[removed]

I'm tired of the fandom's descent into madness. Increasingly delusional theories, constant controversy and neverending discourse. Everyone is arguing with everyone about everything constantly, everyone thinks they have the answers, and the loudest voices are invariably the most obnoxious. There is no consensus about anything.

I'm tired of Toby's wishy-washy and evasive attitude toward the actual point of his game. It's been almost a decade of this man dancing around the heart of the issue with his Secrets and Mysteries and Quirky Shitpost Humor. Maybe I could accept it if he'd give any direct indication of what his intentions are, but he still hasn't! Almost a decade on and it's entirely unclear what this story is and what it's about, and where it's going. Will this story have some dark fucked up mystery twist? Will it be something Lynchian? Will it be a rehash of Undertale? Something more like DDLC, or something more like MOTHER 3? Will it just have some trite power of friendship ending where love saves the day and everything is sappy and overly neat? Will it infuriatingly refuse to answer anything even at the end? It's been too long of this with too little of substance.

I'm tired of the characters. I liked them a lot, but it's been a *decade* and they've hardly grown at all!

Kris works constantly to hide themselves from us and most of what we know was either obvious or not that interesting, and even then they don't really have an "arc."

Susie coin-flips from performing being a "bad guy" in Chapter 1 to performing being a "good guy" in every following chapter, and she's rewarded at every turn for it and is never once asked to grow any further. Susie already has the right answers to everything. She already knows how to solve every problem. She correctly identifies the moral of the story and embodies it before everyone else, and she's never made to confront anything difficult to where she can't overcome it by just being the person she already was.

Ralsei dips his toes into the idea of developing as a person, but is too afraid, too ashamed, and too stubborn to *actually* grow. Ralsei is the same as he has always been. Awkward, self-conscious, self-sacrificing, stubborn, snarky, insecure, and trying to get an A+ in Friendship by being the nicest kindest most moral and considerate person possible, despite having a poor understanding of how to interact with others and what morality actually looks like, often leading to him being easily influenced by others on trivial matters, or hypocritical on more important ones. He sometimes asks politely to be allowed to indulge himself in a beverage, or a small personal belonging. He remarks occasionally how he's never done X before and it's really actually pretty neat. He sometimes gets snappy with people who are self-important or ignorant. But none of these are things he *wouldn't* have done in Chapter 1 has he been put in the same situation. He reacts about the same to Lancer as he does to Flowery, except Lancer is far less antagonistic and far more innocent, so he can't get nearly as upset at him. Had Flowery been in Chapter 1, Ralsei would have been the same.

Noelle as a character is treated more as a prop on the main route, a poor damsel for Susie to rescue and empower, telling her the strength was within her all along, while doing all the hard work for her so she never has to grow or change. She's pushed off screen most of the time and has her personality and problems boiled down to something simple and easily resolved, while all her history and more complicated thoughts are pushed out of sight and need to be rummaged around for. Something Noelle is aware of herself and *hates.*

There's something to work with here, but it's been too *long.* It's been so long, I'm starting to think this is just the extent of it, and there's no more depth to the characters than the superficial outward behavior they display and return to in every chapter. And even if that's not the case, it's hard to stay invested when every chapter just has the Good Shit postponed further. I had Ralsei figured out in Chapter *2.* And as cathartic as it was to be proven right about him come Chapters 3 and 4, when the Chapter 2 era fandom just sidelined him, that's not worth anything when he's still the same Ralsei after all this time.

And another thing, I remembered that OMORI existed, and it's got so many of the same concepts at play as Deltarune, but it released as a single package when it did come out, and it also didn't try to bury the lead or act pretentious with meta storytelling that doesn't justify itself, or work to obscure itself from me with constant subterfuge. Headspace is. OBVIOUSLY. A cloying, sugar sweet fantasy land. In a game marked Psychological Horror. You already *know* it's not how it seems, and that things are going to become darker, and more complicated. What you're there for is to learn the history of the real world characters and why things are the way they are, and become invested in what's happening. Deltarune buries its fantasy worlds under layers of obfuscation, so we can't even be sure that's what they are. Ask a dozen Deltarune fan what Dark Worlds stand for in the story and you'll get a dozen different answers.

