Stuff like Alex actually being a nonverbal autistic kid were in the original game, but were just genuinely very easy to miss as they were buried in Onism emails. I think that YIIK IV does indeed do some retconning, but a lot of this was there in the original, now it's just brought to the forefront in a way that makes the story much easier to read in a playthrough.
Im curious what parts of I.V you think are retcons? Because I felt like everything new was building upon ideas the original game had, such as Alex's sister and micheals mysterious sub plot.
This game left me with such a puzzling feeling. Im reminded of one of the Alex's lines in the game where he asks to not be understood, but to feel the sincerity in his words as he speaks. I have literally no idea what the fuck Id seen and heard but I can sense that everything this game said and did was deliberate and sincere. I never once questioned whether or not YIIK meant to do that and thats what fascinates me the most. I genuinely feel like I just consumed an ideal, definitive version of a product in the purest, truest sense of the word.
I never played the original YIIK, so I was hyped to jump into I.V hoping it would be another No Man Sky situation. The game still have MANY faults but in the end I enjoyed most of my time and it's still one of the most SOULful and KINO games I've experienced in a long while. By the time I reached the end and was ready to move on to other games , the curve-ball of being presented Y2K: 2 on NG+ was probably the first time in awhile a game managed to illicit any type of emotions out of me. I wasn't ready to leave the world of YIIK just yet and here I had the sequel I never thought we'd get.
Howdy, I find the description of this video interesting, and while I believe obviously that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I do have a couple things I'd like to elaborate on about the game. I'm not trying to "gotcha" or say you are wrong, but you're clearly interested in the game and I figured I'd tell you what I know/think from being a fan of it for a good few years now. This is stuff I figured simply by playing 1.25 and I.V. 1. I.V contains no retcons. Original YIIK aimed to tell it's story through subtext more than most games, aiming to be confusing, obtuse and make you say "what is even happening" about as often as possible. Development woes resulted in a game that didn't fully meet with this original vision. Said vision is in the title, "A Postmodern RPG." Postmodernism is a movement that seeks to question "grand narratives," or in other words, narratives that make meaning of life. Religion and biblical texts are a great example of a grand narrative. It's an RPG that asks you to try and "role-play" a postmodernist, to unpack what Alex prescribes as your fate, to destroy the world. Not the universe, the scale of the story is actually quite small. His reality is really only the circumstances of his life, all he really does is chase off all his friends with his appalling personality and have a melodramatic meltdown, complete with a scene about his childhood stuffed toy no longer providing him comfort LOL. He then says in no uncertain terms, that this is also you, that you are him and are fated to do the same, just like all versions of him. The base game is told to you by Alex in 2nd person, and you only unlock NG+ by admitting you aren't him, thereby breaking from his perspective entirely. Alex himself is a delusional conspiracy theorist who reads internet forums a bit too much and metaphorically has trapped himself living in the 90s, the last time he was happy as a child. It's obviously a lot to go over, it's not exactly a short game, but the people in his life are already "ghosts" of the past who have left him behind. Alex has spiritually trapped these people, perhaps instead of literally. Consider parallel lives and how people like Michael are suddenly revealed to also be Chondra. This isn't because they're literally the same person, it's because Alex sees the same value out of them. He objectifies people into what they offer him and ignores their real individuality. He is, after all, obsessed with his life being like a convenient story. Mom wants me to get groceries? A cat stole my list and I met the girl I saw on the internet! Time to get a job? A timespace alien showed up in my house and told me exactly how to stalk this musician girl I'm super into, but it's totally reasonable for me to do so cause we're connect by fate, trust me! I get that all sounds like heady, pretentious BS to a lot of people, and it's cool if you feel that way, but they really just wanted to make a game that's rewarding to solve narratively, with a protagonist who is realistic and funny in a cringe way. It initially failed to get this across for the majority of people, I.V is having more people realize what it's talking about which I'm happy for, but I disagree on the premise that it's both shallow and retconned. I've literally never had a game I had more to say about, and the critics on RUclips agree considering they have multi-hour essays to show for it, even despite being negative. That stuff doesn't come out of nowhere, and remember that depth isn't a marker of quality. Speaking of critics, though... 