YIIK: A Post Modern RPG / Ackk Studios / Andrew Allanson - "I wanted to make a game with a protagonist who was very unlikeable" - From Someone who is equally unlikeable. Currently developing Version I.V (1.5)

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The worst part is that the tutorial went on for a good 5 minutes so I had to hear this song at least 3-5 times. It sounds like a shitty Digibro album. As for using the main theme right away, it's a toss up between having it as a placeholder and general incompetence. I'm leaning towards general incompetence.

I didnt pay attenttion to it so i didnt notice but yeah the lyrics are so awful they HAVE to be ironic/satire (of trappers maybe?) but it doesnt work cause ironic garbage is still garbage. This seems to be a recurring theme with YIIK, that the humor attempts never land at all. Blowing 5 rocks in a row in the same room isnt funny but Hellkrai will insist is a hilarious "joke".

In the demo, the first tutorial fight is scripted for you to lose and says "oh no you didnt last very long did you? select try again!" and thats... not funny? Who are we laughing at, the player that lost for no reason?

What i mean is, "stylistic suck" only works if you convince the audience you're not incompetent first. You gotta "earn it".

Like, Claudio talking about magical girls is intentional cringe humor, i get it... but every joke in the game is cringy by default so that one doesnt look any better.
 
The two core issues with the original was the gameplay and the plot. With the new gameplay, it sounds like they essentially took the whole thing out and started from scratch, which is definitely good. But from the sounds of things, they didn’t fix the core issues with the story and instead stiches and stapled a bunch wacky shit to it on top of attacking even more bad plot to it.

So half the game is fixed while the other is probably worse off than before.

In the demo, the first tutorial fight is scripted for you to lose and says "oh no you didnt last very long did you? select try again!" and thats... not funny? Who are we laughing at, the player that lost for no reason?
They put MORE scripted losses in?!
 
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Like, Claudio talking about magical girls is intentional cringe humor, i get it... but every joke in the game is cringy by default so that one doesnt look any better.
Isn't Claudio in particular super cringy because 1) The anime he is sperging about wasn't even popular at the time and 2) Weebs like him simply didn't behave like him?(ie he's a modern weeaboo wearing a skin of someone from the 90s, just like Alex YIIK is a modern day soycuck that pretends he's in the 90s)
I remember one of the vids raising that point, but there have been so many made about this game.
 
The two core issues with the original was the gameplay and the plot. With the new gameplay, it sounds like they essentially took the whole thing out and started from scratch, which is definitely good. But from the sounds of things, they didn’t fix the core issues with the story and instead stiches and stapled a bunch wacky shit to it on top of attacking even more bad plot to it.

So half the game is fixed while the other is probably worse off than before.
To be fair how could anyone fix the story without making it completly different?
The story is a mess, it just jumps from set piece to set piece with just a very flimsy thread tying everything together sometimes, that beign Sammy
-Alex meets Sammy
-Alex tells Michael about Sammy
-They both learn about Vella from the forum
-Vella info dumps a bunch of nonsence to them
-They go to meet Rory
-Alex goes to the radio tower and begins the search for the LP
-The group meets Chondra and Claudio
-They go inside Vella's mind for the LP
-Playing the LP leads to them learning about Essentia
-They rescued Essentia
-Essentia tells Alex about the end of the world
-The groups trains for Y2K
-They all die
-Alex wanders the soul space until he meets the player
-They fight Proto Alex and Essentia
-They loose
-Alex tells the player to fix the problem
-All of the Alexes die and the player is the last one

It get that the intent of the story is that Alex is putting away adult life by chasing after Sammy and whatever stupid shit that comes his way, but this is way too disjointed to create a narrative that even has the semblance of a coherent structure
Earthbound also has a disjointed narrative, but it never dwells too much on each part and it has element that affect other parts in the story.
The point of Earthbound having multiple different set pieces was to showcase as many aspects of american culture as possible, it also helps that many JRPGs of the time were somewhat similar in structure. Yiik story has no justification for beign a mess
 
Earthbound also has a disjointed narrative, but it never dwells too much on each part and it has element that affect other parts in the story.
The point of Earthbound having multiple different set pieces was to showcase as many aspects of american culture as possible, it also helps that many JRPGs of the time were somewhat similar in structure. Yiik story has no justification for beign a mess

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the wacky disjointed narrative was an intentional choice on the devs' behalf to mimic those old JRPGs (and Japanese media more generally), and not purely a function of the poor writing. Not to say that it was executed well -- the tropes feel strange and out of place in a Western game with a more grounded approach to worldbuilding and character writing -- but the contrast does feel deliberate.

