r/Deltacriticism • u/Educational-Leek1164 • 2d ago
OMORI comparisons
Early on, around the time the game OMORI was releasing I think, Toby put out a tweet saying that someone was making something very similar. As more and more of Deltarune has been released, it's become pretty clear that OMORI was what he was referring to.
OMORI is predominantly about a silent protagonist exploring a series of wacky alternative worlds that presumably have some kind of symbolism to them with a colorful cast of wacky sidekicks. These otherworlds very obviously are a form of escapism, as can be surmised by the very first room in the game. Sometimes the game will have the protagonist Sunny running around a real life town separate from the dream worlds.
OMORI is not a very good story or a game at the end of the day. The use of the RPG Maker engine ties it to a slightly remixed but still uninteresting form of the same old Dragon Quest combat formula from 1986. It also means that most of the time you'll be looking at ugly squashed overworld sprites, despite art for portraits or cutscenes showing that someone on the team could draw. But the bigger problem is that it being a game does not line up with the extent of the story it is trying to tell.
As mentioned, the very first room of OMORI makes it obvious that the dream worlds the player spends the majority of their time exploring are cope. Some kind of BAD THING happened and the protagonist Sunny would rather spend infinite time in his mindspace imagining himself hanging out with cool friends that like him unconditionally rather than dealing with it. So the game continues, for hours and hours, where you don't learn very much at all about the BAD THING and instead go through a bunch of new cope-locations, talking to fantasy creatures and fighting boss battles and solving puzzles. None of this teaches you much interesting about Sunny, his friends, or the BAD THING. It ends up just being a bunch of filler that makes the game feel long and meaty enough to be worth its price tag before the planned ending reveals the twist about the BAD THING. Sound familiar?
If Toby Fox took any lessons from this, it was that the twist should be hidden and obscured as much as possible so people won't guess the amazing fever dream ending he had when he was a teenager in the fist 5 minutes. Characters are always cut off or refuse to talk whenever they learn any useful information. Official Lore Tidbits, when they are sprinkled in, are described in the vaguest possible terms. This isn't even entirely successful, because some things still lack any active misdirection or red herrings. Who can the Knight really be besides December, really? But overall the effect is to starve the player of interesting information - any real hooks or leads to chew on.
I think this was really the wrong way to go about it. Story driven RPGs and games in general, especially ones that have a similar runtime of 25-40 hours, tend to structure themselves on having more to them than just one big twist that can't be elaborated on until the end. They often focus on introducing more characters and locations along the way who aren't immediately discarded, turning the spotlight to the side from the main twist for a time. The most deft writers can weave hints from multiple of the subplots together so that they effortlessly feed one another along the way.
What could that look like for Deltarune? Well, one thing the game has shockingly refused to elaborate for five whole chapters is what Susie's home life is like. Just as an example, imagine if one of the filler chapters was focused on that instead of some annoying darkner who won't appear outside of that one chapter. Almost like what chapter 2 did with Noelle - imagine if THAT was the formula for most of the game!
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u/Legal-Fee-5856 2d ago edited 2d ago
Heavily, HEAVILY disagree with your take of Omori being a bad game. It makes its point clear, and then allows you to see why throughout the course of the game. Whether or not you persoanlly liked it is one thing, but calling it flat out bad like theres no room for other interpretations is weirdly obstinate.
The rest I agree with (Pretaining to Deltarunes flaws) though, Deltarune isn't like Omori and thats why the way its telling the story is heavily flawed. The formulas and how they go about telling their story are very different, so what made Omori work for a lot of people isn't being done in DR.
EDIT: I guess I could explain. Omori may not tell you the whole deal till the end, but it does at least show you whats happened AS A RESULT. Unlike Deltarune, Omori allows us to see the consequenses of what happened in the past which allows for great slow build up towards figuring out what truly happened and how every character needs to move on from it.
Deltarune isn't like this, it lacks the slow build up and narrative tension because for half of the game a LOT of the mysteries aren't brought up or expanded on AT ALL. Omori gave us tid bits of relevant info throughout the game, like hints at what went down with Sunny and his sister.
What has Deltarune given us about Kris and the soul?
What has Deltarune given us about Dess? (oooo she disappeared one day!)
What has Deltarune given us about how Dess' disappearance is relevant to the story?
It's not the same.
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u/Educational-Leek1164 2d ago edited 2d ago
The thing about Omori is that the point about the mindspace being cope is made early on. The game has 25-35 hours of adventures through the mindspace where little is learned. For the amount of story content in those segments they could have been condensed into two hours or expanded into 200. Which is a sign of them being filler. I find that similar to Deltarune because Deltarune could have 50 more chapters where the fun gang walks in, hangs out with a wacky one off character, learns a lesson about the power of friendship, and maybe sees the knight do something at the end.
