Just when you thought you were out they dragged you back.
I was pleasantly surprised to read the Steam listing. It’s… pretty much what you’d expect to see from someone who had done the introspection, realized that they had no clue what they were doing when they made a game, recognized their mistakes for what they were, and determined to take the good ideas and turn them into something playable. We’ll always have the memories of what was, but there could also be something good.
Then I read the spoiler text.
While I’m part of the extensive crowd that’s pointed to the mystery of the Golden Alpaca as one of the many things wrong with the game, I don’t think this sounds anything like addressing the problems. But I guess we’ll see how it goes in practice.
Also, since the Steam page doesn’t say it, my guess from context is that silent protagonist mode would mute all of Alex’s voice lines, possibly in line with the content warnings, for people who don’t like the VA who provided them.
Yeah, I only heard about the silent protagonist thing as a rumor, so I’m not entirely sure whether it’s accurate (or even if it’s the same thing as reduced monologue mode). I’ll update the hub post when the update hits and I know for sure.
My friend is going to play YIIK eventually, so when I saw this news I was like “Oh no he won’t be able to play it as ORIGINALLY INTENDED!!!”
Fortunately, YIIK is one of those games that don’t require Steam to run, so if you go into Steam and set YIIK to “Only update on launch”, you can maintain that crisp, YIIK 1.0 flavor. Or whatever the version number is.
Now, let’s talk about the title: “YIIK | Deviation Perspective I | Wrong Soul Requiem”. If your eyes work like mine, you merged the “I” and “|”, and it took you a long time to realize that was supposed to be “Deviation Perspective 1 (of a number > 1)”.
‘Deviation Perspective’ isn’t a bad emulation of the subheader for a Japanese game like…like…um…okay for some reason I can’t think of any examples but you probably know what I mean. I assume ‘Deviation Perspective’ just means “told from another point of view”, though if I had made a game called YIIK: A Postmodern RPG, I probably would’ve called my sidestory YIIK Gaiden. ‘Wrong Soul Requiem’ gets a thumbs down from me though. Also what’s with putting pipes in the title? God invented colons and dashes for a reason. Were they not q u i r k y enough?
This was also a GIGANTIC missed opportunity to call the update YIIK HD 1.25 ReMix. Maybe they were afraid of getting sued by Square. Oh, or maybe even better… YIIK: Special Edition.
Yeah. I looked it up this morning, because the game had come out on Xbox Game Pass but had not come out on Steam (or at least, if it did, I don’t have it).
One of the Allansons has responded to a thread on the Steam discussion board and basically said that they left a thing in to keep the original godawful minigame combat, but that enabling that won’t bring back the LP Toss bug or revert any of the balance changes.
On a side note, I’ve also updated the OP now that I know exactly what’s in the patch.
: Well, it’s finally here. I was kind of hoping it wouldn’t be. The main menu screen now has the incredibly bitter bibliography on it, leading me to believe they didn’t get rid of all the Haruki Murakami crap.
: Naturally, the first thing I did was check the bibliography to see if they updated it at all. I compared it to the version from Update 2 of the original LP. They didn’t update it at all, meaning that if they haven’t changed that one verbatim copy-paste from Wikipedia I found that I am going to call them on that.
: I will also be closely monitoring the new content for anything that looks even vaguely out of place. If you find anything that you suspect might be plagiarism, please let me know. You would THINK they’d have learned not to plagiarize after two games, but I doubt it.
: I’m also wondering now if some of the things in this list are actually applicable to Two Brothers - I know Two Brothers plagiarizes from Merriam-Webster, but I don’t remember seeing this game do that. Maybe it was in one of the ONISM comments that I never read.
: The start of the game is still the same, only now they ask you if you “want to view a content warning”.
: The only thing this does is allow you to choose whether Rory can die or not. Of course we want him dead, he’s a useless dipshit.
: We then get the choice to turn Reduced Monologues on. So, what does this do exactly? Not a whole lot - I played up to Wind Town and only noticed three monologues that were changed. Two were removed outright, and one was shortened slightly.
: We also get the choice between Normal Mode and Story Mode. If, for some reason, you decide to play this game post-1.25 patch, DO NOT PLAY ON NORMAL MODE.