2. I.V does not lash out against critics, though this interpretation can be forgiving if we're cherry-picking key phrases. The game genuinely wants anybody who sees themself or somebody they've known in Alex to gain some new understanding, or closure, since empathizing with bullies much like Alex despite the harm they cause the author is exactly what inspired the story in the first place. "The critic" being referenced in-game is not a member of the audience, or even necessarily anybody who talked about the game, it's the themes that embody a person like Alex's life, as his circumstances are the product of this. He can't forgive reality, his circumstances, for being what they are and instead lashes out. He tries to subvert the question "Why do we live, why do we suffer-" etc, instead of confronting and answering it earnestly. We see Michael in this video forgive reality, and though throwing away his plans all at once feels painful, it's good for him. The way I like to put it is that not everything we believe for good reasons, is good for us. As a good modern example, job market is hot trash right now. You can barely get an interview in, and applications are often scanned by machines and rejected automatically based on keywords. It's dehumanizing, disgusting and almost designed to make life more miserable. That's a logical conclusion and it makes sense, but you shouldn't just give up and decide that circumstances have made it truly impossible to get a job. It's still worth achieving if it's something you really have to do. Everything in Alex's life is convenient excuses and complaints, criticism of life. No solutions and no efforts. 3. Finally, please understand the circumstances of 1.0's release. It comes out, people call the game transphobic, claimed it has an intentional prank to deadname players, that it contains some pretty nasty stuff almost approving of child abuse, that it's racist rather than the main character being mildly racist, that the protagonist is a self insert of the developer who has the hots for a real life woman who died, etc. Not a single one of those things are true, but that's the fanfare the game released to. Many of these statements point to this idea, and it's of course a common sentiment amongst gamers, but there is this idea that games should only ever be 100% oriented towards fun and never show you other emotions. The success of games like Papers Please obviously disprove this as a universal constant, but people reject that game for this reason, so it's something interesting worth addressing. There is no critique of the industry in that podcast appearance, it's honestly a pretty natural response to the vast majority of your game's discussion being nothing about the game, and instead a myriad of made up reasons to hate it. There's even an attempt in that podcast appearance to temper expectations, he says he doesn't think the game is above criticism or anywhere close to perfect, but the only part that gets clipped out of context is treated as some kind of push back against the games players. You can say that one reason I.V exists is so that the game can have actual discourse, rather than prevailing negativity and an almost complete lack of examination. People are actually looking at it and talking about it again, and it's not a universal negative. Not only has YIIK gotten popular and profitable in the wake of it's infamy, but that refreshed discourse is honestly worth it on it's own. The game was begging go be discussed from the start, there is no hate for critics. ... that podcast is also a comedy podcast that asks callers to be performatively angry, but i digress. Thanks for reading if you bothered. I hope this provides new perspective to anybody on the game, and I recommend chatting in YIIKcord if you're having trouble believing any of what I've said. This game has been discussed to death almost exclusively there, as there are scarce places of fandom for the original game online. The devs are there and are pretty honest and open to criticism.
@@Lucio_Nero I perused towards the public replies of my recently published RUclips comment and ruminated on the feelings expressed of my personage. "Alex Yiik:", or so I'm told. Why? What of my countenance creates such frictive reception? Dread washes over me like hot soup washes over the spirit of an ailing man, only it's not good wash, but bad wash. Do they really think I compare to Alex Yiik, the protagonist of the subject in question with the comedic, prosaic, and most of all sophomoric style of musing? No, clearly the masses are mistaken. For to, consider, ergo, I lack a thesaurus, as well as lack for vigorous self-righteousness and ego-centrism. The content on the RUclips platform relating to "Alex Yiik" and his adventures in"yeek" certainly have longer scripts than anything I've written in the past 48 hours. Like lambs to the proverbial slaughter they fall into my nefarious trap, to believe anything lengthy is a product of "Alex"-esque behaviors is a gross misgiving, but my boundless benevolence offers nothing but forgiveness. How was that?
Why they said its transphobic? I finished the game today for the second time, the first one was on 1.25 and second one is I.V. im gonna go for ng+ because i didnt know that saying yes wouldnt make ng+ lucky me i said no, i also may do a video in the future about this game if i get an okey pc to record.
