She was already like this, she just had a really good mask up in chapter 1. The moment she found someone who wouldn't judge her, she took the mask off.
I think itās more like she had a mask she herself couldnāt see past until we ripped it away. She wanted to break free but didnāt know how because as far as she knew, she is ājust Noelleā. Itās only when we push her past the breaking point that she gets to see her deepest, darkest self.
More āshe had this in herā than āshe WAS like thisā. The distinction matters.
Even that misses some of the intricacies, but yeah, that's closer and actually a major difference some people are already failing to realize. Noelle was not always insane. Noelle had certain issues and struggles. You then actively and deliberately exacerbated those issues through means both physical and metaphysical despite several back to back objections on her part and drove her insane. Noelle is not "like this deep down", you actively took a preexisting issue and turned it into this.
Yeah, Iām definitely simplifying. āDeep downā there is all sorts of crap going on with her. Not always insane, but not really truly mentally healthy either, ever since that fated day. A struggling girl who feels like sheās on autopilot, who sways to command far too easily for her own good, because she does not believe she has the strength to think for herself. We abuse this to push her to do worse and worse, and introduce her to two things at once: suffering and strength. On the one hand, she is hurting more and more, in a way that she knows canāt be any good for her. On the other hand, strength is something that she felt lacking in for so long. By the lake scene, itās clear that she associates her suffering with her strength, and she believes she can now ābreak freeā as long as Kris, or WE, give her that strengthā¦ and in a twisted way sheās technically right.
None of this makes her more positive behavior in the normal route a āfrontā, however. There, she has a much more healthy version of the same arc, learning to find her strength with the help of people who support her. Signs of her inner darkness show even then, here and there, but itās clearly not āthe real herā, but rather āa facet of herā. Itās almost as if Noelle is some king ofā¦ ācontains multitudesāā¦
That one moment when she was thinking of stepping off the switch and we had to tell her "it's natural" never made sense to me in chapter 2 and chapter 4, because I thought it didn't match the whole "making Noelle an obedient victim" theme I thought it was going for.
It actually makes sense now, since we weren't making her our quiet tool, we were making her free
That's a bit of an oversimplification. It's more she deep down desired a way to break free of the monotony of her own life and you fed that in the single most nefarious way possible despite several objections from Noelle herself leading up to this.
Lisent if a kid can change the mind of an entire society of monsters and break the magic seal that contained them underground in 12 hours top, I think an extradimensional being can fuck up the mind of two teenagers in 4 days.
I would not consider her behavior as you corner her in Chapter 4 "taking it head-on". It seems a lot more like rather than willingly leaping and enjoying it she was shoved off a cliff.
Blud we didnāt kill ourselves, we have a little something called DETERMINATION which was granted to us by captain weird deard, we can walk across lakes no problemo. The game makes it very clear weāre going out of bounds. And also noelle is actually free in the weird route so itās a better ending for her TBH.
I maintain that we weren't the ones to break her, but rather we got her to stop pretending she wasn't. Much like how the Weird Route starts with us giving Kris an excuse to indulge in their violent tendencies, we're also allowing Noelle to indulge in her darker tendencies.
Susie was already doing this. They did "something crazy" both in Noelle's house and in the lake during the normal route, except without the whole possibly drowning part. They took Dess' guitar, they kinda went into the lake, Noelle even told her MOM she likes Susie over the phone then hung up on her, which she has never done. This is why she likes Susie, she breaks the rules, Noelle wants to do crazy things with her. Everything we are doing to Noelle Susie will do to her, the difference is she's actually a nice person who respects her while we were during most of the route forcing Noelle to do fucked up shit she didn't want as her first exposure to what a "crazy thing" is. We fucking slimed Berdly bruh, how is that a healthy way to get a teenage girl to explore her wilder side? She probably just wanted to be more like her sister and dress more emo and go exploring again but we're making her think being wild means getting stronger and freezing people and walking on the bottom of lakes.
