Anyone played YIIK?

Yeah just wanna say, no shade on folks who do like the game. It's just been a huge barrier for my own enjoyment of the game, and I really did give it my best shot, so I was a bit curious as to what other people thought of it.

Given that NG+ seems to be doing its own thing so far I'm gonna try and give that my best shot as well. Like, there were parts of the game I liked, mostly parts that had been added by I.V, and given that NG+ appears to be entirely new stuff, I'm willing to give it a chance.

Ok well, I am unsure why I just resigned to agree with you based on absolutely no evidence, but I looked up interviews and almost immediately found evidence to the contrary.

Yeah, NG+ is an entire sequel that is designed to deconstruct and reiterate the same ideas as the original, and it explains things much more explicitly, but also in equally obfuscated ways. I like it quite a lot.

I'm sorry if this thread sort of turned into an argument, that was never my intent.

No, in fact I'd like to offer much the same thought, not looking for an argument lol. Honestly, even given what Allanson said there, I'm on the side of, yeah, he drew too much from the real case. He even admits it's a valid criticism there. I've been watching a streamer play the 1.25 version of Yiik to see some of the differences, and even not knowing the initial critcism that was leveled on the game at release, bc the Elisa Lam case was local to him, he immediately recognized it based on how the game presents its own story. Given that this isn't an uncommon reaction, I think it's valid for people to have their discomfort. However, having played the whole game, I certainly don't think it really has ill-intent, even if I still find it a bit distasteful. Like I said when I was talking about having just played the demo here, even if it seems like it might not be my thing, I appreciate that it has a community and the devs are putting a lot of work into it even now.

Real of you!! Valid opinion.
It's fine if it's not your thing, it's definitely not for everyone

Oh, I will say, since this is the Yiik appreciation thread lol. some things I did like. The new combat system is actually p good. In the last chapter I found myself really wishing it was scaling in difficulty, bc i was just kinda steamrolling enemies, but in bosses like the Perfume King fight or the final one, it really came alive. The fights seems less frequent so far in NG+, but more impactful.

I also mostly liked the Nameless Child story and the stuff with Michael and the Camera. It seems like some of that is more central to NG+, so it does have my interest piqued slightly.

I do not mean to make this any argument, but that interview was made in 2021, 3 years after YIIK was first released and criticized for its exploitation of the case.

Here's a screenshot of a now deleted response from Ackkstudios when asked about Elisa Lam on Reddit.

I really am not here to say nobody can't enjoy YIIK, but I find Allanson's attempt to sweep the "Elisa Lam manic pixie dreamgirl oc" aspect of his game under the rug extremely cowardly. To say it's a surface reference is also just untrue. The famous footage that everybody distastefully over-analyzed back in the day is a straight reference to this scene.

Also. Sorry, we know what happened to Elisa Lam. She isn't a mysterious missing woman. She was a young woman who had a mental breakdown and killed herself, who just so happened to show up in some slightly unusual CCTV footage in an elevator before her death. To recreate that footage with added blood dripping from her eyes and claim her suffering was influential in the making of your game just to years later turn around and say "it was actually a very smart critique about the thing I definitely didn't do" does not show growth, it shows a desire to have outsmarted everyone from the start.

Alex is not a self-insert of Andrew. But Alex woulda loved YIIK.

I'm sorry but that reddit thread really makes it read like it was ALWAYS a critique of people who obsess over this sort of thing.
"I started to feel like I knew her, and of course I didn't" is like. Pretty much the same thing he's saying in the new interview. The point is he didn't know her, and Alex doesn't know Sammy.

Her name isn't even Sammy, that's a nickname Alex made up.

I kinda don't wanna harp on this anymore.

I am bringing up how distasteful it is and you keep saying "no no you just don't get it". I think this conversation over.

love yiik! weirdly enough it's somehow more homestucky than undertale/deltarune even though toby literally lived in hussie's basement? i got kinda fixated on it back when it came out from how absurdly negative the reception was, but didn't get around to playing it until like 2022. i liked the old version a lot then, and i love the new version now! the older version is very flawed, but i like it a lot as a focused exploration of one awful guy's headspace and love the way it slowly gets more and more weird and surreal as his own sense of reality (metaphorically, maybe) seems to break down. the writing is funny (on purpose a lot of the time) and alex sucks but i personally never thought it ruined the game or anything, especially since him sucking is kind of the entire point. i.v is less focused, but more than makes up for it in everything new being some of the coolest stuff i've ever seen from a video game, and for just straight-up being a lot more playable! love the new gameplay, love the new characters & heavy expansion of old characters, love how hard it emphasizes that surreal dreamlike conspiracy atmosphere, and love how much more obvious it makes the plot (i.e. actually shows things that were only ever Implied in like a single line of the original game).

as for the elephant in the room: the online fixation around elisa lam and missing people/true crime in general? is pretty distasteful and if the game were just a straightforward Missing Person Spooky narrative it would also be distasteful, but that fixation itself is a Real Thing and i honestly think it's fair game to comment on it with a purpose, which yiik does do. i do think it's fair to say it might do that too straightforwardly though.

or maybe 'straightforwardly' isnt the right word? whatever point is i kind of agree it's kind of weird how it literally just Has A Dead Person instead of ex. making a fake case more distanced from reality and think the insistence that nooo actually she's not THAT based on her is also kind of silly when the specific case was clearly the character's main inspiration. (at the same time i also think it's silly when people act like she's meant as a Romantic OC or something when alex having a deeply unhealthy obsession with the case which ruins his life and drives everyone he knows away is quite literally the main theme of the game - the only reason it seems reasonable at all at any point is because the entirety of the main campaign is seen through alex's very limited, very biased perspective.)

