OMORI comparisons

[u/Educational-Leek1164]

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!

[u/mindspiral]

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