#drune

with spoilers obv

For the quick and easy thoughts: I thought ch 5 was fine, even Good in a lot of ways, but very disappointing and tiring in other ways. It is undeniably spinning the wheels and avoiding the plot teed up in the previous chapter, the festival was very underwhelming, and the plot didn't really move outside of the, by this point overwrought, character arcs of the trio being dripfed. Again though, there's the usual suspects of the good parts of Deltarune; the music was great (Who Might You Be? is probably my favorite song of the game so far), there's some great individual moments of writing (even if i don't like the writing overall), and the Weird Route is still the most interesting thing about the chapter. But the general tricks of Deltarune and the method of how it captivates its audience has gotten old, and while I will continue playing as things are released, I can't say I'm exactly a fan.

Now, the longer thoughts:

Of every different element of Deltarune, I think it is fair to say that Tone is what carries it, and if you don't buy into that tone, it changes the view of things. Elements that are positives for others to become negatives for you. I don't like the tone of deltarune (at least on the normal route) and I am aware of this bias. This chapter, like every chapter, was great at establishing the tone, the vibes, and runs with it all the way to the end. There is always a good (or at least distinct) song playing, there is always a gag or joke happening, there is always something new demanding your attention. I think that focus on tone, specifically the "something new," has lead to the stagnation of other elements of the game, both narratively and mechanically.

The mechanics are easier to explain. I won't lie and say I like the core gameplay of Deltarune. (NOTE: I have beaten every Shadow Crystal boss twice over. This isn't a "git gud" situation.) I'm not a fan of bullet-hells, I find the RPG elements to be superfluous, and really every battle seems to boil down to the most efficient way to build up the mercy meter before sparing them, surviving simple attack patterns until you choose the right menu options. Ostensibly TP and Graze make those attack patterns more interesting and important for battles but in reality, Kris's actions take care of everything with little need for TP. Susie and Ralsei both get new moves this chapter that I never used. I have been using the same options in battle for 8 years now. In fact, I have LESS options than I did 8 years ago, as the Targeting System was only in Chapter 1. On top of that, the rules of the gameplay are obfuscated in needlessly; not knowing who is going to take damage or if the completely unused element system going to actually matter this time is just plain annoying. What makes this bearable for the 8 years is two things: the actual Important Fights change the rules, and every chapter adds another mechanic to distract from the battles.

Save for a tiny few, most every boss fight in Deltarune operates in, effectively, a new game. Fighting Queen in Chapter 2 was Punch Out, Fighting Tenna in Chapter 3 was Wario Ware, Fighting Gerson in Chapter 4 was some pseudo Rhythm Heaven stuff, etc. My two favorite fights in all of Deltarune were against The Jevil and The Knight, which were the only difficult fights that didn't change the rules of the core gameplay. Every other fight is a twist on the core gameplay, but never an actual test of what you've been playing the whole time. They all follow a similar pattern of introducing a new mechanic specific to the fight, layering it over the battle and increasing the difficulty of it, then never using it again after it's gone (until the inevitable Chapter 7 fight that'll reuse them, in more of a test of memory than skill). In the moment it feels like a good experience but I'm always left wanting; if you can make fights interesting and engaging like this, why not do it more often instead of just the bosses? Why introduce these mechanics only to abandon them 30 minutes later? Chapter 5 does the same thing, and by now, 8 years after the Chapter 1, I find it getting old. Entering the Flowery fight I was just tiredly wondering what color the SOUL was going to be this time, knowing that I'd have to rapidly learn new rules before forgetting them again. The battle against Pink was the same. (ASIDE: the Flowery fight being centered around Negative Edge is fucking terrible. Who thought that was a good idea?)

