1:29:52 a bit of correction Roc the gestalt pack leader wolf wasn't a human. Previously he was a dog raised by an old man (the old man was the one in Roc's flash back right before he died). His original owner wanted Roc to take his place in the replicant program cause he felt that he had lived long enough and wanted his friend to live on instead. His sentiment of co-existence with humans came from his previous experience of bonding with his owner.
Dude had a rare ticket for the Ark of Noah during the flood and he gave it to his dog. Imagine being a regular dude that didn't get to be saved because some old fart wanted to save his dog.
Okay, so the whole relapsing shade thing is alittle easy to miss. A shade is the default state of a Gestalt. However it can relapse and 'go feral' turning into the ones actively attacking Replicants. Tyrann is alittle odd in this because he didn't relapse. He was always an asshole in life, his Replicant was destroyed after it was discovered by the government and that's why he desperately wants a body to possess, just to feel things again, after it's been like 1000-ish years. The black scrawl is caused by a replicants assigned gestalt relapsing. Not all shades are relapsed but they do still value their life and will defend themselves. After the timeskip even shades that haven't relapsed and are mentally sound follow the Shadowlord, because that's the whole plan. He can forcefully merge all replicants with their assigned gestalts, erasing the black scrawl entirely and solving the relapsing as a whole. It'd be beneficial for all parties. Except, the Replicants have somehow gained a soul of their own. And the cases of the black scrawl are growing exponentially, which make the Replicants think the Shades are the cause, they are linked in that way, which causes all the animosity towards each other, since the Shades can't just talk to the Replicants and explain what's going on. The only ones that truly know are The Devola and Popola models of Androids but they can't just say anything or they'd be attacked for 'siding with the shades' It's a whole bunch of mistakes that keep building ontop of each other until they're left in a situation that can only end in tragedy. With the Shadowlord dead, all gestalts WILL relapse, causing the extinction of all replicants and gestalts. ALSO: Tyrann was involved in the whole Project Gestalt, but yeah it's unclear how he would know how to erase someone from existence and use that to bring someone back, but that being said, he was involved in the whole Maso Particle experiments, the creation of Weiss, Noir, Rubrum, all of the magical books, which are, magic. So, I suppose that does explain things in an admittedly lackluster way.
Man, this is so full of chunky philosophical/ethical discourse, I really love the direction this podcast has taken. I feel like y'all have hit a stride with this format.
Long time listener (from the early Dark Pixel Podcast days), first time caller and patron. I had to leave a comment after finishing this part of the NieR analysis, I just wanted to say I've been thoroughly enjoying it the whole time and both of you are doing a bangup job. Very insightful and productive discussions, especially about Facade's rule #0 and how differently you can interpret and view death (and come to accept it). One thing I'd like to point out about Kainé's portrait of her grandmother, is that you can actually see it inside the shed at the entrance of the Aerie, where you first meet Kainé and where is implied she lives. And the "portrait" seems to have been drawn with color crayons, so to Casen's point about shades possibly being similar to a kid's drawing done with charcoal, while it may be a compelling theory and it may be something there I wouldn't say it'd be related to Kainé's drawing in particular. Overall, I really like this game despite some of its sloppy execution. And while I think Automata refines some of the concepts seen here and implements most of them in a more cohesive way from a technical perspective (multiple playthroughs and routes, combat, sacrificing your save file), I feel I had a stronger attachment to Replicant/Gestalt's characters and the emotional highs felt higher to me in Replicant compared to Automata's. Needless to say, I'm quite happy you hit the weekly goal!
I don't think you're necessarily supposed to "feel guilty" as you replay the boss fights and realize who/what you're killing, and the lack of malicious motivation most shades have toward you. Nier as a protagonist is supposed to represent the shift in ideas from "you have to be a monster to kill the way an rpg protagonist does" to "you just have to think you're right." I don't think your feeling about the shades matter so much as the point that Nier, even presented with the loss of morally grey or fully innocent life, does not step off the path he's chosen. The Nier series is steeped in the idea of "constructing meaning in a meaningless world." Nier as a character has constructed a goal/motivation that sees him through hardship and tragedy - killing shades, defeating the Shadowlord, rescuing his sister. He does all of this at the cost of spending actual time with his sister, at the cost of what you later learn are human souls - ultimately at the cost of his own original soul / gestalt. The machine/shade fight is the only one we really have where it's pushed to the extreme of "this is a child who did nothing wrong." I don't think the point is for us, the player, to feel bad - I think the point is to know that a character like Kaine /knows/ it's a kid, and says nothing; a character like Nier has all of these hints that he's doing something wrong, or outright watches his decisions destroy a village, and it won't stop him from pursuing the thing he has chosen as the point of his existence. I think the fact that some people play through it a few times and, knowing one or both sides, "don't feel bad" isn't in conflict with the point. When I was playing the second time, I didn't think the point was to feel bad for the shades or feel bad about my actions, the point was that Nier is locked onto this quest, and he doesn't have all the information, and by the time we get to the Aerie, he flat out tells us that he does not look back, does not want the information, the information would not change his goals. So I reacted emotionally to what it meant for the characters, and not really for the shades, so I didn't feel taken out of it or disappointed, personally.
Nier won't stop until he gets what he wants. As far as I can tell, there's exactly _one_ time when he feels a little torn. It's right before he kills the Shadowlord. He sees the whole scene with Yonah and SL and seems like he might kind of be starting to grasp what might be happening but he only hesitates for a second. And as can and has happened in real life, that one second changes the world forever.
Yea, if you felt something during playthrough B, like hesitation and regret as you're killing shades, then it's mission accomplished by Taro. It's not meant to make the player think they are the bad guy, one is really missing the point if that's how they feel. The game was never intending to make the player, or the main protagonists justifiable. They're just vessels (literally, and figuratively) to tell his story and reveal the deeper meanings. In other words, it's so unconventional, that even people who are thinking about the game unconventionally, are still having issues understanding the direction that it went.
My interpretation of what happened in ending E was that the 2 androids observed Kaine and the development of her own "soul" (singularity point as it was referred to in game) and realised that humanity wasn't the be all and end all of consciousness. They say something along the lines of "Is this the true potential of a Replicant?" Almost in awe at her own will to live and fight, and I believe this was the inception of the resistance and YorHa androids we see in Automata. It's implied heavily that A2's personality is based on Kaine and she was one of the first YorHa units. I think the whole sequence of ending E was a test to see if non human souls could match up to human souls and Kaine proved that, which meant the tree/androids believed existence is no longer doomed, it would just take a new form in the androids.
These are some of the best discussions out there! The depth you both go for research, even far outside of the game itself to better get a grasp of the themes and storytelling is something to be respected!
As a long time fan of Nier, ending E is the gaming moment of the year for me. What a great wrap up to the game, even with some of the retcon to connect it more to Automata
Same. I was getting a little fatigued playing through the same stuff again but as soon as I got to control Kaine I was so excited. I was completely revitalized and wished it could go on much longer. Definitely a great treat to end the game.
To the whole shades not attacking part, made me think about how the first shades you see in the game don’t even attack you. And the girl who saw a shade in the village but didn’t want to tell you? I believe that shade was the shade of that woman’s husband who is always at the tree in the hill. That is where you finally find it. And it too doesn’t attack you. Love this game and how it makes you think.
I love FF6 but I REALLY hope Xenogears ends up winning the poll...You guys would be among the first to give it the truly comprehensive analysis it deserves
For RUclips, this might be the first comprehensive review (Miiks has some excellent long form videos on the Xeno series). But there was the Xenotensei website which had a staggeringly large amount of analysis articles. In any case I voted for Xenogears on Patreon, crossing fingers for it to win the poll.
I discovered this channel from this Nier series and subscribed on Patreon today! Love the work you guys do, it's longform and very your analysis has a lot substance to it. Hoping this goes weekly soon.
Great discussion! I have a few comments: 1) While I do think the most likely explanation for why you don't play as Kainé is the challenge of programming another playable character or something like that, one thing that I do like about playing as Nier in Route B is the disconnect between the knowledge of the player and the knowledge of the character, making it more difficult to identify with Nier and sort of allowing for a distance that fosters critical thinking about the events that are unfolding. While Automata does have the player switch control to 9S for its Route B, Automata also uses its own strategies to distance the player emotionally from 9S later on, and so refusing to let the player fully identify with the character they are playing as seems to be a bit of a running theme in the series. 2) I wouldn't mind hearing you say a bit more about your two major themes of the game in relation to Ending E. With regards to "how far would you go if you think you are in the right" theme, I find Ending E is doing something really interesting by recontextualizing Ending D in a similar way that Route B recontextualizes Route A. While Ending D could certainly be thought of as an acceptance of loss (for the player a pretty substantial loss - their save data), it also fits into a heroic sacrifice narrative wherein Nier assumes he knows what is best for Kainé. This is especially hammered home at the end of E when Kainé says to Nier "I'M the one who gets to decide what my life means to me." So it seems like there is a bit of an interpersonal continuation of that theme there to compliment the earlier application of it in cultural terms. With regards to the "acceptance of loss" theme however it is interesting in a bit of a different way, as it seems to me that it could be argued that Ending E is a bit of contradiction. After all, Kainé has lost Nier (albeit unknowingly to some extent) but completely refuses to accept that loss, potentially at great cost if we buy what Drakengard fans are suggesting that ending might mean. However, I don't think it is simply the case that Taro's position on the theme is just inconsistent. It feels very intentional and I think part of what he is trying to say is located in the tension between the acceptance of loss in Ending D and the rejection of loss in Ending E. My thought is that it might be something in the nuances between "accepting and letting go" versus "forgetting," but would be curious to hear more of your own thoughts 3) I just have to say that Ending E seems like it would be completely brilliant in a world without Internet and everyone having immediate access to knowing what to do to unlock it. The point at which it begins (a few hours into playing what seems to just be the normal game) feels very intentional, to deter anyone starting again immediately after Ending D, just to see if anything new happens, from reaching it and having them think there is in fact nothing new to see. How players would most likely discover it then would be at whatever point they come back to revisit the game and maybe play it a second time after a long time has passed, long enough that they *may* not actually remember the name of their original character. I think in that case, many more people would find that their save data had been lost because they themselves had forgotten about it, and that to me seems really interesting (as well as thematically connected to the nuances between accepting loss and forgetting). Then again, I know plenty of people who stopped playing Automata after Ending A despite having access to the Internet, and I wonder if eventually more and more Replicant players will discover Ending E accidentally, and if anyone ever gets stuck on that screen simply because too much time has passed.
