NieR: Automata Spoiler Thread

PBalfredo said:
I left Pascal and I think that's the best option. Killing him is a no-go, especially since the children killing themselves is what set off this tragedy, so I wasn't about to assist in any more suicides. Wiping his memory is also off the table. There are enough side quests in this game where androids who had their memories erased start to remember bits and pieces of their old life, seek to remember the past and end up reliving the trauma to assume that the same would happen to Pascal. Which makes Pascal selling the children's cores extra rough since one day he'll realize what he's done.

Leaving Pascal to deal with the trauma is the only option that has even a glimmer of hope that he might one day recover. Maybe he doesn't and it's all for naught, but its worth trying, which is very much in keeping with the themes of the game.
Click to expand...

You've just created the last boss for Automata 2 .

Jk . this seems like a cliche for some games/stories villains haha .
 
texhnolyze said:
So it's been bugging me for a while..

Why the efff is that everyone referring Pascal a 'he'? It's definitely a she!
Click to expand...

Because... reasons. He's simply a he. That's what he identifies as, and the kids call him "Uncle Pascal". Even then, technically robots and androids don't have genders. I saw it as Yoko Taro just making a point by giving him a feminine voice in regards to how the various robots in the game sort out what gender, age, etc. they identify as. Pascal's voice is just part of the whole theme from my perspective.

- Pascal with the feminine voice, but considers himself a he, so why not? One's voice isn't the final say on one's gender.
- The robots deciding who are brothers and sisters, mother and child, oldest and youngest, king and servants, becoming as gods, etc.
- Eve sharing a (feminine) name with a woman that was born out of man, just as he was born out of Adam. He also is highly dependent on Adam, and breaks down in grief after losing his brother.

And so on.
 
Also it's a parody on how we impose such strict gender practices/traditions on ourselves. We laugh at the cute machines playing house in a way, but really, if we think that it really doesn't matter for them, why should it matter for us?
 
texhnolyze said:
But it's too sweet to be called uncle. There must be some errors in its programming, or maybe due to aging.

It has to be aunt Pascal.
Click to expand...
Uhhhh what? That's really weird to say. Being sweet means you have to be a girl? Shit then A2 and Kaine need to step the fuck out
 
Jintor said:
YOKO TARO UNMASKED

lol jokes it was kamiya all along

i'm not really sure what he was doing there, he must have gotten sick of blocking people for a bit
Click to expand...

2B cosplaying co-host....

Oet148v.jpg
 
Hektor said:
Is there really a new one? Couldn't check myself yet
Click to expand...
It's inside a building near to the open area heading to the castle/tower. If it was there before, I didn't notice it. Either way, if you have the DLC, it'll eventually pop up on your map.

And then things get weird.
 
Don Friday said:
I enjoyed the Waypoing spoilercast for what it was, but was left a little disappointed that they just barely scratched the surface. Austin said it himself, he could talk about it for 4 hours and that's what I was hoping for. Nier: Automata has become the classic literature of video games to me and I'm still hungry to consume discussions and essays about it. I know there will be really good analysis of this in future.

LOL that lore is still coming out in ways like the concert and strategy guide. I expect at this point for new content to be written on the back those napkin packages that are given out on the streets as marketing in Japan...each one with a different sentence of the story!

Will there be canon story elements in the Sin o Alice mobile game? They already announced the Nier:A collaboration, it's a slam dunk right?
Click to expand...
Now there's a great thought point. What would be the 'Classic Literature' of video games? Would make for a great thread idea. I would also add the Trails series, Planescape: Torment, and the Witcher series to the Nier series.



To me, there was only one flaw with the game (besides nitpicks about the game's combat system) and it's that I played Nier before playing Nier:A and hyped myself way too much. Knowing how Taro operates (heh) made plot points relatively predictable until mid - Ending C/D. I'll give some examples. Just entering Pascal's village for the first time, I fucking knew the second I saw those robits waving white flags with an utterly pacifist leader, 'This dude is going to turn on his morals in someway and this village is going to be destroyed'. Same thing with the 'Glory to Mankind' mantra and the pre-recorded messages which immediately led to think 'Humanity is extinct'. When I walked into the zombie infested Amusement Park, I was like 'That's how the robits will die'.

