Okay I watched this video over the course of a few days and I may have missed this, but while I absolutely love this analysis and theorization and agree with so much of it, I don't know if I can accept the role of the Angel being some omnipotent being who Gaster is fighting against, when Noelle is forshadowed so much to be the angel, and I dont know how that can work with the theory. Sorry if I missed when this was addressed, but I can't 100% accept this theory because of this. If this was addressed please tell me.

Took me about a week to finish watching this and i was absolutely enraptured the entire time. have already shared this with like 5 people and talk at length about it to anyone who will listen. to me this is on the level of narrachara in terms of "recontextualizing the entire game in a way that makes me enjoy it significantly more" and its also just an extremely entertaining and artistically bold video; "is what i WOULDVE said if i was a PUSSY" is some of the most iconic shit on earth. 800/10; easily exceeded my lofty expectations

as my mom passed by me, i pause your vid and then she commented on your appearance, calling you: "Betty from Scooby Doo" in spanish. I found that comment amusing.

5:33:50 im surprised you didnt bring up the filename mystery_man (really great trilogy! im just about to finish it up, your effort is much appreciated)

yesss.keep headcqnoning and assuming shit and claiming its the most likely thing!!

Holy Deltarune!!!

I speculate about the differences in the three save slots indicating that there are differences in the lives led by the characters up to that point in a save slot, even though they may be miniscule and irrelevant to the story of us starting to control Kris spontaneously one day, along with some major events like the disappearance of December Holiday, or the splitting up of the Dreemurrs.

omg I thoguht you died or smthn I didn't even notice you put this out finally.

i took my sweet-ass time watching this video, but god DAMN am i glad i finally pushed through and finished it. this is the best piece of deltarune analysis i've seen yet, hands down. everything about it -- your analysis of the lore, the narrative, the themes, even the stuff at the end about your experience with undertale and deltarune -- really just resonates with me. i don't really have anything intelligent or insightful to say, and if i did, someone else has probably already said it better, so i'll just leave you with this: thank you for making this series. i've watched it from the start, and seeing it unfold has inspired me to maybe do something like it for myself one day. except probably not as long. editing a 10-hour series does NOT sound fun lmao. i look forward to whatever you do next; whatever it is i'm sure it'll be excellent :)

the sprites change at 4:37:11 - 4:37:16, is this the secret?

2:33:42

Me after rewatching part 1 and 2 while waiting for 3 only to immediately see 3 get posted and its 6 and a half hours: Aw sheet, here we go again Seriously, this video was worth the wait and exceeded my expectations exponentially. Well done 100/10. Take a bow and a VERY long break for your own mental health. Thanks you

I think that when talking about the Angel in deltarune, it's important to remember what the angel represented in undertale. Gerson says there's a legend that an angel will descend upon the underground, and the underground will go empty - with the caveat that people are wondering if it will be an angel of life, allowing everyone to escape to the surface, or an angel of death (genocide route). In my opinion, this strongly suggests that the "Angel" is meant to represent the Player - Sure, frisk is the one who falls into the underground, but it's ultimately the player's choices and actions that determine the nature of the angel - one of life or one of death. (This also would fit in with the idea of an angel being some otherworldly higher power - What is the player but such a power?) Taking this into account with deltarune, I think it suggests less that gaster and the angel are diametrically opposed (as cool as that would be), and more that "banishing the angel's heaven" refers to the lightners and darkners banishing the player from having influence over their worlds. In other words, the game's ending would literally be the player being shut out of the fictional world by the fictional characters inhabiting it. IDK if this is what will happen, but its certainly interesting to think about!

