It’s not uncommon for people to question their place in the world and to wonder if anything they do has some kind of meaning. You live, you die and then you are probably forgotten. The universe is so large and vast that nothing you do here on one planet out of probably trillions even matters. Do you have free will or are all your actions predetermined? What does it truly mean to be a human being? To be or not to be, that is the question. Welcome to the latest installment of the Drakengard/NieR series and sequel to cult classic NieR Gestalt/Replicant: NieR Automata. Square Enix, Platinum Games, Kamiya Hideki and Yoko Taro have truly created something special here that people need to experience.
A little bit of history on the overall series before deconstructing and analyzing the crap out of NieR: Automata. Yoko Taro has worked on Drakengard 1, 3 (not 2) and the first NieR and while they have a dedicated fanbase because of his characters and themes, they did not sell well. And to be completely honest, they aren’t good video games. Yoko Taro is a strange man with one of the most intriguing minds on Earth. His games are generally viewed as dark and twisted but they usually always have a point or meaning if you take a second to dive deeper than the surface. I mean the first Drakengard had some stuff in it that made a lot of people wonder if that man was okay but enough of all that. NieR: Automata is probably his most tame game in terms shock value, but the only one where the gameplay is as phenomenal as the characters and plot.
Starting off with the gameplay, NieR: Automata delivers which isn’t surprising since it’s a Platinum game and Hideki Kamiya was working on the game too. If you’ve played any Platinum anything Hideki has worked on, you’d know how fun his games are to play. I’m talking Viewtiful Joe, Wonderful 101, Devil May Cry and of course Bayonetta. When this game first came out and people were wondering if it was worth buying, someone on Twitter had said this: “do you like Bayonetta and being really sad? If so, buy NieR: Automata”. It’s actually funny because that tweet wasn’t too far off. The combat is deep; you can combine different weapons and time your combos to do big damage. The playable characters also have a perfect dodge that works similarly to Bayo’s Witchtime and the dodge roll is smooth, perfectly controllable. 9S has a hacking ability that works as bullet hell style Galaga shooter.
A little bit of history on the overall series before deconstructing and analyzing the crap out of NieR: Automata. Yoko Taro has worked on Drakengard 1, 3 (not 2) and the first NieR and while they have a dedicated fanbase because of his characters and themes, they did not sell well. And to be completely honest, they aren’t good video games. Yoko Taro is a strange man with one of the most intriguing minds on Earth. His games are generally viewed as dark and twisted but they usually always have a point or meaning if you take a second to dive deeper than the surface. I mean the first Drakengard had some stuff in it that made a lot of people wonder if that man was okay but enough of all that. NieR: Automata is probably his most tame game in terms shock value, but the only one where the gameplay is as phenomenal as the characters and plot.
Starting off with the gameplay, NieR: Automata delivers which isn’t surprising since it’s a Platinum game and Hideki Kamiya was working on the game too. If you’ve played any Platinum anything Hideki has worked on, you’d know how fun his games are to play. I’m talking Viewtiful Joe, Wonderful 101, Devil May Cry and of course Bayonetta. When this game first came out and people were wondering if it was worth buying, someone on Twitter had said this: “do you like Bayonetta and being really sad? If so, buy NieR: Automata”. It’s actually funny because that tweet wasn’t too far off. The combat is deep; you can combine different weapons and time your combos to do big damage. The playable characters also have a perfect dodge that works similarly to Bayo’s Witchtime and the dodge roll is smooth, perfectly controllable. 9S has a hacking ability that works as bullet hell style Galaga shooter.
The Pod programs that accompany you are capable of firing long ranged projectiles such as bullets, missiles and lasers. It’s almost like two of the game developers couldn’t decide whether or not to make a hack n’ slash or bullet hell game so they compromised and combined them (the first NieR had enemies that fire shit too). But now you can fire back, so while you are slashing machines you are also shooting them, not to mention the Pods have skills like a barrier that negates physical damage. The equipping and skill managing portion of this game are absolutely fantastic because it ties in with the actual narrative. Because the characters are androids with systems and data storage. That being said your normal HUD displays like the map, health and EXP bar are actually chips you install in the limited data space. You can also equip chips that auto-heal, increase attack, increase ranged defense and more. But it all works like a computer, like you’re upgrading, removing and remodeling your android self to suit the situation.
When you die, your characters' data is uploaded to the bunker, installed into a new body and you can go back to where you passed away to find your old android body. From there you can retrieve your chips and weaponry. Even the “fast travel” called transport puts you character in a device then it uploads all the characters data into another body in the same device at the desired location. The game has no auto-save; you have to save your data manually to the bunker and that also ties in with the games narrative because it’s basically your memories and experiences being backed up. If you die, the most recent version of your save data is what’s uploaded to your new body. The reason I’m going into great detail to explain this is because I don’t think NieR :Automata works as any other medium. They’ve done a great job in making the minor gameplay things in any game such as menu interface make actual in-universe sense.
