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NieR: Automata Spoiler Thread

G

Golnei

Member
I wonder if it'd have been more effective to withhold Route A and B's title cards and make C's the only ingame one - it works well in the moment, but the impact could have been even greater that way.
 
M

Moaradin

Member
Golnei said:
I wonder if it'd have been more effective to withhold Route A and B's title cards and make C's the only ingame one - it works well in the moment, but the impact could have been even greater that way.
Click to expand...

It wasn't the first late title card but it was definitely the first opening credits in the game.

Antiwhippy said:
I actually can't even remember if A/B had title cards.
Click to expand...

A didn't. The opening for B did. C is the only one with actual opening credits.
 
G

Gbraga

Member
spiritfox said:
Maybe I should do a second playthrough.
Click to expand...

I'm definitely doing one very soon, hahaha. This damn game won't leave my mind. Doesn't help that I may be doing something completely unrelated, and then start humming a music from the soundtrack, and then I'm back to thinking about the whole experience.
 
D

DrunkShogun

Member
How About No said:
Oh...I, uh, never even tried to repair them...is this in a place that makes sense one would attack you?
Click to expand...

Remains of another player. Was about to enter the tower for the big finale and betrayed me. Makes sense consider the logic virus is more or less active. Just got ending d and made 9s stay. Ending c and e tomorrow to finally replace my deleted save file.
 
H

Hektor

Member
It's really amazing how much the gameplay is integrated into the story.

Another good instance is where the game entirely drops the dark souls system it has used throughout the game once the bunker is gone at the beginning of Route C.
 
P

pelican

Member
I hope to see a presentation of Romeos and Juliets touring the UK soon ;p

Tied up the game last night, with so many great moments. I really liked the dialogue developing between the two pods as the game came to a close in the run up to ending E.

I don't really get my heart strings tugged, but poor Pascal and his village.
 
D

DrunkShogun

Member
Sizu Sizu said:
I hope to see a presentation of Romeos and Juliets touring the UK soon ;p

Tied up the game last night, with so many great moments. I really liked the dialogue developing between the two pods as the game came to a close in the run up to ending E.

I don't really get my heart strings tugged, but poor Pascal and his village.
Click to expand...

Its beyond exceptional how the two pods especially 042 were able to be such strong characters coming off their predecessor Weiss who is basically one of the greatest companion character I've seen in a game.
 
N° 2048

N° 2048

Member
LotusHD said:
The game would have towers with a "Wise Machine" for each one. You get to see more of the map, but for each tower you unlock, a machine jumps and commits suicide.
Click to expand...

Each tower is a Goliath you have to climb, like the one in Machine Examination side quest.
 
G

Golnei

Member
The conversation shifting to formulaic open-world content reminded me of something -

- why did they refuse to bring back Fragile Delivery sidequests?
 
F

Ferr986

Member
Cosmo Clock 21 said:
So, that pre-release characters trailer and the
papa Nier teaser ended up just being a red herring after all
?
Click to expand...

Honestly I expected something about Nier appearing in this game (of course, not himself). It was a little dissapointing that the person his name is also the name of the game isn't even mentioned (as much as you can select his name in the first game). I know Taro doesn't like doing the same thing and all of that, but it's also his fist sequel, so we didn't truly know what he would do, but Nier Automata is so distant it could have been a new IP, much like Nier was to Drakengard 1.

Tbh, I always thought about what a Nier 2 would be, and it was more close to the first game, depicting the last remnants of Replicants and the fall of humanity. Of course the sequel ended up being totally diferent.

Mind you, not shitting on the game, loved it, just what i expected was a totally diferent thing. Guess it's also a Taro thing lol
 
R

Rizzi

Member
I saw online that I should have hacked A2 during the battle as 9S four times to see something? But I only managed to do it three times before she died. What did I miss?
 
A

Antiwhippy

the holder of the trombone
Ferr986 said:
Honestly I expected something about Nier appearing in this game (of course, not himself). It was a little dissapointing that the person his name is also the name of the game isn't even mentioned (as much as you can select his name in the first game). I know Taro doesn't like doing the same thing and all of that, but it's also his fist sequel, so we didn't truly know what he would do, but Nier Automata is so distant it could have been a new IP, much like Nier was to Drakengard 1.

Tbh, I always thought about what a Nier 2 would be, and it was more close to the first game, depicting the last remnants of Replicants and the fall of humanity. Of course the sequel ended up being totally diferent.

Mind you, not shitting on the game, loved it, just what i expected was a totally diferent thing. Guess it's also a Taro thing lol
Click to expand...

I kind of respect that honestly. His 4 games have wildly different tones and themes yet still managed to keep his trademark style.
 
