Can the audience be more than just an observer?
By Serena Wang
It’s pretty common to find fourth wall breaks in stories now. It’s an easy way to get the audience engaged, adding a touch of comedy and inserting yourself into the story for a brief moment. But what if you existed in the world for more than just a moment? What if you were part of the story? How can a story involve a higher being beyond itself?
For series such as Whitepine and Deltarune, the audience is an active participant in its story. They are wildly different types of media, yet both release in an episodic manner. This is especially key to audience-involved stories, as it forces viewers to consider the story currently provided and take apart each piece of evidence given. It almost becomes a race to see who can make the most coherent theory of the story after each release, only to have them collapse after a new piece of content.
Through premises specifically set up to provoke a response from the general audience, they are able to steer the audience into acting and thinking in certain ways. The wider audience, as well as the individual viewer, then becomes a playing part in the story, approaching the role of a character. Whitepine and Deltarune accomplishes this in different ways, where Whitepine positions the audience as a detective that ultimately pervades the characters, Deltarune subverts the typical Role-Playing Game (RPG) narrative and explores the intrusion of the player.
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Whitepine is an indie Youtube series directed by IvoryTV, considered a period drama and murder mystery series set in the 1900s. It is expertly filmed, with attention to cinematography and pacing standard for a high-level production. Each episode was shot and released approximately every three months, of which in the space between episodes, fans would plunge into the new content to dissect it.
The main premise of the series is introduced by the end of the first episode – Ivory, a new hire at the Whitepine manor, witnesses the aftermath of a murder alongside the staff and residents of the house, the Hemlocke family. From its first reveal in 2024, audiences quickly adopted the role of a detective, producing fan content detailing the exact movements of the characters around the house. Theories circulated quickly, everyone making an attempt to determine the murderer. The most popular two accused Ivory as she may have motives relating to freshly joining the staff, as well as claim she had amnesia, and the head staff member, Clown, who seemed closely tied with a mysterious package entering the manor. This behaviour only continued to develop as each new episode released, pushing theories towards different characters and motives.
From the second episode, a detective is introduced to the characters. He took his work seriously, interrogating each member of the house, but then seemed to suspect Ivory. He began pushing the boundaries of his professional life, personally spying on her in the manor and spreading distrust among the staff, with the intention to make her confess to a crime. The scenes involving him are tense, awkward and makes it clear that his actions are excessive. Ivory does not confess and he eventually resorted to violence as a last effort.
However, besides all this wild commotion around the murder, both in universe and in the community, the rest of the world became overlooked. Each episode not only revealed more about the murder, but about its characters and relationships, allowing viewers to watch their daily lives and connect with the struggles and actions of each unique person. There were interrogations and violence and desperation typical of a murder mystery, but practically most of Whitepine focused on simple, inconsequential moments with emotionally significant dialogue and flowing piano instrumentals over idyllic forest scenes.
By this point though, Whitepine’s audience had one single goal. Each simple action was dissected into foreshadowing, blown out into huge clues and turned into another piece on the evidence board. Characters were seen for their role in the murder first, then their identity afterwards. This was sustained even after an anticlimactic reveal that the murderer was simply an unrelated drunkard – the audience could not accept an uneventful conclusion.
When Whitepine ended, it became clear that the detective was a reflection of the audience’s behaviour as viewers became so engrossed in disassembling the story that they disregarded the inherently human and flawed nature of the characters, just as the detective had. By completely sifting through each second of the series and debating between theories, the audience had mirrored the actions of the detective, contradicting the purpose of Whitepine – revealing the raw reality of life, yet finding comfort despite everything.
The viewer was intentionally led down a path of denial, repeatedly trying to find theories only to eventually accept that things play out as they are. In this way, the audience were immersed into the world of Whitepine and the struggle of processing misfortune and abuse.
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Deltarune, developed by Toby Fox – also known for creating Undertale – is incredibly complex, involving 30 hours of dialogue-heavy content. However, much of the lore exists outside the gameplay, expecting players to derive the story from meticulously inspecting images, sound files, and even breaking into the game code. It is practically impossible to fully understand Deltarune by passively playing the game, and multiple runthroughs become a standard for the full experience.
Deltarune excels in its ability to throw off its audience. For being such a huge name in the gaming space -- reaching 290,000 active players during the release of Chapter 5 – there have yet to be more than a handful of long-standing theories within the community. This is mostly attributed to the constant additions to the game content, whether it be a new chapter update or a secret line of dialogue in unused assets – theories are almost guaranteed to falter after every update.
The game achieves this by remaining ambiguous in meaning, often hiding important foreshadowing in lighthearted throwaways as seen in Noelle’s mention of wanting to fly, when with Susie in the ferris wheel in Chapter 2, foreshadowing her monologue in Chapter 5. Alongside the game’s tendency to leave key details unaddressed, it becomes hard to tell whether or not to take something seriously when presented. This is seen especially with a post made by Toby Fox, titling a distorted video of ‘You’ve Got a Friend in Me’ as ‘Friend inside me’. It became popular for its absurdity and was quickly adopted as a Deltarune theory, stating that the secret boss battle would relate to the video.