I think the sort of inconsistent degree of sentience in the shades actually helps the theme out. While to us as gamers it might just seem inconvenient to not really know how sentient or insane a particular shade is, there's a fundamental flaw in trying to classify them all in one category. This gives off the vibes of going into Iraq to counter 'terrorists' but ending up hurting or killing civilians because they look the same and we can't bother to tell them apart. Just because some shades actually provoked the replicants by attacking them first does not mean that it's justified to attack them all, and that fallacy is part of what feeds the cycle of hate that ends up pitting all replicants against all shades. I think it's actually a good thing for the game that we have to examine the actions of shades individually, because it helps to point out how stupid it is to try to categorize them as 'good' or 'evil' just because they look the same. tbf, with the lack of subtlety about moral validity in the reveals in route B, I'm not sure if this is an intentional thing since Yoko Taro sure didn't want us considering the possibility of those villains being even marginally in the wrong (except for maybe Louise). But there is a possibility that Taro includeded both enemies who were clearly in the right(most of the ones in the second half) and enemies who were given absolutely no justification(the ones in part one) as extreme examples to show that it's not a simple problem? Even if that's the case it would have been nicer to have them all be complex characters with good and bad parts, but if not fixing the characters at least that might make the theme more complex. idk, but it's something to think about
On the topic of Emil's comments on the wedding. One thing I'd like to point out is that (at least in the English translation), Emil doesn't exactly say "I want to marry a man," even though the next line almost definitely implies they're into men, but not necessarily Emil says "I wish I could be Fyra." While, it could be grasping, I think it's a fun reading considering both Emil's closeness with Kainé.... Who also has her fun relationship with gender and also effectively having gone from childhood and seeing themselves as a monster after their body does change (Though, it is also their sister's body, sort of)
First off: excellent analysis guys! I absolutely love these. Second: I'd like to point out that nobody takes into account THE NAME, NIER, and its thematic addition to the game and its story. Nier, essentially means "no" or "to deny" in french and I feel like it fits the nihilistic tone rather well.
nah, theres a fail safe, if you fail to imput your save file name 10 times during ending E the screen goes white and tells you your file name (its implied to be Weiss telling you)
The Route B of this game was done that way because of budget and time restraints. They wanted to make Kainé playable but couldn’t. Budget and time was also the reason there’s so many Storybook segments of the game. The Forest area was going to be bigger and more involved but ended up being cut and the team comprised by making it a reading section.
On Gretel's character growth it's probably not fair to assume the friendship garned between it and the other shades happened right before you bust through the door. There has been 5 years for this to occur between Hansel's death and the party's return to Lost Shrine, and other similar scenes, like between the Postman & Louise read as if they take place over a period of time, maybe days or weeks. Roc, the wolf shade, isn't a human soul in wolf form, it's literally a dog that went through gestaltisation on his owners' request instead of him. Its death scene reflects on the potential of humans to be fundamentally good and co-operative with the rest of nature from its experience as a companion to its human owner, and thats the motivation behind it trying to stop the wolves from escalating the conflict between them and the humans of Facade until that, which is when they attack the wedding and kill Fyra.
It feels like the classification of shade is something that the living replicants made up to stop the cycle of gestalts taking over their replicant bodies, because the replicants gained sentience and didn't want to lose that to their gestalt. The gestalts are disembodied souls of people who chose to become "ethereal" in hopes that they would one day regain their bodies, so I can imagine it is not a forgone conclusion that they are resentful, especially once they find out the replicants gain an individual consciousness.
I feel like with Nier, how you feel while playing the game is more important than knowing what happens in the story. Hope the game gives you a good experience!
In a way I honestly love how flawed Nier is. Like they give it charm and it is very different and unique from other games out on the market and I just love Nier for everything it is.
The game is trying to tell a story, not "make the player feel bad" for what they did. You can't choose to not attack the shades. They're entities that look completely different than us, speak in a way we can't understand, and some of them attack us because they've relapsed and gone crazy. Because some of them show hostility, Nier wants to kill all of them. He doesn't even try to communicate with them at any point, all he cares about is saving Yonah and the people close to him. Kaine knows that they are conscious, but kills them anyway to satisfy her hatred, to save herself from being overtaken by Tyrann, and later because she developed feelings for Nier. Even the children. Emil understood that the worst instincts of the ultimate weapon made him save his loved ones while slaughtering the people of the Aerie. Even though he didn't know any of them, he felt empathy for the lives he just snuffed out. Nier made his own point of view very clear here. "You saved us, your own people." That's the most important thing to him. He accepts other points of view, as long as they aren't too different. Every life is precious, as long as it's not a shade life. He's a giant hypocrite. He dooms all of humanity by destroying the Shadowlord. The core idea of the Nier games is to make you empathize with people who aren't close to you, who aren't your family, friends, comrades. The game intentionally shows characters that hold very high moral ideals, yet fail to apply them universally. Nothing shows this better than the credits in Automata. You don't know the person you're sacrificing your save file for. You probably don't speak their language, and you'll never meet them. Yet you're supposed to sacrifice something precious for them.
This is something that I read a long time ago from Grimoire Nier or some other supplementary material so my memory is a bit foggy. This one need to be checked again, but about the original Yonah having a black scrawl at the beginning was not quite the same with Replicant's black scrawl. It was probably because she was turning into a relapse shade. It was more similar to Kaine when Tyrant relapsed in her body and turning her into complete shade, because Kaine also has similar black scrawl like thing when she's about to turn into shade. During the tutorial timeline, apparently a bunch of scientists were conducting experimentation to find the person who can assimilate with Grimoire Noir. So they gathered a bunch of people in the area where the tutorial stage happened, by telling them that they take refuges and promising food and safety. Then these scientists had them touched Grimoire Noir, which is probably the reason why there's a lot of relapsed shade around the convenience store area where Nier and Yonah were. The people who failed to assimilate, turned into relapsed shade not long after touching Noir (at this point Replicant system was still in development so there's no replicant yet). Not sure how Grimoire Noir ended up there though.... They found Nier and Yonah soon after the tutorial stage end and took them in, then put Yonah into some kind of static sleep to slow down the relapse, but that also made Nier felt resentful towards them. And I believe they also speed up Replicant System development cause Nier was getting impatient and restless about Yonah. So Yonah's replicant probably always has the black scrawl cause the Original Yonah already half-relapsed way before the Replicant System was completed. Edit: Right I remember a bit more. Yonah and Nier were also among the people that came to seek refuge but later he accidentally witness what happened to the other refuges. So he took Yonah and escaped, however he also instictivelly brought Noir along with him.
In the Drama CD it's explained that Tyrann is a fake name and is actually the Gestalt of a guy called Yura Masayoshi, who was a violent leader of a military unit. He overtook the organisation responsible for experimenting on Emil and his sister and then was eventually outcast. He used the name Tyrann to sneak his way back in to being part of the gestalt project. Just thought it makes more sense as to why Tyrann is more violent than the other shades. There's also a part about how Weiss became the book, who the grimoire in the mansion was etc in it. It's a cool expansion on the lore and if you get chance you should definitely check it out.
Personally I feel that the repetition and recontextualization of Nier go hand in hand, not in making the player feel bad for their actions, but for creating a sense of performativeness in the player and desensitizing them to violence. Beyond guilt, desire, duty, vengeance, madness, what is violence for? Once all emotional ties to action are dissolved, Nier(the game) looks for answers beyond that, or at least tries to. I think the repetition of playthroughs follows a pattern that many weapon stories do. The first two entries hook you with bold characterization and economic language. The second entry is a descent into madness. The third entry is one word written over and over again. The fourth entry (arguably) is the player trying to find meaning in the story beyond the meaning the characters know.
So shades are not all relapsed. Shade nier is using his magic to stabilize the shades. Its due to him neglecting his duties that cause the shades to begin relapsing in greater quantities. At the end of the day the shades need their bodies back as you guys mentioned. So there is an antagonistic relationship by default even without communication. There's definitely more room for nuance I was surprised to hear the mermaid was a new addition as it was my favorite shade story in the game and felt the most well written aside from the forest of myth.
To add to this (from my understanding): At the end of route C, Tyrann isn’t intentionally taking over Kainé’s body. The effect that the Shadowlord’s death has on all remaining Shades is that they relapse. Tyrann is relapsing, and Kainé is trapped in the crossfire.
@@jacksonschwarz9592 I’ve loved this game for ten years and this is the first time I’ve seen the mental math of why the Shade takes over Kainé at that exact moment and why Tyrann can’t stop it. Thank you.
I've been rewatching this one, and after finishing Outer Wilds latest episode, the talk about acceptance towards the end of this one hits different now. Love what you guys do 🤘
The big flower at the end of ending E definitely IS a Drakengard 3 reference, in some capacity. It wasn’t mentioned in the original novella (at least I don’t think so) and even then, someone like Yoko Taro doesn’t just ‘coincidentally’ end up with giant white five-petal flowers in two separate games. Additionally, one of the Androids say “I hear a song” right before that scene, a direct reference to the Drakengard 1 boss the flower is based on. I’m not sure quite what the significance is, but there’s no way it’s not an intentional connection.
Oh yeah, didn't the Japanese hunt down the wolves to near extinction? That'd be another parallel between Facade and Japan. Also don't forget that Taro is the given name while Yoko is the family name. That's why people like Hideki Kamiya refer to him as "Yoko-san".
The weapon stories are pretty cool I like how 10 to 12 of the weapons are from Drakengard. And the fool's weapons their weapon stores literally tell the story of Angelus and Caim.
A bit late for this, but thank you for mentioning my comment. In the end, maybe the whole rule zero business was sort of moot since _the king of Facade was the one that gave Nier the power to override their own legal system,_ Nier didn't come and conquer them to force his morals, ethics and culture down their throats or anything.
I've been meaning to check out that game for a while now, I've had it sitting on my vita tv for months. If they decide to talk about it in the next few episodes I'll probably play it along with them
In the discussion on rule 0 that NieR adds. I think this just comes down to that their are 2 themes being explored. 1) You should respect other cultures even though you might not immediately understand it. 2) rules of society can be stifling and contradictory to its people. You are set up with this issue of the king has gone missing and his people can not search for him. You are given a very short conflict better fiera and other masked people. Fiera is willing to break the rules while the others aren't and to avoid a conflict. NieR offers himself as the scapegoat around the rules that bind them. NieR comes up with Rule 0 only after seeing and understanding the conflicts and only offers his solution after being given the power to do so by the King (the leader of that society) and empowering the other masked people to actively take part in the growth and formation of their own culture not just the royal family. The key difference between NieR and wiess is Wiess immediately dismisses the culture while NeiR waited to understand the culture before providing input and left it up to them to come up with solutions for themselves as a community. This isn't 100% just NieR inforcing his views because Feira was already about to break the cultural norms. He more impowering voices that already existed. Though you could say the fact that he used the word "voting" is him enforcing his culture over theirs.
It's been an emotionally painful week. Thank God for you guys and your impecable timing. BTW. Will you consider analyzing the Yakuza series? Either way, I'm voting Xenogears. I can't believe I played that when I was 10...
I like the rule 0 debate. I only struggle with one thing. The assertion that it’s the wrong choice for the story. I’d argue it’s not incorrect considering who is making the choice. Nier is making a character choice and Nier is literally a white savior and a flawed character. I think it makes alot of sense for him to make that choice.
As much as I love the game, I agree it's so annoying how, despite the amount of chances there was to work it out, Shades and Replicants NEVER try to communicate or if they do, Nier just ignores it. -Whenever Nier meets a shade that doesn't attack him, he says shit like "I don't care, it's a shade" (Memory tree, tutorial shades, Shade in the Village and Emil's Library sidequests etc) -Shades can literally talk but never try to do anything with it -The mermaid LITERALLY has a human voice -Even after finding out shades are humans, you mow down a room full of them. -Devola and Popola always say cryptic shit and tell you legends that Grimoire Noir and the Shadowlord are evil even tho they want Weiss and Noir to fuse There's so many examples of characters hiding information or being cryptic for the sake of it or insane amounts of coincidences leading to Nier killing innocent Shades that it gets annoying. I do appreciate how Yoko Taro's writing developed in Automata, since i think it's done better there. Most of the bosses are evil or dangerous and area like the Amusement Park cover passive enemies in a better way. It's way more morally grey and feels less "guilt trippy"
Shades can talk, but it's not shown in the game they can communicate with Replicant's, even though the mermaid may have been a case to show that they eventually could communicate with us. Without the help of the postman, that wouldn't be the case, so I think it's really the shades and replicants are speaking two different languages, even though potentially that could change, in the current state of the game's time, it's not the case. I also don't think this game was intended to provoke an ego centric response as in, the main protagonists having the options to change the course of the situation into "Grey areas". The game was clearly meant to display the tragedy that emerges from not understanding another. So, the player isn't supposed to be goody two shoes hero that can do no wrong, it's supposed to show the player that no matter how much resolve, you could be banishing, or killing something not so different from yourself, and it's not explicitly stating Nier is now the "bad guy". It's simply showing there's more side to a situation than some care to see. Most of the negative response I see to only showing layers 1 at a time, before the whole picture is revealed is that it somehow guided the player into not having a choice, but that's not what it's about, it's not about the player. Talk about missing the point.
