NieR: Automata Spoiler Thread

I can't remember too clearly, but does anyone but 2B actually bring up the prohibited emotions thing? If not, that would be another one of the signs.
"Stop calling me ma'am" plays into this as well. He's talking to her like he doesn't know her, which just reminds her of him not retaining his memories

Doesn't want to call him Nines because it shows attachment
 
I can't remember too clearly, but does anyone but 2B actually bring up the prohibited emotions thing? If not, that would be another one of the signs.

Going by the novella I'm more inclined to think shes actually saying that for her own benefit.
 
So what was supposed to be sad in this?
Can't say I cared for 9s or 2Bs weird relationship
Machines killing themselves
The mourning of dead comrades
The fear of dying alone
The forest people just wanting to be left alone
The inevitability of failure

Like I feel like you shouldn't have to look hard to find examples
 
Heartless of you, but Pascal's a big one. Devola and Popola's another.

It's ok. It just means the story is not for you.

It definitely wasn't. I ended Pascal without hesitation.
Devola and Popolas whole story basically being tied to a mini visual novel kind of hurt it as well.
I expected a lot more from the story at least from the surface. If anything has me itching to play the original nier, so I can better compare them story wise while this is still fresh.

Machines killing themselves
The mourning of dead comrades
The fear or dying alone
The forest people just wanting to be left alone
The inevitability of failure

Like I feel like you shouldn't have to look hard to find examples

Cant really say much of that stood out to me.
A lot of it just kinda, comes and goes so you don't really have to think about it.

-----

I do think an issue was not caring about the characters. Especially 9s. I cared more about Adam and Eve than I did the main characters. I'd have taken a whole game about them. They were definitey a big highlight for me.
 
You know... I just noticed that the only character that talks about "emotions being prohibited" is 2B. Not the commander, not even 21O (she's just tsundere).

Makes you think. She was only distant and trying for emotionless because she knew what she had to keep doing :(
 
I wonder if it would be a spoiler to tell people they literally can't finish the game without an internet connection.

I've already seen a handful of people run into this brick wall and got really sour about everything. *Example. when Liam from Superbestfriends streamed it, he tried to fight the credits for like 2 hours without knowing why it was so hard
 
I wonder if it would be a spoiler to tell people they literally can't finish the game without an internet connection.

I've already seen a handful of people run into this brick wall and got really sour about everything. *Example. when Liam from Superbestfriends streamed it, he tried to fight the credits for like 2 hours without knowing why it was so hard

Just tell them the network features the game talks about "are more important than you think"

Also, haven't seen it posted here or on the main thread, but doing 6O's missions makes the beginning of route C much more painful T_T
 
So what was supposed to be sad in this?
Can't say I cared for 9s or 2Bs weird relationship

I didn't really feel sad when playing this like I did with Nier, and I was playing this while my dog passed. (I joke that Taro actually has a curse on me. I've only played 3 of his games and every time I have a sick dog who passes before I beat it)

I did feel more empty by the end. Like everything was pointless.

The fact that they're cursed to always end in death, be it 2B killing 9S or the war itself, the death loop left me feeling hopeless more than sad.
 
What is this war loop everybody is talking about?

Are 2B and the others supposed to build a new bunker?

Or does it refer to the machine lifeforms ark sent into space?

And BTW what's up with Adam and Eve asking 9S if he wants to come along?
 
What is this war loop everybody is talking about?

Are 2B and the others supposed to build a new bunker?

Or does it refer to the machine lifeforms ark sent into space?

And BTW what's up with Adam and Eve asking 9S if he wants to come along?
A lot of people have misunderstood the way the war works and think that the events of the game keep looping. Really all it is is just every time one side is about to win the war they self-sabotage to keep it going.

Adam and Eve ask 9S to come with just to hammer home that the machines really don't want to fight anymore.
 
I just beat the game. I'm gonna get no sleep but it was worth it. I'm pretty confused though.

What was the point of Project YoRHa? What was the point of the endless fighting?

Why was an ark holding everyone's memories sent to space? Does this happen in every cycle too?

What did the original Devola and Popola do to get shitted on so badly? All I remember from Nier is that they were androids created by humans and were ultimately in the Replicants' side.

What exactly happened in the ending? Weren't their memories being sent to space? So do they instead retain them and are allowed to live their lives? Is the war even over at the end? I know 2B and the others will know it's all bullshit but that's not gonna stop machines from attacking them.
 
