Undertale / Deltarune / Toby Fox Discussion

my penis is on fire said:
Recently found this very long critique of Deltarune 🄰. Despite it being 26,000 words of WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS, I thought it was a surprisingly compelling read and figured you guys would be interested.
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Thank you for the TLDR lol.

I actually do really dislike how Deltarune's story is being given the Fnaf treatment (being made up along the way with the community in mind). I don't know if anyone else noticed this, but in a newsletter Toby implied that the story of each chapter is being written after the previous one is completed.
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This, when combined with him regularly following the utdr community and listening to the theories, is a little worrisome to me.
 
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San Marino said:
I actually do really dislike how Deltarune's story is being given the Fnaf treatment (being made up along the way with the community in mind). I don't know if anyone else noticed this, but in a newsletter Toby implied that the story of each chapter is being written after the previous one is completed.
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This, when combined with him regularly following the utdr community and listening to the theories, is a little worrisome to me.
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I always got the impression from what Toby has said that he has some general idea in mind as to how he wants the story of Deltarune to end that he's writing around, but he doesn't actually write anything concrete until he's literally working on that exact chapter. So I think he's trying to keep to his original ideas, but I suspect the passage of time and interactions with others has affected how exactly it plays out and gets from point A to B, compared to a hypothetical Deltarune Toby was able totally make by himself years ago.
 
Retarded Weeb said:
So I think he's trying to keep to his original ideas, but I suspect the passage of time and interactions with others has affected how exactly it plays out and gets from point A to B, compared to a hypothetical Deltarune Toby was able totally make by himself years ago.
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Whatever original vision Toby had for Deltarune in that dream is long gone by now. Partly because of rewrites to pander to the fans, partly because if you work on a game for 10+ years you're a totally different person from when you started.
On the upside, given how prone he is to fanservice, maybe the recent Tumblr ship rankings will make him reconsider his lesbian fetish and finally make Krusie real.
 
my penis is on fire said:
Despite him repeatedly claiming that he's very welcoming of fanworks and that "The Underground is as big as you want it to be," his actual actions regarding fanworks are dismissive at best and outright hostile at worst, especially when Fangamer and their legal suitkikes get involved.
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hostile? all i know is he publicly told some guy to fuck off, that had previously been copyright striking a lot of ost uploads on toby's behalf
San Marino said:
Toby implied that the story of each chapter is being written after the previous one is completed.
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i imagine that every chapter is outlined beforehand, or at the very least the chunks he plans to release at a time.
 
