Nier: Automata

[Roxy Robinson]

Still on B. Going to finish the Shooting Star quest if it fucking kills me (just found out that you can use the wire pod move at full (3 pods) level to pull yourself to the goal robot, want to give that a try - but probably going to just have to use the slow time cheat and get good at running up tree roots.

Absolutely don't read the spoiler above (prev page), just wanted to stress this.

[Roxy Robinson]

C and D done and just finished E, incredible game and one I'll remember for a long time, although...

Couldn't agree more, incredible moment.

[Mister Six]

Absolutely don't read the spoiler above (prev page), just wanted to stress this.

Cheers, have avoided and will continue to avoid!

[Mister Six]

Completed route B and was running around the bunker in the credits. Wondered what would happen if I self-destructed next to the commander. Turns out the entire base gets blown up. Got ending U (I think), then had to replay the climax of Route B all over again (so effectively for the third time!).

I've also got false endings a couple of times as 9S by straying too far from the mission area. I kind of like them, though - there's a sarcasm to the death messages that's genuinely amusing. It's like Space Quest, if the deaths were due to me genuinely fucking up and not clicking on a seemingly innocent pixel, or failing to pick up a hidden object two hours ago.

Anyway, on Route C now.

Spoiler alert

Playing as 9S first, and saving the A2 experience as a little reward. Speaking of which, this game really rewards backtracking, doesn't it? Went back into the factory on a whim and ended up finding a new spear that was being worshipped by the kooky religious machines, as well as a bunch of other goodies from newly appeared/refilled hackable chests.

It's a bit funny that they make a big deal about not being downloaded into a new body when you die when you can't connect to the bunker, when in practice it's exactly the same as dying normally except that you don't have to piss about finding your body to get all your chips back.

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Now, where do I find a pile of Machine Arms and Natural Rubber?

[Mister Six]

What the fuck happened to

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my boy Pascal and his buddies?

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I'm going to kill whoever did this. Especially if it was me.

[Mister Six]

Just went to the amusement park.

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:(

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[C_Larence]

You're making me want to replay it for the 3rd time! I just got Zelda this is untenable!

[Mister Six]

Went back to the amusement park and killed the

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rabbit statue

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so I could upgrade my laser pod to max level. This thing is insane now. Looks like it'll be a ballache to get the second L pod upgrade, but I still haven't upgraded the gatling to M yet so I suppose there's no rush. I haven't even got the third S upgrade for the missile pod because I didn't realise I had to kill those gold robots as 2B in Route A. :(

Quite pleased that I found

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Emil's home

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by myself though.

[Timothy]

Finished this three months ago and its a joy to read your posts Mister Six. Makes me want to play it again. Might be the best game I ever played.

[Mister Six]

Hooray! Thanks. :)

I'm grinding for materials like a total fuckwit, so probably won't be many good updates for a bit.

I spent Routes A and B trying to avoid fighting machines where I could, but my completionist streak has made a rare emergence and now I'm being a bit more brutal. Only a bit though...

[Mister Six]

I CAN RIDE THE ANIMALS?!

[Mister Six]

_{oops rode a moose off a cliff}

[Mister Six]

Fuckinell, this is dark, innit?

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Poor Pascal. :(

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On a lighter note, I repeatedly stole shit from Emil's home and he absolutely bodied me. Fair enough, TBH.

[Mister Six]

Fuckinell this is dark, isn't it?

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9S is going mental, Pascal's been mindwiped, 2A just slaughtered a bunch of lads with buckets on their heads pleading for mercy for their "big brother"... and I'm not going anywhere near that Resistance Coliseum again.

And then you bump into Pascal again, and see what he's selling...

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On the plus side,

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I killed the rabbit a few more time and now I have more Pod Power Up L's than I can use, so I guess I don't have to kill Emil. Yay!

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[Mister Six]

Sooo, I finished endings C, D and E, completing most of the game except Shooting Star (because I couldn't be arsed) and Emil's Determination (because he's a nice guy and I don't want to make him angry or disappointed by stealing all his shit).

I loved

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all the gimmicky stuff at the end of E - a series of very lovely surprises that had me chuckling with delight all the way along. And yes, I erased my data, although I reckon that must be a ruse (because I used up at least six or seven helper ships in that bullet hell finale, and I can't believe there are more people out there capable of completing it solo than there are people fucking up and killing them, so it would surely be fully depleted by now). My closing message was "Your shoulders are tense. Relaaaax. Then go crazy like 2B!" or something.

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The story, though, I have mixed feelings about.

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I loved the air of melancholy that gradually took over as it went along, and thought the commitment to absolutely fucking up all its characters was very impressive (and the little mini-story that you get once you complete the coliseum battles was especially heartbreaking). But it also felt a bit sketched out and thin in a lot of ways. When I finished Route A I was disappointed by how thinly written Adam and Eve were, but then I figured I'd learn more about them on Route B, which I did - a tiny little bit. Then when Route C continued the story, I thought maybe they'd come back with a meatier role, but they were just replaced by the Spooky Twins, who appear out of nowhere at the end as a supreme villain we've not even met before.