I'm just. So. Tired of this.

*This isn't a criticism of the game*

To clarify what I mean by the title: in my personal online experience, I often see people talking about Deltarune as an inclusive game (which is true) where queerness is central to the plot and themes...

I don't agree with that.

It's true that Toby Fox is very open and fills the cast with various spectrums of the LGBTQ+ community, but these characters never discuss their sexuality or gender identity. There are no conversations about the difficulties, or lack thereof, of being Queer.

It seems to me that Deltarune's main themes, perceived identity, free will, and a dash of postmodern meta-narrative, are framed in a way that could resonate with anyone, even my 99-year-old grandfather who fought in World War II. And don't get me wrong: obviously, the themes of Deltarune can be deeply felt by the Queer community, but I don't feel like they are the primary target audience.

The game definitely targets the Queer community in terms of its demographic/fanbase, but I don't think its philosophy and narrative are specifically "queer" in nature.

Perhaps it's because I'm used to Queer literature being a body of work that actually problematizes the issue, rather than just including 10 LGBTQ+ characters and then speaking broadly about general philosophical themes (which, to be fair, are quite interesting in their own right).

I always felt like I'm the only one who addresses heavy critique to Deltarune, even If I appreciate it.

Thanks for showing me that someone who thinks is out there.

It's pretty well known that Toby LOVES deconstructing tropes and subverting expectations. However this makes it so that when the writing is actually (or at least looks) bad, you can't tell whether he intended for it to be so or if it was an actual blunder. Am I against deconstructing and/or subverting tropes? Absolutely not. I don't want to see the same thing over and over again. I love when a traditional trope gets subverted or when it gets deconstructed to show the realistic consequences. However, Toby does this to such a degree that it becomes confusing. Is Toby cooking here or is the writing just... Bad?

Take Susie in CH5, for example. We already know how weird her mood reset is, but Susie's escapism is pretty obvious. So is she just suppressing her worries a lot? Then again, she doesn't seem to show any sign of distress that would hint to it being the case before the chapter's end. She made a big deal about how she dislikes people who don't tell her the whole deal and literally told Ralsei to be more honest with them, yet when Ralsei pulls out a fire spell that would have been VERY USEFUL ESPECIALLY IN THE KNIGHT FIGHT, THANKS RALSEI, her entire reaction is just "woah, cool!" She doesn't grumble, she doesn't get annoyed or angry in any way, she just compliments him. She also tells Kris that they can't treat the dark worlds as a joke anymore and have to take this seriously since people are ACTUALLY getting hurt, before immediately saying that they should bring along her girlfriend who, as far as Susie knows, is as defenceless as a child in the dark worlds (and plus, look at her. She doesn't exactly scream "can hold their own" or "is pretty strong" or "she can keep her cool when stuff goes BAD" to me). So this begs the question again, is she just suppressing her worries and nervousness a LOT, or is the mood reset a genuine blunder on Toby's part?

Then there's the whole Suselle debacle which we also all know how shallow the ship seems. Is Toby setting up a falling out between Susie and Noelle where their relationship (at least temporarily) crashes and burns, or is the ship just badly written?

There was no challenge, the platforming was easy and only presented the smallest amount of challenge on the Running sky section (i dont remember the areas name).

But most importantly the bullet patterns (the little flower ghost things), the first few aqua ones made me believe this was gonna like an actual platformer with combat elements and every enemy type would be a different flowers bullet pattern. After that there are almost no "grunt" bullet patterns and the rest are mostly mini-bosses, now to the worst part. For some stupid reason the game doesn't want you to actually lose to any of them. They mostly deal around 20 damage, i spent 30 seconds trying to die to one of them, its ridiculous how Toby or whoever made this decision looked at well made slightly challenging encounters and decided you shouldn't be expected

to be good enough to beat them.

