Cycle of Stories
Y'know, when I made this blog about a year ago, my thinking was that whenever I get the urge to ramble about something in an especially nerdy and longform fashion, I'd use this. The thinking was I'd have all sorts of game design thoughts that I wanted to share. I wasn't intending to make it about a single game.
And yet, here we are, here I am, close to a year later, and I'm writing about Deltarune again. And it's only my second post in that year. Whoops. Well, nothing to be done about it but dive in.
I think it's natural for most people to guess what happens next in an ongoing story, whether it be conscious or unconscious guesses. Surface-level thoughts, or deep-diving into the symbolic or interpretive. It's been said by people that aren't me, but it's quite remarkable that Deltarune is so close to its climax and conclusion, but we the audience still have so many questions and uncertainties. The fact that fan theories are so diverse is a testament to how little we still know about the end of the story. The idea that started it all, that everything is building toward.
I personally don't really keep up with any theorycrafting scenes, at least not very closely. The most I do is read or skim ideas that friends and acquaintences have offered in the Discord servers I'm in, as well as cool fanart from various parts of the internet, also shared in those spaces. Still, it's been interesting to see these otherwise-completely-isolated groups of people come up with similar speculations. Thoughts on, for instance, the subjectiveness of reality versus escapism, the nature of said reality beyond the simple dichotomy of the Light World and the Dark World, the symbolism inherent to Kris ripping their soul out of their body, or the nature of the choices we make for Kris in the game's dialogue trees (aside: I should write a new post about silent protagonist theory; the last one I did is dated January 2015-- that was an entire gender ago).
The fact that there are so many theories that run along these parallels to each other speaks to the strength of Deltarune's writing. Consciously or unconsciously, many of us playing the game as it's being released are picking up on the ideas and themes that the game is built on, and it's fascinating to witness.
Another recurring speculation that I've been seeing quite a bit since the release of Chapter 4, and even moreso with the release of Chapter 5, is the idea that the events described in the prophecy of Delta Rune are cyclical. Some speculated that in their youths, the adults seen in the game had also gone on adventures within the Dark World, just like Kris and Susie. Others suspect that the "last time" everything happened was more recent, when Asriel and Dess were both still in town. I've also seen more than one person hypothesizing the possibility of time travel, beyond the act of Saving and Loading one's progress.
Personally, my thoughts and predictions are informed by two ideas. First, that Deltarune is a video game. That whatever is happening in this world and can only happen as a result of its nature as a form of interactive media. Not unlike how things can happen in a cartoon the way they can't in live-action recording, or how things can happen in a comic book the way they can't in a cartoon.
Second, it's very commonly believed that Deltarune will ultimately serve as a prequel to the events of Undertale, in some form or fashion, but I don't think it will be. It not based on much more than gut feeling and vibes, but that's what I'm running with. I think that the connections Deltarune has with Undertale are going to be in their themes, rather than their narratives.
Last Sunday and into the next day, I mulled over the idea of Deltarune being cyclical, and how it meshes with the above two foundational thoughts. And eventually, I realized-- Deltarune is cyclical, because the act of playing and replaying a video game is likewise cyclical. Because all forms of storytelling (aside from purely oral storytelling and arguably theater) are finite. Everything that happens between the story's beginning and end will be the same, no matter how many times you experience it.
Of course, those familiar with this particular Calvin and Hobbes strip will likely be able to recall that the punchline is that Calvin's dad ended up making up a much darker take of the story, instead of the one transcribed in the book ("Do you think the townsfolk will ever find Hamster Huey's head?" Hobbes wonders), which in its own way demonstrates my point. They've read this particular strip before, and so they know how it ends. It also demonstrates what I mean by oral storytelling being a less finite form of narrative than most others. But I digress.
While I of course agree with the idea that a story can continue to exist and grow in the minds of its audience (I hate to imagine being in the company of somebody who disagrees), the end result that the story's concrete existence is fixed and cannot be changed. Stories describe a specific set of people, places, and actions over the course of a specific length of time, no matter who experiences them or how often they do so. To re-experience a story it to pull everything back in time to the beginning, and repeat it all over again.
