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NieR: Automata Spoiler Thread

The way i see it, all pods were in on it at the end because their own masters all died, leaving only 2B and 9S as their next logical commander, and thereby in extension their own specialised pods i.e. the two talking ones

That's my interpretation at least

That makes sense. Thanks.
 

LProtag

Member
Reading all of this... I need to replay this.

I still think that there's a cycle where all of Project YoRHa is rebuilt again and again. I feel like the Machine Hivemind even lets this happen again and again, as it discusses the fact that it needs strife in order to continue evolving. Likewise, the constant state of war keeps too many machines from straying from their path and attempting to become more human.
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
Reading all of this... I need to replay this.

I still think that there's a cycle where all of Project YoRHa is rebuilt again and again. I feel like the Machine Hivemind even lets this happen again and again, as it discusses the fact that it needs strife in order to continue evolving.

I feel like the watchers are part of the machine hivemind now and being blown back to the stone age in their legion still didn't stop them...Adam and Eve are the wrench in the gears
 
Reading all of this... I need to replay this.

I still think that there's a cycle where all of Project YoRHa is rebuilt again and again. I feel like the Machine Hivemind even lets this happen again and again, as it discusses the fact that it needs strife in order to continue evolving. Likewise, the constant state of war keeps too many machines from straying from their path and attempting to become more human.

I don't think Yorha literally repeats. The war does, and many machines/androids who have fought many times are rebuilt/repurposed, but I think this is the one and only war where Yorha was a factor.

There's only one generation of Yorha androids besides the prototype run that A2 is the last member of. If the Yorha cycle literally repeated, surely 1. the non-Yorha androids on Earth would instantly know what was up and 2. wouldn't Yorha spec androids be all over the place/not a "new" design? If Yorha and the machine network were the only characters in play, I think the literal repeating test/cycle would make more sense, but there's a whole world of androids out there who would surely notice that Yorha kept getting built up and torn down. The logic virus only targets Yorha if I remember correctly, so it's not like it's an android-wide apocalyptic event.

When the Pods refer to the possibility that "everything could happen the same way again," I think they're referring to the cycle of violence and war that has happened so many times previously, not a literal repeating of the same cycle. I could be wrong though, but right now I'm leaning more towards the cycle being figurative more than literal.

EDIT - I would submit that there is evidence for this interpretation in the fact that their recorded date continues to tick up from the original Nier's - time is still marching forward and everyone is aware of it.
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
Xanders explanation makes sense.

I mean they arent going to rebuild the bunker literally every time

Which makes the ending much happier in context. Even though the war continued, the androids from the 14th's machine war continued to survive and live in this world long after that instead of becoming just another casualty of the process, despite how they might feel about being able to change the cycle
 
Just now realizing that the library in the Tower is strikingly similar to the one in the original game:

dBJYlji.png
 

Slater

Banned
On an replay, the Amnesia side quest is amazing in its foreshadowing. It starts with 2B being cute and jealous of 9S being nice to the girl, then the ending drops the E bomb and its ominous as fuck
 
On an replay, the Amnesia side quest is amazing in its foreshadowing. It starts with 2B being cute and jealous of 9S being nice to the girl, then the ending drops the E bomb and its ominous as fuck

Yeah, and her rush to shut down the conversation at the end of the quest is really telling as well.

More than anything else, I'm so impressed with how brilliant a character 2B turned out to be. Even though she is only actually present for maybe half of the full game, she really is a powerful force for the storytelling throughout. You learn more and more about her in retrospect that makes revisiting her scenes really interesting. I know around the time the demo came out a lot of people (myself included!) were wondering what was going on with her "inconsistent" personality. Turns out it was entirely intentional and a key part of the story.

They literally had the office and trophy room in the Automata version. It's definitely the same place, though recreated.

Oh yeah, that's right! I haven't played Nier since 2011 or so, so it went over my head.
 

Slater

Banned
2B x 9S is one of the best written couples/relationships I've ever seen in a game, there's SO MUCH between them especially on a replay. Just listen to 2B's opening monologue and think about what she's talking about.

