NieR: Automata Spoiler Thread

DLC related:
The way they implemented Amazarashi's musicvideo and shortstory was simply beautiful

I totes did not expect that to happen

Too bad that most people won't experience this cos it's part of a rather overpriced DLC

Also

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!

https://www.reddit.com/r/nier/comments/68yri4/translation_50_questions_for_yoko_taro_from_nier/

50 questions for yoko tarp from the guide translated.

Edit: holy shit, this goes into way more depth than i expected.

This Q&A reconfirms that the machines got sentiens because of beepy ;_;7
 
Q39. Androids and machine lifeforms who go berserk have their eyes turn red; does this have anything to do with the Red Eye?
If I have to pick a side, it’d be yes.

Wtf is this answer haha.

If I have to pick a side?
 
11945:
August 6th: The "tower" launches an object into space.
September 2nd: Humanity's forces announce the end to the 14th machine war.
September 5th: --------
September 19th: ---------
11946:
January: Peaceful machine lifeforms led by Pascal sign a ceasefire with humanity's forces.
12422:
September 2nd: An android wearing black clothes is sighted.
12530:
"Nobles" appear amongst machine lifeforms.
12543:
Civil disturbance happens amongst machine lifeforms. Not counting individuals who've gone out of control, this is the first internal conflict amongst machine lifeforms.

Well at least this confirms that Pascal surviving is canon and he goes on to create another peaceful nation, at least for a while. My boy *sniff*.
 
I like the game and the story, but honestly, the big "revelation" was just confirmation of the ending of Neir (Ie, Humanity done effed up with Gesalt/Replicant).

It had less impact to me IMO.

I also don't understand why 2B had to keep killing 9S. Why? Because he would find out the truth? (He did). Why make an andrioid capable of doing that? Seemed a little forced.

Come to think of it....Alot of seemed a little more forced than Neir.
 
I like the game and the story, but honestly, the big "revelation" was just confirmation of the ending of Neir (Ie, Humanity done effed up with Gesalt/Replicant).

It had less impact to me IMO.

I also don't understand why 2B had to keep killing 9S. Why? Because he would find out the truth? (He did). Why make an andrioid capable of doing that? Seemed a little forced.

Come to think of it....Alot of seemed a little more forced than Neir.

The revelation wasn't really the point.

It's more about what it means for androids to be living for a lie, and the machines who explore humanity's past.

Also they made 9S like that is because he's an advanced model of a scanner unit, is really good at his job at scanning for new information, and in order for him to be that advanced they have to risk him being too good to hide anything from him. So they made sure there is someone there to keep a check on him.

As to why they can't just limit him to not be able to explore past his means, the entire game is about machines and androids evolving past their programming. To apply the current limits of AI to this game is kinda missing the point.
 
I like the game and the story, but honestly, the big "revelation" was just confirmation of the ending of Neir (Ie, Humanity done effed up with Gesalt/Replicant).

It had less impact to me IMO.

I also don't understand why 2B had to keep killing 9S. Why? Because he would find out the truth? (He did). Why make an andrioid capable of doing that? Seemed a little forced.

Come to think of it....Alot of seemed a little more forced than Neir.

I think you hit on two of the main issues I had with the plot in this game. It was still great and had some really high highs, but the first Nier felt like it had bigger, more meaningful twists and more meaning to it all.

The humans being extinct felt way too predictable. It felt so tame overall compared to the insane swerve that Nier had with the Replicant and Gestalt project reveals. I also felt like the characters in the first Nier had more emotional impact and resonance, it says a lot when the character I felt the most from was a returning character (Emil).

I had an incredibly hard time feeling any sort of sympathy towards 2B the entire game. In retrospect knowing she was holding in her emotions to save 9S from becoming too close is a sad concept, but I would have liked a lot more in game time with a sympathetic and emotional 2B than the cold hearted one we got for maybe 95% of this game. 9S was hands down the redeeming quality of this game for me as well as the various side quests and bosses and their incredible writing. Pascal also had his merits, but ended up also becoming predictable and the emotional beats fell a bit short.

I love the messages the game portrays, the world, the music, the gameplay, the meta narratives (like ending E, which was incredible). But it just felt like it was lacking in coherence and emotional resonance within it's main plot in comparison to the original Nier. There were moments in the first Nier where I just felt like I had my soul ripped out of me, this one just kind of fell flat a lot of the time, like ending A was really hard to care about without knowing the reveal of 2E, which by that point you're long past watching ending A.

Maybe I just don't like the idea of needing to reflect on my feelings in retrospect and would rather feel them powerfully in the moment, I'm not quite sure the game is at fault here as it feels like it was done well. But on a personal level it just didn't jive well with me.
 
Lol, you basically said your main issues are that you prefer the first Nier, which is completely fine imo. I hear occasional talk about how the humanity reveal was predictable, and yet, the reveal that they're already dead is not even the point (Not to mention those who played the first game would know this anyways, albeit some were confused lol), but more how everyone's dealing with it. Then with Route C revealing 2B and 2E, it becomes a bit more intriguing that 9S planned on telling 2B about this, but we all know how that'd go down...

That being said, emotional resonance is a rather subjective thing, since a lot of people did feel for the characters. Also what in particular made you feel the game was lacking in coherence?
 
Lol, you basically said your main issues are that you prefer the first Nier, which is completely fine imo

That being said, emotional resonance is a rather subjective thing, since a lot of people did feel for the characters. Also what in particular made you feel the game was lacking in coherence?

I edited my post to elaborate a bit stating it's probably a personal thing with the emotional resonance rather than the games fault itself.

And personally I just felt like it moved too quickly at times. It felt like I was going from Adam and Eve and their seemingly abrupt end straight into an all out war where it was twist after twist with not quite as much emotional down time as I'd have liked.

