I wished I could just make everything go away! A picture of a dark void surfaced in my mind and in it I saw everything and nothing, I should be a philosopher or something... stream of consciousness? What's that? Sounds deep...
@@AL2009man and at least _that_ part is just an out-of-context part of a musing of how much the speaker doesn't need their immortality anymore; this is just padding.
YIIK is like some kind of Lovecraftian object where your lose parts of your brain trying to understand it and it's probably not worth the cost of your mind in the end.
you aren't wrong. and even after you think you've finished, when you think you can finally put it out of your mind for good, it all comes crashing back in waves and you wake up in the dead of night in a cold sweat. "what did he mean by this?" "what was the point?" the questions will never stop plaguing you.
There you are, at the ending of your indie RPG, and all of the sudden, you’re Alex. You didn’t ask for this. You didn’t choose this. Yet there it is. And it’s treated no different from being a decent person.
The most funny thing about this is that unlike the thing its referencing it makes actual sense here because the games description certainly doesn't prepare buyers for what is about to happen to them.
@@asra-5180 Not at all like Undertale, outside of Vella's Banish minigame. Everything else is either a Paper Mario minigame (or came from another Mario game: Bass Drop is Super Mario 2's way of attacking), or the Shadow Hearts battle spinner. Or straight up Pong. I have no idea where Claudio's move where he slices for nearly 17 seconds straight comes from. Maybe they made that up entirely on their own, which would be really sad and telling in how little they understand of what makes a game feel fun and rewarding.
Normal talk: "I was thirsty, so I went to the fridge and grabbed a glass of milk." YIIKSpeak: "My body once again tried to assert dominance over my mind by communicating to me that it was lacking something and couldn't function in top shape until I addressed that lack. Of course. Parched throat and dry lips, my own fallible flesh was trying to tell me I needed to hydrate. I made my way confidently to the kitchen. I didn't really care to try not to make any noise. There wasn't anyone worth being careful not to disturb nearby after all, but even if they were, they would owe me at least enough respect not to make a fuss for merely not measuring my footsteps around them. I yanked the fridge door open, the slightly sagging sides of the milk carton signaling to me that it was, in fact, half empty [...]"
"The game acts like this is our first tool, but we've already met Alex" "You want to be a book, but you're just showing a total lack of spine" The writing quality Yiik wishes it had
I like that Michael was so doomed as a character conceptually that they had to rebirth him into some kind of singularity-achieving shirtless ascetic just to give him something to do
@@Arkangel630 I made by character who sucks and admitted it’s a representation of another character who also sucks!! Take that gamer haters my game is art!!!
@@dracorex426 That might be the third meaning, I think. 1. Alex is a tool (insult) 2. Alex is a tool (an actual tool to do things in game) 3. Alex is a tool (the panda is a tool, and Alex is the panda) Alex is a tool who acts like a tool and who also happens to be a tool
You know that old saying "The only winning move is not to play?" YIIK goes further, the only way to win is to never even consider the game or spare it any thought. If you engage with YIIK as a concept, YIIK wins, and you lose. We are all losers, to a one. YIIK will forever have the last laugh merely by existing in helpless mindscapes.
For the "it brands us as the true alex" during the Ending A, if you name yourself Alex at the start of the game, your character will be called "True Alex"
Watching this has been a process of going "I should force [pretentious friend] to play this to see if he justifies it's bullshit" and then eventually realizing that I'm [pretentious friend] to half the people I know
I love how the clever writing of this video contrasts with the self-indulgent, drawn out and outright terrible writing of the game. "Alex, wanker that he is, is already a master of debating with himself" - stuff like this is why I'm subscribed.
The "90's" setting feels forced. Their definition of late 90's is just based on 2010's hipsters and geeks interpretation of 90's. You can literally rewrite the setting to be in 2010's and all of the characters will perfectly belong in there.
It actually caught me off guard when I found out YIIK is supposed to take place in the 90s since Alex's appearance and the subtitle "A Post-Modern RPG" just scream modern day.
I can’t get over the fact a party member’s suicide caused by a choice literally made by the player is just hand waved away in a simple phone-call, especially when said character’s character arc is him coming to terms with his sister’s suicide. What in the actual fuck is this game
If you believe one of Snake's interpretations, that was intentionally done - albeit poorly - as a jab at the player and how they don't actually care about any of the characters in the game's world.
@@MonteScarf That's YIIK's fault for making the characters unlikeable. I can actually care about characters that are well written in games. Like Sebille in Divinity OS 2. I cared about her story, because she was well written.
I’m not saying suicide isn’t impactful in real life, it very much is and no one should do it. Rory’s suicide shouldn’t be something Alex can control, because it honestly takes away from the story instead of not giving the player any choice at all. If the game decides to let Alex save Rory, then that shows how Alex is changing for the better, and lets the writers take advantage. If the game decides to let Rory commit, then it can show how Alex and co need to change for the better, and can have them all look out for each other more. But by making it a choice, the game has to write around that, meaning it’s story beats can’t revolve around Rory being there/not being there, because it can’t assume which path you’ve gone down. Even then, considering how Alex loses all of his friends in the comet boss, then what’s even the significance of the choice, from a gameplay perspective? Shinji’s death in P3 hurts a lot, because not only is it tragic, but you lost a party member and can never get him back, and it helps the player feel that pain of losing him as well. But with Rory, you’re gonna lose him either way, which means replays of the game (imagine!!) won’t feel unique if you choose both choices.
So . . . . what you're saying is that by watching this video, I can deny being Alex by never playing the game. I must thank you for bearing the sin of being Alex in my stead. Also nice vid.
@@Tehsnakerer Not the worst thing in the world. I do kind of like Vella; could’ve been a great character and constantly seems like she’s still trying to be.
You know, years ago, Yahtzee Croshaw from Zero Punctuation talked about a game idea he had where you played as an entity called “The Protagonist” that was so desperate to be important and save the world that it kept meddling in affairs that were none of its business and always caused more problems than it solved. For example, it joins a rebel militia fighting against an oppressive regime, only it becomes evident that the regime isn’t that fascistic at all and the militia are more akin to violent domestic terrorists than heroes with a righteous cause. YIIK reminds me a lot of that idea, taking the expectations a player has for the role of the protagonist and twisting it to have some weird message about self-importance or something. Difference is, Yahtzee says he scrapped the idea because at the end of the day, the message would be “fuck you for wanting to play a game,” and that’s hardly a recommendable way to treat your audience.
Sorry to necro, but that's sort of what Far Cry 3 did, yes? Tell a story of Jason being a badass, killing the pirates, only to acknowledge that him doing so makes his friends scared of him, and how in the end, he isn't really sure if he'd be able to heal from how fucked up the event in the game made him.
@@HolyApplebutter no, its not even close: Jason didnt volunteer to a fighter, it was upon him by circumstances, so he became a badass out of necessity to survive & save his friends, not to feed his own ego. Plus the pirates were actually awful, so yea, those are not the same thing at all. If anything farcry3 is exactly the type of plotline that Yathzee want to subvert with that idea.
Someone gifted me this game on steam with the comment “this is like if the most obnoxious person you know tried to make undertale. Have a good time!” I did not.
No? This story needs a protagonist that speaks. Alot of stories need a main character that can talk. Silent protagonists are harder to fuck up but that's about it.
I find it funny that the dev's main gripe with this game is the fact he misunderstood videogames as art. According to would-be non-pretentious modern artists, art is meant to evoke emotions and a reaction out of people, more than meaning something in and of itself, but rather being a product of its time and its author's experiences. YIIK has been a terrible game to everyone who has played and/or covered it, but just by looking at the amount of time spent on it by pretty much anyone, you'd be under the impression that most people really did get a reaction out of it, even more tellingly the fact it got people interested in its plot and world way more than anyone would expect from such a product. So basically the main dev cannot even be right on accident about his game being meaningful, since he doesn't realize that he inadvertently created actual modern art, as shitty as it is. It's so bizarre, man.
Thank you for putting it into words I have been trying to get what I have been thinking of after learning about this game and guy it's that he successfully did what he wanted but seeing that it wasn't how he wanted it to be seen ,that plus him not realizing that he was going deeper into grief by taking it out on his work didn't help him so ya thanks for helping me
Art is not that, art is short for artifice. It is something that is created. The greater the skill required to create it, the higher it is as a form of art.
@@czarkusa2018 You got it the other way around, chief. "Artifice" is actually derived from "ars" and "facere" both Latin words meaning "art" and "make" or "create" whereas the word "art" is from... you guessed it: the Latin "ars" so actually it's "artifice" that is derived from "art." Google is at your fingertips, might wanna check out your theories before saying weird stuff like that.
What a horrendously elitist and undemocratic way to think about a concept intrinsic to practically *all* human beings. Why should art be one big pissing contest? You're allowed to look at it any way you want, but you're reducing art to a talent show with that mentality. And your etymology is incorrect.
1:23:30 you know... that could have actually been a funny joke. Not the peak of comedy, but to a dark, irreverent sense of humor like mine, Claudios line could have been genuinely funny. All he had to do was stop at the line "No, I cannot pick a lock... well, at least not a car lock." There. End dialogue. Next character. Light exhale from nostrils. But NOPE! He starts going over his backstory in painstaking detail and as a result stomps any grain of humor or entertainment that might have been there into the fucking dirt, until I want to fucking strangle him just like every other character In the game.
Like Snake said in the video, one word can be the difference between a good and a bad joke, and YIIK proves time and time again that if it can do something in one line of text, it will do it in dozens
The joke could still work as is with a better punchline. Have Claudio go through a list of locks he can pick, ending with him saying that, as a black man, no he cant pick a car door. Beat. "But Chandra can." Immediately cut to Chandra standing next to the open door.
@@Reoko77 i feel like avgn would end a yiik review in the same vein as the second jekkyl and hyde review, pretending to understand the game’s alleged deep metanarrative themes before saying, “or, the game’s just full of shit.” cue endcard.
24:27: “Alex, wanker that he is, is already a master of debating with himself. He hardly needs a toy to do it more.” Instant subscribe for how clever & well-written that was
So, the 'Player' Alex in the fake TH-cam ending is called Link. Clearly a Zelda reference, but they were probably going deeper since Nintendo has said that Link is meant to be renamed because he's the 'link' between the game and the player. But since this is an ending nobody can actually get, that's another layer of the devs rubbing in the unobtainability.
As I recall the original reason his name was Link was because in one of the earlier versions of the first Zelda it was this sci fi like game where the main character went between the past and future or something similar, so he's called Link because he's a physical Link between these two points in time.
@@TheRatMan Huh, so Ocarina of Time fulfilled that original concept. Also, Breath of the Wild got rid of naming Link, though the name still fits with concept of him beinf part of a legacy if heroes.
Did anybody else get kinda upset that Alex, Michael, and Rory are all wearing shirts of roughly the same color and pattern? They look like visual mud when all together in a scene.
It doesn't help that they're all so bland that they look like they'd be NPCs in other games, especially Michael. He's a design that a dev would copy and paste six or seven times across a map, possibly in different colors.
I'm not even an hour in and the "hateable but lovable protagonist" already comes off as the guy who pays no attention during class and then has the audacity to be offended by having to do work.
You know the premise about internet sleuths piecing stuff together? There's already a novel, a best seller by cyberpunk godfather William Gibson, Pattern Recognition. The main character is obsessed with a series of viral short films that no one can identify but have slight connections, creating a boom of people trying to form a story, pin point the origin, dox the author, apply film theory, hunt copycats and so on. Those videos slowly get more and more relevance, from just being what made her met some cool dude she needs a favor from to an international corporate conspiracy. Solid almost scifi thriller.
@Piss Harrison It's a solid novel, not the best Gibson has ever done but by far better than the rest of the blue ant saga (the first novel in every series he does is that way)
@@onigames7309 I'd recommend finishing that trilogy. Just like each book after the first gets worse until you finish the saga out of inertia, a similar thing happens to each trilogy. Gibson is glorious at mixing a bunch of concepts into interesting characters and connecting them in a bizarre but eventually logical plot, but the plots themselves are pretty disapointing. I think his short stories are his best work. (personal opinions, obviously, I don't want to offend the 4 Gibson stans that still exist)
I’ve seen this sort of premise in a Visual Novel done a hundred times better than YIIK. Chaos;Child. The whole premise is about a series of bizarre serial killings, your protagonist is kind of an asshole at the start, really self centred and anti-social. He believes himself to be higher and more intelligent due to him following these conspiracy forums, that he’s on the “right side” of the maze of information online. As he personally investigated the killings with his friends as a conspiracy research group, they get more and more entangled with it. It gets supernatural and that directly links the characters to it. Over time the protagonist actually grows in multiple ways. He starts seeing more and more how little the forums he frequented knew now that he actually knew everything about the case, starts to view his old way of thinking as wrong, actually opens up socially a bit (still awkwardly as the inexperienced introvert he is but he legit puts in effort), and in the end he has to accept some harsh truths about his whole life and subconscious. This feels like it accomplished everything YIIK was trying and more and just BETTER.
Yiikes (how I like to pronounce the games' title) is an interesting phenomenon. On the one hand, you have an overambitious, halfbaked game with aspirations to be profound (while failing to do so and in the end contradicting itself), whose developers got pissy when people pointed out these obvious flaws and the lukewarm reviews started coming in. On the other hand, Yiikes did make a pretty big splash in the indie game scene and kicked off a lot of interesting conversations about games, postmodernism, narrative etc. , thus actually making a valuable contribution to the world of video games. So in a way ... the devs succeded? They made an impactful 'artsy' game that made people think - even if that impact largely revolved around its' flaws. I guess what I am trying to say is this: Even when art is bad , it can still be art.
The entire point of Postmodernism, at least as my biased (as in against it) views is entirely meant to be purposefully shite because "Anything can be art because everything is meaningless" or something along those lines
@@gidofter_lukge I fully Agree, I never want to play this game, my point is, if you where reading, is that some things *shouldn't* meet their potential
The wordplay in this video is underrated. "You don't need text for sub-text; subbing sub-text for text takes a toll on texture and substance" floored me. I had to pause for a minute to recover.
I believe you stated in a "Beyond two souls" stream that no matter how bad a game might be, you still want to meet it on its own terms and give it a solid shot, and that mindset is what allows you to dissect the media in this spectacular way. You could have ripped this game apart from its bones and detailed the tedium that came from it and I am sure most of us would have just laughed along. But you dug deeper, you tried to give this game the fairest shot I have ever seen. None to make the game seem better than it is or find meaning where there is not, but to disprove Yiik the most. That you treat the game, the medium and your audience with a level of respect and care.
That earnestness is what drew me in to this channel in the first place. I happened upon it because I wanted to find out what the deal was with Hunt Down the Freeman. And in that review (as in this one), Snake's earnest enthusiasm for storytelling, gameplay, and the player experience, and his precise, considered, and detailed criticism really won me over. Snake's reviews make me think more deeply about storytelling, and make me want to engage in a deeper way with the games I play. A good reminder of the importance of thinking about character motivation and plot cohesiveness.
I think I understand now why Yiik offends me so much. It's not the writing, the characters, the music - it's that the creator clearly doesn't respect his audience. He spoonfeeds every explanation, and when people point stuff out he just goes "they're stupid, they don't get it". He thinks he can make better songs than what people enjoy, better gameplay than what people enjoy, better writing than what "gamers" enjoy. He may have not intended Alex to be his self-insert, but he very much mirrors himself.
And the delicious irony that ties it all up is that this studio twice over got caught plagiarising pieces of media people enjoy. So I guess the joke's on him.
This game seems to simply be a sack of shit and bile. I feel disgust at having spent a single moment of my life contemplating this cancer of a game. I don't care how insensitive the creator feels that comment is, his petty rage is more beautiful than any piece of art he's produced.
>He may have not intended Alex to be his self-insert, but he very much mirrors himself. Personally, I assume that he backpedaled on that after seeing the public's reaction. He'd say it was him all along if people liked Alex.
This was a very good video. After watching Running Shine's incredible video I didn't think I had it in me to watch another hours long YIIK video but seeing the spoiler warning for Barkley Shut Up and Jam Gaiden made me stay and it was worth it.
@@100billionsubscriberswithn4 He also makes fantastic points related to game development that indicate a real background in the industry, as well as providing constructive criticism towards Ackk. The jokes are subjective, but that doesn't change the good content besides.
2:14:19 It was just on the tip of my tongue. "A misguided attempt at integrating a player/protagonist meta-narrative headed by someone(s) with delusions of grandeur? I've seen this all before." Then you hit me with it. The horror, the horror... WELCOME IN OMIKRON
Never thought I would say this, but it's truly tragic that the one *GENUINE* link the game has to the mother series... Is that both this guy and the main guy behind Mother 3, created *FAR* darker and more depressing games, topped off with bleak, almost malicious endings... because *they lossed a family member during development.* The "More Human" elements in both game, feel more like a loss of faith in humanity. That a happy ending is *truly impossible* for the characters, after so much death and suffering. Both final bosses are also truly impossible to ever truly "win" against. That's extremely tragic. It's human to make such changes in grief, but it makes me feel sad, that it's almost a permanet reminder to how deep down in grief they were, to the point their work was significantly coloured by it.
I disagree with the take that MOTHER 3's ending is bleak, since IIRC the final line of dialogues you see after the THE END text appears and you start moving it around indicate that the world was indeed remade after the events of the cutscene and that the people lived through it. Bittersweet yes, especially as Claud died, and it leaves open the question of how they're going to move on, but the ending is not "malicious" by any means and ends on a relatively positive note for what transpired immediately before. I agree with your take as far as YIIK goes however. That ending definitely felt more like the work of someone retreating into grief rather than moving past it, in spite of the author's insistence that he only removed "cynical" aspects of the plot.
@@LonelySpaceDetective That makes sense. Though the fact that the screen is pitch black, without any music during the chat with the other characters in the Mother 3 ending, makes it feel like a lie to me. Like someone telling you "Everything will be OK", when things are obviously awful.
@@KittyKatty999 I'm personally inclined to read the scene in a positive "at face value" light, since right after that final line you get the main theme swelling as the game's logo appears; now in pure natural form with no mechanical features. To me that feels like it's making it clear that the world is now healing after Porky's actions, and that we're supposed to leave off the game with the feeling that something good *has* happened. I concede that it's not impossible to interpret it the way you have, but I'd be more convinced if the logo appearance was either more muted (especially if it was the same partially mechanized one from the title screen) or just didn't happen.
@@KittyKatty999 Oh, you're welcome. I apologize if I came off as heated or condescending, I have a passion for stories where the cast and/or setting goes through hard times but there's still a light at the end of the tunnel (whether that light is a conventional happy ending or something more like what MOTHER 3 did), and to me MOTHER 3 is one of the definitive examples of that in gaming, so it kiiiiinda bugs me to see people interpret the ending as meaning everyone died.