Yeek is meant to be an obtuse mess made up of random bits ripped from other pieces of media, because it's a "Post Modern RPG", and everyone knows that postmodern just means weird. The narrative dissonance is the point. It's been written with the sole goal of defying as many storytelling conventions as possible for the sake of art, and predictably ends up sucking because of it. I find it very unlikely that 1.5 will do anything to improve this.
 
They put MORE scripted losses in?!

You're locked away from doing anything but basic attack so all you can do is watch alex get out damaged and die.

Isn't Claudio in particular super cringy because 1) The anime he is sperging about wasn't even popular at the time and 2) Weebs like him simply didn't behave like him?(ie he's a modern weeaboo wearing a skin of someone from the 90s, just like Alex YIIK is a modern day soycuck that pretends he's in the 90s)
I remember one of the vids raising that point, but there have been so many made about this game.

You must have seen running shine point out Claudio wouldn't be able to find such old anime without importing it but then he would have to be extremely dedicated to anime in general and not just one specific magical girl one.

Claudio is cringy cause he's a black guy obcessed with a magical girl anime and that's the joke. Some people argue there is a secret depth to this because it implies Claudio breaks the illusion that they're in 1999 because he acts like a modern weeb.

But not even that works cause Claudio's anime doesnt make much sense. He says it was made in 1977 but "maho shojou" wasnt a title back then, they were wiches or princesses. I dont think Andrew put much thought into this beyond having a "funny black otaku friend".

To be fair how could anyone fix the story without making it completly different?
The story is a mess, it just jumps from set piece to set piece with just a very flimsy thread tying everything together sometimes, that beign Sammy

The story was fine until the end of act 2. Alex stumbles his way into meeting Sammy and keeps searching for clues and realizing there is a lot more going on here. And then this is thrown away completely when cause .

Chapter 3 is alex literally telling his friends he had a dream so everyone follows him across THE ENTIRE WORLD MAP searching for something that he could've found if he simply read the cover. This entire chapter is pointless.

Chapter 4 is alex taking exposition from essentia, which we later find out was all lies. This chapter is pointless.

Chapter 5 is Alex spending a full month training for y2k except the fight is unwinable. This chapter is pointless.

Chapter 6 is Alex meeting proto alex and giving up and dooming the world OR learning to improve and saving the world (It's unclear). This chapter is pointless?

Chapter 3-6 being completely detached from 1-2, retroactively make chapter 1-2 pointless.

Earthbound for comparison has a strong start and sticks to it. A time traveling bee says you must find these magical places so you can get strong enough to fight the evil alien that is messing with nature's balance. The narrative sounds disjointed but every new city is literally "Ness fixes this shit and makes quirky friends along the way, and they all root for him at the end". It's not that deep but the structure is coherent.

Yiik is coherent through chapter 2 but by chapter 3 it becomes a different game and shoots itself 4 times in a row. At best it needs to justify chapter 3 and rewrite 6 completely to justify 4, at worst it needs a full rewrite on 2/3 of the game.
 
Isn't Claudio in particular super cringy because 1) The anime he is sperging about wasn't even popular at the time and 2) Weebs like him simply didn't behave like him?(ie he's a modern weeaboo wearing a skin of someone from the 90s, just like Alex YIIK is a modern day soycuck that pretends he's in the 90s)
I remember one of the vids raising that point, but there have been so many made about this game.
RunningShine perfectly explains the issue with Claidio. I specifically clipped it because it’s surprisingly relevant to bring up with the way black guys are written these days.



Yiik is coherent through chapter 2 but by chapter 3 it becomes a different game and shoots itself 4 times in a row. At best it needs to justify chapter 3 and rewrite 6 completely to justify 4, at worst it needs a full rewrite on 2/3 of the game.
@LucasSomething ans also, to quote OneyPlays, “maybe don’t make the only leg-mother joke in the game belong to the guy with the dead sister and the suicide”.

Like it’s fine if you want to do a thing where you can make a depressed party member kill themself if you treat them like shit, that can actually work for the story they were somewhat attempting to tell, but you can’t do that AND make a random “lol his mom is just a big leg” joke that has nothing to do with anything and is never brought up or mentioned again. Kinda ruins the entire mood and point of Rory’s character.
 
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Some people argue there is a secret depth to this because it implies Claudio breaks the illusion that they're in 1999 because he acts like a modern weeb.
Honestly i always found the period inconsistencies and how they are there to push the whole "Alex is lying" narrative pretty weird, like, they are glaring enough that, unless i am really overstimating the Allanson's, it's obvious that they were added on purpose instead of being oversights, yet still, why would Alex even have to lie about the period the game takes place in? I get him lying about stuff like his spat with Rory or how he never met Sammy to save face, but lying about the year the game takes place doesn't really make sense, it feels like they only added that in because they wrote all these things that paralleled modern society, but they clashed with the whole Y2K narrative so they glossed over them at the last second. The fact that the story is set up in a way that it tries to deflect criticisms on decade inconsistencies or even the plagiarism of Kafka on the shore with "uhh, Alex made it up" does seem to add to the theory TehSnakereer had that Yiik is about nothing because postmodernism means finding a meaning in a piece of art by yourself, even if you pull it out of your ass.
 
