Deltarune #1:

Deltarune made me ask myself what it means to exist

And clearly, that’s not an easy question for anyone to answer. There’s something incredibly unique about the way that Toby Fox, creator of Undertale and Deltarune, uses his games to make characters real. He breaks the fourth wall in a way that is, in my opinion, only doable through the medium of a video game. I’ll get into more of that later, but for now a lot of setup (we’ll see if I can actually make sense of this or if I’ll just talk in circles). Deltarune is being released in chapters and as of now, only chapters 1-4 have been released. Furthermore, I have only seen Chapter 1 and 2 as of now, but I think it is enough to talk about how the game uses the fact that it’s a game to create characters that feel just a bit too real.

The game begins with words from an unknown speaker saying, “Are you there? Are we connected?” It’s very eerie. Then you’re given a screen that allows you to customize your character and you are told, “you must create a vessel.” Many games do this, so one would not see anything abnormal by customization alone, yet the framing is incredibly strange. Character customization is a huge deal in games and many people spend hours making their character, molding it to their liking. Although Deltarune has much fewer options than other games, you still may spend a decent amount of time creating your… vessel. You are asked “this is your body, do you accept it?” If you say yes, the voice says, “Excellent, let us shape its mind as your own.” You are given questions about the vessel’s favorite food—sweet, soft, sour, salty, pain, or cold???—then you’re asked your favorite blood type—A, AB, B, C, or D—it’s incredibly strange. Once all this customization is done, you name your “vessel.” After this, the voice says, “Thank you for your time.  Your answers… Your wonderful creation…  Will now be discarded. No one can choose who they are in this world. Your name is…” And then, we see the main character’s mom say, “Kris!” If you have ever watched the show Invincible, it is very similar to that lol. From here on, we control Kris like normal and that whole beginning part is immediately forgotten as the game’s plot progresses.

Now all of that was a lot of preamble that seemed to go nowhere. What was the point? In all honesty, I’m not sure yet. Deltarune clearly has a story underneath the story (probably several actually). Despite all that initial weirdness, our biggest hint to what is going on comes from an extremely easily missable detail. When you first save your game, the name in the save slot is “Kris.” You overwrite that with your file, asserting yourself as the one in control, as the one in Kris’ spot. I don’t know if I can even explain how crazy of a fourth wall break that is. It is as if you are literally interacting with this digital character and literally taking over control of their existence. The game is treating Kris like a real existing person and us having control of them is a part of the game’s narrative. It is trippy and bold and insanely impressive.

There’s a lot more to delve into. I will continue thinking about this in future posts.

See you later.