The difference between the relapse and non relapse is that the relapsed Gestalts have lost their sentience and turned hostile. Originally every Gestalt immediately relapsed when they turned into a Gestalt, most likely due to the process of separating the soul from the body, until they were able to find Shadowlord/Nier who retained their sentience upon turning into a Gestalt when they touched Grimoire Noir. They proceeded to use Shadowlord as a way to stabilize the project, allowing everyone to retain their sentience upon becoming a Gestalt. However, there turned out to be a bug in that and the Shadowlord's aid only slowed it and some started to relapse and the Replicants gaining sentience also made them reject their Gestalt which can also cause this. Once a Shade relapses they can never return to their Replicant. So while most Shades have not relapsed some however have, the passive shades are non relapsed and maybe even some of the hostile ones (who wear armor) are not. My assumption is the passive ones at least pre timeskip are not relapsed and post timeskip, you've established yourself as a threat so they're acting in defense really. The Shades who talk like the wolf have not relapsed.
1:55:30 Something interesting that I haven't seen others mention is that the Shade seems to say that those babies were actually born recently as Shades. So they could have just recently found a way to repopulate, they only needed to stop relapsing.
Absolutely need Xenogears to win the poll! I recently picked up the book Childhood's End to get ready for a replay so I'm already in go mode (FF6 would be cool regardless though)
I think that the Shadowlord can use powers to kind of "force" OG Yonah into the Replicant but, apart from that, Noir and Weiss are required. I get that the Gestalt Project was basically the last ditch effort to say humanity but it makes you wonder if they knew all this was a risk or if they were just woefully under prepared to deal with the whole "Step 1:remove soul from body. Step 2. ???? Step 3. Souls go back into their body" thing. I'm not sure if there was ever a place they were supposed to chill while waiting, or just wander about but that's why not every shade is outright hostile. As they start to lose themselves, the seem to lose more of the capacity for "rational thinking" and can sometimes merge together to make bigger, more aggressive shades (like the big flower-ball-thing you fight before Emil nukes the Aerie). The ones not completely "gone" clearly show intelligence by "speaking", wearing a bunch of shields for an uncomfortable-looking suit, using weapons, etc. As for why any of this happened at all... I'm not 100% sure. I believe the people who created Project Gestalt didn't expect it to take as long as it did to get rid of White Chlorination, so at some point there was probably a breakdown in communication or some other issue that only left the Devolas, Weiss, Noir and the Shadowlord aware of what was happening. The time skip is _huge_ (at least in human time scales) and most people have a hard time planning a week ahead, let alone 1000+ years. If we fast forward to Automata, there's still the potential that White Chlorination is floating about. The logic virus that infects the YoRHa seems very similar to Red Eye and the Legion. Eve also gets a Watcher tattoo when he gets ma-yud so... The Watchers hate them some humanity, after all and the androids are pretty close and were initially made by humans. Probably. Did humans make Accord... Accords? DrakeNier lore is weird. Dunno if any of that's confirmed or intended but I saw a possible link there. Oh, also, we don't know much about Tyrann other then he was a really violent dude named Yura Masayoshi who tried to sneak into being Gestaltenated or whatever so they did but then they also destroyed his Replicant. So after that he just faffs about the world, possessing Replicants and having himself a grand, merry ol' merderin' time. I'm not sure how Ending D happens but a theory I saw and like is it may be Pact Magic. It's possible that, like blood magic, it came over when Caim and Angelus got pulled into Tokyo by Gross Giant Salt Barbie Who Also Happens To Be A KISS Fan. Nier gets what he wants by pact-ing with Tyrann and Kainé is healed but the price (similar to Caim's ability to speak or his tongue, I don't remember for sure) is everybody forgets Nier existed... except for that tree. Why? Uh... The game's not what's important, it's the "?" speech bubble it makes come out of your head? That's my answer and I'm sticking to it.
In respects to the moment at 2:21:24, I just want to mention that in the Japanese version, all Tyrann says is 'nani?', so that 'it is' is more of a localization thing than him actually having a sudden change of heart. Another correction: after that when Kaine goes berserk, Tyrann doesn't start to take her over. He starts to relapse further and loses the ability to hold even himself back as both of their sentience fades. The choice he gives Nier, while no less arbitrary, is not an ultimatum from him, it's some intrinsic rule of the universe (I guess) that allows Nier to save her life by erasing himself. This doesn't really change the plot but kind of deepens Tyrann's character, since at this point he was basically just doing his best to save Kaine regardless of what happens to him(keep in mind that in ending D Kaine goes back to a normal human, implying that Tyrann dies, but even though both of the options he gives to Nier result in his death he doesn't complain).
With the wolves, instead of saying, "what did we do to deserve this?", I think something more neutral and broad would've been more effective. Something like "How did things get so out of hand?" or "Why did it have to come to this?". I think those convey a sense of understanding as to the reason of the conflict without understanding that total annihilation would be somewhere down the line.
Kaine is basically not allowed to soften up. If she starts having warm feelings towards others or at least display anything other than hard as balls attitude Tyrann takes over. She's a prisoner of that attitude in that sense. It's explained in the text intermission I think
It's interesting that you feel that the story was trying to guilt trip the player because I never once felt that even a little. I think all of that was just there for the purpose of expanding the perspective, broadening the scope and lasering in on the tragedy of all of it while showing how complicated and layered some of these issues really are. I don't agree that the story is trying to make the player feel guilty for doing what Nier does and the reason why you feel like it fell so flat in that way is because that isn't the intent IMO.
In the aerie, you can actually go down ladders even quicker if your good at directing the character, just jump down where the ladder is, it almost always works, and you just go right down where you need too.
Arguably Nier was operating within Facade’s rule system, as they HAD to grant him a boon, and the boon he asked was a rule 0. Which means everything still fell within the whole rule system of Facade, and changing a rule as needed is also a rule now
I think what's also important to know about the original Nier on PS360 is that imo it was a game JRPG fans desperately needed when it came out. Games with dumbster fire stories and garbage characterizations like FF XIII, Infinite Undiscovery (yeah that dinner dinner dinner meme game), Star Ocean 4 and Tales of Graces F made me so cynical and bitter towards that genre for almost a year until i discovered Nier. And the funniest thing is that of all games i mentioned Nier is by far the one with the lowest amount of budget put into it. What a terrible terrible time it was geez.
the 7th generation of jrpgs on consoles was such a disater. on handhelds it was fine as you had stuff like radiant historia and alot of great stuff on the psp. but on consoles? tales of vesperia and nier mostly.
There is English subtitles for the Nier replicant drama CD. Which elaborates more important details about human Kain'e and her past shadowlord and Yonah ,Emil and Tyran / Yura. Plus playing the game of replicants and listening to the CD kind of makes your experience of the characters more interesting.
Loved the discussion and agree with almost all of your points! A few things I'd like to add: 1) Kali as Kainé's biological grandmother: Is the narrator in that section reliable? If they aren't, then there's a good chance that Kali and Kainé are not blood relatives. Why would Kainé not know about even having a grandmother? While we know nothing about Kainé's parents, Kali, at least, doesn't strike me as someone who'd permanently cut contact to her child (Kainé's parent) over anything, whatever may happen between them. Isn't it just as likely that Kali decided to take in the orphaned Kainé and just told her that they're related to make her feel less alone? I think both interpretations of this part are valid. 2) Not continuing the game as a valid 'choice': That entire topic is very reminiscent of the 2012 military shooter Spec Ops: The Line. Including an action forced on the player to be able to continue which only turns out to be terrible with information learned after the fact. And presenting as a very typical game of its genre in the beginning. And "The only way to not be the villain is to stop playing" fits perfectly as well. Finally, the criticism of being too on the nose and shouting "How could you!?!??!" too much applies to it, too. 3) Chicken and egg: Even if we could draw a line between chicken and pre-chicken and asked whether the chicken egg came before the chicken, it's merely a question of definition: Is a chicken egg an egg laid by a chicken or an egg from which a chicken will hatch? If the former, then the chicken was first. If the latter, the chicken egg was first. 4) On Ending D: I agree that the option comes out of nowhere. I feel like getting Weiss or Noir involved could have helped it seem believable. After all, they were to play a role in joining Replicants with Gestalts and recreating humans. No clue why they didn't at least grab Noir's "corpse" and used it somehow for that purpose. 5) Route E: Small note: The androids don't just use the faces of 2B and 9S but also their voice actors. Edit: Thinking about it, it's a bit weird. 2B is based on A2 ("Number Two" in the YorHa stage play) who is likely based on a previous model also called "Number Two" from the Nier Automata concert (also avilable as a reading in English on the RUclips channel of 9S' VA Kyle McCarley). Anways, a precursor to the model 2 line should, I think, be more similar to A2 than to 2B. 6) Ending E and Drakengard 3: The connection goes beyond just the flower in the eye. The final Drakengard 3 ending does feature a giant white flower coming out of the ground and a female character at its center which then turns into (almost) a copy of Drakengard 1's ending E battle. Considering how that one connects to Nier, I can't (or don't want to) believe that the imagery is just coincidental. 7) There's another connection to Drakengard (3) in 1.224...: One of the loading screen diary entries mentions a merchant called Accord which has to be the same as the timeline-hopping/controlling android from Drakengard 3 - especially seeing as Accord is also mentioned as a merchant in Automata. I believe this mention wasn't in the original Nier release. Finally, I'd like to recommend Clemps' video essays on the Drakengard and Nier games - if you can deal with his... eccentricity. He goes into a lot of detail, not just summarizing the events of the games but also concerning the supplementary material (which a lot of people don't even know exists) and how it might all connect.
I feel like not feeling guilty about killing the shade and the robot was the point. Humans always believe they are doing the right thing with the information they have.
I don't know if it means anything (it probably does) but I love the bookend that the original version of Nier begins with Kaine's foul mouthed rant on Weiss in anger, and in this version, the game ends with Kaine cursing you the player/Nier out in anger but also a bit of love
26:30 Minor point but the name of the English sailor that Shogun's Blackthorne is based on was William ADAMS. The protagonist of the original Nioh was also based on him.
One thing to touch on while I'm only an hour in, Tyrann's name is pronounced differently from Gestalt (Tie-ran) to Replicant 1.22 (Tear-an). And that's why people debate over the correct pronunciation.
I know it's almost been two years but I just finished Ending E and can confirm that players who started with "random names" won't actually get stuck. If you enter the Name at the very end wrong you'll hear the young Brother faintly saying some things. This repeats a few times until Grimoire Weiss just goes: "You really are a handful even at the very end." and if you enter it wrong one more time Weiss will just tell you which name you have to enter. I was tempted to keep entering my name wrong after that but I'm pretty sure that the game would have just shown me credits and thrown me back to the main menu after enough tries and I didn't want to redo the whole section. But I've tried looking up what happens if you keep entering the wrong name and it seems like nobody has documented this so now I kind of regret not pushing the game further.
