Full spoilers for Deltarune: Chapter 1 are discussed herein. There are additionally spoilers for BioShock and BioShock Infinite.
Introduction
It has been over 3 years since Toby Fox initially released Undertale on Windows and Mac. Over that period of time, Undertale went from being a cult hit to a massive commercial success. The game has spawned a retail version, three console ports, an official Japanese translation, vinyl records and a plethora of other merchandise. It is safe to say that the game became a sleeper hit relatively fast. However, despite the widespread acclaim, Toby Fox has been relatively silent since 2015. He even downplayed both the commercial and critical success of his game, opining that he believed the game was “about an 8/10, niche RPG”.¹ The extensive coverage by games journalists and adoration by a large fan base says otherwise, but Mr. Fox seems to be less concerned with his own notoriety. In fact, he considered the game’s popularity to be a bit of a curse, stating that “every time it seemed to die down, something revived it”.¹ This made it seem like he would not be releasing anything major for quite some time.
Seemingly out of nowhere, on October 30th, Fox started hinting at a new project through his Twitter account. He asked fans to replay Undertale and have a Windows or Mac computer ready within one day from the tweet.² Surely enough, the next day, the Undertale Twitter account posted a link to a website with a new game titled Deltarune, ready to be downloaded for free. Fox stressed that those who played the game should adhere to a self-imposed embargo of 24 hours for discussing the game’s details. This is not dissimilar to how Fox asked “Let’s Play” streamers to refrain from broadcasting Undertale footage early on.¹ There are not only similarities there, though. Deltarune is yet another RPG game focused on “sparing” your enemies. Furthermore, it seems to want to evoke the player’s nostalgia for Undertale. Maybe a bit too much.
Pulling at the heartstrings
After an intriguing introductory sequence, the player is immediately greeted by Toriel, a pivotal character from Undertale. It quickly becomes apparent that Deltarune is some kind of a successor to Undertale. However, many things are out of place. Instead of the player immediately being thrust into the cold, dark underground from the first game, the game’s initial setting is more akin to a Mother game. Mr. Fox obviously draws quite a bit of inspiration from the Mother games, which is unmistakable in his writing’s quirky sense of humor. Much like those games, Deltarune begins in a small, modernized town. There’s a road system, a police station, a hospital, school and numerous small shops. Toriel drives the player to school, which gives the player a quick introduction to the town and its inhabitants. A vast majority of the characters that either are talked about by Toriel or viewed during the car ride were present in Undertale to some degree.
Shortly after the car ride sequence, Toriel drops the player off at school. Here we are introduced to one of the game’s new characters, Susie. At this point in the game, Susie almost comically adheres to the bully archetype. She shows up late to class, is smart with the teacher and violently threatens the player. Flat characterizations are somewhat of a problem in Deltarune, but Susie luckily manages to overcome this later in the game. After her introduction, Susie and the player go to the supply closet. It is here that they are teleported to a new world, one that is much more similar to the first game. After this point in the game and up until the near the ending, Deltarune stops blatantly referencing Undertale and instead subtly incites feelings players had when playing that game. It also does a great job of quietly referencing the works that inspired Mr. Fox. For example, the scene in the supply closet visually references the Crossover Garden in Yume Nikki without feeling like a blatant attempt to re-emulate that scene from the game. All of these different elements are what helps Deltarune feel like a worthy successor to Undertale. However, it does not always use them wisely.
The moments where Deltarune feels the need to reference Undertale hurt it quite a bit. While the characters from the original Undertale are well-written and memorable, it feels unnecessary shoving them into this game. While of none of the returning characters play a significant role in the story as of the first chapter, their presence is nonetheless unwarranted and genuinely feels cheap. Sadly, there are a few points in the game that feel the need to forge a connection to Undertale. Near the game’s conclusion, the player is given the opportunity to roam around the town from the start of the game. The player can talk with characters like Sans, Undyne and Alphys from Undertale. Despite some differences in their situations, the characters’ personalities are the same and the game strains to exploit the player’s nostalgia. These frustrating moments often left me wondering why Deltarune even had to be related to Undertale at all. Exploiting a player’s nostalgia for a game that came out 3 years ago is not something that a game with so many positive qualities should have to go for, which is overwhelmingly exemplified by Mr. Fox’s creativity in other parts of the game. If anything, I wish Deltarune had nothing to do with Undertale at all. Most of the game stands on its own and connecting it to Undertale feels overwhelming senseless, if not irritating.
