Camille's Deltarune Thoughts As Of Chapters 3 & 4

If you haven't already played both Undertale and Chapters 1 to 4 of Deltarune, click off of this blogpost! I'm going to be talking about all four currently released chapters, alongside some additional fan discussion [1]. Nevertheless, I am going to assume you've played both games at least once.

I want to get this out first: I did not interpret Sans' controversial line the way everyone else did. When Toriel asks Kris if Susie is okay, Sans' reply — "hey, she'll be fine. i'm sure she'll figure it all out." — has been met with a lot of backlash. "How could Sans say that? Susie is obviously not okay! And she's going home all alone in the dark? Jesus, Kris, I agree with you now. This guy sucks. [insert GIF of Kris doing the entire Sans fight from Undertale]". When I saw people saying things like that online, I figured I missed something. I looked back at the scene and realized "no, I didn't miss anything. Is that it? That's the character-ruining line? That was just a bunch of normal Sans dialogue!" When I played Chapter 4, I read that line as Sans saying that, eventually, with time, she'll figure things out. An it's-a-part-of-growing-up kind of thing. I read it as if he was once a troubled teen who, with time, figured it all out.

Additionally, he's just trying to soothe Toriel's worries because, admittedly, why the fuck would Sans, with his lack of Dark World knowledge and his lack of awareness of the fact that Toriel's tires were slashed the night before [2], be worried about Susie walking home alone at night? Hometown's not exactly famous for its many murderers — the worst is probably whatever people's perception of Asgore is. Past that controversy, Hometown's crime scene is made up pretty exclusively by dogs in striped clothes who think borrowing library books is a crime. I mean, Alphys, in Chapter 2, verbatim, says "because of the mayor, there... there... There isn't any crime." But, hell, even if my interpretation is wrong — and that Sans just doesn't care — this is still in-line with his character in Undertale. If you kill just one fewer monster than would constitute a No Mercy run, he just lets you go to meet Asgore and then, possibly, humanity. Quite frankly, Sans does not care what most other people do. His ass does not care.

Okay, now, I haven't seen anyone talk about this: Chess Theory, something I only learned about after the new chapters dropped, was wrong, I think. Molly told me it was and I trust her. After the Queen, King, and the Knight, there are no other characters named after chess pieces. (Having never heard this theory before, seeing all of the pre-Chapter-3 made-up Tenna and Mike names that just have "Rook" shoehorned in there, only after completing Chapter 4, are all really funny.) However, while not as interesting as I've heard Chess Theory supposedly is(?), there seems to be a card thing going on each chapter. Final boss King in Chapter 1, final boss Queen in Chapter 2, final(?) boss Ten(na) in Chapter 3, and miniboss Jack(enstein) in Chapter 4. I'm not going to come up with any specific projection or theory for "what this could mean for Chapter 5 and beyond; it's 'CARD THEORY'", I just think it's a fun pattern. I hope it continues at least somewhat until the end of the game. (If there is actually a Card Theory, I'm completely unaware of it. Mine is better anyway.)

After Chapter 2 released, I had this idea that Ralsei is more representative of Toriel than of Asriel, but I think many elements of Chapter 3 & 4 muddy this. My original idea hinged on Ralsei being the tutorial character who doesn't tell you the dark truth of the world you're about to explore until he feels like he has to like Toriel does in Undertale ("You'll bring the Roaring", "They… ASGORE… will kill you."). Too, based on the brief glimpse we get into who Asriel is in Undertale through flashbacks and the final boss, I figured that Ralsei's demeanor didn't really match that. However, I think it's better to offer, based on the recent two chapters, that Ralsei is not meant to be representative of either Asriel or Toriel. Ralsei, as he, himself, is discovering through the chapters beyond the first, is his own character capable of making his own decisions and doesn't have to be "representative" of any existing Dreemurr. This is something I could have gathered when Susie and Ralsei split from Kris in Chapter 2, but I didn't.

Can I talk about the "freedom leitmotif"? I've been dying to talk about the "freedom leitmotif". More specifically, its nickname as the "freedom" leitmotif. Obviously, it got that name because both Jevil and Spamton — two characters that have themes relating to being "free" (where Jevil calls himself free in his prison and Spamton outright says "[Freedom]") — but its later uses, the Mike(s) fight and the Hammer of Justice, don't really have jack shit to do with freedom. You could argue that Gerson's whole thing is about the freedom to tell your own story, but Mike just has nothing. The name "freedom leitmotif" makes sense in relation to Jevil and Spamton, and I don't expect anyone to stop calling this The World Revolving melody that, but it's just the secret boss leitmotif. That's all. It doesn't imply an implicit theme of freedom onto any character whose battle theme is seen making out with the leitmotif sloppy style.

Kris and the Knight's will [3] are similar, if not identical. When Kris thrusts their knife into their living room floor, it creates a Dark World identical to the Dark Worlds that, I assume, were created by the Roaring Knight. Ralsei specifies that some things only appear in certain darknesses (i.e. Gerson the Old Man) and based on the fact that Susie's darkness looks so different, I have to imagine that any Dark World created by the Roaring Knight or Kris is the same (if not, similar) for a reason.