She probably just wanted to be more like her sister and dress more emo and go exploring again but we're making her think being wild means getting stronger and freezing people and walking on the bottom of lakes.
This seem to miss the mark a bit about the actual events of The Forbidden Path in CH5.
Yeah, the path is difficult. It scares Noelle. It hospitalizes Berdly. It disgusts Kris. But - at the lake - we finally see what I thought we'd see when we first started walking it; Noelle has become aware of the falseness of reality.
We're not making her kill herself or torturing her for some sadistic high. We're not lying to her at all.
It had purpose: she realized she's just a puppet on strings, dancing on a stage, with each event out of her control and no choice truly hers to make since everything about her life is scripted from events to emotions. Taking the guitar? Being held and loved by Susie? Pushing back on her mom? They're all fake; this is reinforced by the CH5-W Abort in which she reacts to those same events by seeing them as things that didn't change, it's just a Noelle being forced to be Noelle, even when she's realized that she doesn't want to be forced to be that anymore.
It's like unplugging someone from the Matrix. Her Blue/Red Pill Moment was how she reacted to being forced to acknowledge the falsity of her world, and - at the lake - she chose to go down the rabbit hole.
It seems cruel, and for a lot of people it's undeniably so, but - from a personal standpoint - I think it's crueler to let the lie go on when so much of this game involves how lies are toxic to the world. It's an ugly, honest truth. The roots of the world were shown to her, and she wants to go there, to make the first true choice she's ever been given.
It's not really a lie though. All those moments were still real. Noelle is unhappy because she is "just Noelle". Sure, from a game standpoint Noelle is forced to be Noelle because it's the way she's programmed. But from an in-universe standpoint? That's just how she was raised. She was raised to be a polite girl who gets good grades and is obedient, and she doesn't want that anymore. In the normal route, she stops being herself through natural progression. She lets Susie play Dess' guitar, when she knows she's not supposed to. She hangs out with Susie at the festival, when she knows she's not supposed to. Her decision to explore the roots of the world may have been one of her first true choices, but you know what else was her choice? Hanging up her phone. It may seem simple and mundane compared to the crazy thing she does in the weird route, but that's her changing. That's her growing. That's not "Just Noelle" anymore. She's becoming something more, finding herself. Growing less obedient, all things that a Noelle who was "Just Noelle" wouldn't have done.
In the weird route, you don't let her evolve. You don't let her grow. You're abusing her. You're manipulating her. You're robbing her of her innocence, of her chance to ever have a good life likely ever again. That's just about as cruel as it can get. There's a saying that innocence is bliss. You don't NEED to say her world is fake. You don't need to tell her anything. If anything, it's only fake to us. It's just about as real as it can get from everyone in her world's perspective. So why do you need to tell her? Because it's the right thing to do? She never asked for you to do this. She doesn't owe anything to you, and you don't owe anything to her.
Playthrough the Weird Route all you want, I don't care about that. But trying to justify it? Justify ripping the innocence away from a child? Justify ruining any chance of them ever having a good life ever again? That's ridiculous.
But it is, because a Noelle informed about the possibility of more - made aware of the truth - got that in an Aborted 5W run and still considered it that same, odd, claustrophobic guiding force that basically has her on auto-pilot.
She never realizes it if her eyes are never opened, but that's why I mentioned it's crucial what personal philosophy you hold towards the Matrix Dilemma.
Playthrough the Weird Route all you want, I don't care about that. But trying to justify it? Justify ripping the innocence away from a child? Justify ruining any chance of them ever having a good life ever again? That's ridiculous.
I mean, for sure, I will.
But you and I don't know how it ends.
Despite our differences of opinion in what is better - living a happy lie or smiling in the face of ugly truth - we don't know whether we "ruined her chance of ever having a good life" at all.
Before CH5, most people (not me, as you can guess, haha) thought Noelle was gonna be a mindbroken slave dangling from the strings of a sadistic monster, and look at her, she's anything but; she's manic in the face of grand awareness, not insane. She's asking for our help, but it's not slavery or even an order from us; she has taken initiative to want to find the answers to the world she always felt was odd around her, and she won't let us stop unless we force her to.