I just beat the game. I'm gonna get no sleep but it was worth it. I'm pretty confused though.

What was the point of Project YoRHa? What was the point of the endless fighting?

Project YoRHa had basically two goals. The main goal was to establish and secure the lie that the Council of Humanity and the alleged human survivors on the moon were a thing, so that the androids would have a flag to rally around, a cause to fight and die for, as it was established that they were suffering from low morale due to the humans dying off thing. The secondary goal was R&D to create even more advanced androids for future war purposes. The purpose of the endless fighting was... meaningless, as Jackass puts it in her Machine Research Report summary. Both sides are essentially fighting just for the sake of fighting, as both sides have no other purpose, though it does clearly push both sides to evolve further, especially the Machine Network.

Why was an ark holding everyone's memories sent to space? Does this happen in every cycle too?

There is no real repetitive cycle here. The Androids and Machines have been fighting on and on for thousands of years, this being the 14th Machine War, but the events are unique. The Machines build the Ark because at least some part of the kind of fractious Machine Network has gotten over the need for fighting being the purpose of their existence and they want to fuck-off to a whole new digs so they don't need to fight anymore.

What did the original Devola and Popola do to get shitted on so badly? All I remember from Nier is that they were androids created by humans and were ultimately in the Replicants' side.

They were a big factor as to why Project Gestalt went tits up, with a little help from the implacable Papa/Brother Nier hisself. As in, a major factor in nailing the coffin shut on the subject of total human extinction.

What exactly happened in the ending? Weren't their memories being sent to space? So do they instead retain them and are allowed to live their lives? Is the war even over at the end? I know 2B and the others will know it's all bullshit but that's not gonna stop machines from attacking them.

From the Android side, only 9S had even the chance to basically have his consciousness join the Machine joyride to deep space. The Ark was a Machine project. And ending E? The Pods 042 and 153 decided that the planned for ending of all YoRHa, aka the total deletion of everything related to it, wasn't agreeable for them and they backed up and restored the data of the dynamic trio and rebuilt/repaired them. And no, going by the timeline given in the Emil Head weapons, the war did not end and the Machine Network will once again rear its head about 500 years from where the game ends, displaying new weapons tech. But there is some room for interpretation there.

Answers are bolded
 
I think one important thing to note on the 500 years later story is that the cycle was also broken for the machines. The machines are no longer trapped in their cycle of warfare, so even if they come back to fight, chances are that they can lose or win now.

Or you can be an optimist like me and imagine that the war doesn't last long and everyone discovers that the fight is pointless and all become friends and dance in fields of flowers whilst Emil sobs about Kainè in the corner.
 
Didn't play the first nier, can someone explain how popola and devola fucked up and led humanity to extinction?

"Technically" they didn't.
In the original game, killing the "shadowlord" or the "original one" caused all Gestalts to go out of control and lead to all replicants relapsing.

Initially the Devola and Popola in that game were guiding the player as a ploy for the shadowlord, but the protagonist's party gets too big for its britches, and so those Devola and Popola try to stop Nier and co from going to kill ol' shadowlord. They fail.

Hence why they are blamed for failing to protect the gestalt project and thus all similar models are condemned for their failures.

(Its amazing how automata makes you feel even more shitty about the events of Nier :( )
 
5. She gets orders to kill 9S whenever he has found out the truth of Project YoRHa. So she just...kills him. This is aided by the fact that she accompanies him in order to follow him closely in order to make sure he doesn't find out, as well as the fact that 9S is programmed to have a fondess for 2B to begin with.
He was? I must have missed the part where you find that out, I thought it were just feelings that always developed naturally. It would make sense to give him that predisposition, but I never saw anything to that effect in the game...

Just tell them the network features the game talks about "are more important than you think"
I turned the network features off midway through the game for a short while but then thought to myself "this won't be here just for the heck of it, Taro's probably got a reason to put that there" and reenabled it. I only realized just now that ending E was that very reason, glad I didn't leave it turned off!



I'm slowly reading through the whole thread, now that I've finished the game, and there's a lot of good discussion in there, just wanted to give props. I don't have much to add, I think, but I'd just like to say how deeply I cared for the whole experience. I felt all the gut-punches so hard and the game left me drained emotionally at many places in a way that I don't think any game has ever done. A replay is probably in order, since even just from memory *so many* of 2B's scenes suddenly made a whole different level of sense after the revelation of the final chapter.

