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S1 Ep30: deltarune
74 Plays7 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they embark upon Toby Fox's next adventure in a spoilerific episode for deltarune!
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Intro and outro are from Toby's bandcamp: https://tobyfox.bandcamp.com/album/deltarune-chapter-1-ost
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Transcript
Introduction and Setup
00:01:09
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I am joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going today, Dave? It's going alright, Jake. I like how you said, uh, how's it going today instead of going tonight. Right. Yeah. Change up. I'm, uh, leaking some information about when we actually record things.
00:01:26
Speaker
We can actually see the sun for the first time in a while. Yeah, that's true. I usually have the blinds closed.
What is Deltarune?
00:01:33
Speaker
But yeah, so game coming up today. It's not a full game, but it is a survey program.
00:01:41
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I have surveyed the program, and I did not find it one technique. Yes. But survey program, aka Deltarune, is what we're going to be talking about. Some of you guys may already know the origins of this game, but it's the next project or most recent project from Toby Fox, famed and beloved creator of Undertale, which we know a little bit about, I think. I've heard of Undertale. Yeah.
00:02:10
Speaker
Looks at tattoo on arm. I think I've heard of Undertale. How did this happen? Yeah, it's kind of this vague thing which happened on Twitter and Toby's like hey Check back tomorrow. We are other vague tweets and then it's like I summon the Delta rune Mm-hmm, which is everyone now knows
Player Choices and Character Dynamics
00:02:32
Speaker
is an anagram of Undertale. Oh yeah. And he kind of had a link to the Deltarune site and you, like you said, you kind of download this survey program. Right. And it's all very high level and vague. Yeah. And he's like, um, your choice is from here on out. How should I phrase it? Yeah. The license agreement's just like you accept everything that will happen from now on is all it says for the installer. Um,
00:03:01
Speaker
Which is ominous. It is pretty ominous. Also, I don't think that's legally binding, but just the same. It is pretty dramatic. So yeah, this is free. He had a note on his site. He's like, hey, don't talk about this for the first day. We are well past that now, so we can make a podcast on it, right? Sue me, Toby. Yeah.
00:03:23
Speaker
Don't. That is also not legally binding. Yes. I mean, that would be weird if it was. But yeah, so download it from the site. It's not that big. Pretty small download. And it's not a full game. But jumping into it, you're not really sure what it is. It's clearly not a survey program, as the shortcut says. As it starts out, you are being asked some questions. Right.
00:03:51
Speaker
Thematically, it does kind of remind you of Undertale. Yes. And you get to create your vessel, which is just choosing from a couple predetermined sprites for what your character would look like. Right. It's like that pottery scene from whatever movie that is in the 80s. It's like, create your vessel. Is it Ghost? Yeah, it is Ghost. Yeah, yeah. That was an odd analogy.
00:04:15
Speaker
I just think to create your vessel, that's what I assume, right? So yeah, you pick a head, a body, general structure, legs, things like that, and a name, right? Yes. And then I think there's a questionnaire. What would your vessel do in this situation and things like that? Yeah. What's your favorite flavor of food, colors, and other things?
00:04:39
Speaker
yeah it's always butterscotch right like that's that's the throwback i see butterscotch and like got it um but yeah you you lock that all in uh at the end you're like all right character creation complete the game's just like no you don't how about you don't you're gonna play as chris yeah it kind of scraps uh any selections you've made i'm not sure if he's actually recording information or you know it's just a
00:05:04
Speaker
misdirect yeah because he does shit I don't know yeah it's a I'm not sure if it phones home or not but in either case it is it is interesting to like go through all that customization to have it taken away from you
00:05:19
Speaker
Um, there are some games that have kind of played around with that idea in the past, but, uh, like, like MGS five classic one. You smell like an hour creating a character. That's like, that's not my character. Yeah. It's like, and you're not going to play as this guy. You're going to play as bandage head, but, um, as not, as not opposed not, uh, related to bandage girl from super meat, but completely separate. Yeah.
Setting and Familiar Faces
00:05:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:44
Speaker
But you log in you load in your in your room as Chris like a teenager He looks like the protagonist from Undertale. Yeah, like Frisk. Yeah name is also kind of similar. Yes Yeah, like your side of the room is very dingy you have like a half-made bed is very grayed out very muted and then the other side is like ornate and nice and kept
00:06:12
Speaker
Yeah. And it doesn't take too long before. Is it when the lights turn on that you realize that there's color in the world? When does that transition actually happen?
