I think void should feel like a collapsing giant level that you desperately attempt to navigate and find delirium. I want everything to feel like a corrupted and mixed mind. Maybe make the entire place all mixed up, such as putting withered mine carts in the womb with melting and battered bishops, or gapers that look like they just been through 6 wars. Make the place feel dangerous and adventurous, but also utilize the mechanics that weren't used much in the game
fax, plus the idea of a crumbling or fading memory has so much potential. enemies could disappear and reappear, rocks could explode, rocks could come from above to hit isaac, the room could be fractured (imagine a room that isn't rectangular, and is actually at an angle), etc. idk if thats balanced but itd make it harder than it is and way cooler. and delirium needs a special boss room.
Another idea for delirium, would be for him to turn into his true form when he hits certain hp percentages to do an special attack, and then continue the boss fight as normal.
I always wanted Void to be like the "delete this" challenge's rooms where everything seriously was messed up on the floor designs discolored familiar rooms and all objects used you know?
That would look awesome! And It would fit flavorfully in the story, Isaac's mind racing and forgetting more and more details as he succumbs to Delirium and his death
My take on the Void's floor structure that represents "dying memory": like you said, the floor should be of average size, but it should have a single boss room and be set in a single floor theme at first, looking like a completely normal level. But when you defeat the boss, take the item and jump in the hole, a static effect would occur and you'd be put on a different floor theme with a totally different mapping. And each time this happens, the floors would get weirder in structure and larger, have more boss rooms and rooms from different level themes as the floor does now, include more "delirium champions", maybe some parts of the rooms would be replaced with some Void mumbo jumbo, the vision can get all blurry and glitchy and static-y, the music would get all messed up. Also your items can be removed partially to reflect the current theme like you suggested. However this needs thorough discussion, because in the case when you skipped certain themes (like Chest or Dark Room if you went to the Void through Hush), it's unclear as to what items to remove. P.S. Your Delirium idea reminds me of the Narcissus boss fight from Revelations 😄
I believe it should look at first like the run was reset, starting at basement 1. The first floor is entirely normal beyond not getting an alternate path door. Then the second floor everything is minorly glitched, with all sounds and music which are randomly accelerating and slowing down, same with most enemies (That actually sounds hard, even with basement enemies, randomly accelerating and slowing down would make it very hard to dodge). From floor 2 and onwards, every special room simply contains several items form their item pool that you had before entering the void (You can take all of them, the only cost is having to enter the room, which is simply a key for the shop/treasure room, but can be difficult for the devil/angel/secret room). The amount of items depends on how many items of that item pools you had, always having the least amount of items while still making sure that you can get all of the items of that item pool that you had (Devil/Angel rooms are guaranteed, as if you had goat head and duality, except if you enter one the other doesn´t disappear, and if you had no items from the item pool of one of them, they wont appear, and if you had no angel/devil room items, neither of them appear) As he mentioned in the video, there should be a void background, that is visible in every hole in the floor (Except in Floor 1), and the trapdoor to get to Floor 3 or any later should be a Void Portal instead. Floor 3 should start having delirious enemies (Counterpart to Tainted enemies) like those mentioned in the video, which have a lot of attributes which are randomized per enemy, like Eden´s stats work, making it harder to dodge as delirious enemies have different not only rate of fire but shot speed, meaning that if many of these enemies shoot simultaneously, the projectiles will reach you at different times. The delirious enemies replace Champion enemies, doing full heart damage and appearing when a champion enemy would appear. This would make their appearance more random since they are different than regular enemies, meaning that if an enemy within a formation of enemies was a champion, they would be replaced with a delirious enemy, which are different entirely rather than the same enemy with a slight change depending on the color, more health and more damage. In floor three the musicc is very glitched and there are multiple boss rooms, only one of them makes the devil/angel rooms appear, and the Void Portal to the next Floor. Any of the other bosses will make a Trapdoor that will teleport you to a random boss room in that floor, so you dont have to keep searching for too long for the right boss room, like it can happen in the Void. Floor 4 is essentially the Void he described. It´s a combination of the current void, and what an XL floor would be like in the XXXXXXXXL Challenge. It´s absolutely Huge, and every champion is replaced with a delirious enemy like in Floor 2-3. There are 3 Treasure rooms, 2 Shops, and a Devil room and an Angel room, which appear as regular rooms instead of after a boss, so you can just find them randomly. There is a single Ultra Secret room and many Secret rooms. there are 2 Curse rooms normally, and 3 if you have the Voodoo Head. This Void would essentially be the largest level ever, feeling infinite like The Void might feel the first time, except this one has special rooms and not just bosses. Floor 1 is Basement XL, Floor 2 is Caves XL, Floor 3 is Depths XL, and Floor 4 is The Void. In Floor 4 the trapdoors from each boss dont teleport you to a random other boss room, but instead are a trapdoor with stairs which leads to a room with 1 random item from each item pool, which you can only choose one from. This would make the items from these bosses more useful, given that you can choose between many items. Beyond that, I dont really think Delirium needs tweaking, however I think he should teleport less often and move faster. Also, I think delirious enemies should have a very low chance to teleport or turn into a random other delirious enemy, just like delirium teleports and turns into delirious versions of other bosses. Also, I think bosses should have a chance to be delirious, in which case they would be like delirium but without the extra health and a much lower chance to turn into other bosses or teleport. The chance for a boss to be delirious is 3/4 in Floor 4, 1/2 in Floor 3, 1/4 in Floor 2, and no chance to be delirious in Floor 1.
I'm gonna throw in my 2 cents here: I think that, since the floor is meant to be a DYING memory, that the floor never grows, instead it only ever shrinks, the opposite of what bd talks about here. At the start, the map looks like what you normally see of Void; Ludicrous amounts of rooms, and such; However, the rooms are mainly only the starter locations; Think Basement and Caves. Your build, like bd said, is reverted to about where it was; In this case, I think your build at the end of Caves 1 would do nicely. After you go down the crawlspace hole when beating the inescapable boss room, a static effect occurs, and you're back to the beginning of the Void floor; Now the floors consist of only the next 2 Floors after Caves, etc. This continues until you reach the would-be Void floor; It is now just a straight line, of boss after boss each floor; Fight Monstro with Basement stuff, then next boss with Caves stuff and so on; You get no items from these bosses. This continues up until Delirium, who I think would just behave like bd1p talked of in this video.
@@rickywalters7717 well, that's also a nice rework idea. It all ultimately comes down to whatever one's perception of "dying memory" is, since we don't know that much about how the brain behaves when it's about to die. For example, "dying memory" doesn't have to imply "less memory", it could progressively become hazier and more jumbled (kinda like I described) until it finally implodes
adding on to the idea of floor layouts getting wierder, maybe secret, super secret and ultra secret rooms can spawn as normal rooms or just have different spawn conditions entirely
4:43 I disagree, the items in the boss rooms can really save runs by giving extra power before fighting Delirium, considering all the pools are merged you can get angel/devil deal items, Delirium is very hard so everything that can add some power is useful. My only complaint is why do I always end up with useless stuff from the shop item pool after beating these bosses
I thought this myself because unless you have incredible luck 100% of the time, you going to be fighting hush to get here and the whole purpose of hush is that you had to get here as fast as possible
@@jameskimble6453 i usually go for the mega satan coin flip since if you manage to defeat him you certainly will delirium unless it took you too much soul hearts
The entire void part of the game just felt rushed. I feel like they could have done so much more with it but instead we ended up with reskinned floors and a boss that turns into bosses we have already fought, What if every single individual room had assets from different floors, rather than one set of sprites per room? On top of this delirium is one of my least favorite bosses in any game which doesn't help matters at all
I think your ideas are pretty cool, but where you focus on the feeling of panic and a collapsing mind, if I were to rework the void, I would actually take it in nearly the opposite direction, and focus on the idea of terminal lucidity (the sudden clarity of mind people often get soon before death, and also the track name for the delirium fight) The floor would start out intense and chaotic, lots of powerful enemies (I like the idea of amalgamated 'delirium' champions) and difficult traps. The map would be enormous, and feature the idea you brought up of blue key style rooms that appear unpredictably to make the floor feel more overwhelming. Once you start killing the bosses, however, the floor would start changing. Certain rooms and paths on the floor would start disappearing, less enemies appear, a swirling abyss can be seen in gaps and cracks in the floor. Rooms start falling apart, with pits into the void swallowing all but the necessary paths in the room. Eventually, once the final boss room on the floor is cleared, the floor almost entirely disappears, leaving you with one new path to a boss room with Delirium. The rooms are all almost empty, maybe one or two enemies and obstacles, and as you get closer to Delirium, the rooms behind you disappear from the floor, and the rooms ahead become more and more broken, with the last few just being a single path over a gaping abyss. I don't have anything on reworking the actual boss, and there are probably problems with this idea, but I like the idea of a floor that slowly crumbles away, representing Isaac slowly suffocating while his mind falls apart, leaving only Delirium
This is absolute genius. The Void starts as delirious chaos, but it gets more and more straightforward as you realize: Delirium is all you have left. I like the idea that it'll work kinda like Mausoleum 2 after you kill the bonus Mom's Heart, too. You walk out of the boss room triumphant, only to find that the world you returned to isn't the same world you left. It's smaller, and lonelier. And each time you take a step toward the end, the degradation progresses further. Let's follow your template. I like the idea that the floor opens up in stages - but I think after every stage you pass through, the entire floor's visual consistency should deteriorate a step further. At first, the level looks like it does now: a faithful recreation of each stage (depending on what part of the progression you're on). But then, after the Basement bosses, you start to see some of the rocks mismatched with the stages (e.g., Womb rocks in Depths). After Caves, you start to see Void textures in the holes. After Depths, the Void holes start pulling you in like a gravity trap. (I think this would really sell the feeling that you are now subject to "forces outside of your control" as your mind deteriorates.) After It Lives, your character costume starts to change slightly between rooms, accompanied by a static effect the moment you clear a room. (Nothing major - just an obvious difference, like a hairstyle change.) Finally, once you clear the Blue Baby or Lamb fight, the whole level falls away. You're left with nothing but a blank-textured hallway filled with gravity voids, leading you down a short spiral to the final boss room: Delirium. (You could argue that the terminal lucidity would work better with a straight path to Delirium, and I'm open to that. But the spiral makes it feel even more winding and inevitable. I'd take either.)
As it stands, the Void feels less like a finale and more like...an optional challenge to test your Isaac skills. Delirium gives off that vibe too, since you're basically fighting almost every boss combined.
IMO the item reversion idea while sounding cool would feel _really_ frustrating in practice especially for runs that started out badly and got good in a clutch fashion at the end of the run. Same goes for the locked progression concept, because you'd essentially be _forced_ to go back and forth all over the floor. I also think *I* would want to keep a Void rework to _no additional spriting or etc,_ I think "new content" is essentially a bonus ask for a Void rework I wouldn't fully expect. With that in mind, here's what _I'd_ do: 1. *The visual effects of the DELETETHIS challenge, perhaps somewhat curtailed.* This challenge already laid out _exactly_ how to do an eerie atmosphere for a floor that doesn't make any visual sense. Combine this with full visual rock randomisation too, and you've got a good formula for a crazy looking floor without having to create any new assets. 2. *Going crazy with room usage.* Specifically, I want occasional random previously visited Special Rooms being dropped in from previous floors. A Shop with items you didn't buy sandwiched in, that Secret Room that had a Black Lotus you couldn't reach before, a Library with all those books you touched for Bookworm, a Devil Deal you refused, and so on. Things that prompt players to _think_ as they pass by presenting them with decisions, instead of ENDLESS enemy rooms. 3. *Curse immunity on the floor.* Sorry, I know that sounds weird and petty, but _SERIOUSLY_ Curse of The Lost or etc on Void is just abhorrent. Trash it. If one _really_ wants to keep them, Curse effects could be assigned at random to specific rooms, so while Isaac is in _this_ room, he has Curse of the Unknown for example. 4. *Implementation of alt-floors into the room layouts.* Pretty simple. 5. *At the start of each room, a number of enemies reroll themselves into other enemies with roughly equivalent HP, like the D10.* Ideally IMO, this proportion would increase the more rooms you clear with increasingly chaotic total room transformations, resulting in entirely unpredictable floor clears to make up for your strength. 6. *Delirium fixes.* I won't even go that into depth on this, just fix the telefrags and it's _good enough_ but a wider change to its patterns would be cool too.