I also didn't like how little it chose to not elaborate quite enough on some important characters. Adam and Eve are supremely interesting, but I feel they show up to just show that machines are evolving at an accelerated rate and just vanish and don't really feel like they give any ultimate message or value to anything. It could have just gone over my head though.

A2 felt underutilized as well, she seemed to be something to throw a wrench in the plot to disrupt the cycle rather than actually developing a lot of her own character.

I would have liked a bit more regarding the bunker and Commander and her thoughts on all this since one twist I didn't expect was for her to not be in on everything and the bunker itself to actually be somewhat out of the loop. 6O also seemed like she was going to play some pivotal emotional role, but she kind of amounted to a side quest and a few quips.

Pascal's story and 9S's emotional conflict feel like the two character arcs that were the most complete to me. Which were great, but I just wanted more I guess.
 
I think you hit on two of the main issues I had with the plot in this game. It was still great and had some really high highs, but the first Nier felt like it had bigger, more meaningful twists and more meaning to it all.

The humans being extinct felt way too predictable. It felt so tame overall compared to the insane swerve that Nier had with the Replicant and Gestalt project reveals. I also felt like the characters in the first Nier had more emotional impact and resonance, it says a lot when the character I felt the most from was a returning character (Emil).

I had an incredibly hard time feeling any sort of sympathy towards 2B the entire game. In retrospect knowing she was holding in her emotions to save 9S from becoming too close is a sad concept, but I would have liked a lot more in game time with a sympathetic and emotional 2B than the cold hearted one we got for maybe 95% of this game. 9S was hands down the redeeming quality of this game for me as well as the various side quests and bosses and their incredible writing. Pascal also had his merits, but ended up also becoming predictable and the emotional beats fell a bit short.

I love the messages the game portrays, the world, the music, the gameplay, the meta narratives (like ending E, which was incredible). But it just felt like it was lacking in coherence and emotional resonance within it's main plot in comparison to the original Nier. There were moments in the first Nier where I just felt like I had my soul ripped out of me, this one just kind of fell flat a lot of the time, like ending A was really hard to care about without knowing the reveal of 2E, which by that point you're long past watching ending A.

Maybe I just don't like the idea of needing to reflect on my feelings in retrospect and would rather feel them powerfully in the moment, I'm not quite sure the game is at fault here as it feels like it was done well. But on a personal level it just didn't jive well with me.

Could not have said it better myself.

The revelation wasn't really the point.

It's more about what it means for androids to be living for a lie, and the machines who explore humanity's past.

Also they made 9S like that is because he's an advanced model of a scanner unit, is really good at his job at scanning for new information, and in order for him to be that advanced they have to risk him being too good to hide anything from him. So they made sure there is someone there to keep a check on him.

As to why they can't just limit him to not be able to explore past his means, the entire game is about machines and androids evolving past their programming. To apply the current limits of AI to this game is kinda missing the point.
Kinda what Zutrax said. I didn't' care at all what the androids were fighting for. It didn't have the punch it should have (IMO). Tell me why I should care about Androids. Tell me why I should care about 2B and 9S (though 9S in route B and C connects...).

In the end....what the game missed for me is why should I care about anything going on. The game did not connect up or contemplate that AI had evolved to our concepts of Life. As a matter of fact, the game points out that it is merely mimicked. So...if this is just a bunch of machines fighting each other mimicking humans..So what? Even if you try and take if from a philosophy level...the game doesn't do a great job of showing the reflections of humanity's failure.

I mean...Pascal probably had the right idea when trying to read Nietzsche "Oh well, that's enough of that."
 
I mean, humanity being dead was predictable because it was the only logical output after Nier 1. Doing something else would mean retconning Nier 1, and would destroy the ending and meaning of that game.

So yeah it was predictable, but the other choices would have been worse. I honestly would have been pissed if humans were still alive.
 
It is weird for people to even call the humanity reveal a twist.

It was only revealed to 9S, not the audience.

We already knew it. We knew it the whole time. That isn't a twist. It is a dramatic irony that the Yorha were fighting a battle for humanity when we already knew that humanity had gone extinct.

I think it is an interesting and ultimately effective narrative choice to make it seem like maybe there was going to be some kind of twist that would explain mankind surviving, but ultimately the only reveal is that there is no twist. Things happened exactly as they appeared to in the original game.

And really, I feel like the ultimate irony is that the androids and machines are both essentially so desperately trying to protect or recreate or emulate humanity that they have become the new humanity.
 
Like honestly the black box twist was way bigger to me than the humanity thing.

I mean, humanity being dead was predictable because it was the only logical output after Nier 1. Doing something else would mean retconning Nier 1, and would destroy the ending and meaning of that game.

So yeah it was predictable, but the other choices would have been worse. I honestly would have been pissed if humans were still alive.

I guess I'm dwelling a bit too much on that being predictable, as you're right I also don't think it was the point to not be able to guess that sort of thing. While I was a bit bummed at it's predictability I guess I was more disappointed that despite being predictable, the fallout and emotional response didn't quite live up to what I was hoping.
 
Hang on a second. seems like im fighting Shades who look like machines in this S rank fight? I'm fighting a Shade Simone and it's bleeding like holy mother mary when I hit it uhhh

EDIT: OMG THE 3D SUPER MARIO GALAXY HACKING
 
I guess I'm dwelling a bit too much on that being predictable, as you're right I also don't think it was the point to not be able to guess that sort of thing. While I was a bit bummed at it's predictability I guess I was more disappointed that despite being predictable, the fallout and emotional response didn't quite live up to what I was hoping.

I do wonder of non Nier 1 players feel about the humanity revelation. To me it was fine because I knew it (and I wanted it to happen) but it's true that maybe for a non Nier 1 player it could felt a little rushed and flat. I dunno.
 
