Hi, I’m Hamish Black and welcome to Writing on Games.
Lately, I’ve been pondering the question: “did this story NEED to be a game?”
It’s not really a question of the quality of a product – Yakuza 0, for example, is
one of the best pieces of media I’ve experienced in a long time, but its story is delivered
largely through non-interactive means.
Do I think it would have fared better as a film or TV series?
Not really, but the story could have at least been explored that way.
It’s a similar situation with Nioh – a game with combat that potentially bests the
mighty Bloodborne, but a fairly throwaway story.
It doesn’t hurt that experience, but it’s certainly not implementing the strength of
the medium its working with; that while games incorporate artistic media of all kinds, their
stories can and perhaps should be told through your interactions with them.
With that in mind, I struggle to think of a game that pulls this off as well as recent
release NieR:Automata.
Further than merely working better as a game than a film, for example, Yoko Taro’s latest
creation simply would not work in any other medium.
It’s perhaps the best example I can point to and say “that HAD to be a game.”
This is because absolutely everything about NieR:Automata subverts our expectations of
the ways we typically interact with video games.
Things as simple as its menus are essentially fictionalised as the memory of the characters.
This means that when virus corruption enters the scene for example, the resulting glitches
use the player’s comparative lack of control in this situation to represent the breakdown
of the protagonists’ psyches.
Whilst inconvenient, forcing you to manually save your progress plays into the struggle
of preserving one’s memories; highlighting the disconnect between the consciousness of
an android and the sack of meat and circuitry it inhabits.
The chips used as stat buffs remain on your so-called corpse when you die, because of
course they do – the body you respawn with is entirely different.
As we’ll come onto later, this isn’t the only mechanic designed to convey the game’s
themes deliberately at the expense of providing a comfortable player experience.
Even the excellent music, with its prominent and constant vocal melodies, is a narrative
device.
Traditionally, soundtracks must remain ambient enough to punctuate the player’s experience
without intruding on it.
Here, as you’re doing something as menial as running across a desert with this epic,
colourful vocal melody playing, that music becomes the focus.
Nearly every track in this game could be considered just slightly over-the-top for the situation
it’s used in, which is why it’s so fantastic; it’s uncanny, just like the androids you
control.
Like I say, every element of what constitutes a game is used here to present its themes.
However, the most obvious reason I feel this story couldn’t be effectively conveyed through
any other medium, is the fact that like other Yoko Taro games, it requires multiple playthroughs
to see the true ending.
This is where we’re going to start approaching spoilers.
It’s wild that these playthroughs are considered separate though, because completing the quote-unquote
“first playthrough” is basically like playing the first third of any other game.
The second playthrough covers the same events but from the perspective of a totally different
character in different places (so it’s essentially all new content), while the third pulls a
Metal Gear Solid V and has you playing more-or-less a different game.
Not only is a game the only way to fully realise this (for example, you can’t have a movie
that you watch again for different content), this idea ends up elevating the game’s plot
above tired sci-fi tropes into something much larger.
This is where we’re going to start approaching spoilers, by the way.
I daresay leaving the game at a first playthrough may have left me feeling underwhelmed.
The somewhat on-the-nose dilemma of killing cute robots who act like humans is arguably
the focus from beginning to end of that playthrough; with everything wrapping up in a way that
feels a little too happy, despite numerous plot holes.
By requiring a second and third playthrough, however, Yoko Taro convinces us that this
plot is not the most important thing here.
As 2B chokes a corrupted 9S to death, she states “it always ends like this”.
By “suggesting” you play through again, Taro begins the REAL story of NieR:Automata
in earnest.
It’s incredibly telling that you don’t see a title card for the game until you start
it a second time - this is not merely a game about the humanity we imbue in robots, it’s
about cycles.
This is where you uncover the truth behind NieR:Automata.
Its focus is not the protagonists, it’s the player; it’s you.
It’s where you start to discover, from 9S’ perspective, that the action is being used
to hammer this home – it’s flashy and fun, but it arguably lacks the depth of something
like Metal Gear Rising or Bayonetta.
