Musical Adventure

So, the switch 2 came out, and the market was so flooded with these things that I really do hope scalpers are crying their eyes out right now. I hope even more that the people who bought like 20 of them intending to scalp are stuck with 20 of them and can't get rid of them. Anyways, pettiness aside, what was important about the switch 2 launch was actually the release of Deltarune's next two chapters and man what a hell of a curve ball these were. So, first, how about a seriously cool track from chapter 4?

All the spoilers for DR Ch3&4 below. You've been warned.

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So, if you're like me, your first introduction to Undertale... ten years ago—vomits—was actually through the pony fandom because of how amorphous ponies are. This video in particular was what opened the rabbit hole. While I bought the game, I knew a lot more about it and more importantly, the music of it, well before I actually tried to play it. As cool as it is and as much as I love the story and characters of the game, I actually can't stand bullet hell games, and I never made it past Papyrus. It was in this moment that I truly found value in a let's play, i.e., having someone else play the game, record it, and post it without commentary. I sat down for however many hours while somebody else who had clearly beaten the game several times at this point, talked to everyone and did everything on all three main routes. It was much like watching several multi hour movies with everything you've done adding up to what happens in the final pacifist run and the culmination of all that. To this day, 'Save the world' is one of my favorite pieces of music, and I always come back home. Home is actually one of the only songs I've put serious time into trying to learn on the guitar, but it's actually like, very technical and not beginner friendly. One day, maybe.

Anyways, Undertale is special to me because It helped me bond with several friends in college and the music has inspired me to write many things over the years, home in particular being one of my most played tracks of all time. (I have literally listened to a 10 hour loop video multiple times, not including how many times I've just played the audio file on my various devices, usually on loop.) So, when Deltarune comes out of nowhere however long ago now, I get the ost and watch somebody play through that. As it's the first chapter, there's nothing too crazy and the secret boss of this chapter is fairly standard, but it sets up that there are things to discover in every chapter as what you do changes things. Lots of little points of lore in this chapter, some undertones of things not being right in several places across the world, and things not lining up exactly with how Undertale ends of course. You get introduced to Suzie and Ralsei and that's the bulk of it, getting to know them. Field of Hopes and Dreams was the standout track of this chapter, but I'm not so attached to it as I am the next chapter's music.

Things get weird in chapter 2, as this is where the first 'real' path split is. I am gonna spoil this 5 year old free game, so if you haven't played (or watched) this play out, I recommend it. It's... very traumatic.

The normal way this goes is that you enter cyberspace with your other classmates during a study session, this chapter being the introduction to Noelle and Berdly who may or may not stick around. Kris has a history with Noelle and her family, but it's only lightly touched upon here if you're nice. Because You (the player) are not Kris, you have the option to make him act out of character mid way through the story which puts you on what people call the 'snow grave' route where You make Noelle kill all the NPC enemies which eventually leads to Noelle killing Berdly, taking out her frustration and her rush of finally being in control of something for the first time in her life. When you get back to the real world, Berdly is in a coma and Noelle starts having nightmares about what she did coping to believe everything that happened in the dark world was a bad dream. The other route is a more normal thing where you fight to seal the dark fountain that causes these dark worlds to spawn, more information you learn in this chapter, and Queen being hilarious the whole time. She's very 'lol random' but this whole chapter is based around the internet and cyber space, which takes me to my favorite track, A Cyber's World.

What Chapter 2 also has is an additional darker path in which you follow the spam mail character, Spamton, into the dark depths of the dark web in which he tries to become a [BIGSHOT] using [hyperlink blocked]. This isn't necessarily a bad ending for you per say, but if you go all the way down the path, Spamton is stuck in place after trying to attain freedom, and if you win the fight, he kills himself. Also traumatic. Big shot is another awesome track from this chapter, and Queen's theme is pretty great too. a lot of good music for what is some very not great vibes in a majority of this chapter. One of the things that makes this OST so great is how often Toby uses a leitmotif. You'll hear parts of songs from other parts of the game or Undertale in the case of older characters or characters with a lot of collaging going on like in Big Shot.

At he end of this chapter, Suzie comes over to hang out and you all watch TV with Toriel before Kris removes You and opens a new dark fountain right in the house. From here, Chapter 3 starts.