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Also, there were loads of bits I didn't quite understand - although whether that's because I never played Nier: Replicant, or because I didn't pick up the right bits of lore lying about, or because it's a Japanese game and allusive/elusive storytelling is just something they really like, I don't know.

So... here's what I gathered happened according to the story, with questions...

Spoiler alert

Centuries (or millennia) ago, aliens decided to invade Earth and kill all the humans (why?), which they did by creating cute murder-machines. There was also some kind of deadly disease knocking about that may or may not have been linked to the aliens.

Luckily, humans had managed to find a particle that could separate the soul from the body and store it. They planned to store the souls of the surviving humans, then create replicant bodies to download them into, but then Popola and Devola somehow fucked up and killed all the stored souls (also there were problems with the replicants). As punishment (by whom?), Popola and Devola were mindwiped and made to think that they were innocent of the mistake, but they were still shunned by everyone.

The aliens also died somehow, and so all that was left was the machine intelligence, aka The Spooky Twins, that was creating the machine warriors (and which still thought the humans were alive on the moon) and whatever it is that controls the androids. Let's call it The Council.

The Council decided it was going to keep up with the war (why?) and so continued to produce androids to fight the machines. It also created the Yorha project. But it knew that they would eventually find out the humans were dead, so it built in a backdoor virus that would wipe them out - although a bunch of Yorha knew this anyway, apparently (why?).

Yorha sends 9S down to do recon and data collection, but it knows he'll end up discovering the truth (how? And why send him down or make him in the first place?) so it also sends 2B, who is an assassin droid, to follow him around until it's necessary to kill him (does 2B know the truth? Why don't they want her killed?). It apparently does this over and over again, with his consciousness being uploaded each time minus the information about the humans (or was the reference to her repeatedly killing him just about the black box explosion and that one time she strangled him?).

Separately, the machines have split broadly into networked machines (the ones just tottering around the city and the desert) and non-networked machines (the ones in the Forest Kingdom, Pascal's Village and the Amusement Park).

The networked machines in the desert create Adam and Eve (how and why? I assumed it was because they wanted to create an android to talk to 2B and 9S and end the war, and the game just forces you to attack them, making Adam and Eve violent in return?), who then decide they're going to kill the humans on the moon, but obviously 2B and 9S do them in.

There's a zombie virus that affects the Amusement Park and then Pascal's Village even though none of them are on the network (how, why and were did it come from? Is it the Spooky Twins' doing? If so, why? And why did they send in all those tanks to attack the kids in the Factory?).

Meanwhile, the Spooky Twins have created the Tower as a big cannon to shoot the humans on the moon. They invite 9S to enter it (why?). They've also taken control of the Yorha units with a virus (how? Was it the Spooky Twins using the backdoor to attack Yorha, not the Council?). A2, who has some (or all?) of 2B's memories manages to stall them enough to start fighting amongst themselves.

As a result of that, the Spooky Twins develop enough to realise that they're above this. They've made copies of the machines (and androids? Only those on the network?) and are going to put them in a rocket and blast them into space to start life anew on some distant planet. In Ending D, this is what happens. Poor Pascal is left behind. :(

In Ending C and E, however, A2 - not knowing of their plan - cunts them in the bastard (how?), causing the Tower to collapse before it can fire. The various Pods, which have copies of 2B and 9S's data, gather up bits of dead Yorha units with the intention of reviving them. A2 has survived the Tower collapse and is chilling with a pigeon. Then I choose to believe they go live in the android village with Pascal and the kids come back to life and the clowns are cured and everything is OK. :(

Not clear on whether the Council is dead or not, or what's supposed to be happening to Yorha now the Bunker is gone. Any ideas? The Yorha project is dead but something might replace it? The surviving machines are out there, but there won't be any more because the Spooky Twins have been foiled?

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I suppose the ending is deliberately ambiguous, but is the other stuff just because I'm thick?

[Mister Six]

Anyone play the Replicant remake form 2021? How does it compare to this?

[Roxy Robinson]

@Mister Six I would spoiler that stuff about

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Ending E

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.

Will read your extended thoughts later on. Glad you overall enjoyed a lot about it.

[Mister Six]

Cheers, I've spoiler-tagged that bit now @Roxy Robinson.

I did love playing the game (I put about 80 hours into it at least, easy) and I think it's a brilliant achievement - the sort of thing you can point to when people ask what this medium can do that others can't. But I did feel a little let down by the sketchiness and opaqueness of the story, which might be more an issue of my perception/expectations than a genuine problem with the game.

[C_Larence]

Yes I think asking "why" anything happens is a fool's errand, the answer is probably because Yoko taro thought it was cool.

As for the replicant remake, I don't love it as much as Automata but it's still very charming, though a little more rough around the edges. There's a few throughlines between the games but nothing major. I wouldn't recommend playing immediately after you've just finished this as it's quite a step down gameplay wise.