Like do they think deltarune fans only play deltarune? Haven't most people played a platformer before? One thing would be going easy on you with a more niche type of gameplay but platformers are so common youd have to actively try to never play one before playing deltarune

Imo this is a product of the hate hero_sword got for being "too hard". I think it was a great addition, nicely paced so even people unfamiliar with the gameplay could get used to it while still presenting a nice challenge later down the line. Its what these platforming sections should have been

This is gonna be a long one. I don't expect this to do numbers, but it's 4am and I'm writing it anyway. Take everything I'm about to say with a grain of salt. This could just be conspiracy theory, red string bullshit but I think I'm cooking and I wish I wasn't. Just bear in mind with me here.

If you care to read until the end: Thank you.

Part 1: Toby Fox really loves mysteries.

Or rather, he really likes creating mysteries.

He likes putting things in his games that point at being part of a bigger whole, little breadcrumbs, references to bigger things that may or may not mean something important. He loves watching people scramble over themselves to try and piece the most tangential bits of story together into something strange, fantastical and new.

But Toby Fox does not love it when people solve his mysteries.

The Freedom motif showed up in a lot of important areas of the game, tying certain characters together in odd ways, and it seemed to be trying to establish a narrative through-line that was alluding to them all being connected, somehow.

And people noticed, and they started to think it meant something, and they were getting excited: And Toby noticed. And now you can find the Freedom Motif in a bunch of random places it didn't really belong before. Guess it doesn't mean anything after all.

Dark Worlds exhibit a number of blatantly out-of-place attributes that mark them as being distinctly fake and videogame-y, even in the videogame world of Deltarune. Previously left to subtext, this has become increasingly obvious with each chapter. Surely somebody's got to notice eventually, right?

Perhaps somebody who's fallen in love with the Dark Worlds more than anyone else, and might be pretty upset to learn they're way more fake than she was lead to believe? And might... Do things, if she had to confront this strange, uncomfortable part of her reality? Well, I wouldn't worry about it. She already knows! Flowery told her. Lol, good one.

Mike. Who is he? Spamton keeps muttering his name in a frenzy, he seems to be connected to the mysterious voice on the other side of the line, the one that sent Spamton spiraling - Surely he's important, right? Well, no, actually.

He's three goofy guys in goofy clothing who do goofy things. One of them is confused: Isn't Mike supposed to mean something? He pulls out a conspiracy corkboard with red string and does a silly paranoid monologue. That's you, dude! That's what you sound like. A silly little guy getting upset about silly little guy things. In the end, the silly little guys decide Mike doesn't matter after all.

What I'm getting at here is that there is a clear, distinct pattern of Toby Fox setting up mysteries and then, once everyone's noticed those mysteries and started forming conclusions and theories around them*: He drops them*.

Turns them into jokes, laughs at the audience and then goes on to the next mystery. These are just the big examples that come to mind, I think if you looked you could find a bunch of other mysteries he's set up and "resolved" similarly.

And what's the biggest mystery of all in Deltarune?

What's the big, juicy secret that everyone's been salivating over since the start of the game?

Who is Kris working with?

Why is Kris working with the Knight?

Who is the Knight?

Who is December Holiday?

Why is December Holiday the Knight?

Why is December Holiday doing any of this?

Here's a better question.

Part 2: How long did it take you to figure out who the Knight actually is?

It's a tall, adult-proportioned deer-inspired creature with a strong connection to Kris. Kris has a strong connection to exactly four deer creatures. They're a family: One of them is an over the top "obvious villain" who is practically chewing the scenery, daring you to fall for the reddest herring in the world. One of them is dying. One of them says "holy cheese and crackers" unironically. One of them went missing ages ago under mysterious spooky circumstances. This isn't a big mystery.

