Deltarune Chapter 2's chilling alternate route has changed how I think about playing video games

Things are never what they seem with Toby Fox. The developer of Undertale and Deltarune has never shied away from pulling a fast one on his audience and if Deltarune Chapter 2 is any indication, he isn’t stopping now.

Last Friday’s release of Deltarune Chapter 2 came as a surprise to many. Mere days after Undertale‘s sixth anniversary, the second chapter of Fox’s latest project dropped to the delight of fans. Though not a sequel or a prequel — that we know of anyway — Deltarune features characters, gameplay mechanics, and concepts familiar to fans of the original.

While Fox is vague about how the two games relate to one another, Deltarune is a spiritual successor to Undertale and will thus garner comparisons. Undertale drew fans in with its charming characters, a stellar soundtrack, and its clever subversion of typical RPG tropes. In Fox’s two chapters of Deltarune since, the game has built upon Undertale’s foundation masterfully, from the greater detailed sprite work to the evolution of the bullet-hell turn-based combat system.

And yet, having finished Deltarune Chapter 2 myself now, it’s not the music or the jokes or the visuals that have stuck with me the most. It’s something… a lot more complicated than that.

Note: Spoilers ahead for Deltarune Chapter 2.

Much like Undertale before it, Deltarune Chapter 2 features an alternate route based on choices you make. Though it doesn’t change the ending like Undertale‘s “no mercy” route — where you kill every character you get into combat with — Deltarune‘s alternate route is just as devastating… with a much lower body count.

The alternate route — now dubbed the “Snowgrave Route” unofficially — was found by fans of the game and spread through Twitter as others began to find this path for themselves. In Deltarune, you the player control protagonist Kris and their friends in battle to act, use magic, heal, converse with or spare your foe, most often in a non-violent manner to end the encounter.

The Snowgrave Route takes this gameplay loop to horrifying ends. It sees Kris manipulate and force new party member Noelle to freeze every foe in your path, leading her to kill mutual classmate Berdly by encasing them in a fatal all-out ice attack called Snowgrave. Given Deltarune‘s previous lack of a murder-filled ending, the Snowgrave Route came as a complete shock to many as you subject these characters to sheer horror by your own hand.

undertale no mercy made me feel horrified and weirded out. deltarune snowgrave made me feel vile and completely at fault

— wisteria | 40 days (@wiisterian) September 19, 2021

Taking the plot implications of this route aside — of which there are many! — to me the most chilling and upsetting part of the Snowgrave Route is what the text is saying about us as players of video games.

Undertale is full of commentary on video game completionism, even going so far as to call out fans who wanted to experience the no mercy route without playing it themselves and getting their hands dirty. The game also bills itself as one of player choice, where you decide how to shape the world and your relationship to the characters.

Meanwhile, from the outset, Deltarune tells us our choices don’t matter and that our path is a futile one. It’s easy to believe at first glance that Deltarune is talking to us, the audience, but I think it goes further than that.

Where Undertale commented on our relationship with completionism in video games, Deltarune is commenting on our relationships with video game characters themselves. Many fans of RPG video games — unconsciously or not — insert themselves into the life and adventures of the protagonists of games. It’s why the silent protagonist trope works so well for self-inserts, as you can create a character from a blank slate and let your imagination do the rest.

Deltarune Chapter 1 even opens with a character creator, fully leaning into the trope before discarding our creations and introducing us to Kris. As a silent protagonist, Kris is easy to self-insert into, but it’s clear from the game’s descriptions and character interactions that they have an established personality and a life before we join the action.

As such, it’s hard not to feel as if we, the player, are merely puppeteering Kris as we guide them throughout Deltarune. In the Snowgrave Route, after Noelle leaves the party upon icing Berdly, Kris’s friends remark that they seem troubled by the events which had transpired. Not something you’d typically see from someone who emotionally manipulated their friend into murder, right?

The events of the Snowgrave Route continue an idea which Deltarune seems to have been building towards over its first two chapters, that we the players are performing our own acts of unintended manipulation on its characters just by… playing the game. In the final moments of both chapters, Kris rips out their soul (metaphorically speaking) in a move that on the surface feels sinister, but under the idea that we the players may be the real villains here it takes on a new light of them reclaiming their true self away from our influence.

Deltarune also features numerous references to freedom and breaking free from one’s proverbial strings. This drives home the point even further that even though our intentions of playing this game may just be for fun or to see characters we love again, we are puppeteering characters with lives of their own.

That, in turn, puts the Snowgrave Route in a whole new light too. Kris, the character, very likely didn’t want to emotionally manipulate their childhood friend into murdering a classmate, but we the player made them do it just for our own amusement.

This idea of player agency versus character agency is a very fascinating concept for a video game, one which has since made me question my own relationship with the games I play going forward. When I step into the shoes of a video game protagonist, am I venturing on a journey with them or am I just puppeteering an unwilling participant?