From that translated Q&A in the guide book:

Q7. What is this “Command” organization that came up with project YoRHa?
Since humanity’s forces consist of all the androids who report to the Council of Humanity on the moon, the so called Command is just the Council of Humanity. However, as revealed in the game, the Council of Humanity does not actually exist, and neither does the Command (the closest thing would be the server on the moon). The one who came up with project YoRHa is an individual android, but we have not revealed the details yet.

This is another thing that rubs me the wrong way about Yoko's storytelling; so much important information that just isn't in the game and has to be tracked down across a dozen different fan-translated cross-media things. The question of who set all this in motion is so conspicuously absent in the game that I figured I must just have missed something. I just assumed it had all been the Red Girls' doing. I figured they'd infiltrated the android's network at some point and started the YorHa program for whatever reason, but I guess I was wrong. No doubt this 'individual android' thread is going to be followed up on in some Japan-only radio play, limited edition comic book, blurb on the back of the box of a Gachapon figure or short story collection that will never see the light of day in the West.
 
It was not about the twists for me. It was taking those twists and looking at past events in a new light that made it for me.

Me speaking about the twists probably makes it seem like I'm dwelling on those way too much and putting a lot of value in that for the purpose of my entertainment. I more think the predictability combined with the (in my opinion) lack of payoff is the problem. This game has a ton of subtext, themes, and ideas bouncing around that mean a lot and are really intriguing, but just making me think isn't enough for me to feel very strongly about it.

Maybe it's a very base level, boring way to look at entertainment but I do enjoy having powerful emotional responses from the things I'm viewing. Some of my favorite media are ones that both make me think on top of giving me the emotional response I ask for. This felt like it succeeded wholeheartedly at one, but fell flat on the other.
 
From that translated Q&A in the guide book:



This is another thing that rubs me the wrong way about Yoko's storytelling; so much important information that just isn't in the game and has to be tracked down across a dozen different fan-translated cross-media things. The question of who set all this in motion is so conspicuously absent in the game that I figured I must just have missed something. I just assumed it had all been the Red Girls' doing. I figured they'd infiltrated the android's network at some point and started the YorHa program for whatever reason, but I guess I was wrong. No doubt this 'individual android' thread is going to be followed up on in some Japan-only radio play, limited edition comic book, blurb on the back of the box of a Gachapon figure or short story collection that will never see the light of day in the West.

It is completely irrelevant to the themes and the story of the game, like most additional material

This is a very good twitter thread about this stuff, albeit about the original Nier
https://twitter.com/SpiritusNoxSA/status/842531010600456192
 
From that translated Q&A in the guide book:



This is another thing that rubs me the wrong way about Yoko's storytelling; so much important information that just isn't in the game and has to be tracked down across a dozen different fan-translated cross-media things. The question of who set all this in motion is so conspicuously absent in the game that I figured I must just have missed something. I just assumed it had all been the Red Girls' doing. I figured they'd infiltrated the android's network at some point and started the YorHa program for whatever reason, but I guess I was wrong. No doubt this 'individual android' thread is going to be followed up on in some Japan-only radio play, limited edition comic book, blurb on the back of the box of a Gachapon figure or short story collection that will never see the light of day in the West.

It isn't like it matters. People need to let go of the fact that the game needs to answer every single question.
 
I love the messages the game portrays, the world, the music, the gameplay, the meta narratives (like ending E, which was incredible). But it just felt like it was lacking in coherence and emotional resonance within it's main plot in comparison to the original Nier. There were moments in the first Nier where I just felt like I had my soul ripped out of me, this one just kind of fell flat a lot of the time, like ending A was really hard to care about without knowing the reveal of 2E, which by that point you're long past watching ending A.

Maybe I just don't like the idea of needing to reflect on my feelings in retrospect and would rather feel them powerfully in the moment, I'm not quite sure the game is at fault here as it feels like it was done well. But on a personal level it just didn't jive well with me.

I feel completely differently. I rarely, if ever, get to play a game where something that happens in the later portions of the games recontextualizes nearly everything that became before it. Like I've probably played a couple of games where they did it on a small-scale, but the 2E reveal ripples across not just the main plot beats, but even the side quests, their mannerisms, the opening line, etc. Where the reveal has actually made me do a 2nd playthrough, not just simply because I like the game and want to fight a certain boss or whatever again, but because now I'm motivated to see all the little hints I had missed or not bothered attempting to find out for myself. It's something I rarely experience, so that in turn made the game a lot more meaningful to me than a game they only focused on making you feel something in the moment. Instead, Nier does both. It's that rare game where I can confidently tell someone to finish the whole game because they really need to in order to see the whole picture, and not just because I'm hoping it'll suddenly click with them. It just takes Routes A/B, "chapters" in the story that some people felt lukewarm or indifferent, and just makes them automatically better.

But all that being said, yes, this game is all about retrospection, where you look back on past events and go "Oh, so that's why..." quite often. If someone doesn't like that, that's fine, but like you said, I felt the game did what it set out to do rather well.

I edited my post to elaborate a bit stating it's probably a personal thing with the emotional resonance rather than the games fault itself.

And personally I just felt like it moved too quickly at times. It felt like I was going from Adam and Eve and their seemingly abrupt end straight into an all out war where it was twist after twist with not quite as much emotional down time as I'd have liked.

I also didn't like how little it chose to not elaborate quite enough on some important characters. Adam and Eve are supremely interesting, but I feel they show up to just show that machines are evolving at an accelerated rate and just vanish and don't really feel like they give any ultimate message or value to anything. It could have just gone over my head though.

A2 felt underutilized as well, she seemed to be something to throw a wrench in the plot to disrupt the cycle rather than actually developing a lot of her own character.

