Is this the guy who shat in Oney's toilet so hard that he burned down the house then made a video essay about how it was Oney's fault for being rude to him?
This is like Scott Pilgrim but instead of learning to be better to those he relies on. The man character learns that all of his friends and family are disposable and he is the most special boy in the universe
Its funny cuz Scott is supposed to be an emotionally detached dick. But he does grow. But don't compare my boy Scott to this mixture of hipster and edge. Scott is a lovable dweeb
The quote from the dev speaks volumes. He's so obsessed with making people think he's smart that he calls people stupid for not liking his "smart" game. He has no sense of self-awareness.
@Shaman Xeed even if we ignore all the great games that are meaningful and made an impact on peoples lives, he's still wrong because this game is pretentious shit and would have been shit in any medium.
Naruhito Da Grandaddy of Japan yeah the biggest problem is that Alex is an egocentric jackass who is actually proven to be right for thinking that way. He is literally the center of every universe, which greatly conflicts with the game's messaging.
The bachelor from pathologic is probably the best example of an unlikable playable character, literally every choice of speech check he has is just him being an asshole and the stuff you do as him ends up actively fucking you over when you play as the other characters, granted being an asshole is basically unavoidable as the bachelor but the game actually keeps the same tone the entire time, aka everything sucks, fuck you, this will be so painful that it will become pleasurable, oh you want to have loads of money? That's fine we'll just increase the price of everything so much that all your money is now worthless, deal with it pussy.
There's a video asserting that he's the creators self insert and the game is just a way from him to ship himself with a girl from a real life murder case
@@creed8712 Aren't GTA main characters usually shown as morally superior to all the other criminals they work with/for? I remember at least some GTA IV cutscenes trying to make it seem like the main character has some standards and codes of honor, despite it going against all the gameplay and most missions in the game. Even Hitman from the Hitman games, the most famous anti-hero in gaming probably, assassinates people who are complete scumbags and criminals. There honestly isn't that many video games (that include a story) where the main character is just flatout bad.
@@Assimandeli eh. When a guy double crosses you it makes him look worse than you because of framing. As for Hitman most people who hire him are doing it for vendetta or because his actions will help them in some way. As far as 47 is concerned he isn’t a hero or anti hero he’s just doing his job. The only reason it’s frowned upon going in and slaughtering everyone is for purely professional reasons
@@AverageUsernames Well, to be more precisely, he said to give the game a chance, because he thought it look good. But when the game came out and the creator was like “oh video games aren’t art” Then he headed tf out
So, you don’t think video games are art? Or are you modernists who think certain mediums are only allowed to hit certain notes, like saying that cartoons can only be for children?
I feel like even I, a slightly above average writer at best, could make a more compelling story than this, and unlike the asswipe behind this game I actually understand that people are inevitably going to dislike something, especially if it's needlessly convoluted or just flat out bad!
Because regardless of how much artistic merit there is in the story, music, or visuals, they're all beholden to how good the gameplay is. You know, the thing that makes videogames... well, videogames. When I say games are the museum, I mean that almost literally. The building is the structure that contains its primary function. In the case of gaming, the gameplay is the fundamental aspect. You can go from Ace Combat to a pilot training simulatior where the only changes are the controls. Would you call those simulators pilots train in "art"? They're techincally videogames. Would you call a government building "art"? What if you repurpose that same building as a museum. Is it now considered "art"? That's why games are more like architecture than art. I mean, a building can be pretty, have some superb arches or sculptures that would make Michael Angelo blush, but if the structure topples and crumbles then what's the point of all those embellishments?
@@brian0057 architecture can also be art, you dingus. Just because something has a practical purpose doesn’t mean it isn’t art... Also there are plenty of games without a focus on gameplay in the traditional sense: visual novels, walking simulators, interactive fiction, etc.
Br'er Jethro Honestly Alex, kinda makes me despise that outfit and that’s a shame because it’s a pretty cool outfit but Alex ruins it because i will think of him everytime i see it.
Problem with storytellers like these is they tend to tell the story from a single voice, so they are pretty much strawmanning everything as what they believe to be the right response without considering the variable of the personalities around said characters.
I get what you mean with Scott pilgrim and earthbound but I’m not sure YIIK had a weird shoehorned system were you hang out with characters that never progress outside of their social link/ confidant. YIIK just doesn’t develop the characters. Also before someone tells me to play the first persona games I have and I really like them
@@Grey-i2o im really glad you like them! I personally meant the uh...weird theming of Persona 4 and 5. I dunno, it's been months since I made that comment.
A Player: "Yo, Alex is kind of an unlikeable piece of shit and I hate listening to him breath." Dev: " Duh that's the fuckin point! You just don't understand what I was doing with the character!! Gamers are so uncultured ffs!!! "
So true. What's sad is that is what had become of modern art, it can't be critisized or interpreted, and therefore it can not be improved nor can it change. This game is a great example of that.
" durr I'm so quirky and unique for making a game with a game with a protagonist who does bad stuff and is unlikable unlike those other games where every main character is a model citizen " James earl cash - manhunt A death row inmate who kills without remorse
Ikr? That mindset of "People didn't like the thing I made so they're in the wrong because I'm always right" drives me nuts. I think that these people need to realize that they can get things wrong sometimes. We're humans and we make mistakes. Instead of blaming his failures on others and plugging his ears and running away, he needs to face his criticism head on and make a better product next time. HOO sorry about this long response. Just had to rant about this.
Not to mention condescending. I will never understand the mentality of "I made a game that got heavily criticized and made fun of. Therefor all gamers are children." I swear man, those kinds of people have problems. Even *if* gamers were all mouth breathers (which obv the majority aren't), why would you be in an industry that caters to that audience if you hate them so much? Why even bother? If that's your audience, you serve them. They don't serve you. Period. Shitting on your audience and any potential fans you may have had will not reassure people to keep coming back.
He made the game with the intention of being art. Because he didn’t realise he failed that, I can see where he got that conclusion. It’s just so fundamentally wrong that it hurts
You know, this game could have been something good. If he took the criticisms and made a new game with the faults of the old in mind, there really could have been a gem there. But pride blinds. And him saying games are just toys, I guess he never really loved games to begin with if that's all he he's them as.
It was an unrehearsed on the spot speech given in a podcast with his friend. I just figured it was worth defending since I actually like the developer and his games
Oh, but he's right, you can't *talk* about anything meaningful or thought provoking in a video game. The player is supposed to *experience* something meaningful and thought provoking. Perhaps if he'd realized that his goal as a game developer is to make the player *experience* things instead of trying to outright *tell* them things, his game would have been better.
@@Tamaki742 *Makes a game based on the mother series, a series with themes of family bonding being stronger than inate instinct and how the love and connections between people can be more powerful than any other emotion even enough that hearing the song his mother sang to him as a child causes the big bad to be so overcome with feelings that he can no longer exist as physical being, and follows that up with a game that follows a broken family as it's characters deal with the idea of loved ones dying for no reason other than to fuel to cogs of a society that forced itself upon them for the benefit not of the common people but of one powerful person who uses people like playthings and pits brother against brother in a vain pursuit of something that no longer exists, and ends with the world being ended and reborn for a second time based on the sheer human desire to keep existing not for ourselves, but the people around us." YIIK Dev: "Yeah i made a game inspired by the mother series but I don't think video games can say anything meaningful or thought provoking"
To be fair, that's the only time Alex is absolutely on the right. Rory himself called Alex under the pretense that he knew shit, talking a bunch of nonsense and then dragged Alex into that mess in the sewers for no reason. It was a waste of time. So Alex flipping out on him is reasonable, imo. Like, sure, maybe he could've been a little nicer, but the fact that he got scammed remains.
@@bazzjedimaster they dont get that doing that makes even more lousy feeling. cmon, you need an actual character with humorous tendencies that could be meme worthy. sure something made specifically for a meme works but that's pretty rare
he's the child, just because someone critiqued his game he's allowed to call them children, everyone has a opinion he can't hate people for disliking his game
Sometimes they can be like toys. Reason why is because anyone can play game differently, and toys are a lot of fun! The way he described it was flawed. I do not think he knows what toys are truly for.
You could hate on something by making something better or you could hate something because of your own convenience. He chose the former, and I could respect that.
@boulderguy888 why? And that's fine, it's definitely not a game for everyone. However, at least it has merits in characters, in story, in motifs, and it handles each of these with some level of respect. YIIK, uh, doesn't.
@boulderguy888 why? thats a totally fine opinion. Not everything is made for everyone, and the fact that you can recognize its strength separate to your personal taste is admirable
@@danialyousaf6456 Because not only does it speak about a powerful subject - the cycle of abuse, hurt and grief that can extend through generations - in an honest fashion, which is refreshing to see, it also does it in an interesting world, with funny characters, events, and a genuinely engaging combat system where every skill, item and party member counts, instead of the typical "do big damage, heal sometimes if you need", and has choices that genuinely impact gameplay, like a choice between losing an arm (which comes with stat downs and blocked moves), and a party member that permanently leaves. Overall, that's why I personally like the game.
@@papasscooperiaworker3649 It's slang and kind of a meme. It's when you agree with someone's opinion and voice your assertation. It's sometimes used ironically.
I think unlikable protagonists can be summed up like this: Protagonists are the characters you spend the most time in the story with, so if you want them to be unlikable, you have to make them interesting/entertaining, otherwise the audience is stuck with a character that annoys them for the entire story.
The actual Y2K: An example of an era where technology was an increasing necessity while about to potentially fall on top of itself due to a limitation decades prior. People and corporations had to adapt to the times by better educating themselves in modern hardware to prevent the hardest blunt of Y2K occurring. YIIK: Some asshole in a stylized 90s setting is super important. I feel like the actual Y2K had deeper themes than whatever metanarrative this game tried to present.
I could imagine a sci-fi story that uses allegory to the event. The idea of these technological bottlenecks leading to huge disasters is super interesting.
@@MachineMan-mj4gj Agreed. There's an actually interesting theme that could be told with a story inspired by the actual Y2K events, but it's clearly not found here.
A pep talk from a character, who themself is from another one of the developers games, is the videogame equivalent of a dmnpc saving a dungeons and dragons party from an overturned boss
The best part is that the character talks about how if people try to bring you down you should ignore them and keep going anyway. Fun fact, the game he was from received very little positive criticism.
The only people he likes are ones he wants to sleep with, the "friends" are just props, and the "villains" are there just long enough for him to kill them in some impossible fashion. Sounds pretty Stu-y to me.
I don't think the dev even knows what "post-modernism" means. There's nothing post-modern about this game, it's just a quirky RPG with blocky graphics.
@@darrelsam419 A real post-modern RPG would introduce a whole lot of unique and interesting mechanics, and then about a quarter of the way through the game, you never use them again. And the cycle would repeat. It probably wouldn't be a very fun game.
@@thekeyandthegate4093 Yeah, it would probably be something like that. The game could look great and be fun to watch someone play, but not be fun to play it yourself. I know this isn't an RPG, but would The Neverhood be considered a post-modern game? It looks great and has a weird, artistic feel to it, but it was a lot of frustrating segments that are annoying and dumb on purpose, like the long hallway and some of the more absurd puzzles. It's more fun to watch than to play.
@@chezmix64 (Whisper-Voice activated) Now that we confirmed we're not alone, we have to Plot how to 'win' and 'get rid of the OTHERS'. The 'Non-Believers'!! ...All hail Harris... all hail harris... ...
video games are their own art is for pretentious bozos like this developer. Art and video games are two different things in my opinion. You pretend video games are art and you get this hot piece of garbage.
@@matguimond92 ever played Gris? I would call that art, good art. This is just bad/pretentious art. People like this, who make things like this, exist in every art community.
