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Some thoughts on Deltarune Chapter 5

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I have to warn you first that this article contains spoilers for Deltarune Chapter 5, and Undertale/Deltarune in general. I recommend you don't read this article unless you've played the game up to this point. I seriously mean it. These games are an experience that's best *cough* experienced on your own. You'll irreparably ruin things for yourself if you read up about them. Start with Undertale if you can, as Deltarune, despite being set in an alternate continuity, features several nods to its predecessor, which you probably don't want to miss. There's also a mention of major plot points for Mother 3 in the section "Chapter 5". Same warning applies. I'll tell you which paragraph to skip.

I was 3 years into my internet adventures when Undertale dropped, and became a huge thing. I was slogging through the swamp that was college at the time. My first impression of the game was through its music, which, I can't overstate how wonderful it was. Now, I knew most of the soundtrack before I tried the game myself, so I think it didn't have the same impact as if each song was freshly revealed as I progressed through the game's story, but it was absolutely a great motivator to seeing what this Undertale craze was all about.

I did not buy Undertale and I did not buy Deltarune, not for myself anyway. I received them as Steam gifts from two very generous people. I've gifted Undertale once, but not Deltarune, since I don't have a recipient yet, but I'd like to continue this tradition of gifting wonderful games to people who want to enjoy them.

There's an entire additional layer to experiencing these games, in the form of the fanbase. One of my favorite things to do is seeing people's comments and thoughts on specific aspects of the games, notably in its music video uploads, as it helps me understand them in new ways, and it helps me relate to their experiences. The fan theories are sometimes quite insane, and really interesting too. Toby Fox is really good at subverting the fans' expectations as to how the story will play out, which keeps me and many others on our toes as for what will happen next, both in the current part of the story, and the upcoming chapters for Deltarune. Gaster is my favorite mystery in all of gaming, owing to how Deltarune is essentially a living game at this point, and how there's pretty much no explicit mention of this character in the games, with all of it being through really subtle hints and cleverly concealed secrets that the fans interpret.

My memory of these games is super fuzzy. I constantly get reminded of specific little details by reading people's comments on YouTube, and I tend to forget some of their overarching plot points and specific elements as time passes. Perhaps this counts as replay value?

It was the latter half of April of 2016. The weather was quite bad and our water supply was cut for a few days due to heavy rains. I had made it to the Waterfall area by the time we no longer had water. The experience is ingrained in my memory; the experience of using this game as an escape from all the crap that was going on in my life at that point, not just the bad weather. I felt alone and helpless in the game, and in the real world as well.

I remember hearing talk about some pacifist and genocide routes, but a friend suggested I just play the game normally and see what happens. The beginning of the battle with Asgore made me uneasy as he destroyed the mercy option. It took me a while to defeat him, and it wasn't a satisfying win at all. The true final boss was weird and difficult I remember.

I remember then attempting the pacifist route, which was beautiful and deeply touching, and years later the genocide route, which I didn't finish because I gave up at Sans. I've seen videos of its completion though, and well, I think I'm more satisfied with everyone being happy at the end. The genocide route is sadistic, but I like that it exists, as it shows us what happens when a soulless monster makes it their mission to destroy everything that was previously built.

I played the game through laptop speakers because my cat made me break my headphone jack earlier. To this day I can't listen to the things I used to hear in Asriel's song, I swear there's something hidden in there, like a whole another layer of music.

I think that what I enjoyed the most of this game was the overall production quality. Sure, it doesn't have the most bombastic graphics, but it doesn't really need them. The art style is wonderful for how simple it is, the music is extremely tight, and the writing genuinely touches people's hearts, including mine. The abundance of little details to see, depending on the choices you make, along with the storytelling in all of its aspects (visual, musical, narrative), make for a genuine master class of game design. Just don't take its programming as a great example though; it's infamously bad, but hey, it gets the job done, and I think that's what truly matters.

Undertale remains one of my dearest games to this day. Only the Mother series can match my feelings for it.

In 2018 I heard of this "SURVEY PROGRAM" that Toby Fox had posted. I believe someone either mentioned it and then I went looking for it on my own, or they baited me into downloading it so I could take the "survey". Lo and behold, it's actually a completely new game! I was fascinated.

The idea at the time was that unlike Undertale, my choices don't really matter, everything is predetermined. I think I still tried sparing everything I could, because it feels better than just murdering everything in sight. This isn't that kinda game to me.

The soundtrack was the thing I liked the most. The new battle system is also a marked improvement over Undertale's, while still feeling familiar. I loved seeing all these characters I already knew, in different contexts and living different lives. It's like getting to meet a friend all over again.

I don't remember much aside from this. All I know is that the soundtrack was all bangers, the final boss sucked to beat, and I was unable to defeat the secret boss so I gave up.