Honestly i always found the period inconsistencies and how they are there to push the whole "Alex is lying" narrative pretty weird, like, they are glaring enough that, unless i am really overstimating the Allanson's, it's obvious that they were added on purpose instead of being oversights, yet still, why would Alex even have to lie about the period the game takes place in? I get him lying about stuff like his spat with Rory or how he never met Sammy to save face, but lying about the year the game takes place doesn't really make sense, it feels like they only added that in because they wrote all these things that paralleled modern society, but they clashed with the whole Y2K narrative so they glossed over them at the last second. The fact that the story is set up in a way that it tries to deflect criticisms on decade inconsistencies or even the plagiarism of Kafka on the shore with "uhh, Alex made it up" does seem to add to the theory TehSnakereer had that Yiik is about nothing because postmodernism means finding a meaning in a piece of art by yourself, even if you pull it out of your ass.

The idea is that Alex is a modern day millenial obcessed with the 90s to the point he lied to himself into believing he's in 1999. He collects pogs. The crow in his mind dungeon says he was "raised by television" because his father left and his mother overworked. But like everything in yiik, there are multiple problems.

1-Alex doesnt feel 90s obcessed enough. He likes old music but LPs werent from the 90. His house is the set of fullhouse and frankton is the seinfield logo but those were 80s. Alex doesnt even know what Y2K is.

2-Alex didnt "earn" this level of delusion. Unreliable narrators in videogames are usually mentally unstable or went through severe trauma but Alex seems like a normal spoiled guy.

3-The "escapist fantasy" isnt 90's at all. Why is Alex punching an alpaca in the sewers and a korean guy inside a robo girl's head? Why are we rambling about alternate realities? That's not what 90s were about.

4-It's a "quirky indie rpg" so of course people take shit for granted. Yiik also wants to be all quirky and cute and unironically make leveling up a plot point and the mind dungeon real so it's easier to assume the game is real but simply works under it's own supernatural rules.

Alex lying about the setting and timeline would've worked if he lied ALL THE WAY into a snowball of delusion. Alex should hear sitcom laugh tracks when someone tells a joke. He should run from a jurassic park dinosaur. He should fight random Men in Black trying to erase his memory. He should meet his own Tyler Durden.

But you never even see Alex's supposed mask slip. Vella calls him out on "getting off on searching sammy" but did he really? He had already given up searching for her by the time she tells him that. He also acts annoyed and frustrated for most of the story so he doesnt seem to be having fun.

"Alex lied to you about being in the 90s" is something a lot of yiik defenders preach but isnt that relevant of a twist on practice.
 
If the game doesn't really take place in the 90s, then why does the final(unwinnable) boss fight literally take place during Y2K?
Nah, the story is just shit. It was re-written at the last moment to make the players feel le bad, as a way for the two brothers to make everybody feel as depressed as they were during development. Leaked and cut content shows the story being much more optimistic and made much more sense, any confusion or plot holes are on the devs.

I've had a flash of inspiration, so I wrote a much better ending/story here. It's a long and autistic one, so skip if you don't feel like reading it.

The story would work a lot better if there were two forks, depending on your actions: One would have you lose Sammy just like in the final game and the group would give up looking after her eventually, where as the second path would have Alex actually rescue Sammy from the factory and they would go on paranormal adventures together.
Eventually, the inter-dimensional shenanigans start and no matter which path you chose, you would meet Alex and crew from the other universe, everybody would point and go "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!" and eventually the entire reality would start collapsing(like at the end of the final game). At this point you would have two of every member, for example Proto Micheal and Chris Chan Micheal and both variations would have unique interactions and ways to play in combat.
From that point onwards, depending your actions, several things can happen: You can follow clues left behind by your former self and try to prevent this entire thing from happening, which ends up creating a time paradox(game ends just how it started: with Alex on the bus back to Frankton), you can hop dimensions and fight thru dungeons/alternative universe takes on the previous story missions to actually recruit the alternative characters you find at the very end of the game, which is exactly how this path would end as well(bad ending, fighting is futile, you cannot defeat yourself no matter how much you train the mind dungeon ect).
The good ending would be achieved from getting to know Sammy from either universe(I guess to make this work there would have to be some sort of half assed romance system, yes that would include potential scenes with Rory and Vella like in the final game. It doesn't matter which variation you romance but both have some unique interactions). At some point, once you got far enough in a relationship with either Sammy, you would find the android in a van and that would lead to a true ending path where you eventually help her take down the true big bad in that ending that was cut out. Universe would go back to normal, everybody would learn a moral lesson about themselves(like Alex finally growing up and taking responsibility) and everyone would give one final goodbye as they went back to their own universes. Alex wins the girl and she wants to stay with him in his universe, everything ends on a high note.