@@verbatos9498 Video games are not art period. Otherwise we end up with garbage like this. Another anime game = art lmfao. Anime is highly over rated and the fans are pretentious and pompous idiots.
Ngl chondra with a purple and white outfit looks really pleasing to the eye instead of, the pastel look she has in the original. Also color coding characters can work really well with a large cast of characters, yet no one has a strong color to set them apart, in fact, many of them seem to use a lot of red. Making it harder to stand out.
If you haven't already, then check out the game's main artist's (Brigid Allanson) Twitter. Their 2014 concept art of the gang absolutely decimates the final art in terms of character. Like, holy shit, where is THIS game?: twitter.com/BrigidAllanson/status/526764190359650304
See Alex, what you see here is a 'video game review'. It's a way for sentient existences to provide their thoughts, feelings, and grander social commentary on.... **I drone on but Alex isn't listening to me anymore**
Travis Touchdown from NMH is very similar to the “protagonist” from YIIK They’re both huge nerds,get involved in a huge conflict out of their control, and are both rude and mean The difference is that Travis understands the repercussions of his actions and gets punished for them. Alex doesn’t.
The voice of Alex seemed familiar to me, until I realized that he was the voice of Regan from the Mob Psycho 100 English dub. Which I find hilarious, because Regan is arguably a better "lovable Asshole" than Alex by a longshot.
And the Dev's point that "the typical player needs to relate to the character to like them" is so shallow and such a butthurt response to the criticism they get. I don't identify with plenty of the videogame characters I play as, in fact most of the time they don't factor at all. (Especially in the case of Silent Protagonists)
Not really... They basically just need a accurate reaction, if a person is an a hole in real life people hate and in some point leave them alone, it has to be consecuence, you don't suppose to like unlikeble characters really but an a hole in a story can connect with you if is well done, because sometimes we are also a holes.
So many games do this well. Planescape: Torment, Spec Ops: The Line, Disco Elysium, Night in the Woods, all starring assholes who make you want to follow them to see what happens.
I completely understand you. The failure of many elements of YIIK honestly gives me endless room to think about how to improve something, change something, explore themes which were brought up once and forgotten in the game. The game is pretty much a case study of how to not make a game/story/UI/balance or characters. You can endlessly think about ways to improve it and never run out of things, simply because things that already there connect to you enough to give a damn about wishing it could be better.
I genuinely things the dev wrote the main character like himself, and then got defensive when people hated him. That quote is only proving what a poor writer he is, and douchey person in general.
This is what I pulled from it, too. He put himself into his own game, wrote him the way he would respond to things, and got mad that his real personality was hated and lashed out in exactly the way you'd expect someone like that to lash out -- the same way his poorly written character would.
@BoldTomato Yeah, I don't buy it. He's trying to play the pity card after his "guess games can't be art" card got laughed at. The dude's a narcissist just like the character we all hate and can't handle negative criticism.
@BoldTomato nah but the entire game is stupid down to the writing. that shit cant be fixed he would have to redo the entire game. thats why we call him stupid, because he went through this whole lengthy process of writing, making characters, creating the game, and he still ended up with a shitty cringey product.
Tales of the Abyss, handles the whole "asshole becomes a great guy" main character, MUCH better. The biggest factor is by leaving small bread crumbs of empathy, not just other characters saying "Oh wow you are so nice" but actually having him preform good deeds and actively trying to improve himself after some game changing events (and having a full arc unlike half the cast in yiik).
Liquid Lad This!! So much this!! TotA is still the best Tales game to me to this day and it could be almost because of either Luke or Asch alone but it does so much more right that YIIK could only dream of...
It does also help that Luke's dickishness is contextualized pretty early on as him basically being a five year-old in a teenager's body due to him having lost a good portion of his memories and having been locked inside the castle for most of his life.
I thought a way to make Alex unlikable other than making him an unlikeable jerk would've been to make him a complete coward. The player would want to do things but Alex would refuse out of fear. Running from things we'd reasonably be able to take on, leaving people in danger, the like. Also had an idea for Rory, instead of being a nothing character, would be different. His sister would be fine, but she is out of town, as she lives with his father. The thing is, he's sharing a head with a Rory from another reality, who pushed himself out of his own reality in his grief after his sister did commit suicide. As his 2 personalities fight for control, he'd shift between depression and normality. Vella would eventually reason out how to send the other Rory home, but not before he got to see his sister again. At first, he actually attempts to fight the party as they threaten to send him back, despite his pacifistic nature. Eventually, he would come to terms with how he needs to move on and accept that things won't change back home, and he can't take up space in this Rory's head anymore
Lester the Unlikely, then? The problem with Rory isn't that he isn't interesting. In fact, he's the only character with a completed character arc and character development, The main problem is that Alex's importance overshadows his importance to the point Rory's literally erased from the endgame. As long as Alex stills hogs all the spotlight and reality is still destroyed, it doesn't matter how interesting the guy is.
@@manat31790 The funny thing about Lester the Unlikely is that halfway through the game Lester rises to the challenge of the game's plot and he no longer acts cowardly.
At least Travis had a beam katana and was voiced by Kazuhira Miller. Alex uses a flimsy vinyl record and is voiced by a VA with a long history of sexual harassment accusations.
Travis was pretty cool. The game is aware he don't solve any problems, and one of the antagonists even sang about how stupid he is. Philistine was awesome, by the way.
"gamers dislike my game because they can't relate to the protagonist" Ah yes, i relate to kirby, eating random people when i go for walks is my favourite hobby. Not all characters need to be "relatable", they just need to be interesting and/or fun.
when I play Diablo 2 I can't relate to my fkn Sorceress character. I'm not a woman nor can I shot fkn ice orbs out of my t!ts. I do enjoy the game though without having to self insert myself or have some form of empathy for whatever character I'm playing. I'm not into rp.
So his game didn’t do well, and thus he said that games aren’t art as a result of the backlash instead of trying to fix what he did wrong for a new project?
Yep. And in the main ending for the game he has a character from the dev's previous game (that was also horribly recieved mainly due to lots of bugs and lack of support/updates after it released) show up and state that due to the efforts of some people his journey may have ended, but that Alex can still finish his journey. In other words, he's not just convinced that YIIK was a masterpiece that fans were just too immature to appreciate, but is also convinced that's true for his previous game as well.
I feel bad for critiquing this as I rarely feel the need to but I really enjoy it and want to see this series or whatever improve. My main issue is just how much information is shown, paragraphs will be added constantly on the side and I feel the need to pause and read them all. And then I can lose track as to what you were saying. I’d much rather have a 30 minute video where you go through all these points instead of having 15 minutes where you add them to the side, it feels overwhelming. However I absolutely adore the art animation and editing, I can’t think of any other TH-cam channel that makes videos as clean and stylish as this.
Yeah, the whole point of a video essay is that, unlike an actual essay, you don't have to read a lot. It's honestly sort of headache inducing since it's a very good video in and of itself but has tiny text flash on the screen for 3 seconds, breaking the flow.
Yo I hear ya, never feel bad for critiquing! I do wanna find a neat balance between adding information on screen and speaking my mind, because as you said the 'stylish' nature of editing get's pretty time consuming. I'm trying to find a happy medium so I hope my next video isn't so headache inducing and pace breaking. Again, thanks for the comment!
I think the big thing that irks me about this game is the title. The game ISN'T postmodern in any way, except maybe the setting- and even that is something that a lot of recent games have done. Here's a list of some actual postmodern games that incorporate actual postmodern thoughts into their design: A Short Hike Undertale LISA Killer7 Papers Please and Return of the Obra Dinn Copy Kitty Disco Elysium Grow Home and Grow Up The Hotline Miami games Hypnospace Outlaw Megaton Rainfall Pathologic 1 and 2 Receiver Wuppo Sub Rosa And a shit ton more I won't even mention. And NONE of these games have the audacity to announce themselves as being postmodern.
I don't really understand what Sub Rosa has to do with postmodernism, the game isn't really developed enough to really declare it as anything. Not to mention it's not really telling a story, you kinda just make one for yourself.
@@robinsomers1577 I would argue that the round structure as it is designed is extremely nonlinear and extremely unconventional for an FPS. It's a deathmatch FPS game where it is not only possible for everyone in the round to win through cooperation, but also one where reflexes and map knowledge is put on the backburner against planning and intelligence gathering. Hell, shooting in that game is outright hard and awkward compared to most FPS games, further de-emphasizing the very core nature of an FPS game- First Person Shooting itself. I would argue that's pretty postmodern in it's design, but I can see how some people would rather wait until it's fully "out" before anyone calls it anything. The other thing that's important is that the postmoderism the game i've listed embody is something tied to their game design. A Short Hike has a clear goal and an ending, but is otherwise an extremely nonlinear experience that is designed to be a one-and-done exploration meant to invoke the calmness that hiking brings. Disco Elysium is an RPG where your skills are your mental faculties, and killer7 uses American and Japanese game design differences to tell a story about the cultural differences between America and Japan. Postmoderism is something woven into the DNA of these games as they break, explore, and toy with common constructions of game design as well as constructing new ones.
@@georgecrab1916 Disco Elysium I already explained above, but in slightly more detail without spoiling, the game heavily plays with a postmodern viewpoint of the multiplicity of the human experience. It has an extremely postmodern message. Wuppo incorporates a ton of world design details that make the game more interactive and "larger" than traditional platformers. Real-time train systems, forcing the player to wait in real time at lines in an Amusment Park, as well as other details like being able to work actual jobs, etc. This makes the player consider the greater world as more than just background set dressing, and instead as a real, breathing world operating outside of the players reality. This goes in hand with the climax of the game.
Problem is the narrative acts like Alex changed his behavior, but he never did... at least, only barely, and not until after the cast started pretending he had. Also, one of the themes is supposed to be him realizing he's not the most important person in the universe and that other people matter too... but this is undercut by him demonstrably being the most important person in the universe. The multiverse revolves around him, and he figuratively becomes Jesus in the ending. The game couldn't make up its mind, and the tedious gameplay just made it rough.
You know, I think a main character with no redeeming qualities could be really interesting, but only if the supporting cast is incredibly strong; something where their arc is centered around how they interact with the rest of the cast, so that we're rooting to see them start treating the characters we enjoy better instead of just seeing a character we hate become baseline tolerable.
The problem is Allanson insists he did just that and we were all just too triggered from seeing ourselves in Alex. Granted, he's changed his story about why and how the script ended up the way it did and backpedaled on his creative intent multiple times
@@gtf234 I think I remember this one guy said "professional gamers are a bunch of booger-eaters," and when people were pissed off at him, he claimed that they were mad at him, because he was right. That's what this guy sounds like.
The other issue is, you really can't have a protagonist with no redeemable qualities and still expect the audience to be invested in them. There has to be something that will get people on board with following them. Since the dev mentioned Sherlock Holmes, let's use him as an example. While Holmes is an asshole and probably not the kind of person you'd want to hang out with, he's a brilliant detective. Watching him piece the clues together and lay out the answer as well as how he came to it is enjoyable, even at the times when he's proven wrong. People still read and watch stuff featuring Holmes to this day because they want to see how he'll solve the mystery. When people talk about redeeming qualities, they usually mean whether the character has some morality or niceness to them. I'd argue that that would be limiting. A redeeming quality simply answers the question "what makes this character worth following?"
It’d be awesome if the main character was awful, and you, as a party, have to save him, and on that journey, you figure out who the REAL main character is.
They could've done that with literally any of the characters in this game (well except Chondra there's not much to her, really) I can realistically see Claudio as the protagonist. I remember Essentia saying that Rory, Claudio or herself could've caused the meteor because they're all capable of destruction. I find that interesting. Claudio and Rory have some weight on their shoulders it'd be cool if the game bothered to develop them but nah that would take away time from Alex going on another 5 hour monolog explaining what was just shown in visuals.
fun fact, in the original ending of the game, they were going to at least try and redeem Alex in some way, but they cut it because it was "too bleak" and they wanted a more hopeful ending... go figure.