Hiding behind pacifism
After the player and Susie fall into the new world, they are greeted by another new character named Ralsei. Ralsei explains a prophecy about three heroes bringing balance back to light and darkness in a sequence that is very similar to the opening of Undertale. After the exposition ends, another character appears and reveals himself to be one of the antagonists. A fight ensues. It is here that players are introduced to the new combat system featured in Deltarune. At first glance, the core combat loop appears very similar to the attack or spare system from Undertale. You have dodge attacks and figure out how to pacify the enemy, so that you can spare them. However, despite the resemblance to the combat Undertale, there are numerous differences. First off, there is now a mana system in place. If a character uses a turn to defend or the player nearly dodges an enemy’s attack in the bullet hell minigame, they are granted “tension points”. These points can be used for a variety of purposes in battle. Additionally, there is now a turn system similar to the one present in the very early Final Fantasy games. Susie, Ralsei and the player take turns attacking or sparing enemies. Each character has their own specialty. The player can give commands to their allies, asking them to either use a special attack or pacify the enemy. Susie has a variety of hard-hitting physical and magic attacks. Ralsei is more of a mage and is focused on using supporting spells to heal the party or weaken the enemy.
Throughout the first three-quarters of the game, the amount of control the player has over their party varies. Whenever Ralsei is in the party, the player has the ability to give him commands. Susie, however, is not always cooperative. The most interesting battles early on in the game are the ones where you have to keep her aggression in check. Susie will not take direction from the player and instead insists on beating the enemy to a pulp. Given that you want to try and spare enemies, this creates an interesting dilemma. You can warn enemies when Susie is about to attack, preventing her from being able to hit them for that turn. However, warning an enemy also wastes your turn. This creates a race to spare an enemy before Susie is able to dispose of it. These is one of the most intriguing situations that Deltarune has to offer. Later in the game, a new dilemma affects the way that you strategize combat encounters. Once Susie allows you to command her in battle, you have to figure out how to use each character in battle. One character’s action may be more advantageous, so you have to decide how to use your Tension Points wisely.
After finishing Undertale, I was convinced that any future game that tried to add more patterns to the bullet hell minigame for dodging enemy attacks would have a hard time finding unique patterns. Undertale continuously found ways to make battles interesting by changing up how the bullet hell system worked. Surprisingly, Deltarune still manages to find quite a few ways to make battles interesting. One boss grabs the box that the bullet hell minigame is enclosed in and starts swinging it around as he tosses projectiles at the player. This makes it even more difficult to evade his attacks and greatly spices up battles. Another particularly challenging boss has a carousel of horses dancing around the box in a seemingly three-dimensional fashion. These fights prove that Mr. Fox still has quite a few tricks up his sleeve and I am looking forward to seeing what kinds of battles he can come up with next.
One of the more disappointing elements of the combat system is how watered down the pacification system is. In Undertale, the player had no idea how to pacify a new enemy, making it difficult to spare them. The player had to try their hand at various actions until one finally worked and allowed the enemy to be spared. This system was borrowed from the Shin Megami Tensei games, where players had to choose between different dialog options to sway the enemy over to their side. In both that series and in Undertale, there was a bit of trial and error when it came to figuring out how to talk to an enemy. However, once you figured out the way to an enemy’s heart, you could follow the same suit in each encounter with that enemy. It is hard to defend trial and error in games, as it typically instills frustration in the player. In the original Undertale, it was often difficult to determine what choice would actually pacify the enemy if you had not already encountered it. It felt less like you were reasoning your way through a fight and more like you were just guessing.