Can you explain to me why you think this new update is cynical? I think you went into YIIK 2 fundamentally misunderstanding what the game was referring to with criticism and "the critic", you heard the words the game was saying and didn't want to understand what it was saying. This update expands on what the original game was saying and states themes more directly. It's a bit of a stretch to say things were retconned and that the new content does not befit "the original narrative".
Genuinely. If it weren't for your video,i wouldn't have even bothered to replay the entire game cause man this game is still as much as a slog as it always was. But thanks for confirming that "a whole sequel to the base game" comment i only kept hearing on word of mouth was actually serious.
this ending looks insane lmao. yeah putting a sequel to yiik intertwined with the original yiik seems really messy. interesting experiment though, i really respect how much of a spectacle this update is
I've been trying to find footage of the new content in I.V because I wanted to know what they did to this game, but this is the only source I've found that seems to have anything new so far. Do you have a twitch log or anything I could look through to get more elaboration on the points you mentioned?
In fairness this is the ending after a LOT happens, don't get me wrong the story's still noticeably confusing but there's a lot that leads up to this that can be reasonably understood
So I can understand the story and ending of the original more or less. What is even the story for IV at all? I can’t understand the symbolism of the game at all. Maybe I’m just too dumb lol
Spoilers for anyone (and idk the full story) From watching someone played a full playthrough of it, it mainly talks about how obsessions can drive someone (in the game, Alex Yiik and to an extent, Michael) to slowly stop interacting with reality. Alex was fixated on finding the missing girl he saw online, and Michael wanted to find Allison (his childhood friend, who was also Rory's sister and Alex's half-sister). The game made the point that obsessions usually go away naturally, but due to the existence of ONISM in YIIK (an anonymous-ish Internet message board), it was a hotspot for "like-minded" individuals to continually obsess over their obsessions, never truly letting them die. Michael, the creator of ONISM, wanted to utilise lonely people online as sleuths to find missing people, in hopes of finding Allison. The original YIIK takes place in the "Digital Soul Vessel" of Alex, presumely after he died imo (cuz, u know, it is not a real sould but digital) Near the end of the original game, there is a funeral with one person saying "He was a good boy. Why wasn't there a bigger turnout?", and two graves, one reading 4 April 2016, the day everything changed, and 4th April 1999(?). As the game states and Alex states, the world takes place in 1999. However, that is only what Alex wants it to be, an era of his childhood that he can't return to. He tries to paint himself having a redemption arc inside his world, and paints the Player as a parralel version of himself too. However, due to the nature of this "digital soul vessel", no progression is actually made, and you could say his world loops or "goes on forever". Only when you deny being a parralel version of Alex after his quest ends, that Kisage X (a director, helping Michael to stop the ONISM man) gives you the "benevolent psychosis". A mystic experience that is mostly the sequel part of YIIk Ok this is taking too long i will edit later with more details lol
Do you have a song you absolutely hated when you first heard it, but eventually it started growing on you and you liked it more and more as you listened to it more times? This game is kind of like that. You _notice_ shit and piece more of the puzzle together on subsequent playthroughs, and the community is really engaging. (My song like that is Temporary Secretary lmao)
Okey.... Eso fue una experiencia xd La verdad no me esperaba que cambiaran tanto el final, es aun mas loco que el original, y me encanta, estiy feliz de aver descuvierto eyse juego a la par de la salida de esta update
![[Katana ZERO] Flirting with the receptionist](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/2Nd1C2JVUyU/mqdefault.jpg)
Stuff like Alex actually being a nonverbal autistic kid were in the original game, but were just genuinely very easy to miss as they were buried in Onism emails.
I think that YIIK IV does indeed do some retconning, but a lot of this was there in the original, now it's just brought to the forefront in a way that makes the story much easier to read in a playthrough.
Im curious what parts of I.V you think are retcons? Because I felt like everything new was building upon ideas the original game had, such as Alex's sister and micheals mysterious sub plot.
