GioCities

blogs by Gio

Tagged: theorizing

šŸ“£ 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 Ralseiā€™s prophecy:

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

Angels and HeavensĀ§

First, hereā€™s a list of all the references to ā€œAngelsā€ or ā€œHeavenā€ in the text of Undertale and Deltarune, which Iā€™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 doesnā€™t matter)
  • The Angelā€™s Heaven from Ralseiā€™s prophecy
  • The Heaven Spamton is pursuing
  • The Angel worshipped by the Hometown church
    • The Angel doll Noelle and Dess made in church youth group

UndertaleĀ§

First, the ā€œangelā€ (lowercase) from Undertale, which Iā€™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 heā€™ll exposit:

šŸŽ® 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 getā€¦ this:

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

Boneworksā€™ 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 gameā€™s design.

At first I thought it was a visual gag (ā€œWhatā€™s this barrel full of, anyway? Oh, data, hahaā€), but no, itā€™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, ā€” tasks that in real life are performed by physical hardware but that we have abstracted into the realm of ideas and decisions and design ā€” and says NO! In this space, where they should be abstracted most of all, these things are machines, and theyā€™re individual machines, and youā€™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.

šŸ“£ Post-Ch2 Deltarune Theories

  • Posted in fandom

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

gio irl

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

Susie is immune to player inputĀ§

Thereā€™s a lot in Deltarune Chapter 1 that implies that, unlike undertale, player choice doesnā€™t matter. The character you make in the first sequence is discarded, Thereā€™s even word of god that thereā€™s only one ending to the game.

But, if you look at it, most of that involves Susie. You canā€™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. Thereā€™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.