With the backstory of this game's development and the issues surrounding the game that came before it, it puts the whole thing into a wider perspective that I genuinely don't think I've ever seen before in a video game. YIIK now comes across to me as a genuine attempt at an entertaining product that, somewhere along the way, was transformed by real-life circumstance into a bitter, self-loathing and depressing reflection of two people in a very dark place mentally, to the point where I wonder if all the bitterness directed at the audience is in some way a means of coping. This especially struck me with the remarks by Andrew Allanson that the original ending was "cynical", because I don't think he means "cynical" like it was depressing. I think he meant it in that the ending was somehow disingenuous, that making a happy ending for YIIK was dishonest. That it would have been cynical to leave it in because it didn't reflect what they felt about the final product, perhaps even about happiness on the whole. And the thing is, I don't hold any of this against them. If anything, for the first time in my life, I've come away from this summary and analysis genuinely worried for two people in a deeply troubled place that I have never met and barely knew before this.
That's a truly human, positive expression of sympathy and I just thought you should have some acknowledgement of that. The world could use more people who attempt to sympathize with others.
Yeah, I recall seeing a breakdown of Yiik one or two years ago and wanted to listen to a review on a whim and that information was never covered. That does paint the game in a better light it's still horrible and clearly loathes/disrespects the player but now I can view it as a way of venting their emotions seeing how they tried to give it a good ending and technically did if it no longer rings true to their new vision making up a new ending that fits how they felt is 'better' for the game rather than them intentionally being malicious and hateful. I hope they were able to overcome such pessimism though it's a rather unhealthy outlook on life.
Which is cool and all, but they still took people's money for it. Which I think is shitty. Art as a coping technique or way of healing is fine. Monetizing it, I'm less okay with.
It’s hard to hear the whole story and come away with anything other than a sense of pity for the people who seemingly *actively* sacrificed the product of their blood, sweat and very evident tears to a sinkhole of grief and malice that formed after a horrific tragedy, a common impulse to satiate the well-spring of sadness that only ever makes the pain worse and in YIIK’s case only makes others grow to resent you. And that’s the end, which fucking blows
That comparison to Kojima was pretty apt, since MGS2 basically did what this game was trying to do while succeeding. The events of the story are a pale imitation of the game that came before, with a protagonist who is completely disconnected from what's actually going on. Raiden is imitating Snake without sparing a second's thought to why he did what he did, or what it meant, and he was trained by video games and not actual experience. He is the audience who idolizes a badass action hero who beats up the bad guys and saves the day, while ignoring the parts where Snake was used for political gain, was forced to execute people he respected, and gave up on everything he thought he believed in because it was all a lie. Did you really understand what Metal Gear Solid was about? It's actually not that subtle! do you even care? That's how you antagonize the audience.
I really like this interpretation. Kojima was so insistent we all fully appreciate the themes of Metal Gear that he made an entire trilogy hammering them into our heads from different angles.
But recall that we learn raiden was NOT trained on video games, he was actually a child soldier in Africa with maybe more combat experience than anyone else in that room. We are given raiden (who's name is jack, as we 'jack in' to his perspective) and told he's an empty vessel for us to occupy, his first mission, no expectations on his character or actions. By the end of the game, he's revealed to be his own character, and he is symbolically freed of our control as he casts off dog tags with our info on them, which we entered mindlessly at the start of the tanker chapter many hours earlier.
@@raccoononymous I was a little as well, as it was antithetical to the meaning driven home in the 2nd game. Don't know if that was just Kojima doing the MGS4 thing of taking something from MGS1 or 2 and smashing it together with something from MGS3. There's so many incongruities and plotholes in 4 it's difficult to determine where it stands. MGS2s entire purpose was to disorient and subvert the expectations of players. From the bait and switch advertising showing only snake, the short tanker chapter being the perfect sequel to MGS1 while the rest of the game turns it on it's head. Snake uses cheat codes in the arsenal gear firefight which is why he can throw you ammo (the bandana from MGS1). Ray may be an anti-metal gear metal gear, but that's a good way to describe the whole game too.
@@SirBlackReeds You make a good point but you don't have to be the only writer for a story to have a major impact. It proves that other people could have had more influence on the story, but it doesn't really prove that Kojumbo contributed significantly less than a lot of people claim.
No joke, this game sounds awful, but Rory is probably my favorite character simply because of the fact that his combat style foreshadows(?) his suicidal feelings, him taking damage for you isn’t just him attempting to be useful, it’s him attempting to kill himself in the moment, I honestly love games where RPG’s have a character’s playstyle foreshadows a problem they have or a dark thought that manifest in the person. Yes, I’m probably grasping at invisible thread, this game sounds awful and I’d rather peel my finger and toenails off slowly then play this hot mess, but seeing the way Rory acts and feels, and his combat style, makes me click those invisible threads by poorly tying them up...okay maybe I don’t love that aspect because I don’t see it often, but that’s just something I like, something that when you look back after finishing the game, you notice things that you’d never figured out earlier unless you were really paying attention.
@@ctrouble2309 Also his wardrobe gives it away. Love how the choices to convince him to not kill himself or just keep him depressed changes nothing in the plot.
I’m not saying suicide isn’t impactful in real life, it very much is and no one should do it. Rory’s suicide shouldn’t be something Alex can control, because it honestly takes away from the story instead of not giving the player any choice at all. If the game decides to let Alex save Rory, then that shows how Alex is changing for the better, and lets the writers take advantage. If the game decides to let Rory commit, then it can show how Alex and co need to change for the better, and can have them all look out for each other more. But by making it a choice, the game has to write around that, meaning it’s story beats can’t revolve around Rory being there/not being there, because it can’t assume which path you’ve gone down. Even then, considering how Alex loses all of his friends in the comet boss, then what’s even the significance of the choice, from a gameplay perspective? Shinji’s death in P3 hurts a lot, because not only is it tragic, but you lost a party member and can never get him back, and it helps the player feel that pain of losing him as well. But with Rory, you’re gonna lose him either way, which means replays of the game (imagine!!) won’t feel unique if you choose both choices.
@@mreverything7056 i mean the game could theoretically make it a choice and do it well, but it would need a... lot of changes, likely involving making two entirely different paths (like undertale's genocide route) and the paths could be as simple as "this conversation goes slightly differently" or as heavy as "Alex is becoming a monster and the ending reflects that" although theres also the idea of "its not your fault"/"dont worry about if you could've changed things" when someone else commits suicide, so it might be kinda weird to have the character be able to change things ...but its also not entirely true, and theres room for a game to explore the issue heavily but this is yiik lmao thats not happening
YIIK is like a cursed object, cause anyone who tries to understand it goes at least a little crazy. This is the first time I've heard about that cut content, and that genuine ending almost makes me upset at how the game turned out. I'm glad someone else agrees that the dev could probably do good work given another chance Your ability to make hours of my day disappear is also truly commendable. Awesome work my guy
The two interpretations don't seem at all contradictory. Interpretation 1) The message is "fuck you", and is intentionally designed to be aggravating and gaslighting. Interpretation 2) The story thinks of all audiences as selfish, self-centered, narcissistic vampires, and reflects that via endings that are unachievable or purposefully unsatisfying. That sounds a lot like a "fuck you". I'll believe that Alex is meant as an audience surrogate rather than an author avatar, but he still reads like an author-insert, which... taken together, and with the character himself, suggests that the author is extremely self-centered. The game's infatuation with its own failed predecessor, and the author's reaction to the poor reception being to denigrate the very medium he chose to work in, furthers this interpretation. I'd posit the author is self-centered that to the point of lacking theory of mind. He cannot imagine other people or perspectives other than his own, and so cannot see why something that makes sense to him may not to other people, or places where it may be misinterpreted, or why projecting the author's own experiences and flaws onto the audience may fall flat. And in the absence of recognizing that, the author gets angry when people don't respond right, lashes out at the audience for their impudence, and then gets angrier when people still don't "learn their lesson". It would explain how and why a real-life tragedy that deeply affected the author could get stuffed into the game without any consideration for how it affects anyone but the main character, or how that decision would reflect on the work. It would explain how so many inspirations could all be presented in such an off-kilter manner. It would explain the haphazard humor, and the constant lapses in logic, the characterization brought up and immediately dropped, and the sense of spite. It probably explains more as well. I don't know what mixture of spite and grief and ambition and narcissism and bad luck went into making YIIK, but I am sure all played a role. I suppose if I had any words for Andrew it would be: get help. Not everyone is out to get you, but if you want people to hear what you have to say, you have to meet them halfway. Look at your own experiences, recognize that they are not everyone's, figure out why those experiences are meaningful, and how to share that meaning to someone else. You can have fantasy, but establish it. You can have self-indulgence, but make sure it has meaning. Every element you have in a story, consider how a person will interpret and experience it. You should probably take a break from working, until you have a handle on your grief and anger. If you can do that, you could probably create something beautiful. I am not sure you have that capacity in you, but I would be delighted to be proven wrong.
I agree. I don’t think Alex was intended as a self insert, but I think he is one AND is an audience surrogate. He’s meant to represent the audience, but also intrinsically carries the flaws and mindset of his author, which basically means that Alex is merely a projection. The author’s flaws are assumed to be the same ones everyone has, so Alex is meant to be a stand in for both the creator and the player. This fails because Alex isn’t really relatable in the least. The projection doesn’t work because Alex is far too defined and has interests and flaws so specific that perhaps only a subset of people would relate to. Not to mention that Alex is written to be so obnoxious that no one WANTS to look deeper into his character because his annoying behavior pushes the player’s interest away.
1:57:30 I burst out laughing when i saw "Japanese localization staff" in credit roll poor sods had to translate all those nonsenses into Japanese and i can't stop laughing how unfortunate that is i bet its even more uncomprehensive than the original lmao
"YIIK is so knotted-up, so poorly told, so confusing, that when I think I see something clever or thoughtful, I'm not inclined to be happy that the story is doing something. I panic." is a pretty good summary of YIIK. But it's a little long so "ENDING SPOILERS FOR SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2006" is a decent sum-up too.
This is the most in-depth video I’ve seen on this game. I like that the video takes the time to explore several interpretations for the game’s story. Only Andrew himself knows what the game is really about, and sadly, he hasn’t discussed it much. But it lets the audience have some fun trying and figure things out for themselves and I think your “Alex is Audience” theory is at least within the margins. The game is definitely trying to be some kind of meta narrative about the player. To me, it shows that people do find something interesting in this game that’s worth checking out. Andrew can at least be happy knowing he’s made something people are invested in, for one reason or another. YIIK is a game that I think deserves a decent amount of respect for what it tries to do, even if it stumbles a lot of the time. I’ll definitely remember YIIK for way longer than I’ll remember the next generic metroidvania or roguelike. People were very harsh on it for what I think are misconceptions and anger towards Andrew himself because of how he acted in his interview, instead of giving the game a fair shake and seeing how well it accomplished its goals. I think their mom dying definitely messed them up. When something big like that happens in life, you’re not going to be the same person afterwards. Whatever they made prior for the game obviously just didn’t represent who they were anymore. I think that patch will help them heal a bit from the bad reception and definitely make their fans happy which will be a big morale boost for them. I really am rooting for the Allansons and want to see them use what they’ve learned from Two Brothers and YIIK to make something great. I think they can do it! Also that bug where you can carry abilities into dialogue and cutscenes is awesome, I hope they don't patch it out.
i won't lie when i say that hearing what happened to their mom kind of made me reevaluate what the intentions are with this game and everything that surrounded it shortly after it's release (the interview and the social media shitstorm). at first i saw the devs as some hipsters who were full of themselves, and desperately in need of a another editor to clean up all the filler that's in the dialog. and maybe a few more playtesters to tweak the battle system. then after watching your review i kind of began to appreciate the art direction a little bit more. the colors in frankton are poppin, and the more fall like atmosphere in windtown is every moody. when the game becomes way out there with it's visuals is when the game is at it's strongest. and after watching this review, and when hearing what happened to their mom and the harsh treatment they got on twitter made me understand their outburst in the interview. what happened to their mom hit way too close for home for me and honestly i dont blame them for being really irritated after all the blow back their game got (for all the right and wrong reasons). the fact they changed the game because of all the changes that happened in their lives, deserves a little bit of credit, at least in my eyes. still at the end of the day, it's not a good game in terms of story and dialog, but i hope the devs learn from the mistakes of yiik and hopefully the update fix it's issues. and heres hoping that the devs move on to better things. ill be sure to keep on the look out.
As a pretentious lit nerd myself, the prose style *alone* nearly made me throw my full mug of coffee across the room. Also I don't believe the Murakami thing was plagiarism... but if your idea of allusion is "copying a random paragraph of a literary novel out of context for a cheap badge of intellectual status" you will instantly elicit teeth-grinding levels of dislike from me. I do like the idea of having a shop for each character's upgrades and items though. In a better game with a more fleshed out setting, it could be a really cool bit of worldbuilding.
The shops for each of the characters should have all been in the same mall, less travel time between them, and potintail for fun sides characters or events.
@@helloill672 Surprisingly, the gardening game for Mii Plaza did the concept better. In that game, there are different shops in the mall for different item types. However, rather than having the player travel between shops in real-time, the whole mall is like a menu with the shops acting as sub-menus. One of the shops also offers the game's sidequests on top of being a shop.
Man the flavor you've put into this script is really on another level. 17 minutes in and multiple times I've gone back to hear something again. Is there any better flex than criticising poor writing with significantly better writing?
I find it amusing that despite Sammi and Vella obviously being the targets of Andrew's affection, whoever drew the character portraits clearly has more of a thing for Alex's mom
I kind of hate the creator of _YIIK_ on principle. Games are both toys *and* art, and being the former doesn't somehow diminish its status as the latter. It's a necessary concession when games can ask for dozens, sometimes hundreds of hours to fully experience: an artist is no more entitled to an audience for their art as anyone else would be to have artists make works of art for them for free, and while audiences can have a lot of benefit of the doubt to give, if you end up taking the piss it's going to annoy people. _YIIK_ makes it clear from its title that it's supposed to be weird and inaccessible just from calling itself 'A Postmodern RPG', so players are going to go in assuming it has something to say. Calling them out for then expecting the game to say something and suggesting that doing so is self-centered and manipulative is essentially asking people to pay $20 so they can be insulted in a verbose fashion for 20 hours. _Undertale_ could call the player a monster for a Genocide run because the player has to both choose to start down that path and then choose to stay on it in spite of the game trying VERY hard to get you to turn away. This all served to reinforce the more positive message of the pacifist ending, because you didn't HAVE to do things the harder way. _Spec Ops: The Line_ could do it because the genre it was in has largely been stereotyped as being little more than a Western Power Fantasy, and a lot of people probably bought it thinking that's what it was. I have some issues with it painting escapism as an inherently bad thing - escapism is a thing everyone needs to help deal with life from time to time - but it has a message that at least has value. _YIIK_ is essentially attacking its audience for treating Art like Art. After it essentially asked the audience to treat *it* like Art, and then forcing them to rely on the context of it being art to get any enjoyment from it by deliberately wasting time and generally being slow and dull.
"so players are going to go in assuming it has something to say." Isn't the whole point of Postmodernism the tear-down of pretensions of meaning, exposing it with irreverence as completely arbitrary? I'm not sure I agree with tehsnakerer that it isn't a Postmodernist work - the absurd surrealist Dadaist radical contempt for its audience is pretty much what I would expect from an adherent to this movement (although I'm free to being persuaded, since I'm not too well-read in this regard).
@@roadent217 That's the catch-22 of Post-modernism. If the message is that there is no message, and that messages are illusory, that ethos _becomes_ the message. The artist made the work for a reason, even if that reason was to spite people attempting to figure out why they made it. If you try to banish all meta-narratives, you wind up in a meta-narrative anyway. That's part of why the movement doesn't have much traction anymore.
@Mikhail G Part of it is that it seems to be a train wreck - I'll be the first to admit I'm a lot more interested in hearing people dissect bad art than good.
@slimeball supreme I feel that 'toy' only seems reductive if you allow for the implied associations to childishness to color your viewpoint. Before mass production was a thing, and children's toys had to be made by hand, a great deal more individualized artistry was involved in their creation. The point I was trying to make is that using the word 'toy' to disparage the medium shows a rather profound lack of awareness - being a toy doesn't make something lesser anymore than being art makes it greater in and of itself.
The worst thing is that on paper YIIK sounds like something I could get behind. An rpg based on conspiracy theories, paranoia, mind bending meta narratives, 4th wall breaking and irreverent humor with a cel shaded art style that also parodies internet subculture and pop culture? Sounds right up my alley, but the end result is just so amazingly awful that it is genuinely fascinating how they managed to fuck up so consistently at every turn.
Honestly that kind shit I can also get behind, especially meta narratives with a veneer of conspiracy, one of my favorite games of all time is one called The Hex, and it's kind of like that.
I sort of agree, but for different reasons. And this video basically IS my different reason: though I haven’t played this myself, I almost want to just to dream of what could, what SHOULD have been. The writing here made several missteps and, well, got derailed by grief, but the core is completely workable. Both of Snake’s Windtown segments sum up this feeling in microcosm, rationalizing how a few tweaks could have made this brilliant, versus the actual product ending up contradictory and/or hostile.
I watched a recent LP done by a friend, co-comentated by Gamedawg, and they showed off the Combat Update, which was complete up through the end of Rory's dungeon but could be played through the entire game, and there are four big changes so far. 1. Enemies have rebalanced stats, they have less health, more damage, making random encounters shorter, and death an actual possibility. 2. The original attack minigames for every character have been turned into "Beatdown", a universal, 2 SP attack that uses their respective original attacks for bonus damage, and their new attacks are all the same timing minigame, with a different visual flair for each character (Alex has a spinning Record, hit the Yellow section once, Micheal has a shrinking camera focus, get it in the perfect size, Vella has a keyboard and a hand moving from left to right, time its stop with the highlighted zone). 3. Rory went from F- tier as a party member, to S+, because enemies hit harder, his ability to tank hits is ACTUALLY helpful, even when you have unchanged Chondra spamming share items every round, his protect command, instead of covering a single party member, now covers the entire team for two turns, letting him throw items/use his other skills without missing a turn of protection, and finally, every time Rory intercepts an attack, he damages the enemy in retaliation, it won't kill the enemy, but it can cause serious damage, and it adds up over time. He is, without a doubt, the best party member after the combat update. 4. Elements, they were clearly the most recent change, since most enemies don't have them, most attacks don't have them, and they aren't explained anywhere in the game yet. They do what you expect them to, some attacks hit harder/weaker based on elemental comparison. I remember that there was Fire, Water, Earth, Sound and Joker. Joker hit strong on every element, and was tied to Chondra's Flaming Hola-hoop (Her ultimate weapon from the Friendship events).