@@ejelbertson9974same
Yeah IV doesn't retcon, it only elaborates upon and develops details @ejelbertson9974
This game left me with such a puzzling feeling. Im reminded of one of the Alex's lines in the game where he asks to not be understood, but to feel the sincerity in his words as he speaks. I have literally no idea what the fuck Id seen and heard but I can sense that everything this game said and did was deliberate and sincere. I never once questioned whether or not YIIK meant to do that and thats what fascinates me the most. I genuinely feel like I just consumed an ideal, definitive version of a product in the purest, truest sense of the word.
Must be y2k
im gonna be bold here but yiik iv is one of the best rpgs ive ever played lol
I never played the original YIIK, so I was hyped to jump into I.V hoping it would be another No Man Sky situation. The game still have MANY faults but in the end I enjoyed most of my time and it's still one of the most SOULful and KINO games I've experienced in a long while. By the time I reached the end and was ready to move on to other games , the curve-ball of being presented Y2K: 2 on NG+ was probably the first time in awhile a game managed to illicit any type of emotions out of me. I wasn't ready to leave the world of YIIK just yet and here I had the sequel I never thought we'd get.
18:22 Man I love this version of "The Machine and the Krow"
I think its on the ACKK Studios youtube music channel, its really good.
just finished the game and it was fucking awesome i fucking love yiik
Howdy, I find the description of this video interesting, and while I believe obviously that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I do have a couple things I'd like to elaborate on about the game. I'm not trying to "gotcha" or say you are wrong, but you're clearly interested in the game and I figured I'd tell you what I know/think from being a fan of it for a good few years now. This is stuff I figured simply by playing 1.25 and I.V.
1. I.V contains no retcons. Original YIIK aimed to tell it's story through subtext more than most games, aiming to be confusing, obtuse and make you say "what is even happening" about as often as possible. Development woes resulted in a game that didn't fully meet with this original vision. Said vision is in the title, "A Postmodern RPG." Postmodernism is a movement that seeks to question "grand narratives," or in other words, narratives that make meaning of life. Religion and biblical texts are a great example of a grand narrative. It's an RPG that asks you to try and "role-play" a postmodernist, to unpack what Alex prescribes as your fate, to destroy the world. Not the universe, the scale of the story is actually quite small. His reality is really only the circumstances of his life, all he really does is chase off all his friends with his appalling personality and have a melodramatic meltdown, complete with a scene about his childhood stuffed toy no longer providing him comfort LOL. He then says in no uncertain terms, that this is also you, that you are him and are fated to do the same, just like all versions of him. The base game is told to you by Alex in 2nd person, and you only unlock NG+ by admitting you aren't him, thereby breaking from his perspective entirely. Alex himself is a delusional conspiracy theorist who reads internet forums a bit too much and metaphorically has trapped himself living in the 90s, the last time he was happy as a child. It's obviously a lot to go over, it's not exactly a short game, but the people in his life are already "ghosts" of the past who have left him behind. Alex has spiritually trapped these people, perhaps instead of literally. Consider parallel lives and how people like Michael are suddenly revealed to also be Chondra. This isn't because they're literally the same person, it's because Alex sees the same value out of them. He objectifies people into what they offer him and ignores their real individuality. He is, after all, obsessed with his life being like a convenient story. Mom wants me to get groceries? A cat stole my list and I met the girl I saw on the internet! Time to get a job? A timespace alien showed up in my house and told me exactly how to stalk this musician girl I'm super into, but it's totally reasonable for me to do so cause we're connect by fate, trust me!
I get that all sounds like heady, pretentious BS to a lot of people, and it's cool if you feel that way, but they really just wanted to make a game that's rewarding to solve narratively, with a protagonist who is realistic and funny in a cringe way. It initially failed to get this across for the majority of people, I.V is having more people realize what it's talking about which I'm happy for, but I disagree on the premise that it's both shallow and retconned. I've literally never had a game I had more to say about, and the critics on RUclips agree considering they have multi-hour essays to show for it, even despite being negative. That stuff doesn't come out of nowhere, and remember that depth isn't a marker of quality. Speaking of critics, though...