Ultimately, it’s repetitive.
This isn’t really that subjective an opinion either – it’s something 9S himself complains
about.
Because you’re experiencing many of the same events from the perspective of a higher
levelled character, the second playthrough often feels trivial.
Even when 9S discovers the truth about Project Gestalt – that the humanity his kind were
created to protect was made extinct long ago – the player continues to engage in the
action, cutting through hundreds of robots like butter because hey, that’s what you’ve
got to do to complete the game, right?
Then the third playthrough comes along.
The difficulty ramps back up, with the player in full knowledge of the futility of combat
they’re engaging in, with everything falling apart for the characters.
The game confronts you with the fact that the only reason 9S has to fight now is the
illogical pursuit of revenge, and that 2B’s entire purpose is to eliminate androids when
they get too close to the truth about humanity and Project Gestalt.
We also learn that androids are, at their core, physically identical to machines, heightening
the fruitlessness of fighting.
The conflict is designed to be cyclical, to have nebulous concepts pit machines against
machines in an endless, pointless war at the centre of which is you.
You played through the game already, you already killed the machines and yet you play again;
you kill them again.
You kill for no other reason than it’s a game and that’s what you do in it and then
the story starts over because that’s what happens when you replay a game.
As Taro himself says, “I cannot get myself to think that humans, who could not stop killing
each other for 2000 years, will have a happy ending.”
It’s grim as hell.
Which is also why it’s surprising that the game gives you a chance for repentance.
When you realise the pods themselves have started to achieve sentience and attempt to
break the cycle of conflict, the final task is left up to you.
You destroy the names of everyone who worked on the game, perhaps in order to subvert the
destruction the ending foists upon our characters.
Here’s the kicker though – as things get too difficult, you recruit the help of real
players in order to finish the remaining credits off.
Once this is done, the sacrifice these players made to help you is revealed, and you are
asked to give up your save data like they did.
You’re told that through making this sacrifice, of throwing away your version of 2B and 9S
in an endless cycle of 2Bs and 9Ss, you may be helping someone you don’t like, who doesn’t
appreciate it.
The pod really wants you to be sure that the sacrifice you’re making is entirely of your
own volition, because there’s no reward from it than the knowledge that you, an insignificant
speck on this planet, have helped another insignificant speck on this planet escape
the cycle of conflict.
The game wants you to sacrifice any markers of your experience, to show that you have
truly learned from it; from your responsibility in this scenario.
It’s extremely powerful, for what amounts to deleting some data.
What I’m talking about isn’t just speculation either – Yoko Taro is fully aware that he’s
creating stories about humanity at large, rather than trite plots about “humanistic
machines”.
He sees life in the cycles represented in NieR:Automata, finding them within the violence
humans perpetuate against each other, to what he sees as the game of game development.
Ultimately, Yoko Taro wants to tell stories about life.
Complete stories; viscera, mundanity and all.
And so, he draws attention to this cycle through the notion of “completing” a game, in
order to force the player to look inwards.
The drawn-out process of the game going through all the menus and wiping your progress is
far from rubbing salt in the wound; it’s celebratory.
You chose it; you’ve broken the cycle that Yoko Taro forced you to examine.
The game has taught you something in a way other media cannot.
The idea of viewer responsibility is something of an abstract concept in films and books.
In games, however, it’s mechanical; you’re concretely complicit in what occurs.
It’s just that few games utilise this interactivity and the way it implies responsibility to such
fascinating, eye-opening extents as NieR:Automata does.
So I hope you enjoyed my analysis of NieR:Automata.
If you did, why not share it with a friend and click the subscribe button?
If you really want to go the extra mile however, you can support the channel directly on Patreon
in exchange for various goodies, just like the wonderful people currently on screen have
done.
Every pledge, no matter how small, helps more than you can possibly know.
Thank you all so much for your continued support.
Also, in a particularly dumb turn of events, looks like I’ll be going to E3 in June,
but more on that later.
And with that, I’m Hamish Black and this has been Writing on Games.
Thank you very much for watching and I’ll see you next time.