Alternate Routes

Wiki Discussion
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Hey all! There's been some discussions here and there over the past week regarding the naming & structure of the alternate routes articles.

Now that the dust from release has settled somewhat, we'd like to start a discussion & vote on
what each alternate route should be named and how we should structure their respective articles.

Currently, we have a Snowgrave Route article to describe the alternate route in chapter 2 and a Weird Route (Chapter 4) article to describe the alternate route in chapter 4.

However, as more content was written about the new alternate route, it became clearer that chapter 4's alternate route content is mostly a direct continuation from the story line started in chapter 2. For example, chapter 4's route is only accessible if chapter 2's route was completed for the save file used.
As a result, we've seen the following proposals suggested over the past week:

Proposal Pros Cons
#1 (Current Situation): One "Snowgrave Route" page and one "Weird Route (Chapter 4)" page Pages per-chapter scale better as more chapters get added, and each page can focus more on the route's content in its chapter. The route arguably continues through the chapters and isn't actually separate from a story perspective. There is no way to start the route from chapter 4.
#2: One "Weird Route (Chapter 2)" page and one "Weird Route (Chapter 4)" page Same as proposal #1, but without the fan-chosen "Snowgrave" name. Both the game's internals and its developers have exclusively referred to the route as the "Weird Route". The "Snowgrave Route" name has seen common usage within the fandom. Article names that only have differences in a chapter number are less intuitively distinctive.
#3: One single "Weird Route" page All the route's article content, which arguably continues seamlessly between chapters, is found in one place. The article might become incredibly large as more chapters continue to add content to the route. This might discourage readers (especially mobile viewers).
#4: One main "Weird Route" synopsis page with "Weird Route (Chapter 2)" & "Weird Route (Chapter 4)" subpages. Maintains a single article to summarize the entire (arguably continuous) route, while avoiding an article that becomes too long by splitting off more chapter-specific details in their respective subpages. The separate chapter-specific pages can focus more on the route's content in its chapter. Needs careful writing & editing to make sure information is not splintered or duplicated too much between pages. Would take the most editor effort to implement properly.

All the proposed pages would still be in the Alternate Routes category. These pros and cons aren't exhaustive or set in stone, so feel free to offer your own perspective on them.

Vote for your preferred proposal below. If you end up voting, please state your reasoning in the thread to keep the discussion going! We'll keep the poll open until EOW (15/06/2025).

  • Proposal #1: "Snowgrave Route" & "Weird Route (Chapter 4)"
  • Proposal #2: "Weird Route (Chapter 2)" & "Weird Route (Chapter 4)"
  • Proposal #3: "Weird Route"
  • Proposal #4: "Weird Route" & Chapter Subpages
0 voters
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first one here, hopefully i'm writing at the correct spot (this is "the thread", right???)
edit number 427: yes i am at the correct spot but i'm keeping the line above here for comedic values

my opinion: back when we only had Chapter 2, Snowgrave Route is a cool and compact name: describes spot on the route's key feature - casting Snowgrave.
now that Chapter 4 is here, the route has expanded from just "casting Snowgrave", I believe it's a better option from now on to simply refer to the Weird Route as, well, the Weird Route, considering that even Susie used the term in her dialogue (definitely just a coincidence right? haha?)

The "Snowgrave Route" may become a redirect to the Weird Route (Chapter 2) page/subpage.

I would have voted for 3/4 options (excluding #1) if I had been able to vote for more than one option. In the end, I voted #2 because it seemingly reduces editor workload.

edit number 428: i must thank Pwrfghtr08's reply for this. i agree that #4 clearly shows the Weird Route is one and only. This contradicts my previous "reduces editor workload" bias, but it's better than #3, which may "discourage readers". I would prioritize the readers' experience.[1]

So to sum up, I believe #4 should be the best route we can take here.

edit number 429: this reply has been bombarded by random unnecessary linking! have fun edit number 430 following: added your taking too long to reply

  1. Off-topic: In the end, we editors are just Ralsei's aren't we? putting the readers' experience above our own comfort? see the reference? lol? ... ↩︎

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#4. Clearly shows that the Weird Route is one route, not 2 separate routes that are independent of each other, while also avoiding an already long article that would become even longer with future Chapters, especially if the Weird Route ends up drastically changing the story.
Edit: Also, I like PeterBoy's idea of redirecting the Snowgrave Route page to the Chapter 2 Weird Route.

