The tenth-most-popular post I've ever written on here was a rant about "UNDERTALE", specifically with how it handled the ending of the so-called "Genocide Path" (which I opted to call "The Guilt Trip" for reasons I detail in the piece itself).
I do say, however, that I enjoyed "UNDERTALE" a great deal, and actually thought the ending for the "Neutral Path" was damn near perfect tonally and thematically. I thought the "Pacifist Path" ending was too treacly, and the "Guilt Trip" ending was too didactic and presumptuous. But really, the main thing that bothered me was how the game had important, story-relevant content that you could only access if you went along every route, and one of those routes permanently leaves a black mark of judgment upon your save file.
That said, I've always hoped that Toby Fox would continue developing video games, because despite my problems with some of his choices, "UNDERTALE" was kind of a triumph of interactive storytelling. It was self-aware without sacrificing narrative tension or immersion, the combat mechanics were clever and varied, the characters were distinctive and infectiously fun, the music was incredible, and like I said, one of the three endings is absolutely fantastic.
So I was very happy to find out that Toby Fox had released a demo of a new game he's hoping to make. It's still unclear whether or not the full version of this game will ever actually happen since he apparently needs a team in order for it to be viable, and he has no experience leading a team in making a video game, so there's a halfway decent chance that it will fall apart and this first part is all we'll ever get.
This game is called "DELTARUNE", and in case it's not immediately obvious, that name is an anagram of "UNDERTALE". That name is fitting, however, because it's a good symbol for how this game is related to its older sibling. It's not a sequel or a prequel, but it involves familiar themes and characters, has similar mechanics, and definitely makes references to its predecessor throughout. It's not exactly an "alternate universe" either, because typically, alternate universe stories have clear points of divergence. "Red Son" is an alternate universe where Superman lands in Soviet Russia instead of the United States. "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" is an alternate universe where Voldemort is vastly more intelligent. But "DELTARUNE"? There's no clear point of divergence. It takes place somewhere new, but all the old, familiar characters are there. A number of the characters are doing what they were doing at the end of "UNDERTALE", but they may or may not know any of the characters they ought to know. And despite this universe greatly resembling the state of the world at the end of "UNDERTALE" (specifically the "Pacifist Path" ending), the presence of certain characters makes it seem almost like a prequel. So, like the name, it's "UNDERTALE", but mixed around until it becomes something new.
It's a bizarre choice given how invested the fandom was in the established timeline and characters, but it also makes the game accessible to a newer audience, even though you'll get more out of the game if you've played "UNDERTALE". Toby Fox advises that you play "UNDERTALE" first, but all that really means is that a lot of references will fly over your head. Nothing about the plot really hinges on your knowledge of the previous game, so I'd probably recommend trying out "DELTARUNE" even if you haven't played "UNDERTALE". You can probably get through it in about 4-6 hours and it costs nothing, so I recommend giving it a shot before you keep reading this post.
SPOILERS beyond this point.
So now that we're on the same page regarding what "DELTARUNE" is, let me just say that I absolutely loved it pretty much from the beginning.
The game starts up with character creation, which immediately threw me. "UNDERTALE" had absolutely no character creation mechanics whatsoever, so it seemed like a big departure right out of the gate. I chose my head, my torso, my legs, my personality, and my name, and then the game... threw it all away.
"No one can choose who they are in this world," the game coldly informs you.
WELL THAT'S ONE WAY TO START A GAME, HUH?
And that's not the only time the game does stuff like this. Twice, a character asks you a question, but interrupts you before you have a chance to respond. Later on, you get to design a siege weapon, only to see it unceremoniously blow up a few minutes later. This game has a lot going on, but probably one of the biggest departures it makes from "UNDERTALE" is...
Your choices don't matter.
Oh, they matter a little. It'll change how certain characters respond to you, and small details about the ending will change if you make it through the game without killing anything, but by-and-large, the game doesn't give a crap about the player's morality. In fact, the game doesn't seem to care much about the main character, Kris, at all. The only character with a clear arc in the game is Susie, a new character and one of three characters that make up the party.
Yeah, that's right. Now there's a party system. Evolving from the scaled-down "Earthbound"-inspired combat of "UNDERTALE", "DELTARUNE" moves closer to "Final Fantasy" in terms of its combat. Now you juggle three characters instead of just one. In addition, there are now spells that can be cast that use up a new resource called Tension Points (TP for short), which refills when you defend or narrowly avoid obstacles during the bullet-hell segments, which are still very much a part of the game.
That said, despite these differences, the combat is largely the same. You can still FIGHT or ACT, and once your enemy is willing, you can SPARE them to avoid having to defeat them with violence. But having multiple characters means you can now do fun things like use Kris to ACT so that a different character can SPARE on the same turn, allowing you to finish up combat in a single turn under certain circumstances.
