[ Mellow music and clicking noises ] [ Click ] [ Click ] [ Click click ] [ Click ] [ C l i c k ] [ Click click ] [ Click ] [ C l i c k c l i c k ] [ Click ] Really? [ Intro Music ] If you've been into the whole you know, video games thing these past couple of years and you don't live under a rock, you're probably familiar with the name Toby Fox; This indie dev who was mostly known for his work on Homestuck and Earthbound ROM hacks had his big break When he launched his first massive original project: It was a really cool indie game that explored a lot of different territory, in regards to both its story and gameplay. It would break the fourth wall and use the context of its own game mechanics to drive the story forward. It was so meta that it took the meta out of Metal Gear Psycho Mantis: "Your skills have improved, or rather, your hardware" It even used the very concept of a save file in it's story and using that it delivered some heavier themes in very unique and powerful ways. The inspiration it took from the Mother series in regards to its childlike yet also melancholic tone was obvious, and not to mention, it was funny, the soundtrack kicked ass, and the battle system was a brilliant combination of turn-based and bullet-hell combat. This thing blew up quick, it was phenomenal just how many people were into this thing, you couldn't walk to virtual steps on the internet without bumping into Sans or Toriel or somebody from that freaking game. I mean like I know entire music YouTube channels that blew up significantly once they saw that opportunity and started cranking out some Undertale stuff like it's been like- it's gotta be three years ago at this point but man it was a wild ride. But now the dust has finally settled it's been three years since Undertale came out and all of this craziness later I'd say we've reached a pretty reasonable point it's no longer- I would have a longer call it overrated, I wouldn't even call it underrated either I think it's- I think Undertale is pretty evenly rated at this point. But after three years of making a bazillion dollars on merch, the ever so humble Toby has resurfaced to put out his next project. Not a sequel, but another game that takes place at some point in Undertale's universe. This game is called: With Undertale's presence still fairly strong, Deltarune's guaranteed to be an instant hit. I mean it seemed like I already had dozens of people asking me to check it out the day it was announced. I'm not gonna lie like, part of me just kinda wanted to ignore this thing altogether, like I'm sure every other idiot on YouTube is like scrambling to pump out like 18 videos on this thing but like, I don't know a big part of me was just really curious to see what Toby Fox was up to, that is a man that you just don't know what to expect from, right? And with that said expect tons of spoilers from both Deltarune and Undertale. I usually try to avoid spoilers by either just not bringing them up or by having a time stamp to skip them, but the very fragile nature of Undertale narratives kind of make it hard to comfortably digest this thing without feeling like I'm either leaving too much out or not painting a proper picture like when you have the whole thing and then [Mouth noise] it's all right here. I don't really feel like there's a flow there for something like this, so I'm just gonna... Just don't watch this if you don't want spoilers. Even installing the thing's an interesting process, it's not on Steam this time so you'll have to get it from the game's main website, which, oh, already has a bunch of merchandise, I somehow knew that wasn't gonna take long. "SURVEY_PROGRAM_WINDOWS_ENGLISH"? What, is this game disguised as malware or something? You know like malware you know, the last thing anybody on the planet would ever want to download onto their computer. That's pretty funny I'm not gonna lie as if this game is this thing that's so terrible nobody should ever want to download it, let alone play it. There's always been a level of self-depreciation humor when it comes to Toby Fox, so this kind of gag doesn't surprise me. Apparently it even gets picked up by a lot of virus programs, man you really went all out huh? the only thing written in the Terms of Service that you have to agree to is: [ Distorted voice ]
"YOU WILL ACCEPT EVERYTHING (THAT WILL HAPPEN) FROM NOW ON" Oh, I see what he's going for here you know like, you install something and you blindly accept the terms of conditions and then he's here using that, you know the software to deliver unconventional storytelling and yada yada yada yeah I'm sure there's some sort of theme in here somewhere that's gonna relate to this you know like Undertale did with the whole reloading the save thing The thing is Toby this isn't new anymore you know like stuff like this was mind-blowing to me when I first saw it in games like Undertale and one shot years ago but, "Sorry, but that won't work this time" you're going to need something new whether it's a new method of breaking the fourth wall or a different and more powerful tone or theme or something. Perhaps even delivered by the same kind of unconventional means, and ironically enough Deltarune actually starts out as conventional as games can get, with a character creator We start with the soul and we've got to make a body for it like Dark Souls, you know