The 2019 indie recreation YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is anything but easy. Its combining of eclectic forces, including classic JRPGs like Shadow Hearts and Earthbound and novelists like Chuck Palahniuk and Haruki Murakami, induced a uniquely strange solution. The plot relies on labyrinthine metaphysics involving lost souls divided among parallel realities, as well as fourth wall-breaking minutes where irony and metafiction earn the game’s self-proclaimed label of “postmodern.” The endings of YIIK: A Postmodern RPG thus might seem confusing or contradictory, as various key plot items are touched on only briefly, including those that recontextualize earlier reveals.

YIIK begins with protagonist Alex Eggleston witnessing the kidnapping of Semi Pak, who is spirited away from an elevator by strange “entities.” This inciting occurrence induces Alex to research city mythologies using late-1 990 s internet forums before connecting with the rest of the cast. Party member Vella Wilde justifies the entities Alex encountered previously are Soul Survivors, the someones of people who have abandoned their physical mass due to trauma or enlightenment and have wandered into other worlds by traveling through The Soulspace.

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More uncovers follow the coming into effect of android party representative Essentia 2000. Essentia claims to share the same soul as Vella and Semi, warned that their world is broken off, and are encouraged to flee into Soulspace, vacating their residence nature. Essentia is partially candid about the setting’s reality breaking down; this is something Alex recognizes, and it provides in-game rationalization for YIIK’s surreal imagery of the world, like the colossal figure visible in the sky over Wind Town or the moon and sunbathe having faces.

YIIK’s primary ending follows a lengthy, Persona-style sequence in which the group has a limited number of epoches to develop and educate, as they elect to stay and fight for their world. The group combats a losing debate against a comet – a pernicious avatar of Alex himself that are likely decimates their actuality. Alex then strolls through Soulspace before recruiting the participate into the game. Alex and the player’s character confront Proto-Alex, the most powerful incarnation of Alex’s soul, who are participating on a mechanical throne, conjoined with none other than Essentia. Proto-Alex clarifies Essentia is not an aspect of Vella and Semi’s soul but another part of Alex’s soul. Essentia has been influencing the game’s Alex to lead him to destroy Proto-Alex, hoping to end his influence over their feeling. She declares this complex self-deception before the fight, territory, “It is often necessary to lie to yourself to get a tough hassle done.”

The alternate ending involves Alex finding a veiled Semi just outside of his house prior to embarking on the final battle with the comet. This opens an option to travel to a news studio, where the musician makes on the number of jobs that Semi deemed prior to the opening of her disappearing. After going through the motions of a prosaic internship, much like the ending of Control, the participate is finally reunited with Semi. In this ending, Semi shows Essentia’s duplicity and exhorts the player to abandon their reality and jaunt Soulspace with her in order to save that reality.

The information provided in these resolves is not contradictory, though the outcomes differ. Essentia lied about her sort and used Semi’s disappearance to lure the game world’s Alex into learning about Soulspace and other actualities, hoping to groom an Alex strong enough to defeat Proto-Alex and free her from their symbiotic tie-up. The early scene of Semi’s disappearance expresses Essentia tempted Alex there and advocates she previously used Semi to bait many alternate-world versions of Alex, as Semi’s paroles before disappearing were, “Not again … You predicted you wouldn’t move me again! “

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Ultimately, YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is about Alex battle himself. This is true in the literal narrative of a subdivided feeling battling against itself, destroying worlds to rid itself of the parts of its own nature it loathes, but also in Alex as a persona thriving from being privileged, unsympathetic, and insolent to being able to recognize how spiteful and selfish he has been to those around him.

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Read more: screenrant.com