Couch Potato Chronicles: Deltarune

by Amy McVeigh

How Deltarune Chapters 3 & 4 Broke the Game’s Trends

All the way back in July of this year, the highly-anticipated video game Deltarune finally had its official release after having only been available as a demo since 2018, albeit with the demo having been extended to also include the game’s second chapter in 2021. Now the number of chapters has been doubled from two to four, making Chapters 3 and 4 the only chapters so far to release simultaneously, and that doesn't seem like it's going to change any time soon. Chapter 5 has been confirmed to release on its own, and creator Toby Fox has left the details surrounding Chapters 6 and 7 up in the air. Due to this, a lot of people have noticed that Chapters 3 and 4 both break certain conventions set up by the previous chapters. For example, Chapter 3 doesn't have a traditional ‘secret boss’ for its shadow crystal quest, and Chapter 4 doesn't have its own overarching boss in the same vein as the first three chapters. So I'd like to take a look at these chapters to see why they feel so different from everything we had known up to that point.

The Established Chapter Formula

Chapters 1 and 2 both follow a very similar formula. Kris and Susie, the two biggest outcasts in their class who were partnered up together for a group project because they were the only ones left without a partner, end up stumbling onto a portal to the dark world, where mundane settings such as storage closets or computer labs become giant fantastical kingdoms and inanimate objects become sentient beings known as ‘Darkners’. The two of them end up teaming up with the supposed Prince of the Dark World, Ralsei, and begin racing to the dark fountain to seal it and turn everything back to normal. Along the way, they come across especially quirky and empowered Darkners who serve as obstacles towards sealing said fountains, as the chapter progresses it becomes more and more clear that these Darkners aren't necessarily bad people, rather they just have incredibly naive worldviews and just want to make the Lightners happy. After a final face-off with said Darkners, Kris and Susie are able to seal the fountain and return to the light world, although they end up taking everything out of the room that was turned into a dark world in order to bring their new friends into the core dark world where they’ll be free to live as their Darkner forms. However; there's also an optional fetch quest inside these dark worlds that leads to secret bosses, all seemingly having their own idea of what freedom means to them.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 takes place the night after Chapter 2. Susie has agreed to stay over at Kris’ house for the night; however, Kris has decided, for reasons not yet clear to the player, to open their own dark fountain in their living room right before going to sleep. Kris and Susie wake up in the dark world where they meet up with Ralsei, making this the only chapter not to start in the light world. The trio quickly meet Tenna, Kris’ family TV who hasn’t seen much usage as of late, taking the form of a gameshow host, and this chapter’s ‘Main Darkner’. Tenna invites Kris, Susie, and Ralsei to participate in his gameshow, which is part-quiz, part-physical-challenges, and part-gaming.

The main parts of this gameshow are these Legend of Zelda-style games referred to as ‘boards’ where Kris, Susie, and Ralsei need to perform certain tasks. Along the way, they'll be forced to take quizzes to test their knowledge and do battles with Tenna’s employees. This somewhat replaces the early exploration sections that Chapters 1 and 2 have. Eventually though, the trio starts to get tired of the game show and tries to escape, much to Tenna’s disappointment. And, in his desperation, he ends up trapping the trio, forcing them to traverse a very linear board and creating way less fun versions of the minigames from before. Eventually though, they manage to turn off the power and escape. From here on out it is an exploration system much more akin to the ones from the first two chapters leading to a final face-off with Tenna, whose boss fight also incorporates all of the minigames from throughout the chapter. After beating Tenna, Susie shows Tenna empathy and they have a heart-to-heart only for Tenna to get his arms slashed off by the Roaring Knight, the main antagonist of the game. Thus the Knight becomes the final boss instead. However; the Knight is insanely powerful and the fight is designed to be unwinnable on your first playthrough. Once you lose, the game progresses as normal and the chapter ends after a few more cutscenes.