But the thing is, I think Toby thought it was a big mystery. I think he actually believed it was because surely he wouldn't have planted all those breadcrumbs, the voice in the code, the hidden page playing Lost Girl, the Lost Girl motif playing just beneath the Knight's theme song, if he didn't think that it was a secret so deep and dark we'd need hints to find it.

But a lot of people figured it out the second the Knight showed up on-screen, and everyone else figured it out when the rule34 artists showed us Dess's ass popping out of her armor. The Knight's identity is more or less common knowledge now. Mystery solved!

And remember: Toby doesn't like his mysteries being solved. Every time there's a mystery in the game that gets solved, he rushes to turn it into a joke, or writes around it so it doesn't matter all that much. So far it hasn't been too much of an issue because it's been relegated to side characters or plot beats that you could probably write around. You don't really... Need all that stuff, not really.

But what if the big mystery of the game was also the entirety of its plot in the second half?

What do you do then?

Do you remember that blog post he made a while back? The one where he went out of his way to address the fandom, directly, something he absolutely never does, to tell us that we'd "gotten something wrong" and "shouldn't assume we know the entire story"? Where it seemed like he was addressing a big, popular fan theory, seemingly setting it up to be debunked?

Isn't it kinda weird how fast Chapter 5 dropped after 3 and 4? Only a year's wait. The last two chapters took forever to come out by comparison. For a game with such a glacial development cycle, that's pretty unusual.

More importantly, isn't it kinda weird how Chapter 5 just feels like... Filler? Like it's stretching too little plot over too much gameplay, how the star attractions of the chapter are basically just quirky side characters with a weird amount of screentime? Isn't it weird how much of the chapter is jokes, and how many of those jokes are kinda... Rushed?

It's not a coincidence.

It's not "just a creative decision".

It's not just "one last fun adventure before the sun goes down".

Part 3: Chapter 5 was supposed to be Dess's chapter.

It was going to be about her. After we were formally introduced to the Roaring Knight in Chapter 4, we were going to learn who they are and what they want in Chapter 5. Dess was gonna be the star of the show, one way or the other. We were finally going to learn what her deal is and why she's doing what she's doing.

Chapter 5 was supposed to catch the narrative ball that Chapters 3 and 4 threw, keep the tension going with a big reveal: The identity of the big bad, her goals and motivations - And not a moment too soon, either, because the story is over halfway done.

Usually you learn the villain's goals in the first half of the game, but stories written with mysterious villains can get away with it, as long as the villain's plan is revealed just before the climax.

We were right at the point in the story where it would've been most impactful to reveal the big bad in all her glory, just in time for chapters 6 and 7 to turn the heat up to maximum. It was maybe a bit late in the story, but it would've been the best shot you could get as a writer to deliver a gutpunching reveal that kickstarts your knockout ending. It would've been the chapter that delivered on all that narrative buildup and given this game enough steam to rocket to the finish line.

But it's gone.

He panicked and he wrote it out at the last minute because he doesn't like that we figured out Dess is the Roaring Knight.

He dropped too many breadcrumbs, vagueposted too close to the sun, and everyone figured out who the girl in the code was like, four or five years too early.

When Chapters 3 and 4 dropped, and everyone immediately realized who the Knight was, he panicked. Because he likes to create mysteries, and everyone solved one of his biggest mysteries before his story was even finished. So instead of continuing to write a mystery that everyone already knew the solution to, he decided to drop it and start writing another. And in the process, he cut out a ton of plot.

That's why Chapter 5 is filler. Why it doesn't really mean anything, why the jokes have so much screentime, why Asgore just vagueposts endlessly and why it just feels like the story has fallen flat right at the point where it should be getting good. It's because all the story that was supposed to be there was deleted, and whatever was left got stretched out to fill time.

