The Curse of Protagonism in Deltarune and Undertale

Kris is much more than the protagonist of Deltarune. They are the heart and soul (no pun intended) of the game, and I think something that is integral to understanding them and the game they're in is comparing and contrasting them with the other two notable humans of Undertale - Frisk and Chara. I've finally written the script I said I would half a year ago!
Timestamps:
Intro (The Curse of Protagonism): 0:00
Frisk and Kris (Still just you, Frisk): 2:38
Chara and Kris (You are a great partner.): 4:55
Us and Chara (I Do Sincerely Quite Like You Two): 9:55
Us and Kris (What are these strings?!): 11:54
Outro (Looks like you're almost at the END): 15:21
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Twitter: vivat_veritas

Music used:
Welcome to the World of Pokemon (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky)
Home (Undertale)
An Ending (Undertale)
Before the Story (Deltarune)
The Dark Truth (Deltarune)
Undella Bay (Pokemon Black and White 2)

[TheSweetSpirit]

I don't think the normal route has to necessitiate that Kris hates the 'player, ' but they certainly don't seem happy about their situation.

[Cruxin]

the big lack of properly analysing kris and this aspect of them in the community is so frustrating to me, since its clearly such a huge theme in the game and something i really really like the potential of. i resonate so hard with Andrew's video and especially that specific bit you opened with. this was just a really refreshing video in that regard.

[carver]

what could be an interesting piece of characterisation for kris is the fact that kris will fight against the soul's influence *regardless of the choices of your game;* which says, to me, that kris doesn't care if we control them for good or bad. kris just hates being *controlled.*

[flyfly]

I think there is one angle on Undertale and Deltarune relation that I don't think I've heard a lot of people discussing. As we know, Deltarune was conceived before Undertale. Some theorist have pointed out that in Delatrune, Toriel's kitchen layout is remarkably similar to the Undertale's Underground layout - fridge for Snowdin, sink for Waterfall, stove for Hotland. A lot of Undertale's visual features start suddenly making a new sort of sense while viewed from this lens - water coming down in the Waterfall, garbage coming down the drain (even Asgore flowers seem to be in the garbage can), red and black features of Hotland being reminiscent of an electrical stovetop, you get the picture. It looks like what the kitchen COULD look in Dark World.

Now, why would it be like that? If we are to remember that, again, Deltarune was conceived before Undertale, I think we can sorta trace Toby's steps. Imagine you are him, in front of this humongous JRPG project, as an inexperienced solo gamedev. Things are looking grim! But what if, instead, you just take ONE Dark World, and expand it to be it's own finished thing, using most of your character cast? You can probably make that! You should, it's never getting off anyhow. As a joke of it being sorta reused material, you are switching the letters of the name around, and call it "Undertale". (also, have you ever noticed just how vague and undefined Undertale's lore about stuff outside of Underground is? about humans-monsters war, human magic, etc? I suspect that this is the cause - ultimately these are excuses for the dangling threads where connective tissue used to be)

Of course, I can't know if it's true, but also man does it feel like it makes a lot of sense!

But what does this conjecture even mean for us? Why am I even going on on this all? Well, under assumption of truthfulness, this is a tool, one we can use to analyse Delatarune with. We can't use parts of Undertale as direct evidence - who knows which parts Toby have changed for this switch, and which would he change again for the new context of Deltarune - but we can use it as thematic evidence quite alright. And it's thins angle that I think gives this analysis of your more strength!

[lavaisdry]

I love the parallels you draw between kindness in Undertale and freedom in Deltarune, and how they're both thing that we can give by not playing the game.

[embrefrosste]

This is a really neat way to compare Undertale and Deltarune in a way that I hadn’t before. Looking at it like this, the thematic notes underscoring the endings of Deltarune seem almost… *obvious.*

In Undertale:
—True Pacifist: You extend universal kindness to literally everyone you meet, and in the process, set them all literally free from physical imprisonment. After this ending, the game outright encourages you to stop playing it.
—Neutral: You do things your own way, and at the end of it all, you are the only one to escape the underground. The ending is satisfying enough to leave you room to put it down and be done with it, but gently encourages you to come back and do better.
—Obliteration: You go out of your way to destroy everyone, and nobody gets to be free. You and Chara are now inseparable, whether they stay with you as you play another game, or you give them your soul to continue playing Undertale.

