Why does Deltarune have an Element System?!

howdy you know what i've been dying to talk about since one of my very first videos why the heck does deltarune contain an element system seriously i don't get it why go through the effort to include this is it going to be important later will we need to understand the element system to make sure our attacks are super effective when omega ic neo starts rapidly shuffling between elements why the heck is spamton a cat [Music] sorry about that if you're new here and have no idea what i'm talking about starting in chapter 2 of deltarune whenever you visit one of these save points you have the option to check your recruits which amongst other things will display the element of each of the enemies you've managed to befriend while at first this might appear to be just some silly bit of flavor text these elements do correspond to actual armor which can be used to reduce the amount of damage you take from incoming bullets i already did a pretty thorough video covering element six and how by wearing the mannequin or the frayed bow tie one can acquire a defense against cats which will allow you to take less damage against task task manager and for some reason spam to neo but what about the other elements is there anything we can learn about the characters the world or the future of the story from taking a closer look at them well let's dive in and find out before we get started spoilers for undertale and deltarune don't hassle people for using text to speech and be nice to your fellow theorists when you disagree in the comments at first i thought researching this video would be super easy i just go into the code open up the list of elements and report on my findings but when i opened up the code up yeah that that's not very helpful is it it seems like instead of assigning each enemy an elemental value toby actually assigns them to the enemy's bullets the elements we see listed in the recruit table are actually just strings added in one at a time for each individual enemy so even though we can use this to assign the element names to the enemies we can't use this to learn which element corresponds to which elemental number curses well maybe we can work backwards we do know from the armor info that element one is holy slash electric element six is cat and element seven is mouse so there must be some code somewhere keeping track of which is which right beauties and gentle beauties friends beyond the bounds of conventional attraction may i present to you the elemental damage reduction script that's right folks while we may not have the list of every element we do have the script describing how that damage is reduced by your armor so let's go ahead and see what secrets we can pry from this bad boy shall we to begin with here at the bottom is a line of code that caps the elemental defense so that no combination of armor can reduce the elemental damage by more than 75 that is to say bullets will still do at least one quarter of their overall damage so even if you manage to find some sort of jewels ring of 50 chaos protection you won't be able to equip two and then stand in a rainstorm of chaos bombs i mean you will but up not for very long but we're here for the elements themselves right so does this script tell us anything about those let's see starting off the list we have element zero these bullets are completely exempt from elemental defense so we can go ahead and think of them as element piercers or non-elemental damage tempting though it may be to think of these as the default element i do actually see the script going out of its way to set the overworld bullets to this element so it seems like toby doesn't want players to use armors as a method of cheating the overworld bullets which i think might be a bit worrying to players who spent a lot of time dying on the teacups in chapter two the other elements work about how you'd expect element one bullets are reduced by element one armor such as the sky mantle element two corresponds to element two but hello what is this ic if the item's element is set to nine reduce damage from elements to an eight okay so element nine is actually special because it provides the protection of three different types of armor simultaneously that's awesome i'm a little surprised to be honest because in undertale nine was a number that was strongly associated with power determination and with the first fallen human so this kind of makes me wonder what elements 2 and 8 are please don't let element 8 be spiders actually in the czech data 8 is used for both toril and asgore so i wouldn't be shocked if it turned out to be the slot for fire as for two up there there are way too many twos wait nope not touching that one finally we get to element 10 which is very special because it protects against everything cats mice holy no matter what element the game throws at you element 10 has got your back if this game ends up having a temar armor equivalent i'd be shocked if it didn't turn out to be using element 10. and if hope and dreams turn out to have an element i bet you anything this will be the element for it but before you get to excited strapping on your ethereal armor do remember that element zero will still pierce elem in tens defenses so you will still die to the teacups and there we go we now know that there will be at least 11 element types element 9 will protect against 