While I can't say Chapter 3 has the best music so far, I can say it has the most interesting visuals. The characters in the dark worlds are objects given life, and the main character of this dark world is Tenna, your TV, and his sprits are all super low poly 3D models, and his speech always has like, word art text in the middle of it. Rather than being outright hostile like the previous two antagonists, Tenna just wants to spend time with you again because Kris' family broke up, and Kris doesn't talk to Noelle anymore, so the TV doesn't get used much, if at all. He makes game shows for Kris, Suzie and Ralsei to participate in, most of it coming out as old NES games, specifically Zelda is a big as that's the majority of this chapter. This one isn't so impactful, but there are unsettling moments if you happen to be good enough, or bad enough, at the games. Basically, if you get a negative score, or the high score, you can access the back stage room and play the console while Tenna is busy setting up the next round of games. If you do, you can go through a Zelda-like minigame where you replay the events of the snow grave route, and end up fighting a dark entity within the game. There's a trippy moment where 'You' the game character leaves the game, attacks Kris, and then uses him to go back in the game on the screen to obtain an item. This item allows you to redo the second boss fight in this chapter. You can win by skill alone, but this turns the difficulty of that down a lot. We meet the main(?) antagonist, the roaring knight, the other person who's been opening up dark fountains around town. Based on the deer motifs and what happens in the next chapter, I believe this is Noelle's missing sister, 'Dess' December. Speculation aside, after defeating Tenna to get Toriel back, he's about to comply when the knight comes and cuts his arms off, literally. The knight tries to kidnap her, and whether you win or lose, Undyne finds herself in the dark world and attempts to stop the knight herself after seeing your party knocked down. Rather than Toriel, the knight kidnaps Undyne, and you go back to the real world. The knight runs away to the shelter which is locked by a code only thee people in town know. One happens to be the mayor, Noelle's mom, Carol, so that's your next objective for the next day.

Now, depending on which route you're following into Chapter 4, this happens one of two ways. First, you wake up at home and Toriel offers to bring Suzie to church with the both of you. After going to church and doing whatever, the first split event happens. If Berdly is alive, Suzie just asks Noelle, and because she's into that purple gator girl, she's very happy to invite you over. If he isn't, Noelle comes up to you wanting to talk about the other day and invites you over herself. You can do a couple things after church, including finding a permanent new home for Tenna, talk to the ugly rat, and see Asgore once again get rejected by Toriel.

After going to Noelle's house, in the normal route, Suzie distracts her while you go around searching for the code to the shelter. Once you find it inside December's guitar, Kris rips You out of himself and hides the code. You look around and try to find a way back to the code, and you can over hear Noelle and Suzie discover they like a lot of the same media. We don't know what Kris is doing, but he's been using his phone the whole time to talk to someone. You eventually lead Suzie and Noelle back into December's room where Kris tries to keep You from getting to the code. Suzie finds you and Kris in the closet and tells you to shut up and figure it out, where you then re-merge and you're in control of him again. Suzie takes the guitar out of the closet saying it fell over. Noelle is clearly anxious, but Suzie tries to play it, and Noelle figures it's fine. Her Mom never comes home anyways.

Asgore comes in the house (hes working here as a house keeper I guess) and warns Noelle and Suzie about Carol coming home now, where she then walks in and breaks up the party. The music here is used so well too. Noelle's house has a very warm and fun atmosphere up until this point, but once Carol walks in, her theme begins playing which is just sleigh bells every few seconds. Icy, cold, downright chilling. It makes her presence all the more effective when she kicks Suzie out. Provided you don't mess with the decorations, she then says YOU in red capital letters, are always welcome in her home. This is the first time anyone has not called the main character 'Kris' or 'they,' so its a big deal. I believe Kris is either talking to the roaring knight or Carol when You are separated from him. You leave Noelle's house and it begins to rain. You try to go home, but the door is locked. You head back to the church where you discover a new dark fountain and the next chapter begins in earnest.

Now, if you did take the snow grave route, things get weird.Instead of Suzie distracting Noelle, Noelle wants to talk to Kris alone. Before that happens, Kris separates You from himself and goes to talk to her. Visual shenanigans allow you to get into the room via the vents and hear the conversation. You can then take over Kris and PROCEED. You tell Noelle the truth about what she did. Kris had removed the thorn from her finger (the thorn ring from the beginning that starts the snow grave route), but You, after traumatizing her some more, put it back in with a very dramatic red blood splatter as the scene goes dark.

Suzie is caught in December's room by Carol and summarily kicked out, but in this version, Carol takes the time to once again tell you you're welcome there, and Noelle is very excited to go to the Festival with You tomorrow (whatever Chapter 5 will end up being). Things go the same way up until entering the church again to start the next 'level.' In both routes Suzie gets to see the code in the guitar, but doesn't manage to memorize it, leaving you looking for other ways to get into the shelter.

From here, the game goes mostly like normal, you meet up with Ralsei and explore the new dark world, but then you meet an old turtle, who is not a 'darkner' You try to take care of him until leading him to a safe place where he wants to compose a letter. He sort of becomes Suzie's dad if you follow the events all the way through, encouraging her to make better use of herself and be better, all the while Ralsei is being particularly dodgy in this fountain. you see the prophecy mentioned in chapter one as stained glass murals as the level goes on, and sometimes they just break as you're reading them. As you try to find the source of the breakage, you run into the roaring knight again. The knight tries to impede your progress, but eventually runs away. With the help of the old man, you get Suzie some real self confidence and a cool new hammer. This eventually leads her to confronting Ralsei about being sketchy and he admits he's been breaking the murals so that you can't see how the story ends. So far, everything has been as the murals say, so how does the story end?