I think you ideas are even better than in the video, especially with those curses and thoughts about _no adding additional respriting etc._ I agree with most of these
Risk of rain 2 final boss has that same mechanic in his last phase where he takes all your items and uses them against you and you need to shoot him to have a proc chance of taking one random item back. Of course they had to blacklist a lot of items so you don't insta die the moment he gets an op combination but i think its pretty fun overall.
I would want more random events to happen that you don't see often in standard runs to keep you on edge. What if random red rooms opened even if you didn't have crystal key? What if Mom's Shovel Piece 1 could fall from the sky even in rooms where it makes no sense for that to happen?
I really do love the idea of inbetween-rooms, "the void below" and "collapsing" asthetic, and mashup delerium-style enemies, as well as the expanding floor. Though, the idea of reverting your build depending on the rooms seems cool in theory but i think it would be very hard to implement well in practice and would likely feel very janky.
Not Your Sagittarius did a really cool version of The Void, and I hope they take inspiration from that, as well as the Delete This challenge. Every room would be broken and amalgamated versions of rooms you've already seen on your run, full of mushed up monsters like you proposed. Delirium's forms should be limited to bosses you've already encountered on your run, too. I like your Item removal mechanic as well, but not so much Delirium's copying mechanic or the room opening up. The copying just rubs me the wrong way and the opening is something that should be a signature of Mother since she doesn't really have much else too unique about her. I also suggest that as you go further into The Void, the more delirious it gets, more white and squishy, harder combinations of enemies, etc. Also to help with that sense of progression and atmosphere. The music should use a bit of a retouch since it doesn't feel right at all, but Edmund seems to be more afraid of changing music than the plague. The static effect should just be removed. I'm struggling to think of a clean alternative that doesn't include "enemies teleporting around the room" or a transition that doesn't look bad. It also just reminds me too much of Dogma. Edit: OH YEAH, also when you find the Void portal once in a run, it should be guaranteed to appear after every final boss kill. It just makes unlocks a bit less obnoxious and lets you flex on both Mega Satan and Delirium without leaving it to chance.
@@koliman1588 Yeh. It actually is locked. To those you have encountered. But what i am not sure about... Does Delirium counts the degraded bosses you see on the later floors towards that.
The ascent is so good it makes the rest of the endings look like crap, honestly the void didn't use to feel as out of place as it does now. Good ideas! Kilburn did amazing things for the game, hopefully revamping more old content is on the plate.
this. the ascent path really feels very final-boss-y, which is fitting for the true final ending. just wish the other paths had that feeling in albeit lesser magnitudes
Imo Ascent is the most fun route, and Mother is the least. The delirium boss fight is complete ass, and I only consider it if I’ve broken the game but it’s nowhere near as gruelling as having to get the knife pieces can be with poor items and especially on a no holy mantle lost.
Maybe something a bit reversed. You can explore a giant fully revealed floor with multiple bosses. But, whenever you complete a room, the room behind you permanently vanishes. You can clear out the floor to gain items. When you run out of rooms to enter, Isaac’s memories fully break down and at the bottom all that is left is the boss fight with Delirium. Heck, maybe even do the reverse of your suggestion. Have the boss start out in a 2x2, but have the arena get progressively smaller or emptier. With holes appearing like Wormwood does. As if everything falls apart. When Delirium is defeated, no chest should spawn as it breaks the immersion. Go straight to the cutscene; Isaac’s mind has fully collapsed.
The Red Redemption challenge gave me more emotions than the endgame floor. The fact that every room have that omnious red glow, and music changes with layouts, and devil/treasure/shop room appear where they should'nt be feels really unnatural, like a fever dream or something. Would be really great to have something like that on the Void, just the same rooms and scenarious you've already passed through, but always with something off about them.
The more you advance the more corrupted and messed up things get. Its perfect in making everything connect better with a sense of progression AND matches perfectly the lore. Isaac is slowly dying, the more u advance through the void, the more u forget how things actually looked like because you are, well, slowly dying in a low oxygen environment.
One cool idea for the "mashup" enemies that you were talking about would be to have the Delirium texture be interrupted by a layer of static, and then the sprite after that band of static would have the normal enemy texture.
I really like Delirium and The Void because the have the potential to be the best final boss and floor of the whole game. I mean, sure, The Beast is cool and all, but it's still in Isaac's imaginary world. In that sense, conversely, Delirium is the realest thing Isaac fights in the whole game.
good fucking commentary on the floor not being as atmospheric .. it absolutely needs to feel more chaotic and terrifying and scary . more mental illness in isaac binding Please..... the idea of the floor and the theme itself is so fucking amazing but they didn't do anything with it . the player mimicking is an amazing idea also . wow
I love your ideas, especially for the Void floor, but I have some of my own ideas for Delirium. 1. Keep the room expansion idea initially, it's great 2: Exclude Dogma and Mother from his random boss pool, as well as alt path bosses if the alt path hasn't been unlocked. This prevents spoilers for Repentance fights 3. Have the phases go as follows: P1: 100%-75% health; Delirium cycles between non-story, 1×1 room bosses around every 5% health, cycling the floor with him. At this point, the floors match up with the bosses P2: 75%-50% health; let Delirium momentarily appear as himself in a cutscene, a la Mother, before expanding the room and creating 2-3 random Double Troubles, one appearing after the other for Issac to kill. P3: 50%-15%; Expand room to 4×4 and commence the AB+ style fight, with Delirium speeding up as he gets more damaged P4: 15%-Death; close the room back to 1×1 and start spawning Delirium-ridden champions, the deaths of which hurt Delirium. One is spawned per Item Isaac has, and when one dies, he loses his most recent item (raw stat ups stay for the most part, even if the item itself disappears). When he loses every item, including any starting items, Delirium loses his boss armor before spawning in his true form in the middle of the room, where he sits there, waiting for base isaac to kill him. When he dies, there is no chest to jump into, the cutscene transition is instant. 4. Make a Mega Satan win guarantee Void spawn
While I like the idea of Delirium changing into bosses you previously fought, I feel like it's the only thing going for him. Maybe give him some more attacks where he is in his normal form. Try making him changing into bosses not his most common attack. I feel like that could give the fight more personality and originality. Cause at the moment, all Delirium does is become reskinned bosses that move slightly faster and shoots a bunch of projectiles everywhere.
The void should feel a bit more like a dying memory, we need more stuff relating to Isaac and his life. Exclusive floor types could be an interesting idea, they could be composed of various gigantified items, such as a knife or Polaroid, maybe merged rooms that combine enemies, obstacles and floor types together. Hardmode major boss patterns is a mod that gave delirium attacks that fit this concept, transforming into the tv, spawning distorted Isaacs from a Polaroid, giant knife-hand thing, etc. This is what we need delirium’s rework to be like. If the boss copying is kept, there should be unique attacks for each one, and more rep bosses included. Alt path should also be included, but only if visited. Expanding on the static shift idea, there should be subtle details that appear after a room changes to show something isn’t right, like yellow eyes hidden in the darkness or blurred sprites.
A few ideas: - The in-between rooms you talked about being rooms that you teleport to by a random chance after finishing a room, and those rooms should mimic what type of room you just beat -but with harder enemies (example, defeating a boss in a boss room teleports you to another in-between boss room with a harder boss). - The locked prorgession sounded cool, and I like the idea of the floor being more and more destroyed the further you go - like, also actual holes in the floor that didn't used to be there. - The music needs a touch up, becoming more and more distorted the further you travel on the floor. - Delirium himself should be able to transform into the previous bosses, but to add onto the whole "destroying stuff" bit, the room should gradually be filled with more and more holes in the floor as the fight progresses, but in return Delirium should move a bit slower over time as it gets destroyed more and more (shown by visual design of the boss). - Bomb explosions could have a chance of making cracks in the floor, that if you step on them the floor breaks and you fall into a pit - taking 1 heart of damage (kinda like Little Horn's holes). But you can also lure enemies onto the cracks to make them fall out of the room and the "memory".
My idea for Delirium is that it's *inspired* by the bosses attacks, and looks like a chaotic mish-mash of the final bosses. Instead of just turning into Mom and stomping, it instead summons a barrage of static pillars that act like Mom's foot. Instead of turning into Satan and firing a spread of lasers, it grows a pair of goat hooves and blasts blood lasers from them. Instead of just being defined as "Temporarily turn into this boss and teleport," it now has it's own unique behaviour and attacks that, if you recognise the attack, you should know how to deal with, bar some extra tears and projectiles here and there.
Personally I've always loved The Void thematically, I'm one of the like 7 people who care about the story and stuff so even though I agree that mechanically it's... pretty bad, I still really enjoy what it's trying to convey.
"These extra items shouldn't be needed on the final floor" As someone who usually feels woefully underprepared when I enter that floor… I disagree. I always enter that floor hoping to find something that will actually allow me to beat delirium.
i personally feel like the Delirium fight can kind of take after the Omega Flowey fight. Delirium starts calming down, but soon takes no damage, and then static brings you to a regular boss room of a boss you’ve already fought. this would happen a certain number of times during the fight, and can be HP based, and the multiple phases can also be implemented with it. and, of course, these bosses would be more difficult, can revert your set, and would obviously have the Delirium look.
One thing I feel like the boss rooms do well is support the mechanic of Delirium shifting between bosses you've encountered on the run, since they add to his pool; however, that doesn't fix the issues presented in this video.
i kinda have another sort of rework idea. Which is: generate void floor with rooms that can appear on the floors you already visited, rather then all floors. Say your path was like that: Basement Burning basement Catacombs Mines Depths Necropolis Womb Uthero Cathedral the chest and then you happened to be sucked into the void. So the rooms there should be pulled from these floors, so no cellar, dross, downpoor, ashpit, flooded and normal caves, dank depths, scarred womb, mausoleum, gehenna, corpse, sheol and dark room. The reason is: If the void is a mashup of Isaac's memories, and you chose the light path, then how would you see rooms from sheol for example. You haven't visited that floor, so you don't have memories about it.
I'd like to see Delirium use the Void's blackhole motif. Maybe having the fight have an introduction with three invincible blackhole-like enemies opening up a portal through which Delirium emerges. Then, having them orbit him throughout the fight, only leaving him whenever he's about to teleport, in which case they'll move ahead of him to open up another portal which would be where he would teleport to.
I remember my idea for delirium is having whichever boss it turned into split off of delirium if the player did enough damage to that form, both having delirium not be able to transform and having the player have to fight through a boss rush adjacent fight, as Isaac would continue further into the boss, it would feel as though he's dealing with these past memories, till the only one left is delirium as it would take more damage but teleport/attack more often as the room would change each time it'd teleport
I think by far one of the most serious problems with the void is the fact that it has a CHANCE to spawn (aside from beating hush). I feel like at that point of the run, when you've spent like 40+ minutes on it, at that point you just deserve to get an attempt at getting that delirium mark. It just feels so wrong that with the absolute most you can do (aside from hush), your chance of even getting the floor to spawn is determined by a coin flip
Adding you your idea, maybe make it so that Delirium fight would be unexpected. Like, you fight Monstro in boss room, kill him, get loot, door open but the moment you get closer to the door it suddenly closes and Delirium appears. And as well make him destroy all teleporting cards/items in your inventory.
