Transcription
The word “roots” is something that’s come up a few times now throughout the first four chapters of DELTARUNE, sometimes only in things like soundtrack names and obscure DELTARUNE.com pages branching off of Spamton Sweepstakes. It’s never explained what exactly it means, besides being somehow related to the mysterious egg man, with its prophecy glass showing itself in the egg’s adjacent room. The ambience that plays in Queen Mansion’s basement is called digital roots, while the song played in this level of the retro-style Shadow Mantle game is called BIT ROOTS. deltarune.com/deltarune.com/lostwheretheforestwouldgrow is titled ROOTS, containing the same prophecy tree from Chapter 4. When clicked on, the tree plays a chord before eventually sending you to DELTARUNE.com/windows, again connecting “roots” to the egg man, but also attaching itself to this string of words. Finally, the last place that the word “roots” appears in is in a Bibliox encounter, the act that makes you choose the correct spelling of certain words. In this specific case, we can work out that roots is going to be the name of a future soundtrack, as all of the other words in Bibliox’s vocabulary; Gallery, Flashback, Sword, Atrium, and Guardian are all song names.
Along with “roots,” the words festival and synthesis seem to also be the names of future tracks. So, “roots” is something that’s going to happen in DELTARUNE's prophecy. It also seems to be closely related to the egg man, as well as this story that’s told by this Organnik: “Lost where the forest would grow, the children followed the pointed tail. The poor children!” Okay, sure, the word seems to be connected to these things, but what exactly is it? Well, out of everything, it seems most likely to be the name of a place. Its prophecy glass depicts some kind of setting, with a very generic house surrounded by two trees. And based on the Bibliox words, it’s also going to have a soundtrack named after it.
And that takes us to here, the two places in DELTARUNE whose soundtrack names are called roots with some extra word. The first one is Queen’s Basement, a murky, dark brown labyrinth with vines growing everywhere. The ambience that plays in this area is called Digital Roots, implying that this area is only a digital recreation of the real roots, which would make sense, since Cyber World is on a computer. This is also the first moment in the game in which we spot the pink-and-yellow eyed entity known as friend. Why do they appear in a digital roots? Well, remember that “roots” seems to be closely related to this story, which mentions a pointed tail. The tail of hell, as it's described in DELTARUNE’s prophecy, is heavily suspected to belong to this mysterious feline entity, due to a lot of connections between Noelle’s glitchy Cat Petterz game and once again, the egg man. So if FRIEND, the possessor of the pointed tail, has something to do with this “roots” area, which is implied by their connection, then it would make sense that their face appears within a digital recreation. Notice the vines here, and the brown color of the walls. Notice Spamton’s infatuation with this place, a character who wears pink and yellow glasses.
The second place whose soundtrack name has the word roots is the third board of the Shadow Mantle video game, which you can immediately notice is colored the exact same murky brown as used in Queen’s Basement. This corridor here is also identical in appearance to one found in digital roots. The soundtrack for this level is called BIT ROOTS, implying again that this is only a rough interpretation of the real place, this time in an 8-bit, video gamey way. This level is pretty interesting for several reasons. First of all, it’s the third level of the Shadow Mantle game, following the first, which introduces the idea of becoming stronger to progress, and the second, which is a rough recreation of not just Cyber City, but the Snowgrave route, complete with a white-robed frost mage that follows us around, enemies that are turned to frozen crystals, puzzles that are solved by using the ice, a blue bird that blocks our path before being frozen, and a maze in which we follow the mage until she’s finally used up. This is the third level, which is now following up instructions for the snowgrave route. And since board two was basically a play-by-play of what happened in Chapter 2’s Cyber City, it’s not unreasonable to assume that this board, which takes place in this “roots” location, is also going to roughly represent what happens here during the weird route when we eventually get there.