2 8 and 9 element 10 will protect against everything and element 0 will pierce through everything so is there any way we can use this info to deduce which elements correspond to which numbers a maybe maybe not the thing about trying to do that is with only two chapters out we are missing so much information it makes my head spin to begin with how many elements are there per slot is it one per slot with holy slash electric being an outlier which generally covers the sky element or is it two if it is two which element pairs with mouse in slot seven and cat in slot six is six also sounds strings cosmic horror wait i don't think there's a radical for cosmic yet huh is it rude is root even an element we know that suzy's root buster does root type damage and that other party members such as noel can use ice type damage which does correspond with a known element held by one of the enemies but we don't actually know what that means yet since that could actually just be foreshadowing of noel becoming an enemy or a boss fight later on in one of the chapters which might be a problem if we taught her snow grave now that i think of it oops then again what about red buster would this count as a color type attack there's really no way to be sure i don't see any codes suggesting that our spells have elements assigned to their attacks but that doesn't mean toby won't add it in later this is the challenge with speculating about a game that isn't complete yet toby could literally retcon just about any component of this game at any moment and even if he doesn't we're still missing too much data to really be certain about any of these for example consider rabbit their dust rabbit type but as of the time of this video they are the only enemy with either dust or rabbit is a type so if i start analyzing the heck out of their personality and behaviors how can i be sure which traits are rabid and which ones are dust or what about enemies that have multiples of the same element like jevel and mouse wheel is mouse wheel more mouse than a normal mouse like should i assume that one of the attributes of the mouse element is spinning in circles or is spinning just what happens when we shove multiple copies of an element into one person after all our other example jevel is also spinning spinning wait a flipping second what the heck is that every element in japanese has one radical per element and i thought maybe jevel would be the exception because he spells chaos out in full but uh no no it can't be wait maybe i'm in the wrong place am i reading this script wrong let's see just gotta recruit jevel booted up in japanese and oh my god a beauty is joying in my heart right now they they should have sent a poet salimi what was i thinking assuming jevel would be bound by the conventions of the character limits or the size of the slot don't i know that jebel can do anything i mean his cell isn't resting within the boundaries either so i'm not sure why i'm surprised sorry what was i talking about doubling up on elements why do holy and electric shares slot right if there are exactly two elements per slot should we assume it's the result of elements being in some way the same or is this the result of elements being opposites our only real example holy electric doesn't really give us much to go on one way or the other since we have yet to see any monsters with holy as their element unless you count birdly witch i mean you could but that's even riskier than rabic because berkeley could have multiple elements and we'd never even know so what then am i saying there's nothing we can learn by examining the elements right now well no i don't think that's true i do think toby has left us some clues regarding some of this stuff to begin with let's look at order because we actually have three pretty solid examples of the element we have ponman task manager and ambulance since punman is the only of the three that's pure order i think it's probably the best place to start pawn men are the pawns on the chessboard upon symbolically speaking refers to someone who is allowing themselves to be controlled by another this is a sentiment reinforced by the dialogue as the other pieces around them describe pon menace having no will of their own and being easy to control this is also seen in the pawn men themselves who are described as listening politely despite having no ears these are sentiments reinforced by task manager who commands the player to act in a way that is refined and obedient literally whipping us into shape you might think ambulance is the outlier here because it's a play on the word ambulance and seems to reference a lot of hospital imagery but that seems to be due to the electric part of their element on the order side they act as anti-viral programs that round up viruses and there is a lot of flavor text in both the game and the code that compares them to police officers who would fit the theme of order so we can paint a pretty consistent picture of the order element but when we try to imagine which element might be paired with it then we start to run into trouble why well let's consider root again if order includes the aspect of politeness and obedience then surely rude would be its opposite right makes sense to me but if rude pairs with order then what about chaos chaos is the opposite of order on a very literal sense since chaos refers to disorder unpredictability and