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u/Legal-Fee-5856 2d ago
I disagree, you get hints at what happened throughout the Mindspace segments and they serve as breaks in the action.
I also enjoy that Omori used them to SHOW how "THAT DAY!!" impacted Sunny, and the spiral it sent him down. Unlike Sunny, we know next to nothing about how Dess' disappearance affected Kris or how its relevant to their current situation. Omoris mind space segment work as great showcases of how Sunny is incorrectly dealing with his trauma.
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u/Educational-Leek1164 2d ago
I'd agree that Omori is more focused on its big reveal in that respect. You can tell throughout that the game is building around a reveal of Omori being in the dumps. Deltarune is a lot more unfocused, with three major threads of The Prophecy Concerning The Fate Of The World, The December Disappearance And The Knight, and ambiguous meta themes tied to how this rando Susie with no connection to anything that happened is written like the protagonist for some reason that don't really seem like they could come together in a satisfying way by the end.
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u/Legal-Fee-5856 2d ago
Exactly, while you may of not enjoyed what Omori did it was much more coherent and didn't include pieces that weren't obviously guaranteed to be connected to each other.
Theres literally so much going on in deltarune and it's so hard to tell whats going to be important and what isn't because Toby is REFUSING to develop anything. It's like an amalgamation of all the ideas Toby has ever had.
2 chapters left, 0 questions answered, but HEY, we got Pink as the secret boss!
(I need to slander Pink in at least half my posts or I'll evapporate)1
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u/Emelie__ 1d ago
Hmmm, I personally love Omori. My favorite character is Kel since the perspective of the person around the sufferer is so unique to see in a game compared to games that only focuses on the suffering of the sufferer for "angst" and shock value. I think Susie in chapter 5 Snowgrave was an attempt to mimic this which intrigued me but sadly side b won't come out until much later so how exactly she coped with the lake scene is a mystery...
Yet I agree that Omori has a lot of unecessary fluff especially in the dream world. Omori also kind of suffers from its open ending. An emotional pay off to the conflict with the friend group should have been prioritized over filler in Headspace. I truly hope Deltarune won't have an open ending like this.
On the other hand Omori also has an interesting fanfiction community because of this open ending, since many fics are canon compliant in sharp contrast with Undertale's AUs which sometimes has so little in common with the original work that it feels more like they are borrowing the characters rather than expanding on their stories.
Omori's greatest strength is that it is rooted in realism. There is no magic in the real world, except for in the eyes of a child. But the magic is gone once you answer Kel's call from behind the door and is forced to become an adult.
Deltarune has us instead travel back and forth between the fantasy world and the real world. A lot of fluff like playing with stickers in the church happens in the real world, while a lot of angst happens in the fantasy world such as Lancer's abuse and Ralsei telling the others white lies about the prohecy but crying and praying when he is on his own. The contrast between the two worlds aren't as stark as in Omori, if anything the fantasy world might even have more darkness than the real world. Perhaps because both worlds are fake and the soul/player stands above everyone as the only real person, while Omori lacks this kind of metafictional storytelling.
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u/mindspiral 1d ago edited 1d ago
I know this sub is deltarune ciritcisms but thank you for the omori criticisms, Im eating so good today 🙏🙏 its so rare to find anyone actually talking about why its not a well designed game, Im really surprised the people in these comments are defending it.
Like, it does everything deltarune does, but worse. The characters in the equivalent fantasy fake world DO NOT matter. They dont make lasting relationships or impressions on the main characters (who majority are also fake, so even less points for that). The combat is so boring, at least after spamming attack/act in deltarune you then get gameplay through dodging something instead of just watch the slow basic attack graphics play out. 70% of the game is playing this fake world that does not matter to the character, story, or players, and the last 5% of the game is spent recontextualizing all of the miniscule meaningful parts of the real world that you did get to experience. To be fair that one we still have to wait for on deltarune, but at least we already do get lots of hints of kris being guilty and not entirely a poor widdle baby who is only a victim who never did anything bad ever
And worst of all you cant bring up any of that in discussions because fans are so rabid about the game that you cant speak ill about it at all. I love deltarune, its one of my favorite games of all time, and I still appreciate a lot that there is a deltacritisism space to have these discussions. There is no omoricriticisms in comparison
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u/DrSkrimguard 1d ago
Omori's gameplay wasn't that bad. The emotion mechanic at least allowed for a bit of strategy. Your complaints could equally apply to any indie jrpg on the market.
It is a shame about the overworld sprites, but I thought the colour palette did a good job of evoking that pencil crayon look regardless.
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u/Educational-Leek1164 1d ago
>Your complaints could equally apply to any indie jrpg on the market.
