Hello and welcome to Wasted Plotential, the show where we discuss the wasted potential
of our favourite plotlines.
Nier Automata had a lot of potential.
While the Drakengard series tended towards edgy trash for its own sake, its spin-off
Nier raised some interesting questions about identity and what it was to be human.
These questions lend themselves very well to stories about artificial lifeforms, and
are very commonly explored with clones or AI.
Thus, it made sense for Automata to pick up the baton and run with it.
However, while the game initially seems like it's going to continue running with it, it
instead sees a bunch of other batons scattered across the ground and drops the one it already
has to pick those up instead.
The game raises what many others felt were deep, philosophical questions, but those particular
subjects never really struck a chord me.
As a result, I found the entire experience, aside from some of the character designs,
to be utterly unremarkable.
To me, the concept that had the most potential was discarded within half an hour of play.
The game centres around a war between alien robots named "machine lifeforms", and human-build
robots named "androids".
One might argue that androids fall under the umbrella term "machine lifeform", but that's
a topic for another day.
In the opening chapter, protagonists 2B and 9S meet for the first time while on a mission.
Engaging with the game's first boss, 9S is badly damaged, and more of this boss' model
appear, putting the two into an unwinnable situation.
They use their black boxes to trigger a massive explosion to destroy the enemies, dying in
the process.
2B then awakens back at the androids' base, the Bunker.
Before their deaths, 9S uploaded all of 2B's data to the bunker, including her memories.
These memories were then loaded into a new 2B model to continue her mission.
This is not the same 2B as the one we were just playing as.
The previous 2B's memories and skills were copy-pasted, not cut and pasted, into an entirely
new entity, who now assumes her identity.
But, for all intents and purposes, she is the same 2B, as who we are is ultimately determined
by our memories and experiences; so if none of that is lost and the previous 2B no longer
exists, then who's to say that she isn't the same person?
See what I mean about this being a fascinating subject?
While walking around, 2B encounters 9S, whose memories were not uploaded to the bunker.
As such, he is meeting 2B for the first time, from his perspective.
As he walks away, with no memory of their previous encounter, 2B clenches her fist,
suggesting she feels intense frustration at this, and that this aspect of android life
is a great existential crisis that will be a major theme of the game.
But it's not, really.
Death in the game is justified through this system.
When the player dies, their memories are recovered at The Bunker and a new model is activated,
forced to return to their predecessor's body to recover items and upgrades.
The entire subject is ignored during what you'd think would be a harrowing moment; returning
to what, for all intents and purposes, is your own corpse to scavenge it for equipment.
You'd think at least the first time the player does this, there'd be a small cutscene or
unique conversation where the characters discuss the implications.
It could even have played out differently for each character to show how each of them
reacts differently, with one being newer to this and thus more emotional, and the other
more detached from having done this exact thing more times than they can count.
Except that they aren't really the one who's done this.
And bizarrely, the game had the perfect opportunity to tackle this subject within the framework
of what already exists.
I'll be discussing spoilers from this point, so don't complain if you fail to heed my warning.
At the story's halfway mark, Endings A and B, 9S attempts to hack the final boss, resulting
in his own data becoming corrupted.
Uploading his data to the Bunker now will only allow the corruption to spread, so 2B
has to kill 9S and have another 9S model activated with an outdated backup, leaving a lot of
this 9S's memory lost forever.
Once he is dead, his consciousness is reconstituted into a nearby machine lifeform from a backup
stored in the machine network from just before he was corrupted, meaning this is a corruption-free
9S, ready to be plopped into a new body, having lost nothing but maybe a couple minutes of
memory (though even that doesn't seem to be the case).
At least, I think that's what happens.
It's amazing just how thoroughly writer/director Yoko Taro was able to completely undercut
the entire emotional impact of this moment by bullshitting out a half-explained excuse
for 9S to be completely fine.
Here was this great opportunity to explore this theme and add a real emotional punch
to the story by replacing 9S for the rest of the game with an incomplete clone, with
whom 2B has trouble connecting due to the lost time.
This wedge could then be driven even further between them by 9S knowing that 2B has experiences
with him that he doesn't have with her, starting him down his part to insanity.
This would add another element to how 2B's final death affects him after the Bunker is
destroyed: with 2B gone and no backups left, that chunk of time the previous 9S experienced
is now gone forever.
As they say, once someone is gone, all we have left is our memories of them.
And 9S's memory of his time with 2B is now irrevocably incomplete.
But bad writing aside, there are other ways this theme could have been explored.
Let's continue with the idea that the corruption cannot be undone, and there is a new 9S from
this point onwards.
What if the corrupted 9S survived and encountered his successor during the latter's descent
into madness?
Maybe he's joined the machines, gone into exile to find a fix for his corruption, or
just given into despair himself.
Despite the very clear opportunity here for two versions of the same character to meet
and have a discussion about their respective and shared existential questions - with the
older version being reduced to a form that would no doubt utterly disgust his successor,
while the newer version is going through a massive existential crisis - no such event
occurs.
The scene could even end with a boss fight or at least the option to kill the other 9S,
similar to the existing option to kill Pascal.
But in this scenario, 9S killing his other self could either give him some peace of mind,
or make his descent occur even faster, both options affecting his mental state leading
into Endings C and D.
And later on, the few returning characters from the original Nier reflect this theme
as well.
Devola and Popola, whose actions in the first game helped to cause the end of the human
race, are represented by a different pair of Devola and Popola models.
These two are forced to repent for the sins of their predecessors, despite having had
nothing to do with it personally.
While the subject of a person being held accountable for actions they didn't commit simply due
to familial, national or racial connections is another interesting subject that could
have been explored here, the idea also connects back to the androids.
Imagine encountering an NPC who knows your character, but not vice-versa.
Maybe it ties into some sort of mystery that you need to uncover by discovering what your
predecessor did.
Or imagine a character losing track of which version of them's memory they're recalling,
unsure if it was them or a predecessor, slowly losing their sanity from the confusion.
Again, nothing.
When Emil shows up, all he does is run a travelling shop until the player helps him regain his
memories, whereupon he remembers that he is actually a duplicate of the real Emil, who
created an army of duplicates to battle the aliens when they first arrived.
Then, we don't have much chance to explore Emil's mindset and how this revelation affects
his sense of self, because the next thing to happen to him is a boss fight where he
fucking dies.
And remember, the realm Emil was still out there.
A meeting between the two would have been the easiest thing in the world.
The returning characters seem to have only been included for the sake of fanservice,
when their particular situations mirror those of the androids so perfectly, that you could
be forgiven for thinking Taro originally intended this to be the central theme of the game after
dipping his toe into it last time... only to then think of other ideas to explore instead
and just forgetting all about it.
I've discussed this subject with a few other people, and they've suggested that this simply
wasn't the subject Taro wanted to explore in this game.
After all, this had been a fairly prominent theme in the original Nier, and it may have
felt like rehashing, to some degree.
I can accept that, but as I said before, it was this topic that I found the most fascinating
in the game and would have liked to see it expanded upon further.
For an example of a game that does delve into this subject, Soma comes to mind pretty quickly.
I think that game did a pretty good job with it.
As for Nier, well, if I'm honest...
I'll get crucified, bye!
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