I think I might be one of the most optimistic person in this thread, so I'll think give the second opinion. Honestly, I thought Chapter 5 was mostly fine and not unexpected from previous chapters. Like let's be real here, there's not much particularly "gayer" about the Dark World in this chapter than previous ones. The biggest thing you can point to is Blue's entire character, which is why he's the one people most suspect wasn't designed by Toby. Anything else like Seth's vague gender is just usual for Deltarune and Toby's writing. And while Chapter 5 was a little suspect than usual as far letting other writers do dialogue for it, even Chapters 3 & 4 had moments that really came off like Toby was handing an outline to someone else to write.
People keep bringing up that the chapter doesn't continue directly off the tone of Chapter 4's ending, but that's
always been the case. Chapter 1 ended on a last second reveal of Kris looking psycho, Chapter 2 starts with it revealed to be a fake out. Chapter 2 ends with Kris opening a Dark World in the house while looking suspicious, Chapter 3 starts with Susie not really caring much about how this happened and we quickly go into wacky stuff. Chapter 3 ends with them failing to open the shelter door and Susie freaking out about Undyne getting kidnapped and everything, Chapter 4 picks up the next with Kris and Susie having a casual breakfast with Toriel and going to church with a pretty casual attitude. Susie not immediately having anything to say about the ending of Chapter 4 is completely in-character with Toby's writing so far, hell the fact that Chapter 5 opens with Kris struggling to climb through his window and get the soul back in means this technically has the most serious chapter opener.
As far as needing to explain a lot in two remaining chapters, I think first we need to keep from getting too deep in the sauce of schizo fan theories. Gaster? Gaster isn't even a real character, we only know some vague info about him from Undertale and we all just assume he's the one talking to use in the few meta sections because it makes as much sense as anything. There's also been the possibility he'll never be "revealed" and there still is. Eram? That's just the Shadow Mantle itself. There's no mystery, it's sitting in your inventory. Even if the voice talking to you isn't the mantle itself, it could be anyone including someone who would get revealed later anyway, so it doesn't add any extra work. Friend? Was always likely to be some kind of race rather than some kind of grand conspirator like fans were making up, and the game has barely alluded to them anyway, so we have no guarantee they're particularly important. Sans and Papyrus? People only care because they were in Undertale, there's been nothing within the context of Deltarune to suggest they're important to the story. If Papyrus even appears, I bet it'll be a gag.
When you get down to it, there's basically just 3 or 4 real mysteries for the story to reveal.
- What exactly happened with Dess? (And how this affected others like that were presumably there like Kris.)
- Who's the knight? (And by extension, what's their goal? And why is Kris seemingly working with them?)
- Who and what exactly is Ralsei?
- What's up with Susie's home life? (The story hasn't really been drawing attention to it, but it's sort of edging up against it enough that it feels like there's something important there.)
Going off the length of previous chapters, Chapter 6 & 7 will probably gives us, what, like 8 to 12 more hours of game? Considering the game can be plot-dense when it wants to be, that's plenty of time to answer the important questions and wrap up the plot should it actually focus on it. Especially since those first two mysteries could possibly be directly related.
The actual big problems with Chapter 5 are really just these two, with anything else being a sub-point of them: The Suselle scene is cringy and Asgore vagueposting.
The Suselle stuff goes without saying why it's bad, but it there's couple things to mention with it. For one thing, it's why people are saying the festival was a disappointment. It was mentioned enough in previous chapters and people were hoping for juicier relationship drama, such that many people were expecting the festival to be a bigger event with more important story scenes going on that it's clear Toby actually had planned. Instead, it's just lead up to the lake scene. Now, not matching people's expectations is fine if you exceed them, or match in intensity if not in content, but since the lake scene is cringe, it makes the entire festival feel like a problem. And the festival does have some interesting characterization in places, but since you can skip it all, a lot of people read it as unimportant. The other thing is that it's really unclear where Toby is taking this, because basically everything about what's in the game all points to Suselle not being a viable relationship for real, and there's stuff under the surface with Kris that need to be resolved. Which really, means that if you actually think Toby is definitely going to make Suselle the endgame, then a lot of you are being too nice to him, because that would be a level beyond being a hack. A hack just writes a bad romance. This would be writing a romance that completely goes counter to everything else he's writing, including within Chapter 5 itself. People don't know how to feel about this, so it leads to zero hype for Chapter 6, because people want to have some expectation for what comes next in the story, not feel jerked around. And the thing is, all the arguments about the relationship and why people think it's set in stone are completely metatextual arguments about what type of person Toby is or culture war bullshit, which makes it rather interesting to be honest.
As for the vagueposting, this leads to people feeling like "nothing happened" this chapter, even though there was a little plot advancement with Asgore getting kidnapped and Susie finding a shelter code at the end, plus stuff with Ralsei. The big issue with nothing concrete being revealed about the incident with Dess is actually that it undermines any ability for the player to get a grasp on Asgore's internal conflict. We don't have full context for why Asgore is acting the way he does, so his whole desperation to find the Knight followed by him telling Kris he's learned a lesson in letting go some so as not to push others away just kind comes across as "Oh. Okay, I guess." People were expecting this to be "the Asgore chapter", but as it turns out, the emotional core of the chapter is really Ralsei and Flowery. Asgore is actually kind of unimportant. So that mismatch in expectation leads to people thinking Asgore was straight up written badly this chapter. I wouldn't say he was, but I'll say that even excepting that he wasn't the real focus of the chapter, it's still comes across as a poor writing choice to get him involved when you still refuse to give details about his problems, leading to a lack of any emotional resonance with the little he does do.
Overall, it's clear Toby just wanted to screw around for one more chapter before focusing on the real "act 3" of the story - in fact it's a part of act 2 with Chapters 3 & 4, where you can say 3 was Kris's chapter, 4 was Susie's chapter, and 5 was Ralsei's chapter - but everyone was really expecting Chapter 5 to be the start of plot threads coming to a head, so the expectations were entirely mismatched and not lots of people are in a really bad mood and viewing everything in a more negative light, and now lack any clear expectations of what they'll see in Chapters 6 or 7.
