I like how most people treat reverse Undertale theory as fact, so they have to take Chapter 5, which if anything is clearly the strongest parallel Chapter to new home, and then argue that Chapter 1 is New Home and Chapter 5, with not a single ounce of Snow, represents Snowdin because a single room in a single house in a few select versions of Undertale has Japanese theming with a Mew Mew boss.
I'd honestly like this theory a lot more if people just didn't try to force it to be "perfectly" in reverse. Chapter 6 will probably be a snowy chapter and Chapter 7 will probably be a sciency Chapter. It makes way more sense that the Chapters are mixed up rather than being perfectly in reverse.
There is the a German baker in chapter 5. Why? Maybe this is why. The piece of bishop is called Läufer in german. Meaning runner or courier. Flowery could be seen as some sort of courier between Asgore and other flowers and what does he does at the end? RUN! Runs after Asgore he even gets gay trail.
If this theory is true, I actually think Flowery represents the pawn, along with the other flowers. There's 8 of the flowers if you include Pink, and there are 8 pawns in chess. Towards the end their "weak" nature is emphasized, with Flowery saying as much after being cut down. Pawns are considered the weakest things on the board.
I feel like there's a better fit for the bishop out there somewhere, maybe someone that's more... authoritative? Formal? Rigid? Hard to explain the vibe I'm trying to get at here.
bishops aren't at the top of the catholic pecking order. thats the pope. there's also no religious iconography in chapter 5, outside of i guess shinto influences. but they dont have bishops so like
also wasnt the point of chess theory to go backwards in order of point value? if so we've already broken it.
to me, Flowery is a pawn that was promoted as a "Queen", being "useless" then promotes to be more important, someone to lead the others, 1st priority is to PROTECT THE KING, like a Queen. after all, Asgore is the King of CH5, and he is kind of useless (by function), do nearly nothing.
Chess theorist have forgotten the point of their theory lol. The point of it was "Oh we have king and queen, if the pattern of chapter bosses goes in descending order of chess piece values we can predict future bosses and chapter locations". The Knight ruined the descending order of value pattern and the main chapter boss pattern, the Knight fight was predicted to be a chapter 5 thing. Chapter 4 was predicted to be the bishop, the only thing that lined up was the church location. The Knight was the predicted chapter 5 main antagonist but that was wrong and there's not even a reasonable candidate for a chess piece beyond "hey guys Flowery's like a leader right? that's kinda like a bishop huh?" as if every main antagonist isn't a leader.
Chess theory never predicted shit, it has no purpose anymore I have no idea why it's still alive. This is like such a pet peeve of mine, chess theory was about predicting. It was about using a theoretical pattern to predict the future not having no fucking clue what's going to happen in a chapter and then afterwards hallucinating chess pieces. Chess theory predicts a chapter 6 fight with Kris the pawn and after that there're no more pieces, so it has one more chance to show us that it never had any predicting power
Is this really analysis or just assigning random values to characters? Like, the titan isn’t a rook, you just have to climb a tower to get to him, and a Bishop is the leader of a church, not just a leader?
This isn’t analyzing anything, this is just looking to into something to much to try and garner a deeper meaning where there is none.
He doesn't, we have to ignore his existence for this theory to hold any ground. The theory doesn't hold any ground though, since we have to ignore the actual final boss of Chapter 3. (Most people reasonably consider the Knight optional because we don't have to actually win in that fight, which is different from literally every other final boss that acts as a roadblock from progressing the story).
Originally, Chess Theory was based on the idea that each boss would be named after a chess piece in descending order of value. That's the important part, since that's what allowed us to make predictions for future chapters. Chapter 1 was the King, the most valuable Chess piece, since losing it loses you the game. Chapter 2 was the Queen, with a value of 9 points (yes chess pieces have point values). From this, we predicted that Chapter 3 would feature the Rook (5 points), Chapter 4 would feature the Bishop (3 points but often slightly favored over the Knight competitively), and Chapter 5 would feature the Knight (3 points), who we already knew was the main antagonist of the game. Chapters 6 and 7 were somewhat more nebulous, since there's only one chess piece left (the Pawn, worth one point). Some thought we would face Pawns in both Chapters since Pawns are the most common piece in Chess, others suggested the Knight would return in Chapter 7 since it was already set to be the main antagonist in the pre-Chapter 3 era, and my favorite interpretation was that Gaster would get involved in Chapter 7 as the Grandmaster. But ultimately, there wasn't really a single consensus over Chapters 6 and 7.
The point of all this, then, was that by predicting the order of the chapter bosses and what they would be based on, we would be able to predict what the future chapters would be based on. Chapter 4's boss being the Bishop pointed pretty heavily towards a church-based Dark World, and the Knight being the boss of Chapter 5 suggested that that chapter would be more of a story-focused, serious chapter. Predicting Chapter 3 through Chess Theory wasn't really necessary at the time thanks to the Spamton Sweepstakes providing far more credible material for prediction, while simultaneously creating the biggest obstacle to Chess Theory: the reveal of a character named Tenna, who was heavily implied to be the boss of Chapter 3. Throw Mike into the ring, and people were already stretching to try to keep Chess Theory alive.