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I do believe #4 is the best way to go about this. Currently, the Weird Route page is a redirect to the Alternate Routes category, but that category also includes Sword Route, which is not a Weird Route and has nothing to do with its progression. Making the Weird Route page an independent article would give readers more clarity on what it actually is.

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So, I consider Chapter 4 Weird Route to just be the next part of the Weird Route. So to me, the fact the potential articles wouldn’t be intuitively distinct isn’t much of an issue, they’re not supposed to be. This is the same route. We’re supposed to see it as the same thing. Because it is. I find it being distinct to be the equivalent of making the Murder Route in Snowdin to be different than the one in New Home, just because we’ve changed from picking off enemies one by one and then killing a boss easily, to talking with Flowey and then having to deal with an annoying skeleton. (Also who here thinks the main Weird Route ended at Chapter 4 because of that sound effect? Or at least we’re locked onto it and can’t abort it anymore once ominous_worse [The FULL Weird Route sound effect, the prior confirmation sound effects was taking from the beginning of this one] plays, meaning Chapter 5 doesn’t let you abort?)

I’m somewhere in the 2/3/4 camp. So, I guess I’m casting a negative vote to 1? Oh, wait, negative votes aren’t possible. I’m not that familiar with design, so I don’t really know which of the three remaining would work best. I’d say to go with precedent, but there’s no real precedent that fits. Flowey has multiple pages, but he has distinct forms that justify multiple pages, which doesn’t apply to the weird route, Frisk has one single page encompassing all routes, but they don’t have much character. the Neutral Ending(s) page is one page, but it’s shorter than what the Weird Route would probably be so we can’t use the fact that that’s all one page to say that this should be one page.

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i voted 3 but i... really don't think chapter subpages, as in 4, are necessary. i don't see the use of hiding content in a subpage like that when just having headers would do the same trick. it'd just be confusing with duplicated content and where to find what information.

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The main appeal of having subpages rather than headings on a singular page is that the conditions and effects for Weird Route can be very complicated, especially with Chapter 2 where the entire course of events changes. If I'm not wrong, the current "Snowgrave Route" page is already one of the longest pages on the wiki by itself. If we just kept stacking things on top of it it would easily become a very unwieldy page both to read and edit.

Also there wouldn't necessarily have to be subpages for every single chapter that has a variation in the route if they're very minor, like how Chapter 3 has only a small handful of consequences for taking the route in Chapter 2. That could be summarized on the primary Weird Route page, while Chapter 2's and Chapter 4's more complex changes are kept separate...That's about how I imagined things when I made that suggestion before. (I assume it's my suggestion that made it onto the poll unless someone else came up with the same idea too...)

Anyway, I am partial to the subpages idea of course, but to be completely honest I'll just be happy as long as the page isn't titled Snowgrave Route anymore. ^^; The wiki using a fan name while an official name existed has bugged me for years at this point... (Snowgrave Route can still be a redirect and in the "also known as" field in the infobox though, I think. That seems completely reasonable to me.)

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I thought about this for a while and I'll have to agree with Cerulean - it's unclear how to neatly segment the page into subpages to separate out the information from different chapters. So my vote goes to #3, that is one single Weird Route page.

Someone's looking for how to start the Weird Route, they visit the [[Weird Route]] page and the information they find isn't there. It's on [[Weird Route/Chapter 2]].