It should be mentioned that the game, regardless of quality, was very poorly marketed. I had no idea it existed until negative reviews started popping up.
Well to some extent it does seem like he was heckled over by SJWs. A lot of people think that the game is SJW propaganda so I can’t imagine that helped sales.
I think we hit that point in culture where 'SJW' is used entirely by people who hate having to be thoughtful about others or having to accept that a game they made is just fucking bad.
Look, Andrew had a good chance to defend his game and apologise but instead he started sound pretentious, annoying over dramatically deep and a little too much like his beloved hipster character, to me it sounds like he’s the only one who resonates with this character and this was an excuse to be overly pretentious and snobby. (Great video btw)
he's not thick skinned he let minor insignificant little insults get to his head and started rebuting with the only men who bought his game and they were just giving positive suggestions to him he's the one that's acting like a child not the ones who 'disrespected' his game
Seriously sounds like annoying 15-year-old in 2005 Who just drew the first sonic OC and then gamer zero 65 said that it sucks and then he goes on a rant about how sonic will only get better in the next game will be the best game even better than Mario and how gamer zero is an idiot and an immature five-year-old and how he’s never seen a piece of art and how his OC is better than the Mona Lisa
Pause at 5:10 "I could film a turd in a stationary shot as long as a feature length film. I could say that was 100% my intention, but that doesn't mean it wasn't crap." PERFECT summary to counter pretentious artist's defences of "But that's the INTENTION, you're just a pleb who doesn't get it!" I love it.
@@sarafontanini7051 but he has no substance besides being an asshole you have to have redeeming qualities if your main character is an utter asshole if that's his whole character we can't really enjoy him because we don't know him
"Nope, you are nitpitching and biased. I win, goodbye!" Nice critique, I learned a lot. Keep text short, sweet and not preachy. Give characters a reason to actually be invested. Got it!
Alex a character made to be unlikeable but the biggest problem is that the game dev succeeded way too much on that objective and made him into a full blown Scrappy.
The thing is making an unlikeble is not difficult at all, to make people connect with them is the hard part, that's Tony Stark is so beloved and Capitan Marvel is so hated, literally every single person can be an as**ole.
I know this video is a year old, but quite frankly, I always felt his "he's supposed to be that way" line was just an excuse for people hating the character. He failed to write anything that made anyone want to see the character grow or mature and blamed everyone else for his failure. It was a cop-out excuse to protect his own ego.
@@zusty9589 there's even cut content from earlier builds that play more into this such as the cut essentia ending where he basically said he wished he was the better person the player was. Alex definitely was always meant to be unlikable, it's just the game poorly executed it
this remind me of a teacher i had, he looked tired all the time, he had a dull voice, but for some reason when he talked about history, you just shut it and listened to him, for some reason the way he talked pulled you in in the story... i feel the same with this review i loved it
It does my heart good to see LISA repeatedly put on the same level of indie genius as Undertale. Here it especially works since Brad is a great example of a protagonist that does some absolutely horrific things, yet the player still sympathizes with his motivations and knows there is some good behind the dirt he's doing.
It isn't there yet. The creator has to rerelease the game in an effort to cash in on the meme, but no one picks it up, so it bombs again. then, and ONLY then, will it be the Morbius of games.
Guys took Persona, Saturday Morning RPG, Scott Pilgrim, sprinkled some shit specks on them, shoved it in a blender, blended it, put it in a bowl with ceramic wrap, buried it for a decade, then took it out and force fed it to you with a rusty spoon
The response of the dev is priceless XD Snapping back to negative feedback instead of thinking about how to turn it to positive is never a good solution....especially if the game has an interesting story idea but the implementation is like......this.
The thing about YIIK is that it's not bad to make an unlikable protagonist. It's not bad to show a protagonist that sucks. But you can't just have a piece of trash. When you have a protagonist with huge flaws you have to work even harder to be delicate with the writing, to show things that will explain but not justify their behavior, and to possibly give positive little tidbits that show something underneath the crap that they are. But YIIK's writing is really, really bad. Any sort of lessons about Alex's behavior (and there are) fail because the game likes to do shit like "Hey, Alex actually IS the most important person in the universe" and "Hey, the main character of the creator's previous game is giving Alex his PERSONAL APPROVAL while also calling out reviewers and fans for **not letting him finish his quest** " YIIK has good lessons about not being a piece of shit and helping your parents and being good to your friends--but it's buried by stupid jerking off, a plot that ends up forgetting those things half-way through, and scenes like Alex trying to kiss Rory with no consequences. You wanna know how to fix YIIK? Have it play out exactly as it does, then Alex travels back in time and you play as him being a good, kind person, trying to fix all his mistakes and find some exit to the coming catastrophe. Show actual growth, not just "Well, I guess it's up to you now, alternate version of ME". Alex **baaarely** transforms by the end. He just 'kills' his negative traits, fights a girl that heel-face-turned 'betrayed him all along', and then literally hands the player the reigns so that WE (not him) choose to pull the plug on him and the bad guys.
in conclusion: its fine to have an unlikeable protagonist. Just don't pretend that they aren't an awful person and have them develop, or if not do that at least have a reason why we should care about this asshole. Lisa's Brad is an interesting inversion and thus is a much better character: we're initially SUPPOSED to like and sympathise with him which makes it hit harder as it becomes clear that his journey to save Buddy is making him become worse and worse.
Better idea would have been to have him not want to join in on any sort of quest for reasons of 'I'm not ******ing stupid and don't want to die'. Just out of survival and not wanting to get involved in stuff that will obviously get him killed. Have him only join in, despite clearly not wanting any part of this, after something drastic happens (like Rory attempting suicide or something like that) and forces him to join in (even if he snarks ar every opportunity on the quest stuff). Hell, have him br supporting the other characters from afar, always saying they shouldn't be getting involved in these dangerous things but still willing to somewhat back them up and such. And have him need to catch up to everyone once he finally gets involved.
And there are times where the game forgets what time setting it's even in. Having I think michael say chrono trigger was his child hood game, when it only came out a few years prior to the setting.
CoffeeFlavoredCondom from what I’ve heard, the game actually takes place around 2010, but it looks like the 90s as coping mechanism for Alex. That should have ben conveyed better though.
@@gabrielmcneil7514 I mean it's not a coping mechanism, it's part of how reality is falling apart, like for example the Michael in your party actually not being the childhood friend of the Alex who's the MC but instead another Michael who fell into that reality as stuff continued to break down. They... Could have handled a lot better but I actually do think this is actually one of the ideas they are closer to actually hitting on something and pulling it off well, and part of that is I like they kept it subtle that no Alex is a millennial but they went a bit too subtle with it. I have step way too much time on this dumb game.
RenaDeles nah don’t worry about. This game is interesting to me in a weird way, cause it has so many good ideas and i really wanted it to do good. I think its just a game that need a bit more time in the oven and it could have been awesome or at the very least decent.
@@RenaDeles If that was their intention, they bumbled the execution. It comes across as "the developers were too lazy to fact check". Maybe if they had lampshaded it, it wouldn't have come across that way.
Its like the reverse undertale, no charm, boring combat, too long, too grindy, bad dialogue, tryes to be meta sucks at it, art style is neat tho, shame the rest of the game fall aparts around it.
@@supershadow2021 Y2k is way longer than 2 hours. I seen playtrough of at least 8, feels way longer. That shity dialog + boring combat do wonders to you perception of time. Calling it too long is subjective tho, i did play dragon quest xi and clock at 130 hours with the true ending and that start feeling too long past the 80 hours mark wich is around were the first ending pups up. But y2k starts feeling two long past the first 3.
Y2K is slowly becoming the Morbius of games, i remember when Alex Yiik said "its yiikin time" and yiiked all over the bad guys, truly one of the games of all time indeed, with a plot, written characters and worldbuilding, indeed a game.
The main character's VA is trying really hard to do an impression of Randy Stair. I can't unhear it. Every time he speaks I expect him to start ranting about Ember's Ghost Squad.
The game where the protagonist learns the world doesn’t center around him.........by finding out that the fate of the universe is literally in his hands and everything revolves around him, that is set in 1999 to cash in on “oh man, don’t you just LOVE the NIIINETIEEEEES???? So nostalgic!!!!!” while not really resembling the time period whatsoever and just looking like the mid-late 2010s Also I gotta say, I like your editing style but that is a LOT of words onscreen for short bursts of time. I found myself rewinding and pausing a lot.
How can someone be invested enough in videogames to make one themselves, but not invested enough to still call it art when they fail at it? Also, I like how he's implying Alex would have been received so much better if he was a character in a movie or book.
"My mistake was thinking that videogames are art." no, your mistake was convincing yourself that you created a masterpiece and then getting super bitter when people said "no, u didn't."
I played YIIK and theorized WAY too much on the game and its story, so I've always come to the conclusion that the problem with Alex isn't that he's an unlikable character, its actually that he's SO UNLIKABLE as a character, it eclipses every other character's unlikable traits. Vella knew from the start that she was an Alternate Reality Semi, and knew that there was 0% chance of Alex rescuing her and bringing her back to this reality, because as we know from Rory's story early on "When two souls of the same person are in the same reality, shit gets BAD.", and Vella, who is INCREDIBLY selfish, has no intention of leaving this reality. Why Vella seems chill about The Essentia being in their universe, despite believing them to be of the same soul... is just really bad writing I think, The weird phone calls Alex gets throughout the game, are in reality, Micheal, who is an incredible asshole, Even his theme song is about how much of an asshole he is, how he intends to "Take a picture of (Alex) and then tear it in two." and how he is already intending to stab Alex in the back and leave him, from their very first meeting. This is highlighted when you go find Micheal later in the game, and find out the house he said he moved into, ISN'T his house, he actually moved into a different house, which parallels what happened between Alex and Micheal in the past. The Essentia is NOT actually a Soul of Vella/Semi, but actually a part of Alex's soul, and to elaborate on this, you need to understand how Proto-MIcheal operates. Proto-Micheal mentions that becoming a proto being means you become so aware of your flaws from seeing them repeat through numerous lifetimes, specifically in EVERY reality, there is a Micheal who will eventually betray their Alex, and becoming a Proto-being means moving past those flaws... The writing doesn't really work with Proto-Micheal because his only real characterization is that he's an asshole instigator who riles Alex up to make him look worse, and everything else is just narration of "Oh well THIS happened in our past. Back on The Essentia and Proto-Alex though, just like the four Sub-Alexes before the final confrontation exemplify negative aspects of Alex's personality (Skeeviness, Laziness, Pretentiousness and blind consumerism), Proto-Alex doesn't really act like any of that, he's hooked up next to, what is presumebly HIS ideal woman, and he never even looks at her, he is direct and straightforward with the Player, he doesn't seem to care about... anything honestly, he just kind of wants to sit there and be "Perfect." and only fights back after the player attacks him. But there is one aspect our Alex has that he doesn't, and that's his self-centered nature... which is represented by the Essentia. Proto-Alex got the way he is, by cutting out negative aspects of his personality, but the very nature of throwing away instead of improving is an ultimately self-centered action, so the Essentia got botched, leaving them in their twisted state as connected, but deeply hating each other. A throwaway line is that it's NOT Proto-Alex that is controlling the meteors that destroy realities, its the Essentia, who is doing all of this because, at the end of the day, she doesn't have absolute control, Proto-Alex is just letting her act as she pleases because he just doesn't care enough to take the control away from her, but the Essentia STILL desires to be more important, to be the one in control of EVERYTHING, even Proto-Alex. You're absolutely spot on about Rory/Chondra/Claudio though, they're fine as characters, and Rory even gets his quarter circle arc of "Lying about dead sister" to "Alex is right, I did endanger everyone's lives with my lies" and then translates into "NOTHING" or "SUICIDE". In particular, I would have liked if Rory had literally stated at some point "Look, Alex, Micheal and Vella might be nice to me, but you're real to me, and that's what i need.", that would have really highlighted what Rory was actually looking for, not platitudes, but someone to treat him as a person, not a pity case, and would have given him a reason to actually care about Alex. Chondra and Claudio seem to exist only because "In another reality, Chondra and Claudio are Alex's siblings!" Which is almost never touched on except outside of a trippy dream sequence, and one of the Alex's on Alex Refugee Island being young and black. In a way, it ALSO makes Claudio a Tragic parallel to Alex, because HIS Alex will never be seen again, because this reality already has an Alex that replaced him, ala Semi and Vella. If you decide to torture yourself with a repeat playthrough, a LOT of what I pointed out becomes super clear. It's kinda obvious the story was written in a way that it was supposed to be played through twice... but honestly the game and the story are NOT good enough to warrant a second play through. There were a few moments I noticed that the Onism 1999 Website was CLEARLY a dimensional hub between realities BEFORE it was announced in story, because a poster gets banned in a thread, but they continue posting later on in the story... and fun fact, that same poster is implied to be of the Soul of Semi/Vella. Foreshadowing is actually the story's strongest aspect... but it's hard to notice it without a second playthrough, and... yeah, the game's REALLY glaring flaws make it hard to notice when the writing is actually good.