There would be one more hidden end to make the game truly post modern: there would be secret spots around the map that the game wouldn't actually tell you about, some of which nigh impossible to find without a guide. When you go into them, really weird shit starts happening that Alex doesn't talk about afterwards(like those weird scenes with the entity being in his house or back garden). The game would also hint at you where to go during normal gameplay(usually going to a specific place at a specific time during the story or backtracking to an earlier dungeon) to get a similar interaction, sometimes from characters that shouldn't be there at that point in time. Eventually, after you defeat the (original) Golden Alpaca in the sewer, you will start seeing the edgy Alpaca that the updates added, talking some mumbo jumbo you don't understand in some of those spots. At some point, Alex would point out in one of those hidden rooms that there has to be a pattern behind these events, which would send you across the entirety of the game to search for clues in a mini ARG-like quest to solve puzzles and have strange occurrences happen to Alex using the ONISM website for clues(this would be nearly at the end of the game so all areas would be unlocked by this point). As you solve these puzzles and the game gives you more strange events and cryptic clues, Alex would start becoming self aware and more depressed as the game went on, almost bordering on suicidal as you started reaching the end. You would know you reached a point where you're close to getting the ending when the crew starts an intervention and asks Alex why he's acting the way he is. By that point, he's completely changed and starts mildly breaking the fourth wall, to the confusion of everyone involved. After the scene, Alex says that "he feels it's time", and there will be four obelisks on the overworld that weren't there originally. Each one is a dungeon, and it will mimick that one inside the Android head. Each dungeon will be centered about one of Alex's insecurities and have a darker tone, like the Celestia one in the final game. Depending on who you have in your party at the time, responses from the characters will also be different to what happens there. This dungeon is unique in a sense that only your active party(Alex and two other people) can enter, everyone else stays outside.
At the end of each dungeon, Alex has to sacrifice someone, or something, to the unknown forces. Your companions will, understandably, be more than a little concerned and try to get you to simply leave, but you will have a choice: sacrifice a creature within the dungeon(each one will have a unique enemy not found anywhere else in the game, once you "kill it" it's unconscious body will be added into the inventory and you can sacrifice it at the dungeon's altar. If you change your mind, it leaves your inventory forever after you sacrifice someone else or leave the dungeon), sacrifice a part of yourself(can be done all 4 times but each time Alex has his stats lowered and his personality gets even more deadbeat) or sacrifice one of your allies. As you remember, there is two of everyone(except Alex, as he is the final boss in the Y2K battle in the alt universe) and each member can be sacrificed once. None of them will be willing but Alex will force them to, at the horror of the third party member. The alt universe of that character will become just as monotone as Alex by this point even if they're not there and will immediately know what happened, not being there when you come back out but your party will tell you that they acted "strange" before they left without a word(You can't double dip party members, meaning that the alt universe character is not allowed to fight alongside your timeline's equivalent. This will force the alts to stay outside when the sacrifice happens). The rest of the crew will start freaking out once you get outside and demand answers, with the remaining party member that was not sacrificed spilling the beans. The remaining party member that went in and their alt equivalent will leave by that point if anybody but Alex or the creature were sacrificed, but the rest will be convinced that this is something that needs to be done to save the world, and are willing to go thru with it. If you can't tell, the last option will leave Alex with only himself by the last dungeon if he keeps butchering his friends, and that will impact how this hidden ending will go. The android will not be able to be sacrificed if you found her during the Sammy route and will leave at the point where the sacrificial chamber in the first dungeon scene occurs, making the best ending unobtainable by that point. She will say some cryptic shit about her "Seeing this happen before" and how she "hopes that Alex will make the right choices this time". The sacrificial chamber works in a way that requires three people so you will have to dip out of the dungeon and get another party member in her place by that point.

