Toby Fox's Genius Approach to Final Bosses | Boss Battle Breakdown

Toby Fox has made fantastic final boss fights in Undertale and Deltarune [or Undertale 2]. How does he design a final boss battle? By concluding themes, the Chaos King and Sans fights become the best battles in both games and serve as perfect cohesion to the games' concepts. Here's how his approach is so genius to boss battle design in this episode of Boss Battle Breakdown!

Footage Used:

Music Used:
- "Snowy" / Undertale [0:00]
- "Ruins" / Undertale [1:49]
- "Hip Shop" / Deltarune [2:56]
- "Checker Dance" / Deltarune [5:55]
- "Field of Hopes and Dreams" / Deltarune [6:38]

-OTHER LINKS-

#undertale #undertale2 #deltarune

[KittyKatty]

Another major element that echoes your lack of choice, is how you *CAN'T* trully Spare Spade King.

Sparing an enemy isn't just not killing them, it's *making them want to stop fighting*.

No matter what you do, King will always kneel over, Ralsei will always heal him, and he will *ALWAYS backstab all of you*.

Remember when you had the choice of betrayal killing someone who honestly wanted to Spare YOU?

Now, HE is the one with that choice. And like in Undertale, his betrayal attack deals catastrophic damage to all of you.

"What will you do, if you encounter a relentless killer?"-Flowey

At the end, everyone acts independent of you. Your choices DO matter for truly saving the kingdom from a corrupt King, but...LANCER got everyone to overthrow the king, not you.

Same for Susie getting Ralsei to pacify King. They decided that with no input from you.

Everyone *BUT* you can effect the story in key ways, so in a way, your choices can't change fate.
They can only change how others might act, that might change fate.

[ari_dexel]

In DELTARUNE there’s only one fight that gives you any choice, Jevil, either fighting or tiring gives you a different item each, he’s the only one that gives you that choice because his room is the only free place in the game

[deltaphant_]

My favourite party member is obviously candy, it's such an emotional moment when it joins the party.

[actual_mel]

I think the "your choices don't matter", thing is not for the player, but for Kris. I mean, look at how their family is doing. Asriel left, their parents divorced, it doesn't look like he has the fame asriel had (he was like the best of the best) and all the events he saw with his family were the decisions of other people, not him.

[billcipher]

I like how the only one who believes in your choice is Ralsei. He thinks 'Kris choices matter and tells them that how they treat others makes all the difference. And eventually that turns out to be true, because the best possible ending happens based on how you treat others.

Personally, i see "Your choices don't matter" as the "Kill or be killed" of Deltarune, in that it is something you overcome rather than the theme of the game.
Undertale's genocide route ends with you having no more control over your choices and destroying the world anyway, and i think Deltarune will end up being about how your choices CAN matter but you are more a kid on an adventure than a time god playing with toys.

[brunolinares]

For me, the fight against King reminds me more to the fight against Asgore in Neutral Route. Both characters are leaders to its people, defeating you is their duty to ensure the wellbeing of their people, only that Asgore is a peaceful king and King is a tyrant. They both mess up with the control of the player: Asgore destroys the Spare button and King controls the box. At the end of the battle, no matter what, the result doesn't change: Asgore gets killed either by you or Flowey, King doesn't change its ways and gets either pacified or overthrown.

[NintendYoshiSplatoon]

If you remember the demo of Undertale, it ended after the first boss. Chaos King is actually the first boss, or else the game would be extremely short. If you think about it, Susie even mentions going to the dark realm again the next day.

[TheNomad]

Who started calling him "Chaos King"? He's not referred to as such by ANYONE in the game. The game only calls him "King" or "father"/"dad" (Lancer).

[thermitefe]

I feel like the Jevil fight gives you, by contrast, a lot more choice than the Spade King. there are a whole bunch of ways you can avoid his attacks - the first attack lets you weave wherever you want, the ring around can be solved by ringing around, or by hugging a wall, the devilsknife attack is open ended, and so on.
The act commands that you are given also help represent the open-endedness of the Jevil fight. You can choose to use either pirouette or Hypnosis to wear him down, but neither is fundamentally better than the other.
I think that the open feel of the Jevil fight is there for two reasons. One is that it demonstrates true chaos - one where anything can happen, which Jevil keeps mentioning. The other relates to something mentioned in Game Theory's video - Jevil represents imagination, which is very open ended.

[aarcade]

Seeing those clips side by side makes me realize how much more cinematic and characterised deltarune is then undertale ever was.

[Obi-Wan_Kenobi]

I could never do the genocide run in Undertale. When I watch playthroughs of the Sans boss fight on YouTube, I am always on San's side and dearly wish there was a way for him to win. I never thought a video game would ever make me want an npc to beat the protagonist but here we are.