the- Imagine if people like, called every game Dark Souls because I had like a character creator and not because it was hard and that's like the same thing or taking like a single aspect of the game and being like "Oh it's like that" But man, we get to make our very own little dude to play as in the world of Undertale, that is awesome I'm sure the fanfiction... fans? Is that what you call an advocate of fanfiction? Like a fanfiction fan, it's kind of redundant sounding I think, but like... I don't even remember the joke I was making This has got to be the creepiest creation screen I've ever seen though, we float around this dark shapeless limbo as we choose each lifeless body part to slap on to our character. We got some gigas sounds in there too, still at it with the Earthbound sampling I see. I always thought it was really cool to sample from a game that in itself, it already samples from a lot of other things, like that creepy droning use for the final area you know that right? [ Earthbound - The Cave of the Past ] which was then reused in some of Undertale's music, [ Undertale - Amalgam ] That weird, unsettling sound, is the first vocal lyric to the song Deirdre by The Beach Boys [ The Beach Boys - Deirdre ] And that is the magic of sampling, the very fact that you can take like one second of a song about a pretty girl and just mold it into something creepy and terrifying so easily, it's rad as hell man. So, I spend six minutes carefully making my character, I choose between all the messy hairstyles, I pick out a shirt. I mean they're all the same shirt you're really just picking sleeve length and thickness. I can't even tell the difference between any of these pants, actually I'm convinced that they're all exactly the same except the last one which was like, "Oh one of the legs is kinda a little bit bigger I guess", what is the point of this choice? The footage here has me browsing the legs option for like two full minutes before I decide but I think that was me actually trying to figure out if any of the legs were even different from one another You can pick their favorite food, their color, even their blood type. Oh here's a classic, Frinky, that's the name I made up in the original Undertale video for like some gag, a couple years ago, and I've used that as every character name in every game I played since yeah sure have my name too, I'm sure they'll do some fourth wall breaking Earthbound thingy with it, go for it Uh, huh? "No one can choose who they are in this world", oh I see I see, the theme is like not having a choice right, the game even reminds you of this every now and then, yeah that was a pretty cool introduction for that. Yeah now that this thing's in the frickin garbage, you can finally start with our actual character, a little kid named Kris. It's not long before we start seeing some familiar faces we're even greeted in the morning by Toriel, who is our adoptive mother in this game, well I'm assuming she adopted us because, she's kind of a goat, and we're kind of a man. There's a number of returning characters some of which have on-screen presence and some are only heard about in passing there's constant mention of Asriel coming home from college so I'd assume this is taking place some time before Undertale (Actually an AU) Before we head off the school we can actually look around the house for quite a bit, yeah it's a nice and comfy place I always really like it when games let you do this, like you get to look around your house, in your bedroom before you actually set off on your adventure, it's a small thing but I always really appreciate it. Toriel is a teacher at the exact same school you go to so she just drives you there on her way to work, but you still end up being a little bit late, now the class is partnering up for a project and you are left all alone, so it looks like you've got no choice [ Undertale - Susie ] but to be with the big bully girl who wants to tear your face off and eat it, that's hardly an exaggeration either, she legitimately threatens to do precisely that. Your teacher who happens to be Alphys asks you in Susie to go out and get some chalk so she can start the class. So you begin your high school buddy comedy adventure with a giant purple monster dude who wants to tear your face off. Before long we've fallen to the supplies closet and it teleports us to an alternate dark world where our clothes change and we find out we are supposed to be the heroes, and it just dumps a truckload of lore on us out of nowhere Undertale is already a very lore heavy game and having all of this wizards and warriors stuff come out of nowhere, it honestly just feels kind of out of place in the Undertale universe I felt, it felt really disconnected to me, like oh we're just gonna go to another world that is not this world and have its own separate story that is not the story, I don't know that's kind of how I felt about it, but you know this can work, I'm not saying it's like an inherently bad idea or anything you could say it's a good idea to take characters that were seasoned and developed in a universe we're already familiar with, and then pit them in a unique one so their own story can unfold, You can look at this in a number of different ways I guess. It's not long before we meet with this little goat wizard dude named Ralsei Wait a minute, Ralsei? Really? So