Before we even get to BIT ROOTS, it’s notable that we enter it through a winding alleyway and a manhole, an almost 1-1 replica of the one found exclusively in Chapter 2’s snowgrave route. Of course, this doesn’t make physical sense, but what I think this is trying to imply is that the only way to engage in the following series of events, or maybe even enter the real roots at all, is to be on the weird route by the time we get there. So, with that said, what happens in level 3 of the Shadow Mantle game, in this 8-bit version of “roots”? Well, as with the first two games, it follows the same gameplay mechanic of levelling up, and getting stronger to progress. This already seems to reveal that the “roots” area, like Cyber City, is going to be a dark world area. But really, all you do in this 8-bit “roots” is kill a bunch of different colorful enemies. Unlike the last board, which had representations of Noelle and Berdly and what you were supposed to do with them, it’s just a boring kill spree. So, is that all it’s saying? When you reach the roots during the weird route, kill all of the different enemies there before proceeding.
But wait… what are these enemies, anyways? There’s one that’s surrounded by flowers, that shoots red… wait. There’s a fish-like enemy that can either be blue or gray, and killing it destroys the yellow-lizard enemies that are… wait. There’s a singing purple cat-like enemy right next to a bright green enemy… wait! Oh. These are representations of hometown NPCs, aren’t they? This one is Asgore, surrounded by flowers and shooting red lasers that look like the trident he has in Undertale. This fish-type enemy is Undyne, who can become more tanky by putting on metal armor and upsets the yellow lizards, Alphys, if she’s killed. These two are Catty and Bratty, a purple cat in a room to the left of a green alligator, literally adjacent like their houses in hometown. The singing cat could also represent the Cattenheimer father, who we know sings in the Church choir. But what about these blue ones? Or these orange ones that shoot fire? What about this shadowy enemy that copies your movements? Or these white cat-like faces that charge you down, or the room full of unmoving white enemies..? Are just… some of them lightners, and some of them not? Well, maybe, but I actually think it's plausible to argue that all of these enemies represent lightners.
But, hold on, what? What does this even mean? We just clarified that “roots” looks to be a future dark world location, colored a murky brown, overgrown with vines, and possibly the home of the tail of hell. If we read between the lines, you could also guess that roots is some kind of forest location, with the emphasis on trees, the vines growing in digital roots, the dirty, brown coloration of the walls, the word “roots” which seems to literally mean tree roots, and finally, the story that mentions “Lost where the forest would grow.” With these clues alone, you might guess that roots is supposed to be the shelter’s dark world, as it’s secluded in a forest, vines are growing inside of it, and it seems to be connected to the story that retells Dess’ disappearance, who we know might live inside of the shelter, and that her abductor, the tail of hell, might as well. So what exactly are Asgore, Undyne, Alphys, and Catty and Bratty-like enemies doing here? If they do represent their real selves, like how the white cloak and the blue bird represented Noelle and Berdly, then why would they all be in the Shelter? The knight definitely isn’t planning to bring all of hometown’s residents down there. But roots being the shelter’s dark world also doesn’t completely add up, as the roots’ prophecy glass doesn’t show the shelter doors between its two trees, but instead a house, or more specifically, a doghouse. Also, in board 3, the section where the “bit roots” soundtrack is playing, the area with the murky brown coloration; that section is completely separate from the 8-bit shelter that they show right after, as the music stops playing, and the exterior and interior have completely different colors.