00:06:25
Speaker
Pretty much at the start of the game. Yeah. There's always a second. Yeah. OK. Yeah, I don't recall because it's been a while, obviously, since I beat this, going back in memory. Looks that imaginary watching. Yeah. But yeah, the room looks very similar to Toriel's and like Asgore's houses from Undertale, right? Which is pretty much locked in when you see like your mom is Toriel, basically. Yeah.
00:06:54
Speaker
But yeah, other than that, it's got like a ton of Undertale vibes and you're like, when does this actually, like, when does this happen? Am I growing up frisk? This is after like a happy ending. One thing is like when we started, I'm like, okay, because first I'm like, oh, it's gonna ask questions and it's gonna be done. Yeah. It's like, oh, this is like this little thing. And then you go around the world a little bit, you get into
00:07:17
Speaker
the car with your mom and drives you to school I'm like okay so like that was it yeah it keeps going right and I'm like because when they had like that animated scene you're like driving through the town you see these other characters from the Undertale universe right it's like yeah exactly yeah
00:07:32
Speaker
It's like a, hey, a future project coming from Toby Fox. Yeah. There's like a little teaser, a snippet. It would, it would actually have been hilarious if it was just the survey program. You like make your character answer some questions and then they just thank you and it closes. Yeah. Toby Fox had his message on his website that's like, don't talk about this birthday. It's just like, why? But yeah, no, there's more to it.
00:07:56
Speaker
So, mom drives you to school, you're in high school, walk into your class, and Alphys is your teacher, right? Yeah. And there's a lot more familiar faces there. There's like... There's Temi, he's a classmate. There's the kid, I can't remember his name or if he had a name.
00:08:16
Speaker
Little monster kid the monster kid game, which isn't a name, but I think that is his name right there was one of the Cats trash cats. Mm-hmm. Well, yeah classmate. Yeah
00:08:29
Speaker
And a new character who's introduced in a moment, like you sit down in a class, you try to find a classmate for like a group partner thing, a group. And there's only really one option you can go with. There's one person who's just like, you can join our group. We'll have three, but you know. Yeah. She's like the overly nice and timid girl. Yes. Yeah.
00:08:54
Speaker
Um, but, uh, then your, then your actual group partner walks in Susie and like silences the classroom. Basically she's, she's the bad girl of school. So you end up getting matched with her. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's got this kind of a tonal shift, you know, it's very light up until this and then it's just like, okay, what's, you know, what's the personality of this person that the entire room goes quiet, that, you know, Alphys stutters more than usual things like that.
00:09:24
Speaker
But it kind of progresses from there. It's like the chalk's missing in the classroom. Alphas can't really start class without waiting. Like, write things on the board. Like, hey, here's what you're working on. Here's some information. So you're kind of tasked with going out to get chalk with Susie. Right, yeah. You got to watch her because Alphas is concerned. She's just going to leave or something. Traditionally, a troublemaker, as far as we know. Yeah. So you got into the hall.
00:09:52
Speaker
Susie's being a Bad you see her eat the chalk. Yeah, she eats the chalk which she had apparently stolen earlier, which is a little weird to me I don't really understand but but for context Susie is a monster in like the Undertale You type universe. Yes versus you who is the only human. Yeah, as far as we know So then after that she's like what you're gonna like tattle on me mm-hmm punk-ass bitch I
00:10:19
Speaker
Yeah. And then she, she walks up, the music changes. It gets really dramatic and she threatens to eat your face off, which is like her teeth are showing and her character portrait and stuff. And yeah, which like I said, is like a huge total shift from everything. I was kind of like upbeat and like day in the life. Yeah.
00:10:35
Speaker
Even compared to, like, original Undertale, there really wasn't this oppressive, like, what is... It's kind of like the jump to, uh... Grimms type horror things? Yeah. The threat of violence. Yeah. Yeah. It's, like, graphic compared to, I will kill you dead. Yes. Exactly. And then she's just like, no, I won't do that. Your mom's a nice lady. You're like, well, thanks. Thanks for not eating my face off, I guess.
00:11:03
Speaker
And also of note, similar to Undertale, your character doesn't really have responses. Like you can choose things for like a dialogue, but your character's not actually responding. It's just that then whoever you're interacting with will kind of respond in kind based on your selected response.
00:11:24
Speaker
but essentially when you're given options, like when talking to Susie here, the first time I selected something quick, and as soon as I select it, she's like, it doesn't matter anyway. I was like, all right. There's an actual response in the UI when you select options and things like that, and it actually cuts it immediately, and she interrupts you, and it's just like, you don't get a choice.
