Tagged: theorizing

The Angel is You

  • Posted in fandom

ā€ā€¦okay, fine, you can have one more, but only because of the nameā€
a Deltarune theory

Answering the questions raised by Ralsei’s prophecy:

  • Who is the Angel?
  • What is the ā€œAngel’s Heavenā€?
  • How can it be banished?

Angels and Heavens

First, here’s a list of all the references to ā€œAngelsā€ or ā€œHeavenā€ in the text of Undertale and Deltarune, which I’ll go through one by one:

  • The human in Undertale is called an ā€œangelā€ for coming down from the human world (this is a red herring) (this could also refer to Asriel but it doesn’t matter)
  • The Angel’s Heaven from Ralsei’s prophecy
  • The Heaven Spamton is pursuing
  • The Angel worshiped by the Hometown church
    • The Angel doll Noelle and Dess made in church youth group

Undertale

First, the ā€œangelā€ (lowercase) from Undertale, which I’ll ultimately want to write off as a distraction.

In Waterfall, you can ask Gerson about the Delta ā€œwith-a-spaceā€ Rune, the royal emblem, and he’ll exposit:

Boneworks' Aesthetic of Substantiation

  • Posted in gaming

If you asked me what I expect ā€œVRā€ to look like, I would answer lowpoly, wireframes, etc. You know, the SUPERHOT vibe, or the crisp plastic cartoon vibe of Virtual Virtual Reality or VRChat, or maybe even a little Quadrilateral Cowboy. Boneworks is not that. Instead of freely-manipulated wireframes and polygons, we get… this:

Boneworks blue DANGER Heavy Calculation machine with barrel "Memory Dump" waste barrels, marked "256 mb storage capacity"

Boneworks’ aesthetic goes in a wildly different direction. Everything in the world is industrial and thoroughly utilitarian. There is a deliberate theme of substantiation rather than abstraction permeating the game’s design.

At first I thought it was a visual gag (ā€œWhat’s this barrel full of, anyway? Oh, data, hahaā€), but no, it’s consistent throughout the universe and turns out to be a core part of the world.

Boneworks takes tasks like calculation and positioning and sorting and deletion, — tasks that in real life are performed by physical hardware but that we have abstracted into the realm of ideas and decisions and design — and says NO! In this space, where they should be abstracted most of all, these things are machines, and they’re individual machines, and you’re going to look at every one of them.

I love this approach, both for its aesthetic effects and for its function as a storytelling device.

Post-Ch2 Deltarune Theories

  • Posted in fandom

As you might know, I have a somewhat complicated relationship with Undertale theories, so for Deltarune I’m kind of forcing myself not to go too red thread board with trying to ā€œsolveā€ things — which sucks, because I really like solving things.

gio irl

So instead of trying to be right about the big stuff, I thought I’d just talk about some fun crack theories. For fun! For fun, I tell myself.

Susie is immune to player input

There’s a lot in Deltarune Chapter 1 that implies that, unlike undertale, player choice doesn’t matter. The character you make in the first sequence is discarded, There’s even word of god that there’s only one ending to the game.

But, if you look at it, most of that involves Susie. You can’t control Susie at all for the first half of Chapter 1, only eventually getting her explicit buy-in after she decides she wants to be nice to lancer. And, of course, at the beginning of the game, she tells you directly

Your choices don't matter

Your choices matter with everyone else, though. There’s a massive branching tree of options during your battle tutorial with Ralsei, you design a thrash machine that carries over to chapter 2, and you can tell Noelle about Susie eating chalk to get an extra item in Chapter 2, just to name a few examples. Hell, your choices matter with Onionsan and Starwalker.