2. I.V does not lash out against critics, though this interpretation can be forgiving if we're cherry-picking key phrases. The game genuinely wants anybody who sees themself or somebody they've known in Alex to gain some new understanding, or closure, since empathizing with bullies much like Alex despite the harm they cause the author is exactly what inspired the story in the first place. "The critic" being referenced in-game is not a member of the audience, or even necessarily anybody who talked about the game, it's the themes that embody a person like Alex's life, as his circumstances are the product of this. He can't forgive reality, his circumstances, for being what they are and instead lashes out. He tries to subvert the question "Why do we live, why do we suffer-" etc, instead of confronting and answering it earnestly. We see Michael in this video forgive reality, and though throwing away his plans all at once feels painful, it's good for him. The way I like to put it is that not everything we believe for good reasons, is good for us. As a good modern example, job market is hot trash right now. You can barely get an interview in, and applications are often scanned by machines and rejected automatically based on keywords. It's dehumanizing, disgusting and almost designed to make life more miserable. That's a logical conclusion and it makes sense, but you shouldn't just give up and decide that circumstances have made it truly impossible to get a job. It's still worth achieving if it's something you really have to do. Everything in Alex's life is convenient excuses and complaints, criticism of life. No solutions and no efforts.
3. Finally, please understand the circumstances of 1.0's release. It comes out, people call the game transphobic, claimed it has an intentional prank to deadname players, that it contains some pretty nasty stuff almost approving of child abuse, that it's racist rather than the main character being mildly racist, that the protagonist is a self insert of the developer who has the hots for a real life woman who died, etc. Not a single one of those things are true, but that's the fanfare the game released to. Many of these statements point to this idea, and it's of course a common sentiment amongst gamers, but there is this idea that games should only ever be 100% oriented towards fun and never show you other emotions. The success of games like Papers Please obviously disprove this as a universal constant, but people reject that game for this reason, so it's something interesting worth addressing. There is no critique of the industry in that podcast appearance, it's honestly a pretty natural response to the vast majority of your game's discussion being nothing about the game, and instead a myriad of made up reasons to hate it. There's even an attempt in that podcast appearance to temper expectations, he says he doesn't think the game is above criticism or anywhere close to perfect, but the only part that gets clipped out of context is treated as some kind of push back against the games players. You can say that one reason I.V exists is so that the game can have actual discourse, rather than prevailing negativity and an almost complete lack of examination. People are actually looking at it and talking about it again, and it's not a universal negative. Not only has YIIK gotten popular and profitable in the wake of it's infamy, but that refreshed discourse is honestly worth it on it's own. The game was begging go be discussed from the start, there is no hate for critics.
... that podcast is also a comedy podcast that asks callers to be performatively angry, but i digress.
Thanks for reading if you bothered. I hope this provides new perspective to anybody on the game, and I recommend chatting in YIIKcord if you're having trouble believing any of what I've said. This game has been discussed to death almost exclusively there, as there are scarce places of fandom for the original game online. The devs are there and are pretty honest and open to criticism.
Alex Yiik:
amazing comment right here
world's biggest YIIK fan
@@Lucio_Nero I perused towards the public replies of my recently published RUclips comment and ruminated on the feelings expressed of my personage. "Alex Yiik:", or so I'm told. Why? What of my countenance creates such frictive reception?
Dread washes over me like hot soup washes over the spirit of an ailing man, only it's not good wash, but bad wash. Do they really think I compare to Alex Yiik, the protagonist of the subject in question with the comedic, prosaic, and most of all sophomoric style of musing?
No, clearly the masses are mistaken. For to, consider, ergo, I lack a thesaurus, as well as lack for vigorous self-righteousness and ego-centrism. The content on the RUclips platform relating to "Alex Yiik" and his adventures in"yeek" certainly have longer scripts than anything I've written in the past 48 hours. Like lambs to the proverbial slaughter they fall into my nefarious trap, to believe anything lengthy is a product of "Alex"-esque behaviors is a gross misgiving, but my boundless benevolence offers nothing but forgiveness.
How was that?
Why they said its transphobic? I finished the game today for the second time, the first one was on 1.25 and second one is I.V. im gonna go for ng+ because i didnt know that saying yes wouldnt make ng+ lucky me i said no, i also may do a video in the future about this game if i get an okey pc to record.
Can you explain to me why you think this new update is cynical? I think you went into YIIK 2 fundamentally misunderstanding what the game was referring to with criticism and "the critic", you heard the words the game was saying and didn't want to understand what it was saying. This update expands on what the original game was saying and states themes more directly. It's a bit of a stretch to say things were retconned and that the new content does not befit "the original narrative".