Look at this to http://i.imgur.com/K7wAkD3.png

THEN YOU FIND HER FINAL MESSAGE FOR HIM IN ROUTE C :(

Fuck, my heart
 
2B x 9S is one of the best written couples/relationships I've ever seen in a game, there's SO MUCH between them especially on a replay. Just listen to 2B's opening monologue and think about what she's talking about.

Look at this to http://i.imgur.com/K7wAkD3.png

THEN YOU FIND HER FINAL MESSAGE FOR HIM IN ROUTE C :(

Fuck, my heart

That image. My god.

2B's "Nine...zzz." line wasn't her awkwardly trying to use the nickname he keeps telling her to use. It was her accidentally letting it slip out and then trying to reel it back in, or her struggling to overcome the barriers that she's tried to put up between them.

I can't
 

Slater

Banned
I'm glad they can live together after the end

I want that as the DLC, 9S and 2B going on that shopping date with A2 and the pods spying/ being the unsubtle 3rd wheel.

Pod: "Suggestion: perhaps you should complement her well formed posterior"
9S: Uhhhh......."malfunctions"
 

LProtag

Member
I feel like if Yorha doesn't repeat, it doesn't make sense as to why the pods would be bringing them back and deciding to go against what they should be doing and letting them keep their memories.

Unless they just recycle androids over and over.
 
That image. My god.

2B's "Nine...zzz." line wasn't her awkwardly trying to use the nickname he keeps telling her to use. It was her accidentally letting it slip out and then trying to reel it back in, or her struggling to overcome the barriers that she's tried to put up between them.

I can't

ah fuck.

I feel like if Yorha doesn't repeat, it doesn't make sense as to why the pods would be bringing them back and deciding to go against what they should be doing and letting them keep their memories.

Unless they just recycle androids over and over.

I think that's quite literally what they do. Just like what the Resource Collection Units do with the machine parts.
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
well we know Yorha androids are made from a combination of machine and android parts....
 

ebil

Member
They literally had the office and trophy room in the Automata version. It's definitely the same place, though recreated.
You're even annoyingly forced into walking when you're in there, just like in Nier!

This game is incredible. So much attention to detail. I completed it ~12 hours ago and I just feel so empty, I can't think of anything else, lol.
 

LProtag

Member
I'm really going to have to play through this again sometime. I missed out on a lot, I feel like, and I want to see what other things I pick up about the story now that I know the full context.
 

Jiraiza

Member
I want that as the DLC, 9S and 2B going on that shopping date with A2 and the pods spying/ being the unsubtle 3rd wheel.

Pod: "Suggestion: perhaps you should complement her well formed posterior"
9S: Uhhhh......."malfunctions"

Where the game doesn't deliver, fan art shall.

4Bu9qdu.jpg
 
Do you think there's any greater significance to the similarity between "YoRHa" and "Yonah", or is it just that Yonah was a central figure of Project Gestalt and YoRHa is sort of the successor to Project Gestalt?
 

LProtag

Member
Do you think there's any greater significance to the similarities between "YoRHa" and "Yonah", or is it just that Yonah was a central figure of Project Gestalt and YoRHa is sort of the successor to Project Gestalt?

Maybe just a corruption of the name over the years, but something they knew was important to humanity?
 

ebil

Member
I was crushed by Devola and Popola's fate. They were ostracized and condemned to spend thousands of years with constant feelings of guilt because the D&P from the first game "screwed up". Except... They kind of didn't? Nier doomed mankind to extinction and they couldn't stop him, but since he had been erased from History following ending D, the blame had to fall onto the twins instead.

That's so cruel.
 

Slater

Banned
I was crushed by Devola and Popola's fate. They were ostracized and condemned to spend thousands of years with constant feelings of guilt because the D&P from the first game "screwed up". Except... They kind of didn't? Nier doomed mankind to extinction and they couldn't stop him, but since he had been erased from History following ending D, the blame had to fall onto the twins instead.

