>>717392024
>You're twisting the word "pretense"
picrel, and that's not twisting, but wordplay
i thought fans of postmodernism would understand and appreciate the nuances of the written word, but oh well

>What am I not understanding here
the big gotcha near the end of the game hinges on alex yiik, who is (you) as a player surrogate don't even start with I.V shit, never really thinking about rpg combat and weird surreal shit, because it's simply "supposed to be like that"
it's like one of them undertales, with XP and LV gotcha near the end, which works decently well if you weren't spoiled on the premise of "a game where nobody has to die", unlike in YIIK
i don't think you even need to get into the technicalities of the story, when THE BIG MOMENT falls fucking flat, the devs have clearly failed
that's the "pretense", the failure to be one of those "quirky eartbound-inspired rpg about depression" because nobody actually wanted to go on an adventure with alex