By the way, SPOILERS!!
Me and Sue were really kind of stuck at the start of Deltarune Chapter 3 when it came out, mostly because its not really her game as we found out, and she was the one who launched it day one, but also because it was just so strange stepping back into the Deltarune boots after so many years away.
Now we understand that its Me and Pachi with the Deltarune associations (weird?) I don’t know, we kind of share similar overlap when it comes to the “Having fun on the computer!” gene, but they are a lot more relaxed then I am.
But it was *so* long between chapters, and for really good reasons, as are obvious (and not obvious to those who don’t keep up with the newsletter (Mr. Fox himself has really bad wrist pain!)) But it kind of takes the air out of the story, a little (and this time around a LOT) because unless you are someone in the fandom who is living and breathing and theory crafting every moment between chapters, your life kind of just goes on! And to be fair, I LOVE Deltarune, and I LOVE Undertale, Both previous two chapter launches I (we?) completed on the day of launch because the writing just does this thing of having such goofball energy that just refuses to betray the serious nature of the story being told!
Anyway, Chapter 3 is a bit of the awkward middle child of the chapter, now that we’ve played it, but I say that super affectionately, because it’s bridging Chapter 2 (Which is the best written comedy sketch masquerading as a video game ever made) and Chapter 4 (Which MIGHT be the most compelling story Toby has written so far (If you wanna count the individual chapters as separate, which I do, because they are kind of all their own games in a way) and that is a TALL TALL order! And to his credit, I think he does it super well.
Looking back, I think it’s almost GOOD that Chapter 3 starts off a bit awkwardly, because the character I’m gonna be talking about here, Tenna, is well, kind of super awkward! Chapter 3 deviates from the previous two chapters and Undertale as well, instead of the usual RPG exploration and battles which continue in a linear fashion, Chapter 3 starts with self-contained “shows”, stages of a repurposed video game where the main 3 characters complete a quest within the level, the level ends with a minigame, and between these shows, you go the green room, which is a small area that serves as well, the break room between these levels and the room changes itself the further you play.
This is… smart! I think this is really smart. And it also IS NOT where you expect the story to go after Chapter 2 ends the way it does. The ending of chapter 2 is a total cliffhanger on a part that is mostly entirely silly with some dark undertones in parts but nothing crazy (DISREGARDING SPAMTON), I totally thought that Chapter 3 was when the story was gonna get dark, but instead, it lingers, after Kris (I think it was Kris) makes the Dark Fountain, Susie and Kris wake up in the dark world, Ralsei appears, and the chapter is what you think its gonna be for all 30 minutes until Tenna just blows your expectations hat clean off your head!
Tenna from the continues the Toby tradition of “Love at first sight” when it comes to his comedic relief characters. Papyrus was a total goof, Alphys is a total goof (Alphys haters im biting you! Alphys is so good!) Berdly is a total goof, Queen, Spamton, and now Tenna just jump off the screen, and in Tenna’s case quite literally just taking an axe to the normal art direction of the game to this point, but the important thing is that the pivot from the art direction is basically excluded to his character, which… is good, not from just a keeping the story well paced and from jumping over any sharks, but also because it makes him a total outlier.
This is kind of what makes Tenna so resonant in the chapter, because it’s not that Chapter 3 isn’t dark, or somber in some places, it is, the path to the dark is paved and we’re going down it! The characters know this, everyone seems to know this, Tenna knows this but hes denying it, and the theme is very obvious here- Tenna is a TV, both thematically and literally, he is attached to the attention of the viewers, TV as a medium has been drastically falling off the map as more and more people use the internet, phones, streaming services, to pick out exactly what they wanna watch, whenever they wanna watch.
But it’s important to keep in mind the scale of Deltarune- When Tenna has these character moments, he isn’t just a representation of TV in general, he is the Dreemurr family’s TV in specific. He doesn’t care about a global audience, he cares about the family in front of him he’s always known, he singles out Kris specifically multiple times, in fact, Tenna almost seems to have an obsession with them specifically. Tenna could probably be happy forever if Kris watched his reruns over and over again until the sun burned out, but, they don’t want that, Kris has grown up, changed, and also has… us, the player, influencing them, which is also pointed out repeatedly in the chapter.