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my penis is on fire said:
very long critique of Deltarune 🄰:
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Lack of attention to detail when it comes to Deltarune’s RPG elements plagues far more than just the obnoxious joke stats. The “Black Shard” is a weapon in Deltarune that is obtained from defeating the boss at the end of Chapter 3, a normally unwinnable battle that can only be won if the player obtains a secret item, and perseveres through the hardest challenge in the game at present. The “Black Shard” is a weapon that is explicitly communicated as capable of “striking the weakness of dark creatures.” At this point you seen yet to see dark creatures, but come Chapter 4, they are present, and your weapon is capable of dealing massive increased damage to them. I bring this up because the end of Chapter 4 has you face off against a “Titan”, an extraordinarily strong dark creature. You would think the “Black Shard” would do increased damage here, and you’d be correct. But attempting to kill the “Titan” with the “Black Shard” only results in it healing itself, with no method of outdamaging its healing, regardless if you are using the “Black Shard” or not. If a player is capable of defeating the hardest challenge the game has offered so far, and holds a weapon specifically designed for this circumstance, why would you not reward the player for doing so? An alternate sequence in which you are actually capable of killing it before bringing you back into the main scripted storyline would have been appropriate, but since Toby Fox doesn’t want to commit to rewarding players for attempting to play around the rules and information established in his video game, why even bother? What is the point of engaging with the knowledge doled to the player if said knowledge is never consistent and never actually amounts to anything? Toby Fox is a creator whose implied ethos is the idea of small details mattering, but large issues like this are fine to slip past because it’s ultimately a criticism of the RPG gameplay, which he frankly could not care less about.
I also thought this section was very silly the reason the player has to defeat the Titan in a scripted cutscene is because it needs to happen to establish them as a credible threat. They aren't an enemy you can defeat conventionally right now, and you as a Player are limited in ways you can interact with the world. Then in comes Susie who allows victory to be possible. It needs to happen for story reasons. Susie can help you overcome seemingly unbeatable odds, and there are fights you're not going to be able to handle yourself. Heck even the Knight is a scripted loss.
my penis is on fire said:
Gerson supposedly not fitting with the secret boss theme of enemies with deeper knowledge about the nature of the game setting
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I think this complaint is silly as well, both because the Fandom consensus has been wrong about the game's themes before, i.e the obsession with 'escapism bad' theories during the chapter 1 & 2 days, and that chapter 3 & 4 both have secret bosses which deliberately break the pattern for story reasons as well. It's basic story telling, you set up expectations and then play into them for an effect. Gerson not being a schizo, also makes it clear that what Jevil and Spamton did were their own choices.
Spamton helps the weird route because he wants to, and Jevil tries to attack you because he wants to. They aren't mind controlled, and when they are helpful it's for similar character based reasons, i.e wanting to fuck with Tenna and giving you new moves to help against him in Chapter 3.
Gerson helps you out and doesn't use the Shadow Crystal to make himself stronger for his own character based reasons as well.
The trio of ERAM, the Knight, and Ramb from Chapter 4 who play into the secret boss themes, all mess with the formula in different ways to make a point. Ramb projects his own beliefs onto Kris but isn't a monster like Spamton and Jevil, while ERAM and the Knight seem to be greater villains enacting some sort of plan.
 
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Cryogonal2 said:
hostile? all i know is he publicly told some guy to fuck off, that had previously been copyright striking a lot of ost uploads on toby's behalf
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The argument was made by comparing him to Scott Cawthon and the Fanverse, stating that the FNAF Fanverse is proof that Scott has a much deeper appreciation for fanworks than Toby does, despite the latter shaping his identity around “fangame good” for the past year. He also cites that Toby rarely acknowledges fangames, and that the most common interaction their developers have with official UTDR people is one of the Fangamer suitkikes sending them a C&D. He says that even if Toby wasn’t directly responsible for it, he was at least somewhat complacent with it. Lest we forget Sebastian Wolff’s reign of terror.
I only halfway agree with the above argument. In practice the FNAF Fanverse has been a dumpster fire, and Scott’s handling of his own fandom has been less than subpar. If something similar were tried for UTDR, it would be disastrous.
Also, comparing the two devs is comparing apples to Ford F150s. Scott is a bog standard indie dev who won the lottery. He’s the opposite of an auteur, the more his personal style is present in a game (see: FNAF World, Pizza Sim) the less appealing a game is. Meanwhile, Toby’s personal quirks make his works more appealing. The most definitive proof of this is Undertale Yellow, where we got to see Undertale if it were made by bog standard indie devs instead of Toby. The consensus in this thread is that it was of middling quality, and sorely missing that auteur secret sauce that the review was denying the existence of.
 
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my penis is on fire said:
Whatever original vision Toby had for Deltarune in that dream is long gone by now. Partly because of rewrites to pander to the fans, partly because if you work on a game for 10+ years you're a totally different person from when you started.
On the upside, given how prone he is to fanservice, maybe the recent Tumblr ship rankings will make him reconsider his lesbian fetish and finally make Krusie real.
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I do wonder what would've been if Toby just sat down and wrote the whole story and then started working on the game

Imagine more gradual Suise change character change instead of a 180 after chapter 1.