I still have yet to play Nier (though I do know pretty much everything that happened) because the copy that was meant to arrive before Automata released (on PC) has unfortunately still yet to show up; but I'm looking forward to that now even more than I was before. After reading how much people loathed the gameplay in Drakengard (which I played this year for the first time and actually enjoyed, believe it or not :D ), I don't think I have great concerns about that standing in the way of me enjoying Nier.

My Automata world guide book also should arrive in like 3 weeks or so, I'm curious to see what's in there and whether it adds anything more than what I know already.
 
Alright first off, when help arrives and the theme gets a choral fuckin backing.

giphy.gif


Didn't delete my save-file because I missed out on all of Emil's stuff. Not sure if I can be bothered getting Ending Y, but at the least I want to check out his home.

I found every fight against Soshi and co. pretty unfun so it was especially anticlimatic fighting them as the last robot boss, otherwise I enjoyed the endings.

Hats off to 9S's VA, easily the best voice-work in the series.
 
Alright first off, when help arrives and the theme gets a choral fuckin backing.

giphy.gif


Didn't delete my save-file because I missed out on all of Emil's stuff. Not sure if I can be bothered getting Ending Y, but at the least I want to check out his home.

I found every fight against Soshi and co. pretty unfun so it was especially anticlimatic fighting them as the last robot boss, otherwise I enjoyed the endings.

Hats off to 9S's VA, easily the best voice-work in the series.
Ending Y is a must!
 
Yo is the Mourning track also included in some sidequests, holy shit what!? My first time hearing it is in Ending C on the way to recovering 9S. Wouldn't have minded a more traditional choral track like this used for battles, especially with the male vocals.
Ending Y is a must!
But I can't be bothered grinding to get all the weapon upgrades :cc Do I miss much by watching it on Youtube?
 
Yo is the Mourning track also included in some sidequests, holy shit what!?
Several of them, and it is always goddamn fitting for the quest wrap-up. It can easily be one the earliest heavy hitters beside ending A.
But I can't be bothered grinding to get all the weapon upgrades :cc Do I miss much by watching it on Youtube?
I'd argue that you will always lose something if you don't play it out yourself. The VA work for that fight is fucking on point.
 
Yo is the Mourning track also included in some sidequests, holy shit what!? My first time hearing it is in Ending C on the way to recovering 9S. Wouldn't have minded a more traditional choral track like this used for battles, especially with the male vocals. But I can't be bothered grinding to get all the weapon upgrades :cc Do I miss much by watching it on Youtube?

The only other time that track plays in the game (at least with the vocals iirc) is the Amnesia sidequest, which is pretty fitting.
 
The only other time that track plays in the game (at least with the vocals iirc) is the Amnesia sidequest, which is pretty fitting.
I'm pretty sure it also plays when you've fought and killed the Vengeful Child, the last of the golden enemies, which is more or less an unlisted side quest.
 
"The name is Grimoire Weiss. And it is not to be abbreviated"
NIER_Grimoire_Weiss_TRANSPARENT.png

Liam O'Brien is amazing but 9S' breakdown and descent into madness was portrayed so well. It was especially surprising since Mika from Gundam IBO and Mob from Mob Psycho 100 are the only roles from him that I was familiar with before this game, and they are both very emotionless characters.
 
Drakengard 3's Soundtrack ranges between borefest, awesome electro rock and some really amazing tracks like these

Drakengard 1's OST is awesome in what it's doing, that is, being hectic, experimental disturbing stuf, which is certainly not to the taste of everybody.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et8Rw01LvzI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke7FZz0DHQU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2musgrIYUg
Borefest?! What blasphemy O:< Equipped with a motif that has a real sense of weight to it and some great brass lines it's one of my favourite tracks from Okabe as far as battle tracks go.

Excuse the out-of-nowhere reply, I just finished the game and am going through the thread :p This post stuck out to me because I see hardly any talk of Drakengard 3's soundtrack.
 
Several of them, and it is always goddamn fitting for the quest wrap-up. It can easily be one the earliest heavy hitters beside ending A.

