Chapter Text
It seems Toby Fox is sensitive to all the aforementioned issues, because Deltarune is, so far, staking out a very different course. First and foremost, Kris is clearly an echo of Chara. Not only do they fill the same social space as the strange, alienated adoptive Dreemurr child, they essentially look like an older version of Chara, wearing similar clothes, sporting similar hair and similar interests. Kris, however, is a fully formed, complex character who, far from being a rejected antithesis, arguably constitutes the game’s moral core. In fact, a central narrative thrust of the game regards the conflation of Kris and the foreign Soul possessing them. You are in control, but as I referenced earlier, you are not the protagonist; Kris is. This conflation is visibly a source of great pain, resentment and exhaustion for Kris; a depiction which feels very pointed. Their dehumanization does not originate in their transformation into an avatar of evil, but in their sense of disempowerment and alienation. They are uncomfortable with the existence of other humans, aspiring to monsterhood like everyone around them. Asriel has left them alone with no friends. A foreign object has taken them as its vessel. The light, which they were born from, provides no comfort; they only find it in that darkness where things become more indistinct.
In making a Chara expy the protagonist, Deltarune in fact centers the ambiguous line between destruction and redemption. The directions you can take Kris are not nearly so far removed from one another as Pacifist and Genocide. While the Weird route differs significantly from the Normal one at several points, it does not fundamentally warp reality the way Genocide does. Character interactions are more subtle, less universally hostile. Indeed, the Shadow Mantle sidequest in Chapter 3 acts as an indication that the Weird route is not only not condemned by the game, but offered up as an equally important, complementary approach to the narrative. As we know Kris will act on their own and tear out the Soul in times of need, each route only represents the boundaries within which they allow themself to be controlled. Neither is morally absolutist; regardless of how nice you are to Kris, you are still taking their freedom away; likewise they always remain party to the Knight’s conspiracy. The major difference, in fact, lies in the level of friction which exists between the cage and the caged, the level of strain which you put on Kris as a conscious puppet. I take it as a given that there is some sort of link between what happened to Dess, the promise Kris made, the Knight’s conspiracy, and Noelle’s ice magic. It is this transgression, this ‘breaking of the game,’ which seems to invoke deeply buried trauma, that derails everything. Kris is tormented by the actions you make them do, both to Berdly and, especially, Noelle, who becomes the target of esoterically cruel manipulation. They do their best to undo the harm which they have caused in their effort to work with the parasite inhabiting their boy. In other words, psychological rather than physical violence defines the Weird route. It demonstrates that power is honed much more through the domination of others than their destruction.
This is where we get to the crux of the matter: experiences and relationships in Deltarune are not treated as sacred, but malleable. There is no clearer illustration of this than the fact that Kris is a cheater. In cheeky references to ‘entering numbers knowingly,’ the metatextual engagement with the game’s more esoteric aspects are narratively integrated in a way that goes far beyond Asriel’s reference to people watching the Genocide route on YouTube. You are not moralized to; it’s a simple statement of fact. You are expected to ‘cheat.’ Another side to this is the Dark Worlds being a perspective shift, a manifestation of forceful personality – determination – which makes the mundane magical.
What if we could take away the light that wasn't there Until we reached another side? If that were to happen... You could start to see things again. And hear them. And feel them.
Dark Worlds are exactly that force I ascribed to witchcraft, the flowing out of self to animate everything as experienced. Dark Fountains blot out the socially constructed truth, the light, to replace it with a world weaved from the force of the singular, the isolated, what is cut off from connection and thus surrounded by utter Otherness. This is what we may call Evil, the flipside of an all-encompassing Love which spreads out to embrace everything. Rejecting the bright lights of a predictable future, a prepackaged life, it follows Gerson’s words: “Why don't we go between the lines? It's darker there.” But the further from the light you stray, the closer you get to such dangerous, unstable situations that risk triggering a break. This is where the Titans come in, the fear of the dark which only destroys Otherness. The Roaring is absolute privation, the complementary opposite of the Prophecy’s blinding light which equally kills all possible futures.
Deltarune is concerned with finding the golden mean between these opposing poles. It is an all-encompassing affirmation of freedom with the recognition that this involves pain, destruction, despair and uncomfortable truths. As Ramb offers in counterpoint to Undertale’s moralism: isn’t this dip into annihilation where you find the real fun? It’s this refusal of totalizing dichotomies, of neat categories, which makes me believe that, while the game is obviously not finished yet, we’re not going to see substantially different endings between the routes. In chapter 1, Susie and Ralsei present you with two opposing approaches to ambiguity: either your choices don’t matter, or they matter in how they change the spirit, rather than the facts, of your journey. You can still be heroic if heroism is not ontologically determined to succeed. If so, like in Umineko the game presents you with a ‘catbox’ where the outside is stable but the contents are endlessly variable along changes of perspective. The entire game is a rebellion against the fatalist, reductionist view presented by Gaster at the outset: “No one can choose who they are in this world.” The game embodies the experience of visceral refusal to let things end this way, because no matter what happens, your freedom to experience the world as you see it cannot be taken from you. As awkward as it may be, as incomplete, as hollow, if it is done with intent, without irony, it is substantial, it is real, it is magic; because no experience needs to justify itself with reference to an outside. It simply is.
I still kinda am bad. In some ways, I guess. But now, I... I got hope crossed on my heart. Hope, written in truth. Written somewhere... Written somewhere no one can erase!