: They also re-did the chapter title screens, which I suppose is nice. Now let’s see if the Allansons learned anything. Keep in mind this is a patch that they supposedly beta tested with people who weren’t related to or employed by them.
: One of the only three changes I could detect with Reduced Monologues is that it shortens the monologue when you first meet Dali to three text boxes. This is a marked improvement.
: I mean, the writing’s kind of mediocre and all they really did was cut a bunch of text here without really changing it at all, but it’s fewer text boxes I have to read.
: The second thing Reduced Monologues changes is that it straight-up removes the infamous “vibrating with motion” monologue in the elevator in the factory, so it goes from Dali entering the elevator to the loading cutscene without a single line of text.
: We get into combat, and now we can see how the Allansons decided to re-balance it.
: Each character now has an “affinity”. Alex is uh… being a hipster I guess. Michael is Fire, Vella is Water, and I’m not sure what the rest are. The idea is that each element is strong against two others, weak against two others, and neutral to the rest.
: In practice, this system sucks because it means Alex (who always has to be in the party) is inherently useless against certain enemy types. But here’s where we find out that the Allansons learned ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING.
: Instead of just, I dunno, eliminating the QTEs on normal attacks… they now have different QTEs that are also much, much harder to hit.
: What happens is that the colored area on the circle rotates once, and you need to hit the button when it’s under the square. Hitting the light blue area gives you a “poor” which does far less damage than I could rack up even doing the bare minimum on Alex’s old attack QTE.
: Seriously, that’s what you’re going to be hitting for most of the time unless you are either abusing the hell out of the slowdown mechanic or on easy mode. All the bars you’re seeing here are on Normal, and they’re not much more forgiving on Easy.
: Hitting the yellow area gives you a “good”, which does roughly the same amount of damage you could get out of a max combo in the old system. If you manage to get a hit exactly on red, you get a “perfect” which does a significantly higher amount of damage, but these are RIDICULOUSLY hard to land.
: I had to resort to taking some shots off a stream VOD to capture this properly, but waiting too long gives you a “Time Out” which is an automatic miss.
: Oh, and the old defense minigame is still in. So let’s look at what the new combat system is, because it fucking sucks.
: Basically, instead of having a slower but easier QTE that allowed you to rack up damage, you now have… a slightly faster QTE at the expense of it being really hard to deal even the same amount of damage you were before.
: This means that combat is actually slower, because on average you’re dealing less damage than you were before. I tried looking for where the thing to switch back to the old combat system is, only as far as I can tell it doesn’t exist.
: Oh, and they slowed down the battle text so it’s actually readable. I’m pretty sure this also slows down the attack animations that happen after the QTE, so basically battle is even more of a slog than it was before.
: And here’s our new “vibrating with motion” line.
: The old combat system was bad, this one is worse in every possible aspect to the point where I basically have no idea how you’re supposed to play it without using a New Game Plus file and just auto-killing everything.
: Oh, and I got a softlock here trying to open the menu.
SOFTLOCK COUNTER: 7
: Plagiarism Woman is still here. Her dialog is absolutely unchanged, including the “Eye of Providence” thing, which I forgot to capture. This means that yes, there is still plagiarism in YIIK.
: Everything up to the end of the hotel is the same. The Biggest Bullshit Puzzle is still broken.
: Here’s Sammy’s QTE, which is actually different from Vella’s this time.
: Here’s where the affinity system rears its ugly head. Neither Alex nor Sammy are strong against these skulls, so they take less damage than they did in the base game per hit. This fight is now bullshit hard, because the skulls hit for like 6 damage if you don’t dodge or defend it.
: By the way, the old attack QTEs are now in as special moves. They do more damage than they did as regular attacks, but not much. This means that you basically need to spend your MP to do any kind of meaningful damage.
: Now, Persona 1 and Innocent Sin both did that, and I love those games even if they haven’t aged the best. Here, though? It costs 2 MP to use a single attack, and you start with FIVE.
: On the way to the elevator where Sammy dies, there’s some new content.
: Oh god, the Wilhelm fight. The Wilhelm fight is the gravy of bird shit atop the mountain of garbage that is the 1.25 update.