Outside of battles, in the walking-and-talking part of the game, it's a bit more forgivable. I can see the chapters in this case as kind of like, classical game levels. The Snow Level, the Casino Level, and the like, so when one chapter has a sneaking mechanic that's gone the next chapter, I can forgive that. But, again, I got the feeling that even the game itself was tired of the walking around and so it introduced the 2D platformer mode, which was very very fun (and had great animation quality), but does go back to pattern of introducing something new, layering it, and increasing the difficulty of it over time. Now, the climbing mechanic luckily did follow from Chapter 4 to Chapter 5, but I don't know if the 2D platformer mode will carry to future chapters. I would hope that it does, but then it'd be weird to have it introduced so late in the game. Generally the walking-and-talking is fine enough, but with the size of the chapters and maps getting bigger and less linear, something will have to keep it interesting. Walking around screens to collect dialogue, or special pink coins this time around, feels distinctly unrewarding the more I have to do it. It needs the gimmicks, especially if this is the mode of gameplay where people are going to be spending the most time in efforts to get all the story content they can.

// Tangent, but: [MECHANICAL SPOILERS FOR CORRU OBSERVER] I don't like comparison as a method of critique, but I think about Corru Observer, another indie darling with turn-based RPG battles (also with cool and art and music made primarily by One Guy with a narrative surrounding a mystery, it's a funny parallel to Deltarune). It also has sporadic updates in the form of chapters, with each chapter changing gameplay. The difference being that it's layered well, and each layer is persistent from chapters. It's a turn-based RPG (this one having a focus on status effects), but it starts out with 3 party members. Then the next chapter introduces more party members, so now you have to consider your party composition. Then you find items that modify your moves if you equip them to party members. Then the next chapter you have a rougelike mode on top of that. Then the next chapter keeps the party members and moveset, but translate them to a top-down strategy game. It keeps things fresh, new, but never at the cost of what you already know and learned. Similar with the simple walking-and-talking; there's new, persistent mechanics added that change it up from chapter to chapter, that encourage the player to even backtrack to see what the new options change for previous areas. It's an ideal way of doing this kind of thing, in my opinion. //

This pattern of "introducing something new to the detriment of the main course" is true narratively, as well. It's standard to expect each chapter in Deltarune to introduce a new character, or cast of characters, that take a lot of the screentime. These new characters interact with the main trio, create funny scenes, have their own arcs, etc., and while it's fine and tolerable for the most part, it's becoming clear how much these characters take priority over the actual main cast. There's a good balance that can be made, I think Chapters 2 and 4 do it better, but here in Chapter 5, it feels egregious. Especially after the set-up in 4 and the festival in the morning, putting all that on the backburner in favor of SEVEN NEW CHARACTERS kinda sucks! Especially since none of those characters will be moving forward, as the game constantly reminds us.

Again, this pattern isn't new, and it often functions to give us insight or growth of another character. Chapter 2's Queen also served to characterize Noelle, Chapter 3's Tenna helped characterize Ralsei, Chapter 4's Gerson fleshed out Susie. This time, it seems Ralsei was the one again, now with Flowery, but even then, the arcs for all the three in the trio seemed fairly stagnant throughout the bulk of the chapter. Susie had her moments in the first 30 minutes with the festival but once in the dark world she didn't have many moments. Ralsei had a few scenes of "growth" but they felt like rehashes of things already covered in Chapter 3. And even then, this "growth through the new cast" method feels lacking to me because their growth, which draws the trio together, is rendered almost completely outsourced. These characters are changing, yes, but not because of each other. At least, not as much as I'd like. I'd rather the growth of these characters come because of the conflicts and resolutions they have with each other, not because of a new prop character being introduced each chapter. Considering this was the vibe in Chapter 1, it makes me sad it hasn't been the case since. Especially since Susie has more-or-less finished her character arc all the way back in Chapter 2. The only version of this still happening is with Noelle in the Weird Route, and it's easily my favorite plotline going on.

While to a lot of people this kind of thing is fine, enjoyable even, or even the express reason why they tune in for every new chapter, I'm just getting annoyed by it at this point. I'm tired of new things being shown to distract from the lack of overarching story happening. The same mysteries and lore hints have been around all this time with almost no development on them. And I could hear a Twin Peaks argument about how the mystery isn't important, it's the characters and the town that should matter, but an entire chapter was spent on the Prophecy and the Knight, only to not be followed up on. You spent 8 years talking about the Festival and it's over before it really even starts. It's disappointing. I feel insulted, almost, like they're jingling keys in my face to distract me.