I also didn't like any of the main characters as much as I thought I would. In fact: the best characters, the ones I cared about, were from OG Nier. Not to say I didn't appreciate the complexity of the characters. Just personally didn't identify with them as much.

But I obviously wouldn't be here if I didn't like Nier:A at all, in fact it's on my GOTY right now. And why? Because the lore, backstory, and themes are fucking A+ tier. I loved what the characters stood for, their ideals and how challenged they were. I love all how all the themes came together to that Undertale style ending I love so much. I love the deep lore and the weapon stories. I loved how we made moral decisions that made me pause and choose paths that defined me as a person. I love the UI and design decisions that Taro made to fuck with the characters and the players.

So yeah, I thought the overall story and characters were somewhat weak. And some of the symbolism was just... too on the nose for me. But to me Nier:A is a must play game.

Nier was the the better story. Nier:A is the better narrative. If that makes any sense.

Can't wait to hear the Waypoint podcast. Also gonna go read the gathered lore! Sorry if my thoughts are scrambled, lol.
 
LeleSocho said:
I killed Pascal because i had no idea you could just leave, erasing his memories was not an option because he said himself changing core parts (in this case his memories) would mean losing your own self.
For a person like Pascal, for what i've felt with him and for how much i've cared about him as awful as it sounds killing him seemed the most human thing i could do (leaving him with his memories non withstanding).

As i said before what happened to Pascal and the village was the closest thing that made me cry in a videogame, i will always remember him and every single villager.
Click to expand...

Antiwhippy said:
I wonder how many people knew in the end that you could leave.
Click to expand...
I'm probably super late to this, but I just had a brainstorm about this segment. The fact that the game presents you with two obvious choices (killing Pascal/wiping his memories) but there is in fact a hidden third option to the situation (leaving) that's not immediately obvious is probably supposed to be a reference to Pascal's Wager, isn't it (y'know, where the whole situation Blaise Pascal proposes has two different options but in reality there are many other possibilities Pascal failed to consider or humor)?
 
Pundere said:
Dang it, I bought the ost off iTunes only to realize it doesn't seem to have This Cannot Continue or Become As Gods on it.
Click to expand...

Birth of a Wish is there, but neither the Japanese or English versions of it with the dialogue spliced in are on any official soundtrack.
 
ShironRedshift said:
I'm probably super late to this, but I just had a brainstorm about this segment. The fact that the game presents you with two obvious choices (killing Pascal/wiping his memories) but there is in fact a hidden third option to the situation (leaving) that's not immediately obvious is probably supposed to be a reference to Pascal's Wager, isn't it (y'know, where the whole situation Blaise Pascal proposes has two different options but in reality there are many other possibilities Pascal failed to consider or humor)?
Click to expand...
It certainly fits the themes of 'Humans as flawed Gods/Creators' as the third route. Would that make it the canon choice?
 
LeleSocho said:
I'm too dumb to get these philosophical references about real world's Pascals and other stuff... i feel like i'm missing out a lot :(
Click to expand...

You generally don't need to. Most of the context is already told through the characters and story. Some of them not really either. Like, engels is just a really lame pun from yoko taro. :P

Tvtropes actually did a surprisingly decent of surmising what each philospher referenced have their ideas used in the game.

Jean-Paul Sartre is famous for his ideas that humans are "condemned to be free" and that "existence precedes essence" or that purpose only comes after having been born rather than the other way around. Both the machines and androids, however, did have well-defined creators in the aliens and humans respectively, but lost their creators and as a result have lost their purpose. Much of the game's theme revolves around this situation.

Simone Beauvoir was another existentialist philosopher who happened to also have had a lifelong relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre. She wrote much about the nature of the identity of a woman and gave a negative example of a woman who's identity is based on nothing but a man's affection. The Amusement Park boss' name is Simone, and her rejection by Jean-Paul Sartre is what causes her existential crisis

Blaise Pascal's most famous work "The Pensées" famously seeks to convert readers to Christianity by convincing readers of the horrors of life and human existence assuming that those readers would then be convinced to turn to God. Pascal in game teaches the village children about fear assuming that it would keep them safe, but they instead succumb to that fear and kill themselves. Additionally, similar to how Blaise Pascal understood what he saw as "the wretched nature of Man" but writes in a way that can be considered consoling and heartwarming, the machine Pascal is charming and is comfortable with his own nature as a machine. It is also unsurprising that machine Pascal rejects the philosophy of Friedrich "God is Dead" Nietzsche.

