so, deltarune becomes kind of horrifying if you assume the player is
possessing kris. We save over THEIR save file at the beginning with our own name.
Kris can’t move or defend themself unless we tell them to. They even
noticeably didn’t contribute a team name idea, even susie did that!
Kris
often just stands blankly during cutscenes like a Good Protagonist, but
it’s especially jarring when literally everyone in the scene reacts but
them:
more disturbing than that tho, is when the player relinquishes control and kris lifelessly ragdolls, because they literally can’t do anything.
when susie grabs them:
when the floor falls away:
when the king hits and subsequently drops them (Admittedly they were pretty badly hurt here):
Notably, Kris DOES seem to be able to break control occasionally:
when the supply closet door scares them, they take a step back.
they bow along with the others to protect lancer, in direct contrast to the above instances where they just stand motionless during “group” actions.
THEY were the one who was scared when the guards surrounded everyone, the only time they “show” any emotion at all:
They seemed to be in control during the thing with the Fountain, which makes sense since the soul was otherwise occupied.
Finally, THEY WERE THE ONE WHO CHOSE TO PROTECT SUSIE.
I don’t really have a nice pithy way to close this, but it seems like only extreme fear can free Kris from our control for a short time. Nice happy fun game.
Thinking that way, i think they CHOSE to rip their heart out trying to avoid to be controlled again. What do you think? You are the soul, they are your vessel. With no soul, the vessel is by itself. The funny part is that the game says that your choices for them don’t matter, and suzy says the same about Kris’ choices, but at the end, the choice to rip their fucking soul out of their fucking body was theirs.
Yeah, i definitely think the ending was Kris finally breaking through enough to cast us out. the most horrifying part? the cage being the ONLY thing on their side of the room implies this may have happened before.
ALSO:
@catgirl9696 pointed out in the notes another crucial moment where Kris helplessly watches us do something: throwing out the ball of junk at the end.
Kris has exactly ONE item that actually belongs to them.
if you use it, they admire it and nothing else happens. if you DROP it, on the other hand, this happens:
if you choose no:
if you choose yes:
I am 100% convinced that Kris’ lack of friends, lack of belongings in their room, etc, is because Players have tormented them before, and they’re scared to have anything that belongs to them that Someone Else could just take or destroy on a whim.
In my view, Undertale and Deltarune are both games about choices, agency, and meta in video games. Undertale explores the idea of making choices as a ‘player’ playing a ‘game’ in a way that affects the world as a whole, which we can see in both Flowey’s actions and our own. However, Deltarune seems to be more personal, exploring how a ‘player’ playing a ‘game’ can affect an individual.
you can’t open ralsei’s manual ingame (i’m pretty sure) but there are datamined sprites for it! let’s all just… appreciate how good ralsei is for a second ok…