And the thing is, the jingling keys are really good! At least this time around. I didn't really like the New Characters from previous chapters all that well. I didn't find Queen that funny, Tenna got old quick, Gerson was too sanctimonious for me, but I really liked the Flowers in Chapter 5 (or as I like to call them, The Koopalings bc this is just Boswer's Castle). The cynic in me would say that the reason why they worked so well is that they're several characters getting focus instead of just one, so there's not an expectation of depth for any of them, at least not to the same extent of a single new character taking up all the screentime like previously. Aqua and Seth were fun together, Blue and Yellow were funny, Orange was great, loved Green... Flowery was annoying to me, but that's just effective writing, I don't think I was supposed to really like him that much. And while I'd rather have Ralsei's character growth be due to stuff more pertaining to Kris and Susie, Flowery was a good foil to him, and seeing Ralsei be upset and angry was very fun.

The handling of Asgore was the biggest worry I had about Chapter 5. I know I'm in an unpopular camp thinking Asgore isn't All Bad despite him definitely being Not Great with how he acts around Toriel (whom I do not like, so, bias might be here). I think the angle of making him an absentee or otherwise neglectful father is... not incongruent with previously known things about him, but too simple of an explanation. My grasp of his character was someone who is definitely too divorced but not so much concerned with getting his ex-wife back as much as just wanting to have a family again. Of course he was going about this the wrong way, but it never felt like neglect to me; he was overjoyed whenever Kris would show up, his fantasies were always about family dinners or otherwise all of them getting together again, very little to do with Toriel specifically. Don't know how to explain it, it just felt like a lazy motivation to make Asgore look bad, when a more nuanced way of looking at it would've been better. "I neglected my family because I got too conspiracy brained." is just too simple.

Back to Ralsei, because it should be mentioned, I think his arc is getting too drawn out, but the jingling keys this time would be the very blunt trans stuff going on with him. I'll be frank and say I don't really care for it, and I really don't like the discussion around it. Any form of "this male character cooks and cleans and likes pretty things so he's actually a girl to me" feels gross, and any form of "breaking the prophecy is a trans metaphor" feels lazy. I am not denying the trans theming around his story, I think there's a lot of very obvious signs of it (some more valid than others of course), especially the "Princess" line from Flowery and the changing of the pronouns near the end of the chapter. I just don't care for it. I think that would be a very boring resolution to a character arc I already don't find very interesting to begin with.

Still though, beat by beat, the writing this chapter is fine, even Good sometimes. There were a handful of gags that genuinely made me cackle out loud, and the Flowers turning back at the end was emotional, but those moments felt tangential at best to actually moving plot along. And I don't want to sit here and come off as if plot is the only important thing in a story— I don't believe that. I'm all for character moments and detours that are there just for vibes, but I can't just have condiments, I need a real meal too. This game is driven by its mystery plot, I would want it to be more central to the game. And even then, the parts that I like, the good bits of writing, I only really feel "generally positive" toward them, it's nothing I feel enthused about outside of VERY few moments, and even then they get overwrought. I loved the detail at the beginning of Chapter 5 were you realize, with little prompting, "oh shit Susie might be homeless, she's sleeping in the school closet," but then they spell it out for you in the end of the chapter (it's admittedly a sweet scene but still). Flowery calls Ralsei "Princess" and lets the moment hang, then, because that wasn't blunt enough, Flowery gives him a voucher for a "Pink and Blue" drink. This double dip happens a lot, and it makes me wonder about the writing here, as it pertains to brevity.

