I’m still maniacally following the Deltarune ARG, a bizarro puzzle that’s been going on for several years now and which, as of most recent count, only 1,229 people are able to solve. Today, 24 hours before the launch of Deltarune Chapter 5, there’s been a big update that’s currently sending the Deltarune ARG community into a tizzy, as it stands to potentially upend a year or more’s worth of fan theories on how Chapter 5, and beyond, are going to play out.
Trying to explain Deltarune lore always makes me sound completely unhinged, but I’ll do my best here to walk you through this latest development, with some very light spoilers for all four chapters:
Deltarune’s main cast: Kris, Suzie, and Ralsei, are teenage heroes trying to stop something called “The Roaring” from swallowing everything up in darkness. In doing so, they are following a “Prophecy” that seems to have laid out every step of their journey before them in advance, including some sort of sacrifice at the end of it all that the three of them don’t want to see happen. Deltarune’s text and subtext both do a lot of musing on what it would mean to break that prophecy and whether such an endeavor is futile, but so far the only way players have managed to deviate from the prophecy is by following the game’s well-hidden “Weird Route,” which sees them (as a separate entity from player character Kris) forcing Kris to behave in increasingly cruel ways to their friend Noelle. By the end of Chapter 4, a successful Weird Route playthrough seems to have corrupted Noelle in some horrific way, a plan that looks poised to make her extremely powerful in a way that could subvert the sacrifice the prophecy demands, but at a different, greater cost.
Overshadowing all this, too, is the looming ghost of Noelle’s older sister, Dess, who disappeared before the events of the game in some sort of tragedy that most of the characters seem to be aware of but that no one’s told the player about yet. Currently, the most popular fan theory is that Dess is “The Roaring Knight,” the shadowy villain that’s trying to wrap the world in darkness, and that Kris is secretly working with Dess in a perhaps misguided effort to save them from the dark.
Deltarune’s long-running ARG has thus far been asking cryptic questions like “How long did it take her to smile?” and “Where will it take place?” and asking fans to respond via a hidden web form, with responses delivered back via email indicating whether or not players were on the right track with their answers. But it hasn’t been clear this entire time who or what was being referred to in those questions. Fans have assumed these questions related to Noelle, and that her “smile” would be the final moment of her corruption in the Weird Route, or some other sort of breaking point for her. Fans have also been assuming that these events would take place at a critical moment in Chapter 5’s teased festival event, which the entire main cast is planning to attend.
And then this morning, eligible ARG respondents who answered the “Where will it take place?” question got their answers back. And those that answered “The festival” (seemingly most of them) were told they were off track:
Okay, so if the big, climactic moment of Chapter 5 isn’t at the festival, where will it be?
Oh.
The lake to the east of town has been a subject of Deltarune fan speculation for a while now too, but we really don’t know much about it beyond the fact that strange music can seemingly be heard from across it. Between this correct answer, the accompanying image, the rest of Deltarune’s lore, and a number of other “incorrect” responses, fans are beginning to piece together a pretty terrifying picture of what’s coming tomorrow. Could Dess be hidden in the lake somewhere? Is Chapter 5’s Dark World not in a flower shop, as everyone thought, but actually in the lake? Some people think we’ve been growing a new “Soul” inside of Noelle. Could we be taking control of her as the new protagonist for the remainder of the game?
Or are we going to outright kill Noelle?
There are so many wild places this could go, and the community now has something to obsess over for 24 hours before we finally get some answers. Deltarune still has two whole chapters to go after this, at least, but every clue we’re getting is suggesting that Chapter 5 is going to be dark, darker, and darker still than anything we’ve seen in Deltarune so far, regardless of what route you’re playing on. It’s all just so ominous.
I’ll be content watching Deltarune fans freak out over the weird route on forums, because I’m not touching that path for anything. See you all on the other side!