Once all 4 obelisk dungeons have been fully completed, you will have to face a final boss that is unlike the one you've seen in other endings. This will obviously be much harder if you don't have any party members by this point, but if that happens Alex will get a boost to make the fight manageable. The dev room in one of the dummied out endings will show up on the overworld once you're done with the final boss. This scene goes differently depending on what you did thru out this playthru so far:

*Best ending: Sacrifice yourself all 4 times, max out relationship with either Sammy but ignore the "good" questline, have Alex come back to every single Alpaca location and have a conversation with it(what it's saying now is going to start making sense, and Alex will even interject at moments). Going into the office is a point of no return(what you did or didn't do determines how the layout will look once you entering) so you have to meet all requirements before entering.
-Result: The office will be a happy place full of employees. The front desk will have a cheery secretary welcoming you to ACKK studios, a up and coming indie developer. You get to meet the devs and they thank you(the player) for reaching this point, either by being eagle eyed and witty or by reading a guide online, acknowledging that no normal player could reach this point in the game. They talk about how hard it was to make this game and they hope that they can continue making more games like this down the line. They congratulate Alex on making it thru the entire game without letting anyone get harmed and by taking the brunt of the risk thru out his adventure, telling him that he has overcome his shortcomings and is a changed man. Alex, expecting the worst by following this route, does the YIIK face and cannot believe that this has all been just a test. He accepts that this is some sort of a divine intervention(breaks the fourth wall a little and says he "feels like a video game character") and promises to stop being such an insufferable little bitch. The devs tell him that they had to grow up and change while making the game too, and that they hope that everyone enjoys their time with their loved ones on this earth and don't spend that time doubting or hating themselves(obviously this is the devs talking about their mother). The devs open up a door to the room that has Fallout-esque ending slides narrated by the devs for each party member where both Alex and them comment on it. The endings are optimistic, show each universe's equivalent party member getting what they want . Alex stops being awkward and ends up getting into a relationship with Sammy at the end. You get a unique credit sequence with a song you hear nowhere else, even in the "good" ending.

*Selfish ending: Sacrifice 1 or more creatures or party members within the obelisk dungeons, do not max out a relationship with anyone, talk to the Alpacas before going into the office complex. Alpaca berates you, calling you a prick that only cares about himself(further berating you if you killed one of your party members). Alex stays quiet and takes it.
-Result: The office has noticeably less people and the front desk secretary is surprised anyone would come and visit them. When Alex is confused, she says that the game didn't get a good reception and the developers made asses out of themselves trying to defend it(which is what actually happened, but the brothers wouldn't know that yet). This led to the game becoming a joke and quickly forgotten, future of the studio uncertain. When you meet the devs, they are much less welcoming and they're somewhat scared of the uncertain future of the studio. They tell you that you haven't grown as much as they would have hoped, and will be horrified to hear that you would hurt your friends if you sacrificed anyone in the party. They tell you that human nature leads to people making the same mistakes over and over, and it's rare to see them break the cycle. They then unceremoniously show you the ending room, with everybody leading mostly unchanged lives, but they all succumb to their own personal problems or vices in the end(Claudio and Chaundra never get over their missing brother for example, Claudio keeps to himself and tries to forget the world around him with his stupid gook cartoons and Chaundra straight up starts hating white people. Vella continues hopping universes in hopes of outrunning her past or meeting up with her lover, never happens and eventually disappears entirely. All of these are depressing and take the cuteness of the setting away). If any party members were sacrificed, then the ending shows their families thinking they were either abducted or committed suicide, search parties were called and posters were put up but they were never found. Alex has no comment and just gives a "..." response at the end to seeing these slides. Alex himself tries to pretend none of this happened when he goes back to his own universe, but cannot stop thinking about his insecurities or how he screwed up. None of his friends talk to him again because he is either an unlikable asshole or a psychotic asshole.