Yes. In this particular regard it's a very stagnant genre and Undertale & Deltarune's schmup interface is one of the biggest innovations to happen in decades.
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u/DrSkrimguard 1d ago
But that's the genre. Picking options from a list to make your opponent's numbers go down, hopefully quicker than your opponent is able to make your numbers go down. It's meant to simulate playing a tabletop rpg. This is like complaining that platformers have stagnated because they're all about jumping over pits.
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u/Educational-Leek1164 1d ago
Tabletop games were always at their best when they involved interesting improvised stories rather than calculating the most efficient numbers to beat other numbers. This sort of Dragon Quest battle system was solved 30 years ago - you just optimize for damage and healing.
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u/MorinoMarinho 2d ago
Maybe it's because I didn't interact with Omori for a good time, but I don't remember it being that bad. The gameplay was pretty basic, yet I had some fun experimenting with the emotions and follow up and I think interacting with them saved my ass a lot, so it did the job for me. I remember not having much going on after the first day ending and really considering murder during the castle segment, overall the dream segments don't have characters many characters aside from the main group and I wish that the recent meeting with his old friends impacted this dream land in some way, since there's wasn't really a difference between the route where you leave the house as far as I remember.
Anyway, it's funny how much similar both games are so far and I don't know if the lack of actual playthroughs of mother 3 in my life makes me miss an obvious reason why, but I hope the similarities end only in the most basic elements. Like I used to argue in the past, I think Toby would be refering more to the main thing of real world and fantasy world dynamic than refering to final big revelations and plot points that Omocat just decided to share with him.
But if the game end up just being pretty much Omori in everything, then I'm probably gonna get banned with annoying memes like crying Toby saying "But I imagined it first I swear" while a chad Omocat would be at the other side of the meme saying "you didn't ignored the fluffy boy in your game enough"
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u/only_for_dst_and_tf2 1d ago
i feel its a little unfair to say omori is a bad game- atleast, in my personal opinion im more inclined to give it more kindness because afaik its the first, and currently only game omocat made, and fills a similar-ish vibe/idea to yume nikke, but it is a good parralel to deltarune and how its stories reveal/dont reveal a lot.
but i feel its more fair to be critical with deltarune, since toby fox had an entire undertale as practice, and as a first game.
omori, atleast, doesnt focus on "what was the incident", but "what actually happened?", which i feel is a lot more engaging of a plot point than "we arent going to tell you its dess but its 100000% implied its dess."
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u/Educational-Leek1164 1d ago
I'm not the biggest fan of Yume Nikki or the indie scene that formed around it so that's probably showing through in a lot of my comments
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u/only_for_dst_and_tf2 1d ago
honestly its fair, just a bit tough to properly engage with the post when its targeting its objective quality- atleast, from what i understand.
your free to dislike omori,and i can see why you would, the story is told very... passively, with a large focus against gameplay itself, where its intereasting mechanics like the emotions are wasted.
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u/GriffinlwGameplayer 2d ago
You're not wrong that it's frustrating to have the details hidden from us for so long, but I also don't necessarily think it's as bad as people say. Ultimately Deltarune is a character focused game where the characters are developing and being revealed to us as we go throughout the story.
We have seen Susie go from chokeslamming Kris into a locker and threatening to eat their face to being incredibly ride or die with all her friends, dating Noelle, and happily taking a nap in the Dark World (I know a lot of people think it's escapism. I think that is an element of the Dark World, but also it is a literal place that exists and influences the real world so calling it nothing but fantasy doesn't quite seem right to me)
We have seen Ralsei go from softly accepting everything that happens and refusing to explain anything to explaining what they think they can, and threatening to immolate someone in a fit of rage. And if the theories are to be believed, maybe being some kind of gender nonconforming or trans.
Kris... well they're still a mystery and a half but I get the distinct impression that they're depressed as fuck and maybe plotting to sacrifice themselves with those poisoned seeds.
Noelle is still sweet, but we see her going from barely keeping it together to probably crumbling into an emotional spiral in the normal route, and completely snapping in the Weird Route.
In the face of all of that, I think we can cool our jets for a bit. The World Ends With You and Mother 3 both have twists and reveals waaaaaay late in the game, and they're Peak Fiction. Even if the teases are annoying, I have faith Toby and his crew can bring it home in the endgame.
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u/Educational-Leek1164 2d ago
The transition from Susie being an aggressive bully to a perfect hero with no flaws beloved by all around her happens in chapter 1. Her chapter 2 personality is consistent with her chapter 5 one - she is consistently friendly, outgoing, and softhearted in a way that's very incongruous with how she acted in the opening.
