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YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG
YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG is as the name implies, an RPG that takes place in the 90s. YIIK is notable for being extremely poorly written and pretentious. The main character is an extremely unlikable ginger hipster (a very 1990s stereotype) named Alex who often goes into long, pseudointellectual monologues about shit no one cares about. YIIK was inspired greatly by the Earthbound series. It took the format Shigesato Itoi perfected for the SNES but replicated it terribly.
The story is Scott Pilgrim but without any self-awareness. Alex chases after an asian chick he barely knows, and despite having a black hole where his charisma should be, is able to meet a diverse group of friends, as they discover that Alex is an inter-dimensional dictator in every single universe, and that robot women and Asians are a constant in his life, usually treated like trash by Alex until the player, (who is also an alternate-Alex?), is asked to defeat the army of Alex, with the help of YIIK Alex.
This inconsistent mess of a story was meant to be high art, meant to make YIIK yet another indie darling that would be praised for years to come. Instead, YIIK was and still is ridiculed for it's terrible writing, cheap and lazy voice acting, aspergic director, repetitive and boring gameplay, tiring soundtrack, and general heir of undeserved superiority. While the visuals were praised for, at times, creating a genuinely mysterious other world, it wasn't enough to save this quirky rpg, especially when so many better indie games in the same genre had already released, and were being released, around the same time as YIIK.
Characters
- Alex Yiik - Andrew Allanson's self insert character and arguably the most obnoxious protagonist in any vidya game ever. The quintessential liberal arts university grad, Alex can't get a job because his degree is useless. He spends his days simping over an Azn on a paranormal forum. The writers made sure to use a thesaurus for all of his dialogue to make him sound smart.
- Michael Kucinski - Alex Yiik's hilarious and memorable photographer friend who the writers quickly forget about until the end of the game. You will wish he remained forgotten when he takes his shirt off and starts ranting about DMT, seemingly losing his ability to use a camera.
- Vella Wilde - The cute goth girl written to be an independent and intelligent woman, who kept critiquing Alex Yiik for being a narcissistic retard. The writers hoped she'd be loved for being the only competent character, but she is also involved in a convoluted dimensional merge plotline that makes no sense, even to people who actually play the game, so she became a victim of needless complication.
- Rory Mancer - A kid whose personality revolves around his dead sister, who became an hero due to be literally being half-leg (please see the Funniest Joke of All Time section for more information). Rory himself can also lose his ipod and downs a bottle of bleach depending on the choices you make. Rory is completely useless in combat. You can't deal damage with him because he's a "pacifist". His gimmick of protecting his teammates is negated by the existence of the panda shield. Feel free to make him slit his wrists for the lulz.
- Claudio Unkrich - Black weeb who abandons his vinyl store (because vinyls were a huge thing in 1999 right?) to study the blade. He is canonically a lolicon.
- Chondra Unkrich - Claudio's stong, independent sister who hates white people. Her twin brother is dead too I guess.
- The Essentia 5000 - A sex doll that exists to dump exposition at the player. Her constant need to outline the entire plot became so annoying the developers added an optional setting that makes Alex and E5000 talks less.
- Sammy Park - AKA Semi Pak in Gookspeak. She is an Eliza Lam expy that Alex Yiik desperately wants to bang.
The Writing
One of the major complaints of the game was the writing. The director of YIIK, Andrew Allanson, wrote Alex and the cast, and most of the NPCs, as well as the games main story; which explains why the game feels like it was made by a child. Alex himself is a self-insert; he might be a little exaggerated but he is Andrew, they even look similar. If you were wondering why Andrew got so butthurt about no one liking the main character then there's your reason. Alex is rude to his supposed friends, socially-autistic when he meets new people, insensitive to others feelings, and keeps falling in love with every girl he meets. If your self-insert is this unlikeable you should take this as a sign that you've seriously fucked up. Allanson decided Alex should be studying liberal arts at university so he could flex the writing chops he doesn't have, Alex monologues and introspects after every major event, but it's clearly not gone through an editor as he repeats himself a lot, and is very redundant in his word choice. The first draft feeling also carries over to item descriptions. Alex will spend 10 minutes describing a random cat he meets in the woods, but has barely anything to say about his own home and the items that inhabit it. There's too many scenes of Alex talking to himself like an idiot, most of his rants have nothing to do with the story or the overall themes, Allanson just assumes all artists think to themselves like pseudo-intellectual redditors.