What I've always disliked about the Delirium boss fight is that it has no structure, every other major boss fight comprises of an array of predictable, consistent attacks, which is basically how bosses in all video games are designed, you balance out the high difficulty by making it consistent and thus able to be adapted to. Each Mega Satan or Mother fight can only comprise of the same few attacks, which adds a sense of satisfaction as you master dodging them and subsequently exploiting the brief periods of downtime in between. But with Delirum, there is no consistency, he just randomly moves around, randomly sprays mindless circles of bullets, and randomly switches between a massive selection of bosses each with wildly different attack patterns. There are no patterns to learn, no maneuvers to master, just spray in his general direction and hope he stops firing long enough to let you get close. He's such a boring, unsatisfying boss to fight because there's no sense of accomplishment, there's no "narrative" as you slowly adapt and imrpove and eventually conquer this foul beast, he just kind of dies. If I were redesigning him, I'd make him a more stationary boss like Mother who uses the other bosses in his attacks cosmetically without actually changing into them. Imagine, his head changes to Mega Satan's and he fires a blood beam, then he makes adversaries rain from the sky, then makes a bunch of Wormwood tails punch out of the ground in big clusters, etc. Make him into a more consistent, standard boss with a lot of different attacks that make use of the other bosses' attacks without direct becoming and reusing them. I think it'd be way cooler if Delirium was a distorted amalgamation of Isaac's memories, contorting and twisting them against him, rather than just the reuse that we have currently. I kind of like what you said about the arena getting bigger, but let me propose this instead: do it all in reverse, have it shrink throughout the fight. When you first enter the bossfight, the room is 2x2, and Delirium is MASSIVE. He's this nightmarish mass of white goo and eyes, and you can see the forms of countless bosses melded into him. This phase uses the widest variety of attacks from the biggest pool of bosses. After 1/3 of his health is gone, Delirum does his static bullshit and shrinks, and the arena begins to shrink along with him, collapsing into the swirling void of Isaac's immenent death that sits below everything, the ultimate ending. In this phase, Delirum's attacks mainly make use of story bosses, so there's less of them, but they're much harder to evade. After another 3rd of health, he shrinks again, with the arena turning into something about the size of phase 1 Mother's arena. THIS is when he mimics you, all of Isaac's other memories are gone, it's just you and yourself. As the third phase's health dwindles, the room collapses more and more, closing in on you and Delirum, until you kill him, and it all gives way as Isaac slips into death. It's what Delirium is supposed to be, life flashing before Isaac's eyes. First he thinks of his creations and monsters, then things more down to earth, things like his religious guilt, his regret of being born, his mother who he thinks hates him. And then it ends with him having to come to terms with himself, and what he became. I'd elaborate more, but I've typed enough. Void could be tackled in so many ways, but I agree that it NEEDS to be changed, both to be more fun and fair from a gameplay perspective as well as a more satisfying, definitive end to the story.
I LOVE this idea! Consistent Delirium boss patterns, made up of unique ways that he can channel and borrow abilities from other bosses? That's a perfect balance between "random amalgamation" and "good, coherent boss design." Hats off to you. I'd love to see this. 😁
Imagine if void was done like windwakers final dungeon, one big centre room and branching paths out to different distorted versions of the floors. Like one door goes to basement one to caves and so on. It would keep the part of you having the og items from that floor. Only after you have beaten every mini floor do you got the delerium door open. This does the whole finality thing and makes it not a steamroll.
I absolutely disagree with the room size limitations and wizardry. The Witness fight does have that specific flare and delicious taste when the room doubles in size, the main reason for me to actually do mother runs, but to get it this complicated seems just annoying. Filling the room with some environmental elements you can deal with during phases would be cool tho, the arena is barren, and having deli interact with it too would be nice. Only the minecart boy and one of the corpse bosses interacts with environnement, the stoney worms do not count because player does the interactions and Gideon can go straight to the hell And the sheer sense of scale created by chest absolutely swallowing isaac in it, the whole giant room confining the little boyo is just done right. It feels atmospheric when the rest of the floor doesn't. The ending chest appearing kinda ruins it, because who the hell would put a chest in a chest, but same can be said about the chest room. So it's mostly the problem of ending the run itself.
I disagree with Delirium's room opening up over the fight. He represents the lasts gasps of a dying mind, a mind that is gone by the end of it. Have his room start out nice and large, and Delirium with his full move set available, except for a small handful like Mega Satan, Dogma, Corpse, and The Beast. When you get him down to 2/3 health reduce the room to a 1x2 (whichever half Isaac is in is the half that remains), and cut out all the non-story bosses from before the womb. At 1/3 the room collapses further to a 1x1, and cut Delirium down to only the story bosses from the womb and later plus the handful we had originally excluded. At 10% delirium is all but defeated, and can only take the forms of Mom, The Corpse, The Heart, It Lives, and Isaac/Blue Baby, returning to the key players of Issac's story, the last of what Isaac can make any sense of. At 5% it is reduced to only Isaac/BB and It Lives. At 2% it becomes stuck in the form of Isaac in the fetal position, only using that basic 'three pairs of tears' attack. You finish killing yourself as the static of brain death fills the room, and then it is over.
if it ever gets to a point where it seems like the issac team is done with the game, but these frankly genius rework ideas or something parallel to fix some of the lacking parts of the game have yet to implemented, why not lead a modding team to make a comprehensive rework mod? Community could fundraise to pay the devs, i know id chip in.
I absolutely refuse to go back to trying delirium unlocks with tainted characters until that boss gets fixed. The whole floor is missed opportunity, but I can live with that. What I can't live with is that the game fully expects me to actually beat delirium with a character that dies in one hit.
I've always felt like The Void should lean more heavily on the idea of being the game's version of a more classic dungeon. The floor itself needs to feel alive and hostile. What if everytime you clear a room, there is a chance for an already cleared room to become repopulated with harder enemies. This way, the more time you spend in the floor, the more dangerous it gets. But with higher risk, there should be higher reward, so I think the boss item pool for the floor should be improved. For instance maybe the entire floor could naturally have the effects of There's Options, Chaos, and Sacred Orb, or some combination of the three. Also playing off the Delirium-themed champions idea, what Delirium itself could show up in rooms as a buffed enemy, kind of like the tainted enemies. Maybe there's a constant chance that an enemy on screen will become possessed by Delirium, granting them new attacks and buffed hp, or even making them invulnerable until Delirium stops possessing them. This way Delirium feels more like a true villain who's taunting you as you close in on them.
My idea for the floor is you start off with no items and the amount of rooms is the same as your items... that gives insensitive to fight every room to get your passive items back... all boss rooms reward you with additional items that u didn't have before...
I like the idea of visual changes to the void floor. Thematically what you suggest for it would be really cool. I also like the idea of special Delirium enemies. Not sure about your proposal for a rework though. Taking away your items would just make it feel redundant. What I would suggest (and this would take a LOT of work) is to actually make the Void its own unique floor with its own set of rooms. Each room would be individually crafted just like any other floor, but they would be BASED ON the rooms from previous floors, rather than just copying them exactly. This would allow adjustments to the rooms individually to balance them for how late game it is. For instance, some rooms would be based on Basement and they would have Basement enemies, but they would have added Delirium champions and other difficulty increases. They would look like Basement visually but would have added elements of the Void aesthetic you mentioned (swirling chaos, white slime). Then there could be more rooms based on each of the other floors, with the early game ones getting more adjustments to make them suitable for late game combat. The general structure I don't honestly have a problem with. I don't mind hunting for Delirium throughout the Void, going into each of the boss rooms while revisiting areas from other floors. I just wish they weren't literal copy pastes of the other rooms. It makes the early game rooms seem like you said, lazy filler. You can have the theme of revisiting a variety of floors and aesthetics without being lazy about it. As for Delirium, I think he needs waaaaay more work than you say. A lot of people have suggested having him spawn a minimum distance from you to stop the telefragging, but the issue with Delirium goes so much deeper than just the telefrag. The real problem is much harder to fix: Delirium is unbalanced in his fundamental design. Everybody hates the telefragging, and rightly so, but how many other unfair methods does he have to kill you? How many times has he transformed into a boss at max speed that was clearly never meant to go that fast, hitting you with no realistic way to anticipate or avoid it? How many times has he used his bullet hell in a way that really didn't work with his current form's attack patters, causing unavoidable damage? The problem, again, is that they were lazy. They didn't want to make a bunch of different movesets and behaviors, so they made one basic one: he fires his own innate projectile patterns, he copies the movesets of bosses they already made, and he gets faster as his health gets lower. They clearly gave no thought for how his own innate speed buff or attack patterns might interact with the bosses he's copying. Sometimes, especially in the later parts of the fight, it even feels like the bosses are breaking because they were never designed to move that fast. My solution? Exactly what I said about the Void floor itself: you can have the theme of revisiting a variety of previous encounters without being lazy about it. It would take a shitload of work, but he would need to have his speed and behavior modified and fine tuned for each form individually. Make sure he can't turn into Bloat above the field of view and brimstone you. Make sure he doesn't use Krampus or the Lamb's spinning brimstone objectively too fast for you to move out of the way. For forms that have bullet hell style attacks, make sure they don't overlap with his white projectiles in a way that makes a literal wall. If he turns into a boss that dashes or moves fast, perhaps reduce his max speed so he doesn't appear on one side of the screen and nail you a few frames later. Is all this asking to much? Maybe. I don't make games and I don't even make mods, so I can't really say how difficult it would all be. But I know bad design when I see it, and I genuinely can't believe they playtested Delirium in his current state. It must have been a time constraint. I just can't imagine them going "yep, no issues here. I'm satisfied releasing this as the final boss for Isaac as a whole." And what supports this theory is that Delirium was EVEN WORSE when AB+ first launched. He literally didn't even use his animations. He was frozen and people genuinely though the final boss was just a JPEG with bullet hell attacks. He would just explode into guts like a common enemy when he died instead of his death animation. Shit like that just screams "this boss is unfinished." Well, It's been almost 5 years and I'm still waiting for them to finish it. TL;DR What we have now would actually be totally fine if they didn't do it so lazily. Void and Delirium don't need to be reworked as much as they need to be... well, worked.
Yeah, your ideas would be very impactful and cool the first time round. But I feel like when you get to beating void on everyone, the changes would feel a lot more tedious to beat a lot
But yeah, I wish the taking items mechanic was explored a lot more in isaac. Because it’s really cool when the siren steals your familiars and you get hit by that knife you just spent the run earning
Another cool thing they could do is reduce the floor to the spawning floor, and a few adjacent rooms. Everytime you move into a new room, and combat has ended (or combat doesn't exist), new rooms will appear adjacent to this room. Rooms that you are no longer adjacent to will no longer exist. They will have fallen into the void. When you try to backtrack to the starting room, you will find that it no longer exists, and any rooms you find back in that direction are new ones that you haven't explored yet. The further you explore without having found a boss room, the higher the chance a boss room will spawn upon room completion.
[[Rant Ahead]] Another thing in relation to the rooms: Have the door to a room match the room you are going into, ignoring special room types like Item rooms, Planetariums, Shops, Sacrifice rooms, Bombed Walls, etc. Example: I am in a Dross/Downpour room, to my right is a Mines/Ashpit room, the door leading to that room is the door appearence of the doors in Mines/Ashpit. Granted this is to prepare players for the loadout they will recieve when they enter the room, but this also requires the Devs to make individual door textures for every single floor type. And by the logic of "Items at the end of the chapter" Your loadouts are kept when you enter a New Chapter or Alt floor I assume, and do the Loadout Checks also apply to trinkets, actives, and pocket items; If so, can the change of [the stuff on that list] be negated by picking up that stuff in Void?
idk about the idea of reverting the items on the void, i think it's cool you maintain your items as a feeling of progression and "isaac got over it" or some shit like that
I agree with one man in commentaries here. Any item removing or locked progression would feel frustrating and comparing with what currently exists in void, it would be *even more boring and linear (or more unfair in case of item removing)* and would feel like force nerf/stretching the ending in general
I think that the delirium boss room could also be a room that's empty other than a white and yellow void portal taking you to a new floor that may be named 'end' or 'madness' (I'm not too sure). The floor layout would be two rooms; the starting room with another portal for going back to the main void floor and the boss room. Doing that would also add to the feeling of this being it. The end. Removing the return portal might further emphasise this but a few balance issues may show up with doing that such as restriction of active items. Dying and respawning at one heart is annoying and someone might leave rooms uncleared so that they can get at least a heart back with prayer card or collect batteries to charge it. Late comment I know but I don't really care.
i like the idea of reverting items to the stage you're in, you could bring that into a culmination of power in the delirium fight by having it start in the basement and force you into your basement 2 setup, and as the fight progresses delirium gets more difficult, but it does the static and progresses in stages as well, returning or swapping around your items
i think a neat idea for the atmosphere might be to have multiple floor rooms in one? like the room is cut up at random places on the grid by cracks inspired by how the void portal and chapter icon looks, and mash together rooms from seperate chapters. maybe even look at the seed and take rooms from that seed, to push the idea of isaac's memories merging?
Ive always felt like the void should have a curse attached to it, something like "Curse of Delerium". Where it gives you curse of the Lost and Curse of the Maze effect, so you are really disoriented and really have no damn clue whats happening. Also just turn the floors into a complete clusterfuck. Have walls and floors from different levels in the same room, enemies from all floors, fuck it. Maybe even give the enemies random statusses, random card effects happening. Just really make the void a clusterfuck
7:40 this method of fixing it is an absolute bust. Take how long and boring Void already feels, and add a bunch of useless backtracking - that's what the map-unlocking would do. Reverting back to old points in the run is a neat idea though
Guess it’s a hot take but I really don’t mind delirium as a boss, even with the telefragging. I always enjoy fighting him and find the last bit with him teleporting and transforming every few seconds incredibly fun and tense.