Subverting Player Expectations
00:11:47
Speaker
The second time I played through
00:11:49
Speaker
Like waited because I was like eating something at the same time or it took some of the beverage And then like the half second goes up and it just got the same message. It doesn't matter anyway Yeah, so it was just you can make no selection at that point. Yes, you're kind of being guided linearly which is occurring kind of theme in this one and it's It's kind of explained to you at the start. It's just like hey you made this character You named him chose all the stuff none of that matters your choices don't matter
00:12:18
Speaker
None of this matters. Yes, none of this matters. It's just You're an observer for what is going on kind of but you are guiding Chris, which is Again weird compared to what we've known so far as Undertale Yes, whereas the whole thing is marketed as your choices matter exactly you choose who lives you choose who dies It's like even the Steam page for Undertale was just like welcome to Undertale the game where you don't have to kill anyone Yeah, yeah
00:12:49
Speaker
So it's a weird jump for sure. But as you kind of go and progress through with Susie, you go to the locker. Yeah, there's like a storage room or something. Let's go look for the chalk and it's kind of just pitch black. Great. And it has like a really spooky vibe to it.
00:13:07
Speaker
You like walk in and the door closes behind you and everything's dark. There's like, or you see, is it like shards or papers on the ground? It's like some sort of papers. Yeah. So you know, it's like a walkable surface because you just figure those are on the ground.
00:13:23
Speaker
and then shortly after the door closing the papers kind of just fall away and the ground seems to just drop out from under you yeah you're like in an abyss basically yeah drop down fight man that would be a great crossover yeah you do drop down though and you end up separated from Susie it kind of like fall to
00:13:49
Speaker
You're pretty close, but you find her in short order and you're both like, what's going on? Yeah. What is this? Also of note, when you fall down, it is very similar. Like even the map design is similar to when you fall down in Undertale. Right. You have this rectangle and your only options go to the right.
00:14:08
Speaker
Yes, also your character is not wearing normal school clothes. You kind of have this fantasy armor. Mm-hmm So like there's definitely been some shift almost like a Narnia type thing. Yeah. Yeah, you perceive that you've entered another world. Oh
00:14:23
Speaker
That's true. Um, so you, uh, you meet with Susie kind of progress, um, through this, this fantasy world. Um, which, um, I'm not sure if it's exactly at this point in the game, but I know at some point later, the title of the window that's running it says dark world instead of survey program anymore. You're like, Oh, okay.
00:14:44
Speaker
Welcome to Toby Fox's Dark World 2017 It's actually 2018, but you know, I can't keep track of time. We'll fix that in post But yeah, you kind of progress through and you get like a lot of vibes that's like this is this is the underground like this is
00:15:05
Speaker
Or at least when I played it, I was like, am I in that same fallen down area of Undertale? It's hard not to draw the similarities because of the name and the feel and fucking everything.
Adventure in the Dark World
00:15:16
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. And I think part of that is the intention.
00:15:22
Speaker
Yeah, the goal kind of, it seems like here, is to give you this nostalgia for Undertale. They're reusing a lot of the same characters, but they're slightly different. They know different things.
00:15:38
Speaker
At the same time, they're subverting that Undertale feel by having characters like Susie, who's following you around and she's completely... You can think of a trope of the bad girl at school who gets into trouble and skips class and probably does drugs, but maybe she doesn't actually do drugs, people just think she does. And it's like, that's Susie, basically.
00:16:02
Speaker
I feel like part of her character thing is like she got typecast and she's like this is who you think I am This is who I will be right? Yeah, so she's playing that role But shortly you meet up with
00:16:15
Speaker
Or in this abandoned town, you have a shop and some other things, all of which are locked you can't go into. If you go up to the castle, you meet the Prince of Darkness there. Yes. He's got this cloaked hooded figure, kind of looks like the OG hooded, mysterious person in RPGs.
00:16:36
Speaker
We're all say right? Yeah, I think that's what you say. I'm not sure but we'll be correct. I'll tell I pronounce it on the internet. So But yeah, he tells you about the this this prophecy asks who you are and Tells you about a prophecy till those like light returning and lighteners returning and balancing like darkeners and closing this fount of darkness and
00:17:04
Speaker
There's a whole big deal about it. Is this when the the actual scrawl? Comes down. Yeah. Yeah. So again parallel back to Undertale at the very beginning of the game There's a brown and yellow type thing which talks about like the backstory of Undertale as you know it at that point, right? I mean the same fashion. It's telling you this story of the legend right of like these three heroes who will Balance things between light and dark to save the earth, right?
