"The Hometown is simulation and nothing in Deltarune exists beyond it" theory

Alternative title: when being too meta with your writing is at the expense of narrative

So with The Weird Route in Chapter 5, there is now a growing theory that the world of Deltarune, and I mean the entirety of it, is a simulation by Gaster. It is very much akin to Last Thursdayism AKA the idea the world was created last thursday and all our memories before it are fake and implanted into our heads.

Now, I am not here to argue whether or not this theory is true or not, there's plenty of speculations elsewhere. Probably.

This is about why, to put it mildly, I hate it, and think it would very controversial at best, and highly disliked at worst from a writing perspective.

So its true that Undertale, and Toby Fox in general, loves being meta. The entirety of Undertale is exactly that, an almost meta commentary on video game and ludo narrative dissonance, exploring different layers on the audiences interaction with the game itself.

As a result, the world of Undertale is one entirely built around fame mechanics and the act of "playing". The premise is about a character who can literally time travel and alter fate, and that is even one of the main thing kickstarting the main villain.

Or, at least, that is what the player sees. Turns out if you're paying attention that there is always more to this world, more beyond the screen. The whole point of Undertale and communicated through the mechanics is that these people, these "generic RPG enemies", are people with rich lives, dreams and family. It asks a question about every grunt you kill in an RPG or soldier you shoot in a FPS: what is it that we don't see about them? Of course, we only see glimpses of those characters lives, it would be way too big of a game if every monster had deep written stories about their whole lives till this point, but we know enough to realise these aren't faceless mooks, that there are people, and connections, beyond our limited view, and the meta aspects are done to highlight those themes and aspects. Hell, the whole 10 year anniversary stream was about that! About the fact that there was more beyond. Even Toby mentioned it by saying that each one has "schools" to go to "jobs" to work at. There is a deeper world at play we take for granted.

In contrast, the simulation theory for Deltarune says that Hometown is all there is and all that ever will be in the character's lives. Not to mention, the end result of it is this: once the end credits for the final chapter finishes rolling, once the screen cuts to black with a "Thank You fior playing", the world ends. Forever. Not with a bang or anything, it just ceases to be. All the characters you've met, all the people you've seen? Kris, Susie, Noelle, Toriel, Asgore, Ralsei, Berdly, Lancer, etc. Gone! Less than dead, they never were.

Do I need to bring up how narratively unsatisfying it would be? After 10 or more years? And for what? A meta commentary on what?

Alright, I do need to of course mention that Deltarune and Undertale are different games and have different priorities.

But its just... Why would Toby go to such lengths about interpretations and retelling of stories, and spend an entire anniversary stream about encouraging exploring and speculating and even writing what could be happening in the world "beyond the screen" only for the conclusion of his dream project, his decades life's work, being him hitting us in the face with: "btw, there is literally nothing beyond this, there is no point in speculation, these characters don't exist beyond this, but that's alright because hey, it felt real didn't it?!"

And that leads into the main point, the main thing that would make me absolutely despise it. To sum up my main problems with simulation theory is that if its true then all it does is work as a meta commentary reminding every single player of something they already know. Everyone who has ever played a video game in their life knows the world they see is "all there is". They already know their experiences and relationship with these fictional constructs are brief and do matter in the end. So what does it do except push this reminder in the players face in a very narratively unsatisfying manner? We know fiction is fake! We know nothing exists of this world but what we're shown! Hell, with more esoteric fiction like David Lynch movies that fully embrace the unreality of their fiction, who use its fakeness to explore realness, their whole point is rarely that its fake, but they are using the acknowledgement of fakeness to explore something else! So what is the point of this except to make it front and center?! Witn DDLC, there was more to the twist than just the game reminding us that fiction is fiction. It, amongst other things, was to make the player question if putting fictional characters into easy to place boxes is good or accurate, just as an example. Yeah it's meta and acknowledges the story's fakeness, but does it to explore the medium itself and make the player question things they may not have fully considered. I genuinely do not see how this could do more than that. Yes, the flowers were pretty much symbolic of that meta idea of characters ceasing to exist after they're gone. So why do we need another symbolic reminder if we've already done that in a very narratively satisfying manner?! Sure, maybe the player would think more about their connections to fiction and fictional characters, but to what end? What is the moral? Oh stories are great because it can make us grow attached to fictional concepts that do not exist beyond this tale? We already know that! We known that since the beginning of stories! What new things are you even saying?! That they have value beyond their work, we know that! So why does everyone and everything have to literally and metaphorically DIE in the story to remind us?!

Alright. Now, as I said, this could all still happen no matter what I others feel about it. I can't change Toby's writing and would could be his "brilliant meta commentary" so all I would do is probably avoid Toby's future work afterwards.

To end this, I have two comments from a user on Discord that I didn't write myself but sum up other ways it would be narratively unsatisfying that I couldn't have worded better myself:

Going with that sort of meta characteristic of a Simulated World basically ensures that in the minds of the audience, there is no future for the characters involved that can grow beyond the confines of a very limited reality. That's a rather bleak outlook which doesn't encourage speculation of what could exist beyond the game's boundaries, not really the sort of thing you'd want to leave an imprint of as the ultimate message in a game that seems to have been setting up for the possibility of leaving the future up to interpretation for that audience past the resolution of the ending Also, at any rate, certain bits like Asriel being at college or the part in chapter 4 with Susie talking about her past experience with a public-area piano from somewhere she used to live would ring a lot more hollow if that gets swept under the rug as "oh nah we just implanted those memories of a nonexistent outside into the characters' heads they never actually happened to the versions of the ones you've been interacting with" Hell, chapter 5 starts off with Toriel musing about driving out to pick Asriel up earlier than he'd be expecting -@.theironwaffle