IMO, The Void should've been where they go all out with the decaying theme. I'm talking warped room layouts (1:3, one block wide rooms, rooms with a completely wild shape etc.), enemies that look infected by Delirium's, well, delirium (like the Eternal Enemies mod), mixed enemies (like you said in the video), *floor specific enemies* (No, the void portals don't count, those also appear in the Gehena). And to add to the merging memories idea, the longer you spend in the floor, the more rooms merge together into one. Being in a merged room makes it switch between the floor themes those two rooms had before. If you are in a room that was merged more than 5 times, it turns into a Delirium room, all white and yellow like Delirium, which cannot be merged further. Entering one of these rooms for the first time makes it a room with enemies, which could act the same way Delirium does, switching between previously fought enemies (but don't teleport so no telefragging lol). Add the red void theme in the ground that you talked about in the video, but making them appear the longer you're in that room, even starting to act like the holes that suck you in once there's enough of them, displaying an increasing red static when fallen into like Dogma's death animation. About the multiple bosses, Eternal Bosses. Just that mod. But make it less bullshit lol. Also make defeating the bosses reduce Delirium's health by a percentage equal to the amount of bosses spawned on the floor, such as defeating all of them reduces his health by 15%/20%, as if Isaac is fighting his past memories and helping his delirium. The music, while it already is amazing, should be like the Beast's changing themes, where one layer of the music changes depending on what room type you're in. While in the Delirium room, it plays a theme which uses all the leitmotifs, one after another. But that's just my idea for a void floor. Great video!
I like some of these ideas, particularly having the Void map expand as you clear bosses and giving those bosses the Delirium aesthetic. A void-y background would also be cool though it needs to be distinct from Dark Room. I don't really like the idea of reverting the build, because this could radically change how you're supposed to play at the drop of a hat. Like what if you found Ipecac in Chapter 1 and Pyro in Chapter 3, now you randomly need to stop and figure out if you are worried about self-damage? It's just too much for any but the most experienced player imo (granted, I've never gotten close to even 50% of all unlocks, and have barely played Lost/Keeper at all). Anyway, instead of the build revert I would make the static effect more frequent and yes, add D10/D12 to it to throw off the player. And also have the portals spawn with a gravity-warping effect that either pulls you in or slows your movement. Or more along those lines. I think that, plus some Void equivalent to Tainted enemies, should be good enough.
one thing i would add to the void would be a timer, so the floor could be a mad dash to find delirium as fast as possible. as the timer goes down, the enemies get more difficult and the map starts breaking down, so you cant use certain ways, or room layouts change with rubble blocking the path, etc. if the timer hits zero, it's game over. of course, if you're fast enough, you can go kill the other bosses for more items or find your secret rooms, but that just wastes time and makes everything else much more difficult. maybe, even, delirium could get more powerful the more time you waste, so you wanna find him as fast as possible to make him weaker
I saw something really well done with Hardmode Boss Pattern's addition to Delirium in that he mimics transformations- for example, Stompy causes him to fire rockwaves every time he changes and Conjoined causes 2 smaller heads to fire at you continuously. Having him mirror you is really fitting and I would love to see it implemented in the future.
He actually wouldn’t be able to turn into dogma because (in ab+ at least) he can only transform into bosses you’ve encountered and there’s no way to encounter dogma and deli in one run
what if it used the red rooms, and instead of being able to see the map, even with full mapping, theres no sense of direction, you all ways have the curse of the lost, unknowing of which is where, the rooms corrupted and breaking, and the boss, an amalgamtion of everything you've experience, overwhelming, yet directionless, each room, using similar layouts to normal rooms, yet the enemies are out of place, enimies sometimes splitting apart yet everyone a champion, a floor should feel like a aimless build up, directionless and fracturing, yet using whats already there
the item removal mechanic is cool, but it’d be cool to have instead of several spaced out boss rooms it would be one random basement boss you’ve already faced with the items you had, one caves boss, etc until deli
It'd be cool if the floor also generated in a vague but noticeable swirl pattern like the void item, with Delirium at the end. The thing is you don't know _when_ you're at the swirl's end. The background of the level that usually stays black the entire time could also be given a slight grey swirling animation, maybe one that increases in opacity for every boss you defeat
Personally, I think everything except the Boss rework is an amazing idea. I already love the Void tbh, but its would be so much better with your ideas. You been doing great work these last few months, keep up the good work!
My idea: Take away all the player's items when you enter the void. They start off in the basement, and the floors get further and further along the further from the start he gets. So while the starting room and all rooms surrounding it will be basement, you'll eventually run into Caves floors, then Depths, and so on. To keep with the chaotic theme, floors from earlier will start mixing in throughout the end, though possibly with the ascent enemies, or even original delirium-themed enemies. While none of it is locked off, the player is likely going to need to fight bosses to get his items back. Each boss room is identical to one they had encountered earlier in the run, similar to ascent. When isaac enters each one, there is a beam of light in the center, in which he has to fight a "memory" of the boss that was there. The memory is like the actual boss fight, but shorter, with the memory cutting into static and draining large chunks of the bosses health bar at certain points (since rehashing the whole thing would probably be annoying) and once he beats it, he gets all the items he collected from that floor back. (The exception is that you won't have to fight hush again, any items from the Blue Womb will be tied to It Lives!) Ideally this would be laid out linearly so Isaac isn't constantly backtracking to get his items from a boss room across the map, which would be very far by the end. Once all memories are defeated, Delirium's door (which is a visually distinct one) opens up. Honestly I just think cramming the entire progression of the game into 1 level would be really cool. Even if it's the kind of thing you'd only want to do once for the unlocks, I think that has merit in design
Brilliant video. I disagree about the loss of items, but I love basically everything else. And the ideas in this comment section are off the chain! I really hope Kilburn gets to see this.
I know this is a strange idea, but what if void was structured like fiend folio's gauntlet, where you got keys for bosses, and needed them all to fight delirium? The dogma fight could also be used for the floor transition thought bubble: It starts empty, until two big black dots appear. Pupils like delirium's are in the dots, and you enter the floor.
For more buildup, I feel like the final boss room should be repeating hallways, but the farther in you get, the more delirium goop stuff (the white + yellow stuff) should show up more. The room right before should be completely covered probably with the final room looking like it
honestly despite some people saying that this is a garbage take i actually really like the idea. the floor itself is longer and takes more time to progress but delirium actually becomes balanced and fightable
One cool idea i've always had to fix delirium was to keep the teleporting, but you are shown a few faint outlines that show where they will teleport next. At the start of the fight, its super obvious which of the spots they will tp to (like one is more clear) but as the fight goes on, it becomes harder and harder to tell them apart
Delrium cannot copy any bosses added in repentance except one, that being baby plum (so it cant copy dogma) however it CAN copy hush, however its requires you to have fought very little bosses on your run and the hush copy is broken, its sprites are bugged and unfinished, especially on the second phase
Some of the ideas presented are good, but some others not so much. I'm not the first person to note that removing items from the player can be very frustrating and potentially buggy (imagine getting stuck with basement items cause the game glitched or crashed). As well, the idea of the floor expanding as you go is interesting, but it also forces backtracking and doesn't actually solve the issue it's trying to fix, rather it just hides it. To that though, Delirium versions of champion enemies is brilliant, and making the Delirium fight multi-stage is a good idea too. Keeping in mind the lore and theming of the floor, maybe adding in blue key rooms between certain rooms would be an interesting idea? There could also be just completely random rooms instead of all the regular base floor stuff, like item rooms filled with flies and shops connected to curse rooms. Another interesting idea involves the Red Key and Cracked Key items added in Repentance. Whenever you open a red room with an item that would make it, instead of the standard red room shenanigans, you get Delirium rooms where the whole rooms takes on the goopy white and yellow aesthetic and tougher enemies are found, but clear rewards are much higher. The Ultra Secret Room could follow this and instead of being red themed, it's white. For Delirium itself, instead of having to go and search him out, whenever you enter a boss room that does not contain Delirium, you start a mini-chase room akin to the Mom specter in the alt path, but with Delirium and much shorter. After making it out, you are given some form of hint as to where Delirium actually is, like an arrow pointing towards its room, a light up of the rooms leading to it, and after enough chases, the room becomes revealed permanently and the remaining boss rooms turn into special rooms like item room and shops.
Maybe with the fused-together enemies you suggested, there could also be amalgamations of different bosses? When you initially start the floor, you fight completely normal, first floor bosses. But then as you progress, they get more and more distorted and mixed in with eachother, all while slowly becoming paler and paler. Weirdness initially starts with bosses simply doing the wrong attacks (Hornfel doing brinstone beam, Haunt throwing up like Monstro, etc) but then soon devolves to completley new abominations of Delirium-colored strangeness. All five horsemen fused together, Blastocyst with Wormwood stuck inside instead of an embryo, a melting Mega Fatty who sacrifices his own health to produce tons of Gurglings. All of the new bosses would have pitiful health, just to really send home the idea that Isaac's memories are merging together and dying in the process.
Something I think would be cool for the theming is a constant, veeeeery slight TV static shader being applied throughout the whole floor, like, extremely slight so it's not horribly distracting and intrusive
What if when you get to void it's a floor with corrupted rooms (ex basement with cathedral walls) and the game gives you tmt trainer for every boss you beat before delirium that way when you collect items it feels as though the memories of these items are being corrupted as well, then once you get to delirium the boss plays out normally until about 40 percent when he transforms into his true form adding new attacks into the mix
I just like the idea of delirium copying boss attack patterns instead of doing whatever the fuck it does right now bc it’s really annoying. Like instead of being a pure bullethell where changing into bosses only matters if it’s chub or mom or something, it’d be fun if you could see it turn into conquest and be like “oh, it’s about to do the one scripted attack it’s able to from conquest’s moveset” rather than it just spamming the tear rings constantly. The big issue with it right now is that it only has tells for attacks that don’t matter
i feel like delirium being able to be some of the enemies and being the bosses makes it a lot better because it's like the delirium is lurking, It is following you, It will kill you
I think void should have it so that like someone else said, melting and battered bishops, and some other stuff, BUT another idea is to flip sprites, distort sprites, and the closer you are to the void, the more deteriorated the place starts to look, where all the pits reveal that black-n-red texture of what is interpreted as the void, different rock textures are in the wrong places, and the boss door to delirium would have a special appearance with cracks around the door that show the black-n-red void texture. I thought this was a really cool idea for it, so, what do you guys think? Credits to exotic1405 for the base idea. I came up with the deteriorated-towards-delirium and distorted sprites.
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I think void should feel like a collapsing giant level that you desperately attempt to navigate and find delirium. I want everything to feel like a corrupted and mixed mind. Maybe make the entire place all mixed up, such as putting withered mine carts in the womb with melting and battered bishops, or gapers that look like they just been through 6 wars. Make the place feel dangerous and adventurous, but also utilize the mechanics that weren't used much in the game
fax, plus the idea of a crumbling or fading memory has so much potential. enemies could disappear and reappear, rocks could explode, rocks could come from above to hit isaac, the room could be fractured (imagine a room that isn't rectangular, and is actually at an angle), etc. idk if thats balanced but itd make it harder than it is and way cooler. and delirium needs a special boss room.
maybe at the end Isaac would run through rooms that progressively get less delirium-y, each time having a different combat section
@@YellowSnow i get the idea, but it seems really unbalanced to me, I'd hate to be playing t.lost and die to a random exploding rock
Void should look like the delite this challenge floors to give that "corrupted effect"
so like the ascension sequence?
Another idea for delirium, would be for him to turn into his true form when he hits certain hp percentages to do an special attack, and then continue the boss fight as normal.
I always wanted Void to be like the "delete this" challenge's rooms where everything seriously was messed up on the floor designs
discolored familiar rooms and all objects used you know?
That would look awesome! And It would fit flavorfully in the story, Isaac's mind racing and forgetting more and more details as he succumbs to Delirium and his death
burning womb
@@loonietuunes flooded cathedral
@@loonietuunes flooded womb
@@bjawrk2926 Dank Sheol
My take on the Void's floor structure that represents "dying memory": like you said, the floor should be of average size, but it should have a single boss room and be set in a single floor theme at first, looking like a completely normal level. But when you defeat the boss, take the item and jump in the hole, a static effect would occur and you'd be put on a different floor theme with a totally different mapping. And each time this happens, the floors would get weirder in structure and larger, have more boss rooms and rooms from different level themes as the floor does now, include more "delirium champions", maybe some parts of the rooms would be replaced with some Void mumbo jumbo, the vision can get all blurry and glitchy and static-y, the music would get all messed up. Also your items can be removed partially to reflect the current theme like you suggested. However this needs thorough discussion, because in the case when you skipped certain themes (like Chest or Dark Room if you went to the Void through Hush), it's unclear as to what items to remove.
