Undertale and Deltarune

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discussion question: what's your favourite use of a leitmotif in undertale/deltarune? (self.undertale_deltarune)

submitted 1 year ago by NumericBiconditional to c/undertale_deltarune

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let's see if this community is better at responding to these than c/kirby! :p

toby fox is famous for his use of leitmotifs. what specific instances do you find compelling, interesting, memorable, etc?

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[–] NumericBiconditional 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

it's not an easy question for me!

i'll highlight two from undertale: first, it's pretty cool how waterfall is kind of a "leitmotif bridge" between ruins and another medium / core. too bad snowy isn't connected in the same way

more notably: the way don't give up uses the variation of the ruins leitmotif from an ending / undyne's neutral death theme is pretty amazing. with pretty much the exact same melody and rhythm, it manages to go from depressing and emotional to inspiring... and emotional.

for deltarune, i'll highlight two from chapter 1 and one from chapter 2. i like how field of hopes and dreams, as the very first "proper" area theme, heavily emphasizes the don't forget leitmotif, using it in a cheerful, upbeat way.

as for one of the very last songs in chapter one, the way chaos king just blasts you with the legend section C in a refreshing burst of determination and hope that contrasts nicely with the rest of the theme... yeah even in chapter 1, despite lacking the various improvements of chapter 2, toby fox absolutely nailed it with everything music-wise.

and as for chapter 2, the way berdly's theme is incorporated into attack of the killer queen is both surprisingly subtle (especially since it actually takes up more of the song than queen's own leitmotif(!)) and, just, pleasant to listen to. in particular, i love the way they changed around the rhythm for section B of berdly's theme.

[–] az_ablueautumn 2 points 1 year ago

Okay, the Waterfall one had my jaw on the floor lol.

[–] az_ablueautumn 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

One that stuck with me was that on the genocide route when the infamous "but nobody came" text appears, if you speed the background noise up, it will be Flowey's theme. Really cool!

[–] NumericBiconditional 2 points 1 year ago

ah, that little detail! what's even more intriguing is that it's only the first two bars of the theme

[–] Fanfic_Galore 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I really like how Big Shot uses a variety of leitmotifs from both Deltarune and Undertale, and also minor variations of the Spamton leitmotifs introduced earlier. It's the peak of Toby's music-making style: https://youtu.be/p-AHtHis15M

[–] NumericBiconditional 1 points 1 year ago

my initial thought was that it actually didn't use that many leitmotifs: just spamton's two motifs, the world revolving + power of neo, and dummy!. but that's actually more leitmotifs (5) than hopes and dreams (4: once upon a time A and C, your best friend, and snowdin town), chaos king (3: card castle, lancer, legend), and attack of the killer queen (3 or 4: queen, maybe another queen motif somewhere?, berdly's 2 motifs), assuming i have everything correct! (i'm counting each distinct section of a source song as a unique leitmotif.)

watched the linked video for the first time, though i'm sure i've seen it plenty of times in my recommendations. i didn't consider melody A'' to be a variation of melody A, but i suppose it kinda makes sense. i assume this was one of the more influential analyses of big shot's leitmotifs?