Seeing him say video games aren’t art is so sad to me. It’s not just art, it’s art with emotion. The sadness from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games at their ends. The fear fighting Gigyas in Earthbound. The helplessness making choices in Lisa the Painful RPG. The feeling of hope in Okami’s final boss. All wonderful games, and all that I would 100% call art. It’s a shame his ego has taken away that magic.
There's also NieR Automata, which gives you the feeling of wanting to have hope, despite the whole situation telling you that there might be nothing else left.
In some ways, video games are an art form where getting it right is even more important, since they require so much more audience investment than most other art forms.
This developer has always blamed the audience for not appreciating his work when he himself can't accept his own flaws and issues. Yet he expects us to eventually appreciate and identify with a man who can BARELY accept his own problems 20 hours in and can't even make the final decision for himself. (Plus there are only two bosses that aren't scripted) Forget the tonal issues
Yo, thanks for watching! I did a blind playthrough of this game on Twitch, and I'm planning to stream more games too! So check me out there if you're down to hang :) www.twitch.tv/uricksaladbar
So I’ve learned that they changed the Golden Alpaca scene. It’s certainly not as boring to look at, but now it’s a tonal nightmare in the opposite direction where it’s trying to be more serious with the Golden Alpaca now being some world changing deity that talks about “deep subjects” regarding whether or not Alex’s life is worth living
The main character being unlikable is a kneejerk reaction from the devs, I think. I’m sure the dev wanted to have people actually like him, like he wanted people to like the writing. It’s only when people told him that Alex and the gang are shit that he said ‘nuh uh youre just too smooth brain’
I think Sammy and Alex's story would've been a lot more impactful if this was a person Alex had already known before. Something along the lines of Sammy being a childhood friend that one day vanishes out of nowhere, and then turns up in that abandoned building years later only to be pulled away once more by some otherworldly force right in front of Alex's face. It would add to the story as well as Alex's character, and also has potential for other characters to have connections to Sammy (Michael knowing Sammy when they were kids and wanting to find out what happened, Alex being able to understand Rory's loss)
@jefferyandbob3137 honestly it's a shame, because like everything else aside from the story? I dig. While I haven't played it yet so I can't say much about the combat systems, the visuals and the soundtrack are amazing. I could legit listen to Sammy's theme for hours, and I find it provides a better characterization for her than the actual dialogue did.
![[#2024MAMA] ROSÉ (로제), Bruno Mars - APT. | Mnet 241122 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dgGqD28J6aQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Is this the guy who shat in Oney's toilet so hard that he burned down the house then made a video essay about how it was Oney's fault for being rude to him?
what
Yea this is the dude
@@________9658 ⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻ ________
⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻ ________
@@Duenschissdoktor Go to bed.
@@moona2452 This is a true story, he actually burned down his house.
As soon as he said,”My mistake was thinking games were art.” I audibly said,”uh oh”
I laughed when I read that line at that point in the video. I knew he buried his own grave as a game dev.
Aether Star Of course he buried his own career, they trashed the industry they failed to get into because they’re too stupid to make anything good.
The moment you think to yourself "I'm making art" is the moment you start making shit.
Tfw a self-proclaimed artist (art student) fails making "art"
mariokarter13 I feel that’s a flawed sentiment. I’d argue all creation is art.
This is like Scott Pilgrim but instead of learning to be better to those he relies on. The man character learns that all of his friends and family are disposable and he is the most special boy in the universe
I feel that
Goblin Hero yep
😟I fucking miss Scott Pilgrim.😠
Scott only learned the power of True love, and got a shitty job. He didn’t really change
Its funny cuz Scott is supposed to be an emotionally detached dick. But he does grow.
But don't compare my boy Scott to this mixture of hipster and edge.
Scott is a lovable dweeb
Also the fact that the girl's death in an elevator is based off a real tragedy makes me want to seriously question the devs intentions there
@@ryanred1525 There is, it's called "Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel".
@@comedicsociopathy Yeah I saw my stepdad and mom watching it in the living room one night
I remember someone commenting that the dev actually had a fetish for Elisa Lam
@@skrrtskrrt2410 dear fuck that’s messed up
@@skrrtskrrt2410 excuse me he what
The quote from the dev speaks volumes. He's so obsessed with making people think he's smart that he calls people stupid for not liking his "smart" game. He has no sense of self-awareness.
His explanation gets a big "YIKES" from me.
@@mariakutsu5946 a big YIIKES
@Shaman Xeed explain please.
@Shaman Xeed how is he right? lots of people have made artsy videogames and had a lot more success than this dude
@Shaman Xeed even if we ignore all the great games that are meaningful and made an impact on peoples lives, he's still wrong because this game is pretentious shit and would have been shit in any medium.
The main character could've worked if he was ever punished for his behavior, but he isn't. He literally becomes god for it
Naruhito Da Grandaddy of Japan yeah the biggest problem is that Alex is an egocentric jackass who is actually proven to be right for thinking that way. He is literally the center of every universe, which greatly conflicts with the game's messaging.
@Tum Tum No one wants to see him.
The bachelor from pathologic is probably the best example of an unlikable playable character, literally every choice of speech check he has is just him being an asshole and the stuff you do as him ends up actively fucking you over when you play as the other characters, granted being an asshole is basically unavoidable as the bachelor but the game actually keeps the same tone the entire time, aka everything sucks, fuck you, this will be so painful that it will become pleasurable, oh you want to have loads of money? That's fine we'll just increase the price of everything so much that all your money is now worthless, deal with it pussy.
There's a video asserting that he's the creators self insert and the game is just a way from him to ship himself with a girl from a real life murder case
Clayton Griffith I need to see this vid do you have the link?
Anybody that claims that "people don't want to play evil characters" never played DnD RPGs and it shows
Or any games
Send them a picture of the grand theft auto v sales numbers
*Laughs in Vergil*
@@creed8712 Aren't GTA main characters usually shown as morally superior to all the other criminals they work with/for?
I remember at least some GTA IV cutscenes trying to make it seem like the main character has some standards and codes of honor, despite it going against all the gameplay and most missions in the game.
Even Hitman from the Hitman games, the most famous anti-hero in gaming probably, assassinates people who are complete scumbags and criminals.
There honestly isn't that many video games (that include a story) where the main character is just flatout bad.
@@Assimandeli eh. When a guy double crosses you it makes him look worse than you because of framing.
As for Hitman most people who hire him are doing it for vendetta or because his actions will help them in some way. As far as 47 is concerned he isn’t a hero or anti hero he’s just doing his job. The only reason it’s frowned upon going in and slaughtering everyone is for purely professional reasons
Remember when Toby Fox was cheering for this game but deleted his tweet when the actual game came out? I don’t blame him
I do. He should have just admitted he had no idea what lousy jerk Andrew is instead of pulling a bitch move. That just makes him look bad.
Yeah if I composed music for pretentious game developer I would want nothing to do with it
@@SirBlackReeds how exactly does that make Toby look bad? it's clear that he realize how much the game sucked and the developer was a jerk
A dickish kind of move for toby.
@@AverageUsernames
Well, to be more precisely, he said to give the game a chance, because he thought it look good. But when the game came out and the creator was like “oh video games aren’t art” Then he headed tf out
>games are not art, theyre toys for children
did he just call critics of his game "children"
By doing that he also called the people who bought and supported his game children.
Modern day Phil Fish
critics sure play like children (japan not included)
He is not a clown he is the entire circus
DmC all over again! At least DmC had a superb art-direction, unlike this generic indie hipster shit.
"My mistake was thinking videogames are art"
He's literally Alex then.
It's hilarious, he even said it exactly how Alex would say it
So, you don’t think video games are art? Or are you modernists who think certain mediums are only allowed to hit certain notes, like saying that cartoons can only be for children?
A game about becoming self aware written by someone with no self awareness
breh Just like really life.. no one wants to see theirs real monster but would rather believe they do ..
He took a sledgehammer to the wall and ended up making a castle.
Pottery.
And it clearly shows
Lmao
"I'm bad at writing, but instead of admitting my shortcomings, I'll blame the world for not loving my work unconditionally"
Pretty much
The self insert is very accurate
I feel like even I, a slightly above average writer at best, could make a more compelling story than this, and unlike the asswipe behind this game I actually understand that people are inevitably going to dislike something, especially if it's needlessly convoluted or just flat out bad!
@@asrieldreemurr9968 It's the idea that you can write a bunch of nonsense fluff with no groundings of telling an actual story.
Onision in a nutshell
‘People don’t like my game therefore video games aren’t art and are for babies’
Spectacular mindset
Typical Alex yeek mentality...
Videogames are not art. But not for the reasons this piece of shit "developer" thinks.
@@brian0057 why arent videogames art? Because you cant hang it on a museum and be pretentious about it?
Because regardless of how much artistic merit there is in the story, music, or visuals, they're all beholden to how good the gameplay is. You know, the thing that makes videogames... well, videogames.
When I say games are the museum, I mean that almost literally. The building is the structure that contains its primary function. In the case of gaming, the gameplay is the fundamental aspect. You can go from Ace Combat to a pilot training simulatior where the only changes are the controls.
Would you call those simulators pilots train in "art"? They're techincally videogames.
Would you call a government building "art"?
What if you repurpose that same building as a museum. Is it now considered "art"?
That's why games are more like architecture than art. I mean, a building can be pretty, have some superb arches or sculptures that would make Michael Angelo blush, but if the structure topples and crumbles then what's the point of all those embellishments?
@@brian0057 architecture can also be art, you dingus. Just because something has a practical purpose doesn’t mean it isn’t art...
Also there are plenty of games without a focus on gameplay in the traditional sense: visual novels, walking simulators, interactive fiction, etc.
I know a guy who looks exactly like the main character of this game, down to the way he dresses. Acts like him too.
That guy's the worst.
This character makes me want to shave my head, get contacts, and stop wearing plaid.
Jacob Hill did he make the game
Buy him this game and let him play it
@@cannonfodder4000 I second that, buy him this game.
Br'er Jethro Honestly Alex, kinda makes me despise that outfit and that’s a shame because it’s a pretty cool outfit but Alex ruins it because i will think of him everytime i see it.
It really feels like the worst of Persona, Scott Pilgrim, and Earthbound got mixed in a pretentious blender
You mean if someone ate them and this is the poop.