That's so cruel.

The blame is more about failing to stop Nier then the world forgetting about him.
 
Do you think there's any greater significance to the similarities between "YoRHa" and "Yonah", or is it just that Yonah was a central figure of Project Gestalt and YoRHa is sort of the successor to Project Gestalt?

I'm curious about that too. In an interview he said that the specific capitalization does mean something. I actually wondered if it was related to the angel "Yahoel"
 
Maybe just a corruption of the name over the years, but something they knew was important to humanity?

That works.

I was crushed by Devola and Popola's fate. They were ostracized and condemned to spend thousands of years with constant feelings of guilt because the D&P from the first game "screwed up". Except... They kind of didn't? Nier doomed mankind to extinction and they couldn't stop him, but since he had been erased from History following ending D, the blame had to fall onto the twins instead.

That's so cruel.

It's kind of hilarious, though.

Devola and Popola fuck everything up in Nier 1
They're reprogrammed to feel a constant crushing sense of guilt to both atone for what they did and to ensure that it never happens again
That sense of guilt is what drives them to fuck everything up again by helping 9S get into the tower

I'm curious about that too. In an interview he said that the specific capitalization does mean something. I actually wondered if it was related to the angel "Yahoel"

Neat. I really need to go back and read the interviews leading up to Automata now.
 

ebil

Member
The blame is more about failing to stop Nier then the world forgetting about him.
Well one does not exclude the other in this particular case, and this is what makes it interesting. Since nobody ever knew about Nier existing, they were the closest thing to put the blame on for everyone else.

It's kind of hilarious, though.

Devola and Popola fuck everything up in Nier 1
They're reprogrammed to feel a constant crushing sense of guilt to both atone for what they did and to ensure that it never happens again
That sense of guilt is what drives them to fuck everything up again by helping 9S get into the tower
Yeah, I thought it was brilliant.
 

Slater

Banned
I'm curious about that too. In an interview he said that the specific capitalization does mean something. I actually wondered if it was related to the angel "Yahoel"

The way Emil talks in his desert boss fight, it seems like Kaine, Yonah, and Reborn Nier died for good fighting the aliens.

Maybe Yonah did something during that war that made an impression on the androids and the name mutated over time
 
That works.



It's kind of hilarious, though.

Devola and Popola fuck everything up in Nier 1
They're reprogrammed to feel a constant crushing sense of guilt to both atone for what they did and to ensure that it never happens again
That sense of guilt is what drives them to fuck everything up again by helping 9S get into the tower



Neat. I really need to go back and read the interviews leading up to Automata now.

To be fair, endings C, D, and E (especially if we take E as the true end) have some net positives - especially E, which allows the people with comprehensive knowledge of how everything went wrong to survive, and hopefully work towards a better future.
 

Leaping

Neo Member
I was crushed by Devola and Popola's fate. They were ostracized and condemned to spend thousands of years with constant feelings of guilt because the D&P from the first game "screwed up". Except... They kind of didn't? Nier doomed mankind to extinction and they couldn't stop him, but since he had been erased from History following ending D, the blame had to fall onto the twins instead.

That's so cruel.

They did screw up. Their "sin" was compassion. When Nier returned to town at the start of the game with Grimoire Weiss, then realistically, according to their job, they should have confiscated Weiss, restored his memories and original programming, and then contacted the shadowlord to begin restoring humanity.

Instead, you have to remember that they liked Nier. And they pitied him because of Yonah. So they let him go on his adventure trying to save her and even helped him along.

And then, when he was going to do the unthinkable, they finally stepped in themselves. They tried to reason with him. They even told him all about the project, which they weren't supposed to. They tried to take away Weiss there. But it was too late. And now they weren't strong enough to stop Nier by force either.

So yeah. It really sucks for them, because a very human part of them played a significant role in the events leading to human extinction.
 