: Wilhelm has exactly one attack, which automatically hits. That’s right, the defense QTEs that you had to do once per person? Those are gone, or replaced with new QTEs.
: In this case, Sammy will die in four attacks unless she is healed.
: Regular attacks do a total of jack shit unless you get “perfects” on the QTE. Otherwise, this happens and you die in four turns.
: The trick is that he’s weak to Sammy’s attacks, so you need to have her use her old QTE special attack to do enough damage to it before it kills you.
: Seriously though, I want to know what these beta testers were thinking. There were apparently actual testers from what I’ve heard. This new combat system honestly makes me think this was an attempt by the Allansons to make people want the old combat system back.
: Anyway, the game remains the same as before up until this point, where Alex talks about how his mom works for Pacific Bell (not historically accurate as Pacific Bell was bought out by Southwestern Bell in 1997).
: The entire monologue here though, where he talks about getting sent elephant porn and wondering how many of the people he knew in high school are now sex workers, is gone.
: This whole Haruki Murakami ripoff scene with Essentia is still in, still has unskippable text, and is still dumb as fuck.
: We grab Michael, do the whole thing at the camera shop, check ONISM, and then do the unwinnable fight against Vella in the arcade.
: Michael’s QTE goes from “push keys in order” to a yellow box that shrinks. The idea I think is to hit it so that it touches the white parts without being too big or too small, but I managed I think all of once to get a “good” on it.
: Basically, Michael’s QTE is so fucking hard that he’s now even more useless than he was in the base game.
: Vella also has an unwinnable QTE that I don’t think existed in the base game.
: We unlock the Mind Dungeon, and it’s exactly the same with one minor change. There’s a new NPC here who allows us to turn on Full Monologues mode if we want to. We don’t want to.
: No more changes occur until we hit Wind Town and fight the Hook-Handed Jock. In the original game, this guy was a pushover.
: Now, without looking at the next screenshot, I’d like you to tell me what it is you think you’re supposed to do with this QTE. If you start mashing the buttons, you automatically fail it.
: Instead, you have to wait for this stupid lemon thing to descend and try to punch you with its two penises. If you hit the button at just the right time, you dodge it. Otherwise you take full damage. There’s no more “defend for damage reduction”, it’s all or nothing now.
: He wipes Alex in one attack, and only doesn’t kill Vella because I managed to hit the QTE exactly once. At this point, I gave up and decided to just go with my clear file, because this entire patch is insanely bad.
: Next time, we’ll probably run into the Golden Alpaca replacement and do the side story thing, and that’ll be it for this godawful bullshit patch.
How, how the fuck did they make it worse. It’s like they were so close to what made paper mario style combat work and took a right turn into a pile of bad ideas!
I did see some of the golden alpaca stuff and man I had to process what happened.
I got some massive Godzilla Creepypasta vibes from that face
How could it get worse…
Knowing beta testers, they either are lying about getting unaffiliated people to do it, or they just ignored them completely. Because this is clearly, self evidently, worse.
Also something I don’t think was mentioned when this LP was going but there was a bug in the game where You could do the right things to keep Rory alive and he would die anyway but the game would act like he was alive (Like his lines would still be said even though he wasn’t in the scene and would be said over other characters lines)
Honestly, I wish I knew. It’s not like they were trying something revolutionary and it didn’t work out - there have been RPGs with QTE combat since at least 1996.
Now, I don’t want to make too many assumptions, but it feels like the Allansons tried to fix this game and then realized how much of an ordeal fixing this game would actually be. It also feels like they didn’t quite understand the problems their game had.
From what I’ve read, the idea is apparently that if you get a “perfect” on the QTE, it gives you MP back that you can use to do actual damage. This is kind of the most ass-backwards way I’ve ever seen to design a combat system, especially given how hard it is to hit the “perfect” on most of the QTEs. Skies of Arcadia had a similar mechanic, only it worked there because there were no QTEs and you got MP back regardless of how much damage your attack did.
The thing is, I went into this update basically blind, and I had no idea this was supposed to be the case because fucked if the game is going to explain it to you at any point. Even if it had, the entire thing feels like just another roadblock to actually doing meaningful damage.