So, if the “roots” location is not actually the shelter, then where is it? So, let’s ask an interesting question. What if the layout of bit roots is supposed to be a map of hometown? I already pointed out that the placement of the rooms with the Bratty and Catty enemies seems to be reminiscent of their houses in hometown; not just with how Catty is on the left, and Bratty is on the right, but also with how these rooms happen to be the center two on the top-most row of the map, coincidentally accurate to where they are on a map of hometown. But this isn’t the only coincidence. Far from it. One row down and all the way to the right is this room full of unmoving, white enemies. Using Bratty and Catty’s houses as a reference point, then when lining this room up with Hometown, it would be… the apartments. Okay, technically that could make sense with this room… a bunch of squashed, unmoving enemies like a bunch of people living in cramped apartments. To the right of Bratty and Catty, the room with the shadowy enemy lines up with where the lake would be. The divide which keeps us on the left side of the room could represent the uncrossable lake, and the shadow enemy that copies our movements could also represent whatever it is that’s making the song on the other side of the lake, that of which we hear about at the end of Chapter 4. The very bottom left just has the room that we enter this level in, but lining this up with Hometown, it actually aligns with the only exit out of the town. The room at the very top is the only one on its row and is also situated more to the left side, not only placed exactly where the Dreemurr house is in Hometown, but also being the one thing at the top of the map. The second appearance of the singing cat seems at first to not work, but Toriel, like the Cattenheimer father, does also sing in the Church’s choir. Why is it a cat? Well, for the same reason that Bratty’s 8-bit sprite is just another lizard despite her being an alligator, it feels as though this entire board is trying to just imply certain things, rather than just fully give it to us. For example, if they actually made a unique alligator enemy for Bratty’s sprite, it would be so much easier to figure out what they were trying to sneakily imply here, which ruins a lot of the mystery. It also makes sense, from a design perspective, that a lot of the enemy sprites would simply be recolored or reused instead of having entirely new sprites, as it makes it feel a lot more like an old NES game like they were clearly going for.
Moving on, the Asgore room is strangely placed on the left middle, which would be where Ice-e’s pizza, or the empty plot of the land to the left of Ice-e’s, is on the hometown map, instead of somewhere in the top right, where his flower shop is. I do have a guess as to why the Asgore square would be placed here, but I’ll come back to that later. Filling in the rest of the gaps, to the right of the Asgore room would either be Ice-e’s or QC’s, which has a blue lizard type enemy. The yellow lizard enemy was Alphys, and the green one was Bratty, but who is this? Well, my best guesses, since this room seems to represent either Ice-e’s or QCs, is either Blue Bunny, a character given some depth in Chapter 4 concerning Pizzapant’s fake girlfriend, or the blue, ice-cube face of Ice-e himself, and the blue outfits that the employees wear. To the right of that, just before the apartments, is a room that contains nothing but those white cat faces. Lining this up with hometown, this room would represent either Sans’ shop, his house, or both. Notice how these aggressive cat-like faces only elsewhere appear in the room that represents the Dreemurr house with the enemy that represents Toriel. This could be hinting at the relationship between Toriel and Sans, but what’s also really interesting is that these sleeping faces only start attacking the player when the Toriel enemy is killed, including the ones in the room that represents both of Sans’ places. To me, this is reminiscent of the promise that Sans makes to Toriel in Undertale, which makes him refrain from attacking the human unless they go too far and kill Toriel and the rest of the underground. To the right of the exit of hometown, there’s a room with fire-spitting orange enemies. Between the hospital and the police station, I think this room is supposed to represent the hospital, and the orange enemies are supposed to be Rudy, the orange-colored monster who’s bedridden inside. This enemy’s use of fire is also something that is not entirely out of place, as he says to Noelle when they’re playing Dragon Blazers together after the weird route, that she should use Fireshock instead of Iceshock against the ice palace boss. Thematically, Rudy as a character also seems to embody the opposite kind of energy to his wife Carol, a character who is ice cold all around. To the right of that would be the Library, where we find the version of Undyne without her armor. Why here? Well, funnily enough, Undyne has technically been in this area of Hometown before, in the short little traffic-jam section of Chapter 2. A stretch? Probably, but it could’ve been what made them place the Undyne enemy type in this area. The very right of this row would be the school, represented by a room devoid of enemies, and a line of orange trees. This sprite is clearly a hometown tree, with the neon-orange outline and the softer orange center. It’s an interesting detail to include in this, isn’t it? As they could’ve used anything to blockade the path forward. And if we’re still assuming that this layout works with the map of hometown, then there is a wall of trees to the right of the school.