If we extrapolate this metaphor to Deltarune, then we get:
—Mercy Route: In spite of the choices we don’t have, we extend compassion to Lightners, to Darkners, and to Kris. In the process, everyone is free: the Lightners from their personal troubles, the Darkners from their rulers, and Kris from us and their past. We are possibly even restored of our rightful Vessel, with Kris and company maybe even leaving Hometown to enjoy their newfound personal agency.
—Fight Route: You swiftly solve people’s immediate, practical problems with brute force. Things are changed as a result, but not all that much for the better, as they exchange one prison for another. In the end, you are free from Kris, but Kris is not free from your influence, nor are they free from their past.
—Weird Route: You go out of your way to steal everyone’s agency, controlling everyone you can and killing anyone you can’t. In the end, you leave a permanent scar on the story that even saving and loading can’t fix, either damaging Kris in some way, or maybe even permanently destroying the Vessel such that you no longer have any means with which to leave Kris alone in the Mercy ending.

This is all speculation, obviously, but if Deltarune is meant to be a more intimate and psychologically-driven story, as opposed to Undertale being more straightforwardly and impersonally positive, then I imagine it will play out a lot like that. Maybe this conflicts with Toby’s whole thing about there only being One(TM) Ending(???) but I imagine that it’s probably something along the lines of “the story doesn’t technically ‘end’ if you don’t leave it alone after doing a mercy run.”

[icnic]

5:23
“Adoptive child of Asriel and Asgore.”

[tarvoc]

13:10 - "Others did the Snowgrave route, so clearly, we're not all angels." - No, but Noelle definitely is. 😏

[zeo]

13:50
I love this point.
The only way to not hurt the characters of a game is to not play it.

Toby may hate his early, , Earthbound hack" phase but the point there was the same.
The only, ,real" choice you can make in a video game is to stop playing.

[BetterDayz]

As someone who *heavily* relates to Kris as a character, emotionally, and my sister who relates to Noelle, having done the Snowgrave route truly *b l a s t e d* me morally with some lessons that I needed to learn, and it was all thanks to the moral and philosophical ramifications of the plot of these two games. I appreciate your analases, and you've definitely gained a new sub for covering the topic about this game nobody else seems to be covering!..

[WatchThisSpace]

On the subject of Frisk, Chara and the player; the idea of Chara representing the player in this dynamic never sat right with me. Surely, it would be more accurate to say that Flowey uses Chara as a way of conceptualising the player, unaware of the actual
distinction between the two and Frisk represents the player, at least from the moment we enter the underground to the moment we go through the barrier. I think a good chunk of the No Mercy route (and the other routes to a much lesser extent) seems to be designed with us, the player, thinking we are Chara and then the sudden realisation we're not at the end with the 'real' Chara appearing.

[ultra]

It's worth noting that the save file we use un undertale is actually _Chara's_ file, file0 it has their name on it and everything. Frisk _does_ have their own file though; at certain points the game autosaves to file9

On another topic, I really don't get the sense that Kris is _that_ bothered by the player's influence (outside of snowgrave/weird route). I have the impression of them as someone who's not confident in their ability to connect with people, and i think we're helping them with that in an odd way.

Honestly I'm more concerned with Ralsei's seeming disregard for Kris's feelings. Ralsei seems to be very much aware that we're controlling Kris, and on several occasions he ignores the signs that Kris disagrees with a dialogue choice by taking it at face value despite the strained way they say it. (the clearest examples of this are for saying "gaming is my life" just before the first punch-out minigame, and saying "yes" when asked if they're ok just after the spamton fight)

[TulipsinAntartica]

I disagree that the game is trying to create the idea that you should not play the game, because, if you do not play the game, all you are doing, is leaving everyone in a stasis of perpetual misery. If you never play Undertale, the monsters will stay forever, confined, and overcrowded, hoping for freedom that will never come. If you play the game however, you can free them, and end their misery.

All the game argues, is that you should not play again after making everyone happy, because otherwise you'll leave everyone in a state of misery again, when you can just leave them happy.

And with Deltarune, if we do not play the game, Susie will stay a lonely kid with likely serious home abuse issues, Noelle will be anxious and fearful, unable to stand up for anyone, Ralsei will never have a friend, the Spade king and its inhabitants will remain obssesed with revenge, and Kris if I am interpreting correctly with their background, will remain lonely, and without self-worth. And with a less optimistic interpretation of a stasis existing, the story will go on, and the world will eventually get covered in Darkness, as no one will be there, capable of creating a new future.