disorganization but then wouldn't it make more sense to pair chaos up with rude after all most of jevel's dialogue and items seem to imply a certain affinity for susie but if chaos is disorder then couldn't we also just as easily pair it up with order and refer to this as the element of entropy if you think that's a stretch consider this line from toby fox himself during the jevel fight of the undertale 6th anniversary jevel stream the pirouette move follows a specific order if you count the turns you can get good effects it only appears random all chaos is ordered here to be directly links the idea the chaos and order are actually one and the same and that chaos is merely order that isn't understood yet in fact when you look closer at this fight you'll find that that's not just true of pirouette that's true of the entire jeville fight all of his moves begin by following a specific pattern dedicated by the face and they only become random if he fails to advance to the next phase before he exhausts the order there's also a link between jevel and the ponman in the way that we pacify them as these are the only enemies that seem to use the word hypnotized to describe the way they regard us so then chaos should be part of the order element or do all three of these elements go together can one slot contain three elements or even four which numbered element does this even fall under as if that's not confusing enough i've had some commenters suggest that spamton's element element 6 should overlap with order since teen task manager are the only enemies in the game to reference jevel specifically in battle and i do see where this logic stems from as in battle we do see other examples of this for example vera veracoon and ambulance don't seem to do very well on a team and mouse when paired with the task laments it is not too thrilled about the situation but that it will work with whoever it has to but i'm not so sure this is caused by the elements and to explain why i'd like to present the cafe here you can pair characters up at the southern table and see unique dialogue between certain character interactions so if you see happy and head happy together for example they seem to enjoy each other's company at first that might seem like evidence for elements influencing relationships since they're both hard but the moment you dig a bit deeper that theory starts to fall apart most pairings based on like elements don't seem to have any effect at all so if we pair mouse up with jigs sorry for example we don't see any sort of kinship between them even though they're both mouse type same for veeravira kuhn and you'd think since they are both virus type they'd have some sort of unique interaction but the dialogue remains completely unchanged for task and mouse there is a new line here because cats chase mice but there isn't any sort of dialogue for pairing task up with mouse wheel or jig sorry or any other mouse type creature same for head happy and more wherewire she enjoys their company but not that if a normal wear wire nor a bloxer nor any other fight nor electric type enemy by and large it seems like character relationships are defined by the personalities and experiences of the individuals and not their elemental alignment so as a general rule i'd caution against using their personal relationships as evidence for or against certain elements that said i do think we can learn more about individual elements by comparing enemies of overlapping types against each other like i did earlier and while i'm not going to go over every single case because some of them lack information i would like to highlight a few of the more interesting examples for one electric does seem to be pretty consistent so far with the idea of energy and even though ambulance isn't described as holy type it still has cross-type imagery in its attacks and sprites reinforcing the idea that holy and electric are two sides of the same coin jewel seems to be about both shiny things and the concept of greed or avarice and fight seems to center its themes around rivalry antisocialness and the shape of one's physical body but you know which two elements i find to be super overlooked ice and blade in chapter one there are two darkeners that seem to resemble powered up versions of earlier darkness that would be head happy which is a powered up version of hathi and rudin ranger which is a powered up version of rudin head hathy is interesting because she's our only example of ice that is until we get noel as a party member and the main thing that separates head hathy from happy is that she's withdrawn she's quiet it seems like she has a bit of a theme of suppressing her emotions and distancing herself from others in other words you could say she's a bit cold [Music] weirdly enough coal is an actual stat for noelle and as it goes up in a snow grave run we actually see her behavior become more and more withdrawn and suppressed so if head happy is helping us understand how the ice element affects noel could the same thing be intended for the ranger rotten rangers are only example of blade and i'd find that to be a super intriguing choice of element because blades are directly associated with the knight and with any lightner who chooses to channel their will by plunging a blade into the earth rotten rangers are also referred to as diamond knights in the games code which might be a coincidence