I would have liked a bit more regarding the bunker and Commander and her thoughts on all this since one twist I didn't expect was for her to not be in on everything and the bunker itself to actually be somewhat out of the loop. 6O also seemed like she was going to play some pivotal emotional role, but she kind of amounted to a side quest and a few quips.

Pascal's story and 9S's emotional conflict feel like the two character arcs that were the most complete to me. Which were great, but I just wanted more I guess.

I too wanted more time with certain characters, such as Devola and Popola (although this would be more for people who didn't play/watch the first game), A2, Anemone perhaps, etc. (More Jackass would be great though) But at the same time admittedly, I don't feel that it'd be 100% "necessary", except for maybe A2. I undoubtedly felt for Devola and Popola despite me spending a very short time with them. Anemone's Pearl Harbor log told me the gist of how she used to be as a person, and how she has matured since. I would have liked getting to briefly see what A2 was what up to before Route C, but it seems that all she really did was kill robots and fight 2B/9S in the past, so meh. More encounters would be cool though, or more time with her with 2B's memories.

But overall, the game touched a chord in me regardless, so I'm ultimately good.

Some of your other stuff is more that you expected things to happen that didn't (like 60's importance or the Commander's thoughts), which is always tricky imo, because I too have been in positions where if it didn't happen, I felt like the story "betrayed" those expectations in a sense. Personally I didn't feel that way with Automata. Sure, it'd be nice to get every single important character's thoughts on every little thing that goes down, or know stuff like who is behind Project YoRHa, but ultimately it doesn't matter much.

As for Adam and Eve, for me they represented general themes more than these characters to get overly attached to. Eve in particular fascinates me due to how he's born out of Adam, is dependent on his brother, is emotionally distraught when his brother dies, etc. Just a lot of his character traits is this stuff that'd be stereotypically/traditionally applied to a woman. He in a way just sort of messes with gender roles a little bit in a subtle way.

Could not have said it better myself.
Kinda what Zutrax said. I didn't' care at all what the androids were fighting for. It didn't have the punch it should have (IMO). Tell me why I should care about Androids. Tell me why I should care about 2B and 9S (though 9S in route B and C connects...).

In the end....what the game missed for me is why should I care about anything going on. The game did not connect up or contemplate that AI had evolved to our concepts of Life. As a matter of fact, the game points out that it is merely mimicked. So...if this is just a bunch of machines fighting each other mimicking humans..So what? Even if you try and take if from a philosophy level...the game doesn't do a great job of showing the reflections of humanity's failure.

I mean...Pascal probably had the right idea when trying to read Nietzsche "Oh well, that's enough of that."

I mean, I dunno what you want us to say. I don't know what "magic words" one could type out that would make suddenly care, to be honest.

For me I guess, this game was just one big tragedy. A tragedy that the androids were so inexplicably tied to humanity, instead of being able to live for themselves. How knowing the truth would likely end up slowly destroying them, or at least making them contemplate their existence, their reason for being. The tragedy that on a more personal level, their attempts to hide this huge secret affects the main characters on a personal level: A2 being a prototype that was meant to die along with her team, 2B being put in an impossible position where she's forced to kill the person she cares most about (lest she leaves it to someone else to do the deed), 9S' victimhood. The tragedy of seeing 9S slowly go mad over 2B's death, knowing his quest for vengeance is especially pointless due to everything being a part of this cycle of war. The tragedy of how both the machines and androids look to the humans as gods instead of living for themselves. The tragedy of how Devola and Popola before Route C were living a life where they were perpetually discriminated against, to the point where they've been programmed to feel guilt for actions that they had no part in. So basically you got the tragedies that you've been a part of since the beginning, and an unfolding tragedy concerning 9S that you slowly see unravel as you play the game. And even that gets further complicated by his... complicated feelings towards 2B.

The machines and their varying sense of code, gender, morals, outlook on life, etc. (The line about how machines go so far as to purposefully replicate humanity's mistakes got me) Pascal's approach utterly failing in that regard.

And so on.

And then it ties into Ending E, where it gives you this one chance where hopefully you just might be able to break the cycle for the characters we've come to care, where we defy the "gods" of this game in order to create that potential happy ending.

Like, if you didn't care about any of it, well... Damn lol, but oh well I guess.

It is weird for people to even call the humanity reveal a twist.

It was only revealed to 9S, not the audience.

We already knew it. We knew it the whole time. That isn't a twist. It is a dramatic irony that the Yorha were fighting a battle for humanity when we already knew that humanity had gone extinct.

I think it is an interesting and ultimately effective narrative choice to make it seem like maybe there was going to be some kind of twist that would explain mankind surviving, but ultimately the only reveal is that there is no twist. Things happened exactly as they appeared to in the original game.

And really, I feel like the ultimate irony is that the androids and machines are both essentially so desperately trying to protect or recreate or emulate humanity that they have become the new humanity.

Agreed.

This is another thing that rubs me the wrong way about Yoko's storytelling; so much important information that just isn't in the game and has to be tracked down across a dozen different fan-translated cross-media things. The question of who set all this in motion is so conspicuously absent in the game that I figured I must just have missed something. I just assumed it had all been the Red Girls' doing. I figured they'd infiltrated the android's network at some point and started the YorHa program for whatever reason, but I guess I was wrong. No doubt this 'individual android' thread is going to be followed up on in some Japan-only radio play, limited edition comic book, blurb on the back of the box of a Gachapon figure or short story collection that will never see the light of day in the West.