It's why Chapter 6 is going to be so short. It was probably going to capitalize on Dess's reveal but because Dess got written out, or rewritten, he had to also write out all the parts of the story that referenced her being the big bad. It's a domino effect from him trying to rewrite the story after it's already been set in stone.

I'm calling it right now: He's writing a new ending, a new fresh twist to knock everyone's socks off and prove just how tricky he can be once again - And the Knight isn't Dess anymore.

Whoops! The big reveal that you've been waiting for? Red herring. When all you have is a ball, everything looks like a bat. The Knight isn't Dess at all! It's... Idk, something evil or whatever, I dunno. Good job putting all the pieces together but actually, you're a silly little guy getting upset about silly little guy things.

Because remember: Toby likes to create mysteries, but he hates having those mysteries be solved. And if I'm right, it means he's trashed a bunch of the game's story specifically to keep his biggest mystery going just a little while longer. From a writing standpoint, this is generally considered "not good".

If you wanna know what I think is gonna happen now: I think it's gonna get ugly.

I think it's only gonna get worse from here, probably. The story is already mostly told, man, it's something like two-thirds complete. I think we're past the point at which really good stories start getting really good. I think if something big, satisfying, and crunchy was gonna happen, it would have happened by now.

I think we missed the last stop, the absolute last point in the story that Toby had to tell something really, really compelling. I don't know if what he cooks up now is gonna be trash - But I dunno, man.

Chapter Five was bad. Really bad. We gotta admit it to ourselves. If I'm right about this, and I'm pretty damn sure I am, it means he spent years writing something and then got mad people were reading his writing, and so he turned it into trash. So he could get the last laugh, still be Tricky Tony.

Is that the job of a writer? To treat your story like trash? To treat something that you've spent years of your life pouring blood, sweat and tears into like trash? To treat your audience, who've been following and loving your story for nigh-on almost a decade like idiots? I think that's pretty mean-spirited, dude.

If you're going to tell a story then you have to respect your story. You can't get mad when people listen to the story you're telling and then change it so that you can feel like a mysterious, unknowable trickster god.

I've got a question for you.

If he treats the middle of his story like trash...

How do you think he's going to treat the ending?

Part 4: Let me tell you about Homestuck.

Homestuck was written by a person named Andrew Hussie, and Andrew Hussie loved being a trickster god. They loved writing elaborate twists with years of buildup, getting people invested in their characters and their story, and then, whenever they felt like it: They'd just turn them into a joke. Or they'd forget about them and act like they never existed.

At first it contributed to the appeal of Homestuck: You never really knew where the story was gonna go, or what was or wasn't going to end up mattering. It was exciting, really exciting, it was a roller coaster with no brakes and we were all just puppets being lead along by a mad trickster god's strings.

But then... The god got bored. Their story started to drag. They made too many mysteries, started too many plot threads, and they were weighing down the story because it had become a horribly convoluted mess with no cohesive direction. Hussie had tied themselves into the writer's equivalent of a gordian knot.

So. What did Andrew Hussie do?

They took every character in the story and threw them onto a big platform in the middle of nowhere, and there, on that platform, they made every one of them tie up their respective plot threads by talking. The exact opposite of show, don't tell.

Imagine the plot of your favorite story grinding to a halt so everyone can spend a couple hundred pages speedrunning the rest of their character arcs in endless paragraphs of therapyspeak, liberally interspersed with quirk chungus humor. It was bad, really bad.

When it was done, the heroes cooked up a big, complicated plot to beat the nigh-omnipotent, unbeatable big bad.

And then... They did it. The plan worked. They beat the big bad in a flashy anime sequence. They won. Bad guy beaten, story wrapped up.

And then, with no fanfare or further parting words:

The story ended.