So they go to [[Weird Route/Chapter 2]] and then want to see how it changes in Chapter 3. That's locatied on [[Weird Route/Chapter 3]], right? Nope, there is no such page because changes in Chapter 3 are few. That's just on [[Weird Route]]. Would it make sense to have a [[Weird Route/Chapter 3]] page just for these differences? Probably not.

Let's try a more realistic scenario - someone wants to find the requirements for the route, and doesn't care about the changes on the route, because they want to experience them themselves. They have to visit two pages - [[Weird Route/Chapter 2#Method]] and [[Weird Route/Chapter 4#Method]]. Why? Couldn't that information be condensed into a single section, that wouldn't even be overly long? It feels like it makes more sense to separate [[Weird Route/Method]] from [[Weird Route/Differences]] than to separate it by chapters.

If they are looking for the route's differences, it becomes even worse. Now they suddenly have to visit all three pages to find that information out.

I think rationalizing a page split by the page being overly long makes sense as long as people are individually searching for that part being split outside of the context of the main page itself. Yes, people are going to search for "chapter 2 weird route" and "chapter 4 weird route", but I think it's more important that they are going to search for "weird route requirements" or "weird route changes" which are queries that are going to be served quite poorly by the proposed subpage structure. The route is a long and continuous one, after all, and while Deltarune fans currently may be more focused on just finding out the new changes, I think it's equally important to consider the future Deltarune fans which do not know anything about the Weird Route at all and just want to find out individual pieces of information regardless of the chapter.

Long pages don't really make a difference for editing, I think. Our currently longest page is Spamton Sweepstakes, and I don't have issues using the source editor on it over my phone. If Weird Route was a single page, I estimate it wouldn't even be longer than Spamton Sweepstakes.

Long pages don't make a difference for reading either as long as the information scent is there. So I'm not quite sure we can rationalize this split by the page being long, considering how there's isn't quite a good candidate to split off. IMO, it would be as if the Genocide Route page was split by location.

I know the decision has pretty much been made at this point, but I wanted to voice my opinion anyways, since I didn't vote for "Weird Route" on the original community vote (despite being a proponent of that name) and now we're in this situation.

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Makes sense. I changed my vote.

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Originally voted for option 4 but after hearing your reasoning I have to agree and changed my vote accordingly, even though going off of poll results I doubt it will do much.

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I’d have to agree with KAdmiralac, now. It’s a good point. I’ve collapsed my 2/3/4 superposition into a definitive 3. (Or a 5, I suppose?)

One possible counterpoint to the Method/Changes distiction might be to say that you shouldn’t be on the wiki if you haven’t played the game and gotten every route (like how Undertale Wiki shouldn’t be viewed unless you got all three endings), but it’s a weak one. A whole bunch of readers go on to see the Undertale Wiki and spoil themselves anyway, and the Weird Route is hidden a lot better than the Murder Route in Undertale. Plus how would we even put the warning there in a way that doesn’t spoil it anyway? “Don’t read most pages in this wiki unless you’ve completed all four chapters and gotten the ThornRing?” So 2 and 4 are eliminated from my vote, the only counterpoint to the argument you gave that I thought of I also showed isn’t even a good counterpoint

UPDATE:Huh, the “get all the endings before viewing the wiki” is absent from the new Undertale Wiki. I take it we just gave up on trying to stop them because that warning never did anything lol

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Hey all! The vote has officially closed, and we are moving forward with Proposal #4: one Weird Route page with two chapter subpages!

Some folks are already hard at work getting everything restructured and moved over, but keep an eye on these pages in the coming days to see if there's anything you notice that could improve. We're especially going to have to be careful of excessively omitting or repeating information from the three distinct pages. We'd appreciate your effort in helping build out this new structure!

If you have any questions about what this vote result means, or how you could help out, feel free to drop a post in this thread.

Thanks for participating!

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I completely missed this poll as I wasn't notified by it in any way (I am new to this wiki forum and don't know how to regularly check new stuff) but at the end the option that I most wanted ended up becoming the chosen one so all's perfect for me.

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