YIIK: A Postmodern RPG Endings Explained (& Why They Don’t Contradict)

The 2019 indie game YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is anything but straightforward. Its combination of eclectic influences, including classic JRPGs like Shadow Hearts and Earthbound and novelists like Chuck Palahniuk and Haruki Murakami, produced a uniquely strange result. The plot relies on labyrinthine metaphysics involving lost souls divided among parallel realities, as well as fourth wall-breaking moments 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 several key plot points 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 event leads Alex to research urban legends using late-1990s internet forums before connecting with the rest of the cast. Party member Vella Wilde explains the entities Alex encountered previously are Soul Survivors, the souls of people who have abandoned their physical bodies due to trauma or enlightenment and have drifted into other realities by traveling through The Soulspace.

More reveals follow the introduction of android party member Essentia 2000. Essentia claims to share the same soul as Vella and Semi, warns that their reality is breaking down, and encourages them to flee into Soulspace, abandoning their home world. Essentia is partially truthful 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 towering figure visible in the sky over Wind Town or the moon and sun having faces.

YIIK’s Late Story Reveals Give New Context To Earlier Scenes

YIIK’s primary ending follows a lengthy, Persona-style sequence in which the group has a limited number of days to train and prepare, as they elect to stay and fight for their world. The group fights a losing battle against a comet – a destructive avatar of Alex himself that ultimately annihilates their reality. Alex then wanders through Soulspace before recruiting the player into the game. Alex and the player’s character confront Proto-Alex, the most powerful incarnation of Alex’s soul, who sits on a mechanical throne, conjoined with none other than Essentia. Proto-Alex explains Essentia is not an aspect of Vella and Semi’s soul but another part of Alex’s soul. Essentia has been manipulating the game’s Alex to lead him to destroy Proto-Alex, hoping to end his influence over their soul. She admits this complex self-deception before the fight, stating, “It is often necessary to lie to yourself to get a tough job done.”

The alternate ending involves Alex finding a hidden 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 player takes on the job that Semi held prior to her disappearance. After going through the motions of a mundane internship, much like the ending of Control, the player is finally reunited with Semi. In this ending, Semi confirms Essentia’s duplicity and urges the player to abandon their reality and travel Soulspace with her in order to save that reality.

YIIK Is About The Fight For Self Improvement

The information provided in these endings is not contradictory, though the outcomes differ. Essentia lied about her nature and used Semi’s disappearance to lure the game world’s Alex into learning about Soulspace and other realities, hoping to groom an Alex strong enough to defeat Proto-Alex and free her from their symbiotic link. The early scene of Semi’s disappearance indicates Essentia lured Alex there and suggests she previously used Semi to bait many alternate-world versions of Alex, as Semi’s words before disappearing were, “Not again… You promised you wouldn’t move me again!”

Ultimately, YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is about Alex fighting himself. This is true in the literal narrative of a divided soul battling against itself, destroying realities to rid itself of the parts of its own nature it detests, but also in Alex as a character growing from being privileged, unsympathetic, and arrogant to being able to recognize how hurtful and selfish he has been to those around him.

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