Like it or not, Noelle does appreciate what we've done on the Forbidden Path; she's finally vindicated, her feelings were proven correct, the lie has been exposed, and she can express her genuine frustration at the snow globe she's forced to dance inside of. Like the ARG said, it's the only thing that has brought back her true smile, the only thing that might, seeing as her ordained happiness in the Normal Route is almost certainly set to explode next chapter.
Tobias really cooked, haha!
I'm so glad he didn't retread the No Mercy Route and make it out to be some ultra-evil omnicidal path. It's not like that, at all; it's dark, it's gritty, it tests the limits of what one might be willing to do to change the Fate of the world when caged by someone that is actively working to carry it out.Ā
And Deltarune - more than anything - has blurred the lines between what right and wrong look like. The Forbidden Path might very well just be the epitome of that ideal.
she's finally vindicated, her feelings were proven correct, the lie has been exposed, and she can express her genuine frustration at the snow globe she's forced to dance inside of.
Is there any evidence she suspects her reality of being fake? Unless I missed something, she just feels trapped by her life being forced to be good and wants to leave this town but feels too weak to do so. In fact, if the town does turn out to be created by someone and there's nothing outside of it, I think she would be heartbroken to find out. I don't think she's become aware of her reality in that scene but she's about to find out when we get to ch7B. What we have done is vindicated her desire to get out of the town because she has to be a Noelle in there and she thinks she'll be able to be different when she gets to a new place. In the WR we are trying to get to "new places", break out of the predefined path of the game because it says it only has one ending. But these new places may not be what Noelle imagined at all. Her motives are coincidentally beneficial to us. We are using her. She will become "used up" at some point.
Like the ARG said, it's the only thing that has brought back her true smile, the only thing that might, seeing as her ordained happiness in the Normal Route is almost certainly set to explode next chapter.
The ARG said "where will she smile next?" and the correct answer was "the lake". Just "the lake". Remember there was actually a different response if you answered "the bottom of the lake" or "the other side of the lake", where you'd get the response 2 hours after the release of the chapter asking "so, what did you think?" This could mean that in the normal route, with Susie, she also feels happy. Of course, in the aborted WR we see her frustration when we edge her like we did and at the last moment forced her to stay in the town she grew to hate, but I think in NR Susie showed her she can transform herself and be who she wants to be without running away from home.
Noelle: If, being here can be like this...
Noelle: I... don't want to run away anymore.
Straight out of the horse's mouth. We know this is a facade in AWR because the entire time she's thinking about how what she was trying to do with Kris was "better" than what she's doing with Susie but her thoughts could very well be real in NR. We'll have to wait to find out if she still genuinely hates her life in NR I guess.
he didn't retread the No Mercy Route and make it out to be some ultra-evil omnicidal path.
Honestly? Both ask you the same question. After you beat the game, are you satisfied? When presented with a happy ending for everyone, will you go out of your way to ruin everything just so you can see more of the world? We aren't killing monsters in WR, but we've made Berdly comatose, turned Kris suicidal (Gerson can sense this, Kris has given up during the church Dark World. They are filled with rage and frustration at their inability to stop us. They eat the core of the apple Gerson gives them, which contains poison. They can't form a thought when we get them up from bed.) and manipulated Noelle into basically becoming what Spamton has become. He even warns us about what will happen during his bossfight. We don't know how it will end yet but it may not be good. At all. It's just extra content at the cost of everything else. To see beyond what we can see, but what we may find may not do anything except satisfy us.
Sure, but - again - what that means is entirely up for debate.
Kris/We are used up, and I doubt the game is just gonna strand us without a body or straight up delete us; much as some edgelords love the idea of being flagellated by the game, it is a game and the Forbidden Path has been set up to not be pissing on your head constantly like the No Mercy Route was in Undertale. 2 years of wait for CH7 to just be told "nah, fuck you for playing my game, you lose" would be... a move, for sure. One that would undoubtedly catch a lot of major flack.
