Anyone played YIIK?

@asterdisaster

I think it IS that art, and it’s in Rory’s room!! The scene kid with the dead sister.

I've never played YIIK, but what I've seen on the first one I've absolutely despised (I think drawing from that one real life missing persons case is gross, I get he's meant to be unlikable but Alex talks way too fucking much, and the "trailer trash" area felt in extremely poor taste), but, I've since seen people say the I.V update or whatever it was was really good, and I think public opinion has been turning. That said, I'm still hesitant to try the game myself. Would you say the first one is worth it or should I just watch a summary or something and start with I.V?

i have to agree with the comment about Into the Mind. i really love that song but, though i havent reached the part of the game where it plays, the music so far has a really different vibe to it so i can imagine the battle theme suddenly turning into undertale music would be jarring as hell

RE: @lyrichartwell

just play I.V. imo its the definitive version of the game, and theres not much reason to play the original release first, outside of curiosity

Ive installed Nameless Psychosis so i'm gonna try that and see if it piques my interest

@lyrichartwell
If nothing else, you'll probably think the aesthetics and battle system are cool!
I find it kind of ironic to imagine someone finding Alex too wordy but liking Homestuck though :V
No shade on you

Well I finished Nameless Psychosis and will probs not say my full thoughts since this is more a YIIK appreciation thread than a general discussion I guess. But uh, yeah no I didn't like that at all. It's certainly, creative, and has some good music and interesting art direction, and the combat is... interesting. I think I'd need to play more to feel if it gets more fun but it felt kinda overcomplicated yet still basic. But ultimately, there was... very little that compelled me to try the full game, I still dread the idea of spending any more amount of time with Alex as a character, and the Elisa Lam parallels still feel kinda gross.

Nice that the game does have a community and people who like it, and I respect the dev for making something that more people have enjoyed. I just don't think it's my thing :V

EZCAT rules the YIIK merch scene it seems.. I have their Rory & Essentia keychains and I always keep Essentia on my phone & Rory protects my wallet. I know Ackk likes to hire fan-artists, they really should have them do some official merch if they haven't had the opportunity already.

I never played YIIK until IV came out, I'd been meaning to for ages but never got around to it, but I'm really glad I waited. I keep thinking about replaying it lately and maybe I'll finally play the pre-IV version so I have a much better grasp on what's new & improved. But the battles look annoying as fuck even in screenshots, I'm kind of dreading it.

I feel kind of slow playing it LMAO, it's really a thinker's sort of game, lots to interpret. there's some things I still don't get at all like Y2K II/NG+. I really like Krow, isn't he so cute..

This song is like the yiik version of the freedom motif in deltarune seriously this melody is in like half the ost

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-NoLS-4iSg

THIS THING'S DIGITAL, BABY!!!!!!!!!

@talentshredder
Alex's theme being so omnipresent is really great. Does a good job of showing how much control he has over your perception of the story, and I love how it's essentially completely absent when you're seeing anyone else's perspective!

@insomniacatgirl

It's so goooddd... the music in this game is off the charts, really. I wish they'd release an OST CD. I know there was a vinyl record released a few years ago that looked like the Mystical Ultima LP legend and I would kill to be able to own it.

@lyrichartwell

I feel like the worst part of YIIK is that it's a game that can't truly be appreciated unless you complete it. And that's kind of an arduous task if you don't like Alex. It took me like 30 hours to clear the main story & NG+ and there's STILL more I haven't gotten around to playing in NG++. Post-IV I think that it's the weakest part of the game, how much of it is complete fucking nonsense until the end. Honestly I think it's a game best replayed, I dunno, is this even a common things with games I don't really play a lot of super story heavy games.. But, yeah, I definitely get why people don't finish it. ESPECIALLY if they were playing an earlier version.

I've finally playing 1.0 so I have a better appreciation of the improvements made in IV. I noticed early on in chapter 2, there's a cutscene with Essentia that I believe they cut from IV. I don't remember seeing it there. (I've only finished chapter 1 so far, right now I've got to check out the Mind Dungeon.)

I don't know if I like it or not. It was interesting, and I think the narrator is the Proto-Woman you meet in the factory, since it's just like how she speaks. It's too hand-holdy, it made me realize I liked how vague these sorts of scenes were in IV. Proto-Woman is just a weird character overall, I don't really know what to make of her.

I wanted to interpret this as being a dream Alex had, since that's how Essentia was introduced in IV. It's the only change that's stuck out for me so far. Besides the bug where my menu doesn't actually show on-screen when opened.

Well, I finished Yiik. I'll probs save more complete thoughts for elsewhere or maybe my own thread bc, to cut a long story short, I really hated it. I do wanna ask the folks in this thread a genuine question though.