Søren Kierkegaard's writings have much to do with the concept of both religious faith and doubt and emphasized death accusing society as a whole of being in denial about it. In a world of contradictions, he believed that one could only take a leap of faith and believe in religion. He wrote "to have faith is precisely to lose one's mind so as to win God." Kierkegaard is the name of the leader of the Abandoned Factory cult. Kierkegaard was not a fan of the organized religion of his time, yet was still deeply religious whereas the Abandoned Factory cult are cut off from the network, yet still establish a cult revolving around death.

Karl Theodor Ferdinand Grün was a socialist thinker who argued the idea that humans are inherently social beings that have a need of a community of others in order to survive. Grün in-game is a machine lifeform that was discarded by the machines and was motivated by a desire to rejoin their community.)

Immanuel Kant wrote of the role of reason in determining moral principles along with duty in moral action and one's duty to obey one's government. He also prized the intent behind an action moreso than its result in determining the morality of an action. Immanuel, otherwise known as the Forest King, sacrifices himself for his people out of good intent but with little result. Likewise the king's duty-bound subjects put him in the body of a child with good intent, but with unfortunate results. The subjects of the Forest King also emphasize the importance of duty in their actions when you engage them in combat.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were the co-founders of Marxist theory which makes it quite amusing that their models both physically make up a part of a giant factory. They are literally a means of production for the machines.

George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel emphasized the importance of looking at one's past in order to learn from it and was a believer in learning from intellectual enemies. Hegel's fight with A2 ends with Hegel attempting to hack A2 allowing A2 to view the memories of Hegel, A2, and 2B and ultimately defeat Hegel. Additionally, it is here that many players first suspect the true nature of 2B by experiencing a small snippet of her past.
Click to expand...
 
I have the dlc but i am at the beginnig of the game:P welp time for a replay lol. I ofcourse sacrificed my save the first time it was the right thing to do:)

So that stuff you guys are talking about is the 1 secret dream part of the dlc that Yoko mentioned?
 
Antiwhippy said:
I wonder how many people knew in the end that you could leave.
Click to expand...

The game tries to trick you into thinking it's not possible, though. It was the first thing I tried, but Pascal says "you can't do this to me, A2", and then the game takes the control away from you and walks back. Why would I try it again? :P

I'm glad I didn't, though, visiting him as 9S was such a strong gut punch. I wouldn't want to miss that.
 
Shift Breaker said:
It's inside a building near to the open area heading to the castle/tower. If it was there before, I didn't notice it. Either way, if you have the DLC, it'll eventually pop up on your map.

And then things get weird.
Click to expand...

I have the DLC now, but either it sin't there, or i'm too stupid to find it.
The only things that popped up on my map were for the three in the desert, forest and flooded city
 
Sooo, it seems to be super hard to get the outfits since (i think) you get them for completing the 6. or 7. stage of each arena. But at least in the one i'm in (desert) this is a level 80 challenge. (stage6)

Which isn't a problem itself, but it means that you will basically only be able to get the outfits very late or post game (if you're not some kind of pro player) and together with the fact that there is no new game+ this is just stupid.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

The First Descendant reveals collaboration with Nier Automata
News 
2
349
Dr. Samuel Hayden replied
A few thoughts on Nier Automata (lttp)
2 3
111
7K
Soodanim replied
Nier Automata core developers are making a new game
News Game Dev 
19
2K
nikos replied
NieR: Automata creators deny rumors of Square Enix imposing character design restrictions on them. “It’s a huge mistranslation”
Game Dev 
4
361
Deft Beck replied
Nier: Automata creative director Yoko Taro says AI will replace “All Game Creators”
Opinion News Game Dev  2
79
2K
Tams replied
Top Bottom