Though the post was made way before the first release of Deltarune, the only time ‘Friend inside me’ has been addressed was by the addition of a cowboy character in Chapter 5. Thus, the theory which has been taken seriously ends up completely unrelated and serves a different purpose than expected. It is unclear if this is done purposefully to taunt the excessively devoted theorists, but it acknowledges the active audience subtly as well as conflict the audience on whether or not something will end up becoming relevant.
Within the world of Deltarune, the player controls the perspective which we explore the world in. In most cases, this is from the viewpoint of Kris, a silent protagonist – of which is expected from an RPG, conventionally using the character a player controls as the catalyst of the story. However, players do not directly control Kris, and they frequently rebel against our control by taking out their soul, which is what we actually control in Deltarune. The soul exists as part of the detailed world of Deltarune/Undertale, but exists only in human characters, therefore making Kris the only character we directly control (so far).
From here, I’ll address the character of the player piloting the soul as ‘the player’, and the wider audience as the audience, but it’s important at this point to make the distinction. The player exerts as much control as they can in the world, given options to wander, observe objects through narration, pick dialogue options for Kris, decide the actions of each party member, as well as the spontaneous options the game provides for secret interactions. Generally, what the player picks for Kris does not affect the overall playthrough aside from some detours, but the existence of branches in the timeline forces the player to replay chapters to experience them. This creates a new sense of objectification from completionist players, placing a barrier between the characters and the player, and instead viewing the events as paths towards a specific result. The initial idea of a timeline is no longer significant and the effort redirects to trying to discover every version of one, becoming only another part of the dissection of Deltarune.
This only results in a disregard for all the other characters too. A player in another game may be expected to feel guilt or at least avoid distressing their characters in an act of empathy, but the player of Deltarune may actually bypass the boundaries of the characters and not realise it themselves. Despite the conventions of its genre, Deltarune’s protagonist is not completely hollow. Kris bears their own personality and identity, shown where the player does not have control over. They are explicitly referred to by gender-neutral pronouns, make jokes with Susie without the player’s command, and clearly have differing relationships with their community. We are reminded that the player has not been here from the start, that Kris ultimately is a real person in this world, and our intrusion becomes even clearer.
Even while existing alongside their individuality, the player then is given choices that benefit or hurt Kris, the effect also extending to their friends. Despite Kris’ unwillingness to open their brother’s drawer in Chapter 5, the player can force them to open it by interacting with the drawer, where they are assumedly upset and close it quickly. It is an abuse of the player’s power over Kris, where they are completely unable to fight back against the player’s will. This also occurs when the player is given the option to console Ralsei or encourage his self-hatred during a vulnerable moment in Chapter 4. Choosing to perpetuate his toxic perspective pushes Ralsei to objectify himself into an item of service to the party members. Through this exertion of power, the player does not take the wishes of the characters seriously, playing the game without empathy. The invasion of the player causes suffering without regard, and explores the discomfort of player possession in the main character.
A significant element of Deltarune is in its gameplay routes. Similar to the genocide route of Undertale, which is named for the act of killing every enemy the player comes across, the respective route in Deltarune is known as ‘Side B’, ‘Weird Route’, or ‘Snowgrave’. It is started by killing every enemy in Chapter 2, and continuously maintained by picking specific options through to Chapter 5. Mainly, players entered this route by accident in an effort to advance through enemies as quickly as possible, ending up in an act of cruelty towards Noelle and Kris’ other friends. However, the route is only continued by an express effort to continue abusing the characters, repeatedly offering ways to return to the normal route which can go ignored. In this way, the player of Snowgrave is the most extreme display of power by making Kris assault their friends at every option offered to them.
The Snowgrave route chooses to skip past most of each chapter. Snowgrave in Chapter 2 ends up skipping a large portion of the ending, Chapter 4 makes players miss a significant cutscene with Susie and Noelle, and Chapter 5 almost entirely skips the adventure, otherwise hours of content in the normal route. This reflects the speedrunner mentality of RPG players – ‘speedrunners’ being a type of player who attempts the fastest way to achieve something – where players disregard morality and empathy in place of completion and efficiency, perceiving abuse as a shortcut. Here, players are rewarded for their neglect by missing existing content. Replaced by the need to reach the end, Snowgrave objectifies its cast, skipping over all the characterisation and experiences that highlight the complexity of each character, especially missing out on dialogue opportunities as noted by Susie, who is less close to Kris in this route. It even pushes Noelle into a dark mental state, as she is inspired by Kris’ ability to alter the world and is implied to drown herself and Kris in the lake. The result of Snowgrave forces audiences to consider whether their moral code should be applied to people who aren’t ‘real’, while perpetuating an assault on the characters. Therefore, from the desire to strip through all the content, the player invades into Deltarune and attempts to destroy every connection, moment of fun, and inflict pain upon Kris and their world.
By prompting the audience to engage with the world and enact the objectification of characters, the audience can be simultaneously immersed in the story and also observe our desire to force our will onto the timeline. In Whitepine’s case, it prompts a perversion of characters and projects us into the detective, while in Deltarune, it explores the reaction of characters to the intrusion of the player and an urge to achieve our goal at any consequence.
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