Now, not everything lines up perfectly. For instance, the Alphys and Undyne room is placed to the left of Catty and Bratty’s rooms, which leaves only the Holiday House for this square. And if this board is foreshadowing a future chapter, then why would Undyne be on the board at all, when we know she’s trapped inside of the shelter? We also had to make some pretty stretchy arguments for some of the other squares, like the blue lizard and fire enemies, the placement of armorless Undyne on the Library square, the second cat being on the Dreemurr house, and that’s not even mentioning that buildings like the Police Station and the FlowerKing don’t even seem to be represented on this board. But we have to keep in mind that board 2, even though this one was an adaptation of the events that play out in Chapter 2’s Cyber City, the layout of this level is not at all accurate to the real Cyber City. It more just implies that it’s a recreation, which could also be the case for board 3, in that it’s just an implied map of hometown. This could explain, for instance, why Undyne is here in this version, even though we know that she’s trapped in the Shelter. Not everything here has to be taken literally, nor do I expect it to be. Undyne is simply just a good clue to get us to recognize Alphys.
So, going back to the other things we know about roots, does this hometown idea work? Well, Roots definitely has something to do with trees, something that is, of course, a very prevalent thing in hometown. The orange hometown trees even appear in the bit roots, so the trees in the roots prophecy glass and the 8-bit hometown trees could be the same thing. But what about Friend, the dog house, and the story that involves “lost where the forest would grow”? The tail of hell doesn’t seem to live somewhere in hometown, but instead somewhere in one of hometown’s forests. Lost where the forest would grow, the children followed the pointed tail. So what if these two versions of roots, bit and digital, are two entirely different sections of a connected area? Bit Roots is the hometown part, with its NPCs, and digital roots is in the forest, with the vines, and where we see the face of friend, the tail of hell. If we remember, there’s a corridor in Bit roots that I pointed out is strikingly similar to the one found in digital roots. So similar, in fact, that the same tiles; not just the same color, the same files from digital roots are used to create the corridor in bit roots. In bit roots, this corridor is found by breaking through the orange hometown trees, and is the exit of the section. In digital roots, it’s the first corridor you walk through when entering. So, it would make sense if this corridor, divided by a wall of trees, no less, is the connection between these two parts of roots; town, and forest.
So, what does this mean? If Bit Roots is an implied recreation of hometown, then does that mean that part of the “roots” location, somewhere we’re going to visit in a future chapter, is a hometown dark world? And if so, then what exactly is the situation in which all of hometown becomes enshrouded in darkness? Is it perhaps a consequence of the full blown roaring, with darkness taking over everything due to the opening of too many dark fountains? Well, no I don’t think it would be. In fact, I don’t think we have to look any further than Chapter 5 to figure out why hometown would become a dark world. What do we know about Chapter 5’s dark world? It’s described, by the Lord of The Hammer, to be a field of pink and gold, a vast garden charred with an inferno of jealousy. This dark world also seems to be one that’s created by Asgore, not only because of his suspicious monologue in which he reveals his possession of a black shard and a plan to bring his family back together, but having yet another Lightner strike a dark world is clearly foreshadowed in Chapter 4, with Susie’s creation of a dark world, and the fact that it changes due to her own unique memories and wants. Now, at first, I think we all immediately assumed that this dark world will take place inside of Asgore’s Flower Shop. Not at all an unreasonable assumption, as the word garden, Asgore’s association with the dark world, and the suspicious double doors in Asgore’s flower shop seem to fit easily together to result in a Flower King dark world. However, the more we look over all of the evidence for Asgore’s dark world, not only does the Flower King dark world theory start to fall apart, but another location jumps out as being far more likely.