B

Bebpo

Banned
Just finished this today, read up on stuff and have a bunch of questions:

1) When you meet Adam & Eve in the UFO area, they want to find/meet the humans. But Adam & Eve are physical representations of the terminal machine lifeform network that was only the way it was because it had already connected to the moon server long ago and been heavily influenced by humanity, so Adam & Eve should've known there were no humans?

2) So the "cycle" where Yorha is killed off because of the backdoor and their combat data is transitioned to a new set of units. I think the execution of this is the only thing that really confuses me in the plot. Because I assumed that the bunker was all there was of Yorha and where the server running all this is. So if that gets destroyed, how are the next set of Yorha units created? Is the explanation actually something simple like that there's a ton of Yorha bases around the world and the next base begins the cycle of war against the machine lifeforms afterwards?

3) Speaking of the "cycle" (again, I'm a little confused at how the loop works), do the machine lifeforms build a tower up everytime and it's destroyed everytime? Am I taking the world cycle/loop to literally? Is it more just that androids created Yorha Model A -> fight machine life forms long enough and then Yorha Model A dies -> androids create Yorha Model B -> Yorha model B androids fight machine life forms long enough and then Yorha Model B dies -> androids create Yorha model C ...etc? Would appreciate a fairly clean explanation of how the loop works.

4) (not really a question) and then throughout all these loops/cycles, the 9S model because it was so smart would always learn too much and the 2E models would kill them, right?

5) Ok, so THE WATCHERS. I think my biggest disappointment of the game's plot (which I definitely enjoyed) was seeing the angelic writing on the sub-towers and then nothing really comes of it. I find The Watchers to be the most interesting lore part of the Drakengard/Nier universe personally. I've been looking for good theories on the watchers and Nier Automata and haven't found much besides pointing out the connections like red eyes and stuff. Here's my theory:

Aliens came to earth with machines lifeforms, machines lifeforms somehow reached a point of evolution that allowed them to access a non-physical dimension where the watcher gods live, they found god and god helped them evolve and also drove them to kill their creators the aliens (because the watchers seem to like murder and suffering), the machine lifeforms build up their society according to the docs and install parts of worship of the watchers in, like using the angelic language on the sub-towers and the factory worshipping them. Eventually machine lifeforms are thriving enough that the watchers now turn to take pleasure in mass murdering them, and inflicts the red-eye as a digital virus causing them to turn and eat and murder each other. This virus spreads to the androids as well through the backdoor and is the logic virus. Idk, game could really use some extra info on this stuff.

6) What happens at the end of the tower? Like it made no sense when I did ending C and A2 reached up and somehow the tower was destroyed. At what point did A2/9S do anything that would destroy the tower? I know they got the terminal red doll girls to turn on each other and are we just supposed to assume that in-fighting causes the tower to fall apart in A2's ending? It's also weird how in 9S's ending where nothing is different the tower doesn't fall apart and launches a rocket instead...

7) I didn't do most of the sidequests, reading up on it, in terms of sidequests that add to the lore and have substantial stories, it sounds like the two sidequests I should do are Emil's memories and Anemonie's memories? Any other ones?

8) Is there a material collection book out/planned? I know with the original Nier there were a lot of questions regarding the details of how plot elements/timeline actually worked and then they brought out the material collection which had an insanely detailed timeline from Drakengard -> Nier and it basically made complete sense of everything. Wonder if they'll do something similar to flesh out/detail some of this stuff.

If you can answer of these, thanks in advance! It's a neat story, pretty different from the original Nier, but more interesting than most game plots.
 
K

Kvik

Member
Hi guys. halp. How do I reach the marked chest, here?

Platforming seems impossible, unless its needs specific glide/jump combo I didn't know about. :-\

34079764131_2baae72de4_o.png
 
K

kewlmyc

Member
Kvik said:
Hi guys. halp. How do I reach the marked chest, here?

Platforming seems impossible, unless its needs specific glide/jump combo I didn't know about. :-\

34079764131_2baae72de4_o.png
Click to expand...

Control 9S, control those weird flying drill centipede things, fly over there, then self destruct. It's the easiest way.
 
V

Vazra

irresponsible vagina leak
Kvik said:
Hi guys. halp. How do I reach the marked chest, here?

Platforming seems impossible, unless its needs specific glide/jump combo I didn't know about. :-\

34079764131_2baae72de4_o.png
Click to expand...

I did jumping attack (when rising from the ground use the heavy attack with 2B or regular attack with 9s), pod toss (x + R1), and air dash (R2) I think

There is also this.
 