That last 30 minutes felt like an extra 2 hours tagged onto the video. It really contextualized a lot of my own thoughts of this game I couldnt put into words. What a bitter disaster this game was.
Actually, part of the "third ending" IS accessible in the game! There's a way to glitch out of bounds during the calendar section and get inside. ...Unfortunately, the game softlocks before you can reach the end of the Essentia tutorial section, but still. I can send a link to a video demonstrating it, if you'd like. ...And it's not a dev account, either; it's a let's play that discovered the area totally accidentally.
I'm surprised you can see that much of it in-game, frankly. Wonder if that's just a leftover from the "TH-cam ending" build, or if there was some actual plan to integrate the third ending into the publically available game.
@@LonelySpaceDetective Wouldn't it be horrible if the YIIK Dev said "I will patch that good ending into the game if you give me positive reviews on Steam"?
it's been years and i'm still awestruck that in the cut ending Alex, of all fucking people, says "enough talking" and there's no needless 4 minute monologue, and just starts using 2 lines per textbox. Just that being in the game would give SO MANY PEOPLE catharsis and possibly making them forgive some aspects
It honestly feels awful saying this, but it really needs to be said: Given everything that happened with the change in the original ending, the existence of the different ending with all of the "They wouldn't let me make a happy ending", and the spite they hold about the last game... I really get the feeling that the death of their mother made the developers straight up snap and become incredibly bitter towards the world, their work, and their players. Given that they turned around and said that they "wanted to remove the cynicism from the original ending", while turning around making the new ending so utterly bleak and bitter compared to the original, makes me wonder if their worldview got completely distorted and corrupted. It's honestly tragic to see.
Bitter definitely describes it. That's probably a more charitable reading than I had, which was that the writer was so self absorbed that he felt changing his perfect fuck you ending would be a cynical move for audience sake rather than his true 'vision' then again I think of the creator of this like the guy from the house that jack built in personality.
@@SirBlackReeds Of course they're not. But the lead devs get the final say in the game direction, so they're the primary reason the story beats and tone are the way they are.
I find the ending of Yiik has some interesting parallels to the "Ultimatum" event from marvel comics. Tragedy occurs in the life of the author and as a coping mechanism or a reflection of their mental state they actively sabotage the story.
Leviathan comment warning. So, this is easily my favorite review of YIIK so far, because it's at least willing to try going into some aspects of the game that I think a lot of reviewers just... well, hate the game too much to try. The two really odd-but-important parts of YIIK that always stuck out to me that people don't seem to focus on are 1) The Subtitle, and 2) Andrew wants people to think of YIIK as Art. Post-modernism isn't really just some checklist to satisfy some genre of art creation. It's effectively a means for humanity to continuously question whether the fundamentals or "accepted" accumulated knowledge on a subject is actually the optimal form it should take. It's meant to challenge, and in some cases break, conventional art means to see if the result can be an alternative-or-even-superior option to standardized norms. YIIK absolute *IS* a Post-modern RPG. Everything, every single aspect of the game, is built on that premise. It breaks EVERY rule in the book. Including having the sub-title be more important than the main title. The way characters level up, the combat's (lack of) engagement, one attack breaking the entire game, one character being so pointless he can be missing from the final battle and most players probably won't even notice, blatantly wasting the player's time, the main character being nigh-insufferable for 99% of the game, the music choices, the art style, the Tools you get having overlapping functionality, breaking a somber moment with the Golden Alpaca, flat-out lying to the character and by extension player MULTIPLE times, treating the player like both the main character and a piece of crap, referencing prior unrelated games, unwilling endings and a final boss, the taboo of integrating recent real-world people and their deaths, the list goes on and on and on and on. YIIK breaks them all. The standards are being challenged with a vengeance. I think Andrew wanted to tell the best story he could under those means- to make the best ART he could under those means. And in turn, he wanted people to see those challenges and introspectively review it that way. Ask "Why do games not do it like this?" when they come across something strange in YIIK. And in a lot of ways, I can respect that. I want to like YIIK, because it has passion put into it and has obviously had a lot of work put into its themes. I don't think everything that is actually put in the game in its current state was "intended" to be as post-modern as it is, but I can still respect it. And you know what? I think YIIK does exactly what it set out to do. It does what a lot of post-modern art does. It proved the standard formulas work better. YIIK is a terrible game that is close to greatness, if only it would have just let itself be. It isn't just bad. It is AGGRESSIVELY bad. I have a confession: I think Post-Modernism is a load of crap. We live in the modern age. There's nothing "post" about someone living in modern times, by definition, and certainly not with their art. It can be different, it can be weird, it can challenge conventions, it can even change art going forward, sure. But "Post-Modernism" is looking to one-up humanity's efforts to refine and improve art over its entire life-cycle; to see if everyone was actually just incredibly stupid and we could have been doing it a better way all those centuries that's counter-intuitive to what people currently like. It comes off as pretentious self-importance at worst, and aggressively optimistic at best. YIIK uses its subverting and disregard for normal standards to make the player question "Why don't we do this?" The answer is because the way YIIK does it is bad. On a fundamentally satisfying-for-humanity level. The moment I keep thinking back to is when Alex and co. visit the guy in the mountains that collects records. He's a perfect "Wise Old Man" stand-in for the Hero's Journey, a guide to provide wisdom to a a fledgling protagonist that needs a push in the right direction. YIIK asks two questions here, in my mind at least. 1) Do Wise Old Men actually serve a function in stories, and do we need them? Why keep them? 2) Would people like it if the Wise Old Man isn't really in our party, and just a guy we consult for something the protagonist probably could have resolved on their own? Would it be okay if the guy rambles for ten minutes before getting to our core issue, including giving some of his backstory completely unprompted? Would it be fine if there really wasn't a payoff for the visit? Why not do it like YIIK does? (I'm actually abbreviating about 15 "Why" questions into the "Why not do it like YIIK, but the answer is all the same) The answer to 1 is Yes, Old Wise Men do serve functions. Our characters needed help, and they got it. The problem was incredibly stupid, but the character trope has its uses in modern art. The answer to 2 is Video games don't write like YIIK, because people hate this. It frustrates them. That's post-modernism, and that is YIIK. Originality misused not on advancing or evolving art, but by degrading it to try and find a core everyone could already see. Mini-extra rant, as if this wasn't a novel already. I actually sort of like the ending, what with everything coming to a close with You The Player being the only one left. You, who is another (assumedly much better and more dashing, not that it's hard) Alex really were the center of the entire YIIK story-line all along, both antagonist for starting the game at all and the protagonist that finishes it. It's... kind of mean-spirited, but not entirely without merit. Just don't think about how many Alex/Sammy's are actually running around in game, or you'll start to wonder if literally the entire cast is just different versions of their soul. Plus I just really like the Proto-Alex and Proto-Essentia designs and aesthetics of the last sequence. It's just cool to me. I especially liked the interaction with the 4th TH-cam ending and the one in the game. Like, if you beat the game ten-times or do some trigger methods You could actually "beat" the game. Alex specifically recruits You into his party at the end of the game to continue his fight past what he alone can do. The 4th ending would have been a perfect meta execution of that. You interact with the game past what should normally be feasible for the characters alone to achieve a victory that shouldn't be possible. You see the setup of the game's events, and fix them in ways Alex never could. YOU, the last party member, use the fact that you exist outside the game to finish the fight. I actually like and respect that. ....At least I did, until the data-miners found IT'S NOT IN THE GAME. Maybe it's supposed to be modded in or some other unreasonable expectation. That's past the point of a party member putting their all into finishing a fight. That's them recreating the entire world to be something different. That's just a cruel mistreatment of reliance and respect. An ending that congratulates a player that You, the viewer, can NEVER achieve. The video hit the nail on the head for this one. It's just mean.
I think your analysis is on-point. I think most people hate the game because they misunderstand it. I'm not saying it shouldn't be hated, but 99% of people are hating it for the most surface level of reasons.
I disagree with your points on postmodernism, mainly because old story traditions, cliches, etc, were super fucking yikes-y (black face in old films, anyone?) to most people. I think to uncritically believe that the way something has been done is the best way to do it will inevitably lead to stagnation in anything, especially art. YIIK, is a terrible piece of art from near any angle.
@@thecynicalone7655 You know... you bring up a fair and good point. I was narrowing my judgement and disdain for "post-modernism" based on a perceived arrogance on the part of the creator(s), without considering the sheer importance of its potential benefits. Art, as an extension of society, needs to constantly evolve and grow to better benefit and stimulate people. It's wholly plausible that methodical, routine methods of "growing" art might not actually lead to the best results. It's not necessarily a bad thing for artists to use unconventional or seemingly irrational means to try and explore alternatives. The results will undoubtedly lead to oceans of crap to wade through to find just small handfuls of worthy change, but that alone shouldn't really dissuade artists from trying. We wouldn't have those treasures if they didn't. I still think that the term "post-modernism" itself is a bit misleading, but I think I can appreciate the creed behind it a bit better. So thank you. I'll still like what I like and dislike what I dislike, but maybe it's not so bad if people aim outside those expectations entirely. Even if it produces things like YIIK sometimes.
@@0ctopusComp1etely I think what really separates YIIK from other examples of postmodern art is that YIIK doesn't point out crucial conundrums, at least not in a constructive way. No one plays RPGS and goes "Woah, this old man is expositing on me. Isn't that CRINGE????" or something. We ask questions like "Why can't I have more freedom in the plot", "Why is the main character being treated in this way? Why is it fair for the world to revolve around me" or stuff like "Why is the game wasting my time with these meaningless fetch quests? Aren't I supposed to be doing something more important"? In essence, it's confusing tropes for plot structure and vice versa, and thinking that those elements need to be dissected and made fun of when they, in actuality, help hold up the plot and keep things coherent. It would be like renovating a house and choosing to rip out and carefully examine each and every nail in the entire building instead of looking at potential problem areas and moving to fix them first. I also don't necessarily agree about your summarization of postmodernism. In my experience most postmodern pieces of art take apart and examine tropes in order to see how they function, before re-inserting them back into the medium to support other elements of the collective piece of art. For instance, Undertale takes the "Why can't I have more freedom in the plot" question and builds the entire game around the answer- "Because most people aren't ready to handle the consequences". This answer informs the combat system with the kill/spare mechanic, the story with the relationship and power imbalance between humans and monsters being explored, and the themes of the story and it's commentary on violence. It essentially gives the player power within the narrative to kill whoever they like, and then uses it to further all other elements of the story, including coming back down to providing a compelling narrative. It's good stuff, and there's lots of other examples out there of people making some really excellent postmodern art that challenges our conventions of consuming and creating media, but there's a lot of OTHER examples of people fucking up super hard. I think you're correct in that postmodernism is a bit filled with wankery- writers and artists who are eager to cut their teeth and prove that specific elements don't work because "LOL THIS ISN'T HOW REAL LIFE WORKS??!!?". But that's all art, in a sense. Constantly trying to say something about something else, even if what you're saying is shallow. I believe that postmodernism, by it's high-concept nature, tends to elevate these artists to a point where their fairly innocent-but-poorly-thought-out "criticisms" become much more negatively infused then they perhaps assumed. It is one thing to point out clichés and laugh at them, it is another to point out clichés and proclaim that they do not work as narrative or thematic tools, which is necessary by the structure of being postmodern. YIIK's abrasiveness comes from this deep seated confusion on the importance of tropes versus narrative storytelling, and the eagerness to prove these elements wrong. Considering the creator's reaction to criticism and their history as outlined by this video, I wouldn't be surprised if this anger came from a very dark and personal place. It is difficult to understand why people would love something that frustrates you, especially if you're doing through serious issues.
I have problems with Post-Modernism too; but one thing I feel inclined to address is that we are NOT living in the modern age, that ended back in 1950~ This is the contemporary age or sometimes called... postmodern. So while you are right "there's nothing post about someone living in modern times" that hasn't applied to people in quite a long time, there is nothing "misleading" about the name
A very interesting detail with the cut ending-Essentia mentioned she specifically sought out “good” versions of Alex to fight Proto Alex, but those other versions of him died. The only version of Alex who succeeded was the one who needed to recognize his worst qualities, grow, and mature as a person. It’s actually a really good reflection of character development, along with the other dialogue you mentioned. As disappointed as I am that this finale was cut, I’m actually glad it exists. I think it reaffirms the point you made at the end-there’s definitely potential for a good game here if the devs don’t undercut themselves. With the recent update, I think they’ve become more responsive to feedback, so that makes me optimistic.
Oh wow, someone actually read my godawful Let's Play. I should credit Grandmaparty and the people from Something Awful who posted in Grandmaparty's original Let's Play thread. I don't have an SA account so I don't know who those people were, but they provided among other things a complete datamine of the game and a video of the unused content that I thought was new in that video - I think you can access it with Cheat Engine wizardry, but obviously the things in that third ending video go well beyond what you could do in Cheat Engine. I was still young and naive when I made that post about the third ending, and didn't realize that the reason they probably didn't just LP Toss through everything is that doing that softlocks the game if you try it against the final bosses. For some reason, the meteor bossfight (and the subsequent Proto-Alex/Essentia bossfight) have scripting that breaks if they're reduced to 0 HP. They don't die, the game just softlocks. I didn't know this when I made that post because I had actually hit the meteor softlock halfway through recording the first ending and gave up for the day, hence why I thought the Alex/Essentia models were new when in fact I hadn't seen them yet. Great video, though. I feel like if nothing else, YIIK is to game development what the Therac-25 is to computer science, and discourse like this gives a valuable lesson to new game devs in what not to do.
@@Tehsnakerer Glad to hear you enjoyed my LP. I'm also glad you pointed out in the video that they're doing a "content update" because I had no idea and now I'm just waiting for it to drop.
21 years ago, little baby Andrews parents brought him to see the turning of the century, and as the boy joined his community in watching the ball drop, he wondered to himself. "What if that was me and I was killing everyone?"
I love the take of “well, it’s supposed to be bad/not be explained that’s part of the experience” I could film a rotting squirrel, and filming that squirrel could be my full intention. Still doesn’t change that I’m looking at a decaying corpse. Their intent doesn’t matter if none of the characters work, if the story is terrible and pointlessly convoluted, if the themes are nonexistent, contradictory, or both, and most painfully in a game, if the gameplay is tiresome and repetitive.
from my own TWO playthroughs the biggest thing that stuck with me is how the story felt like it was written completely independently of itself. You mention the three scripts and how they barely interact, but to me it feels like every chapter was written by a different person who only had the cliffnotes of the last chapter and had to build off of it, like a bizarre game of telephone. Everything about the game establishing rules only to break them in the next chapter really brings that feeling home, and it feels like the during the whole game the intended message and meaning changes with each new chapter. As always, great video. Looking forward to the next!
Also I don't mean to be a prick and advertise other channels here, but if anyone is fiending for more Yiik content, my buddy One Doomed Game Critic posted a slightly over 4 hour long video of our experiences with the game. I feel it wouldn't be right to drop a direct link to the vid here, but just searching "one doomed game critic yiik" should bring anyone to it.
I'm consistently impressed by your willingness to engage with a piece of media well past the point others would have written it off. So frequently I see people approach these types of things with an almost aggressive incuriosity, and it's so so refreshing to see somebody who understands that a text can have meaning even if the text's quality is poor. This was really really great work, the rapidly increasing quality of your videos has been super exciting to watch
I feel like an irony to all of this is that YIIK and how deep this video read into it proves that games are art, but from a less ironic perspective also goes to show that bad art is still art and can still be read into, and arguably still deserves it as much as good art even if it doesn't change anyone's opinion.
I think it says something that YIIK has become popular, not because of any quality but because of the massive lack in it. The enjoyment derived from dissecting this disaster of a story is more interesting than anything the story actually offers, even though I would never touch the game with a ten foot pole, I love to hear it be torn to pieces.
Man after finally hearing a solid interpretation of the game's plot I'm kinda pissed. Not because I think the game's plot is bad or offensive, but because the rest of the game is so shit and spiteful that its basically wastes it
"If a person goes at a dartboard with a shotgun, it's not the same when they hit a bullseye. You don't need text for subtext; sub-ing subtext for text takes a toll on texture and substance." ~ The best writing/delivery I've heard in quite awhile And that's after so many fantastic lines only ten minutes prior: "Alex narrates everything: You could take all the ventilation in the world, jam it together-- and it still wouldn't be half as long-winded as this c***." "I get Alex is a moronic blowhard, and that we should take everything he says with a grain of salt... but man, that's enough sodium for a f***ing heart attack." "YIIK neglects and doesn't use the tools it's medium provides; not-so-much because it's doing a Pastiche, as much as it is because it's Taking the Piss." And, love this one: "You want to be a book, but you're just showing a total lack of spine."
I know exactly how you feel... This game reminds me of those 400,000+ word "magnum opus" novels sent off to agents that can't have anything cut because it's all important.
I think something that wannabe novelists need to keep in mind is that the narrator's tone *matters.* If your narrator is unlikable, it'll color the audience's entire experience. The *main character* doesn't have to be the narrator, and the *main character* can be an unlikable prick, or a creep, or sleazy, but for god's sake, don't let their voice be the one that defines your story. There's a reason The Great Gatsby isn't told by Gatsby.
Not to mention, that a key part of story telling is that a character can be annoying to other characters, but they should never annoy the audience. Annoyance and boredom are the most likely emotions to turn off a player. Even the most horrific and controversial games with morally dubious or unethical main characters still have players who are interested because the story or gameplay is intriguing. Once your audience is too bored to care about what’s happening, or too annoyed and frustrated to engage, and there is nothing to accommodate those feelings, people will drop it, and it’s no one’s fault but the developers.
I wouldn't say an unlikeable narrator is impossible, because I think it's done well in Catcher in the Rye, but in every case it will cause a split audience with some people just not liking the story because of it, and that's fine of course as an opinion.
@YellowpowR I’d say your example emphasizes that an unlikeable narrator still has to compensate by being an *interesting* perspective to follow; choosing them as a narrator still has to say something. Holden is a teenage kid who says shitty things, makes ill-advised decisions, and gets into some unusual or awkward situations because he’s lashing out due to depression, which may make for a character who tries someone’s patience to follow, but it’s not unsubstantial and can even be moving and an easy thing to relate to. Alex, by contrast, is just… *vapid.* And sure, according to Allanson, that’s apparently part of the point, but “he’s a vapid and arrogant guy who needs to learn to be worthy of the importance he has dropped into his lap or else” isn’t well-conveyed by the way he’s presented until how boring and self-centered his character simply *is* has outstayed its welcome by being allowed so much time to ramble to mood music and be easily forgiven for callous or skeevy behavior several times over.