As far as I'm concerned, so long as the actual game leaves nothing super important out and told the story it wanted to tell, I'm fine with it, and even appreciate that there is additional info or lore being fed to us. If it were something like the DLC in Drakengard 3, you'd have a much stronger case I believe. There's definitely a point to be made that it is irksome that it can be stuff that you gotta hope someone will translate, lest you never learn about it or whatever, but ultimately it's neat to see that he cares so much about the universe he's built. As usual, it's just stuff for people who are really into the universe, who enjoy putting it all together.
 
Anemone's Pearl Harbor log told me the gist of how she used to be as a person, and how she has matured since.

Well shit, looks like I somehow missed a really important facet of her character despite getting the Platinum Trophy in this game. Time to go back and read that because she's someone I felt needed some fleshing out considering her connection to A2 in that other side quest.
 
I mean, I dunno what you want us to say. I don't know what "magic words" one could type out that would make suddenly care, to be honest.

For me I guess, this game was just one big tragedy. A tragedy that the androids were so inexplicably tied to humanity, instead of being able to live for themselves. How knowing the truth would likely end up slowly destroying them, or at least making them contemplate their existence, their reason for being. The tragedy that on a more personal level, their attempts to hide this huge secret affects the main characters on a personal level: A2 being a prototype that was meant to die along with her team, 2B being put in an impossible position where she's forced to kill the person she cares most about (lest she leaves it to someone else to do the deed), 9S' victimhood. The tragedy of seeing 9S slowly go mad over 2B's death, knowing his quest for vengeance is especially pointless due to everything being a part of this cycle of war. The tragedy of how Devola and Popola before Route C were living a life where they were perpetually discriminated against, to the point where they've been programmed to feel guilt for actions that they had no part in. So basically you got the tragedies that you've been a part of since the beginning, and an unfolding tragedy concerning 9S that you slowly see unravel as you play the game. And even that gets further complicated by his... complicated feelings towards 2B.

The machines and their varying sense of code, gender, morals, outlook on life, etc. (The line about how machines go so far as to purposefully replicate humanity's mistakes got me) Pascal's approach utterly failing in that regard.

And so on.

And then it ties into Ending E, where it gives you this one chance where hopefully you just might be able to break the cycle for the characters we've come to care, where we defy the "gods" of this game in order to create that potential happy ending.

Like, if you didn't care about any of it, well... Damn lol, but oh well I guess.
I wasn't saying for YOU to tell me why I should care...I meant the game. Ha!

Moreover, the game does not contemplate that these machines are "alive." That's the connective tissue missing. That this programmable AI gained sentience and are alive in the traditional sense instead of mimicking.

IMO the game even falls a little flat in trying to demonstrate that the machines are desperately trying to understand what Life even is (Adam specifically) and why the mimic humans to do it.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed the game. But for me it just couldn't deliver on impact on the main themes as it didn't flesh them out enough.
 
Could not have said it better myself.


Kinda what Zutrax said. I didn't' care at all what the androids were fighting for. It didn't have the punch it should have (IMO). Tell me why I should care about Androids. Tell me why I should care about 2B and 9S (though 9S in route B and C connects...).

In the end....what the game missed for me is why should I care about anything going on. The game did not connect up or contemplate that AI had evolved to our concepts of Life. As a matter of fact, the game points out that it is merely mimicked. So...if this is just a bunch of machines fighting each other mimicking humans..So what? Even if you try and take if from a philosophy level...the game doesn't do a great job of showing the reflections of humanity's failure.

I mean...Pascal probably had the right idea when trying to read Nietzsche "Oh well, that's enough of that."

Then you have to ask, why are they mimicking us? What is it about us that is worth mimicking?

Like, you can boil down a lot of this game to "Why humans?" It's not asking if the androids and machines are humans, but instead why they mimic us instead, sometimes in incredibly clumsy ways. Why do they look at us to define a purpose?

I'll tell you why I care, it's because in their exploration of us they created communities, and in its most basic form they found a purpose through each other. That's why I was incredibly saddened to see the circus machines reduced to zombies, why it's sad to see the forest machines enraged about losing their king, and Pascal destroyed from losing the community he himself built up.

It's also why I'm saddened for the androids. I knew all too well what it meant to lose god. How I have to face my gradual loss of a guiding stone, the nights I spent wondering what my brief 80 or so years amounts to in a universe that will span infinitely more. Look at how many societies around the world formed around religion to find a purpose for themselves in life. If you lose that guiding stone that tells you about what your life's meaning is, how would you deal with the loss? Or is it simply better to follow a lie blindly? Then why keep fighting in the name of a lie? Is that sense of purpose worth the bloodshed? Even now we have people fighting in the name of god, and the game asks us how truly senseless it is. The android's desperation for a god, to the point of being willing to sacrifice hundreds if not thousands to perpetuate a lie and a holy war where they can mindlessly kill and die because it's a purpose that exist as long as that lie is still believed, is truly sad to me.

It's the reason why it's sad to see 9S go on a rampage once he loses his only emotional anchor he has in his life, 2B. Why I care that 2B could only be near to the person she loves by having to forcibly erase him continuously, and why I care that 9S subconsciously allowed it because it's the only way he can break away from his own feelings of isolation, while his resentment slowly builds to a breaking point too. 2 androids that need each other to the point of desperation, and they are willing to bear the hurt for their brief moments of bliss without having to consider their horrifying circumstances. They found something they can cling on to this world other than a god they know doesn't exist. I care deeply because I'm a sucker for such tragedies.

And it's why I care about how Ending E ended the way it did. Why I care about the messages encouraging us not to give up even though for the past few hours we've been asked repeatedly if there really is a purpose to this world. Why I care that there are people willing to sacrifice everything (for the game anyway :P) in order for us to create this sense of community of just wanting to see a goddamn happy ending in a yoko taro game, because we truly value the need to link for a common cause.