First of all, let’s go over Asgore’s plan. This dark world isn’t going to be created for no reason; there’s a scheme, one that seems to be aiming to draw Asgore’s shattered family back together. Specifically, he mentions that he’s going to settle this once and for all, Toriel will see that he just wanted to protect everyone, and not only will Toriel see this, but everyone will. Putting this into the context of a Flower King dark world, it just doesn’t make much sense. Why would Toriel, someone who is inexorably closed off against Asgore, step one single foot within Asgore’s Flower Shop willingly? That, already, is a hole, but then you take into account that Asgore says that he’s going to show everyone. But then, what about the word “garden” being used to describe Chapter 5? Garden has to refer to flowers, there’s no getting around that, and a vast garden seems to be very obviously hinting towards the flower filled Flower King. But, the Flower King is not the only place during Chapter 5 in which an abundance of flowers will be present. We know that Chapter 5, taking place on a Sunday, is going to be the day of the festival, a town-wide carnival that completely transforms hometown’s appearance. Balloons, a ferris wheel, but most notably of all, to be included in the town-wide decorations: flowers. When talking to Ice Wolfe at the beginning of Chapter 4, he says that a large order of flowers has gone out to Asgore in order to decorate the town for the festival. And what do we see being wrapped around the Town Hall’s columns? Flowers. And we know that the festival is going to be the time in which Asgore creates his dark world, since the inferno of jealousy that’s going to possess this dark world is very likely going to be stoked by Sans taking Toriel to the festival, something that Asgore is probably going to bear witness to to his absolute dismay.
Finally, The Lord of The Hammer describes Chapter 5’s dark world as being a field of pink and gold. Remember that we confirmed before that Roots seems to be the home of the tail of hell, or the shadowy feline entity that seems to be the origin of the pink and yellow eyes. Chapter 5 being the field of pink and gold then makes a lot more sense if we end up visiting the tail of hell’s home, roots, in this chapter. And while this visual here seems to show falling flower pedals, it could also just as easily be autumn tree leaves. So with Asgore’s plan demanding a dark world that traps Toriel and everyone in hometown, the garden hint working well with a flower-decorated festival, and a field of pink and gold making sense for the roots location, then Chapter 5’s dark world looks to be a hometown/festival dark world, where roots is. This could also explain why Asgore’s room in Bit roots, along with all of his flowers, lines up to be where Ice-e’s Pizza is. Maybe during the festival, this empty plot of land to the left of Ice-e’s is where Asgore sets up a Flower Stand. The aggressive cat faces that only appear in Toriel and Sans’ rooms could also represent the jealousy that’s going to possess Asgore’s dark world.
But what about Asgore’s Flower Shop? We kind of glossed over the fact that even though the dark fountain can’t be created in there, there’s still a locked double door, a back door to the shop, a basement, seven colored flowers upstairs… So, what I think is that the Flower King is just going to be another area of this dark world. The festival bit is the area where we can continue the weird route, the forest bit is going to be a secret area where we fight the secret boss (and it probably will be the tail of hell,) and the FlowerKing is going to be the final area. Of course, there could also be other subsections that split up the dark world. In Asgore’s piece of the prophecy, it mentions that he’s going to become trapped in some kind of asylum. And while this could be referring to his state of mind during this dark world, it also could be a physical asylum, and it might just be the Flower King, especially the locked double doors at the back of the shop. Something that’s heavily explained in DELTARUNE Chapter 4 is the dark world doors: how they work, how they separate different dark worlds, how they represent locked doors in the light world. Because of how in-depth they go in explaining exactly how they work, they’ll definitely come into play again in future dark worlds, and we’ll probably find the one that represents the locked doors of Asgore’s shop in Chapter 5. So that part, at least, can be explained, however I’m not exactly sure how the basement of the FlowerKing as well as the back door come into all this. They definitely don’t point out their existence for no reason, so, honestly who knows. In relation to this, I’m also really wondering what exactly Asgore’s plan to fix his family is beyond just creating a hometown dark world, and what exactly, beyond just the intrusive inferno of jealousy, is going to trap Asgore in this asylum. It seems like Asgore is planning to put on a bit of a show, a performance that’ll prove to Toriel and the rest of hometown that he was “just trying to protect everyone." But what this entails, how a dark world helps in this, what he’s even trying to prove, is so hard to predict that I’m just going to leave these questions alone for now.