Problem with storytellers like these is they tend to tell the story from a single voice, so they are pretty much strawmanning everything as what they believe to be the right response without considering the variable of the personalities around said characters.
I get what you mean with Scott pilgrim and earthbound but I’m not sure YIIK had a weird shoehorned system were you hang out with characters that never progress outside of their social link/ confidant. YIIK just doesn’t develop the characters. Also before someone tells me to play the first persona games I have and I really like them
@@Grey-i2o im really glad you like them! I personally meant the uh...weird theming of Persona 4 and 5. I dunno, it's been months since I made that comment.
@@punkitt No no no, you're right. In P4 they used this whole "dealing with your true self" from P4.
someone: criticism
oH MY mIsTaKe, i tHoUgHt I wAs mAkInG ART
A Player: "Yo, Alex is kind of an unlikeable piece of shit and I hate listening to him breath."
Dev: " Duh that's the fuckin point! You just don't understand what I was doing with the character!! Gamers are so uncultured ffs!!! "
He sounds like Randy from South Park when he gets arrested
So true.
What's sad is that is what had become of modern art, it can't be critisized or interpreted, and therefore it can not be improved nor can it change. This game is a great example of that.
" durr I'm so quirky and unique for making a game with a game with a protagonist who does bad stuff and is unlikable unlike those other games where every main character is a model citizen "
James earl cash - manhunt
A death row inmate who kills without remorse
Are games art?
Yes, this is a bad art.
-Jeff "Mr. CBS" Gerstmann
3:43 That response is even more pretentious than the game itself.
Ikr? That mindset of "People didn't like the thing I made so they're in the wrong because I'm always right" drives me nuts. I think that these people need to realize that they can get things wrong sometimes. We're humans and we make mistakes. Instead of blaming his failures on others and plugging his ears and running away, he needs to face his criticism head on and make a better product next time.
HOO sorry about this long response. Just had to rant about this.
Not to mention condescending. I will never understand the mentality of "I made a game that got heavily criticized and made fun of. Therefor all gamers are children." I swear man, those kinds of people have problems. Even *if* gamers were all mouth breathers (which obv the majority aren't), why would you be in an industry that caters to that audience if you hate them so much? Why even bother? If that's your audience, you serve them. They don't serve you. Period. Shitting on your audience and any potential fans you may have had will not reassure people to keep coming back.
He made the game with the intention of being art. Because he didn’t realise he failed that, I can see where he got that conclusion. It’s just so fundamentally wrong that it hurts
You know, this game could have been something good. If he took the criticisms and made a new game with the faults of the old in mind, there really could have been a gem there. But pride blinds. And him saying games are just toys, I guess he never really loved games to begin with if that's all he he's them as.
It was an unrehearsed on the spot speech given in a podcast with his friend. I just figured it was worth defending since I actually like the developer and his games
"Games arent art. You cant talk about anything meaningful or thought provoking"
Oh cool so he has *no idea what hes talking about*
Well, I guess we should ignore NieR : Automata then. That's totally not meaningful at all.
Oh, but he's right, you can't *talk* about anything meaningful or thought provoking in a video game. The player is supposed to *experience* something meaningful and thought provoking. Perhaps if he'd realized that his goal as a game developer is to make the player *experience* things instead of trying to outright *tell* them things, his game would have been better.
@@Tamaki742 *Makes a game based on the mother series, a series with themes of family bonding being stronger than inate instinct and how the love and connections between people can be more powerful than any other emotion even enough that hearing the song his mother sang to him as a child causes the big bad to be so overcome with feelings that he can no longer exist as physical being, and follows that up with a game that follows a broken family as it's characters deal with the idea of loved ones dying for no reason other than to fuel to cogs of a society that forced itself upon them for the benefit not of the common people but of one powerful person who uses people like playthings and pits brother against brother in a vain pursuit of something that no longer exists, and ends with the world being ended and reborn for a second time based on the sheer human desire to keep existing not for ourselves, but the people around us."
YIIK Dev: "Yeah i made a game inspired by the mother series but I don't think video games can say anything meaningful or thought provoking"
@@theflamelord Wow...I never played or watched anything from the Mother Series...but that sounds amazing.
I guess we should ignore Hollow Knight then :/
"Nobody cares about your dead sister! Now put your life in danger to save this cute girl I met a few days ago!"
This cute *dead* girl
@@reaperz5677 who is based off a real dead girl
@@ImmaLittlePip But they don’t want you to know that.
To be fair, that's the only time Alex is absolutely on the right. Rory himself called Alex under the pretense that he knew shit, talking a bunch of nonsense and then dragged Alex into that mess in the sewers for no reason. It was a waste of time. So Alex flipping out on him is reasonable, imo. Like, sure, maybe he could've been a little nicer, but the fact that he got scammed remains.
That lemonade alpaca is screaming “LAUGH AT ME! MAKE MEMES OF ME!” but _no one came_
the lemonade alpaca looks like it was made by the people who say "HEY GUYS LOOK AT ME!!! POTATO!!! LUL XD IM SOOO RANDUM IM SORRY"
The poor thing is like the crackhead cousin of the undertale minor characters.
And they later removed the original Alpaca and replaced it with one that takes itself too seriously and kills the joke.
@@bazzjedimaster they dont get that doing that makes even more lousy feeling. cmon, you need an actual character with humorous tendencies that could be meme worthy. sure something made specifically for a meme works but that's pretty rare
@@imaaronnotyou3887 Yes literally *XD SO RADUM PENGUIN OF DOOOOM LLAMAS*
"Games aren't art, they're toys for children" did this man ever play a rpg before?
he's the child, just because someone critiqued his game he's allowed to call them children, everyone has a opinion he can't hate people for disliking his game
Hes being sarcastic. He thinks that people dont like the game cuz it's artsy.
SNMtv Xenoblade chronicles is crying in its ashes (Which it will soon rise from.)
Persona 2-4-5, The Mother (Earthbound) Saga, The big Majority of Final Fantasy and fire Emblem: Bitch are you for real!?
Sometimes they can be like toys. Reason why is because anyone can play game differently, and toys are a lot of fun!
The way he described it was flawed. I do not think he knows what toys are truly for.
What's funny is that the LISA guy hates JRPGs and yet it's still a more respectful take on the genre.
You could hate on something by making something better or you could hate something because of your own convenience. He chose the former, and I could respect that.
@boulderguy888 why? And that's fine, it's definitely not a game for everyone. However, at least it has merits in characters, in story, in motifs, and it handles each of these with some level of respect. YIIK, uh,
doesn't.
@boulderguy888 why? thats a totally fine opinion. Not everything is made for everyone, and the fact that you can recognize its strength separate to your personal taste is admirable
I dunno why I really dislike these types of bleak stories (like Lisa). Can anyone explain to me why they like Lisa ?
@@danialyousaf6456 Because not only does it speak about a powerful subject - the cycle of abuse, hurt and grief that can extend through generations - in an honest fashion, which is refreshing to see, it also does it in an interesting world, with funny characters, events, and a genuinely engaging combat system where every skill, item and party member counts, instead of the typical "do big damage, heal sometimes if you need", and has choices that genuinely impact gameplay, like a choice between losing an arm (which comes with stat downs and blocked moves), and a party member that permanently leaves.
Overall, that's why I personally like the game.
This video has more style and charm than the actual game.
based
the art's pretty good
I mean, yeah. It doesn't take much to do better than YIIK
@@GayBrain what does based mean
@@papasscooperiaworker3649 It's slang and kind of a meme. It's when you agree with someone's opinion and voice your assertation. It's sometimes used ironically.
I think unlikable protagonists can be summed up like this: Protagonists are the characters you spend the most time in the story with, so if you want them to be unlikable, you have to make them interesting/entertaining, otherwise the audience is stuck with a character that annoys them for the entire story.
The actual Y2K: An example of an era where technology was an increasing necessity while about to potentially fall on top of itself due to a limitation decades prior. People and corporations had to adapt to the times by better educating themselves in modern hardware to prevent the hardest blunt of Y2K occurring.
YIIK: Some asshole in a stylized 90s setting is super important.
I feel like the actual Y2K had deeper themes than whatever metanarrative this game tried to present.
I could imagine a sci-fi story that uses allegory to the event. The idea of these technological bottlenecks leading to huge disasters is super interesting.
@@MachineMan-mj4gj Agreed. There's an actually interesting theme that could be told with a story inspired by the actual Y2K events, but it's clearly not found here.
A pep talk from a character, who themself is from another one of the developers games, is the videogame equivalent of a dmnpc saving a dungeons and dragons party from an overturned boss
The best part is that the character talks about how if people try to bring you down you should ignore them and keep going anyway. Fun fact, the game he was from received very little positive criticism.
and not just any DMPC, it's one that the characters has never met before, but the players might have heard once or twice the DM mentioning
@@roverkibb1834 The reason it was rated negatively is because it was a buggy and unplayable mess.
At least Scott Pilgrim became a better person by the end of his series.
Did he?
@@thefinalday5858 well not entirely. He did learn some lessons and grew up a bit. So for me, thats a plus.
@@thefinalday5858 he did (for the comics at least, I don't remember much of the movie).
@@thefinalday5858 *Yes*
Yeah that's the entire arc
"You're like a gary stu, except gary stus actually cared about people or something"
The only people he likes are ones he wants to sleep with, the "friends" are just props, and the "villains" are there just long enough for him to kill them in some impossible fashion. Sounds pretty Stu-y to me.
Putting "A post modern rpg" on the subtitle says a lot about it's pretentiousness
I don't think the dev even knows what "post-modernism" means. There's nothing post-modern about this game, it's just a quirky RPG with blocky graphics.
@@darrelsam419
A real post-modern RPG would introduce a whole lot of unique and interesting mechanics, and then about a quarter of the way through the game, you never use them again. And the cycle would repeat. It probably wouldn't be a very fun game.
Lol kinda ironic
@@thekeyandthegate4093 Yeah, it would probably be something like that. The game could look great and be fun to watch someone play, but not be fun to play it yourself.
I know this isn't an RPG, but would The Neverhood be considered a post-modern game? It looks great and has a weird, artistic feel to it, but it was a lot of frustrating segments that are annoying and dumb on purpose, like the long hallway and some of the more absurd puzzles. It's more fun to watch than to play.
@@darrelsam419 mgs2 was fun to play and that's definitely a postmodernist game if i ever played one.
“My mistake was thinking games are art” damn I’m starting to think the creator was the unlivable main character the whole time
Any Hbomberguy Fan here?!
Dont tell me I'm alone?!?
ALONE??
@@loturzelrestaurant you're not alone
@@chezmix64 Hurray.
@@chezmix64
(Whisper-Voice activated)
Now that we confirmed we're not alone,
we have to Plot how to 'win' and 'get rid of the OTHERS'. The 'Non-Believers'!!
...All hail Harris... all hail harris...
...
Maybe the real main characters were the game devs we made along the way
"My mistake was thinking video games were art."
No, your mistake was thinking _your_ video game was art.
ooo that's a burn
video games are their own
art is for pretentious bozos like this developer. Art and video games are two different things in my opinion.
You pretend video games are art and you get this hot piece of garbage.
@@matguimond92 ever played Gris? I would call that art, good art.
This is just bad/pretentious art. People like this, who make things like this, exist in every art community.
ikr.
@@verbatos9498 Video games are not art period. Otherwise we end up with garbage like this. Another anime game = art lmfao. Anime is highly over rated and the fans are pretentious and pompous idiots.
9:40 tfw your art makes the characters infinitely more charming than the original style
Ngl chondra with a purple and white outfit looks really pleasing to the eye instead of, the pastel look she has in the original.
Also color coding characters can work really well with a large cast of characters, yet no one has a strong color to set them apart, in fact, many of them seem to use a lot of red. Making it harder to stand out.