It asks us "Why humanity?" and in the end it tells us that we don't need an answer, but really, while we may not have a god or a true purpose, we do it anyway because we still define ourselves by the need to to connect to people surrounding us, that it is ultimately up to us to find our own true purpose, and that might just be all the answers that we need. Because we as humans really do try to cling onto dogmas with a predefined purpose instead of searching ourselves. We really do.

All of these is laid out pretty well for me by the game.
 
Me speaking about the twists probably makes it seem like I'm dwelling on those way too much and putting a lot of value in that for the purpose of my entertainment. I more think the predictability combined with the (in my opinion) lack of payoff is the problem. This game has a ton of subtext, themes, and ideas bouncing around that mean a lot and are really intriguing, but just making me think isn't enough for me to feel very strongly about it.

Maybe it's a very base level, boring way to look at entertainment but I do enjoy having powerful emotional responses from the things I'm viewing. Some of my favorite media are ones that both make me think on top of giving me the emotional response I ask for. This felt like it succeeded wholeheartedly at one, but fell flat on the other.
This is pretty much where I'm at. I really appreciate what the game tries to take on and accomplishes, but Taro has proven time and again that he knows how to write stories that make you think AND feel. He isn't the type of writer who has to sacrifice one for the other, and despite his claim that Automata was supposed to be "dry", it is arguably his most emotionally charged story yet.
 
Like honestly the black box twist was way bigger to me than the humanity thing.
The black box reveal is critical for 9S' character, but it didn't really matter to me as the viewer because they're literally both machines regardless :p

Same for the humanity "twist". It's important for the characters, but it didn't really matter to me.
 
It's also why I love the development of the pods and their role in the end. They might have just been emotionless machines who cared for the wellbeing of the androids they're with only because project yorha programmed them to look over the androids till the final plan can be executed, but through repeated communications it formed empathy. It started to care. Throughout C you see it growing to worry about the androids for their own sake. And by the end it's able to break out of its own dogma in order to determine what he truly valued.

Could a machine like the pods truly form that kind of empathy though? They did say that of course they'll inherit the traits of their creators, the androids, and the androids in turn have inherited that from us. Maybe it's yoko taro saying that it's hopefully our one true legacy, if we're to have one at all.

The black box reveal is critical for 9S' character, but it didn't really matter to me as the viewer because they're literally both machines regardless :p

Same for the humanity "twist". It's important for the characters, but it didn't really matter to me.

It mattered to me because the game throughout created this dichotomy between yorha and the machines but in the end they're all the fucking same. Like even for standard androids that don't have the black boxes, the behaviour of YorHa androids is indistinguishable to the regular androids Like why do we put so much stock into appearances to think of something as The Other? Why have they inherited that from us?
 
So for beating the hardest challenge in the DLC (around 1 hour of level 130-140 mobs with boss rush every other stage) you get Neon wig colors, and 10 forbidden fruits which each decrease your level by 10, and a shiton of chips.

Also it's hard af.
 
It is completely irrelevant to the themes and the story of the game, like most additional material

This is a very good twitter thread about this stuff, albeit about the original Nier
https://twitter.com/SpiritusNoxSA/status/842531010600456192

It isn't like it matters. People need to let go of the fact that the game needs to answer every single question.

Alright, I know it's about how the characters reacted to the situation they were in and not necessarily how that situation came about, but I think throwing "It doesn't matter" around excuses a lot of uneven storytelling. It shouldn't have to be one or the other. You can make the story about the characters and still have a fictional world that adheres to some internal logic. If the game had just been an unexplained series of tragic events that put its characters through the wringer, that'd be one thing, but it's a half-explained series of tragic events. It throws those archives at you, raising the very specific questions of why the YoRHas would be designed to be killed from the start, and by whom, and then it just abandons that plot thread.

If it really doesn't matter, why bring it up at all? Why throw out all that YoRHa backstory if it isn't going to go anywhere? I guess you can argue that it feeds into the meta theme of "bad stuff can happen and you'll never know why, never-ending cycle, etc", but I feel like that's a pretty generous reading. A nice little 'get out of jail free' card; it's not a flaw, it's a feature. To me it just feels like an unfinished plot thread that adds nothing to the game but disappointment when it isn't followed up.
 
it wasnt so much the extinction of humanity twist that was important point to me, but the need to maintain the lie about it, the need to fabricate a god

Alright, I know it's about how the characters reacted to the situation they were in and not necessarily how that situation came about, but I think throwing "It doesn't matter" around excuses a lot of uneven storytelling. It shouldn't have to be one or the other. You can make the story about the characters and still have a fictional world that adheres to some internal logic. If the game had just been an unexplained series of tragic events that put its characters through the wringer, that'd be one thing, but it's a half-explained series of tragic events. It throws those archives at you, raising the very specific questions of why the YoRHas would be designed to be killed from the start, and by whom, and then it just abandons that plot thread.

If it really doesn't matter, why bring it up at all? Why throw out all that YoRHa backstory if it isn't going to go anywhere? I guess you can argue that it feeds into the meta theme of "bad stuff can happen and you'll never know why, never-ending cycle, etc", but I feel like that's a pretty generous reading. A nice little 'get out of jail free' card; it's not a flaw, it's a feature. To me it just feels like an unfinished plot thread that adds nothing to the game but disappointment when it isn't followed up.
but...those questions are answered
 
Alright, I know it's about how the characters reacted to the situation they were in and not necessarily how that situation came about, but I think throwing "It doesn't matter" around excuses a lot of uneven storytelling. It shouldn't have to be one or the other. You can make the story about the characters and still have a fictional world that adheres to some internal logic. If the game had just been an unexplained series of tragic events that put its characters through the wringer, that'd be one thing, but it's a half-explained series of tragic events. It throws those archives at you, raising the very specific questions of why the YoRHas would be designed to be killed from the start, and by whom, and then it just abandons that plot thread.