The theme and pacing is all over the place. Certain scenes are meant to be dramatic and serious, like Rory finding his dead sister's soul inside a monster, and then the game will randomly have you fight a gold alpaca who scream "lemonade" when it attacks. The mid-game has a some-what consistent speed and then you are forced to meet a robot that spend half an hour dumping all the lore. Characters like Vella and Rory bombard the player with copy and pasted Wikipedia definitions of philosophical terms, which Andrew must have thought made him look well-read but it's painfully clear he's just ran his scripts through a thesaurus and then checked each words meaning in the dictionary. Andrew Allanson tried to be a good writer by trying to highlight Alex's USI and make a lesson of him thinking he is God's gift to the universe by making him actually some overpowered savior of the universe.
YIIK is filled with all sorts of anachronisms such as the game's weird fascination and hatred for anime. Most of the cast make references to watching anime, but given that the game takes place in the 90's, none of them should have all that much experience with the stuff unless they have it specially shipped over. A few characters even make fun of anime tropes and pretend as if the YIIK story is so special and unique, which is retarded because most of the plot is stolen from Persona 3, a very anime-seque game. Similarly, Alex is supposedly obsessed with vinyl which is strange for 1999 when CDs were popular and vinyls were seen as outdated and gay. The story critiques Alex for being a consoomer because he likes vinyl and even has him conform to stupid vinyl-music guy jokes like "You've never heard of this album" and "Vinyl just sounds different man.", but beyond these few lines he doesn't really show any interest for music at all. Michael is meant to be a photographer since it's his signature item but he never shows any interest in the hobby, in fact every cast member has superficial interests they don't talk about. It's a widely believed conspiracy theory that the game was meant to take place in the early 2000s, but was changed to 1999 to reach peak nostalgia-baiting, and hopefully reach the most neckbearded failures possible into buying this shit.
—Two words when one would suffice. | ||
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Plagiarism
In one of the first proper dungeons of the game, you can meet Proto Woman, who looks like the lava girl from the flash games grew up. Her dialogue was pretty decent, a little too decent for some players, who started investigating to find out who wrote her lines. They discovered her dialogue was stolen from Haruki Murakami, a Japanese novelist. The developers explained that through some alternate reality bullshit, Alex's books are seeping into his dream and autist brain, which means he's thinking the same way his books are written. Not only was this excuse bullshit, it didn't explain why other lines were copied and pasted Quizlet flashcards and Dictionary.com definitions.
Games Aren't Art
The most consistent and reoccurring criticism of YIIK on release was quite simple; Alex is a fucking asshole. Andrew Allanson went onto the Dick Show to talk about the game, and quickly turned the show into the ramblings of a mad man as he used his favour with the podcast's host to turn the episode into a defence of his game; Allanson would make shit up about the game and Dick would nod in agreement like a bobblehead. Allanson praised 4chan for "understanding his vision.", whilst insulting "gamers" for not liking a character he claims is intentionally obnoxious. Allanson is convinced his game about a self-insert, inconsistent, angry hipster going through Scott Pilgrim fan-fiction is high art with lots to say.
—"Waah, why don't you like my self-insert?! | ||
Elisa Lam
Early in the game, Alex meets Sammy, a girl that accidently seduces Alex with her being Asian. She mysteriously disappears and Alex makes it his quest to find her so he can awkwardly ask her to join his poly-cube. Later, Alex is sent a video on his computer of Sammy in an elevator, being dragged into a psychedelic-void. Even later, you can find Sammy being chased by ghostly-void monsters, bleeding from her eyes and begging for Alex's help. All of this seems pretty normal for a game with a paranormal story, sure it's dark and edgy as all hell, but hardly offensive on its own.
Until you realise this was all inspired by the Elisa Lam murder video, and that the developers thought this was a respectful way to acknowledge the inspiration of Sammy's character. Quirky games appeal to children, teens, man-children, artsy-types, people who tend to be sensitive, progressive types, the kind of people who need trigger warnings if a video on a morning routine has fruit in case it's fatphobic. Seeing an Elisa Lam reference, especially one as explicit and shocking as this, was not going to go down well with them. These sensitive souls were highly offended about this harmless; if not done in poor taste, homage to some bitch who managed to drown herself in an impenetrable water tank. Hundreds of threads started to appear, demanding the creators apologise and repent for their sins. However, as previously mentioned, Allanson the director believes he's created a profound piece of art with lots to say, and didn't change a thing, lest it compromise his artistic vision.