I really, really like the new combat system. The TP mechanic encourages you to be more daring during the bullet-hell segments, the new "Pacify" spell cast by the new character, Ralsei, creates alternate ways to non-violently (or at least non-lethally) defeat opponents, and having to play around Susie's initial inclinations to just hit everything that moves creates some pretty compelling challenges for players who want to avoid resorting to violence.
That said, there is one major flaw with this new structure, and it has to do with the first major departure that I mentioned. There is really no in-game incentive to avoid violence.
The game itself actually literally prevents you from killing everything. Most enemies will just run away instead of dying, and some enemies can only be defeated through ACTing in the first place.
In a post on Twitter, Toby Fox himself acknowledged this problem:
"I think [the lack of multiple endings is] part of the reason why the ACT / FIGHT system feels so vestigial in this one."
To a certain extent, he's right. There's really no in-game reason to have the ACT system, except, of course, for the fact that the ACT system was probably the most distinctive thing about "UNDERTALE". And yeah, if the choices don't matter for the story (as they did in "UNDERTALE"), why have them?
Well, one could say the same thing about the "Metal Gear" franchise. Almost every single one not only has a nonlethal way to play the entire game, it actively encourages you to do it. Playing that way almost never actually affects the story, but it's always there, and the games are all better for it. The same holds true here. No, I didn't NEED to use the ACT system over the FIGHT system, but I chose to anyway because I wanted to.
Furthermore, I LOVE the fact that Toby Fox isn't doing diverging story paths this time.
As I've made abundantly clear at this point, I thought that the multiple story paths idea in "UNDERTALE" ultimately hurt it, because if you wanted to understand the full story, you needed to experience all three playthroughs, but then the game itself chastises you for doing exactly that, mistaking your natural curiosity for sociopathy. And furthermore, despite HAVING multiple endings, it was pretty obvious that only one of them was considered to be the "true" ending, and thus, every other ending might as well not exist.
This time around, Fox decided it was better to just have one good ending rather than one good ending and a bunch of mediocre ones. Maybe he did that to keep an already complicated game from getting more complicated, but regardless of why he chose to take this direction, I'm very, very glad he did.
Even better, by including multiple characters, you still get to have multiple perspectives, essentially allowing you to get what you would have gotten out of having three different playthroughs all at once. Kris plays the neutral party, Susie represents the nihilistic "shoot first, ask questions never" attitude of "The Guilt Trip", and Ralsei represents the naive and treacly attitude of the "Pacifist Path". It allows the game to have the same moral depth found in "UNDERTALE", but without forcing the player to replay the game three times and then making them feel like a monster for doing it. Susie and Ralsei's ideologies regularly clash, and Kris is never really put in a position to have to choose between them. The game still has something to say about its own mechanics and the ethics of interacting with fictional characters, but by making Susie the focus, it can talk about those things without feeling like it's actively judging the player.
That's not to say that it doesn't seem to have some deep things to say about the player and the supposedly neutral Kris. The ending certainly suggests that Kris has a lot more going on than we might initially imagine. But for now, I'm going to judge the game based on this demo, which, again, may very well be the last we ever see of this project if Fox can't get a solid team together. There's no use pontificating on what the full game may or may not be like.
And based solely on this demo, I think "DELTARUNE" is quietly brilliant. It takes what worked best about "UNDERTALE", removed the excess baggage by having it all in a new alternate universe, and built clever, ambitious new ideas on top of it.
Now, that's not to say I liked everything about the game. Kris' pointed lack of agency allows Susie and Ralsei to shine, but I'm not sure if I really get the point of that. Maybe it would make more sense in the context of a completed game, but within the demo itself, it mostly just makes you feel like an outsider looking in. In that regard, I'd say "DELTARUNE" is a lot less immersive than "UNDERTALE" was, which is not necessarily a big deal-breaking problem. Not every game has to be immersive so long as it's still engaging in other ways, and "DELTARUNE" absolutely is. My only concern is that Kris' lack of agency might make it difficult to understand or relate to whatever conflicts they go through in the larger game (if it ever gets made). It's not a problem in this first chapter, but now that Susie's character arc is more or less finished, the rest of the game would presumably have to depend on delving into the mystery of Kris, and when the player has literally no ownership over the direction Kris takes, it might make it difficult to empathize with them.
But aside from that, I was really into "DELTARUNE" and it seemed to address my biggest problems with "UNDERTALE" while also improving the things I loved most about it.
I really hope Toby Fox gets to make the rest of it and that we don't have to wait 7 years to get to play it.