If it really doesn't matter, why bring it up at all? Why throw out all that YoRHa backstory if it isn't going to go anywhere? I guess you can argue that it feeds into the meta theme of "bad stuff can happen and you'll never know why, never-ending cycle, etc", but I feel like that's a pretty generous reading. To me it just feels like an unfinished plot thread that adds nothing to the game but disappointment when it isn't followed up.

Because it's not unfinished?

Someone built up YorHa for a purpose, that purpose is fulfilled.

Like the purpose of YorHa is made very clear in the game. You already know the council of humanity is fake in the game. The only thing we've been speculating really is who's behind it all, but even without that people were able to connect and understand that part of the story.
 
It mattered to me because the game throughout created this dichotomy between yorha and the machines but in the end they're all the fucking same. Like even for standard androids that don't have the black boxes, the behaviour of YorHa androids is indistinguishable to the regular androids Like why do we put so much stock into appearances to think of something as The Other? Why have they inherited that from us?
The game makes it pretty clear within like the first couple hours that there is no meaningful difference between the machines and the androids. The black box reveal doesn't say anything about that the entire rest of the game hasn't said a hundred times already. You could completely remove that twist from the game, and your questions would still arise.

Again, it needed to happen to remove any layer of reasonabl doubt between 9S and the truth, but as the player, it was redundant.
 
Alright, I know it's about how the characters reacted to the situation they were in and not necessarily how that situation came about, but I think throwing "It doesn't matter" around excuses a lot of uneven storytelling. It shouldn't have to be one or the other. You can make the story about the characters and still have a fictional world that adheres to some internal logic. If the game had just been an unexplained series of tragic events that put its characters through the wringer, that'd be one thing, but it's a half-explained series of tragic events. It throws those archives at you, raising the very specific questions of why the YoRHas would be designed to be killed from the start, and by whom, and then it just abandons that plot thread.

You get the why though. The whom is the part that doesn't matter.

What possibly could naming a character add to the story? It is just an additional detail and as soon as a character was named, would require the game to service motivations and backstory which wasn't at all relevant to the themes of the game. People need to start to understand what good scoping in stories is. It is about adding details where it matters and leaving noise out of the picture. The game was never about dumping story lore on you.
 
The game makes it pretty clear within like the first couple hours that there is no meaningful difference between the machines and the androids. The black box reveal doesn't say anything about that the entire rest of the game hasn't said a hundred times already. You could completely remove that twist from the game, and your questions would still arise.

Again, it needed to happen to remove any layer of reasonabl doubt between 9S and the truth, but as the player, it was redundant.

Eh, true enough. I just like it as the coda of the entire charade. People ask for emotional catharsis from the characters and that's one of them. What good is it for me to know if I can't see it reflected onto the character? It mattered because I think 9S's realisation mattered.

edit: I guess what you meant is that it's not a true twist for people who already considered them no different as presented by the story, but I dunno, I like the final confirmation. :P
 
You get the why though. The whom is the part that doesn't matter.

What possibly could naming a character add to the story? It is just an additional detail and as soon as a character was named, would require the game to service motivations and backstory which wasn't at all relevant to the themes of the game. People need to start to understand what good scoping in stories is. It is about adding details where it matters and leaving noise out of the picture. The game was never about dumping story lore on you.

So why did it dump that story lore on me? Why not just not raise the question. Just leave it out if it's not relevant. There's no way you can tell me about a mysterious faction pulling strings in the background and not have me wonder who it is. Reading through this thread I'm seeing plenty of people who wondered the same thing, and of course they're pointed to that same fan-translated supplemental information I mentioned because the answers aren't in the game.
 
Alright, I know it's about how the characters reacted to the situation they were in and not necessarily how that situation came about, but I think throwing "It doesn't matter" around excuses a lot of uneven storytelling. It shouldn't have to be one or the other. You can make the story about the characters and still have a fictional world that adheres to some internal logic. If the game had just been an unexplained series of tragic events that put its characters through the wringer, that'd be one thing, but it's a half-explained series of tragic events. It throws those archives at you, raising the very specific questions of why the YoRHas would be designed to be killed from the start, and by whom, and then it just abandons that plot thread.

If it really doesn't matter, why bring it up at all? Why throw out all that YoRHa backstory if it isn't going to go anywhere? I guess you can argue that it feeds into the meta theme of "bad stuff can happen and you'll never know why, never-ending cycle, etc", but I feel like that's a pretty generous reading. A nice little 'get out of jail free' card; it's not a flaw, it's a feature. To me it just feels like an unfinished plot thread that adds nothing to the game but disappointment when it isn't followed up.

It simply a thing that doesn't need an explanation at all. You get to know why Project Yorha was created and that's enough. There's no point to knowing when and where and by whom it was made.

Just like you don't need to know why Nier and his wife banged and made Yonah come into existence. It's unnessecary context that serves no purpose, it only matters that they did.

What would the game gain if it were to explain to you that it was him, Dio, who was one day very sad and decided to lift the morale and invented that plan?

So why did it dump that story lore on me? Why not just not raise the question. Just leave it out if it's not relevant. There's no way you can tell me about a mysterious faction pulling strings in the background and not have me wonder who it is. Reading through this thread I'm seeing plenty of people who wondered the same thing, and of course they're pointed to that same fan-translated supplemental information I mentioned because the answers aren't in the game.

There is no mysterious faction in the background

There was just a bunch of people that devised a plan (Project Yorha) to fool fellow androids into a hopeful massage because everybody was down due to humanities exctinction
 
It simply a thing that doesn't need an explanation at all. You get to know why Project Yorha was created and that's enough. There's no point to knowing when and where and by whom it was made.
Before the recent concert 'lore' I just assumed that either there was a set of androids or an AI program that set up YoRHa or that the androids on the orbital bases were all just on the same wavelength. No need for a hierarchy if everyone is programmed to the same goal.