Oh, and as it turns out, there is a way to get the old combat system back. Like the rest of this game, it is done in about the least intuitive way imaginable. You have to set it on a per-character basis… on the stat screen. Not on the options screen, on the stat screen. I’ll be doing that for the next update.
Me and some buddies just ran through the game up until the Wind town stuff and man…we cam away much less enthused than the first play through
The new combat made the game more palatable but its still Yiik at its core. Which is rough.
Do you plan on looking for the NPC that apparently leads to the new third ending?
Just out of curiosity, what did you like about the new combat system compared to the old one? I’m not going to make fun of you or anything, I’m just legitimately curious.
The answer to that question is no, as I have no reason to believe a third ending exists. If anyone else finds it and can show a reproducible method of getting it, I’ll do it.
We streamed it twice one full play through over the course of a few weeks and then one one up to wind town day of 1.25.
In both instances the combat being a slog or nothing because of LP toss was a big point of contention. I should also say despite all odds I do like this game but I can live with a lot of the crap and see it for what it is.
But the increase of more choice and like actual tactical use of stuff like panda and other party members decisions being made on top of just faster turns was nice. I got to level 70ish in the first run and I am going to go as high as the game will let me with NG+ but like the feeling that more than just Alex matters during the bulk of the gamepaly is such a huge boon to me.
Also the Mini games being like 1.5 seconds long for basic attacks is great and you can still do the beat downs for amped damage.
I will say its so incredibly wild the game explains nothing about the new mechanics and a THIRD PARTY made a guide for how it works that the DEVS linked to on twitter which is a whole level of “wow…”
EDIT: So after digging in a bit more I love what they have done with Rory in combat
: First thing this update, I’d like to mention that I was wrong about the new battle system. It’s actually worse than I thought, but at the same time not quite as bad. You can turn it on or off using this menu: turning on “Deep Strike” gives you the old QTEs back and turning on “Imbue Affinity” turns on the elemental weakness chart mode.
: For this testing, I used two sets of options - one that’s purely the new battle system (Deep Strike off, Imbue Affinity on) and one that’s purely the old one (Deep Strike on, Imbue Affinity off).
: This is with the old battle system, on Normal difficulty. The enemies outside the factory go down in one hit as opposed to three or more.
: I counted, and for Alex’s basic attack, a “good” in the new QTE system is equivalent to a 4-hit combo in the old one. A “perfect” is equal to about 6 or 7 hits.
: For reference, most of the time under the old system I could land somewhere between 8 and 12 hits. This means that the new system is a straight-up damage decrease.
: The only place the new combat system is better is with characters who had a very low max combo count, like Vella. Vella’s new QTE gives her the same amount of hits on a “good” she’d get from a perfect QTE in the old system. Getting a “perfect” gives her 4 hits, meaning she does more damage than the old system until she gets her combo upgrade.
: This is a hit from a level 68 Vella against the Hook-Handed Jock, with a “good”, under the new system.
: Even with a “good”, Vella gets the same combo count she would have under the old system - she hits three times in both. This isn’t true later on, when Vella’s combo upgrades to a 4-hit maximum in the old system.
: Now here’s the same fight, same Vella, just with the old system on. You can see that there’s a pretty major difference because the Jock is weak to her element.
: I also tried it with Michael, who seems to hit harder under the new system provided the enemy isn’t strong against his element.
: Because his max combo under the old system was only 3 or 4 hits anyway, it doesn’t make much of a difference. I’m not sure if the new system adjusts its damage when you get the weapons that add a max combo thing. His new QTE does 3 hits on a “good” (out-damaging the old system by 1 hit) and 4 hits on a “perfect”.
: So basically, the answer to “Should I use the new combat system” is “For most of the non-Alex party members, yes.” The other exception would be Essentia, who had a relatively high max combo count in the old version.
: You might ask what I did to get their levels that high, and the answer is that I started a New Game + file. What does that get you, you ask?
: The only thing that carries over is your total EXP from when you finished the first run. You don’t get to keep any equipment, money, or anything else - just EXP. It took me 45 minutes in the Mind Dungeon to level Alex up.
