Characters of Undertale and Deltarune
The fantasy role-playing video game Undertale, developed by Toby Fox, takes place in a universe where monsters once coexisted with humans, but have long since been forgotten in modern times.
Some characters gained notoriety for their ability to break the fourth wall, manipulating gameplay elements normally only accessible to the player, such as saving.
In a certain story route, Toriel ultimately intervenes in the human's fight against Asgore, leading to the pacifist ending and the freedom of the monsters.
Jason Schreier of Kotaku called Asriel's final boss fight one of the greatest in video game history, citing its climactic music and the necessity to save your friends from him.
A pair of skeleton brothers known for their outlandish human-capturing schemes, Papyrus and Sans function as comic relief within Undertale.
In Undertale's Genocide route, Sans functions as its final boss, revealing he is secretly an incredibly skilled fighter with control over the game's combat system.
Though statistically weak, he uses a unique "Karma" mechanism to deal more damage per frame, and pure speed to dodge the player's attacks.
While initially presented as intimidating, her clumsy behavior in combat is heavily inspired by anime, which she believes to be an accurate representation of the human world.
She possesses a small amount of Determination: a substance that makes humans far stronger than monsters and enables her to persist upon death.
It has been theorized this is due to the intervention of her love interest, Alphys, who was conducting experiments on injecting Determination into vessels, such as monsters and flowers, which led to Flowey's creation.
She tries to earn the protagonist's trust by helping them "fight" off a malfunctioning Mettaton throughout Hotland, but he later reveals he was acting to make Alphys look better.
The True Pacifist route reveals that she experimented with Determination on comatose monsters, but this caused them to fuse into creatures known as "Amalgamates".
In Undertale, Mettaton is a robotic entertainer who is the Underground's sole celebrity, hosting various television shows and having products, brands, and a hotel in Hotland themed after him.
They achieved this when they befriended Alphys and she created his body (in order to make Asgore think he was an artificial soul), but at the cost of abandoning their cousin Napstablook.
If Undyne and Toriel are killed, but Mettaton is spared, he becomes the Underground's dictator, building a cult of personality around himself and making those who do not worship him "disappear", with Sans and optionally Papyrus serving as his bouncers.
In the True Pacifist Route, it is revealed that the "fallen human" superficially resembled Frisk, but had arrived years earlier.
If the player names the fallen human Frisk, a “hard mode” begins with more powerful monsters and fewer healing items.
Noelle Holiday is a timid fellow student resembling an anthropomorphic reindeer, who is a childhood friend and classmate of Kris and has a crush on Susie.
He tells Kris of the threat the Dark Fountains pose, and appears to be meek and kind-hearted, encouraging the player to deal with enemies peacefully.
Seam (/ʃɔːm/ SHAWM) is the first shopkeeper encountered in the game; a nihilistic androgynous Darkner who is a personified cat plushie with a missing eye.
In Chapter 2, Seam continues to be a shopkeeper in Castle Town and reveals that the superbosses possess powerful artifacts known as "Shadow Crystals", claiming they could make "something incredible" if the player collects them all.
He is shown to be a tyrannical figure with little care for his subjects or family, zealously dedicated to the Knight, and plans to take over the Light World as retribution for the Lightners abandoning him.
Upon defeating Spamton NEO in the normal route, the player can revisit his shop and speak with his former coworkers, who explain how he rose to success after communicating with an anonymous voice on the phone, who is implied to be the same figure who drove Jevil to insanity, only to lose his job, home, and sanity when they abandoned him.
As Spamton NEO, he acquires the following abilities: firing lasers and "Pipis" (a blue egg-shaped projectile described as an "invasive species of freshwater clam"), as well as transforming different parts of himself.
Griffin McElroy of Polygon described Undertale's characters in general as not just funny, but "incredibly vulnerable", stating that he felt "real affection" for all of them after getting to know them.
Noting that the characters were "well-written and relatable", he remarked that, when doing the Genocide run out of a desire to see all the game's content, he felt "genuinely terrible".
[4] Richard Cobbett of Eurogamer stated that Undertale's characters were "layered" by RPG standards, calling them "not exactly Walter White in terms of complexity", but more deep than they initially seemed.
He called the responsiveness of the world and characters an important part of Undertale's success, stating that "spending more time with familiar faces makes them feel real".
[6] Axel Bosso of Bloody Disgusting stated that the game's characters were difficult to trust, causing an anxious feeling with every encounter, starting with Flowey's switch from seemingly harmless to evil.
Noting that "even the most inconsequential NPCs have an existential crisis and/or nihilism vibes around them", he said that it was "hard [...] to feel safe in this treacherous environment", though nevertheless remarking that "they became some of my most loved cast in quite some time".