Even though I'd never thought about it before, I kind of agree that the recontextualization is very arbitrary. I suppose it was too obvious they want to make you feel bad. I have to admit though, they really get to me with story of the wolves. I REFUSE to kill wolves in this game. Except for the ones that are story or quest mandatory, I never kill them. That flashback that Roc has at the end, the innocence and the happiness in his younger self's expression when he remembers his grandfather, that scene crushes me. Perhaps it's because it's an animal, which would be unable to understand any better. Think about it, they are not killing children out of malice. Animals function in terms of survivability. I don't know. What I know is that his story brings me to almost shedding tears every single time.
A shade is just the replicant's word for a gestalt. A shade that isn't aggressive hasn't relapsed. They only become aggressive once they relapse. The relapsing also causes the black scrawl to appear on a replicant. If their shade hasn't relapsed, no black scrawl. Tyrann also isn't a relapsed shade. He was a murderer while human. He does start to relapse after ending C/D, when you kill or save Kaine.
Yoko Taro has never said that killing is bad or that that’s the the of or message of Nier, he once said that he used to think that someone that killed dozens and hundreds of people had to be a psycho (in reference to Caim) but years later he realized that that’s not necessarily true, but rather than being a psycho, that person had to think what they’re doing is right, and that’s what’s happening in Nier, he doesn’t kill people because he’s a psycho but because he thinks he’s the good one and noble and right.
Yep. And this is why the characterization of Nier as being nihilistic is so totally off base. The point of the story is that there is meaning and purpose on all sides. The error is assuming moral supremacy and using that as a justification for inhuman acts. No heroes, no villains just competing imperatives in an emotionally-driven world. Emotion versus rationalization being the "wet" versus "dry" distinction in Yoko's approach between this game and Automata.
I wonder, had YT made it so that Ending B revolves around Kaine understanding the shades and facing this struggle of telling NieR what’s up and allowing herself to go soft and allow Tyrann to take control OR keeping the information from NieR and bottling up the pain of knowing what they’re doing in order to keep control over her own body.. I wonder if that would have made Ending B better at all. Like you said, if Kaine had been the playable character. I’m not sure if that’s what you were trying to get at with that comment.
2:25:53 quick note: I believe it's mentioned in grimoire nier or one of the other stories that the scientist who was walking with Emil and abusive to him in that story segment was in fact Tyrann
1:39:34 I just wanted to touch on the ecosystem bit regarding the replicants turning a forest into a desert; Australia has experienced this with the introduction of rabbits, whereby they begin to compete with existing species (they've apparently contributed to the extinction of many animals in Australia) and overgraze, so they essentially eat the forests until there's little to nothing left. The damage is extensive but has only been occurring the last 150 years which, relatively speaking, isn't very long. And the gestalts don't seem to die of old age? (Someone correct me if I'm wrong.) Another place that comes to mind is the island of Sicily; because of intensive agriculture the island is much drier and arid than before with parts of the island being completely devoid of forests. And it probably happened over the course of a few decades rather than a few millenia.
1:20:00 about you being the Shadowlord to the Shades. It's not just the Shades, Nier is remembered as the Destroyer or the World-Ender by the time of Automata.
atlest with the wolves i feel the intention was for both to be in the wrong it is the most grey of the scenarios. i think relapsed shades are meant to be the ones that fuse so the giant ones. goose is the one exception as she is still sane after fusing. as the game does not make it clear if the small ones or the ones with armor are defending themselves or not.
I'm a little late but I didn't see anyone comment on it - I did the mansion library shade on play thru C, sadly the shade doesn't say anything at all 🤷 in case anyone still wondering
Hard disagree with the take on B. There are only two cases of "black and white". Gretel and Kalil. There is a reason it's the only two that come back to haunt Kainé in E, in her memories. You guys mistook it for a boss rush. But it wasn't. It didn't have Roc (who btw is a gestalted dog, not a human), it didn't have the boar, it didn't have the aerie shades (but it had the actual villagers from her past!), it had no bosses outside of Gretel, Kalil, the androids tell you why they picked those two. It's because of how Kainé felt. There is another scene they added from the original, that happens right after you kill Kalil. Gretel and Kalil (and I guess Louise) are the only times Kainé actually questions herself. The weight of accepting these were not monsters is too much to handle so she is in denial. Even in E. The androids try to guilt trip her and she dismisses it. So they then send her worst memory, Hook. All the other bosses, have your actions being justified in some fashion. It was either self defense or revenge. The backstory just means "it sucks" for everybody. Not "oh I guess you were a terrible person the whole time". Obviously not. The kids with Gretel don't understand what they are and they kill themselves, they run into the sun, which I guess Nier should have questioned. And for Kalil, the whole Junkheap is about how irrational hatred makes someone, no one is supposed to side with Gideon. His hate infected Nier and us into doing this pointless thing that we don't question either at first glance. Nier realizes it was wrong, it's the only time he actually reacts that way in the whole game. Gideon is also the only "important" character of a fragment arc not to get any proper cutscene for his adult self, because this game uses cutscenes to tie emotional beats to characters, and they wanted to separate Gideon from it as much as possible, there is a wall. A disconnect. You did correctly point out why shades don't bother trying to communicate with replicants, they see them as soulless shells that are refusing to hand back their bodies. It's only a matter of time until Gestalts relapse because of Replicants becoming sentient, they do not want to "cohabitate", they just want their bodies back. So for some of them, the sooner they die and get reborn, the less likely they are to develop a consciousness. As to why they're within human bodies in the Aerie, I think they touch upon that in Grimoire Nier. (which btw gets a new updated version on July 9th, so maybe wait for that date for the next podcast in case some important stuff is added) Regarding D, Nier says he loves Kainé during the final boss fight. He wouldn't give up on someone he loves, he literally says that. Yonah has been saved (that he knows), of course he'd give up his existence up for Kainé. He knows Kainé can watch over Yonah. He thinks Yonah is finally cured, and she is safe from the Shadowlord. Keep in mind, at the end, Yonah is temporarily healed, she can stand, she can jump, she is smiling, she isn't coughing anymore, the black scrawl disappeared etc..., in Nier's mind, he "saved" her. That's why he can let go and then save Kainé.
I only made the comment about the project, because in the last podcast you guys confused the details or at the least presented them in a confusing way. But if you guys understood, it was probably just a mistake in the moment. Thank you for clearing that up.
I know i’m late, but i just finished nier replicant and this has been a really great way to digest it. thank you so much for the great content. It is so fascinating to come to this understanding and here y’all’s perspectives on it, though i can’t say i entirely agree with the stuff about part B feeling hamfisted with the guilt it’s trying to instil into you. A and B both give contrasting views, and i think that creates the moral grey of the game since both sides can’t possibly interact. One gives a black view of things and another white, but viewed in tandem that IS grey, giving that chicken or the egg feeling you both talked about. Even with the robot in the Junk Heap, you appear and Beepy immediately says “Exterminate” before you start fighting. it’s not meant to make you feel guilty the whole way through but make everything into a tragic misunderstanding
I know I’m late, just finished the game a couple hours ago, but I just want to say that, regarding the “what comes first, chicken or egg”… I think in the case of NieR, relapsed shades didn’t appear until the first replicant didn’t gain self-consciousness. A healthy Gestald wouldn’t attack a replicant, but I think a non-sapient replicant wouldn’t attack a shade either. So I think it is kind of a system in a perfect 50-50 balance that simply becomes exponentially unstable until it can only destroy itself entirely (both parts)
The 15 nightmares, world of the recycled vessel DLC I'm looking forward to plus the lower of text is telling information from the drama CD which is cool. And I like how you play us brother and Papa Nier. Depends on which version you have.
@Resonant Arc Okay, so here's just a few more corrections. When looking at some of the things you were talking about. First off, The Shade Wolf known as Roc, is actually a wolf. This is something they actually show in the B scenario. Roc was a Pet to a human owner. During the commencement of Project Gestalt, Roc's owner had the dog undergo the Gestaltization process, separating Roc's soul from his body. Causing him to become a Gestalt. During the 1400 years that took place between project gestalt beginning and NieR Replicant's story, Roc becomes the leader to a pack of wolfs, the territory they resided in was once a Forest. However, due to either the Replicants or humans (prior to or after them being transformed into Gestalts) the Forest underwent Desertification, in which what was once the Forest the wolfs lived in slowly transformed into a barren Desert that is now inhabited by the Replicants. In this case, the people of Facade. The story surrounding the conflict between the wolfs and Facade's people isn't clear cut, it wasn't a matter of "The Wolfs were eating the peoples children which is why Facade are killing them". To the Wolfs, The Kingdom of Facade are trespassers on their territory, they were the one's who turned their home into mostly a inhospitable desert, contaminating the water with sand and their streams and due to the desertification, the wolfs literally have no source of food. They're not likely to find sheep, goats, or buffalo to hunt down and eat. With maybe the only things that could even *possibly* be a potential substitute being the mutated Scorpions, Spiders, and Bats, all of which reside in Facades territories just outside the Kingdom and within the Barren Temple. Both of which the Wolf's wouldn't even have a chance to eat because the Barren Temple is riddled with magical guardians and seals that force you to obey Facade's rules and of course the Scorpions are outside Facade's Kingdom itself, which is guarded by the Men of The Mask. So you take into consideration all of that, the wolfs effectively no longer have a food source, the only thing keeping them alive is the last pure water well spring that is located in their den. And if the wolfs being slowly starved to death isn't enough for Roc's pack to deal with, they're constantly being hunted and killed literally for NO REASON. We actually see this in the side quest in Act I for NieR Replicant's story after we first visit Facade. We're forced to save the Facade Blacksmith's son from becoming a Man of The Mask in the side quest "The Littlest Hero". It's shown to us that for citizens of Facade who wish to become Men of The Mask, there is a ceremony where they go to the wolf's den and basically kill a bunch of them. In the side quest itself it's revealed that the blacksmith's son isn't actually a part of the Men of The Mask yet because they weren't given a letter of approval from his father, which is required as per Facade's rules, so the son travels to the wolf's den to prove he's worthy to become a Man of the Mask, which ends up roping us (NieR) into going into the wolfs den with him, killing a couple dozen of wolfs. So given the evidence from Act I and what we come to find out later supported by evidence in Act II Route B and onward, the People of Facade were basically carrying out genocide against the wolfs. Albeit unknowingly given them not knowing the state of Roc and what his pack was forced to endure, but still a genocide nonetheless. The finale straw that broke the camels back in the end being The Men of The Mask killing more of the Wolfs in the packs Den in which finally sees Roc's hope for peace with the Human-Replicants futile as they have quit LITERALLY have only killed them simply for being. Which lead to the Wolf's attack on Facade, Roc killing Fyra, and the King of Facade along with the Men of the Mask and NieR with his companions exterminate the Wolf's, kill Roc, and finally the genocide is complete. As for Roc and his nature as a Gestalt, it is to be assumed that he has a Replicant, in which could be a Wolf that resides somewhere in the world. So had Weiss and Noir merged, Roc would become a wolf again. It is also to be inferred that Roc also receives the Maso that is harvested from the Shadowlord, therefore that being the reason he still has his sentience. Although it could also be speculated that given Roc isn't even a human and instead is a wolf, the nature of his Gestalt could be totally different. In which case he may not suffer a relapse like humans would. But that's only speculation on my part.
