Alterna Citizen Program M-00: Init (System Noise)

Game info: Deltarune wiki (complete spoilers)
Listening: Bandcamp, Linkfire

Info

It’s time once again for Toby Fox’s Wild Ride! Chapter 5 was teased as “one more fun adventure” before we presumably get down to some dirty, raw business in the final two chapters, so in contrast to the darker, more contemplative tone of chapter 4, the soundtrack has a brighter, more adventurous tone that’s reminiscent of the music from the first two chapters. Which isn’t to say there aren’t dark or contemplative moments in the soundtrack, it’s varied like all the DELTARUNEs are, but the balance is much more in the direction of vibrancy this time around.

The main part of this chapter is the most varied one so far in terms of settings, going from a forest to a jagged cliffside to a Japanese castle. All three locations are evoked in their own ways in the soundtrack, but the Japanese castle influence strongly predominates, with multiple area, character, and battle themes incorporating at least some Japanese traditional instruments, particularly shamisen and percussion like taiko and hyoushigi. These instruments are generally mixed in with the usual kinds of instruments, styles, and melodic writing that we see in DELTARUNE, so it’s not like there’s suddenly a bunch of gagaku music here or anything like that; it’s fairly typical Japanese-hybrid music that you’ll find in all sorts of video games.

As is usually the case for DELTARUNE soundtracks, my favorite pieces tended to be ones with sound design I liked more than anything else. On average I thought this chapter’s music was as decent as the music from the first two chapters, honestly maybe even just slightly more consistently decent than them, but the flipside is that there was only one track this time that made me go “okay that’s cool dang,” while the first two chapters each have like 3-4 of them. So my emotional takeaway from it is that I’m less impressed with it because it had less standout moments, but in a mathematical sense I’m not sure it’s actually “worse” than them. For sure I thought it was easily better than chapter 3, though it wasn’t as specifically targeted to me as chapter 4 was (which I didn’t expect it to be); I’m kind of hoping the events of the final chapters will allow Fox to get freaky with the soundtracks in a way I think he’s mostly intentionally been avoiding so far, but we’ll see!

For this chapter’s soundtrack, Fox got five of his buddies to do six guest tracks, both of which are very easily new records for a single chapter. Three of the contributions are pre-existing arrangements of chapter 1 music—the pieces by Carlos Eiene, rakuichi, and Trevor Alan Gomes—which are reused here with varying amounts of modification. The other three—a cutscene theme by Hana Itoki and two battle themes by Camellia—are new pieces; they fit in a bit more closely with the rest of the soundtrack in terms of their lower-fi instrumentation and composition than the reused arrangements, though none of the reused pieces are especially off-putting or anything.

Recommended tracks:

All selections by Toby Fox, except where otherwise noted.

• “I guess I’m in love” (arr. Hana Itoki & Toby Fox) has a background synth that’s weirdly dissonant in its first appearance at 0:25

• “Weirder Birds” is a modified version of “Weird Birds” from chapter 1 with a little distortion and an extra loop at a slightly lower pitch, minor stuff but they both really make it feel more fleshed out to me somehow

• “Quiet Glade” is some ambient, impressionistic piano with running water noises on top of it (and a synth later) and that’s just nice

• “Petal Dance” was my favorite of the Japanese instrument tracks because it has a couple of good chords in it, very very clearly Touhou-inspired piece here

• “That Day” has a weird plonking sound at 0:22 that’s cool