: This time, recalling GrandmaParty’s wisdom, I levelled Alex’s luck up first to get 100% critical rate. This takes around 34 levels to accomplish.
: By level 68, Michael also gets a fairly high strength score (which is a waste given how bad his basic attack is in both versions) and good defense with a mere 29% critical rate. He does, however, have a fuckload of HP.
: Vella really doesn’t level up all that well. You basically want to ditch her for Claudio and Chondra ASAP.
: Actually, after fighting this guy, you might just want to turn elemental affinities off entirely, as both Vella and Michael are weak to his attacks now.
: By the way, the game softlocked again after that fight.
SOFTLOCK COUNTER: 8
: On my second run through Wind Town, I figured out that it’s actually better to turn affinities off. You’re basically trading less maximum damage for better damage on average.
: I also discovered that during certain fights (like this one with the Wannabe Cop) they forgot to get rid of the old full-party defend QTEs where each person has to defend individually.
: I gave LP Toss a try in this fight, and discovered that it has been nerfed to the ground. It does less than half of one of Alex’s basic attacks in damage. This means that the optimal way to level up Alex (unless you are using the new system for some reason) is Luck until 100, Strength, HP, and Defense in that order. At 100 luck, none of Alex’s skills will out-damage his basic attack.
: So anyway, we meet Rory, go to the sewer, and do the whole sewer dungeon. It’s all the same, including the time-wasting bullshit rooms like this one.
: Now, if you read the patch notes, you might ask “How did they improve Rory?” to which the answer is uh… they kinda didn’t.
: The idea is that Rory now guards everyone as opposed to just one person, but in the entire time I used him I never once saw him guard anyone. I think it’s straight-up broken now.
: After doing everything but the Golden Alpaca, we get enough EXP to reach Level 70. At that level, you get the final mind dungeon cutscene, which I don’t believe you can reach on your first playthrough - I’m pretty sure I got all the possible EXP on the first run and was only level 64 or so.
: I hope you’re ready for one last Allanson Monologue. At least, I hope this is the last Allanson Monologue I ever have to read.
: This character has a different voice, and I don’t know if it’s Chris Niosi just doing a different voice or one of the Allansons. I streamed it and the video will be up just after this update.
: “I’ve come to realize something… something pretty screwed up. You and I…? We’re the same. Like, literally the same. Like, a concept. Like, a stuffed panda.”
: No, you see, I’m different in that I didn’t fuck up my first game after getting Kickstarter money, fuck up a second game after getting a publisher deal that I didn’t deserve, never learn a goddamn thing, and then fuck up a patch to my second game that makes it… you’ll see.
Typo Counter: 1
: “A stuffed panda can be a friend, it can be a playful monster, it can be a protector… whatever it needs to be, that’s what it is.”
: “The concept of a stuffed panda is greater than any actual panda. Same thing with a crow. A crow is ugly. It’s not welcome. No one would EVER want one in their home, unless they were weird.”
: Hi, question from the audience? Can the concept of the stuffed panda make Brian Allanson learn anything?
: “So, somehow… we’re both the stuffed panda, and the crow. We’re not perfect. In fact… we kinda suck. We’re absolutely mediocre young men.”
: “But, have you stopped to look at who tells us how much we suck? A teenage goth girl who slept with someone twice her age. A bratty photographer responsible for one of the skeeziest websites on the net. A robot, who would lead infinite amounts of boys to a life of solitude on a distant star, just because one might hurt someone one day.”
: Wow, that’s… yiikes.
: “No one ever said we’d hurt anyone. That wasn’t written in stone. Just like how dad said you’d never be able to learn to ride a bike. You fell off! SO MANY TIMES! You were sooooo bad at it! That’s the same thing.”
: “People say you’ll destroy the world enough times, and damn… you’ll grow to believe it!”
: That’s Andrew Allanson for you, taking what’s basically Ryuji’s awakening cutscene in Persona 5 and turning it into a monologue that is at least three times longer. This monologue is well over 50 FUCKING TEXT BOXES.
Typo Counter: 2 (It’s bad RAP, you incompetent fuck! Bad RAP!)