[pyrrhickong]

Hrm, I can definitely see where the king fight is coming from, and that is rather clever. I do think that some of sans' patterns can only be survived in one particular way - the one where you're bouncing on a platform scrolling from left to right, for instance - but I do enjoy the flexibility in sans' patterns and the feeling of inevitability the fight brings out. Likewise, I DO feel that choice impacts the Chaos King fight, if only based on the outcome of "did you let Susie accidentally kill somebody/did you kill people" and HOW the NPC's help you overcome him post-game, whether it be through pacification or Lancer busting in and going HEY GUESS WHAT I'M KING ALL THESE KIDS DIG IT AND ALSO YOU. I mean, ultimately the ending cutscene makes even that bit of choice ring hollow, but I do see it as your last opportunity to stick to the choices you'd made through the game if you went pure pacifism or aggressive or just weren't successful in controlling your friends.

Then again, it's only Act 1, so it could mean nothing anyway. Good stuff either way, really dig the analysis of claustrophobia in the Chaos King part!

[namelastname]

While Sans is definitely the hardest fight in Undertale, I feel like hes not the final boss. The hard conditions you need to meet to get to him, and his difficulty compared to the rest of the game, make him more like a Bonus Boss in my eyes, especially since he's less cinematic and interesting than Flowey and Asriel. You can also draw a parallel between him and Jevil, in a way. They're both aware of the game they're in to a degree- but while Sans tries his hardest to convince you to stop the Genocide route- because you have a choice, because you can reset all the horrible things you've done, Jevil encourages you to go ahead and take him on. It's a fun battle, much fairer than Sans, though not much easier, and that's the point. Your choices don't matter, so why not go and have some fun while playing?

[LunaMinuna]

For the final boss in Delta Rune, I only saw 2 endings. The first one is where you be nice to everyone and talk to the King until the end of the fight where Lancer comes in to save you. The second one is where Chaos King is about to kill Susie but if you use the Sleep spell In he battle he gets sleepy and then you survive but the ending is still the same it’s just that it’s ends up different.

[jason]

What I find ironic is that, for all the talk about how your choices don't matter, they kind of do in the end. If you've been pacifistic enough, the Darkners will gather up to save you from the Spade King and overthrow him. On the other hand, if you've been agressive enough, Ralsei will just put him to sleep, letting the party escape. The mob will still come, but they're mainly chasing after you and thus you must leave before they arrive. I'm not sure if they'll do anything with the King after that but considering they absolutely fear him and you didn't do anything to help them, I'd say it's quite likely that they'll just leave him be.

[LuckiSir]

Its something that I noticed with those boxes facing Sans how they change to give the player a chance to avoid attacks, and in Delta Rune with the Chaos King moving the box to his advantage. Makes me think on how we essentially broke the rule to kill Sans.

I also noticed how when fighting Sans and hitting him he dodges and gets tired, with him getting weared down. Whereas when you damage the Chaos King he remains steadfast and keeps controlling the pace until he gets tired, after that he baits Ralsei. It really supports the idea in your vid.
In any case was a nice analysis video! :D

[keebs]

Alright, finished the vid. Didn’t even realize how heavily the King fight echoed the theme of choice (or lack thereof, rather). I knew well enough about Sans and the themes of his fight with how Undertale-obsessed I was a few years back, but haven’t really had as much time to look into DeltaRune. Really appreciate this vid. Good as always!

[gooseflinger]

This analysis was great! I didn't even think about the whole lack of choice thing in the final boss of Deltarune contrasting with the choice you have in the Sans fight.
Great video, the entire opposites to the two games and the choices available also plays into the fact that Deltarune is a mixed up Undertale. They have similarities, but when you take a closer look, they're strikingly different.

[lindenbree]

Just want to say I really appreciate you responding to comments and facilitating discussion! I often make giant comments on topics like this but it's super rare for the uploader to respond.
... Unfortunately I don't really have any deep thoughts on this topic at the moment to share but still, letting you know I love that you respond to your comments! And I like the video too! It didn't occur to me how the King moving your box around strictly controls your options, or, choices

[sunsetsynth]

For sure choice is a huge theme in Undertale’s no mercy route, but even within that route there are hints that you were never really in control to begin with.
Advancing towards Papyrus while he’s explaining a puzzle, destroying Flowey, attacking Sans again to deal the killing blow, and Chara’s flat-out declaration of SINCE WHEN WERE YOU THE ONE IN CONTROL? come to mind as examples where the player’s power to choose are questioned and completely overridden by the game. I wonder if a similar mirror will happen in Deltarune, where choices apparently don’t matter but ultimately will have some subtle impact in future chapters. I wouldn’t be surprised if future chapters remembered what players did on the previous one.