@Resonant Arc As for Louise, well... No one really knows *what* she is/was, if you read/listened to the dialogue with Devola and Popola in the extra scenes from Route C, Devola explains that Louise doesn't have a Replicant and she was more or less intended to be used by the twins to help them apprehend the Shadowlord, since by this point in the story he has gone rogue and was speeding up Project Gestalt far more then what was intended, forcing Popola and Devola to help him override the Replicant system so Gestalts could be united with their Replicants. So Louise was not possessing a Replicant, but much rather was so powerful in Magic that she tried to suppress her power to assume a more human form. This is alluded to with other Magically powerful Gestalts too in various side quest you take during Act II. With the only real case of Gestalt's possessing Replicant's being the story quest when you investigate the Arie Village. Due Replicants having sentience, this makes Gestalt's *physically* unable to possess Replicant bodies, therefore resulting in heightened aggression, which we see the reason behind in Route B as we know by this point the Shadowlord is trying to merge Weiss with Noir, which would not only see Yonah saved by having her Gestalt unite with her Replicant body, but also every human Gestalt unite with their own as well. However, if a Gestalt forcibly tries to take possession of a Replicant body, this results in a Relapse due to the Souls of Replicants and Humans not being able to reside in one vessel, this starts turning Gestalts into the mindless Monsters we see. Creatures such as Wendy, which is a relapsed Gestalt you fight in the Arie in Act II, and also Tyrann after we kill the Shadowlord.
@Resonant Arc Also when responding to the criticism that you guys had about Route B and how it was done, the reason why every boss we fight in the 2nd Act we fought are pitched as sympathetic is because we're supposed to empathize with them. When it comes to the Gestalts (Shades) we fight in Act I, there are many clues that we could glean that point to our actions having consequences, Route B doesn't only just show us reasons why we should empathize with the Shades we have fought and killed, but showed us that we have also been responsible for many of the tragic things that have happened to these characters. In Act I, we killed Hansel while trying to save Yonah. This results in Gretel mourning the loss of his brother and in Route B it shows us how Gretel comes to terms with the Death of his brother and move on, becoming a Guardian to the Orphaned Shade children whose Parents we killed in Act I. With this, we see Gretel find a new purpose and a New family in the form of the orphaned children. Shades, who Gretel once saw as Inferior, he now values them as the people they really are. Had we not come to the Lost Shrine, Gretel would've left with the Orphaned Shades and see the world living peacefully with the new family he found in the children. Obviously with Route B in the Junk Heap, we see that Gideon was responsible for the death of his brother and given the presence of P-33 and Kalil (the orphaned Shade boy) Gideon assumed them to be responsible for the debris falling and collapsing onto Gideon's brother. However in Route B, we come to see the story of both Kalil and P-33 expanded upon so we can empathize with them. Kalil and his Mother lived in the Junk Heap, to seek refuge from the hostile Replicants. But do to Replicants having been occasionally known to venture into the Junk Heap to salvage medal alloys to help them enhance their swords, Mercenaries raided the Junk Heap believing there to be a Shade Nest. This results in Kalil and his mother being cornered by the Mercenaries. Out of a desire to protect her son so he may continue to live, Kalil's mother sacrifices herself to lead the Mercenaries away. This results in her death. We then later see P-33 discover Kalil, initially intending to kill the orphaned Shade seeing it as a trespasser. However upon seeing Kalil mourn the death of his Mother, P-33 inquires why Kalil is crying. Upon Kalil explaining his Mother's death and also how he can't go outside because of the Hostile Replicants were going to kill him, meaning he would die, P-33 suddenly remembers his creator and that he died thousands of years ago before Project Gestalt. P-33 held an attachment to the person that created him because he counted how much time had past since the death of his maker. Realizing that P-33 had also lost someone very close to him, Kalil was immediately able to empathize with the Robot. With P-33 realizing that he himself had no purpose anymore since his creator died, P-33 swore to protect Kalil. During the Junk Heap segment in Route B, we are then treated to scenes where we see Kalil and P-33 bond with each other. So much so, that they have become friends. Upon witnessing the death of Gideon's brother Jakob, P-33 correctly points out because of Gideon's carelessness, he ended up indirectly causing Jakob's death saving Gideon from the falling debris. As we see NieR reunite with Gideon for the first time after 5 years and help Gideon in his quest to avenge the death of his brother at the hands of the Robot he believed killed him, we are treated to more scenes of Kalil and P-33 bonding and becoming friends. We see that at this point, Kalil has finally moved passed mourning the death of his Mother, having found companionship with P-33. And we see that P-33 has moved passed the loss of his Maker, having found a friend in Kalil and a purpose in protecting him. With the both of them making plans to finally leave the Junk Heap and explore the world. Something they would've done had NieR and his companions not showed up to kill them both. With P-33, now Beepy, no longer wanting to see Kalil die, the Robot attacks our main characters to protect Kalil, who at this point simply wants to leave the Junk Heap so Beepy could survive. After we defeat Beepy, we end up fighting Kalil, who ends up using magical abilities to duplicate himself and protect Beepy from being Destroyed. Of course though, we successfully kill Kalil, which now sees Beepy mourning the death of his friend that gave him new purpose to live right before being destroyed. We then meet Louis in Route B. Louise is a powerful Gestalt with almost an unlimited affinity in Magical power. When we see her in Route B, we look at her perspective featuring the Postman. Someone who we previously met in Act I of the story. To simply put, the Postman ends up taking care of Louise. During the time we see him take care of her and Louise's bond to the Postman becoming closer, we see the Postman still mourns the death of the Light House Lady from Act I. This ends up seeing the Postman take care of Louise, who gives him a means to help him move on. And given how strongly attached to the girl he becomes, he eventually desires to adopt her as his daughter. Since we discover Louise to be Shade, this causes Louise to attack us in defense, due too us discovering her having kidnapped and eaten the Replicants that lived in Seafront. Louise believed that by eating people she would become "human" and be able to live with the Postman as his daughter. Of course, given that he knows she is a Shade at this point, we know how the story ends with them. In Route C however, when we successfully kill Louise without the Postman's help, at the end of the Main Story Quest "The Mermaid" Kaine gives the Postman Louise's letter, since the Postman taught her to write, Louise intended to give him a "Thank You" letter. Out of appreciation for all the Postman did for her. As a result, despite knowing Louise was brutally killing the people of Seafront and also a Shade, the Postman still couldn't help but mourn her death, as he still cared for and loved her. We then have the Arie Village in Route B. Basically what we have here, are Shades that desire to become human again and live peacefully, without the threat of being killed. NieR and his companions investigate the Arie upon hearing strange news that the village has now opened up to outsiders. This results to NieR discovering that the Shades have possessed some of the Villagers and due to the Gestalts having become aware of NieR's reputation by this point, they attack him and his companions in self defense, telling him that NieR had been responsible for the deaths of well over hundreds of men, women, and children at this point. Most of whom never even harmed him. The Shades tell NieR that they want him to leave them alone so they can live in peace. NieR doesn't understand them though and just keeps killing them. Due to the Gestalts and their desire to become human again, but also their inability to maintain their Replicant bodies because of Replicants being sentient, this results in the Gestalts now becoming fully relapsed. With the Gestalts and the souls of the Replicants they once possessed now becoming the fully relapsed Shade known as Wendy. Who we end up killing with the combined power of Grimoire Weiss and Emil. Due to Emil tapping into his nature as a magical weapon though, he ends up destroying the entire Arie Village. Which killed not only the Relapsed Gestalts, but also the remaining Replicants that were still alive. Emil is understandably upset, since he realized that he killed innocent people. NieR however, helps him cope with this. Then last but not least, we have Roc the leader of the Wolf Pack. Roc laments how the "humans" have come into their once dense Forest territories and have transformed it into a inhospitable Desert. Despite the wolfs of his Pack having suffered a great deal at the hands of the people of Facade, Roc still has hope that the Wolfs and the Facade people would be able to coexist together, fondly recounting the memories he had of his owner prior to becoming a Gestalt. Unfortunately though, Roc and his Pack return to find that many of their Wolf kin had been brutally slaughtered by the Men of The Mask while the Pack was away from the Wolf Den. Due to the Wolfs having suffered at the hands of the Facade people, having been killed for Years without ever harming them unless out of self defense, Roc become outraged and stopped persisting with any false hope for Peace with the Facade people. This leads to the Wolfs attacking The New King's wedding, killing a hundred or so people including Roc killing Fyra, the King's bride and Kaine and NieR's friend. This results in the King and the Men of The Mask, along with NieR and his companions to retaliate against the wolfs and finally exterminate their remaining population. This ultimately ends with the King killing Roc, to avenge the death of his bride Fyra. As we see the Shade Wolf Die, questioning what happened for the Wolfs to suffer and die as they did. We see Roc think back to the time he departed his owner before getting transformed into a Gestalt. Ending with his owner telling Roc to think of him every now and then. With Roc viewing his owner as his Father.
@Resonant Arc From all of the re-contextualized scenes in Route B and onward, we see a very specific theme. One that you guys already figured out when looking at Ending B for the Shadowlord. And that is the acceptance of Death, moving on, trying to find a new purpose in life, and not being chained to the past or stuck mourning or returning to it. We see many of the bosses we have faced embrace this theme in Route B one way or another when looking at the stories of Gretel, Beepy and Kalil, The Divine Tree, The Arie Shades, Louise and the Postman, Roc the Shade Wolf, and last but not least the Shadowlord and Yonah. With this all being brought to head with ending B, in which not only just shows the Shadowlord and Yonah reunited in the afterlife, but also the many Shade bosses we fought throughout the game being reunited with their loved ones, as we see them in the background as Human NieR and Yonah are reunited with each other again after everything we see them endure throughout the story. That is why ending B and onward, in my opinion at least, is not only good in making us feel horrible for what we did in the game's story, but also even better in hitting home the themes of mourning a loss and how we are able to deal with it, in either accepting or denying it and move on. Something you guys kind of missed in this video. Hopefully after reading this comment this is a better appreciation of route B and the characters we end up getting the perspective of in the game. As for the criticism of Children dying always being the empathy card in this game, this is a Taro Yoko game. Child murder is basically a given. You had it in Drakengard 1, NieR Replicant/Gastalt, Drakengard 3, and NieR Automata. As disturbing it seems, it's kind of the meme/tragic weight of every or most games that Taro creatively directs. As for there being phases Gestalts go through when under the threat of relapse, I think you guys are right. As it is implied in route B when we see Gretel trying to ward off the orphaned Children Shades, he refers to them as "imperfect" or "incomplete" Gestalts, despite them not acting unstable. This basically gives us the implication that humans first underwent the Gestaltization process, their Gestalts were supposed to look more human in appearance prior to relapsing. Basically meaning that they were supposed to look like those Ghost people we see when we enter the Ballroom upon entering the Shadowlord's castle. So the Gestalts looking like Shades seems to be the first indicator of Gestalts being under the threat of relapsing, before losing Sentience. Beyond that, I really enjoyed the video. I'm excited to see the next episode when it comes out. I appreciate that you read my comment too, thanks for the shout out and reference. See you next time.
Not all Shades are *relapsed* Gestalts. Shade is just the informal name for Gestalt because the general population does not know about project Gestalt. All shades are Gestalts, some have relapsed and some have not. All Gestalts are Shades. Relapsed Shades are aggressive, but not all aggressive Shades have relapsed.