*Obsession ending: Do not sacrifice your friends or yourself all four times(otherwise this defaults to Best or Worst ending), max out your relationship with any character, talk to Alapcas. Depending on who it is(Sammy, Vella, Rory) he has something different to say. With Sammy, he asks you why you would potentially risk everything for a girl you just met and knew nothing about, with Vella he asks you why you think a useless nerd like him deserves a girl like her, and with Rory he asks you if you're just trying to make him feel better so that he doesn't kill himself. Alex is confused, emotionally immature and doesn't give a well thought out answer. Alpaca ends the final conversation by telling you that only you can answer these questions.
-Result: When you enter the office, it is empty except for the Secretary. She perks up and says she has been expecting you, Alex is confused and she tells him and your party to go on up. When you get to the dev room, it looks like a wedding ceremony, with the two brothers dressed like Priests. Alex is, understandably, confused, and asks WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?! The brothers tell you that they've been watching you and they know you've got a crush on certain someone. Alex, like a small child, tries to play dumb but everyone in the party facepalms and tells him that they know. Some tell him it's hard NOT to notice when they keep smooching up out of nowhere and in public, a cute little reference to how awkward the kiss scenes in the game are. The brothers tell Alex that he should confess his feelings(note that the person you maxed out your relationship with doesn't speak up and just awkwardly stands back). This prompts Alex to start spilling his spaghetti all over the place and talk about how much he loves the person in question and wants to spend the rest of his life with them, all in a very creepy "Alex YIIK The Sex Offender" kind of way without being overtly sexual. Alex offers up for a final kiss, and the person in question tells Alex that they're not ready for a relationship and berates him each for a different reason. Sammy is offended that the only reason he tried rescuing her/traveled around with her was to get laid, Vella tells Alex something similar but also tells him he's immature and childish, and Rory is just confused. He asks Alex if he's just been nice to him to make him feel better or if he's some sort of weirdo. Alex doesn't take these accusations well and starts YIKKing out, being confused as to why he's not getting the girl/guy at the end like all good heroes do. The party berates him and tell him this isn't a game and you can't treat people like this, the person with maxed out relationship tell him that they were treating him like a friend and that this isn't how relationships go if they want to get more serious. The party talks down to Alex and call him an idiot who wasted their time and treated them like his toys, and then leave one by one as Alex begs them to come back(like in the Panda scene). If anyone was sacrificed before this, the tone of this conversation is also much more confrontational and they call Alex a sick freak, willing to let people die just so that he can get laid. Once they all leave, the two brothers tell him that he must have mistook the party's reactions to his advances and thought there was something there when there wasn't. They end up making a point on how forced a relationship build in an uncomfortable situation like this would even look, throwing shade at all the sudden "guy gets the girl" stories in games and media(are we post modern yet?) and wish Alex better luck next time. Alex steps into the ending room alone and it shows him being a lazy, awkward coomer piece of shit browsing some weird website in his underwear, suggesting that Alex only regressed further into his own room and the internet and didn't bother forming any relationships(platonic or otherwise) with anyone ever again or getting that job. It should be noted that the "relationship" scenes, while showing that there might be something between Alex and the other character, show off Alex being very touchy and forward, making the other person uncomfortable but they never do anything about it other than going "Alex!" or "Please stop". This means this ending doesn't come out of nowhere and just plays Alex as a creep straight up, kinda mocking the player expecting any sort of coomer or romantic ending as well(again, the post modern angle).

*Nihilism Ending: Do not talk to any Alpacas at the end. Default hidden ending.
-Result: Alex and the crew(assuming there is any) are, understandably, scared and concerned of going into the mysterious building. They point out that Alex has been acting really strangely and they don't know if they can trust him. Alex doesn't respond, the surviving crew members openly talk about the situation while ignoring Alex. They end up deciding to go on in. The building is empty but has the same layout as in all the other endings. When you get to the devs, they're standing over a casket. They don't interact with you and simply tell you to go into the next room and ask not to be disturbed(this is obviously the two brothers grieving their Mother). When the party goes thru, they get the worst possible endings, but this is in a doomed timeline where everyone is going to die anyways, making them even worse. Some characters, like Rory, decide to just kill themselves early and Vella ends up jumping universes, only to find out each one is doomed for a different reason, and eventually ends up willingly staying in one as it is destroyed because she is tired of running. Alex makes a big speech about how nothing matters, how all of this was a waste of time, and how he shouldn't have even tried because he failed himself, his friends, and the world(so a typical YIIK monologue). This Alex ends up becoming one of the Alexes in the original ending, suffering from one of the deadly sins. If all party members were killed, he becomes "Wrath", a jittering lunatic that has nothing but contempt and hatred for everybody but himself and abhors human life. If he ended up killing every party member, he also gives himself a final monologue during his "ending" he thought he was doing the right thing, but ended up enjoying it by the end. He says he enjoyed this little bit of power as he never felt any at any point in his life and goes on to how he never cared about any of these characters anyways. He ends up making a statement that if there are infinite timelines, there must also be infinite versions of his friends, so their deaths in this timeline were meaningless anyways and can always find more. This leads to him thinking about it further and leading into the idea that he can start doing this for fun, leading to him becoming the bad guy like I said above. If he didn't kill all his party members, he just becomes one of the more "mundane" sins found in the actual YIIK ending.