like what, is he actually Asriel in disguise or something? Is it gonna be like "Oh it wasn't at college at all!" yada yada yada You don't find out by the end of this either, which yeah I guess that's probably worth mentioning, this is actually not like a full game, this is just the first part in a multitude of chapters that are planned for this thing, so there's gonna be a lot of puzzle pieces that have yet to be on the table and given the obsessively analytical nature of fans of stuff like Undertale, yeah I think that was a pretty good move on Toby's part He's definitely gonna keep interest in the project strong and ongoing. So now I've guess we've got three total party members, that's a lot more than Undertale's solo mission huh? while I'd probably describe Undertale's combat as a bullet-hell spin on something like Dragon Quest or Earthbound, this is more like a bullet-hell spin on Chrono Trigger, stylistically mostly, the way the screen transitions like you don't enter a separate screen, instead the characters just jump into their positions as the battle starts, of course with its own little spin using the familiar neon grid backgrounds from Undertale, it looks dope, but even with the two additional party members the battle system is widely the same as Undertale's Except with a couple of minor tweaks, you can attack your enemies or you can act, same as before but with the party little kids that all have different personalities, it's kind of hard to come to a compromise Susie here being the big problem, she just wants to kill things, and Ralsiel (Ralsei) knows better, and you're gonna have to use an array of moves that'll hinder her from damaging your opponent's, while also trying to act on and spare them to finish the fight, I actually totally forgot about the whole sparing thing when I did the first fight, so I was just attacking him like normal and I thought "Oh wait, nonono" and I complimented him on his shoes and I was like "Aight" and then Susie cut him in half and killed him. Yeah that can't happen, so you'll have to use partnered actions with Ralsei and later on even Susie to take out the enemies peacefully instead, I guess it's kind of like the double techs in Chrono Trigger, kinda, but with of course actions instead of attacking. And this sounds super duper cool it's a brilliant concept, but I thought the execution was a little bit too simple for me, like it sounds way more complicated than a really is, once you know what to do you're just gonna be recycling through the exact same actions for every single fight, I felt like it kind of lacked the element of puzzle and trial and error that were in Undertale's battles Figuring out what actions are the ones that work, I found myself not really experiencing that here, I wasn't going through multiple options, I wasn't getting all of those funny responses you know? I'm not trying to say the game's not funny anymore, I just feel like the actual combat part of the combat, while it should have been made more in-depth by the more party members, actually feels simpler here to me. Well I guess there is the TP meter, basically every time you defend you get more TP, and then you can use that to spend on like, better attacks and stuff, it's pretty similar to the TP meter you would see in an RPG Maker game, except you get it by defending instead of like attacking and being attacked, so yeah I guess that does add a little bit to it, but I mean all it's really doing is like, "Okay don't attack this turn and then you can do a good attack the next turn" but I guess in turn that does encourage you just to go through more defense phases, and let's be honest here it was the defense part of the combat that made Undertale so special, and what they've done with it here feels like a very proper and natural evolution of what we've seen before, you get these snappy reticles to tell you which party members are gonna be taking damage, and once again different combinations of enemies will dish out different variations of their attacks , there's a lot of new juice here to enhance the game feel, just these little visual and audial things that feel very satisfying. Like how there's now feedback for bullet graze these little pings and dings and visual effects when a bullet goes real close to your comfort zone, it makes every one of those close dodges all the more engaging, and the way bullet-hell has also, been introduced into the overworld is something I really liked Sometimes projectiles may come on screen outside of battle and the visuals will then seamlessly morph to alert the player for what to do, the screen dims down, the borders of the area go neon and your characters soul appears, showing you exactly where your hitbox is, everything is made so visually clear in such a short amount of time that the first time happened to me I was not caught off guard at all I immediately understood what was happening simply based on how these visuals were linked to previous mechanics, even though the previous game did not have this version of these mechanics. Speaking of which the environments in Undertale were something I always found very basic, I mean some of this stuff seriously looks like I could have made it in MS Paint when I was six. Deltarune's environments have seen a pretty good upgrade, the world is much more consistently detailed now. But hey, what's a world without characters. That was always Undertale's strongest component for a lot of people. Undertale focused mostly on interactions with that area's boss character, and Deltarune does echo this with Lancer the game's-, he's kind of like a little villain, about as much of a villain as Papyrus was at least. You know that stuff's all here again, and it's charming and fun and goofy, you know as it was in Undertale, but there's also a good dose of internal party interactions here, that I think do a really good job of strengthening these characters. I mean, some of it is a little bit cliche like the very end when Susie has her change of heart and she's like [ High pitched voice ]