: “That’s just because we had a lot growing up. Good mom, lots of money… we lived in a nice town. Things were easy for us. But, you know what? That’s just on a basic needs level.”
: “Life sucked. Dad left us… mom was NEVER HOME… television raised us. No one was there to check out homework… Dad never called… never…”
: Can’t have a fucking 50-textbox monologue without a pointless Earthbound reference that 98% of people aren’t going to bother to see.
: “That would’ve been nice… but yeah, we had everything else. No one ever judged us for the way we looked. No one was scared of us walking down the street. Maybe our life was on easy mode…”
: “I don’t know. I’ve never lived another life. But… I guess, we’re weak. Easy mode was too hard for us. I don’t even know what I’m talking about any more, man.”
: “So, look. Here is the deal. The world is over, it’s done… but there is another world… far away… I’m going to suggest something radical. SUPER RADICAL. Go, right now… and kill proto you!”
: “You’re strong. Stronger than you’ll ever be. Go and fight him alone… and from there… maybe then you’ll find happiness. Just avoid that robot. She’s not a bad girl, she’s just not good for you.”
: “We bring out the worst in each other… don’t we? Yeah, so… if you want to be happy, you’ll need to kill proto you, yourself. Then you’ll be good to go! Just you, Panda, and Krow. The holy trinity of suburban mediocrity.”
: “Good luck, man. Oh, did you figure out the question? Yeah, I thought you did.”
: Even though he says this, I don’t think there’s any actual way to fight the final boss alone. Besides, we saw what happens if you kill the final boss - the game softlocks.
: Oh, we’re here. I hope everyone’s ready for the AMAZING new Golden Alpaca cutscene.
: All of the dialog here is the same as before, because naturally the Allansons couldn’t just throw away all those voice clips they had. I’ll let you know when it starts changing.
: Vella looks like she’s either high on something, just shit herself, or both.
: This crotch shot on Rory is clearly very important for the storyline.
: I had my mic off when I was recording this, but I burst out fucking laughing at this. This entire cutscene looks like a kid’s first attempt at using Source Filmmaker.
: So this is it, right? They got rid of the Golden Alpaca as a fight, and instead we’re fighting a Rory-themed Soul Survivor? I mean, at least that’s more appropriate.
: This absolutely looks like Vella shit herself, and Rory is just starting to smell it.
: I swear it’s like it’s not possible for that Vella model to not look like it’s in the middle of taking a shit.
: Boy am I glad I killed his useless ass off in the main LP.
: Vella has been exposed to the YIIK script and now the last brain cells are leaving her cranium.
: Meanwhile, Alex is basically T-posing and… god I don’t even know what the fuck you’d call that facial expression. It looks like someone just told him Haruki Murakami sucks.
: Michael has committed soul suicide in the back and has left for another plane of existence. Seriously this just looks fucking goofy and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t what they intended.
: This is some fucking cutscene direction right here.
: God these fucking faces.
: And here’s a carbon copy of an earlier shot, because this is how cutscene direction works.
: Rory nutted so hard he went to space.
: Gotta love that Ghost Rory basically has the America Online logo on his chest.
: Also gotta love that Alex has turned around now because someone else is monologging and he’s just not interested anymore.
: I hope you are ready for some quality* content, because we’re getting close.
*quality not guaranteed
: Meet the new Golden Alpaca. I’m not sure if this is better or worse than the old one, but I think I’m gonna go with worse. The Golden Alpaca is voiced by DC Douglas.
: By the way, the Allansons claim that they had some kind of side story involving the Golden Alpaca, but I have not seen it. I’ll post what that is after we’re done here.
: What’s funny is that they promised a “dramatically reworked” sewer dungeon, but this is the only change.
: And now I guess we’re in End of Evangelion?
: Remake of YIIKvangelion: Cutscene Direction (Is) My Passion
: The Alpaca has nutted.
: Finally, someone else who feels the same way I do about this game.
: You might ask “Is he repeating himself?” and the answer is yes, yes he is. They only got DC Douglas to record around 20 voice lines, if that.
: The game goes through this entire crotch shot of Michael and I have no fucking idea why. Cutscene direction!
: This is starting to feel like a much, much dumber version of Killer 7.