00:17:34
Speaker
Light side dark side. Yeah And I also like that you can you can skip this plot point entirely, right? Yeah, cuz like hey, do you want to hear the legend you can say no No, not really. But the second prompt is like, are you sure? And they kind of like respond sheepishly like I think I think you might want to hear it just like I know I'm good think so
00:17:54
Speaker
I think if you, I had read if you do that later when you encounter the next main character to encounter, we're also able to actually interrupt and like give you the opportunity to learn about the plot again during the other guy's speech. He's just like, oh yeah, that stuff you're talking about, that's the prophecy.
00:18:14
Speaker
Oh hey, by the way, he sneaks it in. Yeah. Which is, which is pretty great. Yeah. But Rolf is a very, very friendly character. Yeah. And ends up being like the healer of your group. Right. Which is a good time to mention that you have a group now. So this is actually, I think the first person that like, if they're not the first person that joins the party, they're the first person you get control of other than your main character.
00:18:42
Speaker
Yes. Because you don't control Susie's action. She just goes, hey. Yeah. So let's first, the character Lancer is introduced here. Yes. Who kind of looks like a variation of some spade, like playing card spade. Right. Like to imply that this is not a racial slur. And he's very kind of over the top silly. Like, I'm the bad guy. Yes. And he literally says, I'm the bad guy. I am the bad guy.
00:19:12
Speaker
Yeah, he's clearly just playing to the role, kind of like, there's parallels to him and like Papyrus. Yeah. From Undertale, where it's like, oh yeah, we're going to set up all these traps and we're going to, you know, catch you because that's what we got to do. And it's just what he's been told to do. Yeah. So he's just like, oh yeah, as the bad guy, this is my job. But he's actually pretty hilarious. Yeah.
00:19:41
Speaker
So you enter your combat with him, and the combat in this game is RPG-esque, because you can control more than one character as the game goes. You still have your option to fight, which is kind of like original Undertale. You also have the option to act, similar to original Undertale. You still have your heart, which you want to use to dodge enemy attacks. But you also have the ability to use some magic. Right.
00:20:09
Speaker
They have like those magic spells, specifically Ralsei, kind of like near the start, has like a heal ability, which you can use to replenish your health, as you know, heals usually do. But like if you defend, you can build up TP percentage, which is your magic points.
00:20:29
Speaker
You can also build it up by narrowly dodging projectiles. Yeah. If you get like within this buffer hitbox, it will build your thing. So if you're skilled at dodging and getting close, you can get rewarded with magic. Yeah. And the magic usually, there's not like a whole lot of spells that I saw, but it kind of boiled down to you can use your TP offensively to kind of like wear them down quicker or defensively in the form of heals and things like that.
00:20:57
Speaker
But yeah, if you're playing really close, dodging projectiles closely, you could like accelerate your way through some of those fights. Yes. Just because of all the spells you cast.
00:21:09
Speaker
But yeah, this is the first time Undertale's had a party set
Combat and Gameplay Mechanics
00:21:13
Speaker
up. Before it was just you, the protagonist, you act or fight, and you move around in your box to dodge projectiles. And in this one, you got three characters, they can each take damage. I actually, by the end of the game, I wasn't actually sure what determined who took what damage.
00:21:32
Speaker
Whenever an enemy was attacking, it would kind of like say who was targeting. Sure ones would be targeting specific characters. Other times they might target multiple or all characters. But in either case, you dodge with Chris' human soul in the center to make sure that the attack doesn't actually hit.
00:21:50
Speaker
And it's interesting. It's like they've they've in the same kind of system. They've added more inventory like equipment slots So you can equip more things than you could in the first game So we kind of build on top of it your phrase right there the first game Yes, exactly the first game that Toby Fox has made that I played Qualified
00:22:14
Speaker
This is one of those things where we're not entirely sure, nor is the community fucking anybody. We're not sure if this is supposed to be a sequel, if this is supposed to be an alternate universe based on various factors, which, I mean, play it or research it yourself because some people go deep. But there's so many similarities that it's hard not to theorycraft for sure.
00:22:41
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that's, that's probably, uh, by design, like Toby, Toby Fox is a really good writer. Like he has made, if you look at the, um, the diagrams of like the choice trees that existed for the original on detail, like it was crazy. How many like variations on the ending you could have, even though there was like three main endings, like different things could happen based off of your choices. And, uh,
00:23:09
Speaker
I think it would be naive to expect that he just grabbed all the characters, reused the characters, and kept their personalities mostly the same. And he's like, this is now the content, but it's something completely different. He has mentioned that the world of Undertale is as you left it.