Deltarune‘s solution to this is to completely scrap choices in a majority of battles. Most enemies only have one or two different actions you can try and both of them typically will lead to you sparing them. I feel as though the game’s approach to the system is lackluster, which is exemplified in a short boss fight early on in the game. At one point, an NPC tells you that it is their friend’s birthday and that they are trying to decide between gifts. He rattles off several things that the friend likes and then goes back to deciding. Later on, the player fights the aforementioned friend and you have to remember what their interests were to win the battle. A solution more akin to this is far more elegant and I am sorely disappointed that complexity had to be stripped away from the game in an attempt to address a minor issue.
A whole new world
After Ralsei, Susie and the player reconvene from their fight with one of the antagonists, the adventure actually begins. Most of the gameplay in Deltarune consists of solving puzzles in the overworld and fighting enemies. Undertale was similar in this regard, but Deltarune makes some additions. Enemies now roam around in the open, similar to how enemy encounters work in Mother 2 and Mother 3. You can try and sneak past enemies, but it typically comes down to timing a sprint past their patrol path. This system is different from the one present in Undertale, where encounters with enemies were randomized. After walking around for a while, an enemy encounter would suddenly begin. This made backtracking through earlier parts of the game a nuisance, as you would encounter enemies constantly without warning. As a result, the system in Deltarune feels like a massive improvement. Not only can you avoid many enemy encounters, but you can also visibly determine what you will be up against.
Another change to navigating the world comes in the form of environmental hazards. These hazards are similar to the encounters with Undyne in Undertale, where the player had to run and dodge her attacks outside of battle. During these encounters, the screen darkens and the player’s focus is drawn to their character’s heart. This is essentially a way to highlight the player’s hit box. From there, the player has to keep theirr hit box away from the hazard. An example of one of these hazards is a bird-like enemy that shoots projectiles at the player while flying around the level. You have to strategize how you will have to dodge the enemy’s projectiles based on the design of the level. Sometimes it is a straight run across the screen, other times you have a twisting path ahead of you, making it more difficult to evade the projectiles. Regardless, these segments make navigating the overworld interesting and add some additional difficulty to the overall experience.
Puzzles make a return as well, but there have not been any tangible improvements to them. A majority of the puzzles are very simple, just asking the player to move boxes onto switches. The best puzzles featured are the ones that stretch across the entire length of the game. One puzzle requires the player to keep track of the symbols on the wall in different rooms within the final dungeon. A locked door that is found earlier in the game can be unlocked by inputting the symbols in the order of the rooms. These kinds of game-long puzzles are far more engaging than pushing boxes onto switches. Unfortunately, there are not many of these types of puzzles in the game. Some puzzles span across small subsets of the game world, but the fact that not many ask you to retain information is disappointing. Given the amount of time spent doing puzzles in the game world, it would be nice to have more of a challenge presented to the player.
An additional area where Deltarune does not improve much on Undertale is in its overall level design. Deltarune is still a very linear game. There are some secret areas and puzzles that ask you to go off the beaten path, but the game is essentially a straight line from start to finish. You can backtrack using a door that teleports you to previously visited locations, but the locations in the game are not very interconnected. Although this is how Undertale was designed, it still is incredibly disappointing. The worlds that Mr. Fox crafted are so interesting, but you typically have to experience them the same way each time you play, bar the distinct moral choices you could make in Undertale. Given the absence of consequences for moral choices in this game, any playthrough of Deltarune’s first chapter will always be the same. This lack of replay value hurts the game quite a bit and its short length adds more insult to injury.
Flat as a pancake
One of Undertale’s greatest assets was its characters. Throughout that game, you met a colorful cast of distinct characters with interesting personality traits. Even long after you finished the game, the characters managed to stick with you. So much so that a number of the characters have evolved into ongoing internet memes. It is hard not to love the characters in Undertale, even if all of them did not get the screen time they deserve. Disappointingly, Deltarune’s characters are not as nearly as enduring as the ones in Undertale. A couple of them manage to see some development throughout the course of the game, but most of them are static and relatively uninteresting. In fact, a number of the individuals you meet feel like archetypes or plot devices. There are less original characters in this game and rightly so, as Deltarune’s first chapter is about one-third as long as a single playthrough of Undertale. Given that Undertale’s cast was one of its strong suits, it is a shame that Deltarune fails to keep up.