If you're confused on the air some of the replicants are giving up their souls for shades to enter that's why like the letter in the area. Is acting odd in that town and then it fuse into big shade for the boss named Wendy.
love the direction this channel is taking! is there a way to see how much content the patron has? thinking of supporting and never used that site before. loved this video! 😌
I really liked the game. Automata is the better experience for me, but the two offer something different I think. Replicant felt more like mythic storytelling to me. Best way I can describe it is . . . well for some reason it reminded me a lot of Beowulf. Not one for one, but Replicant had a kinda episodic 'this happened, and then this happened' flow whereas Automata felt more linear. And more than that. Replicant felt like folklore. As though it exists as a story handed down, and outside the realm of logic. I mean, the forest becoming a desert thing? Shorthand for consumption. A similar kind of short hand you find in fables. And I really liked about it. Gave it some power that I believe will be dissipated by too much explanation. I know there is material out there that makes the connections between the games more clear, but for me, it's not as interesting as letting the story take root in the minds of fans and become alive. Don't get me wrong; I love context and backstory. What I mean is, when the details of a story are a little vague, it feels alive. When everything's spelled out, it's just a thing what some bloke came up with. Despite Replicant and Automata being connected, it's better I think it's more powerful when they relate to each other as stories being told around the same camp fire, if that makes sense. Like Zelda was before that stupid timeline was made.
The thought of someone "accidentally" unlocking Ending E years after the fact is really funny to me
to be fair unless someone told you about it you'd have no idea it existed. as it happens after an ending that feels like the game is done.
1:29:52 a bit of correction Roc the gestalt pack leader wolf wasn't a human.
Previously he was a dog raised by an old man (the old man was the one in Roc's flash back right before he died).
His original owner wanted Roc to take his place in the replicant program cause he felt that he had lived long enough and wanted his friend to live on instead.
His sentiment of co-existence with humans came from his previous experience of bonding with his owner.
I was.going to say the same thing, but I read your comment. I really hope they read this comment and mention it in the next episode.
Dude had a rare ticket for the Ark of Noah during the flood and he gave it to his dog. Imagine being a regular dude that didn't get to be saved because some old fart wanted to save his dog.
Okay, so the whole relapsing shade thing is alittle easy to miss.
A shade is the default state of a Gestalt. However it can relapse and 'go feral' turning into the ones actively attacking Replicants.
Tyrann is alittle odd in this because he didn't relapse. He was always an asshole in life, his Replicant was destroyed after it was discovered by the government and that's why he desperately wants a body to possess, just to feel things again, after it's been like 1000-ish years.
The black scrawl is caused by a replicants assigned gestalt relapsing. Not all shades are relapsed but they do still value their life and will defend themselves.
After the timeskip even shades that haven't relapsed and are mentally sound follow the Shadowlord, because that's the whole plan. He can forcefully merge all replicants with their assigned gestalts, erasing the black scrawl entirely and solving the relapsing as a whole. It'd be beneficial for all parties. Except, the Replicants have somehow gained a soul of their own.
And the cases of the black scrawl are growing exponentially, which make the Replicants think the Shades are the cause, they are linked in that way, which causes all the animosity towards each other, since the Shades can't just talk to the Replicants and explain what's going on. The only ones that truly know are The Devola and Popola models of Androids but they can't just say anything or they'd be attacked for 'siding with the shades'
It's a whole bunch of mistakes that keep building ontop of each other until they're left in a situation that can only end in tragedy.
With the Shadowlord dead, all gestalts WILL relapse, causing the extinction of all replicants and gestalts.
ALSO: Tyrann was involved in the whole Project Gestalt, but yeah it's unclear how he would know how to erase someone from existence and use that to bring someone back, but that being said, he was involved in the whole Maso Particle experiments, the creation of Weiss, Noir, Rubrum, all of the magical books, which are, magic. So, I suppose that does explain things in an admittedly lackluster way.
Man, this is so full of chunky philosophical/ethical discourse, I really love the direction this podcast has taken.
I feel like y'all have hit a stride with this format.
Long time listener (from the early Dark Pixel Podcast days), first time caller and patron. I had to leave a comment after finishing this part of the NieR analysis, I just wanted to say I've been thoroughly enjoying it the whole time and both of you are doing a bangup job. Very insightful and productive discussions, especially about Facade's rule #0 and how differently you can interpret and view death (and come to accept it).
One thing I'd like to point out about Kainé's portrait of her grandmother, is that you can actually see it inside the shed at the entrance of the Aerie, where you first meet Kainé and where is implied she lives. And the "portrait" seems to have been drawn with color crayons, so to Casen's point about shades possibly being similar to a kid's drawing done with charcoal, while it may be a compelling theory and it may be something there I wouldn't say it'd be related to Kainé's drawing in particular.
Overall, I really like this game despite some of its sloppy execution. And while I think Automata refines some of the concepts seen here and implements most of them in a more cohesive way from a technical perspective (multiple playthroughs and routes, combat, sacrificing your save file), I feel I had a stronger attachment to Replicant/Gestalt's characters and the emotional highs felt higher to me in Replicant compared to Automata's.
Needless to say, I'm quite happy you hit the weekly goal!
Thanks for the info! We'll read this comment on the next episode!
I don't think you're necessarily supposed to "feel guilty" as you replay the boss fights and realize who/what you're killing, and the lack of malicious motivation most shades have toward you. Nier as a protagonist is supposed to represent the shift in ideas from "you have to be a monster to kill the way an rpg protagonist does" to "you just have to think you're right." I don't think your feeling about the shades matter so much as the point that Nier, even presented with the loss of morally grey or fully innocent life, does not step off the path he's chosen. The Nier series is steeped in the idea of "constructing meaning in a meaningless world." Nier as a character has constructed a goal/motivation that sees him through hardship and tragedy - killing shades, defeating the Shadowlord, rescuing his sister. He does all of this at the cost of spending actual time with his sister, at the cost of what you later learn are human souls - ultimately at the cost of his own original soul / gestalt. The machine/shade fight is the only one we really have where it's pushed to the extreme of "this is a child who did nothing wrong." I don't think the point is for us, the player, to feel bad - I think the point is to know that a character like Kaine /knows/ it's a kid, and says nothing; a character like Nier has all of these hints that he's doing something wrong, or outright watches his decisions destroy a village, and it won't stop him from pursuing the thing he has chosen as the point of his existence. I think the fact that some people play through it a few times and, knowing one or both sides, "don't feel bad" isn't in conflict with the point. When I was playing the second time, I didn't think the point was to feel bad for the shades or feel bad about my actions, the point was that Nier is locked onto this quest, and he doesn't have all the information, and by the time we get to the Aerie, he flat out tells us that he does not look back, does not want the information, the information would not change his goals. So I reacted emotionally to what it meant for the characters, and not really for the shades, so I didn't feel taken out of it or disappointed, personally.
Thank you for the comment! We'll bring this up in the next episode.
Nier won't stop until he gets what he wants. As far as I can tell, there's exactly _one_ time when he feels a little torn. It's right before he kills the Shadowlord. He sees the whole scene with Yonah and SL and seems like he might kind of be starting to grasp what might be happening but he only hesitates for a second.
And as can and has happened in real life, that one second changes the world forever.
Yea, if you felt something during playthrough B, like hesitation and regret as you're killing shades, then it's mission accomplished by Taro. It's not meant to make the player think they are the bad guy, one is really missing the point if that's how they feel. The game was never intending to make the player, or the main protagonists justifiable. They're just vessels (literally, and figuratively) to tell his story and reveal the deeper meanings. In other words, it's so unconventional, that even people who are thinking about the game unconventionally, are still having issues understanding the direction that it went.
My interpretation of what happened in ending E was that the 2 androids observed Kaine and the development of her own "soul" (singularity point as it was referred to in game) and realised that humanity wasn't the be all and end all of consciousness.
They say something along the lines of "Is this the true potential of a Replicant?" Almost in awe at her own will to live and fight, and I believe this was the inception of the resistance and YorHa androids we see in Automata.
It's implied heavily that A2's personality is based on Kaine and she was one of the first YorHa units.
I think the whole sequence of ending E was a test to see if non human souls could match up to human souls and Kaine proved that, which meant the tree/androids believed existence is no longer doomed, it would just take a new form in the androids.
These are some of the best discussions out there! The depth you both go for research, even far outside of the game itself to better get a grasp of the themes and storytelling is something to be respected!
Thanks!!
As a long time fan of Nier, ending E is the gaming moment of the year for me. What a great wrap up to the game, even with some of the retcon to connect it more to Automata
Same. I was getting a little fatigued playing through the same stuff again but as soon as I got to control Kaine I was so excited. I was completely revitalized and wished it could go on much longer. Definitely a great treat to end the game.
To the whole shades not attacking part, made me think about how the first shades you see in the game don’t even attack you. And the girl who saw a shade in the village but didn’t want to tell you? I believe that shade was the shade of that woman’s husband who is always at the tree in the hill. That is where you finally find it. And it too doesn’t attack you.
Love this game and how it makes you think.
I love FF6 but I REALLY hope Xenogears ends up winning the poll...You guys would be among the first to give it the truly comprehensive analysis it deserves
@UCyd-wFS-MQSPFZCGoaFX0Gw I believe they said they were gonna put it on their Patreon and Subscribestar at some point
Sounds like a win/win to me, but having never played Xenogears I'm kind of hoping it does win.
For RUclips, this might be the first comprehensive review (Miiks has some excellent long form videos on the Xeno series). But there was the Xenotensei website which had a staggeringly large amount of analysis articles. In any case I voted for Xenogears on Patreon, crossing fingers for it to win the poll.
As a casual fan of the channel, has this guy always been this jacked? Like damn bro, leave some gains for the rest of us.
I discovered this channel from this Nier series and subscribed on Patreon today! Love the work you guys do, it's longform and very your analysis has a lot substance to it. Hoping this goes weekly soon.
Thanks a ton!
Also the shadowlord was the one that was able to make it so the gestalt wouldn't relapse that is why the death of shadowlord was so great
Great discussion! I have a few comments:
1) While I do think the most likely explanation for why you don't play as Kainé is the challenge of programming another playable character or something like that, one thing that I do like about playing as Nier in Route B is the disconnect between the knowledge of the player and the knowledge of the character, making it more difficult to identify with Nier and sort of allowing for a distance that fosters critical thinking about the events that are unfolding. While Automata does have the player switch control to 9S for its Route B, Automata also uses its own strategies to distance the player emotionally from 9S later on, and so refusing to let the player fully identify with the character they are playing as seems to be a bit of a running theme in the series.
2) I wouldn't mind hearing you say a bit more about your two major themes of the game in relation to Ending E. With regards to "how far would you go if you think you are in the right" theme, I find Ending E is doing something really interesting by recontextualizing Ending D in a similar way that Route B recontextualizes Route A. While Ending D could certainly be thought of as an acceptance of loss (for the player a pretty substantial loss - their save data), it also fits into a heroic sacrifice narrative wherein Nier assumes he knows what is best for Kainé. This is especially hammered home at the end of E when Kainé says to Nier "I'M the one who gets to decide what my life means to me." So it seems like there is a bit of an interpersonal continuation of that theme there to compliment the earlier application of it in cultural terms. With regards to the "acceptance of loss" theme however it is interesting in a bit of a different way, as it seems to me that it could be argued that Ending E is a bit of contradiction. After all, Kainé has lost Nier (albeit unknowingly to some extent) but completely refuses to accept that loss, potentially at great cost if we buy what Drakengard fans are suggesting that ending might mean. However, I don't think it is simply the case that Taro's position on the theme is just inconsistent. It feels very intentional and I think part of what he is trying to say is located in the tension between the acceptance of loss in Ending D and the rejection of loss in Ending E. My thought is that it might be something in the nuances between "accepting and letting go" versus "forgetting," but would be curious to hear more of your own thoughts
3) I just have to say that Ending E seems like it would be completely brilliant in a world without Internet and everyone having immediate access to knowing what to do to unlock it. The point at which it begins (a few hours into playing what seems to just be the normal game) feels very intentional, to deter anyone starting again immediately after Ending D, just to see if anything new happens, from reaching it and having them think there is in fact nothing new to see. How players would most likely discover it then would be at whatever point they come back to revisit the game and maybe play it a second time after a long time has passed, long enough that they *may* not actually remember the name of their original character. I think in that case, many more people would find that their save data had been lost because they themselves had forgotten about it, and that to me seems really interesting (as well as thematically connected to the nuances between accepting loss and forgetting). Then again, I know plenty of people who stopped playing Automata after Ending A despite having access to the Internet, and I wonder if eventually more and more Replicant players will discover Ending E accidentally, and if anyone ever gets stuck on that screen simply because too much time has passed.