@@blueblank8287 Oh yeah, I'm not saying YIIK executed the idea to any degree of positivity, quite the opposite. I'm just saying a character can be unlikeable if they're interesting in their perspective. (Running Shine made a good point about this in _their_ YIIK review, which this review must take inspiration from, due to a couple of references to that video in this video.)
Having now watched this video in full, I'm amazed at how much you pulled apart here. The music in particular blew my mind. I cannot believe i never picked up on Alex's theme. I think the removed ending is the entire point of the game, at that. Ending D is what it all comes down to. This game isn't made to give you closure, nor a point. You sit here and drool over its vacuous bullshit. Those who really matter get their good ending, and you never will, because in the devs' eyes, you're a mouthbreathing ingrate who won't know what to do with a good ending if they saw one.
You know, part of me feels really bad for the guy, given what he went through with his mother and how tragic that all was, but another, bigger part of me is comfortable in finding him a detestable self-important asshole despite that.
@@jor4114 I'll have to agree. YIIK is exactly what it had to be for everyone involved. It's horrible, it's traumatizing, it's a little like a lovecraftian artifact, but it shouldn't be anything else. I'm sort of glad it exists, even if it sapped so much of my time and sanity away.
Honestly the Mark/Alex conversation about metal music just kinda proves that not only does Andrew not know anything about 90's culture, but he made a game all about making fun of things and doesn't know anything about half of them. The game's writing is all through the lens of how *he* experienced the 90's or what *he* remembers of it. Alex refers to metal music as being marred by "teased hair and bad fashion" and being "so 80's," but the game takes place in 1999. Nu metal had been around for years at that point, if Andrew bothered doing any research maybe he could have snuck in a clever quip about the culture. "I dunno I like the passion in the music but the bagpipes and DJs are a bit much," or some kind of jab at the tracksuits, jorts and frosted tips. Mark's rant about how metal music is a force for social good sounds like it would be better applied to the punk scene. Try harder than not at all, Andrew
My cousin had a fuckin Slipknot poster in 1997. This game is written like somebody was born in 1999 and looks at the 90s through vaporwave TH-cam videos
Honestly, the idea of it being more how Andrew remembers the 90’s instead of the 90’s themselves sounds quite interesting. Like the rest of the good ideas here, however, the execution is botched to hell. Actually, the game kind of gives him an out, or would have if it was addressed. The whole parallel worlds crap: all taking place in world’s where Andrew’s version of the 90’s WAS the 90’s. But, that’s just how YIIK is: a series of terrible executions of good ideas, making it very easy for casual observers to write a better narrative from the same parts.
I recall pure metal music being called dino music by the 90a but it got more appreciated in the 2000s. I was 6 to 9 in 96 and 99, no internet in sight. I knew that but not this guy?
That whole "interesting ideas with little payoffs" makes me think that Andrew needs another writer who can work off his ideas to frame them correctly. This was an amazing analysis on this game, also that ending getting cut is sad.
This is pure speculation on my part but I think both of your interpretations are true or at least have bits of truth. Somewhere down the line Alex turned into what his was in the final release. I think originally what the brothers were going for was your second reading or at least a version of that. Once the game probably wasn't as antagonistic towards Alex or the audience as it is now. But when their mother got diagnosed and their hatred of their audience started to grow. We were the ones they were making this game for, we were the ones taking time away from them spending time with their mother. It was just a happy coincidence that they had a audience surrogate right in the game. That's why the much better ending got cut, why the game feels so disjointed. Half of it was made by another set of brothers, from a time before their grief. Or at least the concept for the game was made in a time before their grief. The ending was cut because it was too cynical for them to put it in because we as the audience deserve the ending we got. We should in their eyes feel guilty and admit that guilt. They had to make this for us and all we will do is use it up and forget or maybe even destroy it with bad reviews. That's also probably where the two brothers reverence came from. If that game was successful, more revered and renowned then it actually was, if it sold then they wouldn't have had to make Yiik. For us. If we just understood. The people who made this don't hate us, at least not really. They're just angry.
Probably the most poetic interpretation i've read, and the one i would want to believe more than most others. Still gotta find my own conclusion though.
Fun fact: A scene in the Mind Dungeon implies that Alex's father left in order to pursue a relationship with Rory's mother (the person with "nice legs" is in reference to how she's "all legs") which in turn implies that Rory and Carrie are actually Alex's half-siblings, Andrew himself later confirmed this to be true on the YllK Discord. This puts Alex's callous statement regarding her death as well as him potentially driving Rory to suicide in an even harsher light. As for the NPCs, while the majority of them simply repeat the same stuff over and over there's at least one that changes their dialogue each chapter, (or at least most of them) that being the one who initially asks you about your sister. His statements are an early indicator that something strange is up as they don't seem to match up. I don't remember them exactly, but he initially asks about your sister, but later on will mention that Alex is an only child and eventually that neither he or you have a family. Another hint is in chapter 4 in an optional scene at the university where Alex mentions that his sister, Alison use to live on campus there in the all girl dorm, but Chondra tells him that there is no all girls dorm there. I still don't understand what the deal is with the Essentia and Sammy appearing in Vella's Mind Dungeon, I get the impression that the 3 were all the same person/soul/whatever in the original script since it doesn't make much sense otherwise. Regardless, I really like your idea of having the group be more at odds with one another, especially rising tensions between Michael and Vella. There's still a lot of plot points which never get followed up on too such as when Proto-Michael makes a big deal about how reality is shifting or when they bring up that the Essentia leaves every night for some unknown reason. Either way, I believe this was the most fair and balanced video I've seen covering this game, it's really a shame that it ended up the way that it did since there were some pretty interesting ideas here and there.
Alright, so I now have an official explanation regarding Sammy and the Essentia's presence in the Mind Dungeon. Firstly Sammy and Vella are parallel versions of one another, I presume that must mean Vella entered that reality around the time that Sammy left. Anyway, as we already know it's possible to view alternate versions of yourself from within the Mind Dungeon, hence Sammy's presence in Vella's. This is also why the Essentia doesn't want you snooping around the doors in your Mind Dungeon when given the opportunity since her whole false narrative would have fallen apart if you did. Additionally, people who make large impacts on the collective psyche of you and your parallel-selves can appear in some form within your Mind Dungeon. Apparently that is why Essentia is there, but can't be accessed, the reason Essentia appears in Vella's Mind Dungeon, but Vella and Sammy do not appear in her's is because they don't mean anything to her nor have any meaningful impact on her. Additionally, it's apparently through the suffering of others which allows the Essentia to enter a broken reality in physical form. When Alex decides to peruse the Mystical Ultima LP Legend against Vella's wishes he ends up opening old wounds regarding the painful memories surrounding its creation. The vulnerability she feels is the key needed for the Essentia to proceed with her goals as it will result in allowing her the means of physically influencing events in that reality from that point onward. There's still a lot of other unanswered questions, but it seems that at least some of them may potentially be answered in the eventual story update.
The absolute madness of the sequel's development is a rabbit hole in and of itself. One of the Shut Up and Jam Gaiden 2 devs spilled the beans on SomethingAwful, detailing how the whole project just collapsed, and they could hardly ever get in touch with Cboyardee (he's very elusive). People didn't get paid or were paid to do half-assed work, like copypasting a single generic NPC to fill maps instead of properly flagging dialogue and whatnot. They switched genres and it became like a topdown shooter with a million guns and they had a bunch of half-coded game mechanics they kept trying to add.
@@Antiformed I honestly thought it was all 100% intentional on their part as some kind of post-modern art piece on the state of the games industry. It's a shame to find out, no, it was just genuine development hell.
@@Antiformed Honestly it's both funny and heartbreaking because Shut Up and Jam Gaiden is a lovely thing and the sequel would have been great if it was just more of the same, but better and bigger. Feature creep is such a lethal thing for creative projects
Thank you for the wonderful background noise for my reading. This is such a clusterfuck of a game with the worst parts of every crowdfunded project just kind of mushed into it. Hell its a sad sign that an isometric real time tactical roguelite (like)( I don’t really care to think about the differences) like Brigador has better writing, gameplay, storytelling, and artwork. YIIK feels like the caricature of every Death Stranding review blurb of “Kojima just showed how much he needed an editor”.
I hadn't even considered playing this game before now and watching this video made me both hate it and think more about it than it deserves. By helping it accomplish that goal you've actually advanced its malign purpose further forward. I hope you're happy with yourself
The use of the colon in the title is interesting. "Playing: YIIK Made Me Think" implies less sarcasm than "Playing YIIK: Made Me Think" I'll probably see why you did that as soon as I can find 3 hours of free time lmao. Looking forward to it, though.
This reply wont trigger a notification so I doubt you'll see it, but that was a great video man. Amazing how clear your thoughts are considering how complicated the subject is, even if that complication just comes from the sheer volume of words that the game threw at you. It shows that the time spent grappling with your thoughts paid off, but I'll let you decide if it was worth it ;). Struggling with a project for that long is really rough, but its great to see you've pulled through with minimal sanity loss. Can't wait for what's next. Hopefully it induces less actual suffering than what your voice betrays at 4:58 lol
I actually really like your ideas for the party dynamic. Michael and Vella butting heads over their knowledge on the paranormal, Alex using both of them just for his own interest of tracking down Sammy, Rory just tagging along as in regret for the sewer incident, it's all great.
Tehsnakerer' ability to see deep into the games is remarkable. What about trying something with actual good writing? Pathologic or Disco Elysium, for example?
I had this on in the background until you got to your readings, which really humanized the devs but didn't let them off the hook for, well, everything. Wound up fiercely paying attention by that point, and I think it was sweet of you to understand and be empathetic toward the circumstances around the two brothers.
The developers of Yick promised years ago a remake of their horribly broken first game, Two Brothers. It still hasn't happened. Don't hold your breath for any updates to this.
It's almost certainly actually happening in a week. I don't know what made them do it for YIIK exactly and not Two Brothers, but all signs point to it really being true, even down to people as of when this video came out talking about a beta to the update. There's even a fairly detailed changelog on their website, with it also mentioning that there would be an option for less monologuing and that the golden alpaca scene would be completely redone (and now he's voiced by D.C. Douglass; that's relevant apparently). I'm excited to finally be able to show it to other people with it having better gameplay; I would be very shocked if it somehow got worse.
If YIIK is Persona, then imagine instead of playing a blank slate protagonist who must confront Death or find Truth by making bonds, you play as Mitsou and the entire game is just his dungeon.
This video put me on such a fucking rabbit hole for this damned game. I've watched it god knows how many times these past few years and even after playing the game itself to 100% I still feel so mystified. This game is an anomaly that escapes my mind and hearing you put it into words is so fascinating. You have nothing but my respect for being able to vocalize YIIK because I sure as hell can't. Hopefully this will be an easier task when the IV update comes out.
The protagonist wears a shirt that has an attributed quote from the guys who made the game... yikes. And wow, the writer really does present the self-indulgence of an amateur. It has raw talent but lacks the experience or knowledge to do it well. It _really_ reminds me of the first drafts of a 'magnum opus' that the creator is too close to, to realize its faults. I am simultaneously impressed, and embarrassed.
The creator even managed to get himself an Easter egg of his game in another (competent) game (Va11-hall-A) while he was doing his kick-starter, where YIIK is described as "the best game ever", shaking the concept of games as art to its core and other things like this, which makes him look even more like a smug ass.
I was angry. Like a boy mad that he was upset about something frustrating.
I'm literally angry with rage!
I wished I could just make everything go away! A picture of a dark void surfaced in my mind and in it I saw everything and nothing, I should be a philosopher or something... stream of consciousness? What's that? Sounds deep...
this has the same energy as "People Die When They Are Killed".
@@AL2009man did u really think killing me would make me die
@@AL2009man and at least _that_ part is just an out-of-context part of a musing of how much the speaker doesn't need their immortality anymore; this is just padding.
YIIK is like some kind of Lovecraftian object where your lose parts of your brain trying to understand it and it's probably not worth the cost of your mind in the end.
Hey didn't know you followed this channel
Mandalore has good taste, I'm not surprised he's here.
you aren't wrong. and even after you think you've finished, when you think you can finally put it out of your mind for good, it all comes crashing back in waves and you wake up in the dead of night in a cold sweat.
"what did he mean by this?" "what was the point?"
the questions will never stop plaguing you.
FRIENDSHIP ONION TIME!
Brigand review when Mando!?
There you are, at the ending of your indie RPG, and all of the sudden, you’re Alex. You didn’t ask for this. You didn’t choose this. Yet there it is. And it’s treated no different from being a decent person.
HOW DID I NOT FIND THIS COMMENT EARLIER THIS IS GOLD
The most funny thing about this is that unlike the thing its referencing it makes actual sense here because the games description certainly doesn't prepare buyers for what is about to happen to them.
@@rynobehnke8289 what's the reference?
Rays extra credits
@@trustytrest The TH-cam channel Extra Credits. They said that about CoD multiplayer, that the player "didn't ask" to be a Nazi
“There is no game I hate more than YIIK. And that means YIIK won.”
- A tweet by Tehsnakerer
True
I kneel to this gaming prowess tm.
“I think too much YIIK can be unhealthy”
I will watch this video in one go and nothing you can do can stop me
Did the exact same thing, it was worth it.
I listened to the whole thing while working.
Me and a friend did. My brain is fried but it's totally worth it
two sittings, i'm weak
I have issues but I’ll love watch video essays on this game
I’m not ok
11:52 the absolute PAIN in his voice when he realizes he reacted the exact same way as Alex is incredible
Which is way more horrible if you factor in the ending themes of YIIK
@@ceyboard4296 FORESHADOWING
he's literally me @@ceyboard4296
Foreshadowing is a narrative device [...]
Insane how YIIK copied over Paper Mario/Mario and Luigi's combat minigame style without understanding a single thing of what makes that fun to play.
You mean more like undertales.
@@asra-5180 Not at all like Undertale, outside of Vella's Banish minigame. Everything else is either a Paper Mario minigame (or came from another Mario game: Bass Drop is Super Mario 2's way of attacking), or the Shadow Hearts battle spinner. Or straight up Pong.
I have no idea where Claudio's move where he slices for nearly 17 seconds straight comes from. Maybe they made that up entirely on their own, which would be really sad and telling in how little they understand of what makes a game feel fun and rewarding.
@@TaoScribble Fruit Ninja
@@bumibomber Crap, you're right! XD
@@asra-5180 I.... I don't.... have you played a Mario & Luigi or Paper Mario game?
It’s like Christmas but when u open the box, Alex pops out telling you to shut up about your dead sister
"B-but my sister isn't de-"
BANG
"Now she is. She's dead, lifeless on the floor. No sign of life coming from her once alive body. Not alive."
@@francescomena8181
an ex sister
"I don't even have sister"
"That's because I killed her!"
Normal talk: "I was thirsty, so I went to the fridge and grabbed a glass of milk."
YIIKSpeak: "My body once again tried to assert dominance over my mind by communicating to me that it was lacking something and couldn't function in top shape until I addressed that lack. Of course. Parched throat and dry lips, my own fallible flesh was trying to tell me I needed to hydrate. I made my way confidently to the kitchen. I didn't really care to try not to make any noise. There wasn't anyone worth being careful not to disturb nearby after all, but even if they were, they would owe me at least enough respect not to make a fuss for merely not measuring my footsteps around them. I yanked the fridge door open, the slightly sagging sides of the milk carton signaling to me that it was, in fact, half empty [...]"
fucking hell
this was a joke and still unbeareable
I'm vibrating with motion
"The game acts like this is our first tool, but we've already met Alex"
"You want to be a book, but you're just showing a total lack of spine"
The writing quality Yiik wishes it had
FULLY AGREE
Don't forget the best one: "Aabboahbaboba We almost died though"
That second line could fit PERFECTLY into a Monkey Island game. 10/10
'As an absolute wanker, Alex is already a master of debating with himself.'
Also the one about knocking for six hours of time-wasting is genius, I had to actually look up what "knocked for six" meant to fully appreciate it.
I'm glad YIIK exists because it's an excellent learning tool for any burgeoning indie RPG developer on exactly how NOT to make an indie RPG.
It's legitimately fascinating just how wrong it gets, well, everything.
True
It seems like it had potential at one point, and then just got butchered by the writers.
Truly a lesson in hubris.
@@dainfinitum7819
Potential can be attributed to anything really
I like that Michael was so doomed as a character conceptually that they had to rebirth him into some kind of singularity-achieving shirtless ascetic just to give him something to do
"dooood: ive been listening to the Joe Rogan Experience.."
@@audiosurfarchivei love Running Shine
"I love the moment we get Panda. The game treats it like our first tool, but we've already met Alex."
This is why I keep coming back
That kind of takes on a second meaning when you remember that Panda IS Alex.
@@dracorex426 Such deep layered writing
Truly this is the YIIK of YIIK reviews
@@Arkangel630 I made by character who sucks and admitted it’s a representation of another character who also sucks!! Take that gamer haters my game is art!!!
@@dracorex426 That might be the third meaning, I think.
1. Alex is a tool (insult)
2. Alex is a tool (an actual tool to do things in game)
3. Alex is a tool (the panda is a tool, and Alex is the panda)
Alex is a tool who acts like a tool and who also happens to be a tool
@@dracorex426But Panda is a Chinese bear.....da fuq that's got to do with a 25 year old in 99? It's not even a Futurama reference!
You know that old saying "The only winning move is not to play?" YIIK goes further, the only way to win is to never even consider the game or spare it any thought. If you engage with YIIK as a concept, YIIK wins, and you lose. We are all losers, to a one. YIIK will forever have the last laugh merely by existing in helpless mindscapes.
It's literally "The Game" but you can play it.
Aurélio Souza you can play the game, it’s just that you already lost it
YIIK but actually it's Rocco's basilisk
Does this mean I have lost for watching this video?
@@tropicarls yes.
For the "it brands us as the true alex" during the Ending A, if you name yourself Alex at the start of the game, your character will be called "True Alex"
Watching this has been a process of going "I should force [pretentious friend] to play this to see if he justifies it's bullshit" and then eventually realizing that I'm [pretentious friend] to half the people I know
Sounds like you need to made a video about it
Don't force yourself
Everyone is Alex. YIIK was right.
@@lucasdimartini4157 Maybe the real YIIK was the friends we made along the way
So, uh... when's that next No Man's Sky video coming out, Shammy, hmm?
I love how the clever writing of this video contrasts with the self-indulgent, drawn out and outright terrible writing of the game.
"Alex, wanker that he is, is already a master of debating with himself" - stuff like this is why I'm subscribed.
The "90's" setting feels forced. Their definition of late 90's is just based on 2010's hipsters and geeks interpretation of 90's. You can literally rewrite the setting to be in 2010's and all of the characters will perfectly belong in there.
Exactly this, YIIK is about as 90s as a current-year Hot Topic.