So Tenna is alone, and more over, Tenna seems DOOMED to be alone, Doomed to be left behind, Doomed to be irrelevant. And now I really wanna bring up the other important part of his story and Deltarune’s story besides the writing, I wanna talk about this music! Because the music is what makes these stories so compelling in their wholes, It’s what gives the moments and characters gravity and movement and life when the sprites can only carry so much of that weight, The music is probably the most remembered thing about Undertale and I’d wager its the same for Deltarune.
The music of Chapter 3 is really what gives Tenna the well defined edge that makes him so compelling to me! It seems very likely that Toby engineered Tenna’s leitmotif in a lab for those three years between chapters to be so immediately catchy and sticky. And it’s used liberally throughout the chapter to great effect. This lovable melody that encapsulates Tenna, and is inseparable from his design, and its… affecting to see this melody get distorted and hurt when Tenna does himself.
I know all of this probably just seems like a big old synopses so far (and probably not a super good one) so I kind of want to pivot to what I really wanna say, and I guess to do that I’ll touch on themes. Chapters 1-4 of the story do feel like a sliding scale into darkness. Both in the literal characterization of darkness in the story but also things… getting worse for the characters. People getting lost. People experiencing loss, familiar sights getting distorted into something unsettling instead of settling.
Chapter 4 is where all the “light” basically leaves the story. Or to be more accurate, the end of Chapter 3 is where the light is basically turned off like a switch in dramatic fashion.
The last moments of Chapter 3, more specifically, the final fight with Tenna, is the part I find most resonant with me, despite it not being a particular scene, It’s a lot like the Spamton NEO fight; a brawl carrying so much implication. The music during the fight is just a perfect characterization of Tenna’s character and him at this moment in time, desperate to be anything, desperate to stay alive, desperate to stay “himself.”, His very silly, game show host self, right before everything falls into darkness.
And that is why I’ve been… borderline obsessed with him as a character, and his songs, and his story, since I’ve swallowed what they mean and appreciated Chapter 3 and 4 in their whole and in the scope of the whole game. Because Tenna CAN’T be anything other then this, not really! He is just a TV, the company of his viewers, basically his only family, is all he has, he is nothing without their attention, he has to be silly. He has to be wacky and playful. It’s the only way he knows to survive!
And… that mirrors me! That mirrors me. I’m a girl, I’m a sister of a system bigger then me, and… I only know how to survive, like anyone else, really! And the only thing I really can be, the only thing my body and brain seems to let me carry is… a very silly demeanor! What gives me energy is fun and music and I feel all bubbly and that makes me happy! It’s not all that’s there… I can bring myself to a serious level, serious enough to write something like this.
What really gets me about Tenna is his position, he wouldn’t have been close to this compelling if he was in Chapter 2, but he’s… right, right before the dark. These chapters of the game couldn’t have been released at a more relevant time. My real world, the life us sisters are living is… right before the dark. A descent into it darkness, into something we don’t know if we will get out of. I’m here, and I’m being a silly girl, in the shadow of something so monstrous I don’t even know what it’ll look like when it encompasses me, and all I can do is… keep being that. I… can’t be anything else. I have to be wacky and playful to survive, I mean… that’s why I front, right? It’s probably why I front so much!
The dark gets bigger and bigger and all I know how to do is keep playing games and keep singing songs, keep watching videos, the same games and songs and videos I always partake in, I don’t know how to start anything new anymore. New feels so awful, so much of whats new recently is so, so awful. I just keep walking in a circle, sitting in old memories, because they were of a bad time, but of a time that wasn’t as bad as now. And soon this time will be a bad time that wasn’t as bad as whats in the dark.
When I listen to that theme, that final desperate theme, I feel that desperation in myself, the desperation of just trying to bring joy, it feels so dizzingly counter intuitive, a desperate joy... but what else do I have? What else does he have?