00:23:33
Speaker
Yeah. So at the very least we know it's like a new world, but we don't know exactly what the bounds of that world is as far as world building is concerned. This is the descent into theorycraft, but this is what you get when you get people so invested in the first game.
00:23:51
Speaker
Yeah. Like I said, by design, for everything he's done, I feel like this is going for him as planned. Yeah. For sure. But yeah, you were talking about Lancer, who is the self-appointed bad guy. He's like, all right, I'm the bad guy. And his father is the king who is responsible for creating this fountain of darkness that's throwing off the balance between light and dark.
00:24:20
Speaker
And the plot itself, as explained to you, is pretty standard fare for RPG. You're just like, oh, darkness is doing bad things? Well, hero of light gonna show up and take care of that stuff. Yeah, it's basically that, but...
00:24:38
Speaker
As it goes on, there's some hints that maybe there's more things at play than the top-level hero story you're experiencing. And we mentioned this a little bit, but this feeling of agency.
00:24:52
Speaker
that the game actually lacks. It's really big. And in games that have come out recently, you're like, choices, progression. We were just talking about how Toby Fox had this big diagram of like all the choices you can make and how you test for routes, et cetera. Yeah, exactly. So it's like, why at the start of this game do they just throw all of that out explicitly? It's not even implicitly. This is like.
00:25:15
Speaker
This would be on the box as a feature, like you have no choice. It's too on the nose to be anything other than intentional. I think part of it is to subvert our expectations from what we know with Undertale, where the choices matter so much. Right. But I think the other part of it is
00:25:40
Speaker
It's being done for a reason that will be revealed in the plot later. Exactly. And subsequent installments.
00:25:47
Speaker
We're going to continue to like pile evidence on this theory as we, as we walk through here. But, uh, Lancer, although he's the bad guy, he does lead you through this. You chase him through several areas, kind of, um, completing, uh, traps, fighting enemies, other monsters that are in the area. Right. Or maybe fighting, you know, right. You don't have to fight. You can act and like everyone has a.
00:26:13
Speaker
Like you can just talk with someone like, Hey, we shouldn't fight. And they're like, yeah, I don't get paid enough to do this. Yeah. Or the, I remember there were like these little.
00:26:22
Speaker
kind of weird bunny puzzle piece enemies they looked like. And as soon as you encounter them, they're like, oh, dear God, please don't fight me. Or I'm really trying my best. And you're like, hey, we should be friends. And they're like, that's a great idea. And you can just be like, all right, you're free to go. Spare. Yeah, Rawse actually shows you how to fight like Toriel did in the first game against a training dummy. But in this one, the dummy actually looks like Rawse.
00:26:52
Speaker
You're like, huh? What's going on here? It's pretty funny, actually. You have the option to hug the dummy? Yeah. Or else he's like, uh... You can also have the option to hug Ralsei. And Ralsei's like, oh, I'm glad that you're trying, but what?
00:27:13
Speaker
And apparently Rawlsay had never been hugged before. Yeah. There's actually a minor Easter egg in the game because this is one of those RPGs where your party members follow around behind you. And you can just walk through them in a non-collidable, but they're there on the screen. But if you walk up right next to Rawlsay and just wait there a minute, Rawlsay will blush.
00:27:35
Speaker
Which is just a great touch. Yeah. The character is very cute and daring and pure. Pure of heart ones. The best for everybody. Doesn't want confrontation. Yeah. They even have like some of the tropes of the traditional kind, like hearted person. They're like, oh yeah, baking. Like we're all saying like bakes, cakes and things like that. You're like, I got it. I got it. This is a good guy. Yeah. This is a good guy.
00:27:58
Speaker
And then Susie being the polar opposite of I'm the bad one. I make trouble. Also, you cannot control Susie at that point in the game. She just auto attacks the first enemy. Yeah. When she dropped the Narnia, she ended up with like an axe. Yeah. Fucking seriously. But it's really fun because one of the mechanics you can do if you have Susie in your party is you have the option to warn your enemies about Susie. Yeah. Like, hey, Susie is going to attack you. Yeah. So that will make Susie auto miss on enemies.
00:28:28
Speaker
Yeah. She's like, what are you doing? Trying to explain as soon as like, Hey, we're not trying to murder everybody. Right. Oh man. But also you were saying before, you don't really have the option. So if you are doing the combat strategy, you can't actually kill enemies. Right. Run away. Yeah.