@4ndr7a
How you got into the game is very similar to how I got into the game! And your thoughts are very similar to mine lol ^.^ (although I'm one of those Fucking Freaks who actually LIKED the stupid minigame battle system)

Yeah, your take on the whole Elisa Lam thing is very levelheaded I feel, and pretty similar to my own thoughts? I was kinda not doing great when I was responding to the person before. @.@ oops.
I do definitely think it is a little bit too close to the real case for comfort at times, especially since the nickname "elevator girl" definitely originates from real forums, but I don't think it's necessarily entirely wrong to fictionalize real events like that? Even the deaths of real people. Especially in a story where the point is very specifically that the way people acted about it wasn't okay.
I definitely get why people are uncomfortable though!

This might be a weird take on my part though.

She is absolutely not a love interest for Alex though, and that's a weird hill to die on.

Idk I guess my mentality is it's not necessarily wrong to depict something like that if it's done with purpose? I might be putting my foot in my mouth here.

I thought YIIK was very explicitly critical of the way true crime & communities surrounding it tends to be fetishistic.

Especially in this entry from Y2K II, linking offsite for anyone who hasn't gotten to that point ingame: https://i.imgur.com/Rmvy588.png Obviously Y2K II is very recent but I do think criticism of that behavior is present in even the original release. Chondra is a good example of this, if I recall correctly.. I'm still replaying, and anything beyond the first couple chapters is fuzzy in my head. 1.0 is a slog to play through.

I also think the way they decided to use her case as inspiration was incredibly disrespectful. Specifically, having that gif on ONISM look so close to the original. They should've changed it in IV. I actually think it's strange that they didn't, considering they revamped the earlier scene and removed the blood & bones. It is a lot worse in earlier versions. I think there's a way they could have included something similar involving Sammy, but having it be so close to reality is disgusting.

I don't think Sammy was intentionally meant to be based on Elisa, but she is because of how closely intertwined that case is with the game & its development. If that makes sense.

I agree with @insomniacatgirl that it's not inherently wrong to have something be based on a real life event, but the way the Allansons went about it was wrong. It was absolutely done with purpose, to criticize people like Alex & the people on ONISM, but it was still disrespectful.

...But I disagree that pointing out the way they used her case was disrespectful is "harping on about it."

I get that maybe it might get irritating to have people constantly criticize something you like, but it's something that SHOULD be criticized. With a complex game like YIIK, I think a thread about it should be open to criticism and discussion of said criticism. Especially when it's something that is so important to the game.

ADDL: They've been open about her case being an inspiration for the game itself since it was in early development. Here's a 2014 dev forum written by Brian Allanson. https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=39985.0

And here's the original reddit thread that earlier screenshot is from. It's not deleted at all.

https://www.reddit.com/r/earthbound/comments/3560h3/yiik_a_postmodern_rpg_a_video_game_i_am/

Unrelated, I don't feel like double posting: Have any of you read Deviation Perspective I & II? I would really like to, but I'm holding out until I can buy the physical book. And if they release a physical copy of Deviation Perspective II, last I heard it was only on YIIKcord. Whhhyyyyy.

..sorry if my formatting is poor, by the way.

Waiitt, such a silly nitpick but I want to retract specifically the bit about Alex having actually met Sammy. I didn't factor in how odd ONISM posts & users are. I don't think the altered capitalization is random since we later learn that the board allows parallels to interact with one another. I remember passing off timeline inconsistencies like VERAformer alluding to Allison in a post as something related to the general timeline fuckery that comes with Alex's reality, but I think it's more likely it's parallel realities.

If you read through ONISM posts, I think reactionnod is meant to be Alex, and he's the OP of the original gif. He saw her on IRC, and fabricated a story about meeting her.

A parallel Alex obviously, since 'our' Alex, the one we see ingame, is SNESMAN99. The Michael on the forum isn't our Michael - Alex introduces him as Verraformer but I don't think any Michael besides VERAformer ever posts. papershivers is our Claudio, he sees reactionnod's post about the LP and brings it up when Alex asks him about it.

I believe ChronoCrossing is Michael as well, considering Michael mentions liking Chrono Trigger, we know parallels can interact directly thru ONISM, and Michael is the creator of ONISM. But yeah. I don't know about superbpudding. I don't want to take them saying they're Sammy at face value.

Bah everything in this game is so complex. and confusing. fun to think about though.

YIIK with the update now makes it clear that Sami Pak isn't a friendly apparition who loves Alex after a brief encounter in an abandoned building and wants to be with him - she is instead a person who tragically goes missing and then inspires many others to waste their time in trying fruitlessly to rescue her or to bring justice to her death by combing the internet and doing amateur real life sleuthing. I would say that is about as respectful as you could hope to be to the real life Elisa Lamb case while also trying to tell the real story one of the developers writes about with being personally involved in the sort of internet sleuthing that did occur when Lamb actually did go missing and die.

I've watched like 4 video essays on YIIK and haven't played it. But then I went through the demo for the updated version, and the sheer audacity made me applaud the game. I mean, having a character literally named Jocasta flirting with Alex while teaching him about the new battle system is a move most devs wouldn't be able to pull the trigger on. It's made me want to give the game a genuine chance.