Susie is easily the best-written character you meet along your journey. She begins the game as a typical bully who has a short fuse and a love for violence. She refuses to take the player’s orders and attacks enemies against Ralsei’s wishes. She even sides with Lancer, one of the game’s minor antagonists, for a short period of time. But as the game goes on, Susie begins to see the world from a different perspective. Late into the story, she realizes that violence might not always be the answer and decides to take orders from the player. During the final confrontation with the main antagonist, Susie goes as far to call the player character her friend, a far cry from when she violently threatened them nearly two hours earlier. Deltarune sees Susie develop and it is characters like her that elevate the narrative. Her snarky and violent personality makes her very memorable and her development throughout the story only bolsters this.
One other good character in Deltarune is Lancer. Much like Susie, he starts out antagonistic and warms up to the heroes near the end of the game. He resembles characters like Papyrus from Undertale, who start out opposed to the player and employ numerous shenanigans in an attempt to stop them. Much like Papyrus, Lancer’s quirky sense of humor is incredibly likable, making scenes with him a great deal of fun. At one point, he asks Susie to teach him how to be intimidating, which eventually leads to them working together to form an antagonistic duo. Even after the duo splits, Lancer’s friendship with Susie leads him to turn against The Spades King, his father and the main antagonist. Near the end of the narrative, Lancer puts his foot down, attesting that the heroes are not as harmful to the kingdom as his father believes. Mr. Fox has a knack for writing these kinds of characters and his ability has not diminished since Undertale was released. Lancer, like many of the members of that game’s cast, will likely be remembered long after Deltarune’s release.
Sadly, a number of the characters in the game are relatively flat. Ralsei in particular is a major disappointment, as his cute design and genial personality make him incredibly likable. Despite this, he sees no development throughout the course of the game and more or less serves as a plot device. Ralsei does not have any scenes that develop his character. It also feels as though he is only there to advance the plot, as he continuously provides crucial exposition to the player. He most resembles Toriel from the first game, as he introduces the player to the game world, teaches them game mechanics early on, and has a caring personality. That being said, even Toriel had a meaner side, as she often got angry whenever her ex-partner Asgore was brought up. Furthermore, she was willing to stand up to the player when they wanted to leave the tutorial area, as she knew the world outside was harsh and dangerous. These qualities made her an interesting character, but Ralsei lacks all of them. Throughout the course of the game, he is absolutely nothing other than sweet and innocent, which is endearing, but also incredibly dull. When I think about Ralsei as a character, I have a hard time viewing him as anything but the moral compass. His desire to spare enemies serves as a model for the player, as the pacifist route is clearly the one that the player is supposed to take. This kind of characterization is incredibly flat, which is disappointing given how memorable the characters in Undertale were.
The Spades King, the main antagonist of Deltarune, is also fairly weak. The character in Undertale that most resembles him is Asgore. Much like Asgore, the majority of the game is spent travelling to the Spades King’s castle. Both characters are not shown until near the end of the game and are built up as foul villains by word-of-mouth from other characters. The core difference between them, though, is that Asgore, like most of the characters in Undertale, actually has some complexity to his character. Asgore was the antagonist for most of the game and he was talked up to be some evil monster that lived tucked away in his castle. When the player meets him, they discover that he is the same kind of creature as Toriel. He also is not anywhere near as threatening as people made him out to be. He still fights the player, but it quickly becomes apparent that he is not quite the malevolent ruler that he was made out to be. Despite being separated, he still has strong feelings for Toriel, which plays into some funnier moments at the end of that game. In the end, Asgore is no villain and the fact that he was more than just a cookie-cutter antagonist is what made him a wonderful character.