This entire video took me on a ride, heck, I'm not even finished watching it yet and I'm still willing to make it to the end regardless. From start to finish, I'm in awe how each part just kept layering my perspective on deltarune's possible narrative and just how fun it was to actually watch the whole thing. Molly, you've made a wonderful piece of media, and I dearly hope you award yourself for the effort you've poured into this. I'm gonna go back to listening to the rest of the closing statements, and then I'll proceed to go on that little E. Hunt that was mentioned in the intermission. Be like your name and reach for the stars! Sincerely, A Fan of yours

DETERMINATION-DETERMINISM.Is so OBVIOUS about what is DT and UT.How nobody talking about it?If you know DETERMINISM,you already KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT THESE GAMES.Player is GOD aka Free will.Character are puppets and GAME is just THEATER.Why?Why it exist?FOUR GOD'S ENTERTAINMENT.I know,I broke MATRIX code.Is just so funny to me that most OBVIOUD message of these games nobody notice XD

If Kris and Susie did know each other early on (as friends), the potential "falling out" could have simply been the fact that the Dreemurr family moved away, leaving Susie without her only friend until the events of the game.

Maybe, just maybe... Toby saying that's just one ending, means that you will get a lot of final scenes, but the true one to the timeline will be just one. One right, correct, canon ending.

“HOLY DELTARUNE!” and also my most crack theory on who I think the Knight is that it’s the Vessel we made

You mad genius, this is glorious! I’ve been working through it piece by piece since it came out and it’s so great. Enjoy your break, you have more than earned it!

This feels more like presentation of nerd who loves doing homeworks as some game theorie...I am impressed XD

i think kris is the second voice from the goner maker, lines up with what we know about him and how he handles the soul

Have you played Slay The Princess? Not going to drop spoilers but I recently got around to playing it and couldn’t help seeing parallels between it and this theory (particularly between Gaster and The Narrator). Sorry if this was referenced in the video and I missed it. Watched it a couple weeks ago so I honestly don’t remember everything. Just finished the game and it reminded me of this. *If* you haven’t played it, it tackles some similar themes so it might be interesting to check out.

There's a part of me that views the device theory as something that might become almost cyclical. Like, fiction creating fiction creating fiction what's so say someone won't be created within the Deltarune experiment who does the exact same thing that Gaster did somewhere down the line and hand someone in the light, the dark or even darker than dark a device that similarly lets them exert their control over another world they see as a "Light World". What if Kris becomes in control of their own device given to them by someone like Lancer?

Did Molly get the actual IRL Toby Fox to voice himself at 6 hours in?..

This was an absolutely amazing video & series, man it took me several days to watch this, but I loved it, can't wait to see what's next - :)

Sooooo...Gaster is a fanboy who isn't happy with the canon so is trying to make his fanfiction real. Hell yeah.

Fuckin hell the bit at 4:14:37 genuinely jumpscared me real bad, I'm watching this on my second monitor at 2 am and I nearly pissed myself lmao

OH GOD FRUMS JUMPSCARE

Holy Deltarune!

Is Dess trapped in a dark world inside a dark world, of which the main dark world got closed before she got out of the dark workd inside it?