It honestly would be pretty interesting to see how would that look like
 
my penis is on fire said:
stating that the FNAF Fanverse is proof that Scott has a much deeper appreciation for fanworks than Toby does, despite the latter shaping his identity around “fangame good” for the past year.
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i mean, we're talking about a guy who dealt with the homestuck fandom firsthand. i feel like op of mucho texto blog might be too young to remember this. also, you see dudes like shayy catching pedo allegatons on the reg with this fandom, in toby's head he might just be thinking that an endorsement of anything from the fans is like playing russian roulette. it doesn't matter if you didn't know some dude was a turborapist, people are just going to see that you said he was a cool dude once. or maybe he praises a guy whose fangame/fan fiction is really good but the fandom hates him. tribalism within tribalism

smartgenius55583433157 said:
Imagine more gradual Suise change character change instead of a 180 after chapter 1.
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susie's 180 feels a lot like this so i don't really mind it
 
Cryogonal2 said:
i mean, we're talking about a guy who dealt with the homestuck fandom firsthand. i feel like op of mucho texto blog might be too young to remember this. also, you see dudes like shayy catching pedo allegatons on the reg with this fandom, in toby's head he might just be thinking that an endorsement of anything from the fans is like playing russian roulette. it doesn't matter if you didn't know some dude was a turborapist, people are just going to see that you said he was a cool dude once. or maybe he praises a guy whose fangame/fan fiction is really good but the fandom hates him. tribalism within tribalism
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He already fucked up and took the side of Piratesoftware when he had a tantrum about MatPat.
The Allison brothers also had a big tantrum on social media when YIIK was released which got him caught in the crossfire because he did a guest song.
 
Danann said:
I've seen this guy's review being bashed by troons for being about right.
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Having read the review, I must say I agree with most of it. But the author comes off as very uncharitable towards the game, and very hostile overall.

I agree that if the game, with the way it's being developed, had been made by basically anyone else, it would have been shat on and mocked as the second coming of YandereDev, or PirateSoftware nowadays. Toby has managed to accrue an insane amount of respect and has achieved a big cult of personality, either due to luck and circumstances, or with intention, but I can't know which is the truth.

Perhaps it's just me being a sucker for liking the game, the jokes being sufficient if corny at times, some not landing at all for me. I only got interested when chapter 2 with the Snowgrave route dropped, before that, chapter 1 on it's own seemed rather pathetic for the hype. There doesn't feel like there is that much to hate about the gameplay. Sure, it's easy when you're fighting non-bosses, and in a greater artistic sense the game is lacking, and the writing is rushed in places, Susie's instant shift after chapter 1 being an example. But I can still accept as it is.

Though that could change depending on how the future chapters end up going. At this point I wouldn't be entirely surprised if Toby just made it so that the ending is so up for interpretation that all 'Alternative Universes' are canon. I feel like we would see a return of something like the Undertale AUs. The comment by Gerson, about 'the youth' writing the part he couldn't. And Toby's talks during the 10th anniversary, about what wasn't seen in Undertale still being there, waiting for someone to bring it into existence. Makes me thing that perhaps that's what he'll end up doing, and I'm not sure if it's an artistically genius move or artistically bankrupt move.

To make a story, for which the true ending is the one you give it, or the one you choose as your accepted ending. It feels both cowardly and very brave.
 
Noto Bok said:
I agree that if the game, with the way it's being developed, had been made by basically anyone else, it would have been shat on and mocked as the second coming of YandereDev, or PirateSoftware nowadays. Toby has managed to accrue an insane amount of respect and has achieved a big cult of personality, either due to luck and circumstances, or with intention, but I can't know which is the truth.
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it helps that toby is not a total asshole and retard like those guys. not being acting like an autistic faggot goes a long way
 
i've read that hours ago, i have mixed feelings personally but it's whatever

Cryogonal2 said:
it helps that toby is not a total asshole and retard like those guys. not being acting like an autistic faggot goes a long way
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not to mention, Toby just keeps his mouth shut. He isn't getting into slap fights over the internet over this shit. the fandom will forget about this once chapter five drops
 
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San Marino said:
Null once said that for people like this, the game is part of their identity so when you attack the game you attack them.
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I think that's true for the things a person likes for most people. Most people make their likings (and dislikings) of particular things and subjects a part of their personality - and, their personality being a part of their identity, so does their identity also subsume their preferences. The question is how large a part of their personality their preferences become, and for tumblrfags, seeing as most of their identity is not based around their circumstances, work or physical appearance, they really only have their personalities to distinguish themselves.
 
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