Iji

The full unlock screen◊

edited 19th Mar '15 6:53:21 AM by Khudzlin

By the way, does anyone else think the name Imperator Furiosa sounds like a character out of Iji?

Must be because of Anhiliator Iosa.

The title in front of the name, maybe. Otherwise it's just you.

I now welcome you all to the Iji Hell Zone.

... That's it? Comic Sans captions over screenshots?

...It's one of those "ironic" things I don't get, isn't it?

It's also spawned a surprising amount of memes and I find it hilarious.

It's actually just me responding to confessions I get by putting together a somewhat competently-made picture with the sprites from Iji usually depicting the confession or something related to it.

This might sound weird, but after completing a True Pacifist run in Undertale I was reminded a lot of the general themes of violence and pacifism in this game and decided to redownload it. (It was also mostly responsible for my adoption of a Cave Story avatar just to poke fun at some aesthetic similarities.)

I'm wondering if I should go for an ultimortal run just for kicks: it's been a long time since I've played this game but I still feel like I'm pretty familiar with it.

It's always a good idea to pull an Ultimortal run from time to time. Good for keeping your reflexes sharp against Asha 2.

Honestly, I feel that in many ways Undertale did what Iji wanted to accomplish and did it better.

As is clear from looking at pretty much any player's reaction, Iji shoots itself in the foot when it brings in the Komato, who have pretty much no sympathetic qualities and there's not really any good reason not to kill them besides principle. In Undertale, that doesn't happen - everyone (at least everyone you can spare) is actually a good person who players would want to think twice about killing and wouldn't consider them surviving to be a Karma Houdini, as is the case with the Komato.

Furthermore, many Undertale players have expressed reluctance to kill the characters because they got attached to their lovable personalities. Iji is a lot more distant when it comes to showing the enemies' sides of things, and the only times you make friends with the aliens, or even speak to them in person on friendly terms, only present themselves if you've already committed to not killing things, so there's less of an opportunity to get acquainted with them personally.

Undertale also seems to integrate pacifist mechanics more closely into the gameplay - since you have to figure out how to spare each enemy differently, on a purely gameplay-focused level pacifism is more engaging and fun, whereas in Iji, jumping over peoples' heads is honestly a bit repetitive.

And don't get me wrong, I still love Iji. But after playing both games I've started to see the places where Iji kind of fell short of itself.

I actually made a post a while ago where I made mostly the same argument. Though I have heard someone make the argument in response that Iji was more about the psychological effects of violence and war then the actual morality of it, which is a valid point.

On a side note, I found out the hard way that I'm a lot worse at this game then I remember being.

edited 21st Nov '15 11:24:10 PM by Zennistrad

Oh, that was you? Huh. I saw that post and I was going to respond with my aforementioned comments, but it was pretty old by the time I saw it. Funny how that works.

Dan's death is a bad example, because it's essentially independent of pacifism. All that matters is whether you were smart enough to save the mine and place it on the teleporter. Sure you'll have to do that to get a 0 deaths run, but most new players won't know to do that. The 2 death run is more representative of what a new player trying to be pacifist will see.

I'd say the biggest example of a player punch on a killer route is near the end when you find the dead body of the girlfriend of the Tasen Soldier whose logbooks you read earlier.

edited 22nd Nov '15 9:06:23 AM by storyyeller

Admittedly, it has been at least five years since I last played so my memory of it probably wasn't too great when I wrote the post.

I've just played through it again twice with different stat builds and one thing that I find really great about the game is just how versatile the game is in terms of how you want to play. Even if you ignore the fact that you can do a pacifist run, the game becomes very different if you choose to invest stat points in cracking or assimilate instead of strength or attack.

It's also a really interesting design choice to make it so you can't jump and shoot at the same time. I had a fair bit of Damn You, Muscle Memory! from that when picking up the game again for the first time in years.

There are a lot of games that don't let you jump and shoot at the same time.

It is interesting how they exploited that for puzzles with the secrets though.

True, but those games usually aren't sidescrolling action-platformers like Iji.

Note: I'm avoiding spoilers for Undertale in this post, but there are Iji spoilers.

Zennistrad: Well, I knew the comparison was coming, but what you describe is not fully what I was trying to do with Iji. Undertale is cool and all, but just saying that I didn't think of the kill counter in Iji as a karma meter. Essentially:

"you killing the aliens bad, but it's okay when aliens kill other aliens."

At least story-wise, the game never says that either is okay. This is why I had Vateilika and Ansaksie rub Iji the wrong way, even if they took the blood off her hands. But yes, there were gameplay problems with this that I get to further down.

Undertale expects you to kill no-one - it's right in the sales pitch. Iji expects you to kill everyone, and acts of pacifism are viewed in-universe as surprising. Should I have the choice in a game between killing or sparing someone I have the potential to care for, the choice is obvious, unless sparing them would have some other dire consequence. But were it someone related to me purely as an antagonist, the answer is more about altruism (as much as it matters to the individual player when it comes to a videogame, at least).

