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Undertale / Deltarune Part 1: my introduction
(This post is deliberately spoiler-free, but my subsequent posts will contain spoilers for the various playthroughs, endings, secrets, etc. of both Undertale and Deltarune. Please consider playing these games first if you feel like you might be interested in them, as I'd hate to spoil anyone on something they might have genuinely enjoyed encountering while playing.)
I figure I'll begin with my history with The Undertale Franchise, to coin an awkward phrase. I was not really aware of Undertale up to and beyond its initial release in 2015. Looking back, my only real interaction with the game at the time was folks posting screenshots from it as jokes or whatever, but all I really processed was the ...
* Here is a statement written in the text box on the lower half of the screen, with an asterisk in front of it.
... style.
I first really "got into" the game when I was going through the backlog of Game Grumps/Steam Train let's play videos sometime around early 2017, I think. I watched enough of Ross and Barry's playthrough to grow very attached to Toby Fox's style of writing, humor, characterization, and so on. I also gathered from reading comments that they "weren't playing it right", and while I cannot stand people coming into comments or chat and saying shit like that ... I do have the little voice in my head that says "please do it correctly". A voice I satisfied, not by showing my ass online, but by seeking out other playthroughs that were doing things more methodically.
"Why didn't you play it for yourself?" At the time, I was super broke (this is distinct from my status at time of writing, merely "broke"). And by the time I realized that I should probably scrape together some money for this thing I enjoyed so much, I had already seen just about everything in the game. I hope that I have somewhat restored my karma since then by buying a few other items from Toby, like his soundtracks on Bandcamp.
Then October 2018 saw the release of the new Undertale-related game, Deltarune--or at least the first chapter of the game, offered as a free download. Well, I of course played it, and replayed it, several times. Chapter 2 came along in September 2021, also free. Played that one too. Went back and replayed chapter 1 first, of course. When the next part comes out, I'm sure I'll re-re-play the first two chapters again.
Much like Toby Fox made Undertale (partially) so he could make Deltarune, I'm writing all this out as a baseline for what I really want to write: posts on various ideas and theories I have about what can be found in these games. Overarching themes, the various "meta" things Toby does in his games, etc. I approach this task knowing that millions of words have already been written about these things ... but I'd like to believe that my own experiences, and my own efforts turning theories over and over in my head while I'm bored at work, might be worth reading about.
Two topics I already know I want to expound upon are:
* The various ways Toby explores what meta-stuff happens when you treat "I'm playing a game" and "these characters and events are real" as equally true, and
* Theories I have about how Deltarune builds on Undertale, what it "means" that Deltarune is presented to the player in a certain way, etc.
I do want to mention (and I'll mention it again in the other posts) that, as much as my brain starts yelling "that's it, you cracked the code, Toby has this exact idea written down on a napkin from 2011 somewhere!" when I come up with and process these theories, I do know that they're theories, and I don't want to ever suggest that I'm right and others are wrong. The fun isn't in Solving It, the fun is Look At This Cool Equation I Made Where A Bunch Of Terms Cancel Out Elegantly.
... sorry, went a little mathy there.
Go play Undertale and Deltarune, I gotta write.
I figure I'll begin with my history with The Undertale Franchise, to coin an awkward phrase. I was not really aware of Undertale up to and beyond its initial release in 2015. Looking back, my only real interaction with the game at the time was folks posting screenshots from it as jokes or whatever, but all I really processed was the ...
* Here is a statement written in the text box on the lower half of the screen, with an asterisk in front of it.
... style.
I first really "got into" the game when I was going through the backlog of Game Grumps/Steam Train let's play videos sometime around early 2017, I think. I watched enough of Ross and Barry's playthrough to grow very attached to Toby Fox's style of writing, humor, characterization, and so on. I also gathered from reading comments that they "weren't playing it right", and while I cannot stand people coming into comments or chat and saying shit like that ... I do have the little voice in my head that says "please do it correctly". A voice I satisfied, not by showing my ass online, but by seeking out other playthroughs that were doing things more methodically.
"Why didn't you play it for yourself?" At the time, I was super broke (this is distinct from my status at time of writing, merely "broke"). And by the time I realized that I should probably scrape together some money for this thing I enjoyed so much, I had already seen just about everything in the game. I hope that I have somewhat restored my karma since then by buying a few other items from Toby, like his soundtracks on Bandcamp.
Then October 2018 saw the release of the new Undertale-related game, Deltarune--or at least the first chapter of the game, offered as a free download. Well, I of course played it, and replayed it, several times. Chapter 2 came along in September 2021, also free. Played that one too. Went back and replayed chapter 1 first, of course. When the next part comes out, I'm sure I'll re-re-play the first two chapters again.
Much like Toby Fox made Undertale (partially) so he could make Deltarune, I'm writing all this out as a baseline for what I really want to write: posts on various ideas and theories I have about what can be found in these games. Overarching themes, the various "meta" things Toby does in his games, etc. I approach this task knowing that millions of words have already been written about these things ... but I'd like to believe that my own experiences, and my own efforts turning theories over and over in my head while I'm bored at work, might be worth reading about.
Two topics I already know I want to expound upon are:
* The various ways Toby explores what meta-stuff happens when you treat "I'm playing a game" and "these characters and events are real" as equally true, and
* Theories I have about how Deltarune builds on Undertale, what it "means" that Deltarune is presented to the player in a certain way, etc.
I do want to mention (and I'll mention it again in the other posts) that, as much as my brain starts yelling "that's it, you cracked the code, Toby has this exact idea written down on a napkin from 2011 somewhere!" when I come up with and process these theories, I do know that they're theories, and I don't want to ever suggest that I'm right and others are wrong. The fun isn't in Solving It, the fun is Look At This Cool Equation I Made Where A Bunch Of Terms Cancel Out Elegantly.
... sorry, went a little mathy there.
Go play Undertale and Deltarune, I gotta write.