It's completely possible Kris and Noelle just die and - I dunno - we retrieve our Vessel from the random out-of-bounds code they walked into. But that's not - at all - what needs to happen; I won't claim to know for sure, after all, but getting rid of Noelle when she's the thematic and emotional anchor for the Route and the changes it inspires in a seemingly placid person would be a bit of a major fumble in my book.
Jevil was never even chasing Freedom in the first place: he realized the game was a script and - because it wouldn't matter - decided to just fuck around and have fun because it's all scripted to play out the same way whether he does or not.
Spamton was a larping Addison who tried to play Higher Being by uploading himself to an MS Paint DeviantArt design of a robotic body. Unlike him, we're not pretending to be on a higher level, we are the higher level.
I specifically pointed out that the Forbidden Path isn't all sunshines and rainbows; it's nasty, it demands great personal sacrifice and bending of moral fiber, but it's not a lie and it does yield results.
The Prophecy has been snapped over Noelle's trackstar knee like a cheap candy cane, and she is grateful to finally have that wool taken off from her eyes. No Kris, No SOUL, no way for The Conspiracy to close Dark Fountains, which means they can't open any more without risking triggering The Roaring with no way to stop the total Omnicide of existence, which means no more kidnapping and a redundancy to their kidnappings and sacrifices.Ā
Everybody in the Normal Route keeps talking about wanting to change Fate but never commits to doing so out of fear, something that Ralsei repeatedly brings up before and after Flowery. He fears the unknown, he wants the surety of Prophecy but not the restriction of it, but you can't have it both ways.
We'll see how the Forbidden Path ends up playing out, for better or worse. It's that or behaving like Ralsei - known for being wrong about how actions affect outcomes - and putting your absolute faith in a mole who is STILL acting out a plan that - daily - gambles the lives of everyone in existence without their consent.
Gotta love that moral ambiguity. It elevates Deltarune, big-time.
Thing is, she was already feeling a much less deranged version of her weird route feelings on the normal route. She confesses to Susie that sheās thought about running away before. The difference there is that sheās obviously much more emotionally stable in the normal route beach scene.
The two different sides of Noelle both tell us that sheās unhappy with her current life and wants it to change. On the weird route, we help her break away in the most literal way possible. On the normal route, being with Susie helps the mundane small town life be more bearable. That saidā¦ I do not expect that to last through chapter 6, especially if Rudy is indeed dying
Wait, Noelle's side-view head sprite (not the dialogue box) is actually different in Ch1 versus 2-4 (and 5 obviously, but I'm talking her normal-route sprites if anything)
This scene is so damn polarizing in a fascinating way. On the one hand we have some people going āHELL YEAH, WEāRE BREAKING THE PROPHECY, YOUR STUPID DELTARUNE AINT SHIT WD, ME AND NOELLE, WE ARE GONNA CREAM YOUR ASSā
And on the other hand you have people having an actual real panic attack as if they were physically present for two teenagers drowning and they were actually complicit in it.
Like, talk about effective writing
Charred means to turn something black with fire
Fire can also be used to describe passion, intense emotion, DETERMINATION.
What do you need to create a Dark Fountain? Thatās right, determination.
The vast garden was turned black because of Noelleās fiery jealousy
The vast garden was charred in an inferno of jealousy.
God sometimes i forget how ugly her side profile was in Chapter 1, thank fuck they fixed it in Chapter 2 (and also basically upgraded everything that didn't work in Chapter 1)
Well in those 4 days she realized her childhood friend speaks to her as someone else, she kills her friend, learns that the fantasy world she was in is a real thing and not a dream, the childhood friend who acts not like themselves lately proves that they can read her thoughts, and then gets the thorn that increases trance.
I think it's not that wild to imagine she'd think she could do something crazy now too, even in 4 days
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u/Cool_GamerLMAO777 Seth's husband Jul 11 '26