I'd argue that you will always lose something if you don't play it out yourself. The VA work for that fight is fucking on point.
Ah damn it, must have been the side-quests I missed. I just couldn't find the damn Yorha units that were meant to be around the city ruins.

Hmm, that and the music does make it tempting but I'd be getting around to it about a month later. Other priorities and all.
"The name is Grimoire Weiss. And it is not to be abbreviated"
NIER_Grimoire_Weiss_TRANSPARENT.png
Call me a heretic but the VA work in the original Nier really didn't do much for me. I don't know how to describe it but it just didn't sound quite natural/convincing. For what it's worth I think Jackass is a great example of VA.
 
It definitely wasn't. I ended Pascal without hesitation.
Devola and Popolas whole story basically being tied to a mini visual novel kind of hurt it as well.
I expected a lot more from the story at least from the surface. If anything has me itching to play the original nier, so I can better compare them story wise while this is still fresh.



Cant really say much of that stood out to me.
A lot of it just kinda, comes and goes so you don't really have to think about it.

-----

I do think an issue was not caring about the characters. Especially 9s. I cared more about Adam and Eve than I did the main characters. I'd have taken a whole game about them. They were definitey a big highlight for me.
2004's Crash seems right up your alley. Check it out.
 
Answers are bolded

Thanks this helped clarify a lot. Not sure about the 500 years later thing. I don't remember that ever being mentioned. But maybe it's because I still have some Emil stuff to do? I didn't even know you could fight him. I just did the Lunar Tear quest.

Another thing, where the hell does THIS CANNOT CONTINUE even play? Did I just not pay enough attention? The only time I ever even heard the phrase was when I was fighting machines in the first Resource unit but Birth of a Wish wasn't the song playing. The machines were just saying it a bit.
 
Thanks this helped clarify a lot. Not sure about the 500 years later thing. I don't remember that ever being mentioned. But maybe it's because I still have some Emil stuff to do? I didn't even know you could fight him. I just did the Lunar Tear quest.

Another thing, where the hell does THIS CANNOT CONTINUE even play? Did I just not pay enough attention? The only time I ever even heard the phrase was when I was fighting machines in the first Resource unit but Birth of a Wish wasn't the song playing. The machines were just saying it a bit.

It's the part where you find the machine orgy and then fight Adam for the first time. The machines start yelling THIS CANNOT CONTINUE a bunch of times and when you fight Adam, you hear it in the background with Birth of a Wish playing.
 
Another thing, where the hell does THIS CANNOT CONTINUE even play? Did I just not pay enough attention? The only time I ever even heard the phrase was when I was fighting machines in the first Resource unit but Birth of a Wish wasn't the song playing. The machines were just saying it a bit.

You just didn't pay enough attention, the desert boss had the music.
 
It's the part where you find the machine orgy and then fight Adam for the first time. The machines start yelling THIS CANNOT CONTINUE a bunch of times and when you fight Adam, you hear it in the background with Birth of a Wish playing.

You just didn't pay enough attention, the desert boss had the music.

Oh damn you're right. Both times I was there I was too focused on what the fuck I just witnessed lol. In Route A it was the machines fucking and in Route B it was when I noticed the one machine giving oral to another one. I need to play that section again.
 
You know... I just noticed that the only character that talks about "emotions being prohibited" is 2B. Not the commander, not even 21O (she's just tsundere).

Makes you think. She was only distant and trying for emotionless because she knew what she had to keep doing :(

It's exactly that. She obviously cares for him. Wants to try to protect him by being as distant as possible.
 
So what was supposed to be sad in this?
Can't say I cared for 9s or 2Bs weird relationship

I think the way the game tackles purpose and meaning is pretty ''sad'' if you will.

Yes, yes, realize retrospectively how great Route A/B were haha. The "kill God" line, the sudden shift from her coldness to her becoming rather comfortable with him during the Goliath fight ("Shut up!", "It was an honor to fight with you", etc.), the obvious BS of her "emotions are prohibited" spiel that she's only applying to herself (see how 9S, Operator 60, etc. are very emotional) because she's bottling up her feelings regarding the situation she's in, her seemingly out-of-character usage of 9S' nickname "Nines", etc. etc.

Also there's a sidequest called Amnesia that even foreshadows that the Type-E models are a thing, and she acts rather suspiciously...

Route A is actually my favorite of all.

But yeah a lot of the events there gain significance retrospectively
 
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