As you get to the end, Suzie runs ahead before Ralsei and sees the ending. When you find her, she's broken the mural with her fist and gotten it bloody from the glass. Ralsei apologizes profusely but Suzie tries to brush it off, saying it could never happen. Things go from bad to worse as we close the fountain only to find that it was to hid the second fountain deeper within the church. We discover the old man was actually just his ashes brought back to life and Suzie rewrites the letter for him, his son being the current priest. To find out the code to open the next locked door to get into the main cathedral, Suzie uses your knife to recreate the fountain and go back to seek out the old man.

Things are different now, nothing can be fixed or redone. Your team struggles through only to find nothing until the end of the new fountain where the fire extinguisher tells you the code is written on him. He's the most important thing in the church, after all. In the next fountain, you chase down the night, but the fountain has already been open for so long that the darkness has grown uncontrollable and formed into a titan. With the help of all the characters you've met in this chapter, you chase the titan down, but can't defeat it. Then, the old man comes to help you out, and with the light of Your soul, You manage to purge the titan and destroy the fountain.

The end of the prophecy weighing heavy on Suzie, you head home to find Sans and Toriel having a dance party. Weirded out, Suzie goes home, and Though you're invited to dance, you go to bed. Tortured by the music and them having a good time, Kris removes You and makes a call to someone about the festival and sees Suzie leaving, saying "it can't happen, it wouldn't happen."

If you've taken snowgrave up to this point, instead of taking you You out, You get a phone call and answer it, also about the festival tomorrow. And the chapter ends with 'next part in 2026.'

Story telling here is masterful, and something that could really only be told with a game because you miss half the information if you don't see the negative things you can do. The music is really just something else, but I can't say that any particular track of either chapter 3 or 4 other than the one at the top stands out to me. It's good, but way more BGM this time around. I will say Chapter 4 is strong as a whole though and seems to be almost an entire game unto itself. The Snowgrave stuff is pretty disturbing, and the things you have to do to get there are almost 'creepy pasta' levels of insanity that only somebody who will press every button would actually figure out. The part where You talk with Noelle lives in my nightmares, it's very unsettling, but I have to wonder if somebody normally playing the game would ever find any of this stuff out. Suzie even points out in her conversation with Noelle on the nice route (funny enough) that she took the evil route in a game she played because she didn't know the option to be nice was even there.

It's very relevant to what Sans tells you in Undertale during his fight about how people just want more and more and they'd do anything just to see what happens. Snow Grave doesn't feel like something you could accidentally stumble upon very easily, and when You interact with Noelle, she always says something about how she can't move or run away. Because you are doing this to her, on purpose. There are even points where if you try to be mean to Suzie, Kris will stop you from using his mouth like that. It's one part funny and another part disturbing(?) and this is made all the stranger when you consider how things go when you do play nice. Kris still tries to remove you from himself and he's the reason dark fountains open up in spite of playing the hero. There is a lot of messaging about being free through out the story and I'm sure that will be a big part of the final act when you and Kris actually deal with each other.

As an aside, I'm beginning to wonder if Toriel is actually a saint, or if maybe she cheated on Asgore or something to cause their divorce. The thing with Sans makes me suspect. I'm hoping the family breakup ends up being the subject of an entire chapter at somepoint, which I imagine it will, but the old turtle guy talks about it during his fight to train Suzie. He says, "Chapter 5; the field of Pink and Gold, the vast garden is charred in an inferno of jealousy," and then says there was only one more chapter after that, but it was never written. The hope is that the plot point is discussed at some point in the game's future, but you never know. Given that kind of title, probably chapter 5 is when I might get the breakup story. It feels like we're near the climax of the story or at least the turning point where we have all or most of the major plot points revealed, and I am very excited about it. Weirdly, It feels very much like my own book series because I kinda wrote how all the events line up in this order. 1 is the intro to your main character, 2 adds more and shows some of the darker undertones, 3 expands the story but is more self contained, 4 reveals the first half of all the major plot points, 5 does the rest, and 6 leads into the ending which changes the story completely in the final part... which is the one I'm still working on.

All of that to say, that I really like what's going on here with the duality of it and I am very excited to see more of the game as it comes out, even if I have no intention of playing it. The whole of Chapter 4 is very emotionally heavy whether you're good or not and that to me is a sign of great writing.
If you read all this and haven't played the game/seen it for yourself, definitely do that, It's a great experience, IMHO.

Anyways, that's all from me for now.
Until Next Time~
-KCZ