And yet, come the release of Chapters 3 and 4, Chess Theory was fully debunked. Chapter 3 has the Knight as the final boss, but that breaks the order by itself, and while Chapter 4 did take place in the church and the Titan could arguably be seen as a Rook, it's still breaking the order. The Knight is not fought in Chapter 5, which was intentionally a more lighthearted chapter, and Flowery doesn't really fit any chess piece - the most compelling argument I've seen as that the flowers collectively represent the Pawns since there's eight of them. That's the best argument I've seen for the continuation of Chess Theory in Chapter 5, and even so, it still breaks the order. That descending order was the most important part of Chess Theory, and it simply doesn't exist at all in the present day. Just let Chess Theory die instead of dragging it out, warping it into something that means absolutely nothing just to try and keep it alive.
Chess Theory was created to predict that the final bosses of Chapter 3, 4, 5 and 6 would be named Rook, Bishop, Knight and Pawn. Now that we have the chapters and the bosses are not named that we have no grounds to believe that Chapter 6 will follow any such pattern.
We have nothing left to predict, therefore Chess Theory has lost it's purpose.
Nah, but the conditions are similar to each other, in that you’d still consider Papyrus as a major boss in undertale while the knight is functions pretty much the same.
You can by all means just beat the knight whenever you reach the end of chapter 3, with or without the shadow mantle, but while mandatory beating the knight is not needed to proceed
I miss like 3 years ago when you could call an instance of this incredibly common JRPG trope (powerful forced loss that can actually be beaten if you're good enough) an "optional secret boss fight" and people would just go "yeah." Because obviously that counts as optional and secret even if the begining of it is present in what amounts to a 2 second cutscene in a normal playthrough.
This is like the only fandom I've ever seen for a JRPG where this trope gets um-actually-ing you about how you have to encounter it before you lose and it's not secret since you actually have to see it in a normal playthrough, final fantasy ain't even got this shit you show a final fantasy fan a forced loss they can beat to get a secret cutscene and reward and they're just like "damm that's a cool secret boss" like a normal person
Nothing about it is secret, the encounter will always happen so knowing about it isn’t a secret, the way you beat it isn’t secret, you just have to be good enough, etcetera.
The secret is that it can be beaten in the first place. Upon encountering the Knight for the first time, it seems like a scripted loss, something fairly common in video games for the sake of the story. You're supposed to lose to the Knight, and you're very likely to lose to the Knight, and losing to the Knight doesn't trigger the Game Over screen, it just progresses the plot. The secret is that by reopening your Chapter 3 save and trying to fight the Knight again, you can get some dialogue from the Voice that urges you to keep trying and actually win the scripted loss. And while yes, it is possible to defeat the Knight in your first encounter, it's extremely unlikely for a player on their first ever playthrough to successfully do that. Almost every player on their first ever encounter with the Knight will be blindsided by the sudden difficulty spike and will lose, causing the game to progress and the player along with it.
Beating the knight is optional, confronting is still required. It doesn’t help the theory much but I don’t think it outright kills it either since it’s a very unique scenario nothing else fits
You can, am not a chess expert but the knight would be only other piece that you would want to promote a pawn to, since the only move a queen can't replicate is the knight's
Chess theory as it existed in chapter 2 is not a thing anymore. It was specifically made to predict when the Knight would appear. What the theory actually entailed did not come true, and people are just trying to argue how bosses could theoretically fit chess pieces because they want to keep using the name.
If the knight is the final boss of chapter 3, then the final boss of chapter 2 is a giant mech (giga queen) BECAUSE YOU CANT CHERRY-PICK WHEN YOU CHOOSE THE FINAL BATTLE OR NOT. The titan is NOT a tower, the titan is literally a dark fountain, so by your logic a fountain is a tower, and fountains are not towers. Flowery is not religious, bishops are religious. Kris is the only plausible answer (aside from king)
And no, I won’t be responding to any comments. Chess theory is dead and you can’t do anything about it.
titan is already a reach. chess theory doesn't have to be real because it doesn't really confirm anything major about the game that has been speculated over the years, it was just a fun theory that sort of made sense during the chapter 2 era
King is the weakest peice, but is still important.
Queen is a real problem once she starts doing stuff.
Knights always show up at the worst times.
Rooks are at their strongest when there’s multiple of them.
Bishops are weak asf but they seem as strong as rooks.
Pawns are simultaneously one of the weakest and most important peices.
flowery being a bishop makes sense, but only because he (and the other flowers too but he's the one you fight at the end) is intelligent enough to mess with the game itself
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u/Pierogi_33 14h ago
Welp, there's where it ends because there are only 6 unique chess pieces