P.S. Your Delirium idea reminds me of the Narcissus boss fight from Revelations 😄
I believe it should look at first like the run was reset, starting at basement 1. The first floor is entirely normal beyond not getting an alternate path door. Then the second floor everything is minorly glitched, with all sounds and music which are randomly accelerating and slowing down, same with most enemies (That actually sounds hard, even with basement enemies, randomly accelerating and slowing down would make it very hard to dodge). From floor 2 and onwards, every special room simply contains several items form their item pool that you had before entering the void (You can take all of them, the only cost is having to enter the room, which is simply a key for the shop/treasure room, but can be difficult for the devil/angel/secret room). The amount of items depends on how many items of that item pools you had, always having the least amount of items while still making sure that you can get all of the items of that item pool that you had (Devil/Angel rooms are guaranteed, as if you had goat head and duality, except if you enter one the other doesn´t disappear, and if you had no items from the item pool of one of them, they wont appear, and if you had no angel/devil room items, neither of them appear) As he mentioned in the video, there should be a void background, that is visible in every hole in the floor (Except in Floor 1), and the trapdoor to get to Floor 3 or any later should be a Void Portal instead. Floor 3 should start having delirious enemies (Counterpart to Tainted enemies) like those mentioned in the video, which have a lot of attributes which are randomized per enemy, like Eden´s stats work, making it harder to dodge as delirious enemies have different not only rate of fire but shot speed, meaning that if many of these enemies shoot simultaneously, the projectiles will reach you at different times. The delirious enemies replace Champion enemies, doing full heart damage and appearing when a champion enemy would appear. This would make their appearance more random since they are different than regular enemies, meaning that if an enemy within a formation of enemies was a champion, they would be replaced with a delirious enemy, which are different entirely rather than the same enemy with a slight change depending on the color, more health and more damage. In floor three the musicc is very glitched and there are multiple boss rooms, only one of them makes the devil/angel rooms appear, and the Void Portal to the next Floor. Any of the other bosses will make a Trapdoor that will teleport you to a random boss room in that floor, so you dont have to keep searching for too long for the right boss room, like it can happen in the Void. Floor 4 is essentially the Void he described. It´s a combination of the current void, and what an XL floor would be like in the XXXXXXXXL Challenge. It´s absolutely Huge, and every champion is replaced with a delirious enemy like in Floor 2-3. There are 3 Treasure rooms, 2 Shops, and a Devil room and an Angel room, which appear as regular rooms instead of after a boss, so you can just find them randomly. There is a single Ultra Secret room and many Secret rooms. there are 2 Curse rooms normally, and 3 if you have the Voodoo Head. This Void would essentially be the largest level ever, feeling infinite like The Void might feel the first time, except this one has special rooms and not just bosses. Floor 1 is Basement XL, Floor 2 is Caves XL, Floor 3 is Depths XL, and Floor 4 is The Void. In Floor 4 the trapdoors from each boss dont teleport you to a random other boss room, but instead are a trapdoor with stairs which leads to a room with 1 random item from each item pool, which you can only choose one from. This would make the items from these bosses more useful, given that you can choose between many items. Beyond that, I dont really think Delirium needs tweaking, however I think he should teleport less often and move faster. Also, I think delirious enemies should have a very low chance to teleport or turn into a random other delirious enemy, just like delirium teleports and turns into delirious versions of other bosses. Also, I think bosses should have a chance to be delirious, in which case they would be like delirium but without the extra health and a much lower chance to turn into other bosses or teleport. The chance for a boss to be delirious is 3/4 in Floor 4, 1/2 in Floor 3, 1/4 in Floor 2, and no chance to be delirious in Floor 1.
I'm gonna throw in my 2 cents here:
I think that, since the floor is meant to be a DYING memory, that the floor never grows, instead it only ever shrinks, the opposite of what bd talks about here.
At the start, the map looks like what you normally see of Void; Ludicrous amounts of rooms, and such; However, the rooms are mainly only the starter locations; Think Basement and Caves.
Your build, like bd said, is reverted to about where it was; In this case, I think your build at the end of Caves 1 would do nicely.
After you go down the crawlspace hole when beating the inescapable boss room, a static effect occurs, and you're back to the beginning of the Void floor; Now the floors consist of only the next 2 Floors after Caves, etc. This continues until you reach the would-be Void floor; It is now just a straight line, of boss after boss each floor; Fight Monstro with Basement stuff, then next boss with Caves stuff and so on; You get no items from these bosses. This continues up until Delirium, who I think would just behave like bd1p talked of in this video.
@@rickywalters7717 well, that's also a nice rework idea. It all ultimately comes down to whatever one's perception of "dying memory" is, since we don't know that much about how the brain behaves when it's about to die. For example, "dying memory" doesn't have to imply "less memory", it could progressively become hazier and more jumbled (kinda like I described) until it finally implodes
Oh, and the transition cutscene of isaac remembering something bad should have the memory all messed up.
adding on to the idea of floor layouts getting wierder, maybe secret, super secret and ultra secret rooms can spawn as normal rooms or just have different spawn conditions entirely
4:43 I disagree, the items in the boss rooms can really save runs by giving extra power before fighting Delirium, considering all the pools are merged you can get angel/devil deal items, Delirium is very hard so everything that can add some power is useful.
My only complaint is why do I always end up with useless stuff from the shop item pool after beating these bosses
I think the items spawned by those bosses should be picked by a kind of "void item pool" to add that sense of uniqueness
@@Samuel-jn2oc This
I thought this myself because unless you have incredible luck 100% of the time, you going to be fighting hush to get here and the whole purpose of hush is that you had to get here as fast as possible
I got R key lmao of course
@@jameskimble6453 i usually go for the mega satan coin flip since if you manage to defeat him you certainly will delirium unless it took you too much soul hearts
The entire void part of the game just felt rushed. I feel like they could have done so much more with it but instead we ended up with reskinned floors and a boss that turns into bosses we have already fought, What if every single individual room had assets from different floors, rather than one set of sprites per room? On top of this delirium is one of my least favorite bosses in any game which doesn't help matters at all
I think your ideas are pretty cool, but where you focus on the feeling of panic and a collapsing mind, if I were to rework the void, I would actually take it in nearly the opposite direction, and focus on the idea of terminal lucidity (the sudden clarity of mind people often get soon before death, and also the track name for the delirium fight)
The floor would start out intense and chaotic, lots of powerful enemies (I like the idea of amalgamated 'delirium' champions) and difficult traps. The map would be enormous, and feature the idea you brought up of blue key style rooms that appear unpredictably to make the floor feel more overwhelming.
Once you start killing the bosses, however, the floor would start changing. Certain rooms and paths on the floor would start disappearing, less enemies appear, a swirling abyss can be seen in gaps and cracks in the floor. Rooms start falling apart, with pits into the void swallowing all but the necessary paths in the room.
Eventually, once the final boss room on the floor is cleared, the floor almost entirely disappears, leaving you with one new path to a boss room with Delirium. The rooms are all almost empty, maybe one or two enemies and obstacles, and as you get closer to Delirium, the rooms behind you disappear from the floor, and the rooms ahead become more and more broken, with the last few just being a single path over a gaping abyss.
I don't have anything on reworking the actual boss, and there are probably problems with this idea, but I like the idea of a floor that slowly crumbles away, representing Isaac slowly suffocating while his mind falls apart, leaving only Delirium
This is absolute genius. The Void starts as delirious chaos, but it gets more and more straightforward as you realize: Delirium is all you have left.
I like the idea that it'll work kinda like Mausoleum 2 after you kill the bonus Mom's Heart, too. You walk out of the boss room triumphant, only to find that the world you returned to isn't the same world you left. It's smaller, and lonelier. And each time you take a step toward the end, the degradation progresses further.
Let's follow your template. I like the idea that the floor opens up in stages - but I think after every stage you pass through, the entire floor's visual consistency should deteriorate a step further. At first, the level looks like it does now: a faithful recreation of each stage (depending on what part of the progression you're on). But then, after the Basement bosses, you start to see some of the rocks mismatched with the stages (e.g., Womb rocks in Depths). After Caves, you start to see Void textures in the holes. After Depths, the Void holes start pulling you in like a gravity trap. (I think this would really sell the feeling that you are now subject to "forces outside of your control" as your mind deteriorates.) After It Lives, your character costume starts to change slightly between rooms, accompanied by a static effect the moment you clear a room. (Nothing major - just an obvious difference, like a hairstyle change.) Finally, once you clear the Blue Baby or Lamb fight, the whole level falls away. You're left with nothing but a blank-textured hallway filled with gravity voids, leading you down a short spiral to the final boss room: Delirium. (You could argue that the terminal lucidity would work better with a straight path to Delirium, and I'm open to that. But the spiral makes it feel even more winding and inevitable. I'd take either.)
As it stands, the Void feels less like a finale and more like...an optional challenge to test your Isaac skills. Delirium gives off that vibe too, since you're basically fighting almost every boss combined.
that's an ineteresting idea! though in terms of lore it's a bit out
Not only that, but they teleport and keep spamming the fuck outta the hush tears
IMO the item reversion idea while sounding cool would feel _really_ frustrating in practice especially for runs that started out badly and got good in a clutch fashion at the end of the run. Same goes for the locked progression concept, because you'd essentially be _forced_ to go back and forth all over the floor.
I also think *I* would want to keep a Void rework to _no additional spriting or etc,_ I think "new content" is essentially a bonus ask for a Void rework I wouldn't fully expect. With that in mind, here's what _I'd_ do:
1. *The visual effects of the DELETETHIS challenge, perhaps somewhat curtailed.* This challenge already laid out _exactly_ how to do an eerie atmosphere for a floor that doesn't make any visual sense. Combine this with full visual rock randomisation too, and you've got a good formula for a crazy looking floor without having to create any new assets.
2. *Going crazy with room usage.* Specifically, I want occasional random previously visited Special Rooms being dropped in from previous floors. A Shop with items you didn't buy sandwiched in, that Secret Room that had a Black Lotus you couldn't reach before, a Library with all those books you touched for Bookworm, a Devil Deal you refused, and so on. Things that prompt players to _think_ as they pass by presenting them with decisions, instead of ENDLESS enemy rooms.
3. *Curse immunity on the floor.* Sorry, I know that sounds weird and petty, but _SERIOUSLY_ Curse of The Lost or etc on Void is just abhorrent. Trash it. If one _really_ wants to keep them, Curse effects could be assigned at random to specific rooms, so while Isaac is in _this_ room, he has Curse of the Unknown for example.
4. *Implementation of alt-floors into the room layouts.* Pretty simple.
5. *At the start of each room, a number of enemies reroll themselves into other enemies with roughly equivalent HP, like the D10.* Ideally IMO, this proportion would increase the more rooms you clear with increasingly chaotic total room transformations, resulting in entirely unpredictable floor clears to make up for your strength.
6. *Delirium fixes.* I won't even go that into depth on this, just fix the telefrags and it's _good enough_ but a wider change to its patterns would be cool too.
I think you ideas are even better than in the video, especially with those curses and thoughts about _no adding additional respriting etc._ I agree with most of these
Risk of rain 2 final boss has that same mechanic in his last phase where he takes all your items and uses them against you and you need to shoot him to have a proc chance of taking one random item back. Of course they had to blacklist a lot of items so you don't insta die the moment he gets an op combination but i think its pretty fun overall.
This is why i always give myself black candle on the void floor, something that i don't even do on dark room/chest. The damn thing is just too big
I would want more random events to happen that you don't see often in standard runs to keep you on edge. What if random red rooms opened even if you didn't have crystal key? What if Mom's Shovel Piece 1 could fall from the sky even in rooms where it makes no sense for that to happen?
I really do love the idea of inbetween-rooms, "the void below" and "collapsing" asthetic, and mashup delerium-style enemies, as well as the expanding floor. Though, the idea of reverting your build depending on the rooms seems cool in theory but i think it would be very hard to implement well in practice and would likely feel very janky.
Yeah, mixing in some rooms with an actual unique void theme sounds like it would help.