So let’s instead talk about the second half of roots, the hidden forest location where the heroes will see the tail of hell take crawl. It’s heavily implied that this location is going to be underground, mirroring digital roots with its rampant descension, its dirty brick walls, vines growing all over the place, the roots of trees poking their way into it. It could be the shelter’s dark world, just as well as it could be the basement of some forest-hidden demonic doghouse. Whichever the case, we know that it’s the home of a certain cat, and the place where the heroes, like the children, will be lured by its pointed tail. So it’s a secret area, hidden behind trees, one that houses a dark, hostile creature. It’s an area whose digital rendition had a secret boss, one that wore pink and yellow glasses, and gave us an item that has strangely high defense, and a resistance against cat attacks. Chapter 5 is the last chapter of the shadow crystal mission, as Seam only needs one more crystal to finish their creation. So by all reasonable doubt, FRIEND, the pink and yellow eyes, the tail of hell, seems to be the best contestant for being Chapter 5’s Shadow Crystal boss. But does this make sense? Susie fought Chapter 4’s secret boss alone, and got a powerful axe. Kris fought Spamton NEO alone, and got a powerful weapon from the Knight. And now, with the Shadow Crystal mission ending, it seems like Chapter 5 is the last chapter in which Ralsei will get to fight a secret boss alone, as well as get a powerful scarf to complete the trifecta of weapons. It also can’t be forgotten that thematically, these bosses fit with the hero that solo’d them, with Spamton NEO being a puppet, reaching to heaven, and Gerson being Susie’s mentor, teaching her to use her healing magic.
So does Friend really work thematically as Ralsei’s solo fight? It’s a hard question to answer for sure. Ralsei has been the first one to bring up the smiling, pink-and-yellow eyed cat in his dark world explanation cutscene. And since the heroes seeing the tail of hell is part of the prophecy, Ralsei will have memorized this encounter and will be expecting it when it comes. He also has somewhat of an affinity towards cats. But what does friend have to do with Ralsei outside of that? So far, the face has only appeared in places where Kris is solo, besides the one in some random dark room in Chapter 4. And since The Tail of Hell might be the culprit of Dess’ disappearance, then they’d be much more emotionally attached to Kris, or even Noelle, who are presumably one of the poor children that followed the pointed tail, and were witness to the capture of Dess. Of course, we also really don’t know the nature of this entity, whether they’ll be friendly or hostile, and if Ralsei doesn’t already have some relationship with this darkner, or if he’s going to build one throughout Chapter 5. For all we know, he could. So could friend work as Ralsei’s solo secret boss fight? Well, why not?
The last thing I want to talk about in relation to this theory is how it applies to the weird route. When it comes to Chapter 5, we already know that the weird route, to some capacity, is going to progress in this Chapter. Firstly, the ending of Chapter 4 is different on the weird route, where instead of Kris preparing to jump out their window, maybe to follow Susie, they instead get a call from Carol, who tells them that Noelle is looking forward to seeing Kris at the festival. Secondly, deltarune.com/chapter5 is a page that is all about the weird route. There are five numbers on this page, representing the five chapters, with the 1 and 3 invisible due to the lack of weird route progression in these chapters. The size of the numbers also seems to be indicative of how much weird route related stuff is in the chapter. Clicking on each of the numbers also redirects to a game asset that has something to do with the weird route. D.ogg when clicking on Chapter 2, the little red square on Chapter 4, and a slowed down version of the Hometown theme when clicking on the 5, h.ogg. The five, as we can already see, is not invisible, nor is it small. It’s pretty much just a middling size between the 2 and the 4, so we can expect that in Chapter 5’s weird route, there won’t be anything as crazy as Chapter 2, but certainly more than the minimal amount that we get in Chapter 4. But, there’s actually something really puzzling about this page, and that’s the number 3. Even though it's invisible, and rightly so due to the chapter’s complete lack of weird route, it has the same font size as the 2. Now Chapter 1, which also didn’t have any weird route and is invisible as well, is the smallest of the 5 chapters, as you would expect. So, why exactly is Chapter 3’s number just as big as Chapter 2, when there isn’t even a way to progress the weird route? Well, my best guess is that it’s because of the Shadow Mantle game, a game that not only gives instructions on how to begin the forbidden path, but also foreshadows, and maybe even instructs, future parts of the weird route, that of which, of course, is done in the 8-bit roots. Clicking on the 3 also redirects us to ma.ogg, the sound effect played by the Shadow Mantle holder, or Eram, as they fly offscreen. So this confirms many things at once. First: bit roots is definite foreshadowing for the weird route. Second: Not only is bit roots foreshadowing, but it's such an important teaser to the point where it has inflated the 3 to be as big as the 2. Lastly, Eram, The Shadow Mantle holder, seems to have something to do with the weird route.