It actually caught me off guard when I found out YIIK is supposed to take place in the 90s since Alex's appearance and the subtitle "A Post-Modern RPG" just scream modern day.
Honestly, just replace Y2K panic with the 2012 panic
I thought when I first discovered this game it was basically set in 2010-12, or something.
Also the fact that they describe Rory as a scene kid but the scene subculture didn’t really take off til the early 2000s
I can’t get over the fact a party member’s suicide caused by a choice literally made by the player is just hand waved away in a simple phone-call, especially when said character’s character arc is him coming to terms with his sister’s suicide. What in the actual fuck is this game
A masterpiece in cringe.
If you believe one of Snake's interpretations, that was intentionally done - albeit poorly - as a jab at the player and how they don't actually care about any of the characters in the game's world.
@@MonteScarf That's YIIK's fault for making the characters unlikeable. I can actually care about characters that are well written in games. Like Sebille in Divinity OS 2. I cared about her story, because she was well written.
LEMONADE
I’m not saying suicide isn’t impactful in real life, it very much is and no one should do it.
Rory’s suicide shouldn’t be something Alex can control, because it honestly takes away from the story instead of not giving the player any choice at all. If the game decides to let Alex save Rory, then that shows how Alex is changing for the better, and lets the writers take advantage. If the game decides to let Rory commit, then it can show how Alex and co need to change for the better, and can have them all look out for each other more.
But by making it a choice, the game has to write around that, meaning it’s story beats can’t revolve around Rory being there/not being there, because it can’t assume which path you’ve gone down. Even then, considering how Alex loses all of his friends in the comet boss, then what’s even the significance of the choice, from a gameplay perspective? Shinji’s death in P3 hurts a lot, because not only is it tragic, but you lost a party member and can never get him back, and it helps the player feel that pain of losing him as well. But with Rory, you’re gonna lose him either way, which means replays of the game (imagine!!) won’t feel unique if you choose both choices.
So . . . . what you're saying is that by watching this video, I can deny being Alex by never playing the game. I must thank you for bearing the sin of being Alex in my stead. Also nice vid.
Yeah, it makes you a companion on the journey, so you're a Michael, a Vella, a Rory, a Claudio, a Chondra, or an Essentia
@@Tehsnakerer dibs on michael, he drops out of the story to fiddle with his camera until he gets put out of his misery in the finale
@@Tehsnakerer so if you watch this game, and kill yourself, you're just pulling a Rory? Huh..
@@Tehsnakerer Not the worst thing in the world. I do kind of like Vella; could’ve been a great character and constantly seems like she’s still trying to be.
You know, years ago, Yahtzee Croshaw from Zero Punctuation talked about a game idea he had where you played as an entity called “The Protagonist” that was so desperate to be important and save the world that it kept meddling in affairs that were none of its business and always caused more problems than it solved. For example, it joins a rebel militia fighting against an oppressive regime, only it becomes evident that the regime isn’t that fascistic at all and the militia are more akin to violent domestic terrorists than heroes with a righteous cause.
YIIK reminds me a lot of that idea, taking the expectations a player has for the role of the protagonist and twisting it to have some weird message about self-importance or something. Difference is, Yahtzee says he scrapped the idea because at the end of the day, the message would be “fuck you for wanting to play a game,” and that’s hardly a recommendable way to treat your audience.
Wow. That's really what Yiik comes down to isnt it? "Fuck you for playing this game."
It's almost like Yahtzee has actual experience in good game design.
@@krullachief669 I know he does.
Sorry to necro, but that's sort of what Far Cry 3 did, yes? Tell a story of Jason being a badass, killing the pirates, only to acknowledge that him doing so makes his friends scared of him, and how in the end, he isn't really sure if he'd be able to heal from how fucked up the event in the game made him.
@@HolyApplebutter no, its not even close:
Jason didnt volunteer to a fighter, it was upon him by circumstances, so he became a badass out of necessity to survive & save his friends, not to feed his own ego. Plus the pirates were actually awful, so yea, those are not the same thing at all. If anything farcry3 is exactly the type of plotline that Yathzee want to subvert with that idea.
"Ending Spoilers for Sonic 06"
Nah, sorry dood, not gonna watch that, don't want this masterpiece spoiled till I can get a copy of it :D
It's 14 years old, dude. If you haven't played it yet, you never will.
@@qty1315 Bruh its obvious he's joking about it
shadow kills dumbledore
@@LonelySpaceDetective Nah, Rowling confirmed that Shadow only pretended to kill Dumbledore so that they could elope.
@@qty1315 Shadow was trans this whole time didn’t ya know
Someone gifted me this game on steam with the comment “this is like if the most obnoxious person you know tried to make undertale. Have a good time!”
I did not.
And that comment is inaccurate.
@@SirBlackReeds yeah, it's more like that person tried to make a Persona game
@@helloill672 They tried to make scooby doo mystery incorporated but replaced Fred with a pretentious plank of wood and scooby with rory
give me their steam account
@@trickstercj4366 bruh the image of scooby doo just comitting suicide is just too funny
YIIK accidently makes a good case for the existence of the silent protagonist.
Yes
No? This story needs a protagonist that speaks. Alot of stories need a main character that can talk. Silent protagonists are harder to fuck up but that's about it.
@@bobcatsjoe8891 I'm not saying that speaking protagonists are bad, just that a voiced protagonist doesn't work in YIIK.
The yapping protagonist
@@pantslesswrock it's a subversion, but it doesn't work here not because the world isn't ready for it, but because Alex is fucking annoying.
I find it funny that the dev's main gripe with this game is the fact he misunderstood videogames as art. According to would-be non-pretentious modern artists, art is meant to evoke emotions and a reaction out of people, more than meaning something in and of itself, but rather being a product of its time and its author's experiences. YIIK has been a terrible game to everyone who has played and/or covered it, but just by looking at the amount of time spent on it by pretty much anyone, you'd be under the impression that most people really did get a reaction out of it, even more tellingly the fact it got people interested in its plot and world way more than anyone would expect from such a product. So basically the main dev cannot even be right on accident about his game being meaningful, since he doesn't realize that he inadvertently created actual modern art, as shitty as it is.
It's so bizarre, man.
Thank you for putting it into words I have been trying to get what I have been thinking of after learning about this game and guy it's that he successfully did what he wanted but seeing that it wasn't how he wanted it to be seen ,that plus him not realizing that he was going deeper into grief by taking it out on his work didn't help him so ya thanks for helping me
@@mochalta2862 It's like succesfully make a, not masterpiece but maybe a blockbuster, of shit. The best shit ever, while tried to make a food.
Art is not that, art is short for artifice. It is something that is created. The greater the skill required to create it, the higher it is as a form of art.
@@czarkusa2018 You got it the other way around, chief. "Artifice" is actually derived from "ars" and "facere" both Latin words meaning "art" and "make" or "create" whereas the word "art" is from... you guessed it: the Latin "ars" so actually it's "artifice" that is derived from "art."
Google is at your fingertips, might wanna check out your theories before saying weird stuff like that.
What a horrendously elitist and undemocratic way to think about a concept intrinsic to practically *all* human beings. Why should art be one big pissing contest? You're allowed to look at it any way you want, but you're reducing art to a talent show with that mentality. And your etymology is incorrect.
Impressive Snake, jank hasn't slowed you down one bit.
accelerated yiiking
@@Tehsnakerer I assume this causes vibration with motion.
@@Tehsnakerer
Pretentiousness son!
It increases in response to criticism.
You can't hurt me Snake!
@@Calvin_Coolage It directly vibrates the small bones of your ear with motion, only you should be able to hear it
Tehsnakerer Is your “Age of YIIKs” finally over?
1:23:30 you know... that could have actually been a funny joke. Not the peak of comedy, but to a dark, irreverent sense of humor like mine, Claudios line could have been genuinely funny. All he had to do was stop at the line "No, I cannot pick a lock... well, at least not a car lock." There. End dialogue. Next character. Light exhale from nostrils. But NOPE! He starts going over his backstory in painstaking detail and as a result stomps any grain of humor or entertainment that might have been there into the fucking dirt, until I want to fucking strangle him just like every other character In the game.
Like Snake said in the video, one word can be the difference between a good and a bad joke, and YIIK proves time and time again that if it can do something in one line of text, it will do it in dozens
the walking dead season 1 did this joke so much better.
@@megamike15 ... u r b a n ?
Haha you deserve it
The joke could still work as is with a better punchline. Have Claudio go through a list of locks he can pick, ending with him saying that, as a black man, no he cant pick a car door.
Beat.
"But Chandra can."
Immediately cut to Chandra standing next to the open door.
"Alex is in me!? Get the fuck out of me! I didn't consent to this shit!"
-Running Shine
YEEEEEESSSSS!!!! I LOVE Running Shine!
Lol it seriously reminded me of AVGN and it sounds like something he would say.
Everybody, I just met a black person!
In fact, I met TWO!
@@Reoko77 i feel like avgn would end a yiik review in the same vein as the second jekkyl and hyde review, pretending to understand the game’s alleged deep metanarrative themes before saying, “or, the game’s just full of shit.” cue endcard.
Gotta love Snake's wordplay. It's like the verbal equivalent of trickshots.
24:27: “Alex, wanker that he is, is already a master of debating with himself. He hardly needs a toy to do it more.”
Instant subscribe for how clever & well-written that was
Alex was the true master bator the whole time.
Oh god Alex would totally have worked for the Daily Wire if he was old enough
The more I watch Snake, the more I appreciate his wordplay.
So, the 'Player' Alex in the fake TH-cam ending is called Link. Clearly a Zelda reference, but they were probably going deeper since Nintendo has said that Link is meant to be renamed because he's the 'link' between the game and the player. But since this is an ending nobody can actually get, that's another layer of the devs rubbing in the unobtainability.
As I recall the original reason his name was Link was because in one of the earlier versions of the first Zelda it was this sci fi like game where the main character went between the past and future or something similar, so he's called Link because he's a physical Link between these two points in time.
@@TheRatMan Huh, so Ocarina of Time fulfilled that original concept.
Also, Breath of the Wild got rid of naming Link, though the name still fits with concept of him beinf part of a legacy if heroes.
@@TheRatManso, a literal link to the past, huh?
Did anybody else get kinda upset that Alex, Michael, and Rory are all wearing shirts of roughly the same color and pattern? They look like visual mud when all together in a scene.
Even Vella's jacket fits the color and pattern. It's ridiculous.
Michael at the very least should've been in a '90s Internet-themed shirt instead of the striped one.
Also Vella and Claudio
It doesn't help that they're all so bland that they look like they'd be NPCs in other games, especially Michael. He's a design that a dev would copy and paste six or seven times across a map, possibly in different colors.
Glad someone noticed. The color pallets are different enough.
I'm not even an hour in and the "hateable but lovable protagonist" already comes off as the guy who pays no attention during class and then has the audacity to be offended by having to do work.
You know the premise about internet sleuths piecing stuff together? There's already a novel, a best seller by cyberpunk godfather William Gibson, Pattern Recognition. The main character is obsessed with a series of viral short films that no one can identify but have slight connections, creating a boom of people trying to form a story, pin point the origin, dox the author, apply film theory, hunt copycats and so on. Those videos slowly get more and more relevance, from just being what made her met some cool dude she needs a favor from to an international corporate conspiracy. Solid almost scifi thriller.
@Piss Harrison It's a solid novel, not the best Gibson has ever done but by far better than the rest of the blue ant saga (the first novel in every series he does is that way)
Gotta check it out. I finished an audio book of Neuromancer during the summer.
@@onigames7309 I'd recommend finishing that trilogy. Just like each book after the first gets worse until you finish the saga out of inertia, a similar thing happens to each trilogy. Gibson is glorious at mixing a bunch of concepts into interesting characters and connecting them in a bizarre but eventually logical plot, but the plots themselves are pretty disapointing. I think his short stories are his best work.
(personal opinions, obviously, I don't want to offend the 4 Gibson stans that still exist)
I’ve seen this sort of premise in a Visual Novel done a hundred times better than YIIK. Chaos;Child. The whole premise is about a series of bizarre serial killings, your protagonist is kind of an asshole at the start, really self centred and anti-social. He believes himself to be higher and more intelligent due to him following these conspiracy forums, that he’s on the “right side” of the maze of information online. As he personally investigated the killings with his friends as a conspiracy research group, they get more and more entangled with it. It gets supernatural and that directly links the characters to it. Over time the protagonist actually grows in multiple ways. He starts seeing more and more how little the forums he frequented knew now that he actually knew everything about the case, starts to view his old way of thinking as wrong, actually opens up socially a bit (still awkwardly as the inexperienced introvert he is but he legit puts in effort), and in the end he has to accept some harsh truths about his whole life and subconscious. This feels like it accomplished everything YIIK was trying and more and just BETTER.
Yiikes (how I like to pronounce the games' title) is an interesting phenomenon.
On the one hand, you have an overambitious, halfbaked game with aspirations to be profound (while failing to do so and in the end contradicting itself), whose developers got pissy when people pointed out these obvious flaws and the lukewarm reviews started coming in.
On the other hand, Yiikes did make a pretty big splash in the indie game scene and kicked off a lot of interesting conversations about games, postmodernism, narrative etc. , thus actually making a valuable contribution to the world of video games.
So in a way ... the devs succeded? They made an impactful 'artsy' game that made people think - even if that impact largely revolved around its' flaws.
I guess what I am trying to say is this:
Even when art is bad , it can still be art.
“Even when art is bad, it still can be art”.
Probably the best take to take from all this.
The entire point of Postmodernism, at least as my biased (as in against it) views is entirely meant to be purposefully shite because "Anything can be art because everything is meaningless" or something along those lines
@@mmouse1886 That's cool and all, but I think I'll pass. I don't wanna play an intentionally bad game.
@@gidofter_lukge I fully Agree, I never want to play this game, my point is, if you where reading, is that some things *shouldn't* meet their potential
@@mmouse1886 Definitely
The wordplay in this video is underrated. "You don't need text for sub-text; subbing sub-text for text takes a toll on texture and substance" floored me. I had to pause for a minute to recover.
I believe you stated in a "Beyond two souls" stream that no matter how bad a game might be, you still want to meet it on its own terms and give it a solid shot, and that mindset is what allows you to dissect the media in this spectacular way. You could have ripped this game apart from its bones and detailed the tedium that came from it and I am sure most of us would have just laughed along.
But you dug deeper, you tried to give this game the fairest shot I have ever seen. None to make the game seem better than it is or find meaning where there is not, but to disprove Yiik the most. That you treat the game, the medium and your audience with a level of respect and care.
That earnestness is what drew me in to this channel in the first place. I happened upon it because I wanted to find out what the deal was with Hunt Down the Freeman. And in that review (as in this one), Snake's earnest enthusiasm for storytelling, gameplay, and the player experience, and his precise, considered, and detailed criticism really won me over. Snake's reviews make me think more deeply about storytelling, and make me want to engage in a deeper way with the games I play. A good reminder of the importance of thinking about character motivation and plot cohesiveness.
I think I understand now why Yiik offends me so much. It's not the writing, the characters, the music - it's that the creator clearly doesn't respect his audience. He spoonfeeds every explanation, and when people point stuff out he just goes "they're stupid, they don't get it". He thinks he can make better songs than what people enjoy, better gameplay than what people enjoy, better writing than what "gamers" enjoy.
He may have not intended Alex to be his self-insert, but he very much mirrors himself.
And the delicious irony that ties it all up is that this studio twice over got caught plagiarising pieces of media people enjoy. So I guess the joke's on him.
This game seems to simply be a sack of shit and bile. I feel disgust at having spent a single moment of my life contemplating this cancer of a game. I don't care how insensitive the creator feels that comment is, his petty rage is more beautiful than any piece of art he's produced.
@@bjorntheviking6039 You could argue that this game is his petty rage and he is subjecting us to it despite the barrier between him and us.
>He may have not intended Alex to be his self-insert, but he very much mirrors himself.
Personally, I assume that he backpedaled on that after seeing the public's reaction. He'd say it was him all along if people liked Alex.
Another piece of media that treats us like idiots
This was a very good video. After watching Running Shine's incredible video I didn't think I had it in me to watch another hours long YIIK video but seeing the spoiler warning for Barkley Shut Up and Jam Gaiden made me stay and it was worth it.
Will you do videos on SAGE this year?
@@JasonGodwin69
Leave the poor man to live, lmao
Running Shine's video? Amazing? He interrupts the video for stupid jokes at every turn.
@@100billionsubscriberswithn4
He also makes fantastic points related to game development that indicate a real background in the industry, as well as providing constructive criticism towards Ackk. The jokes are subjective, but that doesn't change the good content besides.
...When does he actually bring up Barkley anyways?
2:14:19 It was just on the tip of my tongue. "A misguided attempt at integrating a player/protagonist meta-narrative headed by someone(s) with delusions of grandeur? I've seen this all before." Then you hit me with it. The horror, the horror...
WELCOME IN OMIKRON
it all comes back to david cage
(Training room theme starts playing)
Honestly with this soundtrack it wouldn’t even be out of place.
Never thought I would say this, but it's truly tragic that the one *GENUINE* link the game has to the mother series...
Is that both this guy and the main guy behind Mother 3, created *FAR* darker and more depressing games, topped off with bleak, almost malicious endings... because *they lossed a family member during development.*
The "More Human" elements in both game, feel more like a loss of faith in humanity. That a happy ending is *truly impossible* for the characters, after so much death and suffering. Both final bosses are also truly impossible to ever truly "win" against.
That's extremely tragic. It's human to make such changes in grief, but it makes me feel sad, that it's almost a permanet reminder to how deep down in grief they were, to the point their work was significantly coloured by it.
I disagree with the take that MOTHER 3's ending is bleak, since IIRC the final line of dialogues you see after the THE END text appears and you start moving it around indicate that the world was indeed remade after the events of the cutscene and that the people lived through it. Bittersweet yes, especially as Claud died, and it leaves open the question of how they're going to move on, but the ending is not "malicious" by any means and ends on a relatively positive note for what transpired immediately before.
I agree with your take as far as YIIK goes however. That ending definitely felt more like the work of someone retreating into grief rather than moving past it, in spite of the author's insistence that he only removed "cynical" aspects of the plot.
@@LonelySpaceDetective That makes sense. Though the fact that the screen is pitch black, without any music during the chat with the other characters in the Mother 3 ending, makes it feel like a lie to me.
Like someone telling you "Everything will be OK", when things are obviously awful.
@@KittyKatty999 I'm personally inclined to read the scene in a positive "at face value" light, since right after that final line you get the main theme swelling as the game's logo appears; now in pure natural form with no mechanical features. To me that feels like it's making it clear that the world is now healing after Porky's actions, and that we're supposed to leave off the game with the feeling that something good *has* happened.