If you haven't already, then check out the game's main artist's (Brigid Allanson) Twitter.
Their 2014 concept art of the gang absolutely decimates the final art in terms of character.
Like, holy shit, where is THIS game?: twitter.com/BrigidAllanson/status/526764190359650304
Tfw FurAffinity artists make more indepth charecters for their adult comics
I want a game with this art style now.
WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!? WHAT IS THIS VIDEO ABOUT!? CAN SOMEBODY EXPLAINS WHAT IS GOING ON!?
*18 paragraphs of dialouge of explaining the format of video never even touching on the contents of the video itself*
@@supershadow2021
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!!?
*SOMEBODY PLEASE EXPLAIN THIS TO ME ALREADY!!!*
@@_-Lx-_ *IM SHAKING REAL BAD, VIBRATING WITH MOTION!!!*
See Alex, what you see here is a 'video game review'. It's a way for sentient existences to provide their thoughts, feelings, and grander social commentary on....
**I drone on but Alex isn't listening to me anymore**
WHY ARENT YOU EXPLAINING THINGS TO ME?!
Travis Touchdown from NMH is very similar to the “protagonist” from YIIK
They’re both huge nerds,get involved in a huge conflict out of their control, and are both rude and mean
The difference is that Travis understands the repercussions of his actions and gets punished for them. Alex doesn’t.
"Am I so out of touch?
No. It's the games industry who're wrong."
Literally every game journalist
The voice of Alex seemed familiar to me, until I realized that he was the voice of Regan from the Mob Psycho 100 English dub. Which I find hilarious, because Regan is arguably a better "lovable Asshole" than Alex by a longshot.
You can make an unlikeable character, but they must be intriguing and/or redeemable.
sanspeakrus yeah .. look at True Detectives.. that works.. 😊👌
And the Dev's point that "the typical player needs to relate to the character to like them" is so shallow and such a butthurt response to the criticism they get. I don't identify with plenty of the videogame characters I play as, in fact most of the time they don't factor at all. (Especially in the case of Silent Protagonists)
Or at least make said character actually funny or entertaining
Not really... They basically just need a accurate reaction, if a person is an a hole in real life people hate and in some point leave them alone, it has to be consecuence, you don't suppose to like unlikeble characters really but an a hole in a story can connect with you if is well done, because sometimes we are also a holes.
So many games do this well. Planescape: Torment, Spec Ops: The Line, Disco Elysium, Night in the Woods, all starring assholes who make you want to follow them to see what happens.
I will never escape this game. It haunts me.
What do you mean? It's not like you helped make this game (Seriously hoping you didn't for your own sanity)
@@datguyuno98 he means people are always talking about it
i have become hopelessly addicted to yiik videos. this game is bad in a fascinating way
I completely understand you. The failure of many elements of YIIK honestly gives me endless room to think about how to improve something, change something, explore themes which were brought up once and forgotten in the game. The game is pretty much a case study of how to not make a game/story/UI/balance or characters. You can endlessly think about ways to improve it and never run out of things, simply because things that already there connect to you enough to give a damn about wishing it could be better.
I genuinely things the dev wrote the main character like himself, and then got defensive when people hated him. That quote is only proving what a poor writer he is, and douchey person in general.
This is what I pulled from it, too. He put himself into his own game, wrote him the way he would respond to things, and got mad that his real personality was hated and lashed out in exactly the way you'd expect someone like that to lash out -- the same way his poorly written character would.
@BoldTomato Yeah, I don't buy it. He's trying to play the pity card after his "guess games can't be art" card got laughed at. The dude's a narcissist just like the character we all hate and can't handle negative criticism.
@BoldTomato nah but the entire game is stupid down to the writing. that shit cant be fixed he would have to redo the entire game. thats why we call him stupid, because he went through this whole lengthy process of writing, making characters, creating the game, and he still ended up with a shitty cringey product.
@@ForeverLaxx Agreed. I have no idea why he’d make his bully the center of all universes, backing up the bully’s point.
@@canavero4288 how does making a bad game make you a bad person?
Tales of the Abyss, handles the whole "asshole becomes a great guy" main character, MUCH better. The biggest factor is by leaving small bread crumbs of empathy, not just other characters saying "Oh wow you are so nice" but actually having him preform good deeds and actively trying to improve himself after some game changing events (and having a full arc unlike half the cast in yiik).
Well shit that's another tales game I need to check out. I only just got symphonia.
@@329link vesperia is also REALLY good
Liquid Lad This!! So much this!! TotA is still the best Tales game to me to this day and it could be almost because of either Luke or Asch alone but it does so much more right that YIIK could only dream of...
It does also help that Luke's dickishness is contextualized pretty early on as him basically being a five year-old in a teenager's body due to him having lost a good portion of his memories and having been locked inside the castle for most of his life.
True, and i really wanted to jump into my tv and strangle Luke lol
I thought a way to make Alex unlikable other than making him an unlikeable jerk would've been to make him a complete coward. The player would want to do things but Alex would refuse out of fear. Running from things we'd reasonably be able to take on, leaving people in danger, the like.
Also had an idea for Rory, instead of being a nothing character, would be different. His sister would be fine, but she is out of town, as she lives with his father. The thing is, he's sharing a head with a Rory from another reality, who pushed himself out of his own reality in his grief after his sister did commit suicide. As his 2 personalities fight for control, he'd shift between depression and normality. Vella would eventually reason out how to send the other Rory home, but not before he got to see his sister again. At first, he actually attempts to fight the party as they threaten to send him back, despite his pacifistic nature. Eventually, he would come to terms with how he needs to move on and accept that things won't change back home, and he can't take up space in this Rory's head anymore
Lester the Unlikely, then?
The problem with Rory isn't that he isn't interesting. In fact, he's the only character with a completed character arc and character development, The main problem is that Alex's importance overshadows his importance to the point Rory's literally erased from the endgame. As long as Alex stills hogs all the spotlight and reality is still destroyed, it doesn't matter how interesting the guy is.
@@manat31790 The funny thing about Lester the Unlikely is that halfway through the game Lester rises to the challenge of the game's plot and he no longer acts cowardly.
FINALLY, some CONSTRUCTIVE Criticism
Hearing that guys response to criticism makes me never want to touch anything he works on on any level ever.
his words were all hypebolic, it was only a persona for the dick show, the theme is to be angry on the show
I like watching his little ball hands move up and down.
This guy is basically a failed version of Travis Touchdown. Two geeks that are objectively bad people that go on an adventure for some girl.
At least Travis had a beam katana and was voiced by Kazuhira Miller. Alex uses a flimsy vinyl record and is voiced by a VA with a long history of sexual harassment accusations.
Travis was pretty cool. The game is aware he don't solve any problems, and one of the antagonists even sang about how stupid he is. Philistine was awesome, by the way.
@@WillieManga
Plus we saw how Travis grew up and learned about where that path led him and how empty it was in Travis strikes again
Travis is a chad, that's a thing
Except Travis was likable he grew as the games went on even in Travis strikes again he get some character development
"gamers dislike my game because they can't relate to the protagonist"
Ah yes, i relate to kirby, eating random people when i go for walks is my favourite hobby. Not all characters need to be "relatable", they just need to be interesting and/or fun.
Tell that to all my old school teachers who told me my ideas were shit
Kirby lore and Kirb being a part of Void Termina is more interesting and cohesive than YIIK.
@@thedarklrd6714 I wish more games had you play as an adorable, unfeeling elder god. It's a good concept.
Hollow knight
when I play Diablo 2 I can't relate to my fkn Sorceress character.
I'm not a woman nor can I shot fkn ice orbs out of my t!ts. I do enjoy the game though without having to self insert myself or have some form of empathy for whatever character I'm playing. I'm not into rp.
So the main character is a psychological projection of everything the writer secretly hates about himself.
y e s
@@gamerguy6495 y i i k
So his game didn’t do well, and thus he said that games aren’t art as a result of the backlash instead of trying to fix what he did wrong for a new project?
Yep.
And in the main ending for the game he has a character from the dev's previous game (that was also horribly recieved mainly due to lots of bugs and lack of support/updates after it released) show up and state that due to the efforts of some people his journey may have ended, but that Alex can still finish his journey.
In other words, he's not just convinced that YIIK was a masterpiece that fans were just too immature to appreciate, but is also convinced that's true for his previous game as well.
He was used to his post-modern college buddies and forgot that real people consume art
“My mistake was thinking video games are art.” Kind of sounds like something the protagonist would say lmao
I feel bad for critiquing this as I rarely feel the need to but I really enjoy it and want to see this series or whatever improve.
My main issue is just how much information is shown, paragraphs will be added constantly on the side and I feel the need to pause and read them all. And then I can lose track as to what you were saying. I’d much rather have a 30 minute video where you go through all these points instead of having 15 minutes where you add them to the side, it feels overwhelming. However I absolutely adore the art animation and editing, I can’t think of any other TH-cam channel that makes videos as clean and stylish as this.
Yeah, the whole point of a video essay is that, unlike an actual essay, you don't have to read a lot. It's honestly sort of headache inducing since it's a very good video in and of itself but has tiny text flash on the screen for 3 seconds, breaking the flow.
Yo I hear ya, never feel bad for critiquing! I do wanna find a neat balance between adding information on screen and speaking my mind, because as you said the 'stylish' nature of editing get's pretty time consuming. I'm trying to find a happy medium so I hope my next video isn't so headache inducing and pace breaking.
Again, thanks for the comment!
uricksaladbar I’m excited to see what’s next!
Oh!
I just finished writing my own paragraph critiquing this same exact issue,only to scroll down and find this!
Oh well...
@@uricksaladbar you're the best sport to criticism I've ever seen
ily
I think the big thing that irks me about this game is the title. The game ISN'T postmodern in any way, except maybe the setting- and even that is something that a lot of recent games have done. Here's a list of some actual postmodern games that incorporate actual postmodern thoughts into their design:
A Short Hike
Undertale
LISA
Killer7
Papers Please and Return of the Obra Dinn
Copy Kitty
Disco Elysium
Grow Home and Grow Up
The Hotline Miami games
Hypnospace Outlaw
Megaton Rainfall
Pathologic 1 and 2
Receiver
Wuppo
Sub Rosa
And a shit ton more I won't even mention. And NONE of these games have the audacity to announce themselves as being postmodern.
Lisa is fucking gold and everyone who likes video games and tragic stories NEEDS to play it
I don't really understand what Sub Rosa has to do with postmodernism, the game isn't really developed enough to really declare it as anything. Not to mention it's not really telling a story, you kinda just make one for yourself.
@@robinsomers1577 I would argue that the round structure as it is designed is extremely nonlinear and extremely unconventional for an FPS.
It's a deathmatch FPS game where it is not only possible for everyone in the round to win through cooperation, but also one where reflexes and map knowledge is put on the backburner against planning and intelligence gathering. Hell, shooting in that game is outright hard and awkward compared to most FPS games, further de-emphasizing the very core nature of an FPS game- First Person Shooting itself. I would argue that's pretty postmodern in it's design, but I can see how some people would rather wait until it's fully "out" before anyone calls it anything.
The other thing that's important is that the postmoderism the game i've listed embody is something tied to their game design. A Short Hike has a clear goal and an ending, but is otherwise an extremely nonlinear experience that is designed to be a one-and-done exploration meant to invoke the calmness that hiking brings. Disco Elysium is an RPG where your skills are your mental faculties, and killer7 uses American and Japanese game design differences to tell a story about the cultural differences between America and Japan. Postmoderism is something woven into the DNA of these games as they break, explore, and toy with common constructions of game design as well as constructing new ones.
Disco Elysium and Wuppo? Explain yourself this instant.
@@georgecrab1916 Disco Elysium I already explained above, but in slightly more detail without spoiling, the game heavily plays with a postmodern viewpoint of the multiplicity of the human experience. It has an extremely postmodern message.