or it might just be toby sneaking more foreshadowing into we heard places because who even knows at this point what i do find interesting is the way their character design differs from the normal rangers to begin with they have a longer blade of course but they also obscure their face with their mask i can't help but find myself drawing comparisons between them and chris a character who also dresses in the garb of a night and also obscures their facial expressions and who also seems partial to carrying around a blade the check data also emphasizes the red aspect of their design which is a power rangers reference yes but it is worth pointing out that this color is particularly associated with chris not only because it's the color of their eyes and soul but also because of the way they power up suzy's attacks during boss fights specifically by changing the color of the purple root busters into the red buster but i think the most interesting trait the redden rangers seem to share with chris is their inferiority complex as when we see them drinking with rotten in the cafe the russians complain that the rut in rangers are constantly trying to one-up them by ordering fancy or drinks actually speaking of an inferiority complex can i just say that this cut dialogue of raw same using about how strong noel is with ice magic comes off as super unsettling to me i'm not sure if it's because noel and raul say have similar spells if it's because rosse seems to like being extra close to chris or if it's because this line seems like another nod to the snow grave root but up i don't know i guess i can't add it to the raw say sus pile if toby cut it can i oh well either way there are a lot of ties the game draws between noelle and chris from their shared love of chocolate to their similar sounding cd bagels to their status as a pair of young teens longing to be reunited with their older siblings so if head hathy is meant to inform us about noel's element it seems only fitting that rotten ranger would be informing us about chris's blade element as well if you're one of those theorists looking for fresh evidence that chris is the knight then i do think rotten ranger poses as a pretty good piece of evidence to strengthen those symbolic connections although i would like to point out that there is another character with a bit of an inferiority complex and a vague connection to the color red or white is that red or orange oh crap it's the vermilion trap all over again run even if you think the element system won't play a role in the story itself it seems extremely likely to me that the elements will play progressively larger roles in the secret boss fights as jevel is the embodiment of his element chaos spamton's element can be guarded against via cat armor and shalm seems to believe the boss of chapter 3 will be impossible to defeat without a certain missing mantle while i do think it's pretty likely that this will eventually be the sky mantle i wouldn't be surprised if this was the chapter that introduced the concept of players using elemental attacks either so maybe grab yourself a couple of the big ones just in case we need to forge some kind of holy hook sword to substitute for our m.i.a holy halberd it's funny while everyone else is making bingo cards about their guesses for chapter 3's plot and characters i'm making them for the elements and their numbers i don't think i can definitively pin any of them without devolving into tin foil hat levels of confirmation bias fueled guess work but there is one i think i can take a stab at because it shows up in both undertale and deltarune you ready for this if we go into the monster data for undertale there's a certain amalgam made associated with the cold this is snow drake's mom and if you've ever played the snow grave route before you might find her monster id number of 55 to be a bit chilling what you think it's just a rounding error when noelle's hp drops to 55 and not toby sneaking the word love in through roman numerals i dunno how at this point he did it twice so i guess i'll have to leave that debate for the comments what do you guys think does toby keep sneaking 55 into these characters on purpose or is this just a weird coincidence should chaos be paired with order are we rude is rude even an element let me know your thoughts down below because honestly there's a lot of weird elements in here and i'm sure there are little hints and secrets about them that i missed special thanks to claire puppy love for all the help with translations to sergio wack right alexander space corps and everyone else who helped my tiny non-coder froggit brain figure out how to read this code while i was melting from last week's catastrophe thank you as well took all of my generous supporters on patreon and to my new assistant audio editors marlon hetigani x and string who will definitely not go rogue and mess with my audio and all of you for your continuous patience and positivity down below and until next time don't forget to like and subscribe for more hyperlink blocked [Music] you

Channel: HalfBreadChaos

Views: 296,213

Keywords: deltarune elements, deltarune element system, deltarune types, deltarune type system, deltarune recruits, why is spamton a cat, spamton is a cat, halfbreadchaos, deltarune deep dives

Id: uZZMgLj31zU

Length: 21min 12sec (1272 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 24 2022