I concede that it's not impossible to interpret it the way you have, but I'd be more convinced if the logo appearance was either more muted (especially if it was the same partially mechanized one from the title screen) or just didn't happen.
@@LonelySpaceDetective Oh ok. That makes sense. Thanks.
@@KittyKatty999 Oh, you're welcome.
I apologize if I came off as heated or condescending, I have a passion for stories where the cast and/or setting goes through hard times but there's still a light at the end of the tunnel (whether that light is a conventional happy ending or something more like what MOTHER 3 did), and to me MOTHER 3 is one of the definitive examples of that in gaming, so it kiiiiinda bugs me to see people interpret the ending as meaning everyone died.
With the backstory of this game's development and the issues surrounding the game that came before it, it puts the whole thing into a wider perspective that I genuinely don't think I've ever seen before in a video game. YIIK now comes across to me as a genuine attempt at an entertaining product that, somewhere along the way, was transformed by real-life circumstance into a bitter, self-loathing and depressing reflection of two people in a very dark place mentally, to the point where I wonder if all the bitterness directed at the audience is in some way a means of coping.
This especially struck me with the remarks by Andrew Allanson that the original ending was "cynical", because I don't think he means "cynical" like it was depressing. I think he meant it in that the ending was somehow disingenuous, that making a happy ending for YIIK was dishonest. That it would have been cynical to leave it in because it didn't reflect what they felt about the final product, perhaps even about happiness on the whole.
And the thing is, I don't hold any of this against them. If anything, for the first time in my life, I've come away from this summary and analysis genuinely worried for two people in a deeply troubled place that I have never met and barely knew before this.
That's a truly human, positive expression of sympathy and I just thought you should have some acknowledgement of that. The world could use more people who attempt to sympathize with others.
Yeah, I recall seeing a breakdown of Yiik one or two years ago and wanted to listen to a review on a whim and that information was never covered. That does paint the game in a better light it's still horrible and clearly loathes/disrespects the player but now I can view it as a way of venting their emotions seeing how they tried to give it a good ending and technically did if it no longer rings true to their new vision making up a new ending that fits how they felt is 'better' for the game rather than them intentionally being malicious and hateful.
I hope they were able to overcome such pessimism though it's a rather unhealthy outlook on life.
Which is cool and all, but they still took people's money for it. Which I think is shitty. Art as a coping technique or way of healing is fine. Monetizing it, I'm less okay with.
It’s hard to hear the whole story and come away with anything other than a sense of pity for the people who seemingly *actively* sacrificed the product of their blood, sweat and very evident tears to a sinkhole of grief and malice that formed after a horrific tragedy, a common impulse to satiate the well-spring of sadness that only ever makes the pain worse and in YIIK’s case only makes others grow to resent you.
And that’s the end, which fucking blows
Well-said.
I'm twitching and drooling and salivating and seizing and screaming and dancing and bleeding and gushing and writhing. Finally, the YIIK video.
But are you vibrating with motion too?
That comparison to Kojima was pretty apt, since MGS2 basically did what this game was trying to do while succeeding.
The events of the story are a pale imitation of the game that came before, with a protagonist who is completely disconnected from what's actually going on. Raiden is imitating Snake without sparing a second's thought to why he did what he did, or what it meant, and he was trained by video games and not actual experience. He is the audience who idolizes a badass action hero who beats up the bad guys and saves the day, while ignoring the parts where Snake was used for political gain, was forced to execute people he respected, and gave up on everything he thought he believed in because it was all a lie. Did you really understand what Metal Gear Solid was about? It's actually not that subtle! do you even care?
That's how you antagonize the audience.
I really like this interpretation. Kojima was so insistent we all fully appreciate the themes of Metal Gear that he made an entire trilogy hammering them into our heads from different angles.
But recall that we learn raiden was NOT trained on video games, he was actually a child soldier in Africa with maybe more combat experience than anyone else in that room.
We are given raiden (who's name is jack, as we 'jack in' to his perspective) and told he's an empty vessel for us to occupy, his first mission, no expectations on his character or actions. By the end of the game, he's revealed to be his own character, and he is symbolically freed of our control as he casts off dog tags with our info on them, which we entered mindlessly at the start of the tanker chapter many hours earlier.
@@raccoononymous I was a little as well, as it was antithetical to the meaning driven home in the 2nd game. Don't know if that was just Kojima doing the MGS4 thing of taking something from MGS1 or 2 and smashing it together with something from MGS3.
There's so many incongruities and plotholes in 4 it's difficult to determine where it stands. MGS2s entire purpose was to disorient and subvert the expectations of players. From the bait and switch advertising showing only snake, the short tanker chapter being the perfect sequel to MGS1 while the rest of the game turns it on it's head. Snake uses cheat codes in the arsenal gear firefight which is why he can throw you ammo (the bandana from MGS1). Ray may be an anti-metal gear metal gear, but that's a good way to describe the whole game too.
Except we don't know how much Kojimmy contributed to the writing of the Metal Gear Solid games. Note that not a single one was written by him alone.
@@SirBlackReeds You make a good point but you don't have to be the only writer for a story to have a major impact. It proves that other people could have had more influence on the story, but it doesn't really prove that Kojumbo contributed significantly less than a lot of people claim.
No joke, this game sounds awful, but Rory is probably my favorite character simply because of the fact that his combat style foreshadows(?) his suicidal feelings, him taking damage for you isn’t just him attempting to be useful, it’s him attempting to kill himself in the moment, I honestly love games where RPG’s have a character’s playstyle foreshadows a problem they have or a dark thought that manifest in the person.
Yes, I’m probably grasping at invisible thread, this game sounds awful and I’d rather peel my finger and toenails off slowly then play this hot mess, but seeing the way Rory acts and feels, and his combat style, makes me click those invisible threads by poorly tying them up...okay maybe I don’t love that aspect because I don’t see it often, but that’s just something I like, something that when you look back after finishing the game, you notice things that you’d never figured out earlier unless you were really paying attention.
They didn't need to do all of that, it's obvious from his haircut what's going to happen
@@ctrouble2309 Also his wardrobe gives it away. Love how the choices to convince him to not kill himself or just keep him depressed changes nothing in the plot.
I’m not saying suicide isn’t impactful in real life, it very much is and no one should do it.
Rory’s suicide shouldn’t be something Alex can control, because it honestly takes away from the story instead of not giving the player any choice at all. If the game decides to let Alex save Rory, then that shows how Alex is changing for the better, and lets the writers take advantage. If the game decides to let Rory commit, then it can show how Alex and co need to change for the better, and can have them all look out for each other more.
But by making it a choice, the game has to write around that, meaning it’s story beats can’t revolve around Rory being there/not being there, because it can’t assume which path you’ve gone down. Even then, considering how Alex loses all of his friends in the comet boss, then what’s even the significance of the choice, from a gameplay perspective? Shinji’s death in P3 hurts a lot, because not only is it tragic, but you lost a party member and can never get him back, and it helps the player feel that pain of losing him as well. But with Rory, you’re gonna lose him either way, which means replays of the game (imagine!!) won’t feel unique if you choose both choices.
@@PinkManGuy …I’m sorry. Honestly tho it might be better that way, because the game gives Shinjiro rly good stats to trick you into playing him
@@mreverything7056 i mean the game could theoretically make it a choice and do it well, but it would need a... lot of changes, likely involving making two entirely different paths (like undertale's genocide route)
and the paths could be as simple as "this conversation goes slightly differently" or as heavy as "Alex is becoming a monster and the ending reflects that"
although theres also the idea of "its not your fault"/"dont worry about if you could've changed things" when someone else commits suicide, so it might be kinda weird to have the character be able to change things
...but its also not entirely true, and theres room for a game to explore the issue heavily
but this is yiik lmao thats not happening
YIIK is like a cursed object, cause anyone who tries to understand it goes at least a little crazy. This is the first time I've heard about that cut content, and that genuine ending almost makes me upset at how the game turned out.
I'm glad someone else agrees that the dev could probably do good work given another chance
Your ability to make hours of my day disappear is also truly commendable. Awesome work my guy
The dev could do good work if someone else was in charge would be a more accurate statement. The dev would inevitably fuck it up if given the call.
the dev could do good work if he grows up.
The two interpretations don't seem at all contradictory.
Interpretation 1) The message is "fuck you", and is intentionally designed to be aggravating and gaslighting.
Interpretation 2) The story thinks of all audiences as selfish, self-centered, narcissistic vampires, and reflects that via endings that are unachievable or purposefully unsatisfying. That sounds a lot like a "fuck you".
I'll believe that Alex is meant as an audience surrogate rather than an author avatar, but he still reads like an author-insert, which... taken together, and with the character himself, suggests that the author is extremely self-centered. The game's infatuation with its own failed predecessor, and the author's reaction to the poor reception being to denigrate the very medium he chose to work in, furthers this interpretation.
I'd posit the author is self-centered that to the point of lacking theory of mind. He cannot imagine other people or perspectives other than his own, and so cannot see why something that makes sense to him may not to other people, or places where it may be misinterpreted, or why projecting the author's own experiences and flaws onto the audience may fall flat. And in the absence of recognizing that, the author gets angry when people don't respond right, lashes out at the audience for their impudence, and then gets angrier when people still don't "learn their lesson". It would explain how and why a real-life tragedy that deeply affected the author could get stuffed into the game without any consideration for how it affects anyone but the main character, or how that decision would reflect on the work. It would explain how so many inspirations could all be presented in such an off-kilter manner. It would explain the haphazard humor, and the constant lapses in logic, the characterization brought up and immediately dropped, and the sense of spite. It probably explains more as well.
I don't know what mixture of spite and grief and ambition and narcissism and bad luck went into making YIIK, but I am sure all played a role. I suppose if I had any words for Andrew it would be: get help. Not everyone is out to get you, but if you want people to hear what you have to say, you have to meet them halfway. Look at your own experiences, recognize that they are not everyone's, figure out why those experiences are meaningful, and how to share that meaning to someone else. You can have fantasy, but establish it. You can have self-indulgence, but make sure it has meaning. Every element you have in a story, consider how a person will interpret and experience it. You should probably take a break from working, until you have a handle on your grief and anger. If you can do that, you could probably create something beautiful. I am not sure you have that capacity in you, but I would be delighted to be proven wrong.
Yeah, I agree, this game is the shit of someone who desperately needs to be guided in eating better.
I agree. I don’t think Alex was intended as a self insert, but I think he is one AND is an audience surrogate. He’s meant to represent the audience, but also intrinsically carries the flaws and mindset of his author, which basically means that Alex is merely a projection. The author’s flaws are assumed to be the same ones everyone has, so Alex is meant to be a stand in for both the creator and the player.
This fails because Alex isn’t really relatable in the least. The projection doesn’t work because Alex is far too defined and has interests and flaws so specific that perhaps only a subset of people would relate to. Not to mention that Alex is written to be so obnoxious that no one WANTS to look deeper into his character because his annoying behavior pushes the player’s interest away.
@@gregjayonnaise8314 Yeah, basically.
I don’t remember saying this at all, what the fuck?
1:57:30 I burst out laughing when i saw "Japanese localization staff" in credit roll
poor sods had to translate all those nonsenses into Japanese and i can't stop laughing how unfortunate that is
i bet its even more uncomprehensive than the original lmao
I thought it was for the "inspired scenes" from After Dark
@@audiosurfarchive murakami books are already translated to english
This almost makes me want to learn Japanese specifically so I can find out if the Japanese translation is worse or somehow better
@@GinaDriedUpi hope they just did what some english hack localizers do and replace most of the rambling with [rambles incoherently]
@@gewuerzwanze5627 Wouldn't be too far off from the original script if that was the case, honestly.
"YIIK is so knotted-up, so poorly told, so confusing, that when I think I see something clever or thoughtful, I'm not inclined to be happy that the story is doing something. I panic." is a pretty good summary of YIIK.
But it's a little long so "ENDING SPOILERS FOR SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2006" is a decent sum-up too.
This is the most in-depth video I’ve seen on this game. I like that the video takes the time to explore several interpretations for the game’s story. Only Andrew himself knows what the game is really about, and sadly, he hasn’t discussed it much. But it lets the audience have some fun trying and figure things out for themselves and I think your “Alex is Audience” theory is at least within the margins. The game is definitely trying to be some kind of meta narrative about the player. To me, it shows that people do find something interesting in this game that’s worth checking out. Andrew can at least be happy knowing he’s made something people are invested in, for one reason or another.
YIIK is a game that I think deserves a decent amount of respect for what it tries to do, even if it stumbles a lot of the time. I’ll definitely remember YIIK for way longer than I’ll remember the next generic metroidvania or roguelike. People were very harsh on it for what I think are misconceptions and anger towards Andrew himself because of how he acted in his interview, instead of giving the game a fair shake and seeing how well it accomplished its goals.
I think their mom dying definitely messed them up. When something big like that happens in life, you’re not going to be the same person afterwards. Whatever they made prior for the game obviously just didn’t represent who they were anymore. I think that patch will help them heal a bit from the bad reception and definitely make their fans happy which will be a big morale boost for them. I really am rooting for the Allansons and want to see them use what they’ve learned from Two Brothers and YIIK to make something great. I think they can do it!
Also that bug where you can carry abilities into dialogue and cutscenes is awesome, I hope they don't patch it out.
i won't lie when i say that hearing what happened to their mom kind of made me reevaluate what the intentions are with this game and everything that surrounded it shortly after it's release (the interview and the social media shitstorm).
at first i saw the devs as some hipsters who were full of themselves, and desperately in need of a another editor to clean up all the filler that's in the dialog. and maybe a few more playtesters to tweak the battle system. then after watching your review i kind of began to appreciate the art direction a little bit more. the colors in frankton are poppin, and the more fall like atmosphere in windtown is every moody. when the game becomes way out there with it's visuals is when the game is at it's strongest.
and after watching this review, and when hearing what happened to their mom and the harsh treatment they got on twitter made me understand their outburst in the interview. what happened to their mom hit way too close for home for me and honestly i dont blame them for being really irritated after all the blow back their game got (for all the right and wrong reasons). the fact they changed the game because of all the changes that happened in their lives, deserves a little bit of credit, at least in my eyes.
still at the end of the day, it's not a good game in terms of story and dialog, but i hope the devs learn from the mistakes of yiik and hopefully the update fix it's issues. and heres hoping that the devs move on to better things. ill be sure to keep on the look out.
Awesome to see you here, dude.
-Where's the Sonic Adventure 2 review?-
It’s pretentiousness is enough to cause mental anguish
Are you planning to cover the updates that are coming, the official twitter did mention that they are adding in stuff
@@cosmicfool3334 They're not going to add shit, the Two brothers remake still hasn't come out yet.
As a pretentious lit nerd myself, the prose style *alone* nearly made me throw my full mug of coffee across the room.
Also I don't believe the Murakami thing was plagiarism... but if your idea of allusion is "copying a random paragraph of a literary novel out of context for a cheap badge of intellectual status" you will instantly elicit teeth-grinding levels of dislike from me.
I do like the idea of having a shop for each character's upgrades and items though. In a better game with a more fleshed out setting, it could be a really cool bit of worldbuilding.
The shops for each of the characters should have all been in the same mall, less travel time between them, and potintail for fun sides characters or events.
@@helloill672 Surprisingly, the gardening game for Mii Plaza did the concept better. In that game, there are different shops in the mall for different item types. However, rather than having the player travel between shops in real-time, the whole mall is like a menu with the shops acting as sub-menus. One of the shops also offers the game's sidequests on top of being a shop.
@@magnatcleo2043 that does sound cool
It's never plagiarism when people like you...
@@seg162 thanks for the random insult I guess
Man the flavor you've put into this script is really on another level. 17 minutes in and multiple times I've gone back to hear something again. Is there any better flex than criticising poor writing with significantly better writing?
Jesus, Andrew sounds so smug when he talks about anything. "Oh your music has a strong melody? Uematsu copycat. I am evolved!"
Also Andrew: (steals music from Shadow of the Colossus)
You also know that's the only jrpg composer he even knows, no mention of Noriyuki Iwadare or Yoko Shimomura or anything.
I mean not realy
I find it amusing that despite Sammi and Vella obviously being the targets of Andrew's affection, whoever drew the character portraits clearly has more of a thing for Alex's mom
As they should.
Is it the boobage?
Alex's mom has it going on
@@desolark8616 yes.
@@peppermillers8361 It's definitely the glasses.
I kind of hate the creator of _YIIK_ on principle. Games are both toys *and* art, and being the former doesn't somehow diminish its status as the latter.
It's a necessary concession when games can ask for dozens, sometimes hundreds of hours to fully experience: an artist is no more entitled to an audience for their art as anyone else would be to have artists make works of art for them for free, and while audiences can have a lot of benefit of the doubt to give, if you end up taking the piss it's going to annoy people.
_YIIK_ makes it clear from its title that it's supposed to be weird and inaccessible just from calling itself 'A Postmodern RPG', so players are going to go in assuming it has something to say. Calling them out for then expecting the game to say something and suggesting that doing so is self-centered and manipulative is essentially asking people to pay $20 so they can be insulted in a verbose fashion for 20 hours.
_Undertale_ could call the player a monster for a Genocide run because the player has to both choose to start down that path and then choose to stay on it in spite of the game trying VERY hard to get you to turn away. This all served to reinforce the more positive message of the pacifist ending, because you didn't HAVE to do things the harder way.
_Spec Ops: The Line_ could do it because the genre it was in has largely been stereotyped as being little more than a Western Power Fantasy, and a lot of people probably bought it thinking that's what it was. I have some issues with it painting escapism as an inherently bad thing - escapism is a thing everyone needs to help deal with life from time to time - but it has a message that at least has value.
_YIIK_ is essentially attacking its audience for treating Art like Art. After it essentially asked the audience to treat *it* like Art, and then forcing them to rely on the context of it being art to get any enjoyment from it by deliberately wasting time and generally being slow and dull.
"so players are going to go in assuming it has something to say."
Isn't the whole point of Postmodernism the tear-down of pretensions of meaning, exposing it with irreverence as completely arbitrary? I'm not sure I agree with tehsnakerer that it isn't a Postmodernist work - the absurd surrealist Dadaist radical contempt for its audience is pretty much what I would expect from an adherent to this movement (although I'm free to being persuaded, since I'm not too well-read in this regard).
@@roadent217
That's the catch-22 of Post-modernism.
If the message is that there is no message, and that messages are illusory, that ethos _becomes_ the message.
The artist made the work for a reason, even if that reason was to spite people attempting to figure out why they made it.
If you try to banish all meta-narratives, you wind up in a meta-narrative anyway. That's part of why the movement doesn't have much traction anymore.
@Mikhail G
Part of it is that it seems to be a train wreck - I'll be the first to admit I'm a lot more interested in hearing people dissect bad art than good.
I think your criticism of Spec-Ops is more the fault of the source material, but otherwise I totally agree.