And something that is also very important, we did not choose to control Kris in the first place. We were suposed to have a vessel, someone who would inheret our will and interact with the world, but we were instead forced to control Kris. If Kris does not want this situation, well, we didn't either.

I am also extremely skeptical with the idea that Kris, does not want any of it or hates us because... well. They did not wake up panicking and resisting us. They probably think we can do something for them that they can't do alone, maybe for a miriad of reasons, but I think that it involves their lack of self worth.

[StyleSnivy]

the fact that Kris has the same skin color and hair color, and the same general facial expression. I feel like the idea that this is a more grown Frisk makes most sense. The main difference physically is the shirt, which is the same as charas. But this is probably because they are being raised by the dreamers who bought the same shirt for them and they did for chara in undertale. It also could give more context for controlling frisk in undertale. Despite this i dont think it is frisk. Just that if Kris is any character from undertale I would say frisk.

[SpamtonSlapper]

Kris is in canon probably equivalent to Undertale's Toy Knife kid, they like knives so much they fell into the underground with a toy knife (Chara gets this knife attribute a lot but they did not fall into the underground with a knife, that was a gift for gardening) and their blue in the Dark World is the same exact shade of cyan as the patient soul. Seriously if you color picker the Cyan Soul & Kris' Skintone from the dark world, it is exactly the same color. [Interestingly, neither of Susie's purples line up with the Purple Perseverance Soul. But she's a monster and we don't know her soul color if it's even not just Monster White, so I'm not sure what to think about that] The reason we see so many similarities between UT and DR, is that The Red Soul [the narrator] knows about Undertale. We know they're NOT Chara because they do not care about plants like the Cactus inside of Kris' house. Therefore: THE RED SOUL IS *FRISK DELTARUNE* (Or literally any red souled human [except those who like plants] who could feasibly know about Undertale, like an assistant to Gaster or whoever you think managed to connect us to Frisk's soul in Undertale. But my mildly-cracked theory is that it's Frisk)

Also uh, really good video! You caring about the exact opposite part of the lore from me made this a really interesting watch! I kind of just blurted that paragraph above me out on reaction to the intro about Kris being neither Frisk or Chara lol.

[ShadowSkryba]

I feel like we just know way too little about any of the humans. But I might as well throw in my cent...
Kris is probably some alternative Frisk (name and appearance), who led a life very similiar to Chara (I have a headcanon that their love for chocolate is related to being first taken in by the Dreemurrs, for example), but from a meta-narrative point of view that is irrelevant and they represent something else entirely.

[LegendofLink]

This is a fantastic video, but your point about the "morality" of controlling Kris made me recall something rather important.

Remember how exactly we, the player, got involved, at least within the canon of the narrative. We didn't just pick Kris out of our box of potential protagonists and decide to replace their soul. We were consensually participating in a "survey program, " only to be abducted and placed in control of Kris against our will. We are no more culpable for the situation with Kris than Kris is for our actions, at least as far as the my SURVEY_PROGRAM.exe save file circa 2018 is concerned. (Ominous license agreements that don't exist in the final game notwithstanding...)

However, we *are* culpable for the choice of abandoning the game. There is a huge lack of certainty that abandoning Kris gives them the same freedom to live their life as leaving a complete True Pacifist Undertale save file alone does for Frisk. Are they left with a pilotless Soul, stuck in place? Dying from a lack of Soul altogether? Trapped in the frozen time of a suspended save file? Perfectly fine? We don't really know, and because of that I'd say that there may actually be a moral argument to be made for seeing this through, to try and make damn sure that Kris gets to live their own life and that we aren't simply leaving them to a grim fate.

[Nightout]

Kris could just be kris they dont have to have any relationship to chara or frisk in any way.

[phxcake]

god videos like these really want me to get into themeing and narrative devices more. undertale and deltarune are so well written and with the way they play with the player on a thematic level and not just a literal level is really cool. its also really nice to see videos like this amongst theory videos and arguments on which role a character plays in the story (stuff like is kris the knight, is ralsei evil, stuff like that). its good to discuss things like that but it feels almost overlooked to analyze just. Narrative Conventions. (also what Cruxin said in a comment its really nice to see an analysis of kris here too). thanks

[Beeswarmplayer]

Tbh Kris reminds me a lot of Gregory (from fnaf) they look like their previous game counterparts, however, they have small differences. I believe that Kris (appearance only) may be a reference to Frisk and Chara just like I believe Gregory is a reference to the Crying Child