It's gonna take a minute to get there but bear with me; I briefly mentioned before, but to reiterate, I think the Weird Route is the best part of Deltarune, but it comes with some caveats. It's the obvious parallel to the Genocide Route in Undertale, but in Undertale it was less "an alternate story" and more "the second half of the story." While not required for a true pacifist ending, the Genocide route there felt almost necessary, or at lest concurrent, to the other routes, as key information of the game's world and story were stuck in that route. Not so here. I have played through both Normal and Weird routes so far in Deltarune and there's nothing "new" you learn about the world in the Weird route, you just live in a different one, it doesn't really inform the other route. What it does is offer juxtaposition though, which can feel a little cheap at times (this cutesy wutesy world is actually FUCKED UP!!) but I digress. What I think about, though, is how the Weird Route is "worse" similar to how the Genocide Route is "worse," in practical terms. I think "being evil is tedious and boring" is a genuinely smart and novel way to discourage players to be evil, but it obviously didn't outweigh the sheer amount of story and content that was there. I've made my posts on that before. Here, though, in Deltarune, the "worse" is that it feels pointless, that it gives you LESS content. Chapters are almost entirely identical on the Weird Route, changes being limited to just a handful of scenes, if that. Chapter 2 was completely different, and I think it was my favorite experience playing Deltarune, but it also cut the length of the chapter in half. Chapter 3 was identical, but Chapter 4 changed the Hometown scenes with Noelle, and again, I loved that part of the story. And now, with Chapter 5, we get an entirely different Chapter on this route. And it lasts just 15 minutes.

The issue being, I felt a lot more strongly about those 15 minutes than I did about the hours of playing the Normal Route. Whatever interesting thoughts this game has to say about themes of Player Agency, about The Dangers of Nostalgia and Pretend, about Prophecy, about Sincerity, about Choice, about anything I'm interested in, they're routinely ignored in favor of the Tone like I mentioned earlier. Whatever interesting plot threads this game has going on, like the mystery of The Knight, like Kris potentially being a villain, about Dess being gone, like The Prophecy, all of that has to be put aside in favor of the individual chapter du jour. The interesting character arcs of Kris and how they feels about their family, Susie's home life, Ralsei's origin, all of that is forfeit to the temporary characters of a given chapter. Constantly, we get glimpses of things that are so interesting, but never get the proper time to focus on it.

For instance: Kris opening the Dark Worlds is super interesting. But it's rarely ever focused on. And I wonder if the reason why I like moments like that, these rich bits of storytelling, is due to the brevity of them. I've seen what the game focuses on and I don't particularly care for it, even when I don't think it's necessarily Bad. The Weird Route being shorter, so brief and stark in its differences, that may be a very large reason why I like it better than the normal route, because the concision allows for less room to... disinterest me? Less room to waste time or distract me? I don't know! The cynic in me would say that the game simply cannot handle focusing on the parts that interest me without falling apart or otherwise losing my interest. I love Chapter 5's Weird Route and it's essentially just two scenes, I felt more pathos in those two scenes than I did in all of the Normal Route's. But I imagine that if they were both equal length, I might not like it. And with the end of it hinting that there might just straight up not be a Weird Route for Chapter 6, it feels disappointing. The stuff I like is already so brief, but not it might not even happen anymore!

It's always hard judging this game because it's not even fully out yet (but hey, they're taking money for it so...), and it's maybe not super fair to judge its pacing like this but when SURVEY_PROGRAM.EXE came out nearly 8 years ago, and the games are incorporating the wait times and the stuff between chapters as part of the game, I feel like I can safely say that the pacing is getting to a point. Susie ending the chapter saying "we can't mess around anymore we have to get serious now" when that's, effectively, after 40 hours, over 70% of the total game. And I'm seeing a lot of people share the sentiment, that wheels have been spinning for too long with little of substance happening. It's no wonder why so much discussion surrounding Deltarune is focused on characters that don't even really exist, like Asriel and Dess, or just theory-crafting. Because what's in front of them, in the actual game itself, isn't enough to feed on, not for years between releases!

Hes apparently just some average chump who poses as being a smart guy as like his whole identity, but his magic and bullet patterns seem really advanced? Not to mention that his dark world outfit and weapon seem the most detailed out of the lightners- it could just be a manifestation of his pretentiousness, but I get the feeling there’s something else going on with him besides just being ‘that one super annoying and forcefully clingy guy in your class who’s not exactly mean but not exactly nice and seems obsessed with himself yet has no friends except for you, maybe, but spending time with him feels like a chore but its not like you have any other friends here so you might as well sit with him on the bus’

Like why are his attacks so advanced? We know he works at the library, and he mentions something about being late to meet gerson’s… relative? Assumedly, unless he’s somehow meeting with gerson’s ghost and getting training that way