Fantastic Eco quote, thanks for that.
And yeah, trying to analyse Nier is like trying to untie the Gordion knot... its just impossible to pin down because the fiction is working on so many layers simultaneously.
Yoko Taro is so self-effacing in interviews that its hard to believe that his intent was to create an "intellectual" or "arty" game, yet, Nier is incredibly calculated and manipulative.
I mean, as an emotional journey told in video-game form for me it was vastly more impactful than say, Heavy Rain. I dig what David Cage was going for, and I liked the game, but nothing has ever played with my feelings as effortlessly as Nier did. And most importantly it also posed major moral and philosophical questions to me while doing so.
That really isn't something that occurs by happy accident! I mean yes, there is that soundtrack, and I think the shift from brother to father Nier combined with the sympathetic work on the translation by 8-4, actually improves on the original*... but...
As an overall package I can definitely see the flaws, but the quality of the ideas is inarguable in my opinion.
Nier is a very clever piece of work, and fantastic entertainment if you can get past the overall jankiness of the production. But hey, production values aren't everything.
* Just to elaborate on this. I don't have an issue generally with Brother Nier's appearance, and thematically and narratively it is actually a better fit with the overall story. For example the whole pre/post timeskip split midgame makes so much better sense particularly regarding Nier's personal trajectory and story arc.
However, Father Nier's inheritance of (young) Brother Nier's naivete, typically disguised as world weariness and self-deprecation- "I'm just a big guy who kills things"- makes him very relatable, far more so than your regular videogame hero. And as he's the character we embody on the journey, it works amazingly well as an entry point into this bizarre world.