00:28:47
Speaker
Because I played aggressive, just like the start of my first playthrough of Undertale. I think I actually spared a couple things this time, and then when I came back and played it more, it was just fighting guys. And they all run away. You don't get any EXP.
00:29:03
Speaker
Even if you fight everybody, you stay at level one. And there's actually, as a nice touch, Ralsei has the title, The Lonely Prince in character select. But if you equip a ragged scarf or something on him, it increases his damage or something. So it's like the thorny prince or something like that. And then you can get a different scarf. It's really soft. Really soft. It's like the fluffy prince.
00:29:32
Speaker
And in either case, he's level one, because you're never getting XP. All your party members still have the same starting health throughout the game.
00:29:41
Speaker
It's even easier to manage, I think, than Undertale, or most of the content is easier to manage than Undertale because one of your party members can heal. That seems good. But yeah, you go through, they've created a lot of new monsters, even for this chunk of content. And that creative design process is still like, Toby Fox is still on his game.
00:30:07
Speaker
Oh yeah. Like every single thing is fresh. There's nothing recycled from Undertale. Yeah. As far as combat. It's just, it's in a familiar setting. She's like, okay, cool. I know what to do. There's nothing, not really wrenches thrown into the works, which is nice. You can pick it up really quickly.
00:30:26
Speaker
And they also have the addition of, as you're walking through the world, there might be like traps or things that are moving around that you have to avoid. And if it does hit you, it will damage your whole party. Yeah. Kind of like other RPGs have had that overworld, like, Pundu pits, things like that, you fall and take some damage.
00:30:47
Speaker
The the other thing is the you can see so in undertale one They had random encounters with monsters and then they also had set piece fights Mm-hmm for times that you like see them in the overworld as well and this one you always see enemies in the overworld and when you get relatively close to them, they'll just like run at you and start a combat and
00:31:08
Speaker
Which is nice, I prefer that. I'm in the camp of people who don't really prefer random encounters. You spray your pill on your entire body before going outside? Yeah. I was just gonna like dunk myself in a barrel of oil so I can't be caught and go, like, nope, no random encounters today. Do something like a deaf guy. You can't catch me. I keep trying to catch him, but he's covered in grease. I think that's preferred.
00:31:37
Speaker
Random encounters like have their place, but in a more storied game you don't want to necessarily have Random encounters it kind of throws off a pace. Yeah and like in Undertale they had a
00:31:55
Speaker
If you were just going through the area, you'd run into some random encounters, you'd spare your guys, whatever. It was fine. But you explicitly had to run around in genocide to kill everything until the music stopped in your area. And that's how you know you had killed everything. But I think it was meant to be monotonous. Yes. It's like you're explicitly going out of your way. You cannot accidentally get genocide. Yeah. It's something you worked for. Yeah.
00:32:24
Speaker
But you kind of like go through the areas here and I was talking about the writing and like some of the areas feel very similar to Undertale, to me at least, these intermediary areas. So your goal is to get to the castle at the end.
00:32:43
Speaker
depending on how ambitious or optimistic you are, maybe talk the king out of using this evil fountain or convince him to let you disable it and escape. Or if you're more realistic, fight the king. But you're kind of working towards that goal.
The Quest to Confront the King
00:33:03
Speaker
and you encounter some familiar faces on the way. Some are a little bit newer. I know there's a shopkeep you run into relatively early. I didn't look over all of his wares or ask all of his questions.
00:33:16
Speaker
Are you talking about Sham? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like a patchwork cat. And it has like a little button I, which kind of like rotates. Okay, yeah. But the name, as you see in text, is spelled S-E-A-M, which anybody would read as Seem, which makes sense, because he's like a patchwork cat type thing. Yeah. But he's like, oh, it's pronounced Sham. And this is my, and it says SEAP, shop.
00:33:45
Speaker
So Toby Fox again does a great job of doing very cute light humor of playing off the nature of the game because if you read things as text, you're going to process it as you would read it normally. Yeah. But just doing cute little things like that. But the upgrades you can get.
00:34:03
Speaker
are typically simple consumables for heals or some minor weapon or armor upgrades. There's nothing too crazy over the top. I think I bought one weapon or armor upgrade, but I didn't find the rest of the gameplay that I experienced tremendously difficult so I wasn't too worried about the healing items.
00:34:27
Speaker
For the most part, I would say that this was an easy game. Yeah. Easy game, honestly. GG. At least I think at this point, difficulty is not really a thing that was added or intended yet. It's like a narrative experience more. Yeah.