Perhaps this is a part of what Deltarune is leading up to. Because it is a video game that can be played and replayed, the events of the prophecy and the fates of the Light World and Dark World will repeat again and again in an endless cycle of death and rebirth.
From the beginning, it's been said that Deltarune will only have one ending, no matter the actions and choices the player makes.
But what if the characters refuse to accept that ending? What if the ending is avoided, no matter the cost? What becomes of the story then?
A story doesn't physically exist past its ending. The only way it can keep going is to perpetuate it.
And thus, the story never ends. The plot and characters are in an infinite cycle with no beginning or end, no relief or release. At the end of the last chapter, everything goes back to the first all over again.
Of course, that's only through the lense of Deltarune as a video game. What about the other lense of thematic connection to Undertale? Is there anything said in that game relevant to this line of thought? Once again, Sans and Flowey serve as the anchors of Undertale's metanarrative, and they provide relevance in spades. First is Sans who, during his boss fight, expresses exactly why he usually feels no need to really invest time or energy in what happens in the Underground, and why nothing short of a threat of the world's anihilation gets him to stand his ground: he doesn't think there's a point.
Flowey echoes that same final fear after the end of the Pacifist Route, when he speaks to the player after everything else is finished.
He's already soberly accepted the possibility that he's undergone the story of Undertale so many times, had his memory wiped again and again, but that there's nothing he can do.
Incidentally, this is why, whenever I finish a playthrough of Undertale, I move the save files to a different folder. That way, the timeline with the happy ending is safe forever.
Either way, yes. There is thematic precedence of the fatigue and helplessness of being trapped in a loop of playing and replaying the game's story, that can be carried over to Deltarune.
Do any of the characters know their situation, if that's what's happening? Personally, I think the only one that truly knows what's happening to them is Kris. They have an agenda that neither the player nor Ralsei (I think Ralsei is the Darkner formed from Deltarune itself) are aware of, and it looks sketchy as all heck. But my guess is, they're tired of the endless iterating and want out, regardless of what becomes of them as a result.
Nothing can last forever. Nothing is meant to last forever.
If this speculation is accurate, then that means the player will have to make a choice. Perpetuate the story against Kris's wishes, help them end it, or defy them and break the story outright. And the third one might not end up being possible.
After the secret boss of Chapter 5, I'm choosing to trust Kris. It'll be interesting to see how that pays off.
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* ~ * ~ * (extra ramble that's a lot less coherent) * ~ * ~ *
The above thought process also did a lot to get me thinking about stories, and how in broad strokes they can reflect the mentality of the people in the age they were made. It got me thinking about the tendency of the human condition, and how much it, and human history as a whole, tends to repeat. This isn't exactly a novel thought-- "time is a flat circle," "those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it," the concept of Samsara, among many other ways of expressing the thought.
We live in a desctructive status quo that should be possible to escape from, but for reasons that go beyond any one individual's actions, there doesn't seem to be. For a lot of people that live in the world as it is, there's a feeling of helplessness, an inability to escape, and the desire to break free from it all.
I've played many games that seem to touch on that, at different levels of engagement. And many of them do offer an escape from the self-destructive cycle at the end of the story. Granted, that's not too surprising, given that so many of the games I grew up playing were made in Japan, a country that's felt a lot of historical and cultural influence from Buddhist philosophy. Likewise, many of the games I play today, Deltarune included, were heavily influenced these same Japanese games. In that sense, it kinda makes sense that I keep encountering these thematic elements. Still, I think it's neat, and makes me wonder if there's something to be said about it all. Or maybe I'm connecting dots that don't actually exist.
Either way, I feel like in this past week I've gotten closer to understanding what sort of story I hope to tell.
I've also collected a lot of screenshots from various games that feel vaguely thematically related. Maybe one day, I can bring it all together in a post with more detailed thoughts. Or at the very least, I can write a post about how elegantly OneShot weaves all of its components together. Outer Wilds, too. Man, video games really are awesome.