I revisited Deltarune in 2025 when chapters 3 and 4 released, and did a full playthrough from the very beginning. I didn't have enough money to buy the game when these new chapters came out, so I was doomed to wait for my next paycheck. However, a kind friend gifted it to me, so I was able to play it immediately.

I didn't play chapter 2 when it came out, not sure why, and in hindsight, I think I did miss out on that part of the experience. It did mean I got to play more Deltarune at once though, once the next chapters became available.

I found chapter 2 annoying only because of the YouTuber intro music that plays in the dark world, but that's a really minor thing, it's not bad at all. I wasn't too fond of Tenna in chapter 3 at first, but he grew on me. Chapter 4 was strange and unsettling, and its ending only raised more questions and curiosity on what comes next.

My favorite thing about chapter 2 was seeing the development of Susie's relationship with Noelle. From chapter 3, I loved the wacky 3D models, the rhythm sections heavily reminiscent of Guitar Hero, and the callback to NES games, especially the part where I could openly explore this subworld. I don't remember much of chapter 4 aside from Noelle's house and the dark world, so I definitely need to play it again. The music was absolutely a highlight though, and I do remember how unsettling the dark world was. My favorite detail of Noelle's house is how Kris can be heard playing lots of songs on the piano.

I started reading up about the game after finishing chapter 4 and discovered a whole new layer of choices that apparently do matter. What the hell? I thought my choices didn't matter at all! Seeing people commenting about the weird route only pokes my curiosity further, but that'll require a new playthrough from me. RPGs are a bit of a commitment, so I think I'll have to dedicate a good couple of days for it, which is difficult in this day and age.

I played chapter 5 exactly 31 days after its release, because I wasn't quite ready to commit to it, otherwise I would've glued myself to my desk immediately.

This chapter was beautiful. The parts that touched me the most were Susie and Noelle finally confessing their love to each other, and learning the reason why the antagonists were trying to keep you from sealing the dark fountain. I loved the platforming sections and the exploration it adds too. The visual style and the music definitely evoked a sense of nostalgia that I had never experienced in my life. Like, yeah, I never experienced nostalgia before. I once failed an assignment in school because I was tasked with doing a visual representation of nostalgia. How am I supposed to represent an emotion that I don't know? Dammit! But I digress.

Something about this chapter felt off though. Why aren't we touching upon what happened in the previous chapter? What's up with Susie and the prophecy? Why's everything suddenly so cheery?

Skip this paragraph if you haven't played Mother 3. Anyway, from what I can gather, this is supposed to be the last bit of honest fun we'll have in the game, because shit's about to get really nasty, especially considering the ending of the chapter. I can't help but be reminded of how I've heard that Toby Fox apparently thinks he'll be seen as unoriginal if people learn about Mother 3's plot in the west. This hints at me that someone important is about to die and we'll be dealing with the ensuing grief over the loss of this character. Or these characters? I don't know. Maybe we'll have to fight someone we hold dear, against our will. Maybe the world we've grown to love throughout all these years is about to be torn apart. Perhaps it's something entirely different. The thought of it is harrowing.

I'll touch upon the flower theme a bit, and a really important point that was brought up in this chapter.

I started learning about plants this year and how to care for them. I find plants fascinating, they suck in dirty air and transform it back into clean, breathable air. All they need is some nutrients, some water, and plenty of sunlight. They're incredibly resilient, and sometimes they appear in unexpected places, at unexpected times, defying our idea of what life is supposed to be like. Flowers are, in their bare essence, a reproductive organ. We tend to think of such a concept as something vulgar, but in the case of flowers, it is one we find all sorts of meanings in, despite their apparently simple function.

At the end of January, I planted a few sunflower seeds that I got from a friend, expecting nothing in particular. 5 of them sprouted, three of them together in a row, one across a patch of concrete, and one hidden away behind a large pot. The latter two appeared a bit later and seemed weaker than the other three. For convenience, we'll call these sunflowers #1 through #5.

Sprout #1 was disturbed by, I believe, a stray dog, who broke its stem and took a massive dump on it. I managed to help it recover, but it got attacked again, and this time I was unable to save it. Its two siblings, sprouts #2 and #3 were stolen not long after. That left me with the other two sprouts, #4 and #5.

#4 was growing alongside some really beautiful purslane. It became the first sunflower to reach its flowering stage, with #5 flowering around a week later. Unfortunately, sunflower #4's stem broke due to, I believe, strong winds. That's what I'd like to believe at least, since we had thunderstorms about 2 weeks after it flowered. It was unable to yield seeds and started dying off in spite of my attempts to save it, so I uprooted it and let it go.

Sunflower #5 started to become starved of sunlight due to being under a large tree, and the sun shifting its position in the sky throughout the day, due to the approach of winter. I thought it was not gonna yield seeds either. Eventually it started decaying and I wrote it off as dead. However, a friend recommended to check for seeds anyway, since the plant can conceal them.