Wuppo incorporates a ton of world design details that make the game more interactive and "larger" than traditional platformers. Real-time train systems, forcing the player to wait in real time at lines in an Amusment Park, as well as other details like being able to work actual jobs, etc. This makes the player consider the greater world as more than just background set dressing, and instead as a real, breathing world operating outside of the players reality. This goes in hand with the climax of the game.
- "No no no, you're SUPPOSED to hate the main character!"
- "I do! I don't wanna play anymore"
- "Wait, no"
-"wait a minute, you hate a purposefully hateable character then you must be a baby and all videogames arent art".
Problem is the narrative acts like Alex changed his behavior, but he never did... at least, only barely, and not until after the cast started pretending he had.
Also, one of the themes is supposed to be him realizing he's not the most important person in the universe and that other people matter too... but this is undercut by him demonstrably being the most important person in the universe. The multiverse revolves around him, and he figuratively becomes Jesus in the ending.
The game couldn't make up its mind, and the tedious gameplay just made it rough.
Not only is he the msot important person in the univeerse, he's the only person in the multiverse who matters at all
You know, I think a main character with no redeeming qualities could be really interesting, but only if the supporting cast is incredibly strong; something where their arc is centered around how they interact with the rest of the cast, so that we're rooting to see them start treating the characters we enjoy better instead of just seeing a character we hate become baseline tolerable.
The problem is Allanson insists he did just that and we were all just too triggered from seeing ourselves in Alex. Granted, he's changed his story about why and how the script ended up the way it did and backpedaled on his creative intent multiple times
@@gtf234 I think I remember this one guy said "professional gamers are a bunch of booger-eaters," and when people were pissed off at him, he claimed that they were mad at him, because he was right. That's what this guy sounds like.
The other issue is, you really can't have a protagonist with no redeemable qualities and still expect the audience to be invested in them. There has to be something that will get people on board with following them.
Since the dev mentioned Sherlock Holmes, let's use him as an example. While Holmes is an asshole and probably not the kind of person you'd want to hang out with, he's a brilliant detective. Watching him piece the clues together and lay out the answer as well as how he came to it is enjoyable, even at the times when he's proven wrong. People still read and watch stuff featuring Holmes to this day because they want to see how he'll solve the mystery.
When people talk about redeeming qualities, they usually mean whether the character has some morality or niceness to them. I'd argue that that would be limiting. A redeeming quality simply answers the question "what makes this character worth following?"
There's already a game like that. It's called Drakengard.
Don't mind me, for some reason the replies aren't loading for me
“My game wasn’t well-received so all the literal hundreds of thousands of videos games in existence must not be art or have deep content.”
old school runescape is art
art of the deal - I double your money. You give me your stack and I log.
taken out of context fart eater
@@CrackmiserGaming Such harsh language.
So basically the game is someone trying to do a somersault and say a cool line but constantly face plants onto random things.
Best description of it
@@mightypurplelicious3209 lmao
“Maybe you missed something” maybe if the plot WAS interesting I wouldn’t miss essential info about the plot in a JRPG
Also, maybe you didnt miss anything. Maybe it was just pretentious confusing and bad. Sometimes things are just bad.
It’d be awesome if the main character was awful, and you, as a party, have to save him, and on that journey, you figure out who the REAL main character is.
They could've done that with literally any of the characters in this game (well except Chondra there's not much to her, really) I can realistically see Claudio as the protagonist. I remember Essentia saying that Rory, Claudio or herself could've caused the meteor because they're all capable of destruction. I find that interesting. Claudio and Rory have some weight on their shoulders it'd be cool if the game bothered to develop them but nah that would take away time from Alex going on another 5 hour monolog explaining what was just shown in visuals.
Wandersong
fun fact, in the original ending of the game, they were going to at least try and redeem Alex in some way, but they cut it because it was "too bleak" and they wanted a more hopeful ending... go figure.
i like that he tried to do the whole “triggered sjws are CANCELLING my game” thing but literally nobody bought it cuz the game sucks peepee
A few people fell for it, I remember a comment saying he was getting it to spite SJWs, just ended up fucking himself
It should be mentioned that the game, regardless of quality, was very poorly marketed. I had no idea it existed until negative reviews started popping up.
Well to some extent it does seem like he was heckled over by SJWs. A lot of people think that the game is SJW propaganda so I can’t imagine that helped sales.
I think we hit that point in culture where 'SJW' is used entirely by people who hate having to be thoughtful about others or having to accept that a game they made is just fucking bad.
Nah there were quite a few sjw types freaking out over stuff like "ginger is our word" and various other things
Look, Andrew had a good chance to defend his game and apologise but instead he started sound pretentious, annoying over dramatically deep and a little too much like his beloved hipster character, to me it sounds like he’s the only one who resonates with this character and this was an excuse to be overly pretentious and snobby.
(Great video btw)
he's not thick skinned he let minor insignificant little insults get to his head and started rebuting with the only men who bought his game and they were just giving positive suggestions to him he's the one that's acting like a child not the ones who 'disrespected' his game
DIO criticizing a pretentious person is the rarest shit I have ever seen and I like it hahahahaha
Seriously sounds like annoying 15-year-old in 2005 Who just drew the first sonic OC and then gamer zero 65 said that it sucks and then he goes on a rant about how sonic will only get better in the next game will be the best game even better than Mario and how gamer zero is an idiot and an immature five-year-old and how he’s never seen a piece of art and how his OC is better than the Mona Lisa
Ah yes, let's make the hero a redditor, that will make people love him
REDDIT GANG
yeah, they should of made him 4chan-er
@@marfin4325 Hell yeah. He could throw red pills instead of records.
A redditor would have been better
@@dingdawng Mr. Yiik is essentially already a
Reddior. If he was a Channer, then it would be entertaining
Pause at 5:10
"I could film a turd in a stationary shot as long as a feature length film. I could say that was 100% my intention, but that doesn't mean it wasn't crap."
PERFECT summary to counter pretentious artist's defences of "But that's the INTENTION, you're just a pleb who doesn't get it!" I love it.
ah so its NOT bad writing! You just WANTED everyone to have an awful experience by playing as an utter asshole! THat's SO MUCH BETTER! D:
@@sarafontanini7051 but he has no substance besides being an asshole you have to have redeeming qualities if your main character is an utter asshole if that's his whole character we can't really enjoy him because we don't know him
Reminds me of Andy Varhol's Empire, which is an 8 hour movie with nothing but a shot of the empire state building.
@@FizzyPopVevo ...Exactly. That was her point.
"Nope, you are nitpitching and biased. I win, goodbye!"
Nice critique, I learned a lot. Keep text short, sweet and not preachy. Give characters a reason to actually be invested. Got it!
"Characters don't need to be likeable but they do need to be interesting to watch"
Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw
Alex a character made to be unlikeable but the biggest problem is that the game dev succeeded way too much on that objective and made him into a full blown Scrappy.
Suicune The Monarch Of Pure Water TASK FAILED SUCCESSFULLY
Hey I like Scrappy!
The thing is making an unlikeble is not difficult at all, to make people connect with them is the hard part, that's Tony Stark is so beloved and Capitan Marvel is so hated, literally every single person can be an as**ole.
I know this video is a year old, but quite frankly, I always felt his "he's supposed to be that way" line was just an excuse for people hating the character. He failed to write anything that made anyone want to see the character grow or mature and blamed everyone else for his failure. It was a cop-out excuse to protect his own ego.
Agreed, a protagonist can be a jerk and likable, it just takes writing skills. He just refused to admit it.
@@runawayredmin8263 It's entirely clear that the character wasn't meant to be sympathetic or popular, though, at least initially.
@@zusty9589 there's even cut content from earlier builds that play more into this such as the cut essentia ending where he basically said he wished he was the better person the player was. Alex definitely was always meant to be unlikable, it's just the game poorly executed it
"Developed? This thing is digital baby!" Is one of my favorite lines ever.
this remind me of a teacher i had, he looked tired all the time, he had a dull voice, but for some reason when he talked about history, you just shut it and listened to him, for some reason the way he talked pulled you in in the story... i feel the same with this review i loved it
It does my heart good to see LISA repeatedly put on the same level of indie genius as Undertale. Here it especially works since Brad is a great example of a protagonist that does some absolutely horrific things, yet the player still sympathizes with his motivations and knows there is some good behind the dirt he's doing.
That game made me cry, it's so underrated just because people don't like the heavy stuff in it.
It isn't there yet. The creator has to rerelease the game in an effort to cash in on the meme, but no one picks it up, so it bombs again. then, and ONLY then, will it be the Morbius of games.
Guys took Persona, Saturday Morning RPG, Scott Pilgrim, sprinkled some shit specks on them, shoved it in a blender, blended it, put it in a bowl with ceramic wrap, buried it for a decade, then took it out and force fed it to you with a rusty spoon
The response of the dev is priceless XD Snapping back to negative feedback instead of thinking about how to turn it to positive is never a good solution....especially if the game has an interesting story idea but the implementation is like......this.
The thing about YIIK is that it's not bad to make an unlikable protagonist. It's not bad to show a protagonist that sucks. But you can't just have a piece of trash. When you have a protagonist with huge flaws you have to work even harder to be delicate with the writing, to show things that will explain but not justify their behavior, and to possibly give positive little tidbits that show something underneath the crap that they are.
But YIIK's writing is really, really bad. Any sort of lessons about Alex's behavior (and there are) fail because the game likes to do shit like "Hey, Alex actually IS the most important person in the universe" and "Hey, the main character of the creator's previous game is giving Alex his PERSONAL APPROVAL while also calling out reviewers and fans for **not letting him finish his quest** "
YIIK has good lessons about not being a piece of shit and helping your parents and being good to your friends--but it's buried by stupid jerking off, a plot that ends up forgetting those things half-way through, and scenes like Alex trying to kiss Rory with no consequences.
You wanna know how to fix YIIK? Have it play out exactly as it does, then Alex travels back in time and you play as him being a good, kind person, trying to fix all his mistakes and find some exit to the coming catastrophe. Show actual growth, not just "Well, I guess it's up to you now, alternate version of ME". Alex **baaarely** transforms by the end. He just 'kills' his negative traits, fights a girl that heel-face-turned 'betrayed him all along', and then literally hands the player the reigns so that WE (not him) choose to pull the plug on him and the bad guys.
in conclusion: its fine to have an unlikeable protagonist. Just don't pretend that they aren't an awful person and have them develop, or if not do that at least have a reason why we should care about this asshole.
Lisa's Brad is an interesting inversion and thus is a much better character: we're initially SUPPOSED to like and sympathise with him which makes it hit harder as it becomes clear that his journey to save Buddy is making him become worse and worse.
Better idea would have been to have him not want to join in on any sort of quest for reasons of 'I'm not ******ing stupid and don't want to die'. Just out of survival and not wanting to get involved in stuff that will obviously get him killed. Have him only join in, despite clearly not wanting any part of this, after something drastic happens (like Rory attempting suicide or something like that) and forces him to join in (even if he snarks ar every opportunity on the quest stuff).
Hell, have him br supporting the other characters from afar, always saying they shouldn't be getting involved in these dangerous things but still willing to somewhat back them up and such. And have him need to catch up to everyone once he finally gets involved.
Eddie's entire arc in the Ed, Edd n Eddie movie is a better bad person character arc than this whole character's arc
And there are times where the game forgets what time setting it's even in. Having I think michael say chrono trigger was his child hood game, when it only came out a few years prior to the setting.
CoffeeFlavoredCondom from what I’ve heard, the game actually takes place around 2010, but it looks like the 90s as coping mechanism for Alex. That should have ben conveyed better though.