Not Your Sagittarius did a really cool version of The Void, and I hope they take inspiration from that, as well as the Delete This challenge. Every room would be broken and amalgamated versions of rooms you've already seen on your run, full of mushed up monsters like you proposed. Delirium's forms should be limited to bosses you've already encountered on your run, too. I like your Item removal mechanic as well, but not so much Delirium's copying mechanic or the room opening up. The copying just rubs me the wrong way and the opening is something that should be a signature of Mother since she doesn't really have much else too unique about her. I also suggest that as you go further into The Void, the more delirious it gets, more white and squishy, harder combinations of enemies, etc. Also to help with that sense of progression and atmosphere. The music should use a bit of a retouch since it doesn't feel right at all, but Edmund seems to be more afraid of changing music than the plague. The static effect should just be removed. I'm struggling to think of a clean alternative that doesn't include "enemies teleporting around the room" or a transition that doesn't look bad. It also just reminds me too much of Dogma.
Edit: OH YEAH, also when you find the Void portal once in a run, it should be guaranteed to appear after every final boss kill. It just makes unlocks a bit less obnoxious and lets you flex on both Mega Satan and Delirium without leaving it to chance.
wait, could you link what nys did?
I think antibirth nailed the void music, a mashup of different songs and some slowed down fragments really fits the floor
Pretty sure Delirium already is locked to bosses you’ve already fought.
@@Deadflower019 it is locked.
@@koliman1588 Yeh. It actually is locked. To those you have encountered. But what i am not sure about... Does Delirium counts the degraded bosses you see on the later floors towards that.
The ascent is so good it makes the rest of the endings look like crap, honestly the void didn't use to feel as out of place as it does now. Good ideas! Kilburn did amazing things for the game, hopefully revamping more old content is on the plate.
this. the ascent path really feels very final-boss-y, which is fitting for the true final ending. just wish the other paths had that feeling in albeit lesser magnitudes
Imo Ascent is the most fun route, and Mother is the least. The delirium boss fight is complete ass, and I only consider it if I’ve broken the game but it’s nowhere near as gruelling as having to get the knife pieces can be with poor items and especially on a no holy mantle lost.
Isn't it delirium? Shouldn't we hear diffrent voices and sounds? Happiness, sadness, crying, shame, mom and dad fighting and more?.
Maybe something a bit reversed. You can explore a giant fully revealed floor with multiple bosses. But, whenever you complete a room, the room behind you permanently vanishes. You can clear out the floor to gain items. When you run out of rooms to enter, Isaac’s memories fully break down and at the bottom all that is left is the boss fight with Delirium. Heck, maybe even do the reverse of your suggestion. Have the boss start out in a 2x2, but have the arena get progressively smaller or emptier. With holes appearing like Wormwood does. As if everything falls apart. When Delirium is defeated, no chest should spawn as it breaks the immersion. Go straight to the cutscene; Isaac’s mind has fully collapsed.
The Red Redemption challenge gave me more emotions than the endgame floor. The fact that every room have that omnious red glow, and music changes with layouts, and devil/treasure/shop room appear where they should'nt be feels really unnatural, like a fever dream or something. Would be really great to have something like that on the Void, just the same rooms and scenarious you've already passed through, but always with something off about them.
The more you advance the more corrupted and messed up things get. Its perfect in making everything connect better with a sense of progression AND matches perfectly the lore. Isaac is slowly dying, the more u advance through the void, the more u forget how things actually looked like because you are, well, slowly dying in a low oxygen environment.
One cool idea for the "mashup" enemies that you were talking about would be to have the Delirium texture be interrupted by a layer of static, and then the sprite after that band of static would have the normal enemy texture.
Really enjoy the “video essay” type videos! Perfect for my work commute. Keep ‘em coming!
Random dumb addition idea: Delirium can randomly screw up a transformation and combine two non-story boss fights
I really like Delirium and The Void because the have the potential to be the best final boss and floor of the whole game. I mean, sure, The Beast is cool and all, but it's still in Isaac's imaginary world. In that sense, conversely, Delirium is the realest thing Isaac fights in the whole game.
good fucking commentary on the floor not being as atmospheric .. it absolutely needs to feel more chaotic and terrifying and scary . more mental illness in isaac binding Please..... the idea of the floor and the theme itself is so fucking amazing but they didn't do anything with it .
the player mimicking is an amazing idea also . wow
I love your ideas, especially for the Void floor, but I have some of my own ideas for Delirium.
1. Keep the room expansion idea initially, it's great
2: Exclude Dogma and Mother from his random boss pool, as well as alt path bosses if the alt path hasn't been unlocked. This prevents spoilers for Repentance fights
3. Have the phases go as follows:
P1: 100%-75% health; Delirium cycles between non-story, 1×1 room bosses around every 5% health, cycling the floor with him. At this point, the floors match up with the bosses
P2: 75%-50% health; let Delirium momentarily appear as himself in a cutscene, a la Mother, before expanding the room and creating 2-3 random Double Troubles, one appearing after the other for Issac to kill.
P3: 50%-15%; Expand room to 4×4 and commence the AB+ style fight, with Delirium speeding up as he gets more damaged
P4: 15%-Death; close the room back to 1×1 and start spawning Delirium-ridden champions, the deaths of which hurt Delirium. One is spawned per Item Isaac has, and when one dies, he loses his most recent item (raw stat ups stay for the most part, even if the item itself disappears). When he loses every item, including any starting items, Delirium loses his boss armor before spawning in his true form in the middle of the room, where he sits there, waiting for base isaac to kill him. When he dies, there is no chest to jump into, the cutscene transition is instant.
4. Make a Mega Satan win guarantee Void spawn
the phase 4 idea sounds sick and gives the same vibes that assenttion gives of
I want to say yes to your last opinion but with hush also being 100% guaranteed it would be the end boss or the speedrun boss
While I like the idea of Delirium changing into bosses you previously fought, I feel like it's the only thing going for him. Maybe give him some more attacks where he is in his normal form. Try making him changing into bosses not his most common attack. I feel like that could give the fight more personality and originality. Cause at the moment, all Delirium does is become reskinned bosses that move slightly faster and shoots a bunch of projectiles everywhere.
I agree. Delirium needs his own signature moves.
Besides telefragging.
Every time I go up the ascent, I imagine it like a traumatic flashback running through Isaac's head, over and over every single time I go there.
The void should feel a bit more like a dying memory, we need more stuff relating to Isaac and his life. Exclusive floor types could be an interesting idea, they could be composed of various gigantified items, such as a knife or Polaroid, maybe merged rooms that combine enemies, obstacles and floor types together.
Hardmode major boss patterns is a mod that gave delirium attacks that fit this concept, transforming into the tv, spawning distorted Isaacs from a Polaroid, giant knife-hand thing, etc. This is what we need delirium’s rework to be like. If the boss copying is kept, there should be unique attacks for each one, and more rep bosses included.
Alt path should also be included, but only if visited.
Expanding on the static shift idea, there should be subtle details that appear after a room changes to show something isn’t right, like yellow eyes hidden in the darkness or blurred sprites.
I would say that corpse isn't bad or boring. It's, well, a corpse. Yeah, not much enemies but that's because most of them were scrapped
A few ideas:
- The in-between rooms you talked about being rooms that you teleport to by a random chance after finishing a room, and those rooms should mimic what type of room you just beat -but with harder enemies (example, defeating a boss in a boss room teleports you to another in-between boss room with a harder boss).
- The locked prorgession sounded cool, and I like the idea of the floor being more and more destroyed the further you go - like, also actual holes in the floor that didn't used to be there.
- The music needs a touch up, becoming more and more distorted the further you travel on the floor.
- Delirium himself should be able to transform into the previous bosses, but to add onto the whole "destroying stuff" bit, the room should gradually be filled with more and more holes in the floor as the fight progresses, but in return Delirium should move a bit slower over time as it gets destroyed more and more (shown by visual design of the boss).
- Bomb explosions could have a chance of making cracks in the floor, that if you step on them the floor breaks and you fall into a pit - taking 1 heart of damage (kinda like Little Horn's holes). But you can also lure enemies onto the cracks to make them fall out of the room and the "memory".
My idea for Delirium is that it's *inspired* by the bosses attacks, and looks like a chaotic mish-mash of the final bosses. Instead of just turning into Mom and stomping, it instead summons a barrage of static pillars that act like Mom's foot. Instead of turning into Satan and firing a spread of lasers, it grows a pair of goat hooves and blasts blood lasers from them. Instead of just being defined as "Temporarily turn into this boss and teleport," it now has it's own unique behaviour and attacks that, if you recognise the attack, you should know how to deal with, bar some extra tears and projectiles here and there.
Personally I've always loved The Void thematically, I'm one of the like 7 people who care about the story and stuff so even though I agree that mechanically it's... pretty bad, I still really enjoy what it's trying to convey.
"These extra items shouldn't be needed on the final floor"
As someone who usually feels woefully underprepared when I enter that floor… I disagree. I always enter that floor hoping to find something that will actually allow me to beat delirium.
yes I aggree he's just too bad and he needs to have an op build to win
instead of a chest i would love to see a crack with the void swalloing isaac as entrance and exit
i personally feel like the Delirium fight can kind of take after the Omega Flowey fight. Delirium starts calming down, but soon takes no damage, and then static brings you to a regular boss room of a boss you’ve already fought. this would happen a certain number of times during the fight, and can be HP based, and the multiple phases can also be implemented with it. and, of course, these bosses would be more difficult, can revert your set, and would obviously have the Delirium look.
One thing I feel like the boss rooms do well is support the mechanic of Delirium shifting between bosses you've encountered on the run, since they add to his pool; however, that doesn't fix the issues presented in this video.
i kinda have another sort of rework idea. Which is: generate void floor with rooms that can appear on the floors you already visited, rather then all floors.
Say your path was like that:
Basement
Burning basement
Catacombs
Mines
Depths
Necropolis
Womb
Uthero
Cathedral
the chest
and then you happened to be sucked into the void.
So the rooms there should be pulled from these floors, so no cellar, dross, downpoor, ashpit, flooded and normal caves, dank depths, scarred womb, mausoleum, gehenna, corpse, sheol and dark room.
The reason is: If the void is a mashup of Isaac's memories, and you chose the light path, then how would you see rooms from sheol for example. You haven't visited that floor, so you don't have memories about it.
Instead of my parents relationship fixing I’d rather have a greed and greedier fix
The delete this challenge was what I thought void should have been, everything mixed up and unrecognizable but still familiar
I'd like to see Delirium use the Void's blackhole motif. Maybe having the fight have an introduction with three invincible blackhole-like enemies opening up a portal through which Delirium emerges. Then, having them orbit him throughout the fight, only leaving him whenever he's about to teleport, in which case they'll move ahead of him to open up another portal which would be where he would teleport to.
I remember my idea for delirium is having whichever boss it turned into split off of delirium if the player did enough damage to that form, both having delirium not be able to transform and having the player have to fight through a boss rush adjacent fight, as Isaac would continue further into the boss, it would feel as though he's dealing with these past memories, till the only one left is delirium as it would take more damage but teleport/attack more often as the room would change each time it'd teleport
I think by far one of the most serious problems with the void is the fact that it has a CHANCE to spawn (aside from beating hush). I feel like at that point of the run, when you've spent like 40+ minutes on it, at that point you just deserve to get an attempt at getting that delirium mark. It just feels so wrong that with the absolute most you can do (aside from hush), your chance of even getting the floor to spawn is determined by a coin flip
Adding you your idea, maybe make it so that Delirium fight would be unexpected. Like, you fight Monstro in boss room, kill him, get loot, door open but the moment you get closer to the door it suddenly closes and Delirium appears. And as well make him destroy all teleporting cards/items in your inventory.
What I've always disliked about the Delirium boss fight is that it has no structure, every other major boss fight comprises of an array of predictable, consistent attacks, which is basically how bosses in all video games are designed, you balance out the high difficulty by making it consistent and thus able to be adapted to. Each Mega Satan or Mother fight can only comprise of the same few attacks, which adds a sense of satisfaction as you master dodging them and subsequently exploiting the brief periods of downtime in between. But with Delirum, there is no consistency, he just randomly moves around, randomly sprays mindless circles of bullets, and randomly switches between a massive selection of bosses each with wildly different attack patterns. There are no patterns to learn, no maneuvers to master, just spray in his general direction and hope he stops firing long enough to let you get close. He's such a boring, unsatisfying boss to fight because there's no sense of accomplishment, there's no "narrative" as you slowly adapt and imrpove and eventually conquer this foul beast, he just kind of dies. If I were redesigning him, I'd make him a more stationary boss like Mother who uses the other bosses in his attacks cosmetically without actually changing into them. Imagine, his head changes to Mega Satan's and he fires a blood beam, then he makes adversaries rain from the sky, then makes a bunch of Wormwood tails punch out of the ground in big clusters, etc. Make him into a more consistent, standard boss with a lot of different attacks that make use of the other bosses' attacks without direct becoming and reusing them. I think it'd be way cooler if Delirium was a distorted amalgamation of Isaac's memories, contorting and twisting them against him, rather than just the reuse that we have currently.