That breakdown on “melodrama” perfectly captured why the ending B stuff was very mixed for me. Awesome way to present the issue.
I think the sort of inconsistent degree of sentience in the shades actually helps the theme out. While to us as gamers it might just seem inconvenient to not really know how sentient or insane a particular shade is, there's a fundamental flaw in trying to classify them all in one category. This gives off the vibes of going into Iraq to counter 'terrorists' but ending up hurting or killing civilians because they look the same and we can't bother to tell them apart. Just because some shades actually provoked the replicants by attacking them first does not mean that it's justified to attack them all, and that fallacy is part of what feeds the cycle of hate that ends up pitting all replicants against all shades. I think it's actually a good thing for the game that we have to examine the actions of shades individually, because it helps to point out how stupid it is to try to categorize them as 'good' or 'evil' just because they look the same.
tbf, with the lack of subtlety about moral validity in the reveals in route B, I'm not sure if this is an intentional thing since Yoko Taro sure didn't want us considering the possibility of those villains being even marginally in the wrong (except for maybe Louise). But there is a possibility that Taro includeded both enemies who were clearly in the right(most of the ones in the second half) and enemies who were given absolutely no justification(the ones in part one) as extreme examples to show that it's not a simple problem? Even if that's the case it would have been nicer to have them all be complex characters with good and bad parts, but if not fixing the characters at least that might make the theme more complex. idk, but it's something to think about
Xenogears is fucking great. After I finish Nier Im going to play that.
You guys are the best video game story critics I’ve ever watched.
Did not expect to be mentioned in the video. I'm glad you found the discourse interesting.
On the topic of Emil's comments on the wedding.
One thing I'd like to point out is that (at least in the English translation), Emil doesn't exactly say "I want to marry a man," even though the next line almost definitely implies they're into men, but not necessarily
Emil says "I wish I could be Fyra."
While, it could be grasping, I think it's a fun reading considering both Emil's closeness with Kainé.... Who also has her fun relationship with gender and also effectively having gone from childhood and seeing themselves as a monster after their body does change (Though, it is also their sister's body, sort of)
First off: excellent analysis guys! I absolutely love these.
Second: I'd like to point out that nobody takes into account THE NAME, NIER, and its thematic addition to the game and its story. Nier, essentially means "no" or "to deny" in french and I feel like it fits the nihilistic tone rather well.
nah, theres a fail safe, if you fail to imput your save file name 10 times during ending E the screen goes white and tells you your file name (its implied to be Weiss telling you)
The Route B of this game was done that way because of budget and time restraints. They wanted to make Kainé playable but couldn’t.
Budget and time was also the reason there’s so many Storybook segments of the game. The Forest area was going to be bigger and more involved but ended up being cut and the team comprised by making it a reading section.
On Gretel's character growth it's probably not fair to assume the friendship garned between it and the other shades happened right before you bust through the door. There has been 5 years for this to occur between Hansel's death and the party's return to Lost Shrine, and other similar scenes, like between the Postman & Louise read as if they take place over a period of time, maybe days or weeks.
Roc, the wolf shade, isn't a human soul in wolf form, it's literally a dog that went through gestaltisation on his owners' request instead of him. Its death scene reflects on the potential of humans to be fundamentally good and co-operative with the rest of nature from its experience as a companion to its human owner, and thats the motivation behind it trying to stop the wolves from escalating the conflict between them and the humans of Facade until that, which is when they attack the wedding and kill Fyra.
It feels like the classification of shade is something that the living replicants made up to stop the cycle of gestalts taking over their replicant bodies, because the replicants gained sentience and didn't want to lose that to their gestalt. The gestalts are disembodied souls of people who chose to become "ethereal" in hopes that they would one day regain their bodies, so I can imagine it is not a forgone conclusion that they are resentful, especially once they find out the replicants gain an individual consciousness.
As someone who doesn’t mind spoilers this series has definitely made me need to pick up this remake of neir.
I feel like with Nier, how you feel while playing the game is more important than knowing what happens in the story. Hope the game gives you a good experience!
@@z-nab27 exactly I honestly don’t understand the lore and mechanics that much but I don’t feel that it really matters
In a way I honestly love how flawed Nier is. Like they give it charm and it is very different and unique from other games out on the market and I just love Nier for everything it is.
The game is trying to tell a story, not "make the player feel bad" for what they did.
You can't choose to not attack the shades.
They're entities that look completely different than us, speak in a way we can't understand, and some of them attack us because they've relapsed and gone crazy.
Because some of them show hostility, Nier wants to kill all of them.
He doesn't even try to communicate with them at any point, all he cares about is saving Yonah and the people close to him.
Kaine knows that they are conscious, but kills them anyway to satisfy her hatred, to save herself from being overtaken by Tyrann, and later because she developed feelings for Nier.
Even the children.
Emil understood that the worst instincts of the ultimate weapon made him save his loved ones while slaughtering the people of the Aerie.
Even though he didn't know any of them, he felt empathy for the lives he just snuffed out.
Nier made his own point of view very clear here.
"You saved us, your own people."
That's the most important thing to him.
He accepts other points of view, as long as they aren't too different.
Every life is precious, as long as it's not a shade life.
He's a giant hypocrite.
He dooms all of humanity by destroying the Shadowlord.
The core idea of the Nier games is to make you empathize with people who aren't close to you, who aren't your family, friends, comrades.
The game intentionally shows characters that hold very high moral ideals, yet fail to apply them universally.
Nothing shows this better than the credits in Automata. You don't know the person you're sacrificing your save file for. You probably don't speak their language, and you'll never meet them. Yet you're supposed to sacrifice something precious for them.
This is something that I read a long time ago from Grimoire Nier or some other supplementary material so my memory is a bit foggy. This one need to be checked again, but about the original Yonah having a black scrawl at the beginning was not quite the same with Replicant's black scrawl. It was probably because she was turning into a relapse shade.
It was more similar to Kaine when Tyrant relapsed in her body and turning her into complete shade, because Kaine also has similar black scrawl like thing when she's about to turn into shade.
During the tutorial timeline, apparently a bunch of scientists were conducting experimentation to find the person who can assimilate with Grimoire Noir. So they gathered a bunch of people in the area where the tutorial stage happened, by telling them that they take refuges and promising food and safety. Then these scientists had them touched Grimoire Noir, which is probably the reason why there's a lot of relapsed shade around the convenience store area where Nier and Yonah were.
The people who failed to assimilate, turned into relapsed shade not long after touching Noir (at this point Replicant system was still in development so there's no replicant yet).
Not sure how Grimoire Noir ended up there though....
They found Nier and Yonah soon after the tutorial stage end and took them in, then put Yonah into some kind of static sleep to slow down the relapse, but that also made Nier felt resentful towards them. And I believe they also speed up Replicant System development cause Nier was getting impatient and restless about Yonah.
So Yonah's replicant probably always has the black scrawl cause the Original Yonah already half-relapsed way before the Replicant System was completed.
Edit: Right I remember a bit more. Yonah and Nier were also among the people that came to seek refuge but later he accidentally witness what happened to the other refuges. So he took Yonah and escaped, however he also instictivelly brought Noir along with him.
In the Drama CD it's explained that Tyrann is a fake name and is actually the Gestalt of a guy called Yura Masayoshi, who was a violent leader of a military unit. He overtook the organisation responsible for experimenting on Emil and his sister and then was eventually outcast. He used the name Tyrann to sneak his way back in to being part of the gestalt project.
Just thought it makes more sense as to why Tyrann is more violent than the other shades.
There's also a part about how Weiss became the book, who the grimoire in the mansion was etc in it. It's a cool expansion on the lore and if you get chance you should definitely check it out.
49:00
You can see the drawing in kainé's house with the lunar tears
It even exits in automata
Personally I feel that the repetition and recontextualization of Nier go hand in hand, not in making the player feel bad for their actions, but for creating a sense of performativeness in the player and desensitizing them to violence. Beyond guilt, desire, duty, vengeance, madness, what is violence for? Once all emotional ties to action are dissolved, Nier(the game) looks for answers beyond that, or at least tries to.
I think the repetition of playthroughs follows a pattern that many weapon stories do.
The first two entries hook you with bold characterization and economic language.
The second entry is a descent into madness.
The third entry is one word written over and over again.
The fourth entry (arguably) is the player trying to find meaning in the story beyond the meaning the characters know.
So shades are not all relapsed. Shade nier is using his magic to stabilize the shades. Its due to him neglecting his duties that cause the shades to begin relapsing in greater quantities. At the end of the day the shades need their bodies back as you guys mentioned. So there is an antagonistic relationship by default even without communication. There's definitely more room for nuance I was surprised to hear the mermaid was a new addition as it was my favorite shade story in the game and felt the most well written aside from the forest of myth.
To add to this (from my understanding): At the end of route C, Tyrann isn’t intentionally taking over Kainé’s body. The effect that the Shadowlord’s death has on all remaining Shades is that they relapse. Tyrann is relapsing, and Kainé is trapped in the crossfire.
Very good to know! Thanks!
@@jacksonschwarz9592 I’ve loved this game for ten years and this is the first time I’ve seen the mental math of why the Shade takes over Kainé at that exact moment and why Tyrann can’t stop it. Thank you.
I've been rewatching this one, and after finishing Outer Wilds latest episode, the talk about acceptance towards the end of this one hits different now. Love what you guys do 🤘
I've been waiting for this let's goooo
The big flower at the end of ending E definitely IS a Drakengard 3 reference, in some capacity. It wasn’t mentioned in the original novella (at least I don’t think so) and even then, someone like Yoko Taro doesn’t just ‘coincidentally’ end up with giant white five-petal flowers in two separate games. Additionally, one of the Androids say “I hear a song” right before that scene, a direct reference to the Drakengard 1 boss the flower is based on. I’m not sure quite what the significance is, but there’s no way it’s not an intentional connection.
Oh yeah, didn't the Japanese hunt down the wolves to near extinction? That'd be another parallel between Facade and Japan.
Also don't forget that Taro is the given name while Yoko is the family name. That's why people like Hideki Kamiya refer to him as "Yoko-san".
The weapon stories are pretty cool I like how 10 to 12 of the weapons are from Drakengard. And the fool's weapons their weapon stores literally tell the story of Angelus and Caim.
A bit late for this, but thank you for mentioning my comment. In the end, maybe the whole rule zero business was sort of moot since _the king of Facade was the one that gave Nier the power to override their own legal system,_ Nier didn't come and conquer them to force his morals, ethics and culture down their throats or anything.
I had to sub when you said Xenogears, that is my favorite game of all time.
I did the same thing
I've been meaning to check out that game for a while now, I've had it sitting on my vita tv for months. If they decide to talk about it in the next few episodes I'll probably play it along with them
In the discussion on rule 0 that NieR adds. I think this just comes down to that their are 2 themes being explored. 1) You should respect other cultures even though you might not immediately understand it. 2) rules of society can be stifling and contradictory to its people.