JayEH

Junior Member
I appreciate playing as 9S more. Before I thought it was lame to have to rely on hacking but he's ok with a sword and hacking does make boss fights go by faster. I also like that he reminds me of Kenshi from Mortal Kombat especially the way that he doesn't swing his sword physically.
 
So, huh, why 9S was created then. sound risky to create a hyper hacking unit then wipe him out because he found out vital information
 
So, huh, why 9S was created then. sound risky to create a hyper hacking unit then wipe him out because he found out vital information

I think ultimately they still needed a smart unit to serve that position, but they had to deal with the reality that a unit smart enough to fit their needs would always inevitably figure things out.

So their choices were to ax that element entirely and make things significantly harder for themselves, or to basically just babysit him with an executioner unit.

Risky, but I assume they had completely confidence in the E series' ability to get the job done.
 

pezzie

Member
I didn't get why the Commander, when realizing 9S was in their system, was just all "welp you got in, here's all our secret files" and not "Hey 2E? Time to do your job again!"

I mean, I know she was busy at the time, but there wasn't someone else who could do the job? Or maybe you know, not just hand over the files that you assigned him a personal assassin to prevent him from seeing?
 

jonjonaug

Member
I don't think Yorha literally repeats. The war does, and many machines/androids who have fought many times are rebuilt/repurposed, but I think this is the one and only war where Yorha was a factor.

There's only one generation of Yorha androids besides the prototype run that A2 is the last member of. If the Yorha cycle literally repeated, surely 1. the non-Yorha androids on Earth would instantly know what was up and 2. wouldn't Yorha spec androids be all over the place/not a "new" design? If Yorha and the machine network were the only characters in play, I think the literal repeating test/cycle would make more sense, but there's a whole world of androids out there who would surely notice that Yorha kept getting built up and torn down. The logic virus only targets Yorha if I remember correctly, so it's not like it's an android-wide apocalyptic event.

When the Pods refer to the possibility that "everything could happen the same way again," I think they're referring to the cycle of violence and war that has happened so many times previously, not a literal repeating of the same cycle. I could be wrong though, but right now I'm leaning more towards the cycle being figurative more than literal.

EDIT - I would submit that there is evidence for this interpretation in the fact that their recorded date continues to tick up from the original Nier's - time is still marching forward and everyone is aware of it.

The logic virus targets all androids, some of the Resistance characters get infected in the stage play that's a prequel to the game and it's also mentioned in the Pearl Harbor logs. Although the "backdoor" only applied to androids that synced with the Bunker.
 

pezzie

Member
So at the end, when the ark takes off, does that mean most of the machine's "minds" are going and leaving earth? I know that Emil's weapon story shows that they renetwork in a few hundred years, but are those red girls gone?
 
The logic virus targets all androids, some of the Resistance characters get infected in the stage play that's a prequel to the game and it's also mentioned in the Pearl Harbor logs. Although the "backdoor" only applied to androids that synced with the Bunker.

Oh yeah, good point. Still, the backdoor is only for YoRHa for the inevitable attack their creators predicted, so I think the rest of my post checks out.
 
I didn't get why the Commander, when realizing 9S was in their system, was just all "welp you got in, here's all our secret files" and not "Hey 2E? Time to do your job again!"

I mean, I know she was busy at the time, but there wasn't someone else who could do the job? Or maybe you know, not just hand over the files that you assigned him a personal assassin to prevent him from seeing?

I think it was because it was about time for everything to come tumbling down anyway.

So at the end, when the ark takes off, does that mean most of the machine's "minds" are going and leaving earth? I know that Emil's weapon story shows that they renetwork in a few hundred years, but are those red girls gone?

I think the Terminals are something that naturally but inevitably arise from the network's constant evolution. Eventually the network will become aware of itself.
 
I think it was because it was about time for everything to come tumbling down anyway.



I think the Terminals are something that naturally but inevitably arise from the network's constant evolution. Eventually the network will become aware of itself.

Would she have had the virus at that point?

There's also the fact that she simply might just have felt a similar guilt to 2B and the operators - she told him the truth and explained why things were the way they were and offered him the chance to accept it. If he didn't, 2B could always do her job anyway.
 