*Psychopath Ending: Kill all the members of the party and talk to the Alpacas before entering the office complex. This one takes a strange turn, with Alpacas talking to the player directly. They start asking real psychological questions that one can answer(none of the answers matter). Thy ask things like if you enjoy hurting animals or why did you decide to kill your friends, as Alex meets more and more Alpacas, the conversations get darker and they start asking things like "Which one of them did you hate the most?" or "Did it feel good to see them suffer?". Alex is very stonecold about the whole thing and barely reacts, it's clear he's cracked by this point. Last Alpaca just laughs at how stupid his friends were that they willingly walked into their own deathtrap each and everytime, lampshading how it doesn't make sense that anyone would stick with Alex even after one human sacrifice.
-Result: There is nobody in the building and there is no furniture, there is no floor, it's all just a black "void". The hooded Alexes appear and start asking him what ended up happening this time for him to come here. Some of the exclaim some other sick shit they did thru out the game that had them end up here, being self-inserts for chaotic players who just want to get the worst endings possible either for shits and giggles or because they are curious, with one lampshading that he's just putting out footage for his internet channel and doesn't care about any of the characters or what happens to them either way. When you enter the dev room, you see caskets again, this time each one holds a body of each of the members. Alex talks about how he enjoyed seeing each one die and how he hated something about each one of them, asking himself why he even tolerated any of them to begin with. When looking at Micheal, he begins laughing at the idea of the two of them ever being "friends" and talks about how annoying and useless he was. When Alex enters the ending room, there is nothing in there but a noose. Alex is confused for a second, but then he snaps out of his psychotic phase and realizes what he's done. The realization hits him like a truck and he goes full YIKKING out mode screaming. He goes thru all 5 stages of grief: Denial has him having a panic attack and trying to convince himself that this is just another hallucination or a weird vision of another universe. Anger has him berating himself for being so stupid and impulsive, later screaming at the world forcing him to do this. Bargaining has him running back into the casket room and begging his friends to get up and telling them this isn't funny, as if everyone was playing a prank on him. When Depression hits and he realizes that they're not getting up, he starts feeling sorry for them and talking about how none of them deserve this. He blames himself, the pandemonium before the end of the world and the weird supernatural, claiming none of them ever stood a chance and if they didn't die like this, they would simply die some other way. For the final stage, Acceptance, Alex goes back into the noose room and starts pondering on the last few months of the game's story on how all of this could have ended up like this. He comes to a conclusion that he is a sick guy, roped up a bunch of kids that didn't deserve this and never really knew what he was doing, only using his party as a means to an end, discarding them when they outlived their usefulness. He ends up accepting his fate and mentions he cannot imagine himself going on, end of the world or not, and steps on the stool(the only other thing in the room except the noose). You don't see the act happening but you hear it. This ending doesn't show the credits scene and instead just back out to the main menu unceremoniously.


What I wrote is probably pretty awful and very much autistic, but it still plays with the themes, characters and story more than the final game. Like others pointed out, the story falls apart on itself and no amount of "post modernism" is going to save it. It's just bad writing, period, and I don't see the brothers doing much better on their second go around. At the end of the day, the game is infamous for what it ISN'T, we get shitty and pretentious indie games by the dozen but the fascinating thing about YIIK is that it gives you just enough to go off of to make you think it could have been good at one point, and it might have been if done by professional devs. Hell, just look what I wasted a few good hours writing above, if the game was just straight up garbage and unsalvageable why would I even bother trying to "fix it"?
 
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If the game doesn't really take place in the 90s, then why does the final(unwinnable) boss fight literally take place during Y2K?

Think the other way around. If the game doesnt take place in the 90, it shouldnt take place in y2k either.

And now we reach the million dollar question: Is the Y2K fight even real? Is Alex REALLY fighting a meteor with his save the world right now? Or is he lying to you again?

1-Panda tells Alex he doesnt have a dad and Michael moved away when he was 12. The fact we legit see normal michael talk and then proto michael talk and only then Alex says "michael is back" raises the question if "normal michael" is there or not.

2-The fight itself, is full of heavy handed symbolism. The boss is a meteor with Alex's face, a personification of his explicitly mentioned self destruction, and it banishes (not kill) all his friends away with Alex failing to stop it.

3-The world is twisted and trippy, Alex's friends are stick figures who talk like they're going to party and there are no normal people around. The game says reality is tearing apart but guess what...

4-The person who said this would happen and explains it to Alex is Essentia, who later retcons herself and reveals she is also an Alex and lied to him. Meaning Alex literally "lied to himself".

Even within Yiik own absurd plot, this fight makes more sense as a methaphor for Alex failing to fix his self destructive traits and losing his friends, than a literal attempt to saving the world from a meteor. Hellkrai preaches this logic like i mentioned ago.

But then we get to MY issue of this logic theory, if the Y2K isnt real then you can argue nothing in the game is real. If the entire game is a dream and Alex has been in coma for 10 years after a car crash and that's unironically makes more sense than Yiik's plot. I dont want to believe this theory because i refuse to believe the devs intentionally made it this bad.

I'd like to think the devs were too hyperfocused on being "postmodern" and subverts expectations so they were making shit up instead. Haha you think alex saves the world but he DOESNT cause he's NOT A HERO he's a LOSER. I want to believe it was merely a terrible attempt at looking #deep.
 