The Spades King, on the other hand, is the definition of a cookie-cutter antagonist. He adamantly opposes the heroes, showing no goodwill towards them. When his son stands up for the heroes and their cause, The Spades King threatens to throw him off the castle. He even betrays the merciful player after his defeat. He asks for forgiveness and then attacks the heroes once they let their guard down. His character has no clear traits besides being as absolutely evil as possible, making him entirely forgettable and a major bore. An argument can be made that he is meant to be compared with Susie, who has developed over the course of the game. Like The Spades King, she was once violent and antagonistic towards the player. The scene where she saves the player from The Spades King serves to contrast the new Susie from the old one. Regardless, it is disappointing that one character had to be made a paper-thin caricature in order to exemplify the development of another.
Ralsei and The Spades King exemplify the major issues with the cast in Deltarune. While the majority of the characters are not flat plot devices, the fact that these two are front and center in a game made by the creator of Undertale is disappointing. Characters like Susie and Lancer represent some of the best characters that Mr. Fox has written, but the weak writing of the other characters serves to undermine my overall feelings for the cast. So many of the characters you met along the way in Undertale turned out to be memorable characters, ones that are still being discussed to this day. I cannot help but shake the feeling that the characters in Deltarune will not get the same treatment. The designs of the characters are cute and captivating, but a great deal of them are static and see no development, making it hard for me to care for them.
There’s always a castle. There’s always a goat. There’s always an underground
The story in Deltarune is incredibly similar to the one in Undertale. You fall into a strange place that is visually darker than the world you came from. You meet a cast of monster characters with distinct personalities and start a trek towards a castle. There is an evil king with a goal that could destroy humanity and the game’s heroes are intent on stopping him. Despite these similarities, there are a few ways that the story differs from the one in Undertale. First off, the introduction gives you a better idea of the world you are leaving behind. In Undertale, the player character falls into the underground at the very start of the game and we only see the world they fell from in a short cutscene at the start and in a cutscene at the very end of the pacifist ending. Deltarune starts off above ground and keeps the player there for a longer span of time before throwing them underground. Additionally, more time is spent above ground once the game is finished. Despite how similar the two games’ plots are, this contrast helps the stories feel distinct from one another.
One of the places where I feel that Deltarune succeeds is in its mysterious aura. The game comes in a program called “SURVEY_PROGRAM.exe” and does not brand itself as related to Undertale, despite all of the obvious tie-ins and similarities you encounter once playing the game. Although many of the characters and aspects of the world are carried over from Undertale, it is clearly not set in that game’s universe, which was confirmed by Mr. Fox himself in a recent blog post.³ Typing in “GASTER”, the name of a mysterious character from Undertale, as the player’s name in the character creation screen causes the game to reset. The game’s ending raises even more questions that likely will not be answered until the second chapter. There are few things that I love more than a cryptic game and Deltarune does a great job of keeping the player questioning what exactly is happening. Given that Undertale also had some mysterious plot points and meta moments that gave it an eerie quality, I feel that Deltarune confirms that Mr. Fox has not lost his touch.
There are also a great deal of thematic differences in Deltarune. Undertale was heavily focused on choice, while Deltarune is the polar opposite. The opening of the game asks you to customize a character. After you name the character and finalize your creation, the game promptly discards your choices, saying that you do not get to choose your vessel in the real world. There are a few points in the game where characters ask the player a question, only to cut them off before they can select an answer. This is a stark contrast from Undertale’s themes about choice. In that game, you were constantly making decisions and the ending you got relied on those choices. While the idea that “choices do not matter” is an interesting premise, I feel like it is not very well done here. Deltarune’s approach to choice feels incredibly similar to the 2013 game BioShock Infinite. Much like Deltarune, BioShock Infinite’s predecessor, BioShock, was focused on giving lots of choice to the player. Infinite sought to subvert the player’s expectations by revealing to them that their choices never mattered, because there are always constants, regardless of the variables in our stories. At a few points in that game, the player had to make several choices that felt as though they would have some weight later on. In the end, there was only a single ending to the game and none of the choices the player made affected anything. Infinite, much like Deltarune to Undertale, paled in comparison to the original BioShock as a result of this decision. That game gave you a myriad of choices in both gameplay and story, boasting 3 different endings depending on your decisions. A sequel or successor that lacks that level of replay value is bound to feel somewhat dissatisfying, regardless of the quality of the game.