I uprooted the plant and harvested a good number of seeds from it, then I added its remains and those of sunflower #4 to the soil to finish their cycle. Out of the 5 sunflowers that had sprouted, the one I least expected to yield seeds was the only one to do it.

Sunflowers are beautiful, yet short-lived. The plant's entire life and energy is dedicated to producing one flower head with tons of little florets in it, each of which later becomes a seed. Once the flowering stage is finished and seeds are produced, the plant dies. Occasionally, a sunflower with multiple flower heads is born; yet another example of diversity being not only a natural event, but an essential part of nature. I cherish the memory of my first batch of sunflowers, how I tried my best to help them grow, and how not all of them made it, due to events outside of my control.

Sunflowers, in this regard, are a lot like humans. They sprout from their seed, grow, evolve, and eventually reach maturity. They give everything they can for their future offspring, while putting on a hell of a show. Depending on their conditions growing up, they may become stunted, they could die early, or they can become gigantic and majestic. My friend, the one who gave me the seeds, planted a sunflower by the wayside of a really busy street. The resulting plant, to put it succinctly, dwarfed me. A massive plant with a massive flower head, larger than even my own head.

Caring for plants, or for animals, or even creating a piece of art, is almost exactly like raising a child, for better or for worse. The amount of care you put into it is perhaps the most important factor in this child's outcome, but ultimately, even with one's unwavering love and affection, it can all disappear in an instant. How one confronts this adversity will shape our future self, and our future attempts at raising a new child, whatever form it may take.

Flowers are like life itself. They don't simply show up out of nowhere; they depend on specific conditions, such as a suitable environment, and the support of a parent; a larger structure. Flowers are also not the entire point, they exist as part of a larger ecosystem. They come in all sorts of shapes and colors. Each one is unique, and exists in a specific place and time. Once a flower completes its cycle, it withers away and gives way for a new flower to take its spot, repeating the cycle anew, until the end.

Life is nothing but a fleeting concept, a snapshot of a specific place and time, viewed from the lens of one organism; one consciousness at a time. Events transpiring during any given lifetime are nothing more than passing moments, an interaction with other instances of life, from which we experience feelings, draw conclusions, learn new things, and move on. We cannot relive moments of the past, and we cannot stay forever with everyone we meet along the way, but the memory of them is something we can carry with us and cherish until everything withers away. A life that currently exists is a life capable of paving the way for those coming after us. A life that ends is one that passes the torch, gives up its memories and consciousness, to then start anew and experience a completely fresh look at things. Flowers do exactly that.

As much as we would love to be in these moments of pleasure forever, doing so would mean not giving way to those who come after us; it would hold us back, and hold back everything that occurs around that moment. It would ultimately halt the great machine we call "universe". Imagine sunflowers staying in their blooming stage forever. It would be beautiful indeed, but then, no more sunflowers would come after them. That would be selfish, don't you think?

It's okay to entertain these thoughts. In the end, life is what you make of it. Maybe, like me, you want to do the right thing, so that the world will be left in a better state for our successors. Maybe you'll be completely selfish and only seek your own satisfaction, ignoring whether this has negative consequences on others. Every life must eventually come to an end, and what happens after is a direct result of your actions in your current life.

Given all this, I believe in reincarnation, but in no particular form. I believe in the human soul, but I don't believe in a god, or in heaven, or in hell. I don't believe everything can possibly become a black void after death, and I believe this universe we share cannot possibly be the only one. It's as unfathomable as the origin of life itself. I think that the grandiose concepts of heaven and hell, where all the good and bad ones go after death respectively, are reductionist and self-defeating, unless they are merely a temporary illusion for each specific individual. I therefore don't believe I'll ever see my deceased loved ones again, which does feel like a knife to the throat in the moment, but I find solace in that I was able to share invaluable moments with them, and I'll be able to do the same with different ones in a future life.

Deltarune brings up all these overarching concepts in chapter 5, through flowers and the dark worlds, among other things. This is my personal interpretation of it, of what a flower symbolically represents. The cycle of life and death, and how our memories are our most valuable possession.

Something really special about Undertale, and particularly Deltarune, is how it's so similar to seeing a friend grow up at the same time as you. Perhaps it's more like catching up with a friend after not seeing them in a year or so. So much can change in a year, we learn so many things and live through so much, but it's still the same two people.

Eventually, like everything else, Deltarune will come to an end. As much as I would like to see what's new a year from now, I know it must end, like parting ways forever with that friend. It'll be a bittersweet moment; I will be sad that it has ended, but happy that it happened at all. I don't know what events will play out, but I want to be there to see it.

These games have changed lives, including mine, and right now, all I can hope for is for all of us to be alive, so we can see everything reach its ultimate conclusion. Together.