There’s a lot going on in the overall narrative of Automata because it loosely ties into the first Drakengard and it’s a sequel to NieR. But simply put, aliens attacked humanity with machine lifeforms and humanity fought back by making androids that are fighting the machines. The humans are currently on the moon waiting for YoRHa (the androids) to reclaim the Earth. As you play the game you see machines exhibit human behavior and even find some that assign themselves genders and family roles (some are even in love). So there are non-hostile machines and some who are hostile. There are so many layers to the story and diving into the nitty gritty would take too long because you need a lot of knowledge of the overall lore to get it. But for this article, I want to just focus on Automata.
When you die, your characters' data is uploaded to the bunker, installed into a new body and you can go back to where you passed away to find your old android body. From there you can retrieve your chips and weaponry. Even the “fast travel” called transport puts you character in a device then it uploads all the characters data into another body in the same device at the desired location. The game has no auto-save; you have to save your data manually to the bunker and that also ties in with the games narrative because it’s basically your memories and experiences being backed up. If you die, the most recent version of your save data is what’s uploaded to your new body. The reason I’m going into great detail to explain this is because I don’t think NieR :Automata works as any other medium. They’ve done a great job in making the minor gameplay things in any game such as menu interface make actual in-universe sense.
There’s a lot going on in the overall narrative of Automata because it loosely ties into the first Drakengard and it’s a sequel to NieR. But simply put, aliens attacked humanity with machine lifeforms and humanity fought back by making androids that are fighting the machines. The humans are currently on the moon waiting for YoRHa (the androids) to reclaim the Earth. As you play the game you see machines exhibit human behavior and even find some that assign themselves genders and family roles (some are even in love). So there are non-hostile machines and some who are hostile. There are so many layers to the story and diving into the nitty gritty would take too long because you need a lot of knowledge of the overall lore to get it. But for this article, I want to just focus on Automata.
Contextually, the game asks a couple of questions surrounding existentialism, what it means to be human and the futility of fighting for no cause whatsoever. No one in this game is human yet they all seem exhibit human behavior. The androids have emotions, resemble humans and do a lot of the things we do. This is off putting to the player because of them being essentially robots; we’d expect more cold hearted calculations like a machine. This is made even stranger when the alien created machines start doing the same. Except, they look nothing like a human being, they don’t even have genders; they weren’t even made on Earth. This starts making the player question a few things. For one, are the machines so bad? If androids can feel human why can’t the machines? After mercilessly slaughtering bots for hours you start to think about sparring or leaving the non-hostile ones alone.
All of this is interesting because the player will begin to wonder what it means to be human. Do you have to have been born by conventional means? Do you need flesh, bones and a beating heart? Even someone with a relatively shallow understanding of the brains knows it actually operates pretty similarly to a computer and data. Sure we can’t just upload and remove certain things like it’s literally data but to a certain degree you can. You lose data; it’s gone and in the context of this game it’s like forgetting and people can forget. We love; hate, think, fight and so do the androids and machines. The game raises these questions and doesn’t really answer them but is there even a right answer? It makes sense to leave this ambiguous and up to the player to decide. Machines and androids are the new main lifeform on the planet called Earth, acting like humans. Crazy.
Moving forward we find out pretty early on that the aliens that created the machines to purge humanity are dead. 9S finds out that humanity has actually been completely extinct for years and thus wonders what the point of them even existing is. They were made to fight for humanity but since they’re all dead, what now? The crazy thing about it is that YoRHa expects every version of 9S to come to the truth and then sends 2B to kill him, rinse and repeat. But this time the cycle was broken so 9S is burdened with this knowledge and begins to spiral into madness. He feels rage towards the machines but knows there is no point in fighting them. He’s mad at A2 for killing 2B either because he loves 2B or hates 2B because her role is to kill him over and over. Maybe even both are plausible. This reminds me of Rick Sanchez from Rick & Morty, a scientist so smart he can travel throughout the cosmos and multiverse. He’s seen and knows so much that at some point he understood how meaningless everything was and how being smart is a burden. 9S deals with a similar dilemma.
All of this is interesting because the player will begin to wonder what it means to be human. Do you have to have been born by conventional means? Do you need flesh, bones and a beating heart? Even someone with a relatively shallow understanding of the brains knows it actually operates pretty similarly to a computer and data. Sure we can’t just upload and remove certain things like it’s literally data but to a certain degree you can. You lose data; it’s gone and in the context of this game it’s like forgetting and people can forget. We love; hate, think, fight and so do the androids and machines. The game raises these questions and doesn’t really answer them but is there even a right answer? It makes sense to leave this ambiguous and up to the player to decide. Machines and androids are the new main lifeform on the planet called Earth, acting like humans. Crazy.