P

PBalfredo

Member
I know Nier already is established as an offshoot of Drakengard, but I really hope the Watchers don't elbow their way into being a major factor of the Nier-verse. The thing that makes the Nier games work, in my opinion, is that the seed of all the tragedy experienced in each game is born out of basic human (er, you know what I mean) fallacies. The tragedy of Nier Gestalt was stems from dehumanizing "the enemy" and failing to truly understand them. In Automata, when faced with an existential crisis, each side allows external conflict to define their reason for being, dooming them to a tragedy of their own making. For the Watchers to then butt in from the Drakengard-verse and have everything suddenly be the machinations of Evil Space God Babies would ruin the meaning behind the tragedy of Nier. I can buy into the oppressive amount of doom and gloom of the Nier games when I can easily point to the character's tragic flaw as being the cause of their misery, but not if its just because evil gods are just fucking with everyone.
 
A

Antiwhippy

the holder of the trombone
Bebpo said:
Just finished this today, read up on stuff and have a bunch of questions:

1) When you meet Adam & Eve in the UFO area, they want to find/meet the humans. But Adam & Eve are physical representations of the terminal machine lifeform network that was only the way it was because it had already connected to the moon server long ago and been heavily influenced by humanity, so Adam & Eve should've known there were no humans?
Click to expand...

I don't think it's actually implied that the machines knew all along? I always assumed that they learnt about it when they infiltrated the bunker through the logic virus.

2) So the "cycle" where Yorha is killed off because of the backdoor and their combat data is transitioned to a new set of units. I think the execution of this is the only thing that really confuses me in the plot. Because I assumed that the bunker was all there was of Yorha and where the server running all this is. So if that gets destroyed, how are the next set of Yorha units created? Is the explanation actually something simple like that there's a ton of Yorha bases around the world and the next base begins the cycle of war against the machine lifeforms afterwards?

3) Speaking of the "cycle" (again, I'm a little confused at how the loop works), do the machine lifeforms build a tower up everytime and it's destroyed everytime? Am I taking the world cycle/loop to literally? Is it more just that androids created Yorha Model A -> fight machine life forms long enough and then Yorha Model A dies -> androids create Yorha Model B -> Yorha model B androids fight machine life forms long enough and then Yorha Model B dies -> androids create Yorha model C ...etc? Would appreciate a fairly clean explanation of how the loop works.
Click to expand...

I also don't think it was ever implied that YorHa was a cycle? Who knows if they are actually wholely unique over the 10,000 year period, but I think this YorHa initiative is meant to be shown as unique and never done before. A2 was part of a unit that was meant to be a prototype of the YorHa initiative, but I don't think she's part of a cycle? The destruction of Yorha was meant to be a wholly unique event. Note that when they talked about using gathered info from Yorha to build the next generation of androids, they don't specify Yorha, just androids in general, so there's no implication that it's being built back up.

YorHa were created to falsify the truth that humans are long gone. That's all there is to it. I think you're kinda reading too much into things that aren't there.

4) (not really a question) and then throughout all these loops/cycles, the 9S model because it was so smart would always learn too much and the 2E models would kill them, right?
Click to expand...

There's only 1 9s model and 1 2E model AFAIK. I think the numbers are meant to show that they are unique. There are other S models other than 9S in the game.

But yes, 9S would always gather valuable intel everytime, but also inevitably learn about Yorha's secret everytime, so 2E would incapacitate him and memory wipe him, starting the cycle again.

5) Ok, so THE WATCHERS. I think my biggest disappointment of the game's plot (which I definitely enjoyed) was seeing the angelic writing on the sub-towers and then nothing really comes of it. I find The Watchers to be the most interesting lore part of the Drakengard/Nier universe personally. I've been looking for good theories on the watchers and Nier Automata and haven't found much besides pointing out the connections like red eyes and stuff. Here's my theory:

Aliens came to earth with machines lifeforms, machines lifeforms somehow reached a point of evolution that allowed them to access a non-physical dimension where the watcher gods live, they found god and god helped them evolve and also drove them to kill their creators the aliens (because the watchers seem to like murder and suffering), the machine lifeforms build up their society according to the docs and install parts of worship of the watchers in, like using the angelic language on the sub-towers and the factory worshipping them. Eventually machine lifeforms are thriving enough that the watchers now turn to take pleasure in mass murdering them, and inflicts the red-eye as a digital virus causing them to turn and eat and murder each other. This virus spreads to the androids as well through the backdoor and is the logic virus. Idk, game could really use some extra info on this stuff.
Click to expand...

I really don't think this game is meant to tie that directly to the drakenier series. I mean there are hints, but seeing that the game is all about learning the follies of the past and the machine's fascination with studying the past of humanity, I think my own interpretation is that the signs were just symbols that the machine lifeforms picked up. After all, isn't automata pretty much the whole goal of the watchers, where humanity is wiped out? :p

6) What happens at the end of the tower? Like it made no sense when I did ending C and A2 reached up and somehow the tower was destroyed. At what point did A2/9S do anything that would destroy the tower? I know they got the terminal red doll girls to turn on each other and are we just supposed to assume that in-fighting causes the tower to fall apart in A2's ending? It's also weird how in 9S's ending where nothing is different the tower doesn't fall apart and launches a rocket instead...
Click to expand...