What do you all make of the Elisa Lam parallels?? Bc honestly, I think they're really gross. Even if you accept that the whole thing is a self-critique of both Alex and the creator for his/their behavior towards the Elisa Lam case, I think that rings pretty hollow bc of Sammy showing up right at the end, well past the point where we know Alex's behavior is destructive to all of reality, and she like.... thanks him for his dedication to finding her and... it feels, really gross. Given Alex as a stand in for the creator, at least in this regard of his reaction towards a missing persons case, it kind of feels like... the creator giving himself a pat on the back for making this whole story based on Elisa Lam, as a sort of tribute? But, no, it just feels really gross bc. That was a real woman who killed herself.

I really struggle to see anything positive in that, and it's frankly the worst thing in the game imo. The fact the game never drops this, even framing Sammy as Alex's soulmate, is just... really gross imo. Do people just have a totally different read on this? Is this a thing fans of Yiik also otherwise dislike but ignore in favor of what they do like? Or, do people just not know about Elisa Lam anymore?

So- first off. Alex is not and never was representative of Andrew Allanson. Alex is a worst case scenario depiction of the kind of person who would unhealthily obsess over this sort of missing persons case.

That also wasn't Sammy at the end, she very notably had the same outfit as the Blue Woman who showed up outside the factory hotel. Alex getting his details mixed up. They're not soulmates, Alex never even met Sammy. The entire story is told BY Alex, and you see what he wants you to see. If you realize that, you'll start to notice lots of little inconsistencies and can piece together what's really going on.

Alex isn't an important person in any regard, and nothing about him is meant to be seen as good. He doesn't even ACTUALLY confront his issues when you get to the Alex comet, he does it in the most placid way possible to make it seem like he's improving when he's not.

I think you made the mistake of trusting what Alex shows to you :V

You're not a parallel Alex btw.

I'm not saying Alex is in total the representative of the author, I'm going by the author's own words outside of the game talking about Elisa Lam. He was pretty open near the release of Yiik about the Elisa Lam case being a major inspiration. Most of my issues come from playing into the similarities, making it obvious for anyone who has a passing familiarity that this is indeed based on the same case. If the game has been inspired by that case, but Allanson never talked about it, and the missing persons case in the game didn't so closely reflect the one in reality, I don't think it would be as big an issue for me, but that's not what happened, and while I liked a lot of stuff surrounding I.V, I think it's fundamentally trying to build on that story that just, is really hard to get invested in bc of how distasteful I find it to be.

I'm sure there's details of the plot I'm missing. While I played through the whole game and tried to engage with it, it simply did not hold my interest, so I'll admit I didn't really put the work in of trying to understand it. I simply did not think the Blue Woman you meet once outside the factory was important. I can understand that the Essentia 2000 lied about Sammy/Vella/her being Alex's soulmate, given that it seems the ending implies that, yes, the Essentia 2000 lied, and she is instead a... version of Alex as well? So, playing into his own self obsession, of course another version of him would validate that as fate and try to hide it. I don't quite know if I have those details right but, again... The game hides things, and obfuscates, and that might be cool, but it requires a base level of investment that it frankly never earned from me.

It reminds me a bit of a Deltarune mod called Ribbit. It has a lot of hidden lore and answers if you want to go looking for them, but the core cast of characters are so unlikable and there's so little grounding in reality or any resonant emotional core that, from my view, it hasn't really earned that depth it's trying to present. Now, a lot of people like that mod, a lot of people like Yiik, I'm willing to admit that that level of things is just my own perspective and it kinda prevents me from engaging as much as I'd maybe like.

Still, I think my question was more about the decision to parallel Sammy to Elisa Lam in the first place. Basing her so closely on a real person and then extrapolating this whole crazy plot still just feels a bit wrong to me.

Frankly, I do not think Sammy is "closely based on Elisa Lam". Her disappearance being in an elevator was inspired by Elisa Lam's disappearance as the internet very unhealthily obsessed over that video for a very long time, and in places still kind of do. An immensely distasteful documentary about it JUST came out on Netflix like a couple years ago. I think that is sort of it, and you seem to be misinterpreting some shit Andrew said.

Also, Essentia and Alex are quite literally the same person. There's no such thing as parallel selves. Alex lied to himself.

RE: @insomniacatgirl

Andrew Allanson has been very open about how Sammy is directly inspired by Elisa Lam, and how he was obsessed with mystery of it all. I'll trust you are misinformed as opposed to disingenuous, but this is pretty well known fact it was the target of great criticism back when the game first came out.

@chthonikix

I probably knew that and forgot :V sorry. I have a very bad memory
I am not being disingenuous.