00:34:49
Speaker
There is an exception. You can talk about the process for that because I know you know more about it than I do. I missed it in my play figure. I missed on the first one, but after looking up some things, there is an optional boss, which is the hardest boss in the game. Emerald weapon.
00:35:11
Speaker
As you're going through the castle, there's an elevator in it. You have the option to go down to this mystery floor, which is like a dungeon. Right. And you go down the steps and there's this kind of door-like thing that's just a wall. You hear a voice talking to you on the other side, saying some things and rhyming riddles, asking to be set free. It's like if you want, I can set you free as well. Okay. So throughout the game, you can get various pieces of a key.
00:35:38
Speaker
You need to find all three pieces, repair the key, then come back.
00:35:43
Speaker
And you can unlock this boss fight, which is fairly chaotic compared to everything else. Full of chaos, chaos. Yeah. I saw a little bit of a fight on YouTube after the fact, because like I said, I didn't fight him. And uniquely, he's got his own voice lines. He actually has these eight bit or midi tier recordings that are clearly down sampled a lot. But there haven't been any other voices in the game. Yeah.
00:36:13
Speaker
or Undertale, if I remember correctly. They have like some sounds for the type of sound, but it wasn't speech. Exactly. Yeah. And like it's similar for some of the other characters are like, uh, stands, right? Things like that. That's what they use for voices or repeating crossing type. The text and the box basically. Yeah. Yeah.
00:36:35
Speaker
I don't know what I'd call it either. It's definitely got a name, but I don't know what it is. Things we should look up at a point in time. Yeah. But this guy's got an actual voice. He's got actual English lines. And Japanese lines, if you like the Japanese version. And it looked like a pretty hectic fight. Did you end up beating him?
00:36:57
Speaker
Yeah, it took me like 10 to 12 tries. Yeah. But then I eventually scraped by. I did have to like go back and like buy all the healing items I could and try to pace out when I would use things or use abilities and stuff. So somewhere between the original Undying Fight and Genocide Sands. This is where the difficulty falls. I feel like Genocide Sands is definitely worse because I never did that.
00:37:25
Speaker
But the game itself is fairly short, and
Emotional Engagement and Storytelling
00:37:30
Speaker
I know we're not covering a lot of things for how the story progresses, not doing the full talk through as we've done in the past. And I don't want to. Like Undertale itself, it's a gameplay experience. It's a narrative story that you need to play through and enjoy at your own pace.
00:37:49
Speaker
I'm not gonna be able to convey in my secondhand explanation the impact of like some of the writing or the gags Yeah, that you know happen in the game. So I don't want to deprive people of that if they go back and play it but it's How to describe I Don't know all you think about that You tell us
00:38:14
Speaker
I really want to see where this goes is the best way I can phrase it. Yeah. Like I was really hyped when this came out. For me, this is still a part of like the Undertale universe. Right. And part of the Undertale lore. I don't know in what capacity. Right. It's canon. Yeah. Definitely canon. And it's not extended universe. Right. Yeah. Disney's not going to buy up the Undertale universe and retcon all of this. Be like, Oh no, we're just doing Undertale too.
00:38:46
Speaker
Yeah, not likely.
00:38:49
Speaker
But it's got some interesting themes like I had my grapes with a game when I was playing through it But the more I played it the more it like got its hooks into me like Undertale one. I was like Undertale I like it's too easy. It's too easy to jump I was like, this is all right. This is fine. I like some of these some of what's going on Until the toriel fight and it's just like I accidentally killed it. I'm like, ah crap
00:39:17
Speaker
A lot of people did that. It's designed mechanic-wise that a lot of people do that. And I felt like garbage. And as soon as you start feeling something, that's what pulls you into that game. Yeah, you're now emotionally invested. Yeah. And it took me a lot longer for this one because there wasn't that hook at the beginning that was just like, this is something that you're going to latch onto emotionally. I just saw them reusing characters. Yeah. And I agree with you in that regard.
00:39:47
Speaker
Like I wasn't emotionally hooked because your character is kind of a mute. Yes. And it's just to exist in the world and like things happened around you. Right. But I feel like the emotional hook comes in later between. It's basically because of Susie. Yeah.
00:40:04
Speaker
Yeah, because Susie is the character who will eventually have a change of heart. And she starts working with Lancer for a time being. Oh yeah, we're the bad guys. And it's awesome. They're shenanigans they get up to when they're the bad guys. Just great. Yeah, the whole thing is super entertaining.