I kind of like what you said about the arena getting bigger, but let me propose this instead: do it all in reverse, have it shrink throughout the fight. When you first enter the bossfight, the room is 2x2, and Delirium is MASSIVE. He's this nightmarish mass of white goo and eyes, and you can see the forms of countless bosses melded into him. This phase uses the widest variety of attacks from the biggest pool of bosses. After 1/3 of his health is gone, Delirum does his static bullshit and shrinks, and the arena begins to shrink along with him, collapsing into the swirling void of Isaac's immenent death that sits below everything, the ultimate ending. In this phase, Delirum's attacks mainly make use of story bosses, so there's less of them, but they're much harder to evade. After another 3rd of health, he shrinks again, with the arena turning into something about the size of phase 1 Mother's arena. THIS is when he mimics you, all of Isaac's other memories are gone, it's just you and yourself. As the third phase's health dwindles, the room collapses more and more, closing in on you and Delirum, until you kill him, and it all gives way as Isaac slips into death. It's what Delirium is supposed to be, life flashing before Isaac's eyes. First he thinks of his creations and monsters, then things more down to earth, things like his religious guilt, his regret of being born, his mother who he thinks hates him. And then it ends with him having to come to terms with himself, and what he became.
I'd elaborate more, but I've typed enough. Void could be tackled in so many ways, but I agree that it NEEDS to be changed, both to be more fun and fair from a gameplay perspective as well as a more satisfying, definitive end to the story.
I LOVE this idea! Consistent Delirium boss patterns, made up of unique ways that he can channel and borrow abilities from other bosses? That's a perfect balance between "random amalgamation" and "good, coherent boss design." Hats off to you. I'd love to see this. 😁
I think the Void floor itself is the best part of any Delirium run, but Delirium itself is the worst final boss fight in the game.
Imagine if void was done like windwakers final dungeon, one big centre room and branching paths out to different distorted versions of the floors. Like one door goes to basement one to caves and so on. It would keep the part of you having the og items from that floor. Only after you have beaten every mini floor do you got the delerium door open. This does the whole finality thing and makes it not a steamroll.
I absolutely disagree with the room size limitations and wizardry. The Witness fight does have that specific flare and delicious taste when the room doubles in size, the main reason for me to actually do mother runs, but to get it this complicated seems just annoying.
Filling the room with some environmental elements you can deal with during phases would be cool tho, the arena is barren, and having deli interact with it too would be nice. Only the minecart boy and one of the corpse bosses interacts with environnement, the stoney worms do not count because player does the interactions and Gideon can go straight to the hell
And the sheer sense of scale created by chest absolutely swallowing isaac in it, the whole giant room confining the little boyo is just done right. It feels atmospheric when the rest of the floor doesn't.
The ending chest appearing kinda ruins it, because who the hell would put a chest in a chest, but same can be said about the chest room. So it's mostly the problem of ending the run itself.
Delerium just reusing old bosses for his fight is still cool just because they went through the effort to make a new sprite for every one
I disagree with Delirium's room opening up over the fight. He represents the lasts gasps of a dying mind, a mind that is gone by the end of it. Have his room start out nice and large, and Delirium with his full move set available, except for a small handful like Mega Satan, Dogma, Corpse, and The Beast. When you get him down to 2/3 health reduce the room to a 1x2 (whichever half Isaac is in is the half that remains), and cut out all the non-story bosses from before the womb. At 1/3 the room collapses further to a 1x1, and cut Delirium down to only the story bosses from the womb and later plus the handful we had originally excluded. At 10% delirium is all but defeated, and can only take the forms of Mom, The Corpse, The Heart, It Lives, and Isaac/Blue Baby, returning to the key players of Issac's story, the last of what Isaac can make any sense of. At 5% it is reduced to only Isaac/BB and It Lives. At 2% it becomes stuck in the form of Isaac in the fetal position, only using that basic 'three pairs of tears' attack. You finish killing yourself as the static of brain death fills the room, and then it is over.
if it ever gets to a point where it seems like the issac team is done with the game, but these frankly genius rework ideas or something parallel to fix some of the lacking parts of the game have yet to implemented, why not lead a modding team to make a comprehensive rework mod? Community could fundraise to pay the devs, i know id chip in.
I absolutely refuse to go back to trying delirium unlocks with tainted characters until that boss gets fixed. The whole floor is missed opportunity, but I can live with that. What I can't live with is that the game fully expects me to actually beat delirium with a character that dies in one hit.
I've always felt like The Void should lean more heavily on the idea of being the game's version of a more classic dungeon. The floor itself needs to feel alive and hostile. What if everytime you clear a room, there is a chance for an already cleared room to become repopulated with harder enemies. This way, the more time you spend in the floor, the more dangerous it gets. But with higher risk, there should be higher reward, so I think the boss item pool for the floor should be improved. For instance maybe the entire floor could naturally have the effects of There's Options, Chaos, and Sacred Orb, or some combination of the three.
Also playing off the Delirium-themed champions idea, what Delirium itself could show up in rooms as a buffed enemy, kind of like the tainted enemies. Maybe there's a constant chance that an enemy on screen will become possessed by Delirium, granting them new attacks and buffed hp, or even making them invulnerable until Delirium stops possessing them. This way Delirium feels more like a true villain who's taunting you as you close in on them.
4:52 wym these extra boss room dont serve any purpose i got to the delirium floor on 2 hearts so many times and the boss rooms saved my runs
My idea for the floor is you start off with no items and the amount of rooms is the same as your items... that gives insensitive to fight every room to get your passive items back... all boss rooms reward you with additional items that u didn't have before...
I like the idea of visual changes to the void floor. Thematically what you suggest for it would be really cool. I also like the idea of special Delirium enemies. Not sure about your proposal for a rework though. Taking away your items would just make it feel redundant. What I would suggest (and this would take a LOT of work) is to actually make the Void its own unique floor with its own set of rooms. Each room would be individually crafted just like any other floor, but they would be BASED ON the rooms from previous floors, rather than just copying them exactly. This would allow adjustments to the rooms individually to balance them for how late game it is. For instance, some rooms would be based on Basement and they would have Basement enemies, but they would have added Delirium champions and other difficulty increases. They would look like Basement visually but would have added elements of the Void aesthetic you mentioned (swirling chaos, white slime). Then there could be more rooms based on each of the other floors, with the early game ones getting more adjustments to make them suitable for late game combat. The general structure I don't honestly have a problem with. I don't mind hunting for Delirium throughout the Void, going into each of the boss rooms while revisiting areas from other floors. I just wish they weren't literal copy pastes of the other rooms. It makes the early game rooms seem like you said, lazy filler. You can have the theme of revisiting a variety of floors and aesthetics without being lazy about it.
As for Delirium, I think he needs waaaaay more work than you say. A lot of people have suggested having him spawn a minimum distance from you to stop the telefragging, but the issue with Delirium goes so much deeper than just the telefrag. The real problem is much harder to fix: Delirium is unbalanced in his fundamental design. Everybody hates the telefragging, and rightly so, but how many other unfair methods does he have to kill you? How many times has he transformed into a boss at max speed that was clearly never meant to go that fast, hitting you with no realistic way to anticipate or avoid it? How many times has he used his bullet hell in a way that really didn't work with his current form's attack patters, causing unavoidable damage? The problem, again, is that they were lazy. They didn't want to make a bunch of different movesets and behaviors, so they made one basic one: he fires his own innate projectile patterns, he copies the movesets of bosses they already made, and he gets faster as his health gets lower. They clearly gave no thought for how his own innate speed buff or attack patterns might interact with the bosses he's copying. Sometimes, especially in the later parts of the fight, it even feels like the bosses are breaking because they were never designed to move that fast.
My solution? Exactly what I said about the Void floor itself: you can have the theme of revisiting a variety of previous encounters without being lazy about it. It would take a shitload of work, but he would need to have his speed and behavior modified and fine tuned for each form individually. Make sure he can't turn into Bloat above the field of view and brimstone you. Make sure he doesn't use Krampus or the Lamb's spinning brimstone objectively too fast for you to move out of the way. For forms that have bullet hell style attacks, make sure they don't overlap with his white projectiles in a way that makes a literal wall. If he turns into a boss that dashes or moves fast, perhaps reduce his max speed so he doesn't appear on one side of the screen and nail you a few frames later. Is all this asking to much? Maybe. I don't make games and I don't even make mods, so I can't really say how difficult it would all be. But I know bad design when I see it, and I genuinely can't believe they playtested Delirium in his current state. It must have been a time constraint. I just can't imagine them going "yep, no issues here. I'm satisfied releasing this as the final boss for Isaac as a whole." And what supports this theory is that Delirium was EVEN WORSE when AB+ first launched. He literally didn't even use his animations. He was frozen and people genuinely though the final boss was just a JPEG with bullet hell attacks. He would just explode into guts like a common enemy when he died instead of his death animation. Shit like that just screams "this boss is unfinished." Well, It's been almost 5 years and I'm still waiting for them to finish it.
TL;DR What we have now would actually be totally fine if they didn't do it so lazily. Void and Delirium don't need to be reworked as much as they need to be... well, worked.
Fun fact, Delirium can only transform in to bosses you have encountered during that run, so the fake bosses that you encounter adds to this pool!
Yeah, your ideas would be very impactful and cool the first time round. But I feel like when you get to beating void on everyone, the changes would feel a lot more tedious to beat a lot
The mashup enemies do sound cool though
But yeah, I wish the taking items mechanic was explored a lot more in isaac. Because it’s really cool when the siren steals your familiars and you get hit by that knife you just spent the run earning
Another cool thing they could do is reduce the floor to the spawning floor, and a few adjacent rooms. Everytime you move into a new room, and combat has ended (or combat doesn't exist), new rooms will appear adjacent to this room. Rooms that you are no longer adjacent to will no longer exist. They will have fallen into the void. When you try to backtrack to the starting room, you will find that it no longer exists, and any rooms you find back in that direction are new ones that you haven't explored yet. The further you explore without having found a boss room, the higher the chance a boss room will spawn upon room completion.
[[Rant Ahead]]
Another thing in relation to the rooms:
Have the door to a room match the room you are going into, ignoring special room types like Item rooms, Planetariums, Shops, Sacrifice rooms, Bombed Walls, etc.
Example: I am in a Dross/Downpour room, to my right is a Mines/Ashpit room, the door leading to that room is the door appearence of the doors in Mines/Ashpit.
Granted this is to prepare players for the loadout they will recieve when they enter the room, but this also requires the Devs to make individual door textures for every single floor type.
And by the logic of "Items at the end of the chapter" Your loadouts are kept when you enter a New Chapter or Alt floor I assume, and do the Loadout Checks also apply to trinkets, actives, and pocket items; If so, can the change of [the stuff on that list] be negated by picking up that stuff in Void?
idk about the idea of reverting the items on the void, i think it's cool you maintain your items as a feeling of progression and "isaac got over it" or some shit like that
I agree with one man in commentaries here. Any item removing or locked progression would feel frustrating and comparing with what currently exists in void, it would be *even more boring and linear (or more unfair in case of item removing)* and would feel like force nerf/stretching the ending in general
I think that the delirium boss room could also be a room that's empty other than a white and yellow void portal taking you to a new floor that may be named 'end' or 'madness' (I'm not too sure).
The floor layout would be two rooms; the starting room with another portal for going back to the main void floor and the boss room. Doing that would also add to the feeling of this being it. The end. Removing the return portal might further emphasise this but a few balance issues may show up with doing that such as restriction of active items. Dying and respawning at one heart is annoying and someone might leave rooms uncleared so that they can get at least a heart back with prayer card or collect batteries to charge it.
Late comment I know but I don't really care.