I dont want to believe this theory because i refuse to believe the devs intentionally made it this bad.
If it was intentionally bad(ignoring how stupid it is to make a long ass RPG completely boring and frustrating to play), Alan wouldn’t have blown up and lost his shit over people hating it on that one Dick podcast over it.

Plus, Two Brothers is also overly wordy and a mess of a story , so…
 
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Here is really fucking underrated review of YIIK.

Otherwise, I see no point in making a thread about it. The only thing that can be considered milk is their passive-aggressive reactions to the failure of Two brothers in the game itself.
The review was really good so thank you for posting it. I found it deeply amusing that the party arrived in "Chicago" and not a few moments later their combat encounter was with a boy firing a gun.

Regarding the brothers, Brian is obviously cripplingly autistic and Andrew feels like a pseud. This is compounded by how harshly he reacted to everyone teasing him over his gay rpg. Also, a lot of the characters are just tiresome. I only went about 45 minutes into the review before I got tired of them, but here are my impressions thus far:
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Alex is someone whose hipster quirkiness is like their beard, take it away and you end up with a dysgenic quack.
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I can't care about Rory's sister's death because he's such an insufferable queer. I'd tell him to kill himself but he's a pacifist.
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Honestly, I can only really pay attention to her skirt and thighs.
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My favorite but only because he's wearing the Chris Chan shirt. Doesn't hurt that he's a lanky version of young Alex Jones.
Also, watching this game reminds me of a personal rule. When you are writing something, finish the draft and let it lie for a few days, maybe a week. Then go back and read it. If you're impression is "Wow! Whoever wrote this must've been a faggot!" Then revise it. The function is a literary gaydar. Clearly whoever wrote this game doesn't have it.

Finally, I can't think of a phrase that told me that I would hate a game more than "Yiik is the millennial take on Earthbound." I know, from that alone, that the game will be a heap of gay pretentiousness. Even what the devs call it, "A Post-Modern RPG", is a bad look. "Post-Modern" makes me think of only a few things: philosophers who are the academic equivalent of the "Skeptic Commentator Community", the current year cultural revolution, or French thinkers whose main goal seemed to be deconstructing the age of consent. I'd understand it more if it came out in 2009 but no it came out in 2019. Postmodernism was already sullied by its effects on society. Goes to show the sort of people behind Yiik, them thinking it's a complement.

I started watching his Legend of Zelda : Ocarina of Time review and at about two minutes in I've been given a long shot of John Lennon huffing a woman's shoe and testimony of Mahatma Ghandi's scatological tendencies with little girls. I mean... wtf... lmao.
 
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1-Alex doesnt feel 90s obcessed enough. He likes old music but LPs werent from the 90. His house is the set of fullhouse and frankton is the seinfield logo but those were 80s. Alex doesnt even know what Y2K is.
Speaking of which, was gaming in the 90's that big? From what I remember, people only talked about that time era as a result of AVGN creating the retro review genre, which primarily attracted gen Xers who remember gaming in their early years. I don't doubt there were obsessed autists, but they were in the minority (I'm not speaking of mascot characters that did have a their own deranged following).
 
Speaking of which, was gaming in the 90's that big? From what I remember, people only talked about that time era as a result of AVGN creating the retro review genre, which primarily attracted gen Xers who remember gaming in their early years. I don't doubt there were obsessed autists, but they were in the minority (I'm not speaking of mascot characters that did have a their own deranged following).
The 90’s was like the height of Mario/Sonic and Nintendo vs Sega. PlayStation get its big start then, and 1997, is considered one of the best years of video games given what released that year.
 
Speaking of which, was gaming in the 90's that big? From what I remember, people only talked about that time era as a result of AVGN creating the retro review genre, which primarily attracted gen Xers who remember gaming in their early years. I don't doubt there were obsessed autists, but they were in the minority (I'm not speaking of mascot characters that did have a their own deranged following).
Yes and no. In short, it was the start of the actual media empire it is now. Game releases became a big deal in like 92/93. They start getting adapted into movies around that time, little earlier. Doom alone was a cultural phenomenon. And the US Comgress put video games on the national stage in like 94. But by the end of 99 you finally have online gaming. MMOs are a big deal that the mainstream public is aware of, with things like 'Evercrack'. Which also means you now have actual "hardcore" gamers. The real over nighter people. And they aren't the acne ridden no loads. They become people you know by that point. Columbine puts DOOM back on the map.

But even being in mainstream awareness was still not the legitimacy we have today. That really comes in with mobile games on smart phones. Which showed the world, that everyone enjoyed games.
 
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