While the “choices do not matter” theme has the possibility of being interesting, it tends to harm the game as a whole. Undertale was a 6-7 hour long game, but its length could easily be doubled by replaying the game and making different choices. Even if you went for the same ending, Undertale still did a good job of making the experience discrete from your first, providing alternative dialog choices that spiced up each playthrough. Replay value is incredibly important for a game, even if it is independently developed. Given that Mr. Fox has already revealed in his blog post that Deltarune will only have one ending, I can only hope that future chapters will make up for that lost replay value in some way.³ Deltarune’s first chapter is 2-3 hours long, which is perfectly fine for an indie game developed in a couple of years. That being said, I cannot say that I will be returning to it any time soon.
A wonderful symphony
Visually, Deltarune improves on its predecessor in several areas. The town at the beginning and end of the game bleeds color and detail, doing a good job of engendering warm feelings in the player. The underground once again has a dark and lo-fi aesthetic, adding to both its daunting and mysterious qualities. Characters are better animated, especially in battle. Given that the battle system opts to show the heroes and enemies fighting from the side, we get to see more detail than we did in Undertale’s battle system. The heroes visibly strike at enemies, make poses when they attempt to pacify them, and recoil when they are hurt. The background of the battle screen is further animated too, another improvement over Undertale, which had a flat background for most battles. Likewise, the overworld benefits from improved animations, with areas like the field boasting subtly-animated flora. All of these redesigns and tweaks help Deltarune feel distinct from Undertale, despite all of the obvious resemblances.
The soundtrack, much like the one in Undertale, is absolutely fantastic. Most of them are extremely memorable and all of them at least manage to embody the situation that they are played in. The theme that plays during standard battles with enemies is an absolute earworm, combining more traditional piano riffs and chiptune sounds. Each boss fight has its own unique track that does a good job of making the conflict seem all the more dire. The overworld themes correspond well to the particular environment that the heroes are trekking through. They also feel like an improvement over Undertale in terms of quality, as many of the overworld themes in that game were simplistic. One of game’s best tracks, however, is the credits theme. Titled “Don’t Forget”, it utilizes vocals performed by Laura Shigihara, who also arranged the track’s composition.⁴ The song is a short and beautiful bookend for the game, combining Shigihara’s soft vocals with a simple piano tune. The tune additionally crops up as a leitmotif in several other tracks, making its appearance at the end of the game all the more poignant. Mr. Fox proved that he was an astounding musician with Undertale, but through Deltarune he proves himself as one of the greatest game composers of the modern era.
Conclusion
Overall, Deltarune has quite a few good ideas and even makes important improvements over its predecessor. The score is superb, the visuals are great and the combat system sees numerous enhancements. Most importantly, it manages to provoke a slew of feelings that I had not felt since playing Undertale, which is a feat in itself. That being said, Deltarune also has a fair share of issues. Its cast of characters is nowhere near as strong as the one featured in Undertale. It relies far too much on fan service, prodding at the player’s nostalgia for its predecessor to a frustrating degree. Some of the design decisions that were made pale in comparison to the ones in Undertale, with the lack of choice and dumbed-down pacifism system being the worst offenders. It also is incomplete, as we only have the first chapter to play, which lasts only for a couple of hours.
While I felt disappointed with many aspects of Deltarune, I would be lying if I said that I was not interested in where the second chapter will go. Mr. Fox has made it clear that no more work has been done on the rest of the game, so it will be a long wait until we see what he has up his sleeve.³ There are a number poor decisions here, but the second chapter could easily reconcile for them. The weaker characters could see development, the puzzles could increase in complexity, the fan service could be significantly toned down, and there could be some incentive added to replay the game. Given how good of a game Undertale was, I believe it is entirely feasible that Mr. Fox could one-up himself with the finished version of Deltarune. Until it is complete, though, we will have to hope and dream that will be the case.
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