My interpretation is that the tower itself is being kept up through the maintenance of the machine consciousness, and what A2 was trying to do was get rid of the machine consciousness by hacking through 9S. Think about it, a lot about the logic virus is shown as the machine consciousness controlling the infected, going so far as to talk through them, so they must be actually connected in some way. The pillar of light at the end I think is meant to represent that, and also the tower itself seeing that it extends through the sky. By crumbling it, she got rid of the machine consciousness that's affecting 9S, and the tower as well.

If you read the monologue that plays when ending D happens it would have said that while the tower was originally planned to destroy the human server on the moon, through the machine's continued evolution and observation of the conflict around them, they realised the futility and utter meaninglessness of continuing in the conflict of this world, and instead repurposed the cannon into an ark that will fire the machine consciousness and their collected knowledge through space, to either float eternally through the empty skies, or to land on a new world to start anew.

8) Is there a material collection book out/planned? I know with the original Nier there were a lot of questions regarding the details of how plot elements/timeline actually worked and then they brought out the material collection which had an insanely detailed timeline from Drakengard -> Nier and it basically made complete sense of everything. Wonder if they'll do something similar to flesh out/detail some of this stuff.

If you can answer of these, thanks in advance! It's a neat story, pretty different from the original Nier, but more interesting than most game plots.
Click to expand...

Hopefully! I just need more nier merchandise lol.
 
B

Bebpo

Banned
Hmm, yeah I didn't pick up on a cycle, but after finishing it, like everything I read talked about it being a loop/cycle story and the true ending E was the pods breaking the loop by keeping the files/memories/AIs this time?

If it's not a cycle I don't really get ending E. But if it's not a cycle and was just a one time thing with Yorha, then that all makes sense to me. So in that case, is ending E just the pods putting them back together and restoring their memories and then the pods are like "hey, maybe they'll just end up fighting and going crazy again?", "maybe, but maybe not, let's give it a try and hope for the best!"

Antiwhippy said:
I don't think it's actually implied that the machines knew all along? I always assumed that they learnt about it when they infiltrated the bunker through the logic virus.
Click to expand...

Ok, another thing I find very confusing about how Nier Automata is presented is in the passage of time.

For instance, Adam is born in the desert, and then suddenly a few hours later in the game he's built this whole copied town where he's holding 9S hostage and Adam and Eve have all these conversations and are totally attached and etc..etc.. and all of that just happens in a few hours or a day or two?

I was assuming from the final document after ending E that the machine lifeforms had hacked the moon server centuries ago, and that's where they picked up the humanistic tendencies (ghost of humanity) that you see the various machine lifeforms around the game map?

Also in the tower library the document says they knew about the human server. But that could have been a data file just added an hour prior to the library.

But, now thinking about what you said, that this didn't happen until getting into the bunker and infecting the server, I can buy it sorta, maybe.

Basically in that case the idea would be that the machine lifeform network was doing its thing and various machine lifeforms were curious about human history from what they found in the world and were imitating it in their searching for understanding of life.

Then Nier Automata happens, and they hack the bunker and learn of project gestalt and gain a human-ish ego, and then everything that happens in route C/D/E 2nd half is the machine lifeform network that's now gained a human ego (ghost of humanity) going crazy, running amock and sprouting out a super tower to fly into space. That could work...maybe.

Idk, trying to make everything fit is pretty confusing in this game compared to Nier where everything fit nicely together.
 
X

XANDER CAGE

Member
It's not a literal cycle. The date has continued to tick up, and there are androids beyond YoRHa. The "cycle" being referred to is metaphorical, like when people talk about "a cycle of violence" throughout history, and so on. The YoRHa experiment orders the pods were discussing were orders they had been holding onto for a long time, not orders they had carried out before. YoRHa has only existed once.
 
A

Antiwhippy

the holder of the trombone
I think it's pretty easy (well, not pretty easy, but everything does fit in nicely) to put together, it's just that you seem to be putting in your own assumptions?

I don't think the pods are talking about Yorha as a specific cycle. The game never specified yorha as a cycle. The pods are talking about the cycle of life and death. Most likely about the cycle of conflict that the androids and machines, but also how they are repeating the cycle of conflict inherited from humanity.

As for how adam can create the copied city, I dunno, magic? :p All kidding aside, I mean I don't think you're meant to take the whole as incredibly scientific, and Adam, until he disconnected himself in order to discover what true death is like, presumably had the entire power of the machine consciousness behind him, and they can build a freaking ground to space cannon with that white material, so presumably a facsimile of a human city is nothing to them. It's not even that big really.
 
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