: Mechanically, the Golden Alpaca fight is almost the same. He still summons Soul Survivors, and then eats them.
: As he absorbs the Soul Survivors, the “WARNING” bar increases. You can basically loop him just by having Vella use Banish on every turn, which will cause him to keep summoning new ones. I didn’t test to see if you can cast Banish on the Alpaca itself to lower the warning bar.
: When the Warning bar hits full, the Alpaca uses an attack that immediately brings everyone down to 1 HP. I had to have the entire party spend five or six turns doing nothing to get this to happen.
: So yeah, as far as I can tell, that’s about it. The scene goes on as it did before, with the whole “VELLA, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” and all. Let me just post what the Allansons put in the patch notes about this. It’s in spoilers in the patch notes and is annoying to take a screenshot of, so I’ll just post them in text form.
“For this Deviation Perspective, we chose to focus on the Golden Alpaca. The scene is now told from the tonal perspective of a fictional IP in the YIIK Universe, from which the Golden Alpaca originates.”
38XX PPC Electric City Golgotha: Crucifusion
A Film Synopsis"The 30 pieces of bloodless silver have been stolen. With these tempest metals, any evil deed, no matter how transcendental, can be brokered.
Arcangelo Alpaca, Interdimensional Demi-god, Savior of Shattered Space, must travel through dangerous dimensions and diabolical hellscapes of terror and awe to stop the thieves before it’s too late.
In the far reaches of reality lies his destination: Electric City Golgatha (sic). A seedy underbelly of Angel Stocks, and Digital Soul Vessels. At the center of this debauchery is the COUNCIL OF DIMENSION BIZARRE ESQUIRE.
The motive and identify of the silver thieves are known only to this Shadow Firm. By Holy Judgement’s Blade, he will track down the King and Queen seeking to make the dastardly purchase, no matter the risk.
Armed with the All-Seeing Eyes of God and Gleaming Fur, the Golden Warrior will travel to the ends of time and space to prevent a corporate merger from hell."
: I have absolutely no idea how you’re supposed to get any of that out of what we just saw, but okay.
: Anyway, that’s been YIIK 1.25. If they ever release 1.50, rest assured that I will drop everything to dunk on it. I was honestly kind of hoping there’d be more content rather than one extra monologue. Maybe I won’t need a separate hub post for 1.50 after all.
: The Allansons never learn anything.
I wanted to note if Rory is working properly when you use his pacifism and actively choose to defend instead of dodge her does reflect damage back to the enemy.
Not much but it let him be a healer/tank for real now.
The Alpaca is still dumb
But if you buy the new OST on band camp it comes with a short story about the Alpaca that is supposed to be the like in universe IP that the dude comes from.
Well, I guess It wasn’t as much a tone destroyer in the original.
I do wish more interdimensional beings would kill Alex that aren’t just Alex, also Gotta love how they ripped off kingdom hearts in the new cutscene.
This, despite how weird it is, is actually a big improvement over the original. “LEMONADE” really just doesn’t do anything. The original was a big nothing, and is never explained at all. Granted, this isn’t particularly explained either but at least there’s something to it.
I think there’s some (probably unintentional) sleight of hand with the new Golden Apaca Scene™. Some…experiential? sleight of hand.
Imagine you never saw YIIK 1.0. What happens in this scene is that there’s an emotional moment (insofar as YIIK is capable of that), followed by a yellow alpaca with angel wings with Evangelion eyes on them bursting in and being all “Thou hast transgressed realities avast ye soul traveler” and then you kill it. Personally, that doesn’t seem functionally different from a yellow alpaca without angel wings bursting in and not saying anything, and then you kill it.
The trick being pulled here (again, probably out of incompetence, not malice) is that because the alpaca says words, it appears to be communicating information. But I already knew the Golden Alpaca was some kind of super-dangerous dimensional traveler, because I could conclude that from context.
That said, as I typed all that I thought about it some more and I guess the foreshadowing aspects of the scene are decent. At least, I think they are? I can’t really remember and/or I never really knew the game’s plot.
I just remembered that Alex was supposed to have a sister, Or at least he talked about one early on, when the patch notes said they were adding a new character I assumed it was the sister. Nope.