Toby Fox wrote Undertale while he was living in Andrew Hussie's basement.

okay i’m aware that susie changed so drastically between chapters 1 and 2 because she “let go of the tough girl facade!!” but there is a HUGE difference between a character putting up a front for the sake of self preservation versus actively showing the audience that you kind of enjoy reaping the benefits of being an asshole to others — not saying these two can’t be intertwined or that susie doesn’t know when to NOT go too far — but what she does in chapter 1 is a little too over the top for her to be doing it purely for the sake of a facade:

and this isn’t BAD writing obviously — it’s not bad writing to have a character do morally wrong things — but holy shiiittttt the difference between ch1 susie and ch2 susie is so jarring that sometimes they feel like completely different characters to me. it’s like the story isn’t even trying to do straightforward character development either — it’s like it’s trying to convince you that susie “was actually a good person underneath the front!” (even though her behaviors in chapter 1 tell a slightly different story) and it almost kind of gaslights you into believing that ALL of the shitty stuff she did was purely for the sake of self preservation and that she was never a truly morally grey person in the first place?? like yes i know you aren’t actually evil and it was wrong to bully kris regardless but you literally boasted about making them do your half of the project like bitch you did NOT have to do all of that 😭😭😭

and even if this is purely a facade problem (disregarding the “how” and “why” aspects of her character) it is still super incredibly jarring! oh my god! like at least spread it out across like… 3 chapters. that would have been okay. she definitely developed in chapter 1 but noottttt in a reasonable enough timespan to get to where she apparently was in chapter 2.

also the way suselle is set up is incredibly melodramatic and stupid to me and doesn’t really make sense… there were not enough hints whatsoever before chapter 5 that susie was into her too and it feels a little far fetched to believe she’s into her to the EXTENT that she is in chapter 5 given previous events. like she plays guitar at her house and whatever, but the FIRRRST thing she says to kris after they get kicked out is “damn we didn’t get the shelter code!” when this happened i was like “wow i guess susie really isn’t into noelle then! she doesn’t gaf a lot about what just happened apparently…” idk it just feels out of nowhere given the way she acts around her entire chapter 5. okay. thank you for coming to my ted talk.

Reading posts here has really thrown me for a loop on what I thought people would have issues with surrounding the progression of deltarune honestly. A majority of people I see speaking on the game’s progression nowadays seem to really really like ch. 4 story-wise and as a shift in the entire tone and gameplay philosophy, and therefore think ch. 5 is a step back because it effectively reverses the tone shift and gives a huge respite to the player instead of further continuing story threads from ch. 4 with similar dramatic tension.

From my perspective, and something I felt since first playing ch. 4, was that Toby kinda already fucked up with that chapter, not 5. Writing-wise, it is the most messily handled ramp up in tension like ever, but worse than that, the entire flow of the game suffers massively from the pacing slowing to a total crawl. There are a whole bunch of incredibly cool ideas in ch. 4, and I really do enjoy it story-wise in some ways (thematically very cool chapter, and the prophecy being told in it to the characters serving as something to make Ralsei’s whole schtick more clear is pretty genius), but GOD it’s also drenched in cliches, weird character melodrama that doesn’t fit with the already kinda forced tone shift and it just has a complete identity crisis coming off the heels of the first three chapters. Gerson feels like a plot device since he literally just serves as an infallible and perfect crutch the characters can grow from interacting with and then he’s written out lol. I like Ralsei’s development and how it continues in ch. 5 tho. Gameplay-wise, ch. 4 is the least fun chapter in the game, even the fights aren’t great outside of Gerson (which is amazing, what a goated fight), but coupled with the story-focused pacing and a lot of menial space where you just aren’t very engaged both in the moment and in exploring, it just becomes a bit of a slog compared to earlier chapters. Ch. 4 is good, I still like it, but it kinda messes up everything I like about Toby’s way of handling both gameplay and story ngl. Ch. 5 is so much more focused (though def not perfect, that fucking ending with Asgore man), and it being self contained is completely fine imo? I don’t feel blue balled much at all, and Ralsei gets some of his best character dynamic moments with flowery that really propel his issues into the limelight. Ch. 4 just doesn’t feel like Toby wrote it even half the time :p it’s like it’s trying to be outwardly silly and outwardly serious at the same time, when Toby already does subtle drama and seriously good thematic writing underneath a sillier and goofy seeming exterior really well. It’s just such a confusing and jarring shift in narrative communication (it’s also worse and a bit on the nose for me…) and the gameplay issues make it twice as frustrating!