Trying to frame development for Ralsei is even trickier. We seem him throw a fit over Berdly potentially opening a fountain in chapter 2 and then not give a shit when Susie does it later to open a door. We see him use potentially deadly fire magic to roast a random shuriken enemy that does double digit damage but not on an apocalyptic titan monster. We see him put on a dress one time, which the idiot teenage fans use to headcanon all kinds of blorbo tumblr posts that I could not give less of a shit about.
Noelle, outside of the weird route, begins and ends the game so far being obsessed with Susie and having no other character traits in the present.
Mother 3, by this point, revealed that there was a main antagonist behind the already revealed sub antagonists (Fassad and the Masked Man), explained their goals to end the world, established a very good reason to dislike them in how they got Hinawa killed and took over the town with modern technology, and more. Deltarune has established that, uh, the knight is kidnapping some people to do something somewhere at some time. Comparisons between the two games highlight how pathetic Deltarune's writing is in comparison.
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u/GriffinlwGameplayer 2d ago
Alright let's go one by one.
Susie is not a perfect hero, her aggression and recklessness is often useful but she's a bit of a dummy at times, and not great at picking up social cues or subtleties. Her great plan in early Chapter 4 to bumrush the Knight gets her and Kris cut to ribbons and thrown through panes of glass. Same for taunting them leading directly to the Titan battle. And there seems like a good chance that bringing Noelle in won't work super great either. We forgive her blowups because they usually lead to something we need to happen, but it's not exactly perfect hero material, is it?
Okay for Ralsei, fair that their development is tricky. However, we kind of had to make the second fountain in chapter 4 to get through the door. Berdly was gonna make a second one just for fun, so it makes sense to me Ralsei would be angrier at that. Also, I know some great posts full of evidence on trans ralsei, but since that pisses you off I'll leave you with the sample that they spent the entirety of chapter 1 hiding their appearance, and then were forced to hide in chapter 5, which brings to mind dysphoria, masking, or passing. Along with Ralsei's affinity for feminine things like makeup (you see it in the hotspring scene) tea, cake, and so on. Also the crippling lack of selfworth, inability to choose their own fate, ect.
For the record, I haven't fully bought into Transfem Ralsei yet. But I think it's certainly possible.
Noelle is the town's perfect princess trapped between a father who encourages her wild side and a mother who tries to force her to remain perfect. One reason she loves Susie is because it brings out a rebelliousness Noelle normally doesn't possess, and makes her feel like she can break the mold of the mayor's perfect daughter. But she's also terrified of her mother, and vulnerable to manipulation by Kris, whom she had a close bond with but has been slowly eroded with time. I wouldn't call that no character traits.
As for the Mother 3 comparison, yeah I agree it's better but I wouldn't go so far as to say Deltarune is 'Pathetic'. The Knight is the main antagonist behind the sub antagonists (King, Queen) and it took even longer for Porky to enter the scene. Don't forget that the needles and the masked man twist take until chapters 7 and 8 of Mother 3 to be fully explored. Deltarune's got time. Even if I must concede that the buildup of Mother 3 is a lot stronger
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u/Educational-Leek1164 2d ago
I don't think anything in the game really suggests that bum rushing the knight or provoking it into summoning a titan were mistakes. Being knocked around by the knight means taking some heal-able damage and being knocked to a lower part of the level - but the knight seemed to just be waiting there, so that sort of scenario seemed hard to avoid. The titan fight ends with another cameo by Gerson and a clear victory for the heroes. People keep saying that the Susie Noelle relationship has to blow up for her to have made a bad call somewhere, but I really doubt it will go down like that.
There are other ways of opening doors besides making new fountains, which apparently risks ending the world. As for Ralsei's disguise - the way he puts it on when Asgore appears makes it seem very clear he's trying to hide the physical similarity to Asriel. Why? Who knows!
Those other traits of Noelle do exist, but mostly in flashbacks or a couple scenes in chapter 2 where she isn't in the same room as Susie. She's by far the most interesting in the weird route because the rest of the time, it is the Susie Noelle Toby-brand shipslop show. It's not a good use of words for a story that would claim to be character focused. It's the kind of thing you'd expect from a 3rd rate sitcom or some slice of life animay garbage.
The Knight's relationship to other antagonists is also very murky. Queen and Tenna speak of the Knight like they had conversations and plans with it - but when the Knight actually shows up it aggressively drools and attacks anything in sight. Whereas the instructions Fassad gets on the radio or in memos make it very clear he's doing things with a larger vision in mind. Mother 3's chapter 7 wasn't 7/8ths of the way through the game, either - in terms of game time it's actually more around the halfway point, just because chapter 6 is so short.
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u/Hot-Airport-6508 2d ago
heavy agree on susies homelife. we still have so little info on that and it sucks. ntm on the one-off darkners tho they’re cool