This section is taken almost straight from the notes I made between play sessions of Chapter 3: Tenna is a fucking asshole to Kris specifically. It's insane. While Kris can recognize "these wrong answers are being chosen because this 'Chillin' asshole controlling me doesn't know me very well", it probably feels like catching insane strays when Tenna still rags on them for shit like their parents' divorce. [...] Kris is just getting fucking [annihilated] every dialogue box. Tenna also seems to base this Kris focus on his presence in the Dreemurr household. Queen's perception of the Lightners was based on how they interacted with the Librarby's computer lab, Tenna only knows Kris, Toriel, Asriel, and Asgore, and King is now an outlier, being a King of Spades playing card who just hates Lightners for no Light World-based reason beyond "the Lightners haven't used this classroom which is also my kingdom! I love my beautiful son and my other favourite child, the Dark Fountain". [End of Excerpt] (I actually don't recall if he ever complains about the Lightners abandoning his classroom.)

Nevertheless, the way Dark Worlds work confuses me. King and Queen or Tenna and Spamton have known each other because Kris brought the laptop home to play in the living room with it, but they (assumedly) weren't in a Dark World back then and wouldn't have been Darkners with personalities and thoughts… right? I dunno. I'll figure out if I need to bend my understanding of the everyday objects that Darkners are composed of by game-end or if the game will, by game-end, just make more sense without me having to think any differently. :woman_shrugging:

I haven't seen anyone mention it (because, like hinted at, I don't look at fan discussion), but the same logo on the poster in Mettaton's Undertale house is also seen on one of Dess' posters in her Deltarune room. What's that about? What does that even say?

Lastly, I just wanna talk about something I've mentioned on social media: I'm not the biggest fan of Toby Fox showing work-in-progress Deltarune things for a very specific (and probably personal) reason: it's all I can think about. When I played Chapter 3, I couldn't appreciate the Green Room area because I was solely able to think "oh, it's the song he showed off. Oh, it's the room he showed off." Had I not watched a few playthroughs after beating Chapter 4, I would not have remembered anything beyond the S-Rank room (and the T-Rank room). There's so much to Ramb that I just did not have the capacity to retain after beating the Mantle boss. When, in the TV World area, the sneaking sections came up, all I could think about was "this Lost Girl leitmotif would've played here". It's a miracle that I was able to remember more than just "But what if it could...get darker than dark?" from Ralsei's explanation of how Dark Worlds function. This is, of course, because I am a broken individual, but it's for that reason I just don't like seeing things out of the full context before seeing them in-context. Because despite the fact that Toby said it before the chapters dropped, I didn't know that (assumedly) TV WORLD was composed in 2016. I would have been thinking about it all game. [4] But when the Switch 2 Direct dropped and Deltarune Chapters 3 & 4 had had their release date announced, I was not too big a fan of the fact that there was gameplay from Chapter 3 & 4 in there. I also recently learned that Noelle's Dark World outfit and Lost Girl were both shown off in 2019, two years before Chapter 2 released for Undertale's fourth anniversary. I do take issue with this still in retrospect, but at the time, I (1) missed it, and (2) didn't care as much about spoilers at that time. (I watched Infinite War and Endgame knowing the big don't-wanna-go type things because they were inescapable and I hadn't seen a single Marvel movie when Infinity War released, so I didn't watch it in theatres. As far as I knew then, Infinity War was just what that "most ambitious crossover" meme was about.) Even though these work-in-progress things weren't story spoilers, it was still my issue of these things being shown out-of-context and it's the reason you don't really see too many showcases of work-in-progress Traversal bits from the next two areas, despite the fact they are both almost complete. (However, like I said in the Monthly Post Archive for July, there are older "teases" of stuff that has, in some cases, been retooled, repurposed, or scrapped and while I don't like the fact I posted them, I love an archive, so they stay up.)

Anyway, those are just my thoughts on Deltarune so far. I figured I'd throw these out there just to immortalize them, a decision I will regret as the rest of the game releases and I look more and more like an idiot for some of the things I wrote out here. Maybe I'll do a "Camille's Deltarune Thoughts As Of Chapters 3 & 4, Six Years Later" like those Matt and Tom Park Bench videos. We'll see.

[^] Despite being friends with Mollystars, I am not a Deltarune theory-head. I watched her Device Theory series, but I skipped out on a lot of stuff. I discovered there was a thing called "Tea Theory" on July 21st, 2025. I only kind of understand shit like Friend Inside Me and The Device Theory, etc.; I don't know what Penumbra Phantasm is besides a song Toby Fox made.

[^] I know that we tend to assume Sans knows way more than he's letting on because of Undertale, but what proof of that do we have in Deltarune? I can't really think of any. In terms of his abilities, his only non-normal ones here are his teleporting trick in Chapter 4 (which is also seen in Undertale) and his ability to make neon signs really quickly (or maybe he just happened to have a CLOPEN sign and a sign shaped like his head ready-to-go).

[^] Using the phrase "Kris' will" feels like walking a tightrope, so if you're like "I dunno about that," hear me out. There's a Jojoton tweet about how the "Knight's will was so bad that Kris's will locked in", and it's gained a lot of traction because of an ensuing Undertale meme, but in the King boss fight in Chapter 1, after King says "By the Knight's will, I shall shatter your heart to pieces!", the flavour text reads "Your will is changing" and not "Kris' will is changing". This is why I'm using the word "will" here, because Kris' will has seemingly remained the same. If you still think me using "Kris' will" feels weird because of another in-game dialogue I forgot about, then let me know — send me an email or @ me on social media. I'll append something… maybe.

[^] I would've denied to myself that it was TV World because of that song's rampant usage of Chapters 1-3 leitmotifs from Hip Shop to HEY EVERY ! to Tenna's theme. Maybe they began as melodies in TV World and were later repurposed into those other themes? I'm not sure. I do a similar thing with Traversal's recurring melodies, but saying anything more specific beyond that would be hypocritical.