i think if deltarune has a happy ending waiting then we won't get to see it. if the characters have any sort of bright future waiting for them, bittersweet or not, i think the catalyst for it is gonna be our influence on their world being disconnected.
from the moment we appear, we're meddling in the lives of the people in this town. but nobody has their life upended by our presence more than kris. we control them. we make them say things they normally wouldnt. their agency is immediately limited from the first frame they're on-screen onwards. they're a character who at best, gives us a push in the right direction when they want to exert their will, and actively tries to fight us at worst. we see (almost) everything they see, we live their life when they let us (or just don't have the strength to fight back), and we control how much their life changes while we're in their body.
carrying out our will while we're in someone else's body is, obviously, fucked up, but it visibly has other consequences. the weird route is a series of events which, once kris figures out what's going on, they fight like hell to try and stop it. we're given dialogue options that could mess stuff up for everyone around them, and they know it.
my point is: there's a lot of things that happen in deltarune that are almost entirely something caused by our presence there. things that would not happen if we weren't there to see it. notably, a lot of bad stuff. we have an impact on the world of the game, their world, their lives, and who knows how much of a role we have to play in the things going on behind the scenes, or events we have yet to see. their world still has plenty of problems without us. lots of losses, tragedies, and pain in the past, present, and undoubtedly future. and no matter how kind or cruel we strive to be in our playthroughs, our presence is still an inherent issue. that is why i believe that the best ending of deltarune, or at least a positive one, is one we won't get to see the rewards of. we won't see these characters living their lives in the future, we won't get to see how it all turns out--hell, we may not even get to see susie and kris's group project. and it's okay that we won't.
i'm reminded most of the dialogue that happens at the end of undertale, when you're about to reset the game after the true pacifist ending. when he has to beg you to not reset because everyone is finally happy. frisk is happy. your influence has carried them this far, and to carry it any further would be unnecessary, especially when exerting your will on the world in this specific instance would just send everyone back to the start. it's the same for the ending of any game like undertale or deltarune. the only way to see any more of the world after your agency in the game is gone would be to start over from the beginning. but if the characters in deltarune are truly to have a decent future, it's not going to be by us sauntering around in kris's body anymore. we're not going to see it.
all we can do is close our eyes. and think about what they'll be doing.