@@gabrielmcneil7514 I mean it's not a coping mechanism, it's part of how reality is falling apart, like for example the Michael in your party actually not being the childhood friend of the Alex who's the MC but instead another Michael who fell into that reality as stuff continued to break down.
They... Could have handled a lot better but I actually do think this is actually one of the ideas they are closer to actually hitting on something and pulling it off well, and part of that is I like they kept it subtle that no Alex is a millennial but they went a bit too subtle with it.
I have step way too much time on this dumb game.
RenaDeles nah don’t worry about. This game is interesting to me in a weird way, cause it has so many good ideas and i really wanted it to do good.
I think its just a game that need a bit more time in the oven and it could have been awesome or at the very least decent.
@@RenaDeles If that was their intention, they bumbled the execution. It comes across as "the developers were too lazy to fact check". Maybe if they had lampshaded it, it wouldn't have come across that way.
Its like the reverse undertale, no charm, boring combat, too long, too grindy, bad dialogue, tryes to be meta sucks at it, art style is neat tho, shame the rest of the game fall aparts around it.
Why compare it to undertale? You're like the journalist who compare every game to dark souls
So in other words it's 'Undertale'.
@@Kiwiiizzz
He's pointing out it's the reverse, also they're both indie RPGs inspired by Mother so it is well worth the comparison.
@@TheUndergroundView The rest are subjective but calling a 2 hour max game too long is oof
@@supershadow2021 Y2k is way longer than 2 hours. I seen playtrough of at least 8, feels way longer. That shity dialog + boring combat do wonders to you perception of time. Calling it too long is subjective tho, i did play dragon quest xi and clock at 130 hours with the true ending and that start feeling too long past the 80 hours mark wich is around were the first ending pups up. But y2k starts feeling two long past the first 3.
Y2K is slowly becoming the Morbius of games, i remember when Alex Yiik said "its yiikin time" and yiiked all over the bad guys, truly one of the games of all time indeed, with a plot, written characters and worldbuilding, indeed a game.
i'm yiiking out rn because the characters were some of the characters of all time, much more than omori's characters
So if Deadly premonitions is the room of gaming does that make Yiik the Morbius of gaming
The main character's VA is trying really hard to do an impression of Randy Stair. I can't unhear it.
Every time he speaks I expect him to start ranting about Ember's Ghost Squad.
He's a newgrounds animator and that's actually just how he sounds. Maybe downed a bottle NyQuil but that's just Kirbophers voice
Never thought I’d hear a randy stair reference on a video like this, Kinda thought he was an “internet Underground” kinda topic
Which, doesn't help that the protagonist's VA happens to get metoo'd, which makes some of Alex's line unsettling if you know the context of the story.
@LAW yep
Apparently he also voiced Karna in Fate/Apocrypha in the English dub.
“My mistake was thinking that video games are art.”
And it all goes down from here
The game where the protagonist learns the world doesn’t center around him.........by finding out that the fate of the universe is literally in his hands and everything revolves around him, that is set in 1999 to cash in on “oh man, don’t you just LOVE the NIIINETIEEEEES???? So nostalgic!!!!!” while not really resembling the time period whatsoever and just looking like the mid-late 2010s
Also I gotta say, I like your editing style but that is a LOT of words onscreen for short bursts of time. I found myself rewinding and pausing a lot.
YIIK is like persona's drunk uncle trying to be the cool final fantasy dad
my brain shut off at andrew using the "uh oh my cwitics awe twiggewed" argument
How can someone be invested enough in videogames to make one themselves, but not invested enough to still call it art when they fail at it?
Also, I like how he's implying Alex would have been received so much better if he was a character in a movie or book.
rory: my sister killed herself right here, i miss her so much 😢
alex: lmao stfu
To be honest, the part of the dude screaming ITS DIGITAL BABYYYYY was one of the few times dialogue if this game brought me any joy
"My mistake was thinking that videogames are art." no, your mistake was convincing yourself that you created a masterpiece and then getting super bitter when people said "no, u didn't."
I played YIIK and theorized WAY too much on the game and its story, so I've always come to the conclusion that the problem with Alex isn't that he's an unlikable character, its actually that he's SO UNLIKABLE as a character, it eclipses every other character's unlikable traits.
Vella knew from the start that she was an Alternate Reality Semi, and knew that there was 0% chance of Alex rescuing her and bringing her back to this reality, because as we know from Rory's story early on "When two souls of the same person are in the same reality, shit gets BAD.", and Vella, who is INCREDIBLY selfish, has no intention of leaving this reality. Why Vella seems chill about The Essentia being in their universe, despite believing them to be of the same soul... is just really bad writing I think,
The weird phone calls Alex gets throughout the game, are in reality, Micheal, who is an incredible asshole, Even his theme song is about how much of an asshole he is, how he intends to "Take a picture of (Alex) and then tear it in two." and how he is already intending to stab Alex in the back and leave him, from their very first meeting. This is highlighted when you go find Micheal later in the game, and find out the house he said he moved into, ISN'T his house, he actually moved into a different house, which parallels what happened between Alex and Micheal in the past.
The Essentia is NOT actually a Soul of Vella/Semi, but actually a part of Alex's soul, and to elaborate on this, you need to understand how Proto-MIcheal operates. Proto-Micheal mentions that becoming a proto being means you become so aware of your flaws from seeing them repeat through numerous lifetimes, specifically in EVERY reality, there is a Micheal who will eventually betray their Alex, and becoming a Proto-being means moving past those flaws... The writing doesn't really work with Proto-Micheal because his only real characterization is that he's an asshole instigator who riles Alex up to make him look worse, and everything else is just narration of "Oh well THIS happened in our past.
Back on The Essentia and Proto-Alex though, just like the four Sub-Alexes before the final confrontation exemplify negative aspects of Alex's personality (Skeeviness, Laziness, Pretentiousness and blind consumerism), Proto-Alex doesn't really act like any of that, he's hooked up next to, what is presumebly HIS ideal woman, and he never even looks at her, he is direct and straightforward with the Player, he doesn't seem to care about... anything honestly, he just kind of wants to sit there and be "Perfect." and only fights back after the player attacks him. But there is one aspect our Alex has that he doesn't, and that's his self-centered nature... which is represented by the Essentia. Proto-Alex got the way he is, by cutting out negative aspects of his personality, but the very nature of throwing away instead of improving is an ultimately self-centered action, so the Essentia got botched, leaving them in their twisted state as connected, but deeply hating each other. A throwaway line is that it's NOT Proto-Alex that is controlling the meteors that destroy realities, its the Essentia, who is doing all of this because, at the end of the day, she doesn't have absolute control, Proto-Alex is just letting her act as she pleases because he just doesn't care enough to take the control away from her, but the Essentia STILL desires to be more important, to be the one in control of EVERYTHING, even Proto-Alex.
You're absolutely spot on about Rory/Chondra/Claudio though, they're fine as characters, and Rory even gets his quarter circle arc of "Lying about dead sister" to "Alex is right, I did endanger everyone's lives with my lies" and then translates into "NOTHING" or "SUICIDE". In particular, I would have liked if Rory had literally stated at some point "Look, Alex, Micheal and Vella might be nice to me, but you're real to me, and that's what i need.", that would have really highlighted what Rory was actually looking for, not platitudes, but someone to treat him as a person, not a pity case, and would have given him a reason to actually care about Alex. Chondra and Claudio seem to exist only because "In another reality, Chondra and Claudio are Alex's siblings!" Which is almost never touched on except outside of a trippy dream sequence, and one of the Alex's on Alex Refugee Island being young and black. In a way, it ALSO makes Claudio a Tragic parallel to Alex, because HIS Alex will never be seen again, because this reality already has an Alex that replaced him, ala Semi and Vella.
If you decide to torture yourself with a repeat playthrough, a LOT of what I pointed out becomes super clear. It's kinda obvious the story was written in a way that it was supposed to be played through twice... but honestly the game and the story are NOT good enough to warrant a second play through. There were a few moments I noticed that the Onism 1999 Website was CLEARLY a dimensional hub between realities BEFORE it was announced in story, because a poster gets banned in a thread, but they continue posting later on in the story... and fun fact, that same poster is implied to be of the Soul of Semi/Vella. Foreshadowing is actually the story's strongest aspect... but it's hard to notice it without a second playthrough, and... yeah, the game's REALLY glaring flaws make it hard to notice when the writing is actually good.
You didnt play,you suffered it
too long, didnt read
Very long, worth the read
Seeing him say video games aren’t art is so sad to me. It’s not just art, it’s art with emotion.
The sadness from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games at their ends. The fear fighting Gigyas in Earthbound. The helplessness making choices in Lisa the Painful RPG. The feeling of hope in Okami’s final boss.
All wonderful games, and all that I would 100% call art. It’s a shame his ego has taken away that magic.
There's also NieR Automata, which gives you the feeling of wanting to have hope, despite the whole situation telling you that there might be nothing else left.
In some ways, video games are an art form where getting it right is even more important, since they require so much more audience investment than most other art forms.
Shadow of the Colossus, Silent Hill, Bloodborne...
This developer has always blamed the audience for not appreciating his work when he himself can't accept his own flaws and issues. Yet he expects us to eventually appreciate and identify with a man who can BARELY accept his own problems 20 hours in and can't even make the final decision for himself.
(Plus there are only two bosses that aren't scripted)
Forget the tonal issues
“Games aren’t art because players didn’t see my V I S I O N and not because my execution sucks”
Yo, thanks for watching!
I did a blind playthrough of this game on Twitch, and I'm planning to stream more games too! So check me out there if you're down to hang :)
www.twitch.tv/uricksaladbar
It will be my pleasure!
Please tell me you've got somewhere that you upload those streams as archives
What happened to the Attempt at writing Michael's protagonism? I don't see it in the description. I see the title, but no link or talk after it. ,’:(
Despite the game being not good it was fun watching you stream and reading our comments.
Micheal as the protagonist link is missing from the description
So I’ve learned that they changed the Golden Alpaca scene. It’s certainly not as boring to look at, but now it’s a tonal nightmare in the opposite direction where it’s trying to be more serious with the Golden Alpaca now being some world changing deity that talks about “deep subjects” regarding whether or not Alex’s life is worth living
"Theres always a lighthouse, theres always an asshole" that needs to be on a shirt" lmao
"My mistake was thinking games were art.”......oh my god i can see why he made alex the way he is.
I know it's Y2K, but I always read it is Yiik; I feel this is a more appropriate name.
Players: don’t feel like dealing with a shit-stick for untold hours
This tool: “TrIgGeReD”
The game would had been more interesting if they killed the protag early
"I love being in YIIK!" -Alex Yiik
The main character being unlikable is a kneejerk reaction from the devs, I think. I’m sure the dev wanted to have people actually like him, like he wanted people to like the writing. It’s only when people told him that Alex and the gang are shit that he said ‘nuh uh youre just too smooth brain’
that scene where alex attempts to kiss rory makes me want to curl up into a ball and cry
I think Sammy and Alex's story would've been a lot more impactful if this was a person Alex had already known before.
Something along the lines of Sammy being a childhood friend that one day vanishes out of nowhere, and then turns up in that abandoned building years later only to be pulled away once more by some otherworldly force right in front of Alex's face.
It would add to the story as well as Alex's character, and also has potential for other characters to have connections to Sammy (Michael knowing Sammy when they were kids and wanting to find out what happened, Alex being able to understand Rory's loss)
YIIK is like allergic to good writing, i swear
@jefferyandbob3137 honestly it's a shame, because like everything else aside from the story? I dig. While I haven't played it yet so I can't say much about the combat systems, the visuals and the soundtrack are amazing. I could legit listen to Sammy's theme for hours, and I find it provides a better characterization for her than the actual dialogue did.
I’m so glad you made the parallels to Scott Pilgrim. It’s such a shame when you see the missed potential.