Rory's voice actor
Rory, as previously mentioned, is the whiney emo kid who can kill himself if you're too mean to him. In the story, he lies to Alex and the gang that his sister went missing, forcing them to go into a dangerous sewer that almost gets them killed when random space monsters from another dimension attack them. Rory reveals he was lying the whole time and that he knew his sisters already dead, prompting Alex to tell Rory to kill himself because they didn't care about his sister to begin with. From then on, you can either recruit Rory as the objectively weakest party member, or if you chose all the mean dialogue options, Rory an heroes in a glorious fashion. There's even a random moment half way through the game where Alex can randomly try and kiss Rory against his will, raising questions about the devs morals and sexual orientations.
Rory in game, is based on a YouTuber called "Yuriofwind", who makes child-friendly Nintendo creepypasta cancer. The creators of YIIK contacted Yuri and asked if he'd be in their game, since Rory was based on him. Despite having no previous experience with voice acting, or talent, Yuri agreed and proceeded to record some of the weakest voice acting you've ever heard, surprising nobody. Even Yuri realised his performance was terrible and begged the team to remove his lines and hire someone who can actually act; but he was ignored and soon YIIK released with his terrible performance intact. Yuri now spends his days finding any videos on YIIK that he can, commenting his sob story of how he got involved.
—Yuriofwind using far too many emoticons. | ||
Toby Fox
Quirky earthbound inspired-rpg Undertale had released 4 years ago and had been smothered in praise from underage children and theatre kids across the world, so when Toby caught wind that another quirky earthbound inspired-rpg was coming along, he made sure his name was stapled on in some form to ensure he remained king of ugly nostalgia-bait. Providing a song for one of the mid-game levels, Toby helped promote the game through Twitter. But the moment YIIK started getting in trouble for being a bit shit, Toby immediately deleted his tweets and ignored anyone who asked about the game.
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Offensive Grave
Satoru Iwata was a creepy little Asian man who helped make a large majority of the early Nintendo games. When he died in 2015, hoards of overweight boomers felt they owed their whole existence to the man, and while they tried to honour his legacy, they became very protective of him whenever the games industry as a whole was being discussed, in case it slandered the Chinese man they didn't even know existed until he had died.
The creators of YIIK therefore wanted to honour this video-game goblin. After all, they had tastefully recreated the Elisa Lam video as a horror movie, if anyone was qualified to do respectful references to the dead, it was the YIIK team. In the shittiest, slumiest town in the whole game, the creators made a graveyard and among a bunch of joke gravestones, added Iwata's rotting corpse and a headstone that broke the 1999 setting to have his real date of death inscribed on it. Somehow, no one on the team realised this was a bad idea until they were swamped with hundreds of angry messages from pissed-off players who felt this tasteless inclusion was unnecessary. Why they didn't just add the man as an NPC or have his picture hidden somewhere is anyone's guess. It's even worse when the grave right next to Iwata's is a grave for the developers, where they suck themselves off "We worked ourselves to death.".
ResetEra discuss the gravestone.
Reception
Previous Video | Next Video
I'm yiiking out!
Alex tends to scream and shout a lot like an insurable brat, which means one of his most used sprites in dialogue has him holding his head with his mouth open wide like your mom when the cleaner comes round. When people started making fun of YIIK and it's many failures, people found Alex's need to constantly scream very entertaining, and once some high profile youtubers started saying "Alex Yiik is yiiking out", a meme was born.
See also
- Los Angeles, California - The shithole Eliza Lam disappeared in.
- Video Game Journalists - Who this game was made for.
- Walking Simulator - The type of shit YIIK fans like to play.
- Undertale - The level of popularity and quirkiness YIIK was hoping to copy.
- Self Insert - What this game should have avoided indulging in.
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| Article of the Now December 5 & 6, 2022 | ||
| Preceded by Kanye West |
YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG | Succeeded by William Atchison |