I mostly wanted Iji to be a deconstruction of action heroes and what happens to someone who kills hundreds, even if they are hard to relate to. What happens to those around you came second, mostly because most pacifist modifiers came late in development. But it's no coincidence that Dan tries to convince you that your methods are correct no matter which path you choose - I didn't want him to berate the player for playing the game "wrong". He doesn't have a friendly relationship with Iji's enemies either, though I expected players on their first playthrough to take his cynical words as a hint to the existance of a pacifist path.

In terms of morality, I'm not trying to be overly cynical myself. But in a war, you don't get to stop and have a chat with your enemies, nor do you care for them as individuals. As they are now, for better or worse, the Komato Imperial Army represents the worst in military machines and extremists, so why Iji would hold back on such an enemy is up to the player and the characters. The Tasen are pretty much down to whoever can hold a gun, so there's also a difference in culture between those who are about to win a war and those who are about to lose, however comically excaggerated.

But not everyone in real life has the best of intentions. You can't relate to everyone, and you can't solve all of their problems and dispel their prejudices and hatred. Hence why I think Iji potentially sparing everyone in her path in such a setting says something about her.

But I also think that the game is inherently flawed. As you say, story-wise it may try to say one thing, but pacifism entails little more than jumping over people's heads, jumping into rockets and abusing the reflector. I ran out of motivation for more modifiers, hence why certain characters always die regardless of path, sometimes in really forced ways. I wanted to add a bad ending and a way to spare Iosa and Tor, but I was too lazy at the time. The plans for pacifistic versions of the basic weapons (stun guns etc) also meant too much work and would make pacifism easier than violence, which would go against the point of it being harder and more admirable to strive for. It's not an excuse, just admitting that I left things half-baked. Most things in Iji were made up as I went along after all, including the pacifist modifiers.

Now that I'm planning on doing Iji 1.7 after the strawberry game (mainly to port it to a newer version of Game Maker), I might add some of the old ideas in, but it would be like polishing something that's flawed anyway. It's like the feeling I had after making Hero Core in three months - was it really worth spending four years on Iji when I think of Hero Core as a better game? :p It doesn't help that the writing in Iji is pretty pap.

(Reading through the first part of this post after writing it, it sounds like I'm being negative towards Undertale, but I'm just trying to explain how I think the games have a different approach.)

(Edit: wow, reading it again it all sounds pretty dark - I'm still a pacifist in real life, and certainly didn't intend for Iji's plot to excuse the actions of any its characters!)

edited 22nd Nov '15 2:07:20 PM by Ulti

Wait, you're Daniel Remar, aren't you? I didn't know you posted here. Took me a moment to realize what was happening when you were replying to what I'd said as though you made the game yourself.

I have this topic bookmarked, so it's the only part of TV Tropes that I'm familiar with. :p I have seen the trope pages for mine and Ludosity's games though.

edited 22nd Nov '15 3:34:44 PM by Ulti

^^Yeah, he posts answers questions here occasionally, so thats cool :D

@Ulti: Wait, you are doing 1.7 patch? .-. Huh. Unexpected, but cool xD

Anyway, I think your comment about Undertale is little off. I mean, yeah, Undertale does advertise that you don't need to kill anything, but game itself seems to be designed with assumption that on first playthrough, player kills someone, whether accidentally or not. If you go for full pacifist on first playthrough, it kinda feels like "Wow you caught on early" to me.

edited 22nd Nov '15 4:17:04 PM by SpookyMask

Wait, Iji 1.7 is a thing that's happening? Holy crap.

A part of me feels bad for starting Alphastruck when I did instead of waiting now. Of course, given how long Strawberry Game is taking (no offense to Daniel) that may not have been the best idea.

Yes, mostly I wanted to avoid spoilers by just referring to how the game presents itself with "The RPG game where you don't have to destroy anyone". After the first potential kill, it's a safe bet that the player has learnt what kind of game it is, although Iji does sort of the same thing with Iji's voice.

Don't count on me getting started on Iji 1.7 in at least half a year from now, though - I indeed want to finish up the strawberry game first, now that I'm about to have the time for it. I've been beating myself up for years that it's taken so long to just sit down and get to work.

edited 22nd Nov '15 5:04:47 PM by Ulti

I'm pleasantly surprised that there's even a chance of there being a 1.7: it's been five years since the last update and the game already feels pretty much complete.

I know it can be really frustrating to update a dead game. It's like "why am I bothering to put more work into this when it's already a complete game and anyone who's going to play it already played it years ago?"

A game worth playing is worth re-playing. Especially if there were a couple new shinies added since the last time you played it.