Crym and Punishment
Sometimes murder is allowed as a treat.
(Not for you though, peasant)
Nobody knows who Crym is so just pretend she's 2P and call this piece 2Crime 2Punishment... Incidentally a good alternate name for Yorda Hark Adopadypse
There's this funny thing about Y:DA that plagues my mind ever since I noticed it. I won't go into their context, but there are several nods and references to CrimePun in Y:DA like for starters
Konogg distracts the player with a silver watch just like Raskolnikov before he murders a woman
Glagg grows delirious and paranoid after his 'perfect plan' causes an unplanned death just like Raskolnikov after he murders a woman's sister
Themes of Social Hierarchies and Atonement
and of course
There is a quest literally called Crime & Punishment
and once you notice that you might start to see certain things about the story that will clear up to you that Yoko Taro is a crazy person wtf wtf wtf. Here? Here out of all places? Right in front of my Quirky Video Game Cross-Over?? Did you really think anybody would take this seriously enough to notice any of this???
And I'm perfectly fine with being that guy who shouts into the void that "actually Y:DA is the best, just read this 15-page essay I wrote about how this thing and this thing actually reference a book you don't care about and then three jumps of moon logic later we find ourselves discussing the social mobility of minorities and video games as an art form because I guess that's my life now" only to be told "Bro, It's not that deep" - There is just one problem:
The quest is not called "Crime & Punishment" in Japanese. It's vaguely resembling it in a "X and Y" scheme, but as far as I can tell (using google) it's only called Crime and Punishment in English and German (not in French though) which means my case for "this is defo on purpose" - the only metric of good writing besides "did i like it" - is relying on interpreting a piece of media, which as we all know is not a thing you do with video games.
This situation however also means that one of the following has to be true:
YT meant to do all these CrimePun references and expected people to pick up on them without namedropping the book and the Eng & Ger Localisations knew that (bc of translation notes or something like that) and added a direct reference bc the original quest name was similar anyways.
YT didn't mean to do that and the Eng & Ger Localisations either on their own or together realized that Y:DA had parallels to the book and decided to write CrimePun references into this quest line on their own.
This is just a massive coincidence and everybody involved referenced themes and details of a book that was then also mentioned in two seperate translations by name purely on accident.
Needless to say it's definitely the last one which makes me boo boo the fool as we all know Yoko Taro is a loser and has never used subtext in his life. But if I were ever able to ask him and/or the localisation (who kind of have to know bc they translated it) anything, I would ask them if Y:DA is referencing this book on purpose or not... (YT wouldn't answer that and laugh at me. And then he would call the cops to get me out of his house.)
Anyways, some final notes:
For the background I painted over a woodcut print of the Pulkovo Observatory bc I was lazy and backgrounds are hard. I will accept the withdrawal of my 'Mediocre Art Hobbyist' card for the sin of not being a real artist
Crym's outfit is supposed to resemble Raskolnikov's with his stupid little hat, but we all know that guy's clothes would not color match
....i am indeed actively working on a y:da video essay... i'm sorry in advance... i don't even care about anybody watching it i just want to talk about my favorite piece of video game ever (yes it has gotten that bad please call help)