>6.5 hours ...oh god, I knew it'd be long, but not like this

Damn now I’m obsessed with deltarune again

The thing I find the most fascinating about this theory is it's interpretation of Gaster, the way he still parallels the player and is Deltarune's Flowey, while still being different from Flowey in key ways. WARNING: this is a really long comment and I also talk about like two other things here. A player goes into a game not knowing anything about it. Really, how much the game and it's characters entertain them is what keeps them wanting to play it more. But a player can just play a different game. That's why the player falling in love with the characters and getting more and more attached to the game's world is what drives them to want to see everything from the game. With Flowey, getting more and more detached from the world is what allows him to "play Undertale" in a more and more violent way, but with the player, it's the opposite. For Flowey, the game is reality itself. From his perspective, he's being a murderer inside of his real world, because Flowey is an in universe character. So being psychopathic makes sense for him. He's an in universe mirror image of a player. Someone who acts like a player, but for purely in universe reasons. He is what an in universe character has to be in order to act like a player. But because he's in universe, Flowey's motivations are completely different from the actual player. Someone who acts the way they do because they're attached to the world. This is what I find so fascinating about this theory's version of Gaster. He is a mirror image of the player, with the added bonus of also inhabiting a higher reality than the world he obsesses over, just like the player. Despite this making him less connected to whatever world he chooses to obsess over than someone like Flowey, it ironically is the exact thing that lets him care about that world so so much. This isn't the end of the comment though. There's two more things I want to bring up. First is Test Run Theory. Test run theory basically says that before inviting the player to the world of Deltarune, Gaster tried possessing Kris himself, to make sure everything works just right. Kris of course notices this, and during the time they're not possessed, tries to find a way to regain control whenever they are possessed. That is when they learn how to remove their soul, and that doing so will free them of their posession. Then they setup the bird cage to keep the soul somewhere safe. The other thing I want to mention is that this is the first time I see a theory go this deep into the metanarrative specifically. Before Device Theory, there was Oblivion Theory (if you don't know what that is, look for someone named wandydoodles on Twitter and click the Google Doc in his pinned tweet. It's an AMAZING read and I highly recommend everyone to check it out). It goes into the metanarrative, but mostly to analyze what the metanarrative is about. As in, what the message here is. As opposed to this theory, which takes a much deeper dive into all the meta stuff regarding Deltarune, but more so for the point of just knowing about everything, rather than making a cohesive theory about what exactly the game is about and how it will end. However, through this analysis I gained a higher awareness of just how incredibly meta this game really is. Like, everything is diegetic here. For example, you mentioned that cutscenes are diegetic, and how characters can initiate cutscenes to fight against the player's control. Well, what if skipping cutscenes and/or moving during them was also diegetic? Which it to some extent already is! In the weird route, during the scene where Noelle starts to realize that the dark world was real, you can press Down to move towards Noelle. This gives makes her say unique dialogue. This IS unintended player movement during a cutscene being made diegetic. I just think this is really interesting and I can only wonder where this will go from here. Will the game acknowledge if you did something that should be impossible without cheats, save file edits, or insane glitches, like having the chapter 2 Egg on the weird route?

ok, but do you like mcdonalds?

5:36:09 I'd argue that most good works of art, Undertale, Deltarune, etc, don't have one singular 'point.' They are an exploration of many ideas and concepts. "Your choices don't matter" is, I'd argue, the (Inverse) Thesis Statement of Deltarune, the same way "In this world, it's kill or be killed" is the (Inverse) Thesis Statement of Undertale. But both games have a heck of a lot more to say than that. Flowey and Alphy's obsession to the objects of their interests being encapsulated by the statement "You are filled with a perverted sentimentality." Asgore's story about how a kind hearted person could be driven to commit heinous unforgivable acts of murder (of children no less). San's defeatism despite his incredible skill, contrasted with Papyrus's endless optimism in the face of continuous rejection... All of these are fascinating, thought provoking moments, that create dozens of 'points' and hold vast swaths of meaning. To me, the questions these stories provoke is more interesting than any singular thesis statement. But also, even if there were a 'point,' being able to guess at it so early in the tale would make the rest of the story redundant, no? 6:00:00 Asriel, as Flowey, did a lot of awful things. But in this moment you realize he was motivated by... love. He doesn't want the game to end. He doesn't want to say goodbye to you. He doesn't want to be alone. And the feeling is mutual for a lot of us, in spite of everything, all the awful things he did, all the cruelty, betrayal, mockery, we still care deeply about Asriel Dreemur and feel bad about his fate. And there's something beautiful about love that persists like that, in spite of everything. It can give us hope, that even if we think we're garbage, someone somewhere might still be capable of loving us, and seeing our value despite the flaws. 6:08:05 I warned you about stairs. I told you dawg. 6:17:00 D'aw! No problem. Heh.... mind if I take a turn and have my midlife crisis for a bit? Not too long, I swear! (Also thank you for patiently dealing with my eccentricities, I can be a bit of a mess and I'm so grateful to have an audio-editor who's prepared to deal with that). Thanks for giving me something mind blowing to listen to while I move boxes. (Although I must say, those audio jumpscares are much scarier when you have no eyes on the video)

So, random question but does Spamton's dialogue change from selecting Friends in his shop after seeing IMAGE_FRIEND? That couldn't have something related to freedom and control and someone Spamton knows somehow right?