"Let's go back there tomorrow" and it's like I don't know, it's cute, but some moments like this, I don't know man, maybe it's just the delivery, but I didn't really feel my heartstrings being pulled as effectively as they were in Undertale. But again maybe it's just me, I don't know. That said I still think the characters are the best thing about this entire game, seeing them talk to each other and interact and be goofy, honestly my favorite part of the entire thing was the very end, after you finished the final fight and go back to the normal world it's like [ High pitched voice ]
"Oh no it's late I got to get home" but you just like not go home, and you can instead explore the entire town and you can, talk to everybody, you talk to characters we know from Undertale, characters that are new to us, seeing familiar faces now living in a community with rules and traditions and relationships, it really was wonderful to hop through town and visit everybody, and see what their lives are like. I'm sure this last section has everybody scrambling to the forums to figure out exactly where in the timeline this game's taking place, and the things that are gonna be set in motion here. There's some pretty big stuff you can find like seeing Asgore keeping seven flowers that bare colors awfully close to the seven souls of Undertale. And you know there's also kind of that gigantic inciting moment at the very end of the game where Kris tears his soul out and tosses it into a cage, and then brandishes a knife and looks at the camera all spookily. I'm guessing that's the soul from the very beginning that the game was like hey make a body for this thing, just kidding we're gonna put it in this guy, and I'm sure you can analyze this all day long and make some sort of connection to Frisk or Chara or whatever the characters in the first game were, but you know I'm not gonna bother getting into that; That's just a rabbit hole that I'm not ready to go down. I just wanted to take a quick hop to this thing and yeah it was pretty good, it felt like a natural evolution of the mechanics that made Undertale a pretty rad game, there are some things I feel could be improved on Like a three-party system not really adding as much as I think it should, but this is the first part of a multi-chapter series, So you never know if there's going to be more done with that in the future. The writing's still on point, the characters are still lovable, the puzzles are comedically simple and very entertaining because of that, but somehow that magic that made me fall in love with Undertale in the first place just didn't really seem to be here for me. For starters the soundtrack didn't feel nearly as impactful and well, I don't know, a lot of the other stuff is just recycled bits that didn't really impact me because I've already seen it. Maybe this is just like a big nitpick because it's a lot of small stuff, like when there's a pause and dialogue and the next line is eerily slow and silent and it's like "Yeah, that was pretty creepy" [ Background music stops ]
"When Sans did it three years ago" but now it's something that's become so iconic that it's the first thing you think of when you think of Undertale so instead of being this impactful moment that came out of nowhere it's like, "Oh it did the Undertale thing" "Kind of saw that coming" you know does that make sense? Like some of it just feels like contrived throwbacks, instead of natural exposition. I don't know no man, all I'm saying is it's good, I liked it, if you like Undertale you're definitely gonna like this game but I just hope the following chapters have a more unique punch to them, instead of just echoing what Undertale has done before. I love Undertale because it's so unexpected and surprising, not because of the things I've already been surprised by but I mean like they planted some serious seeds with the hole and meta theme of choice or whatever, so I'm sure something is going to come of that. But it's kind of hard to complain when the game's free though I don't know if the rest of it's gonna be free or when that's even gonna come out, but I think I'm probably gonna wait for the whole thing to finish up before I jump back into it but yeah if you're somebody, that's into Undertale and like the lore and story behind it, Or even somebody that just likes Undertale for like, the game part of Undertale, I think you guys are really gonna love what he's doing with this thing Hi, welcome to the end of my video, thank you for watching it U Uu Uuu Uuuu Uuuuu Uuuuuu Uuuuuuum... I have a Patreon, I do a podcast, it's a dollar, do you want that? You can get that. Thank you, goodbye [ Snickers into the sunset ]