Moving forward we find out pretty early on that the aliens that created the machines to purge humanity are dead. 9S finds out that humanity has actually been completely extinct for years and thus wonders what the point of them even existing is. They were made to fight for humanity but since they’re all dead, what now? The crazy thing about it is that YoRHa expects every version of 9S to come to the truth and then sends 2B to kill him, rinse and repeat. But this time the cycle was broken so 9S is burdened with this knowledge and begins to spiral into madness. He feels rage towards the machines but knows there is no point in fighting them. He’s mad at A2 for killing 2B either because he loves 2B or hates 2B because her role is to kill him over and over. Maybe even both are plausible. This reminds me of Rick Sanchez from Rick & Morty, a scientist so smart he can travel throughout the cosmos and multiverse. He’s seen and knows so much that at some point he understood how meaningless everything was and how being smart is a burden. 9S deals with a similar dilemma.
9S has the most tedious portion of the game during Route B which is Route A just not from 2B’s perspective and while I personally don’t like him, he’s arguably the most important character in the game. 2B actually seems to be the least important in this game out of the 3 playable characters and the one I personally spent the least about of time playing as. And I wanted to look at that sweet robo butt, yet most of my time was spent with 9S, who I can’t fucking stand. But still, thematically his role and descent into nihilistic madness makes tons of sense, was appropriately paced and the best character development the game has to offer. He was marketed as the side kick but the argument that he’s actually the main protagonist can be made because his actions are what set events in motion.
A2 (my personal favorite also best girl) is a bit of an enigma and the last playable character (Route C). We actually don’t learn too much about her in the game( I know Yoko Taro has other things that expand the games lore). Her gameplay was the most fun, her design is dope and her hardass personality resonates with me. She reminds me of Kaine from NieR and there’s actually a reason for that but that’s not in the game. 2B is actually a 2E model designed to destroy rogue YoRHa units and she kills 9S every time he learns the truth. Honestly she was easily the blandest character in the game. I have no idea what her motivations were but in a sense the fact that she obediently obeys command says a lot. Still, she doesn’t develop much and then she fucking dies. So honestly, I know a lot of Automata fans love 2B but, she if were being honest, she isn’t a very interesting as a character. That aside, looking at her bu- I mean, playing as 2B is fun.
I’ve beaten NieR: Automata three times from start to finish. It took me about 80 hours on my first playthrough. I’ve gotten every ending; I got the DLC, completed every side quest and fought all the bosses. The only thing I didn’t do is get all the trophies but that’s never been something I cared about. This game is something special. The content is plentiful: the side quests while some can be tedious; they all add something to the overall story or help develop a character. The soundtrack is marvelous, the characters are solid, the graphics are stunning, the gameplay is great and the game’s context is very impressive. Platinum Games, Square Enix, Yoko Taro,Hideki Kamiya, and all involved parties have very much created a modern classic with this video game and if you get a chance to try NieR: Automata, do not hesitate. “Glory to mankind.”
A2 (my personal favorite also best girl) is a bit of an enigma and the last playable character (Route C). We actually don’t learn too much about her in the game( I know Yoko Taro has other things that expand the games lore). Her gameplay was the most fun, her design is dope and her hardass personality resonates with me. She reminds me of Kaine from NieR and there’s actually a reason for that but that’s not in the game. 2B is actually a 2E model designed to destroy rogue YoRHa units and she kills 9S every time he learns the truth. Honestly she was easily the blandest character in the game. I have no idea what her motivations were but in a sense the fact that she obediently obeys command says a lot. Still, she doesn’t develop much and then she fucking dies. So honestly, I know a lot of Automata fans love 2B but, she if were being honest, she isn’t a very interesting as a character. That aside, looking at her bu- I mean, playing as 2B is fun.
I’ve beaten NieR: Automata three times from start to finish. It took me about 80 hours on my first playthrough. I’ve gotten every ending; I got the DLC, completed every side quest and fought all the bosses. The only thing I didn’t do is get all the trophies but that’s never been something I cared about. This game is something special. The content is plentiful: the side quests while some can be tedious; they all add something to the overall story or help develop a character. The soundtrack is marvelous, the characters are solid, the graphics are stunning, the gameplay is great and the game’s context is very impressive. Platinum Games, Square Enix, Yoko Taro,Hideki Kamiya, and all involved parties have very much created a modern classic with this video game and if you get a chance to try NieR: Automata, do not hesitate. “Glory to mankind.”