Dear Molly The Video Documentary you have produced is incredibly well made, i do have to ask it of you, why would you make a 6 hour long video about a silly eletronic game that isn't even 40% released? Your pal, ______

You should record or stream your first gameplay of the next chapters, your humor seens to be very funny! Also i didn't know you edited for HalfBreadChaos, explained why you're both my favorite

4:04:14

I always figured the ‘strings’ attached to the NEO body were power cables, literally the thing Spamton conceptualized as holding him back were the only thing making it possible for him to use his new body.

this reminds me of another theory i saw, in chapter 1, there is a room with a thing in the middle and if you circle around it the room gets darker yet darker until the only things you can see are kris and scarlet forest tree looking NPC, theory states that if you make a dark world in the dark world it would create a darker world, darker than dark, more fictional than fiction, and in such darker world random inanimate objects from the dark world get turned into people and landscapes just like inanimate objects in the light world

(* Listens to snippets of this as I deal with real world stuff. *) OH! Suddenly all the pieces are fitting together. This feels like the moment someone explained to me that 'GALLERY" was titled such, because it's playing whenever the villains are on screen. It's a "rogue's gallery." Ooh, I'm only at the 54 minute mark, I hope there's still stuff for me to discuss that you somehow don't cover in the remaining.... uhhhh five hours, lol. I bet there are though! This will be great to build off of!

That random Ishmael on Noelle transition screen gave me whiplash

i just had a brainwave, what if when spamton says [Heaven] he isnt talking about the light world or any specific person but rather the program layer?

Just wanted to say that "freaky" has six letters

You … You … YOU SCP-096ed me how how dare you

i literally said "this is some scp pataphysics ass shit" right before the scp logo popped up

Watching this and rewatching Andrew Cunningham's video on the third entity made me realize something: There doesn't need to be a third entity to explain Kris opening a dark fountain after the weird route - in fact, they may be more justified in doing so. We know that Kris doesn't like other humans, and I bet they don't like being one themself, because the birdcage is already in their room at the start of chapter 1 - this implies that they've been ripping their soul out of their body for far longer than we've been in the picture. We also know they're interested in the occult, likely to summon a demon. The only demon we've encountered in the duology is Chara, at the end of the genocide route in UT. If you ask Chara to bring the world back they say they'll do it in exchange for... your soul. What better way to get rid of your humanity than to let a demon take it away? The soul is the "culmination of your very being", after all. We force Kris to walk around town and talk to everybody, being nice and making small talk in the normal route. This is already going against what Kris would normally do, since they seem pretty antisocial and prefer to quietly hang out with a tight circle of friends. Imagine how they feel, then, in the weird route. I think Kris opened that fountain because it's the closest they've ever come to REAL, certifiable magic. And maybe there's something in there that can take their soul away, so they can finally be free from their humanity, and by extension the recent parasite that seems to have taken over their soul.

the idea that the weird route is an allusion to potentially game-breaking glitches that were never intended reminds me of the girl in skies forever blue, who breaks the cycle of never being able to confess to her in game love interest only by breaking apart the game’s code and ending up stuck in its glitches. this contrasts with undertale, whose plot goes out of its way to account for all of your easter eggs, pointless neutral endings, and even a ethically-dubious creepy route.

I can't help feeling like you might be able to send your save backwards through chapters. The way the save and chapter completion data works to me just seems really weird. With the way Seam says the next secret boss is impossible that might be case when limited to CH3 but in CH4 onward there might be a solution or item that you need to take back to the fight. Granted this is just wild spectulation, but I think that could solidify the idea of the game only having one ending. Doing weird routes, optional bosses and secret digging to find new events and stories that need to be told to get whats needed to even see the ending in the first place.