My thoughts on Undertale 2

So... wow. I knew this game was coming for years now, but I wasn't 100% sure - part of me thought it was just wishful thinking, and that it would never actually come. Certainly, that's probably what most people thought. Guess I can tally this one under "ingx24 was right" :P

And wow, what a game it is. To be honest, I was... underwhelmed, at first. At first it seemed like this was just a direct sequel to Undertale, with a new "Underground" location and a new species to replace the monsters from the first game. Sure, it had some great new characters, but... what did any of this have to do with Gaster? In fact, a lot of it seemed to be almost *deliberately* underwhelming, to lure us into a false sense of security.

But what happens if you read a bit between the lines?

First of all: If you pay attention - REALLY pay attention - you'll notice that a lot of things aren't quite right. Asriel is somehow alive and well. Characters who should know each other - Undyne and Alphys for example - have never even heard of each other. Sans "just moved into town" and just met Toriel and Alphys recently. Gerson is described as simply a "historian", and the war between humans and monsters is never even *mentioned*. What the hell is going on here?

Remember in Undertale, one of the big mysteries was that Sans seemed to have come from another world? Remember how there was a place he wanted to "go back" to, but couldn't? Remember the photograph of him with a bunch of other people that appears when you talk to Clam Girl, with the message "don't forget"?

Here's what I think. I think this IS that other world. This is the original timeline - the one where the war between humans and monsters never happened, where humans and monsters have always coexisted together. And what we're about to see is how the warped timeline - the one we saw in Undertale - came to be. This isn't a sequel to Undertale - this is a prequel. A prequel that will show us how the world of Undertale came to be.

And that's not all. For those who are familiar with datamining, the "Kris" sprite should look *very* familiar. In Undertale, there's an "unused" sprite of what seems to be Chara that can show up in puddles if you press a certain button in debug mode. And just like the Chara in the flashback pictures, this Chara doesn't have the big smiling face: they hide their eyes behind their hair. The sprite of Kris in Deltarune is the same - they're just taller. And they're the adoptive child of Toriel and Asgore, no less.

For those who remember my rantings from around the time I first played Undertale, you'll remember that I had some... issues... with the way Flowey was handled toward the end of the game. I felt the whole idea of him turning out to be not an eldritch abomination, but a regular monster in the body of a flower, was a pretty big disappointment after the craziness that we had seen up to that point. I theorized that something had gone wrong during the game's development, and that the story had been rewritten at some point late in development for unknown reasons to essentially combine Flowey and Asriel into one character.

While I still suspect there was a bit of a rewrite toward the end, I'm no longer so sure the rewrite was as significant as I had originally thought. I came across a pretty compelling theory that says that Flowey, rather than simply being Asriel in the body of a flower, is actually Asriel fused with something else: Chara - or at least, a demon *calling* itself Chara; the same "Chara" you meet at the end of a genocide run. I can't properly explain it here, but there's a decent (although not perfect) explanation here: [http://thepageofhopes.tumblr.com/post/129688844067/i-think-i-solved-undertale]. I also wrote a (very rambling and not that coherent) explanation of my updated thinking on this matter on my wordpress page earlier this year, which you can check out here: [https://ingx24.wordpress.com/2018/02/11/a-retrospective-on-undertale/].

Here's what I think. I think Kris is the actual human we've been calling "Chara" all this time. However, Kris is possessed by something sinister: "The demon that comes when people call its name" - Chara. Originally, Kris lived with the Dreemurrs on the surface, in this "good" timeline. However, at some point, something happened. Something that tore the fabric of time and space apart, and created a new timeline - a "bad" timeline where humans and monsters were at war, and the monsters had been trapped underground for centuries. Kris, remembering their family and wanting to reunite, climbed Mt. Ebott and fell underground, meeting the Dreemurrs who no longer remembered Kris. Kris, possibly under the influence of Chara, then carried out the plan to consume golden flowers and break the barrier, resulting in Asriel's death.

But then, Alphys injected determination into the flower that grew from Asriel's dust - resurrecting not just Asriel, but the demon Chara as well. And once Asriel eventually went down the genocide path, Chara took control, creating the entity we know as Flowey. Kris, on the other hand, was reincarnated as a child named Frisk, and returned to the Underground, leading to the events of Undertale.

And, as explained in the Tumblr post linked above, this is where Chara's plan kicked into action. Regardless of what you do, Chara ultimately wins in the end. Either Chara retains control of Asriel (as Flowey) in the regular Pacifist ending, regains control of Kris/Frisk in the Genocide ending, or - if you do the tainted Pacifist ending - gets both. And Sans - still remembering the old timeline where everything was happy - is stuck stranded in a world he doesn't recognize as his own. No matter what, Undertale can't have a truly happy ending.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

We've been given a chance. Gaster has contacted us from across the void, with the hope of guiding us. Guiding us toward creating a better future. We've been given the chance not just to see how this situation came to be, but to alter the course of history - to prevent the events of Undertale from happening, so that everyone can get a happy ending.

Frankly, I'm excited to see where this goes.