00:40:24
Speaker
But then at some point, everybody joins your side and you're working together towards going to fight the king. There's a lot of back and forth about what people are feeling and why they are doing the actions that they do. Exactly.
00:40:40
Speaker
The relationships develop and these minor ways is really conducive to a world building to building up that emotional investment without doing it a heavy handed way. Yeah, which a lot of games will be like.
00:40:56
Speaker
All right, here's your character. Here's your wife and kid. They'll give you 20 minutes left. They're dead! They died! How do you feel? I'm like, I saw this coming a mile away, Fable. Don't even. It's like the game developers are physically in the game, killing your family right now, so that you can have emotional in that part.
00:41:12
Speaker
And it's like, I like the layering that Toby Fox does when they use a story time like this. Cause at top level, it's like a Saturday morning, after school, special, like making friends with the bully.
00:41:28
Speaker
Like that is the top layer here. It's just, he layers so much more into it that you're like, there's a background thread for a plot that maybe we haven't fully like been exposed to. Um, and getting, you know, through the game to the ending definitely reinforces that uneasy feeling that there's stuff going on. And, uh, it's, it's just that it's, it's that there's, there's so much to look for, I think in these games.
00:41:59
Speaker
Also, after you've gone through the content of the game, I'll say, loose expression, you have the opportunity to kind of explore more in your hometown and talk to all these other people.
00:42:18
Speaker
And it's really cool to see What some might consider like oh reused assets or like oh these characters remember from as they keep saying undertale one Yeah, but everything is different. Yeah, and like half the fun of the game is like theory crafting of
00:42:35
Speaker
But how is it related? Yeah, I think so Toby Fox himself recommended that people play undertale before they play this Yes, and having played through it I understand entirely if you play this and you've never played undertale you're going to See you won't be able to tie as much to What's going on in this game? Mm-hmm like and two individual characters?
00:42:58
Speaker
And I think one of the big things of the original Undertale was growing to like the characters over time, growing attached to the monsters. And seeing things be slightly different gives you this kind of uncanny valley sort of sense where it's like
00:43:15
Speaker
Why are they different? You can see the pieces that are missing, right? It's like those newspaper thing where it's like spot the differences between these two pictures. And you're like, I see differences, what do they mean? And you don't get any of that context if you haven't played the first game. Undertale one, as we're calling it.
00:43:36
Speaker
But yeah, it's interesting.
Theories and Future Expectations
00:43:39
Speaker
There's gonna be a crazy amount of theory crafting about, like, what does it mean? And where it's going from here. But we'll, I think, probably leave most of that to the internet. Yeah. I'm hoping in, like, a future episode we can actually
00:43:56
Speaker
I mean, in three years, assuming the podcast is still going, you get a, have another episode on part two. Even if the podcast isn't going, we can just like, we could be on opposite sides of the country. We'll record on like garbage mics and we'll have one extra episode. We'll have like one shitty phone call. We'll both be on speaker. Yeah. Yeah.
00:44:14
Speaker
But I highly recommend that you guys check it out, especially if you've played Undertale. If you haven't played Undertale, go do that. You guys listen to the podcast episode, then play Deltarune, then listen to this, then theorycraft for hours and send us a message. Yeah. It's like this is, you guys would probably be listening to this around Thanksgiving week if you listen to them when they come out. So hopefully you've taken some time off. You can catch up on Undertale. Should be good.
00:44:42
Speaker
Yeah. So I'd like to thank everybody for listening to this episode of the podcast. We're talking about Delta Rune and Toby Fox and the whole universe that that encompasses. We'll look forward to the game release whenever it happens. I'll try to be around for it.
00:45:05
Speaker
I pray it soon, but we shall see. Toby Fox has to hire some people for it, but he's not accepting applications. He says, I'll contact you. So we'll see what that actually ends up being. But yeah, thank you guys for listening and I hope you guys have a good holiday week.
00:45:25
Speaker
What about you, Dave? What are yours? I was going to say, as always, we're on Facebook, facebook.com slash soapstone. Right. You can also send us an email. Is it soapstone or soapstone podcast? I think it's soapstone podcast, isn't it?
00:45:42
Speaker
Google us. You'll find us either on Spotify or Facebook or the Gmail. Yeah. We also have a Gmail soapstone podcast at gmail.com. Um, yeah, send us your feedback. Talk to, talk to us on Facebook, talk to other people, and we will look forward to seeing you guys in the next one. Have a good one. Peace.
00:47:02
Speaker
you