Making the choice to fight or befriend

Right off the bat, I want to say this is a hard game to talk about.

There’s a lot of reasons for that, some of which I don’t need to go into, but it is a very raw and emotional video game about serious topics hidden behind the appearance of cute animation and a story about friendship.

I cried at the end.

This week, I played the second chapter of a game called “Deltarune” by indie game developer Toby Fox. Chapter one came out three years ago and I watched people play it, but I never did myself until I saw that chapter two came out.

Toby Fox’s other game, “Undertale” is a whole other complicated topic, but it’s all about how the choices you make matter and have consequences.

In “Deltarune,” your choices don’t matter.

You play as Kris, who is the only human in a world of monsters. Kris was adopted by Asgore and Toriel Dreemur, who are goat people, and became the younger sibling to Asriel. In the game, Asriel just left for college and Kris isn’t doing so well.

Kris continually gets offered a choice and then the choice is taken away from them. Our other main character Susie asks questions and then keeps talking before you can answer, she tells Kris to lead the way before getting annoyed that they walk slow and taking over, and in school at the beginning Kris can’t choose a project partner.

What is this game if it isn’t about choices?

It’s Kris opening up about what they’re going through and asking Susie, and now other classmates in chapter two, for help.

Kris shows Susie a world, one where they used to go with Asriel, in an unused classroom at school. At first she resists, but eventually she gets into and understands what they’re trying to communicate.

I’m not sure I fully have an explanation for what exactly Kris is trying to communicate, but ultimately I don’t think it matters. They’re opening up to somebody.

Chapter one ends with Kris waking up in the middle of the night, rips out their heart and throws it in a cage before brandishing a knife.

They’re struggling with mental health and emotional connections.

There’s a whole YouTube analysis by the Game Theorists channel talking about how Kris shows all the signs of adolescent Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which chapter two builds on.

While that explanation makes sense if you dig into the science, I think the main point isn’t a specific mental illness.

That video’s producer has PTSD and it makes sense he would project that onto Kris based on what we see. I have depression and anxiety issues (along with probably some other unidentified conditions) and I can relate to Kris.

I get wanting to lock yourself, or at least your emotions, away in a cage.

There’s dialog about Kris putting ketchup on their arm to look like blood. I used to draw lines on my arms in red ink.

Kris is a blank slate of a character. We get details of their life, but a lot of them are fairly common experiences; parental divorce, a sibling going off to college and struggling to belong in society because of something you can’t control.

You might have noticed I’m using they/them pronouns for Kris. In the game, Kris uses they/them pronouns, but I think that serves as another way of being a blank slate. You can view Kris as male, female or another gender.

I project Kris as male because I’m male. It’s another avenue to project yourself onto Kris.

Just like the details of the information we have about Kris, their pronoun doesn’t matter. We still project ourselves onto Kris. We can see ourselves in Kris.

That’s the point.

There’s other messages in the game about bullying, coming to terms with your emotions and accepting yourself.

However, those tend to be chapter specific messages — which makes sense when each chapter is basically its own game.

The message I see coming through between the chapters is explaining that it’s OK to be struggling, needing help and not knowing how.

Chapter two’s ending shows Susie walking Kris home, Toriel inviting her in to make pie and ultimately sleep over. We see Kris lock their heart, or soul, under the bathroom sink and again later between the couch cushions.

They’re ashamed of needing help and trying to escape those feelings.

Why don’t your choices matter? Because we don’t choose to have a mental illness or the consequences of it. We don’t choose to struggle with it. We don’t choose how we feel.

While our choices may not matter in the game, we can still choose whether to fight or befriend an opponent. The ending is the same, it doesn’t change anything, so it doesn’t matter. But that is still a choice we make.

We don’t choose to have a mental illness, but we don’t have to let it control our actions. They’re separate.

Our actions may not matter either, but we still decide who we are.

Michael Shine is a contributing writer for the Daily American Republic.