TissueBox

Member
Ok so I admit I held off from playing through ending E 'til now even though I got the others a while back. (Took out my whole save for the moment, just didn't have the heart to say no. xP)

But yeah, after beating it, that was the game's most rousing, heartwarming stretch of play. Even if it did take quiiite some time, from the first moment I died and on it just gradually became more and more absorbing, from seeing the taunting prompts on the screen to the steadily increasing number of messages floating in the background, and then dying again and again until, finally, you go FUSION mode and..that chorus. That music. That song!!

That alone could have just set this game's OST of the year status for me lol. Exemplifies how the dynamically cued music seamlessly transitions and keeps things fresh...while also leaving the player an emotional wreck. The way it shifted from English and Japanese was also brilliant. With the choral backing accompanying... just... what a powerful moment. A message of unity and anti-nihilism well sent.

The logic virus targets all androids, some of the Resistance characters get infected in the stage play that's a prequel to the game and it's also mentioned in the Pearl Harbor logs. Although the "backdoor" only applied to androids that synced with the Bunker.

Speaking of the logic virus it sure has parallels to Red Eye. Plus it's crazy how randomly strong Adam and Eve (the latter with dat Cult tattoo) are. Like, supernaturally so?! With the hints of Watcher involvement and etc. it definitely makes you wonder how they could have possibly meddled with this whole situation...but hey, Nier 3 will come in time.

I don't think Yorha literally repeats. The war does, and many machines/androids who have fought many times are rebuilt/repurposed, but I think this is the one and only war where Yorha was a factor.

There's only one generation of Yorha androids besides the prototype run that A2 is the last member of. If the Yorha cycle literally repeated, surely 1. the non-Yorha androids on Earth would instantly know what was up and 2. wouldn't Yorha spec androids be all over the place/not a "new" design? If Yorha and the machine network were the only characters in play, I think the literal repeating test/cycle would make more sense, but there's a whole world of androids out there who would surely notice that Yorha kept getting built up and torn down. The logic virus only targets Yorha if I remember correctly, so it's not like it's an android-wide apocalyptic event.

When the Pods refer to the possibility that "everything could happen the same way again," I think they're referring to the cycle of violence and war that has happened so many times previously, not a literal repeating of the same cycle. I could be wrong though, but right now I'm leaning more towards the cycle being figurative more than literal.

EDIT - I would submit that there is evidence for this interpretation in the fact that their recorded date continues to tick up from the original Nier's - time is still marching forward and everyone is aware of it.

I also read that androids' main goal will be to actually become as human as possible, thus filling that hole they left behind. The androids are that desperate for meaning that they needed the deception...but with our party of three still kicking even after learning of the whole thing, maybe they could finally learn to live for themselves, and together.
 
I can't stop thinking about the finale of Branch E and the way the music in the credits explodes as you accept help from others.

I didn't think Taro was capable of such a moving, warm finale, but that whole bit after Pod 042 says that he rejects this outcome is so gripping and so uplifting, even as the music tells you that maybe it was all for nothing.

It seriously gets me my eyes to well up with tears. Over a fucking shoot em up credits sequence for fucks sake.

I just can't stop thinking about it.
 
I can't stop thinking about the finale of Branch E and the way the music in the credits explodes as you accept help from others.

I didn't think Taro was capable of such a moving, warm finale, but that whole bit after Pod 042 says that he rejects this outcome is so gripping and so uplifting, even as the music tells you that maybe it was all for nothing.

It seriously gets me my eyes to well up with tears. Over a fucking shoot em up credits sequence for fucks sake.

I just can't stop thinking about it.

It's really fantastic. I wonder if Yoko Taro is in a happier place mentally, given all of the goofy antics he's been getting up to.

I like to think that his interaction with the West has helped, too. He's a big fan of Undertale and it comes through in the game, and then we get the ending messages that specifically include the poster's location, creating a deliberate sense of global unity.
 
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