Praise the fish god
i like the idea of reverting items to the stage you're in, you could bring that into a culmination of power in the delirium fight by having it start in the basement and force you into your basement 2 setup, and as the fight progresses delirium gets more difficult, but it does the static and progresses in stages as well, returning or swapping around your items
i think a neat idea for the atmosphere might be to have multiple floor rooms in one? like the room is cut up at random places on the grid by cracks inspired by how the void portal and chapter icon looks, and mash together rooms from seperate chapters. maybe even look at the seed and take rooms from that seed, to push the idea of isaac's memories merging?
Ive always felt like the void should have a curse attached to it, something like "Curse of Delerium". Where it gives you curse of the Lost and Curse of the Maze effect, so you are really disoriented and really have no damn clue whats happening. Also just turn the floors into a complete clusterfuck. Have walls and floors from different levels in the same room, enemies from all floors, fuck it. Maybe even give the enemies random statusses, random card effects happening. Just really make the void a clusterfuck
NO.
That delirium fight was rough
I had an idea for the void. Making the stage look like glass from the planetariums, cristal walls falling and a giant red void in the background
That could be the Delirium room
7:40 this method of fixing it is an absolute bust. Take how long and boring Void already feels, and add a bunch of useless backtracking - that's what the map-unlocking would do.
Reverting back to old points in the run is a neat idea though
Guess it’s a hot take but I really don’t mind delirium as a boss, even with the telefragging. I always enjoy fighting him and find the last bit with him teleporting and transforming every few seconds incredibly fun and tense.
IMO, The Void should've been where they go all out with the decaying theme. I'm talking warped room layouts (1:3, one block wide rooms, rooms with a completely wild shape etc.), enemies that look infected by Delirium's, well, delirium (like the Eternal Enemies mod), mixed enemies (like you said in the video), *floor specific enemies* (No, the void portals don't count, those also appear in the Gehena). And to add to the merging memories idea, the longer you spend in the floor, the more rooms merge together into one. Being in a merged room makes it switch between the floor themes those two rooms had before. If you are in a room that was merged more than 5 times, it turns into a Delirium room, all white and yellow like Delirium, which cannot be merged further. Entering one of these rooms for the first time makes it a room with enemies, which could act the same way Delirium does, switching between previously fought enemies (but don't teleport so no telefragging lol).
Add the red void theme in the ground that you talked about in the video, but making them appear the longer you're in that room, even starting to act like the holes that suck you in once there's enough of them, displaying an increasing red static when fallen into like Dogma's death animation.
About the multiple bosses, Eternal Bosses. Just that mod. But make it less bullshit lol. Also make defeating the bosses reduce Delirium's health by a percentage equal to the amount of bosses spawned on the floor, such as defeating all of them reduces his health by 15%/20%, as if Isaac is fighting his past memories and helping his delirium.
The music, while it already is amazing, should be like the Beast's changing themes, where one layer of the music changes depending on what room type you're in. While in the Delirium room, it plays a theme which uses all the leitmotifs, one after another.
But that's just my idea for a void floor. Great video!
I like some of these ideas, particularly having the Void map expand as you clear bosses and giving those bosses the Delirium aesthetic. A void-y background would also be cool though it needs to be distinct from Dark Room.
I don't really like the idea of reverting the build, because this could radically change how you're supposed to play at the drop of a hat. Like what if you found Ipecac in Chapter 1 and Pyro in Chapter 3, now you randomly need to stop and figure out if you are worried about self-damage? It's just too much for any but the most experienced player imo (granted, I've never gotten close to even 50% of all unlocks, and have barely played Lost/Keeper at all).
Anyway, instead of the build revert I would make the static effect more frequent and yes, add D10/D12 to it to throw off the player. And also have the portals spawn with a gravity-warping effect that either pulls you in or slows your movement. Or more along those lines. I think that, plus some Void equivalent to Tainted enemies, should be good enough.
one thing i would add to the void would be a timer, so the floor could be a mad dash to find delirium as fast as possible. as the timer goes down, the enemies get more difficult and the map starts breaking down, so you cant use certain ways, or room layouts change with rubble blocking the path, etc. if the timer hits zero, it's game over. of course, if you're fast enough, you can go kill the other bosses for more items or find your secret rooms, but that just wastes time and makes everything else much more difficult. maybe, even, delirium could get more powerful the more time you waste, so you wanna find him as fast as possible to make him weaker
I saw something really well done with Hardmode Boss Pattern's addition to Delirium in that he mimics transformations- for example, Stompy causes him to fire rockwaves every time he changes and Conjoined causes 2 smaller heads to fire at you continuously. Having him mirror you is really fitting and I would love to see it implemented in the future.
He actually wouldn’t be able to turn into dogma because (in ab+ at least) he can only transform into bosses you’ve encountered and there’s no way to encounter dogma and deli in one run
what if it used the red rooms, and instead of being able to see the map, even with full mapping, theres no sense of direction, you all ways have the curse of the lost, unknowing of which is where, the rooms corrupted and breaking, and the boss, an amalgamtion of everything you've experience, overwhelming, yet directionless, each room, using similar layouts to normal rooms, yet the enemies are out of place, enimies sometimes splitting apart yet everyone a champion, a floor should feel like a aimless build up, directionless and fracturing, yet using whats already there
the item removal mechanic is cool, but it’d be cool to have instead of several spaced out boss rooms it would be one random basement boss you’ve already faced with the items you had, one caves boss, etc until deli
It'd be cool if the floor also generated in a vague but noticeable swirl pattern like the void item, with Delirium at the end. The thing is you don't know _when_ you're at the swirl's end.
The background of the level that usually stays black the entire time could also be given a slight grey swirling animation, maybe one that increases in opacity for every boss you defeat
They need to rework so many rooms because compared to the new repentance content, they just seem so scuffed
the item reversing would probably mess with tainted isaac
Noooo why didn't he pick up dead cat as the soul 😭😭😭
I love how I was thinking "its just lame" and then you also said that the floor was lame.
"These fights can be with everyone except mother, mega satan, dogma, beast, ultra horsemen."
Also hush: 💀
Personally, I think everything except the Boss rework is an amazing idea. I already love the Void tbh, but its would be so much better with your ideas. You been doing great work these last few months, keep up the good work!
My idea: Take away all the player's items when you enter the void. They start off in the basement, and the floors get further and further along the further from the start he gets. So while the starting room and all rooms surrounding it will be basement, you'll eventually run into Caves floors, then Depths, and so on. To keep with the chaotic theme, floors from earlier will start mixing in throughout the end, though possibly with the ascent enemies, or even original delirium-themed enemies. While none of it is locked off, the player is likely going to need to fight bosses to get his items back. Each boss room is identical to one they had encountered earlier in the run, similar to ascent. When isaac enters each one, there is a beam of light in the center, in which he has to fight a "memory" of the boss that was there. The memory is like the actual boss fight, but shorter, with the memory cutting into static and draining large chunks of the bosses health bar at certain points (since rehashing the whole thing would probably be annoying) and once he beats it, he gets all the items he collected from that floor back. (The exception is that you won't have to fight hush again, any items from the Blue Womb will be tied to It Lives!) Ideally this would be laid out linearly so Isaac isn't constantly backtracking to get his items from a boss room across the map, which would be very far by the end. Once all memories are defeated, Delirium's door (which is a visually distinct one) opens up.
Honestly I just think cramming the entire progression of the game into 1 level would be really cool. Even if it's the kind of thing you'd only want to do once for the unlocks, I think that has merit in design
Brilliant video. I disagree about the loss of items, but I love basically everything else. And the ideas in this comment section are off the chain! I really hope Kilburn gets to see this.
I know this is a strange idea, but what if void was structured like fiend folio's gauntlet, where you got keys for bosses, and needed them all to fight delirium? The dogma fight could also be used for the floor transition thought bubble:
It starts empty, until two big black dots appear. Pupils like delirium's are in the dots, and you enter the floor.
For more buildup, I feel like the final boss room should be repeating hallways, but the farther in you get, the more delirium goop stuff (the white + yellow stuff) should show up more. The room right before should be completely covered probably with the final room looking like it
honestly despite some people saying that this is a garbage take i actually really like the idea. the floor itself is longer and takes more time to progress but delirium actually becomes balanced and fightable
One cool idea i've always had to fix delirium was to keep the teleporting, but you are shown a few faint outlines that show where they will teleport next. At the start of the fight, its super obvious which of the spots they will tp to (like one is more clear) but as the fight goes on, it becomes harder and harder to tell them apart
The small percentage of subscribers killed me the comedic timing was just MHM.
Delrium cannot copy any bosses added in repentance except one, that being baby plum (so it cant copy dogma)
however it CAN copy hush, however its requires you to have fought very little bosses on your run and the hush copy is broken, its sprites are bugged and unfinished, especially on the second phase
Some of the ideas presented are good, but some others not so much. I'm not the first person to note that removing items from the player can be very frustrating and potentially buggy (imagine getting stuck with basement items cause the game glitched or crashed). As well, the idea of the floor expanding as you go is interesting, but it also forces backtracking and doesn't actually solve the issue it's trying to fix, rather it just hides it.
To that though, Delirium versions of champion enemies is brilliant, and making the Delirium fight multi-stage is a good idea too. Keeping in mind the lore and theming of the floor, maybe adding in blue key rooms between certain rooms would be an interesting idea? There could also be just completely random rooms instead of all the regular base floor stuff, like item rooms filled with flies and shops connected to curse rooms.
Another interesting idea involves the Red Key and Cracked Key items added in Repentance. Whenever you open a red room with an item that would make it, instead of the standard red room shenanigans, you get Delirium rooms where the whole rooms takes on the goopy white and yellow aesthetic and tougher enemies are found, but clear rewards are much higher. The Ultra Secret Room could follow this and instead of being red themed, it's white.
For Delirium itself, instead of having to go and search him out, whenever you enter a boss room that does not contain Delirium, you start a mini-chase room akin to the Mom specter in the alt path, but with Delirium and much shorter. After making it out, you are given some form of hint as to where Delirium actually is, like an arrow pointing towards its room, a light up of the rooms leading to it, and after enough chases, the room becomes revealed permanently and the remaining boss rooms turn into special rooms like item room and shops.
Maybe with the fused-together enemies you suggested, there could also be amalgamations of different bosses?
When you initially start the floor, you fight completely normal, first floor bosses. But then as you progress, they get more and more distorted and mixed in with eachother, all while slowly becoming paler and paler. Weirdness initially starts with bosses simply doing the wrong attacks (Hornfel doing brinstone beam, Haunt throwing up like Monstro, etc) but then soon devolves to completley new abominations of Delirium-colored strangeness. All five horsemen fused together, Blastocyst with Wormwood stuck inside instead of an embryo, a melting Mega Fatty who sacrifices his own health to produce tons of Gurglings.
All of the new bosses would have pitiful health, just to really send home the idea that Isaac's memories are merging together and dying in the process.
Something I think would be cool for the theming is a constant, veeeeery slight TV static shader being applied throughout the whole floor, like, extremely slight so it's not horribly distracting and intrusive
What if when you get to void it's a floor with corrupted rooms (ex basement with cathedral walls) and the game gives you tmt trainer for every boss you beat before delirium that way when you collect items it feels as though the memories of these items are being corrupted as well, then once you get to delirium the boss plays out normally until about 40 percent when he transforms into his true form adding new attacks into the mix
Vid 58 of saying thank you for your content
7:42 Seeing a secret room near a boss should be illegal
I just like the idea of delirium copying boss attack patterns instead of doing whatever the fuck it does right now bc it’s really annoying. Like instead of being a pure bullethell where changing into bosses only matters if it’s chub or mom or something, it’d be fun if you could see it turn into conquest and be like “oh, it’s about to do the one scripted attack it’s able to from conquest’s moveset” rather than it just spamming the tear rings constantly. The big issue with it right now is that it only has tells for attacks that don’t matter
i feel like delirium being able to be some of the enemies and being the bosses makes it a lot better because it's like the delirium is lurking, It is following you, It will kill you
damn it your sugestions are so cool I actually wanna see a modder make them
Someone should make this into a mod
I think void should have it so that like someone else said, melting and battered bishops, and some other stuff, BUT another idea is to flip sprites, distort sprites, and the closer you are to the void, the more deteriorated the place starts to look, where all the pits reveal that black-n-red texture of what is interpreted as the void, different rock textures are in the wrong places, and the boss door to delirium would have a special appearance with cracks around the door that show the black-n-red void texture. I thought this was a really cool idea for it, so, what do you guys think? Credits to exotic1405 for the base idea. I came up with the deteriorated-towards-delirium and distorted sprites.