@slimeball supreme
I feel that 'toy' only seems reductive if you allow for the implied associations to childishness to color your viewpoint.
Before mass production was a thing, and children's toys had to be made by hand, a great deal more individualized artistry was involved in their creation.
The point I was trying to make is that using the word 'toy' to disparage the medium shows a rather profound lack of awareness - being a toy doesn't make something lesser anymore than being art makes it greater in and of itself.
So YIIK is just a frustratingly tinged revenge porn from the developer to his audience, that's what I got out of this.
It's revenge porn that plagiarizes and uses an actual tragedy all because "gamers" didn't like their first buggy game.
They say spite can be a good motivator, but this is too much .
The worst thing is that on paper YIIK sounds like something I could get behind. An rpg based on conspiracy theories, paranoia, mind bending meta narratives, 4th wall breaking and irreverent humor with a cel shaded art style that also parodies internet subculture and pop culture? Sounds right up my alley, but the end result is just so amazingly awful that it is genuinely fascinating how they managed to fuck up so consistently at every turn.
Or maybe, you have terrible tastes.
@@oh-not-the-bees7872 No need to be so negative, dude. Who made you the arbiter of tastes?
Honestly that kind shit I can also get behind, especially meta narratives with a veneer of conspiracy, one of my favorite games of all time is one called The Hex, and it's kind of like that.
I sort of agree, but for different reasons. And this video basically IS my different reason: though I haven’t played this myself, I almost want to just to dream of what could, what SHOULD have been. The writing here made several missteps and, well, got derailed by grief, but the core is completely workable.
Both of Snake’s Windtown segments sum up this feeling in microcosm, rationalizing how a few tweaks could have made this brilliant, versus the actual product ending up contradictory and/or hostile.
It's trailer came out and was immediately despised. On paper it's worse.
i've been following the twitter updates for a billion trillion years... it's finally here...
I watched a recent LP done by a friend, co-comentated by Gamedawg, and they showed off the Combat Update, which was complete up through the end of Rory's dungeon but could be played through the entire game, and there are four big changes so far.
1. Enemies have rebalanced stats, they have less health, more damage, making random encounters shorter, and death an actual possibility.
2. The original attack minigames for every character have been turned into "Beatdown", a universal, 2 SP attack that uses their respective original attacks for bonus damage, and their new attacks are all the same timing minigame, with a different visual flair for each character (Alex has a spinning Record, hit the Yellow section once, Micheal has a shrinking camera focus, get it in the perfect size, Vella has a keyboard and a hand moving from left to right, time its stop with the highlighted zone).
3. Rory went from F- tier as a party member, to S+, because enemies hit harder, his ability to tank hits is ACTUALLY helpful, even when you have unchanged Chondra spamming share items every round, his protect command, instead of covering a single party member, now covers the entire team for two turns, letting him throw items/use his other skills without missing a turn of protection, and finally, every time Rory intercepts an attack, he damages the enemy in retaliation, it won't kill the enemy, but it can cause serious damage, and it adds up over time. He is, without a doubt, the best party member after the combat update.
4. Elements, they were clearly the most recent change, since most enemies don't have them, most attacks don't have them, and they aren't explained anywhere in the game yet. They do what you expect them to, some attacks hit harder/weaker based on elemental comparison. I remember that there was Fire, Water, Earth, Sound and Joker. Joker hit strong on every element, and was tied to Chondra's Flaming Hola-hoop (Her ultimate weapon from the Friendship events).
I love that you fuck with all the cutscenes by holding something or popping down panda. Visual gag makes YIIK dialogue somewhat tolerable.
That last 30 minutes felt like an extra 2 hours tagged onto the video. It really contextualized a lot of my own thoughts of this game I couldnt put into words. What a bitter disaster this game was.
Actually, part of the "third ending" IS accessible in the game! There's a way to glitch out of bounds during the calendar section and get inside. ...Unfortunately, the game softlocks before you can reach the end of the Essentia tutorial section, but still. I can send a link to a video demonstrating it, if you'd like. ...And it's not a dev account, either; it's a let's play that discovered the area totally accidentally.
I'm surprised you can see that much of it in-game, frankly. Wonder if that's just a leftover from the "TH-cam ending" build, or if there was some actual plan to integrate the third ending into the publically available game.
I'd like to see that
@@LonelySpaceDetective Wouldn't it be horrible if the YIIK Dev said "I will patch that good ending into the game if you give me positive reviews on Steam"?
id like a link?
@@Tehsnakerer th-cam.com/video/P3ZXgxuW1Sk/w-d-xo.html
I haven't tested it out myself on the latest version, but I'll let you know when I do!
it's been years and i'm still awestruck that in the cut ending Alex, of all fucking people, says "enough talking" and there's no needless 4 minute monologue, and just starts using 2 lines per textbox.
Just that being in the game would give SO MANY PEOPLE catharsis and possibly making them forgive some aspects
It honestly feels awful saying this, but it really needs to be said: Given everything that happened with the change in the original ending, the existence of the different ending with all of the "They wouldn't let me make a happy ending", and the spite they hold about the last game...
I really get the feeling that the death of their mother made the developers straight up snap and become incredibly bitter towards the world, their work, and their players. Given that they turned around and said that they "wanted to remove the cynicism from the original ending", while turning around making the new ending so utterly bleak and bitter compared to the original, makes me wonder if their worldview got completely distorted and corrupted. It's honestly tragic to see.
Bitter definitely describes it. That's probably a more charitable reading than I had, which was that the writer was so self absorbed that he felt changing his perfect fuck you ending would be a cynical move for audience sake rather than his true 'vision' then again I think of the creator of this like the guy from the house that jack built in personality.
That's exactly the vibe I get.
So what role do the other devs play in this? The Allansons aren't the only ones who worked on this crap.
@@SirBlackReeds Of course they're not. But the lead devs get the final say in the game direction, so they're the primary reason the story beats and tone are the way they are.
I find the ending of Yiik has some interesting parallels to the "Ultimatum" event from marvel comics.
Tragedy occurs in the life of the author and as a coping mechanism or a reflection of their mental state they actively sabotage the story.
Leviathan comment warning.
So, this is easily my favorite review of YIIK so far, because it's at least willing to try going into some aspects of the game that I think a lot of reviewers just... well, hate the game too much to try.
The two really odd-but-important parts of YIIK that always stuck out to me that people don't seem to focus on are 1) The Subtitle, and 2) Andrew wants people to think of YIIK as Art.
Post-modernism isn't really just some checklist to satisfy some genre of art creation. It's effectively a means for humanity to continuously question whether the fundamentals or "accepted" accumulated knowledge on a subject is actually the optimal form it should take. It's meant to challenge, and in some cases break, conventional art means to see if the result can be an alternative-or-even-superior option to standardized norms.
YIIK absolute *IS* a Post-modern RPG. Everything, every single aspect of the game, is built on that premise. It breaks EVERY rule in the book. Including having the sub-title be more important than the main title.
The way characters level up, the combat's (lack of) engagement, one attack breaking the entire game, one character being so pointless he can be missing from the final battle and most players probably won't even notice, blatantly wasting the player's time, the main character being nigh-insufferable for 99% of the game, the music choices, the art style, the Tools you get having overlapping functionality, breaking a somber moment with the Golden Alpaca, flat-out lying to the character and by extension player MULTIPLE times, treating the player like both the main character and a piece of crap, referencing prior unrelated games, unwilling endings and a final boss, the taboo of integrating recent real-world people and their deaths, the list goes on and on and on and on.
YIIK breaks them all. The standards are being challenged with a vengeance.
I think Andrew wanted to tell the best story he could under those means- to make the best ART he could under those means. And in turn, he wanted people to see those challenges and introspectively review it that way. Ask "Why do games not do it like this?" when they come across something strange in YIIK.
And in a lot of ways, I can respect that. I want to like YIIK, because it has passion put into it and has obviously had a lot of work put into its themes. I don't think everything that is actually put in the game in its current state was "intended" to be as post-modern as it is, but I can still respect it.
And you know what? I think YIIK does exactly what it set out to do. It does what a lot of post-modern art does. It proved the standard formulas work better. YIIK is a terrible game that is close to greatness, if only it would have just let itself be. It isn't just bad. It is AGGRESSIVELY bad.
I have a confession: I think Post-Modernism is a load of crap. We live in the modern age. There's nothing "post" about someone living in modern times, by definition, and certainly not with their art. It can be different, it can be weird, it can challenge conventions, it can even change art going forward, sure. But "Post-Modernism" is looking to one-up humanity's efforts to refine and improve art over its entire life-cycle; to see if everyone was actually just incredibly stupid and we could have been doing it a better way all those centuries that's counter-intuitive to what people currently like.
It comes off as pretentious self-importance at worst, and aggressively optimistic at best.
YIIK uses its subverting and disregard for normal standards to make the player question "Why don't we do this?"
The answer is because the way YIIK does it is bad. On a fundamentally satisfying-for-humanity level.
The moment I keep thinking back to is when Alex and co. visit the guy in the mountains that collects records. He's a perfect "Wise Old Man" stand-in for the Hero's Journey, a guide to provide wisdom to a a fledgling protagonist that needs a push in the right direction.
YIIK asks two questions here, in my mind at least.
1) Do Wise Old Men actually serve a function in stories, and do we need them? Why keep them?
2) Would people like it if the Wise Old Man isn't really in our party, and just a guy we consult for something the protagonist probably could have resolved on their own? Would it be okay if the guy rambles for ten minutes before getting to our core issue, including giving some of his backstory completely unprompted? Would it be fine if there really wasn't a payoff for the visit? Why not do it like YIIK does?
(I'm actually abbreviating about 15 "Why" questions into the "Why not do it like YIIK, but the answer is all the same)
The answer to 1 is Yes, Old Wise Men do serve functions. Our characters needed help, and they got it. The problem was incredibly stupid, but the character trope has its uses in modern art.
The answer to 2 is Video games don't write like YIIK, because people hate this. It frustrates them.
That's post-modernism, and that is YIIK. Originality misused not on advancing or evolving art, but by degrading it to try and find a core everyone could already see.
Mini-extra rant, as if this wasn't a novel already.
I actually sort of like the ending, what with everything coming to a close with You The Player being the only one left. You, who is another (assumedly much better and more dashing, not that it's hard) Alex really were the center of the entire YIIK story-line all along, both antagonist for starting the game at all and the protagonist that finishes it. It's... kind of mean-spirited, but not entirely without merit. Just don't think about how many Alex/Sammy's are actually running around in game, or you'll start to wonder if literally the entire cast is just different versions of their soul.
Plus I just really like the Proto-Alex and Proto-Essentia designs and aesthetics of the last sequence. It's just cool to me.
I especially liked the interaction with the 4th TH-cam ending and the one in the game. Like, if you beat the game ten-times or do some trigger methods You could actually "beat" the game. Alex specifically recruits You into his party at the end of the game to continue his fight past what he alone can do. The 4th ending would have been a perfect meta execution of that. You interact with the game past what should normally be feasible for the characters alone to achieve a victory that shouldn't be possible. You see the setup of the game's events, and fix them in ways Alex never could. YOU, the last party member, use the fact that you exist outside the game to finish the fight. I actually like and respect that.
....At least I did, until the data-miners found IT'S NOT IN THE GAME. Maybe it's supposed to be modded in or some other unreasonable expectation. That's past the point of a party member putting their all into finishing a fight. That's them recreating the entire world to be something different.
That's just a cruel mistreatment of reliance and respect. An ending that congratulates a player that You, the viewer, can NEVER achieve. The video hit the nail on the head for this one. It's just mean.
I think your analysis is on-point. I think most people hate the game because they misunderstand it. I'm not saying it shouldn't be hated, but 99% of people are hating it for the most surface level of reasons.
I disagree with your points on postmodernism, mainly because old story traditions, cliches, etc, were super fucking yikes-y (black face in old films, anyone?) to most people. I think to uncritically believe that the way something has been done is the best way to do it will inevitably lead to stagnation in anything, especially art. YIIK, is a terrible piece of art from near any angle.
@@thecynicalone7655 You know... you bring up a fair and good point. I was narrowing my judgement and disdain for "post-modernism" based on a perceived arrogance on the part of the creator(s), without considering the sheer importance of its potential benefits.
Art, as an extension of society, needs to constantly evolve and grow to better benefit and stimulate people. It's wholly plausible that methodical, routine methods of "growing" art might not actually lead to the best results. It's not necessarily a bad thing for artists to use unconventional or seemingly irrational means to try and explore alternatives.
The results will undoubtedly lead to oceans of crap to wade through to find just small handfuls of worthy change, but that alone shouldn't really dissuade artists from trying. We wouldn't have those treasures if they didn't.
I still think that the term "post-modernism" itself is a bit misleading, but I think I can appreciate the creed behind it a bit better. So thank you. I'll still like what I like and dislike what I dislike, but maybe it's not so bad if people aim outside those expectations entirely.
Even if it produces things like YIIK sometimes.
@@0ctopusComp1etely I think what really separates YIIK from other examples of postmodern art is that YIIK doesn't point out crucial conundrums, at least not in a constructive way. No one plays RPGS and goes "Woah, this old man is expositing on me. Isn't that CRINGE????" or something. We ask questions like "Why can't I have more freedom in the plot", "Why is the main character being treated in this way? Why is it fair for the world to revolve around me" or stuff like "Why is the game wasting my time with these meaningless fetch quests? Aren't I supposed to be doing something more important"?
In essence, it's confusing tropes for plot structure and vice versa, and thinking that those elements need to be dissected and made fun of when they, in actuality, help hold up the plot and keep things coherent. It would be like renovating a house and choosing to rip out and carefully examine each and every nail in the entire building instead of looking at potential problem areas and moving to fix them first.
I also don't necessarily agree about your summarization of postmodernism. In my experience most postmodern pieces of art take apart and examine tropes in order to see how they function, before re-inserting them back into the medium to support other elements of the collective piece of art. For instance, Undertale takes the "Why can't I have more freedom in the plot" question and builds the entire game around the answer- "Because most people aren't ready to handle the consequences". This answer informs the combat system with the kill/spare mechanic, the story with the relationship and power imbalance between humans and monsters being explored, and the themes of the story and it's commentary on violence. It essentially gives the player power within the narrative to kill whoever they like, and then uses it to further all other elements of the story, including coming back down to providing a compelling narrative. It's good stuff, and there's lots of other examples out there of people making some really excellent postmodern art that challenges our conventions of consuming and creating media, but there's a lot of OTHER examples of people fucking up super hard.
I think you're correct in that postmodernism is a bit filled with wankery- writers and artists who are eager to cut their teeth and prove that specific elements don't work because "LOL THIS ISN'T HOW REAL LIFE WORKS??!!?". But that's all art, in a sense. Constantly trying to say something about something else, even if what you're saying is shallow. I believe that postmodernism, by it's high-concept nature, tends to elevate these artists to a point where their fairly innocent-but-poorly-thought-out "criticisms" become much more negatively infused then they perhaps assumed. It is one thing to point out clichés and laugh at them, it is another to point out clichés and proclaim that they do not work as narrative or thematic tools, which is necessary by the structure of being postmodern. YIIK's abrasiveness comes from this deep seated confusion on the importance of tropes versus narrative storytelling, and the eagerness to prove these elements wrong.
Considering the creator's reaction to criticism and their history as outlined by this video, I wouldn't be surprised if this anger came from a very dark and personal place. It is difficult to understand why people would love something that frustrates you, especially if you're doing through serious issues.
I have problems with Post-Modernism too; but one thing I feel inclined to address is that we are NOT living in the modern age, that ended back in 1950~ This is the contemporary age or sometimes called... postmodern. So while you are right "there's nothing post about someone living in modern times" that hasn't applied to people in quite a long time, there is nothing "misleading" about the name
A very interesting detail with the cut ending-Essentia mentioned she specifically sought out “good” versions of Alex to fight Proto Alex, but those other versions of him died. The only version of Alex who succeeded was the one who needed to recognize his worst qualities, grow, and mature as a person. It’s actually a really good reflection of character development, along with the other dialogue you mentioned.
As disappointed as I am that this finale was cut, I’m actually glad it exists. I think it reaffirms the point you made at the end-there’s definitely potential for a good game here if the devs don’t undercut themselves. With the recent update, I think they’ve become more responsive to feedback, so that makes me optimistic.
Oh wow, someone actually read my godawful Let's Play. I should credit Grandmaparty and the people from Something Awful who posted in Grandmaparty's original Let's Play thread. I don't have an SA account so I don't know who those people were, but they provided among other things a complete datamine of the game and a video of the unused content that I thought was new in that video - I think you can access it with Cheat Engine wizardry, but obviously the things in that third ending video go well beyond what you could do in Cheat Engine.
I was still young and naive when I made that post about the third ending, and didn't realize that the reason they probably didn't just LP Toss through everything is that doing that softlocks the game if you try it against the final bosses. For some reason, the meteor bossfight (and the subsequent Proto-Alex/Essentia bossfight) have scripting that breaks if they're reduced to 0 HP. They don't die, the game just softlocks. I didn't know this when I made that post because I had actually hit the meteor softlock halfway through recording the first ending and gave up for the day, hence why I thought the Alex/Essentia models were new when in fact I hadn't seen them yet.
Great video, though. I feel like if nothing else, YIIK is to game development what the Therac-25 is to computer science, and discourse like this gives a valuable lesson to new game devs in what not to do.
Don't be so down, it was a fun read and honestly I'm glad for people still doing SSLPs, I'm happy you enjoyed the video!
@@Tehsnakerer Glad to hear you enjoyed my LP. I'm also glad you pointed out in the video that they're doing a "content update" because I had no idea and now I'm just waiting for it to drop.
YO I WAS JUST REWATCHING RUNNING SHINES YIIK REVIEW THE OTHER DAY
Same. This game has invaded my mind after watching so many reviews and videos on it.
Calvin_Coolage I’ve seen so many reviews I’ve watched that three parter so many times
and the invasion got me
@@mogfoil I've yet to watch that one, might have to start it after finishing this one.
Calvin_Coolage Definitely do!! It’s decent overall but thorough and the multiple parts allowed him to correct mistakes in the previous parts
21 years ago, little baby Andrews parents brought him to see the turning of the century, and as the boy joined his community in watching the ball drop, he wondered to himself.
"What if that was me and I was killing everyone?"
Well crap, if you word it like that, it actually sounds _interesting_ and fun.
Careful, you might make someone accidentally want to play YIIK.
I love the take of “well, it’s supposed to be bad/not be explained that’s part of the experience”
I could film a rotting squirrel, and filming that squirrel could be my full intention. Still doesn’t change that I’m looking at a decaying corpse.
Their intent doesn’t matter if none of the characters work, if the story is terrible and pointlessly convoluted, if the themes are nonexistent, contradictory, or both, and most painfully in a game, if the gameplay is tiresome and repetitive.