Genuinely.
If it weren't for your video,i wouldn't have even bothered to replay the entire game cause man this game is still as much as a slog as it always was.
But thanks for confirming that "a whole sequel to the base game" comment i only kept hearing on word of mouth was actually serious.
this ending looks insane lmao. yeah putting a sequel to yiik intertwined with the original yiik seems really messy. interesting experiment though, i really respect how much of a spectacle this update is
I've been trying to find footage of the new content in I.V because I wanted to know what they did to this game, but this is the only source I've found that seems to have anything new so far. Do you have a twitch log or anything I could look through to get more elaboration on the points you mentioned?
You could just… play the game? It’s not that long
Just play the game lmao
there are other yiik iv videos being uploaded as we speak
I am beyond confused, I knew YiiK existed but trying to understand a single thing of what I saw was torture
In fairness this is the ending after a LOT happens, don't get me wrong the story's still noticeably confusing but there's a lot that leads up to this that can be reasonably understood
If you watched Mother 3's ending cutscene without any context you probably wouldn't get what was going on either
to be completely fair if you could figure out everything that happened in a story just by seeing the final scene it probably sucks
This is my final YIIK
So I can understand the story and ending of the original more or less. What is even the story for IV at all? I can’t understand the symbolism of the game at all. Maybe I’m just too dumb lol
Spoilers for anyone (and idk the full story)
From watching someone played a full playthrough of it, it mainly talks about how obsessions can drive someone (in the game, Alex Yiik and to an extent, Michael) to slowly stop interacting with reality. Alex was fixated on finding the missing girl he saw online, and Michael wanted to find Allison (his childhood friend, who was also Rory's sister and Alex's half-sister). The game made the point that obsessions usually go away naturally, but due to the existence of ONISM in YIIK (an anonymous-ish Internet message board), it was a hotspot for "like-minded" individuals to continually obsess over their obsessions, never truly letting them die. Michael, the creator of ONISM, wanted to utilise lonely people online as sleuths to find missing people, in hopes of finding Allison.
The original YIIK takes place in the "Digital Soul Vessel" of Alex, presumely after he died imo (cuz, u know, it is not a real sould but digital) Near the end of the original game, there is a funeral with one person saying "He was a good boy. Why wasn't there a bigger turnout?", and two graves, one reading 4 April 2016, the day everything changed, and 4th April 1999(?). As the game states and Alex states, the world takes place in 1999. However, that is only what Alex wants it to be, an era of his childhood that he can't return to. He tries to paint himself having a redemption arc inside his world, and paints the Player as a parralel version of himself too. However, due to the nature of this "digital soul vessel", no progression is actually made, and you could say his world loops or "goes on forever". Only when you deny being a parralel version of Alex after his quest ends, that Kisage X (a director, helping Michael to stop the ONISM man) gives you the "benevolent psychosis". A mystic experience that is mostly the sequel part of YIIk
Ok this is taking too long i will edit later with more details lol
Do you have a song you absolutely hated when you first heard it, but eventually it started growing on you and you liked it more and more as you listened to it more times? This game is kind of like that. You _notice_ shit and piece more of the puzzle together on subsequent playthroughs, and the community is really engaging.
(My song like that is Temporary Secretary lmao)
@@sugar2000galaxy So, the original YIIK takes places in Alex mind...but what about Benevolent Psychosis?
Can someone explain to me the story of YIIK I.V?
Yeah. So uh... Michael has a gun.
It's all Alex's excuse to not get the groceries
Okey.... Eso fue una experiencia xd
La verdad no me esperaba que cambiaran tanto el final, es aun mas loco que el original, y me encanta, estiy feliz de aver descuvierto eyse juego a la par de la salida de esta update
lol hatsune miku
how the hell did you get that ending?
after finishing YIIK I.V in the normal ending once, there's a question at the very end that you have to answer "No" to, and it starts NG+
@@asdwz458 ok thanks
@@asdwz458 man i knew i shouldnt of answered that question honestly
@@based980 Your honest answer to the question was "Yes"? Oh no...
Good lord i said no 💀, i answer it because im not alex
what the