagree when
Most seem to think that he'll only first show up in Chapter 7 - and I can see why, for a long time I subscribed to that idea too. After all, Toriel says in Chapter 1 that he's coming home "next week." As long as the game sticks to having each chapter be a consecutive day, Chapter 7 would be just about right time for Asriel's return (same logic extends to the epilogue option, but we don't even know if there will be one, plus the way I phrased the question further helped 7's case, more on that later). Simple. However, I have since come to disagree with this whole theory
Chapters 3-5 being released together as a singular, paid package (hence my name for it: The Paid Package) indicates to me that they will constitute a "Deltarune proper" of sorts, and Chapters 6 and 7 will be the epilogue to provide final closure for the game. More specifically, I believe that The Paid Package will give us An Ending to keep us engaged in the 2-3 year wait, providing some closure to some things, but also building anticipation for the True Ending. A better way to phrase it would be a comparison to Undertale where, when you do a True Pacifist run, you first get a Neutral Ending (The Paid Package), and then play through extra content to unlock the path's true ending (Chapters 6&7)
This of course largely depends on what role Toby wants Asriel to play in Deltarune once he shows up, but I think there is so much about him that could be explored, about his personality, how he might've changed in college, about his relationship with Dess, and so on. I think Toby would want to introduce him sooner rather than later, so he has the time to do all this, and the final two chapters will probably be about stopping The Roaring, so they might have a more urgent feel to them, focusing less on character exploration and more on solving the big crisis. Not that there won't be any character exploration there, just that it'll not be a priority. And for that reason Toby might want to insert Asriel before Chapter 7, so that we get to know him better before he (probably) has to help us stop The Roaring
Which brings me to the Chapter 4 and 5 options, both of which (I think) rely on logic similar to what I described above to conclude that Asriel will feature for the first time in Deltrarune in the Paid Package Ending, although with slight differences enabled by my exact phrasing of the question, and I quote:
Dialogue spoken by him without his body or face being shown count
This is because when I made the poll I imagined that Asriel would make a brief appearance at the Chapter 5's ending cliffhanger, setting him up as a participant of Chapter 6's Dark World adventure, and I wanted for that to make it clear that that would count as Asriel being introduced in Chapter 5. And to me personally it seems that the Chapter 4 voters thought in much a similar way, but a chapter earlier. In other words, they thought that the Dark World adventure with Asriel will be in Chapter 5 rather than 6. And I'm just, incredibly furious that I didn't see that line of reasoning when setting up the poll (or rather, was furious when I wrote this post's original draft back in early May). I only included Chapters 3 and 4 in the poll for completeness' sake, and me not seeing that under my logic Chapter 4 makes just as much, if not more sense than Chapter 5 was a major source of anger for me about the poll. And I think in hindsight, the instant-gratification-seeking part of me would make me vote for Asriel appearing a chapter earlier than I originally voted for
As for Chapter 6, I imagine that the 6 people that voted for it worked under a similar cliffhanger assumption that I described above, and that Chapter 7 would see Asriel in the Dark World for the first time, but if I'm wrong feel free to correct me
The epilogue option, as I said, seems to rely on similar logic as to what I described about voting for Chapter 7, buy 1. not knowing if it'll even exist, and 2. the whole cliffhanger assumption probably led most people considering it to vote for Chapter 7 instead in the end
The Chapter 3 votes got me completely stumped though. Since there were only 4 of them, the only explaination I've got is "trolls and misclicks" but that's probably unfair. Still, I don't see any other logic, so I would appreciate feedback on this
And that brings me to the last two options: Asriel is dead, and Asriel is alive but won't show up. The latter got 8 votes, which indicates to me that it's a relatively serious idea, if less so than him showing up after all. But I can see a kind of logic that would lead to such conclusion, sort of. Kris' arc in Deltarune is probably in no small part about letting go, accepting change (which may incidentally tie into Undertale's message?), and Asriel failing to show up, be it because he's dead, or because other circumstances prevented him, might help with reinforcing that change? Although on the other hand, it would mean that Toby failed to deliver proper payoff to something he set up all the way back in Chapter 1, and has been feeding into with Chapter 2, fueling the intrigue of what happened to Asriel. If he doesn't show up due to a contrivance, I don't think it would make for a very satisfying conclusion to the story, unless handled very carefully. There's also the option that while we don't see Asriel come back to Hometown, it's heavily indicated that is happens off-screen just after the game's end. But I think that would be the worst of both worlds, and Toby wouldn't do this to us
As for Asriel being dead... my first reflex is to say that Toby wouldn't lie to us in such a majorly plot-relevant way. He said Asriel's coming back, and we've got no reason to think he's lying about this. Any potential clues that might say otherwise may well point to there being something more about Asriel, but surely the intent is not to contradict what was said earlier in clear text. Except, there's a good chance that Toby did lie to us in a majorly plot-relevant way. Not about Asriel, we have no way of knowing that, but about choice. After setting up in Chapter 1 that our choices don't matter, in Chapter 2 he did a complete 180 and gave us the Weird Route, with a radically different course and ending to the Normal one. And even if Snowgrave's description as "Fatal" turns out to have been hyperbolic and Berdly's fine actually (which I don't believe, but it is possible), there's still a ton of other, minor choices that still have a lasting impact on the world, such as what NPCs we can bring over to the Castle Town. So, do our choices in Deltarune matter or not? And if Toby did lie to us there, could he lie to us again? I personally think that there is a non-zero chance that, if Deltarune will have two (or more) endings, the one resulting from doing all the Weird Routes might see us, the player force Kris to kill Asriel (or force Kris to force a teammate to do it) But it is way to early to tell, and for now, as long as consensus among the Lighteners appears to be that Asriel is coming back, I'm trusting them
It bears mentioning that I never actually interacted much with the "Asriel is dead" theory, so I don't know all the evidence for it, so this is more of a gut instinct what I just said
But besides. Asriel is waaaaaaaay more interesting alive than dead. So much more potential to tell stories with him in the Deltarune universe. Would Toby really let all that potential go to waste? No. It's his big passion project, the game that he always wanted to make, and the best video game of the 2020s (yes, I'm calling it now. No video game that's better than Deltarune will come out this decade). Asriel is alive because it makes for a better story
So, what do you think? What was the actual reason you voted one way or the other? Do my theories make sense to you? Please engage with me i beg you