It still matters, it just doesn't make the game better; the game is bad, very bad, but it's also very, very fascinating at the same time.
@Rando "A Masterpiece that doesn't deserve a single ounce of praise" is my new favorite description for YIIK.
Thank you.
"A masterpiece that doesn't deserve a single ounce of praise", or more succintly, a masterpiece-of-shit
from my own TWO playthroughs the biggest thing that stuck with me is how the story felt like it was written completely independently of itself. You mention the three scripts and how they barely interact, but to me it feels like every chapter was written by a different person who only had the cliffnotes of the last chapter and had to build off of it, like a bizarre game of telephone. Everything about the game establishing rules only to break them in the next chapter really brings that feeling home, and it feels like the during the whole game the intended message and meaning changes with each new chapter.
As always, great video. Looking forward to the next!
Also I don't mean to be a prick and advertise other channels here, but if anyone is fiending for more Yiik content, my buddy One Doomed Game Critic posted a slightly over 4 hour long video of our experiences with the game. I feel it wouldn't be right to drop a direct link to the vid here, but just searching "one doomed game critic yiik" should bring anyone to it.
@@stickyrick1939 Oh tell me more about him and his content.
two playthroughs? What is your damage?
I'm consistently impressed by your willingness to engage with a piece of media well past the point others would have written it off. So frequently I see people approach these types of things with an almost aggressive incuriosity, and it's so so refreshing to see somebody who understands that a text can have meaning even if the text's quality is poor. This was really really great work, the rapidly increasing quality of your videos has been super exciting to watch
I feel like an irony to all of this is that YIIK and how deep this video read into it proves that games are art, but from a less ironic perspective also goes to show that bad art is still art and can still be read into, and arguably still deserves it as much as good art even if it doesn't change anyone's opinion.
I think it says something that YIIK has become popular, not because of any quality but because of the massive lack in it. The enjoyment derived from dissecting this disaster of a story is more interesting than anything the story actually offers, even though I would never touch the game with a ten foot pole, I love to hear it be torn to pieces.
Man after finally hearing a solid interpretation of the game's plot I'm kinda pissed. Not because I think the game's plot is bad or offensive, but because the rest of the game is so shit and spiteful that its basically wastes it
"If a person goes at a dartboard with a shotgun, it's not the same when they hit a bullseye.
You don't need text for subtext; sub-ing subtext for text takes a toll on texture and substance."
~ The best writing/delivery I've heard in quite awhile
And that's after so many fantastic lines only ten minutes prior:
"Alex narrates everything: You could take all the ventilation in the world, jam it together-- and it still wouldn't be half as long-winded as this c***."
"I get Alex is a moronic blowhard, and that we should take everything he says with a grain of salt... but man, that's enough sodium for a f***ing heart attack."
"YIIK neglects and doesn't use the tools it's medium provides; not-so-much because it's doing a Pastiche, as much as it is because it's Taking the Piss."
And, love this one:
"You want to be a book, but you're just showing a total lack of spine."
As someone who is both a fan of RPGs and is also a literature student, this game hurts me on so many levels...
I know exactly how you feel... This game reminds me of those 400,000+ word "magnum opus" novels sent off to agents that can't have anything cut because it's all important.
Now instead of rewatching the Running Shine video a thousand times, I can rewatch this a thousand times as well.
I think something that wannabe novelists need to keep in mind is that the narrator's tone *matters.* If your narrator is unlikable, it'll color the audience's entire experience. The *main character* doesn't have to be the narrator, and the *main character* can be an unlikable prick, or a creep, or sleazy, but for god's sake, don't let their voice be the one that defines your story. There's a reason The Great Gatsby isn't told by Gatsby.
Not to mention, that a key part of story telling is that a character can be annoying to other characters, but they should never annoy the audience. Annoyance and boredom are the most likely emotions to turn off a player. Even the most horrific and controversial games with morally dubious or unethical main characters still have players who are interested because the story or gameplay is intriguing. Once your audience is too bored to care about what’s happening, or too annoyed and frustrated to engage, and there is nothing to accommodate those feelings, people will drop it, and it’s no one’s fault but the developers.
I wouldn't say an unlikeable narrator is impossible, because I think it's done well in Catcher in the Rye, but in every case it will cause a split audience with some people just not liking the story because of it, and that's fine of course as an opinion.
@YellowpowR I’d say your example emphasizes that an unlikeable narrator still has to compensate by being an *interesting* perspective to follow; choosing them as a narrator still has to say something. Holden is a teenage kid who says shitty things, makes ill-advised decisions, and gets into some unusual or awkward situations because he’s lashing out due to depression, which may make for a character who tries someone’s patience to follow, but it’s not unsubstantial and can even be moving and an easy thing to relate to.
Alex, by contrast, is just… *vapid.* And sure, according to Allanson, that’s apparently part of the point, but “he’s a vapid and arrogant guy who needs to learn to be worthy of the importance he has dropped into his lap or else” isn’t well-conveyed by the way he’s presented until how boring and self-centered his character simply *is* has outstayed its welcome by being allowed so much time to ramble to mood music and be easily forgiven for callous or skeevy behavior several times over.
@@blueblank8287 Oh yeah, I'm not saying YIIK executed the idea to any degree of positivity, quite the opposite. I'm just saying a character can be unlikeable if they're interesting in their perspective. (Running Shine made a good point about this in _their_ YIIK review, which this review must take inspiration from, due to a couple of references to that video in this video.)
i learn so much about writing from watching these videos and reading the comments. shame i don't write, really.
Having now watched this video in full, I'm amazed at how much you pulled apart here. The music in particular blew my mind. I cannot believe i never picked up on Alex's theme. I think the removed ending is the entire point of the game, at that. Ending D is what it all comes down to. This game isn't made to give you closure, nor a point. You sit here and drool over its vacuous bullshit. Those who really matter get their good ending, and you never will, because in the devs' eyes, you're a mouthbreathing ingrate who won't know what to do with a good ending if they saw one.
You know, part of me feels really bad for the guy, given what he went through with his mother and how tragic that all was, but another, bigger part of me is comfortable in finding him a detestable self-important asshole despite that.
@@jor4114 I'll have to agree. YIIK is exactly what it had to be for everyone involved. It's horrible, it's traumatizing, it's a little like a lovecraftian artifact, but it shouldn't be anything else. I'm sort of glad it exists, even if it sapped so much of my time and sanity away.
Never clicked on a video so fast in my life
EDIT: Holy shit you added a Gaming in the Clinton Years reference i didnt know anyone else remembered that
Retsupurae is the only reason I know what that is haha
Caddicarus did a pretty great video about that.
don’t forget the 50 cent: blood on the sand footage in there as well
@@christianj2361 legitimately a good game
Man I miss retsupurae
Honestly the Mark/Alex conversation about metal music just kinda proves that not only does Andrew not know anything about 90's culture, but he made a game all about making fun of things and doesn't know anything about half of them. The game's writing is all through the lens of how *he* experienced the 90's or what *he* remembers of it.
Alex refers to metal music as being marred by "teased hair and bad fashion" and being "so 80's," but the game takes place in 1999. Nu metal had been around for years at that point, if Andrew bothered doing any research maybe he could have snuck in a clever quip about the culture.
"I dunno I like the passion in the music but the bagpipes and DJs are a bit much," or some kind of jab at the tracksuits, jorts and frosted tips. Mark's rant about how metal music is a force for social good sounds like it would be better applied to the punk scene. Try harder than not at all, Andrew
I'm still not sure wether or not Vella's amp is a The Dillinger Escape Plan reference or not.
@@wolfgangervin2582 It probably is
My cousin had a fuckin Slipknot poster in 1997. This game is written like somebody was born in 1999 and looks at the 90s through vaporwave TH-cam videos
Honestly, the idea of it being more how Andrew remembers the 90’s instead of the 90’s themselves sounds quite interesting. Like the rest of the good ideas here, however, the execution is botched to hell.
Actually, the game kind of gives him an out, or would have if it was addressed. The whole parallel worlds crap: all taking place in world’s where Andrew’s version of the 90’s WAS the 90’s. But, that’s just how YIIK is: a series of terrible executions of good ideas, making it very easy for casual observers to write a better narrative from the same parts.
I recall pure metal music being called dino music by the 90a but it got more appreciated in the 2000s. I was 6 to 9 in 96 and 99, no internet in sight. I knew that but not this guy?
That whole "interesting ideas with little payoffs" makes me think that Andrew needs another writer who can work off his ideas to frame them correctly. This was an amazing analysis on this game, also that ending getting cut is sad.
This is pure speculation on my part but I think both of your interpretations are true or at least have bits of truth. Somewhere down the line Alex turned into what his was in the final release. I think originally what the brothers were going for was your second reading or at least a version of that. Once the game probably wasn't as antagonistic towards Alex or the audience as it is now. But when their mother got diagnosed and their hatred of their audience started to grow.
We were the ones they were making this game for, we were the ones taking time away from them spending time with their mother. It was just a happy coincidence that they had a audience surrogate right in the game. That's why the much better ending got cut, why the game feels so disjointed. Half of it was made by another set of brothers, from a time before their grief. Or at least the concept for the game was made in a time before their grief. The ending was cut because it was too cynical for them to put it in because we as the audience deserve the ending we got. We should in their eyes feel guilty and admit that guilt. They had to make this for us and all we will do is use it up and forget or maybe even destroy it with bad reviews.
That's also probably where the two brothers reverence came from. If that game was successful, more revered and renowned then it actually was, if it sold then they wouldn't have had to make Yiik. For us. If we just understood. The people who made this don't hate us, at least not really. They're just angry.
Probably the most poetic interpretation i've read, and the one i would want to believe more than most others.
Still gotta find my own conclusion though.
Fun fact: A scene in the Mind Dungeon implies that Alex's father left in order to pursue a relationship with Rory's mother (the person with "nice legs" is in reference to how she's "all legs") which in turn implies that Rory and Carrie are actually Alex's half-siblings, Andrew himself later confirmed this to be true on the YllK Discord. This puts Alex's callous statement regarding her death as well as him potentially driving Rory to suicide in an even harsher light.
As for the NPCs, while the majority of them simply repeat the same stuff over and over there's at least one that changes their dialogue each chapter, (or at least most of them) that being the one who initially asks you about your sister. His statements are an early indicator that something strange is up as they don't seem to match up. I don't remember them exactly, but he initially asks about your sister, but later on will mention that Alex is an only child and eventually that neither he or you have a family. Another hint is in chapter 4 in an optional scene at the university where Alex mentions that his sister, Alison use to live on campus there in the all girl dorm, but Chondra tells him that there is no all girls dorm there.
I still don't understand what the deal is with the Essentia and Sammy appearing in Vella's Mind Dungeon, I get the impression that the 3 were all the same person/soul/whatever in the original script since it doesn't make much sense otherwise. Regardless, I really like your idea of having the group be more at odds with one another, especially rising tensions between Michael and Vella. There's still a lot of plot points which never get followed up on too such as when Proto-Michael makes a big deal about how reality is shifting or when they bring up that the Essentia leaves every night for some unknown reason.
Either way, I believe this was the most fair and balanced video I've seen covering this game, it's really a shame that it ended up the way that it did since there were some pretty interesting ideas here and there.
Alright, so I now have an official explanation regarding Sammy and the Essentia's presence in the Mind Dungeon. Firstly Sammy and Vella are parallel versions of one another, I presume that must mean Vella entered that reality around the time that Sammy left. Anyway, as we already know it's possible to view alternate versions of yourself from within the Mind Dungeon, hence Sammy's presence in Vella's. This is also why the Essentia doesn't want you snooping around the doors in your Mind Dungeon when given the opportunity since her whole false narrative would have fallen apart if you did. Additionally, people who make large impacts on the collective psyche of you and your parallel-selves can appear in some form within your Mind Dungeon. Apparently that is why Essentia is there, but can't be accessed, the reason Essentia appears in Vella's Mind Dungeon, but Vella and Sammy do not appear in her's is because they don't mean anything to her nor have any meaningful impact on her.
Additionally, it's apparently through the suffering of others which allows the Essentia to enter a broken reality in physical form. When Alex decides to peruse the Mystical Ultima LP Legend against Vella's wishes he ends up opening old wounds regarding the painful memories surrounding its creation. The vulnerability she feels is the key needed for the Essentia to proceed with her goals as it will result in allowing her the means of physically influencing events in that reality from that point onward.
There's still a lot of other unanswered questions, but it seems that at least some of them may potentially be answered in the eventual story update.
"Minor story spoilers for Shut up and Jam Gaiden."
Yo but can we get a review video on that masterpiece?
The absolute madness of the sequel's development is a rabbit hole in and of itself.
One of the Shut Up and Jam Gaiden 2 devs spilled the beans on SomethingAwful, detailing how the whole project just collapsed, and they could hardly ever get in touch with Cboyardee (he's very elusive). People didn't get paid or were paid to do half-assed work, like copypasting a single generic NPC to fill maps instead of properly flagging dialogue and whatnot. They switched genres and it became like a topdown shooter with a million guns and they had a bunch of half-coded game mechanics they kept trying to add.
@@Antiformed that sounds like an absolute shitshow but also sounds super interesting.
@@Antiformed I honestly thought it was all 100% intentional on their part as some kind of post-modern art piece on the state of the games industry. It's a shame to find out, no, it was just genuine development hell.
@@Antiformed Honestly it's both funny and heartbreaking because Shut Up and Jam Gaiden is a lovely thing and the sequel would have been great if it was just more of the same, but better and bigger. Feature creep is such a lethal thing for creative projects
Sequel never ever, that's money I'll never see again
I could have swore you had released a video on this game already but hey.
Maybe Reality is Breaking.
mandela effect.txt
I love how Tehsnakerer, RunningShine, and Jack Saint all had very unique takes going at the game from different angles and in different styles.
Just like snake said, a bunch of people looking at this game and similar complaints, yet each finding something unique.
Thank you for the wonderful background noise for my reading. This is such a clusterfuck of a game with the worst parts of every crowdfunded project just kind of mushed into it. Hell its a sad sign that an isometric real time tactical roguelite (like)( I don’t really care to think about the differences) like Brigador has better writing, gameplay, storytelling, and artwork. YIIK feels like the caricature of every Death Stranding review blurb of “Kojima just showed how much he needed an editor”.
I hadn't even considered playing this game before now and watching this video made me both hate it and think more about it than it deserves. By helping it accomplish that goal you've actually advanced its malign purpose further forward. I hope you're happy with yourself
I am
13:33
"The game treats Panda as the first tool we get, but we already met Alex".
*Italian hand kiss off motion*
The use of the colon in the title is interesting. "Playing: YIIK Made Me Think" implies less sarcasm than "Playing YIIK: Made Me Think"
I'll probably see why you did that as soon as I can find 3 hours of free time lmao. Looking forward to it, though.
that title has more meaning to it than you might expect. won't spoil it for you though, but you're onto something.
This reply wont trigger a notification so I doubt you'll see it, but that was a great video man. Amazing how clear your thoughts are considering how complicated the subject is, even if that complication just comes from the sheer volume of words that the game threw at you. It shows that the time spent grappling with your thoughts paid off, but I'll let you decide if it was worth it ;). Struggling with a project for that long is really rough, but its great to see you've pulled through with minimal sanity loss. Can't wait for what's next. Hopefully it induces less actual suffering than what your voice betrays at 4:58 lol
It's poetic how Andrew called himself a jerk when trying to call everyone else one.
I actually really like your ideas for the party dynamic. Michael and Vella butting heads over their knowledge on the paranormal, Alex using both of them just for his own interest of tracking down Sammy, Rory just tagging along as in regret for the sewer incident, it's all great.
"You want to he a book, but you're just showing a total lack of spine"
ooh that was good
Tehsnakerer' ability to see deep into the games is remarkable. What about trying something with actual good writing? Pathologic or Disco Elysium, for example?
I've got something good for next time, and a little lighter than this
@@Tehsnakerer "A little lighter than this"
Reviews a game about one of the bloodiest points in human history.
@@kingnewgameplus6483 Gotta keep people on their toes
@@Tehsnakerer I don't know if you've heard of it but can you try reviewing the new Frontier mod for Fallout: New Vegas?
@@b3nl555 I'm not very interested in it I'm afraid
I had this on in the background until you got to your readings, which really humanized the devs but didn't let them off the hook for, well, everything. Wound up fiercely paying attention by that point, and I think it was sweet of you to understand and be empathetic toward the circumstances around the two brothers.
The developers of Yick promised years ago a remake of their horribly broken first game, Two Brothers. It still hasn't happened. Don't hold your breath for any updates to this.
It's almost certainly actually happening in a week. I don't know what made them do it for YIIK exactly and not Two Brothers, but all signs point to it really being true, even down to people as of when this video came out talking about a beta to the update. There's even a fairly detailed changelog on their website, with it also mentioning that there would be an option for less monologuing and that the golden alpaca scene would be completely redone (and now he's voiced by D.C. Douglass; that's relevant apparently).
I'm excited to finally be able to show it to other people with it having better gameplay; I would be very shocked if it somehow got worse.
Here is the changelog:
www.ackkstudios.com/news/yiik-v125-release
its out bix
If YIIK is Persona, then imagine instead of playing a blank slate protagonist who must confront Death or find Truth by making bonds, you play as Mitsou and the entire game is just his dungeon.
I would rather die thank you
I’d rather imagine chucking my ribs of a bridge thank you very much
It's more like the bastard of Persona and Earthbound, and it turns out they're siblings.
@@SirBlackReeds So YIIK is inbred?
@@thelittleredhairedgirlfrom6527 Yes
This video put me on such a fucking rabbit hole for this damned game. I've watched it god knows how many times these past few years and even after playing the game itself to 100% I still feel so mystified. This game is an anomaly that escapes my mind and hearing you put it into words is so fascinating. You have nothing but my respect for being able to vocalize YIIK because I sure as hell can't. Hopefully this will be an easier task when the IV update comes out.
The protagonist wears a shirt that has an attributed quote from the guys who made the game... yikes.
And wow, the writer really does present the self-indulgence of an amateur. It has raw talent but lacks the experience or knowledge to do it well. It _really_ reminds me of the first drafts of a 'magnum opus' that the creator is too close to, to realize its faults. I am simultaneously impressed, and embarrassed.
There's also many references to the game they made previously that wasn't liked at all
The creator even managed to get himself an Easter egg of his game in another (competent) game (Va11-hall-A) while he was doing his kick-starter, where YIIK is described as "the best game ever", shaking the concept of games as art to its core and other things like this, which makes him look even more like a smug ass.
more like yiik am i right hahaha god dammit
@@teecee1827 Maybe in a sense, it was right
Your pfp is fucking legendary mate