So let’s re-evaluate bit roots from the perspective of the weird route. We established that this part of the roots is hometown’s dark world, complete with a bunch of its NPCs, like Asgore, Alphys, Toriel, Bratty, and Catty. Like boards 1 and 2, bit roots has the same gameplay mechanic of getting stronger by swording enemies until we can slash through the orange hometown trees. But, there’s something a bit weird about this… Where is Noelle? The white cloak? In Chapter 2, we put a lot of effort into leveling up Noelle, getting her strong enough so that she could use Snowgrave, a devastatingly powerful spell. This is all recreated in the Shadow Mantle game’s glacier level, but at the end of that, after we’ve followed her through the maze, the white cloak disappears and we’re given the words: “she was used up.” She then doesn’t reappear in the game’s third level, implying that by this point, we no longer have a use for Noelle to continue this forbidden path. But this strikes me as… inaccurate to how things are progressing in the real weird route. First of all, after following Noelle to the manhole, this isn’t the end of her use like the glacier level implies. Instead, she actually comes back to save us from Spamton NEO, again by using her powerful ice spells. In Chapter 4, we then completely derail the house scene to re-equip the ThornRing back on Noelle, and by the end of the Chapter, Noelle is asking to go to the festival with Kris. If you ask me, this does not seem as though Noelle is “used up,” after Chapter 2 like the Shadow Mantle game suggests. If anything, it seems like she’ll be with us during the festival, just in time for darkness to cover the town, and for the both of us to be together in Roots. To pick up where we left off. But we also can’t gloss over the fact that the Shadow Mantle game doesn’t just say that Noelle is used up, but that we’re used up too. So maybe these two things are referring to what happens a lot later in the game, or maybe this is just random creepy dialogue that’s just creepy for the sake of being creepy. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that the white cloak is definitely absent from Bit Roots, when it seems like she’s definitely going to be there, with her ThornRing, alongside us. And what about the fact that in bit roots, the path forward for the weird route seems to involve literally killing enemies that represent lightners like our parents? If this is somehow going to be taken literally, then how the hell is the 5 on deltarune.com/chapter5 not enormous? Lastly, Eram is one of the game’s most ambiguous villains up until this point, even more so, I’d say, then the pink and yellow eyed tail of hell. They’re just yet another shadowy boss-like enemy that seems to live in the shelter. A growing list, at this point.
So, let’s tackle each of these things one at a time. First, what’s going on with Noelle? Why does Chapter 2 build her up to be Kris’ tool to destroy anyone in their path, then seemingly drop her when it comes to the next steps of the weird route? Well, what I think is that by the end of Chapter 2, Noelle has leveled up enough to the point where we don’t have to focus on her stats anymore, and instead, we have to start leveling up Kris. We got her most powerful weapon, unlocked her most powerful spell, forfeited a lot of exp for Kris in favor of Noelle, and made sure that Noelle keeps her ThornRing on by the time of Chapter 5’s dark world. She’s basically like Paula, from Earthbound, where when you level her up enough, he ends up unlocking more powerful spells. Coincidentally, one of Paula’s most powerful spells is PSI Freeze. And not only are we leveling up Noelle in Chapter 2, but we’re transforming her to be a much more boldened version of herself, no longer shy, weak, and timid, but now bold, strong, and aggressive. So in Chapter 5, Noelle is no longer going to be Kris’ tool, but instead, a suitable fighting partner that’ll stay by their side and do devastating damage with her ice spells. But remember that Glacier, as well as Bit Roots, are instruction, not just showcases, of the weird route. In this context, Bit Roots seems to be telling us to never freeze-kill enemies with Noelle, as she’ll steal the experience. Instead, slash those enemies with Kris’ weapon, and level them up in preparation for the endgame. And what better place to start farming exp than in a Hometown dark world, filled with strong lightner enemies that are sure to drop tons of exp.