Just like you don't need to know why Nier and his wife banged and made Yonah come into existence. It's unnessecary context that serves no purpose, it only matters that they did.
It's my understanding that in Nier the replicants aren't really cognizant of how reproduction works or their role in it. Your family just exist, or the twins bring people together when a new body is released and that's that. I could be wrong but that's what I recall.

There is no mysterious faction in the background.

There was just a bunch of people that devised a plan (Project Yorha) to fool fellow androids into a hopeful massage because everybody was down due to humanities exctinction
"They" weren't present in the game but recent info does give additional background on both a new and existing character involved with the creation of YoRHa. With just the info the game gives you I can see both sides, one being confused about it.
For me, I didn't see the lack of info as a hole and filled it in myself.
However the new news does have some fairly big implications for 9S and this question.

It's both neat and kind of frustrating how Taro's stories continue on like this. Like how the Q&A references other materials you may not have access to (well except for the whole "internet" thing). But at the same time the events in the game itself tell a complete story so if that's all I ever knew I would still be satisfied.

I fully expect the upcoming mobile game Sin o Alice to have lore implications for all the Taro-verse games.
 
It's my understanding that in Nier the replicants aren't really cognizant of how reproduction works or their role in it. Your family just exist, or the twins bring people together when a new body is released and that's that. I could be wrong but that's what I recall.

I was talking about the Original human - later to be a gestalt - Nier for that matter.

"They" weren't present in the game but recent info does give additional background on both a new and existing character involved with the creation of YoRHa. With just the info the game gives you I can see both sides, one being confused about it.
For me, I didn't see the lack of info as a hole and filled it in myself.
However the new news does have some fairly big implications for 9S and this question.

I must have missed a part of that then, since i don't really know what you are talking about. I'll be looking that up.

It's both neat and kind of frustrating how Taro's stories continue on like this. Like how the Q&A references other materials you may not have access to (well except for the whole "internet" thing). But at the same time the events in the game itself tell a complete story so if that's all I ever knew I would still be satisfied.

Exactly, they tell a complete story that just happens to take place in a larger universe, which is why i have to disagree about elements such as the question that started this argument to be of any actual importance to the plot.

I fully expect the upcoming mobile game Sin o Alice to have lore implications for all the Taro-verse games.

That's more or less a fact basically, as it features angelic language and is based on Nier's original script.
 
Got the rest of the endings last night except Y. only lvl 84 so i'd like to be at lvl 90 before obtaining the final weapon and then upgrading it to get to the last ending. Going through the game I only got ending K on my own, i knew about T. very surprised about how a lot of them are triggered, never even occurred to me.
 
There is no mysterious faction in the background

I mean, there literally is one according to the creator of the game himself:

The one who came up with project YoRHa is an individual android, but we have not revealed the details yet.

The story of YoRHa is that they were designed to make it seem like a new initiative from humanity to trick the androids into thinking they were still around, and then once they'd flown a few sorties here and there they'd be destroyed, right? Except then the game layers in all this extra stuff about how their black boxes were machine cores, and they'd be destroyed by having the Bunker deliberately attacked by machines, which all suggests some kind of alliance between machines and androids to me. That's basically why I assumed the Red Girls had created YoRHa in the first place, like they'd been posing as Android Command or something. Except, again, word directly from Yoko himself says:

This has been shown in the stage play YoRHa, but the machine lifeforms have always been coming through the backdoor. However, the androids and machine lifeforms are not in cahoots with each other. There were mainly two reasons the virus spread through the bunker so quickly. One, since YoRHa launched an all out attack on the machines lifeforms, they were deemed a threat, and two, the red girls just felt like it.

So, once more, referencing some obscure Japan-only expanded universe thing I'll never see, and then basically saying "No it was just a coincidence lol".

Look, I'm not saying I needed to see a moustache-twirling villain tell me he was the architect of my misfortune, I'm saying that these were the questions I was asking as I played through the game, and I was summarily disappointed to find out that those plot threads fell under "Nope, doesn't matter" come the end. If the game had never given me a hint at anything like that, I never would have thought about it twice; I would have taken it for granted that the Red Girls just broke through whatever encryption the Bunker had at that moment and bing bang boom everything went to shit. But telling me it was part of a larger plan, and conspicuously hinting at the planner before unceremoniously dumping the subject and never following up, that just leaves me unsatisfied.

Anyway, I won't push it any further. If you guys read those same archive reports I did and genuinely never wondered the same things I did, then... well, what can I say? I still did like the game overall, it's just, like I said, not a huge fan of certain story beats or the storytelling in general. To be fair, when I hit Ending E, this question of "who?" had been superseded by a couple of other things I was wrinkling my nose at; it was only a day or so later that my brain came back around to it.
 
The stage play is totally in game though.

Maybe it's just me, but I like having some questions after the game and coming with other people to talk about it. And they're not plot holes that break the main story, just supplementary materials that help to flesh out the world. You can just enjoy the in game story as it is without needing all the extra information.
 
Yeah she tells you about the terminals containing the story when you first meet her as A2.

TBF they should probably have made it a more integral "you really need to see this" part of the story and maybe gave it a higher bit of production?
 
The stage play is totally in game though.

Maybe it's just me, but I like having some questions after the game and coming with other people to talk about it. And they're not plot holes that break the main story, just supplementary materials that help to flesh out the world. You can just enjoy the in game story as it is without needing all the extra information.
Agreed. It's one of the things I like about Taro's games. It's part of the overall experience.
 
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