You may have noticed I said the fight was designed to be unwinnable on your first playthrough, that’s because this fight is technically beatable, but by the time you get to the fight it’d be too late to go back for what you need to win the fight. So, what do you have to do instead? Replay the entire chapter all over again. During the boards, you need to make sure to do everything you can to get S rank from the multiple bonus score boosters hidden all around the boards. So even if you’re bad at the battles and minigames, all you have to do is make sure you leave no stone unturned. If you can’t get S-Rank on the first board, not to worry, if you’ve racked up at least 1500 points, you’ll be allowed to buy a fake S rank from an NPC that will give you access to the S rank room. Be warned, however, that this won’t work for the second board. In the S rank room, the character Ramb will have prepared a series of their own Zelda-style game sections, which are apparently the true versions of the boards. From here, you’ll have to find a sword and kill everything in sight, slowly getting strong enough to chop down things like cactuses and trees, which will allow you to access more enemies you’ll need to kill. The other boards are more of the same, although you’re given an extra companion for the second one and there’s a boss fight in the third one. This boss will give the Shadow Mantle when defeated, a piece of armour that will provide resistance against the Knight’s attacks to whoever has it. This is the key to defeating the Knight, but the fight is still extremely difficult even with the shadow mantle. In fact I still haven’t beaten it. This is the fight that upon winning gives you the chapter’s shadow crystal, that’s what I meant when I said this chapter didn’t have a traditional secret boss. This role ends up being split between three characters (though really it’s more like five), and the one I still haven’t mentioned yet is technically a part of Chapter 4, that being Mike(s), a trio of characters based on fan theories to who the supposed “Mike” that Spamton, Chapter 2’s secret boss, had been alluding to. You fight these three in Castle Town and they all claim to be Mike, but it’s eventually discovered all three of them are just Chapter 3 NPCs in disguise and none of them actually know who “Mike” really was, much to their leader, Battat’s, disappointment. This fight was also completely mouse-control based if you were playing on PC or Nintendo Switch 2, which worked really well seeing as this was released the same day the Nintendo Switch 2. With that, we’ve now established everything you need to know about Chapter 3.

Chapter 4

Chapter 4 takes place the morning after Chapter 3. The dark fountain has been sealed, and if you recruited enough enemies to Castle Town, Tenna has been fixed back up. After everyone’s ready, Toriel, Kris’ mother, drags Kris and Susie to church for the morning, where Kris and Susie aren’t paying even a little bit of attention. When that’s over, Kris and Susie start looking for information about the shelter they saw the Knight flee to it the previous night and how to get into it. They do get a lead in the form of their classmate Noelle’s mother, Carol, who happens to be the mayor of Hometown.

The two of them agree to go over to Noelle’s place under the guise of a study group. After a bunch of cutscenes that aren’t relevant to my thesis, Carol kicks Susie out of their house (and Kris leaves as well), when it suddenly starts raining. Kris and Susie try to go back to Kris’ place, but the door is locked. They come to the conclusion that Toriel is probably still at the church and so that’s where they go. When they enter, they realize that the Knight has opened a dark fountain inside of the church. Worrying for the safety of everyone inside, the two of them enter the portal into the Sanctuary, this chapter’s dark world. The light world segment at the start of this chapter is noticeably longer than in any of the previous chapters. In fact, so far this is the only chapter to have save points in the light world. This is presumably setting the stage for the light world elements of the game to play a bigger role in Chapters 5-7. That being said, right off the bat, just like Chapter 3, this still breaks an established pattern of the first two chapters.

Finally, we’ve gotten to the main part of Chapter 4; the Dark Sanctuary. After another run-in with the Knight, Kris and Susie meet up with Ralsei once again, and as they walk along the path, segments of the prophecy of Delta Rune keep appearing on the walls. Apparently, the main religion in Hometown happens to be centered around the game’s overarching prophecy, that apparently has scarily accurate details such as phrases some of the Darkners say. Most of the prophecy however has been lost to time in the light world, which includes most of the prophecy segments shown throughout the chapter. Eventually, the trio meets an old man. Anyone who’s played Toby Fox’s other game, Undertale, will immediately recognize this old man as Gerson Boom, or at least his Deltarune-universe counterpart. Throughout the start of the chapter, Gerson’s old man shenanigans constantly get on the nerves of Susie and Ralsei, and a few puzzles later, the trio arrives at Gerson’s study, which serves as somewhat of a main base of operations for the chapter. Something not seen in most of the other chapters aside from maybe Chapter 3’s green room. Something else noteworthy about Chapter 4 is that it relies much more on the player figuring out where they need to go instead of travelling on a linear path. This was somewhat played with before on Chapter 3’s boards, but the Sanctuary takes it to a whole new level. After enough puzzle solving, the trio will find a place too dark to see anything where there is a boss fight with Jackenstein, a weird Frankenstein's monster with a pumpkin over his head. This boss fight is very different from anything in the first three chapters. Apparently tension points, which are needed for magic and special acts, and reset in each battle, are way harder to rack up when there’s no light in the area. The bullet patterns in the fight also get replaced with Pac-Man style maze minigames where if “You're taking too long” Jackenstein will begin to chase you and deal massive damage if he catches up to you.