But that then brings up another problem, because as we’ve discussed, at least some of the enemies in this part of the dark world are going to be lightners, at the mercy of a rogue soul just like Berdly was in Chapter 2. So if the enemies that we’re farming exp off of are really our friends and family from the light world, then how is the 5 of deltarune.com/chapter5 not bigger? Well, this could be because Kris, as well as Susie and Ralsei, are still incapable of actually slaying enemies with their physical attacks. Besides the titan spawns, which literally have no will other than to fight, every single dark world enemy that we encounter runs away from us the moment their HP gets low. However, even though they run away, we still get stronger from just fighting these enemies; killing them is not a requirement to get stronger. So maybe the 5 is only a middling size between the 2 and the 4, because even though we’ll be encountering our hometown friends in battle, we’ll only be scaring them off as opposed to straight up murder or freeze. However, this does bring up the interesting question of what’ll happen if you do freeze them… And what’s the point of leveling up Kris? Well, besides some very late game stuff, it could be preparation for the battle with the tail of hell, the secret boss fight of Chapter 5. Remember that in Bit Roots, it’s only after we clear the area of enemies that we cut through the orange trees, and proceed, presumably, to the tail of hell’s home. Once there, we’ll then engage in the secret tail of hell fight, not as a solo Ralsei, but as Noelle and Kris, ready to take the final shadow crystal.
So why is Eram and Chapter 3 so important to the weird route? Well, maybe it’s not because of the character themselves, or even the instructions given in the Shadow Mantle game, but because it's the Chapter where we get both the Shadow Mantle, and the BlackShard; tools that will help us greatly against Chapter 5’s shadowy secret boss. This means that Friend is going to be strong, enough to still be an entire boss fight against Noelle’s ThornRing, Iceshock, and Snowgrave, and Kris’ Shadow Mantle, BlackShard, and stat increases from the previous section. Since the tail of hell is a shadow monster, the gimmick of the fight is probably going to revolve around collecting TP, something that becomes a lot harder in dark fights. Snowgrave is 100% TP, so even though it does a lot of damage, reaching that threshold might be near-impossible in a battle like this. So, it’s probably a good idea to save a TensionMax going into Chapter 5. Of course, we also don’t know what color this fight is going to turn our soul, if any. Lastly, considering that friend is apparently this strong, then how do we feel about Ralsei going up against this secret boss alone in the normal route? I mean, the fight will probably be completely different between the two routes, maybe Ralsei will try to pacify the boss or something, but it’s still really interesting to think about.
And that, ladies and germs, is the roots theory. Or at least, as far as I’m currently willing to take it, because you could totally go a lot further and delve into tons of different aspects of the game with it. I really think that this theory, even at its roots (get it?) has very crucial implications for the future of the game, especially for the Chapter we’ll be playing next year, Chapter 5. Of course, I don’t think that every single thing I talked about is absolutely guaranteed, but there’s certainly nothing in here that I think couldn’t happen. I am really looking forward to the next Newsletters, just to see if we can get any sort of new evidence for Chapter 5 before it comes out. Toby has said that he’s not going to reveal anything about what kind of chapter Chapter 5 is, but I know he won’t be able to resist giving us some amount of teasers. I also think it’s quite possible that as we get close to Chapter 5’s release, Spamton Sweepstakes will erupt again with new pages, so I can’t wait for that. We’ll see if I have to end up pushing this theory even further due to new evidence, but until then; thanks for watching this video! This was certainly a longer one, but I had a lot of fun working on it, so I hope you had a lot of fun watching it. But that’s all from me, and I’ll see you guys in the next video. By the way, my reactions to Chapter 4 are finally uploaded, these ones to my second channel at youtube.com/@goldpro2 Okay bye.