I guess I could add that in some ways, I find the attempt at a tone shift really admirable and I think it could have been pulled off super well, but Toby just really didn’t let things breathe enough, while superimposing a slight shallowness on what could have been a subversive, darker point in the story. I love that ch. 5 brings back a sense of naive wonder with an underbelly again after ch. 4, and had ch. 4 been pulled off better, I think it would have worked even better. All I’m wondering now is how the fuck Toby is planning to wrap literally everything up in two chapters lmao

this wasn’t a super thought through post written on impulse so uh, hope it’s not intelligible

This is quite short, but I really didn't like how chapter 4 was this really serious chapter that had developed Susie and Ralsei's relationship as a team, but then Chapter 5 completely throws it all down the drain. I found the transition incredibly jarring and bizzare, I was incredibly pumped for how chapter 5 would top off chapter 4 in the lore drops, but I guess it couldn't top the reveal of the damn prophecies. Toby had no right to make chapter 5 as fun and whimsical as it was, it should've been chapter 3 instead.

I also hate how the festival was set up as this big event that would most likely be traumatic for even the heaviest of fans, yet it doesn't even last most the chapter. Imagine a chapter set in the Light World, I would've just made the festival chapter 6 or 7, the Roaring Knight comes out to the public eye, before corrupting the Lighg World with titans etc.

I'll preface this by saying it doesn't really bother me. I think looking for complete originality is a bit extreme and impossible. Historical settings reference real history (usually) most fantasy settings will ape off what came before, and there's nothing wrong with being inspired by what came before. But... there's a lot of it in Deltarune. Maybe a little too much?

Toby is pretty open about being very heavily inspired by many things, one chief among them being the Mother franchise. Did you know that Dark Fountains are... well a bit of a reverse of the Needles from Mother 3? In Deltarune the Dark Fountains are made by stabbing the ground with something sharp, and pulling the item out. This causes it to shoot out a pillar of light that then spews dark smoke and creates a Dark World. In Mother 3, the Needles are golden needles in the ground which when pulled, produce a flash of light followed by a gentle flow of dark smoke. They're both even related to the creation of a 'world' though in Mother 3 it takes every needle being pulled to actually do it.

There's other, more obvious stuff too. The punch-out fight in Chapter 2, all of the + shaped bomb explosions are clearly inspired by Bomberman, Chapter 3's Legend of Zelda esc boardgames, and while I'm not sure it can be called a direct inspiration the platforming in Chapter 5 reminded me of Paper Mario, with Susie and Ralsei serving as your 'partners' using abilities to open the way.

And for a more subtle thing... the Tail of Hell and the poor children, while it has yet to be properly explored, reminds me of the intro for Breath of Fire 2, where the young Bow and Ryu follow a spiked tail into a cave, only to come face to face with a demon, and nearly killed. There are probably more that I can't remember or don't know the references for.

So I ask... at what point do they get too on the nose? Because it doesn't bother me, but it does seem like there's a lot of inspiration being drawn from varied sources, and that might be a contributing factor in the way the game changes chapter to chapter. For better or worse.

I'm worried that these two will be the chapters that make me see all the writers improvement that Toby had a literal decade after Undertale and these two chapters were the two that were the most heavily planned, aswell as the ending. That and Toby telling us that the pacing would make sense when future chapters come out, but after Chapter 5 i dont have very many high hopes.

Its sad, I liked Undertale a lot. It wasnt the greatest thing ever.