Once you beat Jackenstein, you unlock the Climb Claws, which allow you to climb certain walls. Susie’s healing spell also becomes more functional from here on out, and Susie starts to form a genuine bond with Gerson. Out of anyone in the Chapter, Gerson seems to play the closest role to an “overarching boss”. This isn’t actually the case however. In fact, Gerson is actually this Chapter’s secret boss. After solving a bunch of optional puzzles around the map, you unlock a fight with Gerson. This fight is also very different from any fight we’ve seen up to this point, since Gerson insists this fight is one-on-one with Susie, meaning you only have one action slot each turn and once Susie is defeated the fight end. Gerson also steals all your items. What this means is that your only way of healing is through Susie’s healing spell, which doesn’t heal that much HP at first and only starts becoming effective the more and more you use it. You will beat this fight eventually and when you do, Susie will be given the Axe of Justice, and the fourth shadow crystal. Many puzzles later, you find the fountain and seal it, just like that? No final boss or anything?

This is where the Chapter really starts to get interesting. As there isn’t just one fountain you need to seal, there’s two. Unfortunately, the other one is behind a combination-locked door, and you don’t know the code. Susie has the idea to start looking for Gerson, thinking he’d know what to do, only to find out that, well, Gerson died a long time ago, and the only reason he was brought back was thanks to the dark world. Susie then gets the idea to make her own dark fountain to bring him back. However, this ends up creating a messed up version of the sanctuary, and though she thinks she finds Gerson, it turns out to be just a statue of him, and, according to Ralsei, there’s no way to bring the real Gerson back, which absolutely devastates Susie and causes her to lash out at Ralsei. Once a fire extinguisher darkner tells the lightners the code, the two of them seal Susie’s fountain and

unlock the door into the true sanctuary. After a long journey, the trio finally make their way to the Knight and Susie starts taunting it, only for the Knight to summon a titan. One long tower-climbing segment later, the trio make their way to said titan for a final face-off. This fight operates similarly to the Jackenstein boss fight, just without the Pac-Man mazes and the giant Pumpkin chasing you around. This fight ends up being extremely hard, to the point where it seems like the trio has gotten themselves into another unwinnable fight. That is until Gerson returns temporarily to save the day. A few dual buster spells and one Susie’s Idea later, the titan is defeated, and the lightners seal the fountain, waking up back in the church, which turns out has been empty the entire time. Which begs the question of where Toriel was the entire time. Was she kidnapped by the Knight? Well, not to worry, as it turns out, Toriel was home the whole time, and has been dancing with Sans the Skeleton throughout. Susie doesn’t want to put up with Sans’ shenanigans, so she seemingly decides not to stay with the Dreemurrs tonight, but after Kris goes back to their room, she sneaks in through the window to avoid Sans. The player receives another message from W.D. Gaster, and the chapter ends on that note.

Conclusion

Chapters 3 and 4 definitely function a little differently from the previous chapters. To be perfectly honest though, aside from a few common trends, I do still think these chapters did follow the formula of Chapters 1 and 2 relatively closely, and, to be honest, they don’t feel more different from Chapters 1 and 2 than Chapter 2 did from Chapter 1. I think the main thing these chapters proved is that the formula in Chapters 1 and 2 were patterns that other chapters might follow, not strict rules they need to abide by. At the end of the day, none of us are Toby Fox, and we can’t ever know for sure what he’s going to do next. All we can do is make educated guesses and if we’re wrong, we’re wrong. It’s not the end of the world, and Toby’s gone on record saying he loves seeing what our minds come up with either way. Deltarune is one of my two favorite games to come out this year with the other being Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, and I highly recommend anyone who hasn’t already, to give it a try.

And with that, this is Amy McVeigh signing off for this issue of “Couch Potato Chronicles”.

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