You are set up with this issue of the king has gone missing and his people can not search for him. You are given a very short conflict better fiera and other masked people. Fiera is willing to break the rules while the others aren't and to avoid a conflict. NieR offers himself as the scapegoat around the rules that bind them.
NieR comes up with Rule 0 only after seeing and understanding the conflicts and only offers his solution after being given the power to do so by the King (the leader of that society) and empowering the other masked people to actively take part in the growth and formation of their own culture not just the royal family.
The key difference between NieR and wiess is Wiess immediately dismisses the culture while NeiR waited to understand the culture before providing input and left it up to them to come up with solutions for themselves as a community. This isn't 100% just NieR inforcing his views because Feira was already about to break the cultural norms. He more impowering voices that already existed. Though you could say the fact that he used the word "voting" is him enforcing his culture over theirs.
It's been an emotionally painful week. Thank God for you guys and your impecable timing.
BTW. Will you consider analyzing the Yakuza series? Either way, I'm voting Xenogears. I can't believe I played that when I was 10...
Yep! I'd personally love to play those games
Please do! It'd be even better considering your experience with the culture.
@@CasenSperry I cannot second this enough, get it on one of the polls please! xD
The way Mike rubs his eyes/face in this podcast makes me think of me whenever I have a migraine. Hope your were feeling okay during filming!
I like the rule 0 debate. I only struggle with one thing. The assertion that it’s the wrong choice for the story. I’d argue it’s not incorrect considering who is making the choice. Nier is making a character choice and Nier is literally a white savior and a flawed character. I think it makes alot of sense for him to make that choice.
As much as I love the game, I agree it's so annoying how, despite the amount of chances there was to work it out, Shades and Replicants NEVER try to communicate or if they do, Nier just ignores it.
-Whenever Nier meets a shade that doesn't attack him, he says shit like "I don't care, it's a shade" (Memory tree, tutorial shades, Shade in the Village and Emil's Library sidequests etc)
-Shades can literally talk but never try to do anything with it
-The mermaid LITERALLY has a human voice
-Even after finding out shades are humans, you mow down a room full of them.
-Devola and Popola always say cryptic shit and tell you legends that Grimoire Noir and the Shadowlord are evil even tho they want Weiss and Noir to fuse
There's so many examples of characters hiding information or being cryptic for the sake of it or insane amounts of coincidences leading to Nier killing innocent Shades that it gets annoying.
I do appreciate how Yoko Taro's writing developed in Automata, since i think it's done better there. Most of the bosses are evil or dangerous and area like the Amusement Park cover passive enemies in a better way. It's way more morally grey and feels less "guilt trippy"
Shades can talk, but it's not shown in the game they can communicate with Replicant's, even though the mermaid may have been a case to show that they eventually could communicate with us. Without the help of the postman, that wouldn't be the case, so I think it's really the shades and replicants are speaking two different languages, even though potentially that could change, in the current state of the game's time, it's not the case. I also don't think this game was intended to provoke an ego centric response as in, the main protagonists having the options to change the course of the situation into "Grey areas". The game was clearly meant to display the tragedy that emerges from not understanding another. So, the player isn't supposed to be goody two shoes hero that can do no wrong, it's supposed to show the player that no matter how much resolve, you could be banishing, or killing something not so different from yourself, and it's not explicitly stating Nier is now the "bad guy". It's simply showing there's more side to a situation than some care to see.
Most of the negative response I see to only showing layers 1 at a time, before the whole picture is revealed is that it somehow guided the player into not having a choice, but that's not what it's about, it's not about the player. Talk about missing the point.
I was waiting for this 😭🙌🏼
The difference between the relapse and non relapse is that the relapsed Gestalts have lost their sentience and turned hostile. Originally every Gestalt immediately relapsed when they turned into a Gestalt, most likely due to the process of separating the soul from the body, until they were able to find Shadowlord/Nier who retained their sentience upon turning into a Gestalt when they touched Grimoire Noir. They proceeded to use Shadowlord as a way to stabilize the project, allowing everyone to retain their sentience upon becoming a Gestalt. However, there turned out to be a bug in that and the Shadowlord's aid only slowed it and some started to relapse and the Replicants gaining sentience also made them reject their Gestalt which can also cause this. Once a Shade relapses they can never return to their Replicant. So while most Shades have not relapsed some however have, the passive shades are non relapsed and maybe even some of the hostile ones (who wear armor) are not. My assumption is the passive ones at least pre timeskip are not relapsed and post timeskip, you've established yourself as a threat so they're acting in defense really. The Shades who talk like the wolf have not relapsed.
1:55:30 Something interesting that I haven't seen others mention is that the Shade seems to say that those babies were actually born recently as Shades. So they could have just recently found a way to repopulate, they only needed to stop relapsing.
yessss part 3!!!
Absolutely need Xenogears to win the poll! I recently picked up the book Childhood's End to get ready for a replay so I'm already in go mode (FF6 would be cool regardless though)
Have never played Xenogears but the way you guys talk about it hypes me up.
I love this a lot thanks
I think that the Shadowlord can use powers to kind of "force" OG Yonah into the Replicant but, apart from that, Noir and Weiss are required. I get that the Gestalt Project was basically the last ditch effort to say humanity but it makes you wonder if they knew all this was a risk or if they were just woefully under prepared to deal with the whole "Step 1:remove soul from body. Step 2. ???? Step 3. Souls go back into their body" thing.
I'm not sure if there was ever a place they were supposed to chill while waiting, or just wander about but that's why not every shade is outright hostile. As they start to lose themselves, the seem to lose more of the capacity for "rational thinking" and can sometimes merge together to make bigger, more aggressive shades (like the big flower-ball-thing you fight before Emil nukes the Aerie). The ones not completely "gone" clearly show intelligence by "speaking", wearing a bunch of shields for an uncomfortable-looking suit, using weapons, etc.
As for why any of this happened at all... I'm not 100% sure. I believe the people who created Project Gestalt didn't expect it to take as long as it did to get rid of White Chlorination, so at some point there was probably a breakdown in communication or some other issue that only left the Devolas, Weiss, Noir and the Shadowlord aware of what was happening. The time skip is _huge_ (at least in human time scales) and most people have a hard time planning a week ahead, let alone 1000+ years.
If we fast forward to Automata, there's still the potential that White Chlorination is floating about. The logic virus that infects the YoRHa seems very similar to Red Eye and the Legion. Eve also gets a Watcher tattoo when he gets ma-yud so... The Watchers hate them some humanity, after all and the androids are pretty close and were initially made by humans. Probably. Did humans make Accord... Accords? DrakeNier lore is weird. Dunno if any of that's confirmed or intended but I saw a possible link there.
Oh, also, we don't know much about Tyrann other then he was a really violent dude named Yura Masayoshi who tried to sneak into being Gestaltenated or whatever so they did but then they also destroyed his Replicant. So after that he just faffs about the world, possessing Replicants and having himself a grand, merry ol' merderin' time. I'm not sure how Ending D happens but a theory I saw and like is it may be Pact Magic. It's possible that, like blood magic, it came over when Caim and Angelus got pulled into Tokyo by Gross Giant Salt Barbie Who Also Happens To Be A KISS Fan. Nier gets what he wants by pact-ing with Tyrann and Kainé is healed but the price (similar to Caim's ability to speak or his tongue, I don't remember for sure) is everybody forgets Nier existed... except for that tree. Why? Uh... The game's not what's important, it's the "?" speech bubble it makes come out of your head? That's my answer and I'm sticking to it.
There is no additional dialogue for side quests in other routes
In respects to the moment at 2:21:24, I just want to mention that in the Japanese version, all Tyrann says is 'nani?', so that 'it is' is more of a localization thing than him actually having a sudden change of heart.
Another correction: after that when Kaine goes berserk, Tyrann doesn't start to take her over. He starts to relapse further and loses the ability to hold even himself back as both of their sentience fades. The choice he gives Nier, while no less arbitrary, is not an ultimatum from him, it's some intrinsic rule of the universe (I guess) that allows Nier to save her life by erasing himself. This doesn't really change the plot but kind of deepens Tyrann's character, since at this point he was basically just doing his best to save Kaine regardless of what happens to him(keep in mind that in ending D Kaine goes back to a normal human, implying that Tyrann dies, but even though both of the options he gives to Nier result in his death he doesn't complain).
Thanks for the feedback, Jace! We'll bring this up on the next episode.
With the wolves, instead of saying, "what did we do to deserve this?", I think something more neutral and broad would've been more effective. Something like "How did things get so out of hand?" or "Why did it have to come to this?". I think those convey a sense of understanding as to the reason of the conflict without understanding that total annihilation would be somewhere down the line.
Kaine is basically not allowed to soften up. If she starts having warm feelings towards others or at least display anything other than hard as balls attitude Tyrann takes over.
She's a prisoner of that attitude in that sense. It's explained in the text intermission I think
It's interesting that you feel that the story was trying to guilt trip the player because I never once felt that even a little. I think all of that was just there for the purpose of expanding the perspective, broadening the scope and lasering in on the tragedy of all of it while showing how complicated and layered some of these issues really are. I don't agree that the story is trying to make the player feel guilty for doing what Nier does and the reason why you feel like it fell so flat in that way is because that isn't the intent IMO.
In the aerie, you can actually go down ladders even quicker if your good at directing the character, just jump down where the ladder is, it almost always works, and you just go right down where you need too.
Arguably Nier was operating within Facade’s rule system, as they HAD to grant him a boon, and the boon he asked was a rule 0. Which means everything still fell within the whole rule system of Facade, and changing a rule as needed is also a rule now
I love love love how you express nuance. 👏🏾
I think what's also important to know about the original Nier on PS360 is that imo it was a game JRPG fans desperately needed when it came out. Games with dumbster fire stories and garbage characterizations like FF XIII, Infinite Undiscovery (yeah that dinner dinner dinner meme game), Star Ocean 4 and Tales of Graces F made me so cynical and bitter towards that genre for almost a year until i discovered Nier. And the funniest thing is that of all games i mentioned Nier is by far the one with the lowest amount of budget put into it. What a terrible terrible time it was geez.
the 7th generation of jrpgs on consoles was such a disater. on handhelds it was fine as you had stuff like radiant historia and alot of great stuff on the psp. but on consoles? tales of vesperia and nier mostly.
I don't think Tyrann is relapsed, he's just sadistic.
There is English subtitles for the Nier replicant drama CD. Which elaborates more important details about human Kain'e and her past shadowlord and Yonah ,Emil and Tyran / Yura. Plus playing the game of replicants and listening to the CD kind of makes your experience of the characters more interesting.
I would love more information on the legion war and who red eye really was.
Loved the discussion and agree with almost all of your points! A few things I'd like to add:
1) Kali as Kainé's biological grandmother: Is the narrator in that section reliable? If they aren't, then there's a good chance that Kali and Kainé are not blood relatives. Why would Kainé not know about even having a grandmother? While we know nothing about Kainé's parents, Kali, at least, doesn't strike me as someone who'd permanently cut contact to her child (Kainé's parent) over anything, whatever may happen between them. Isn't it just as likely that Kali decided to take in the orphaned Kainé and just told her that they're related to make her feel less alone? I think both interpretations of this part are valid.
2) Not continuing the game as a valid 'choice': That entire topic is very reminiscent of the 2012 military shooter Spec Ops: The Line. Including an action forced on the player to be able to continue which only turns out to be terrible with information learned after the fact. And presenting as a very typical game of its genre in the beginning. And "The only way to not be the villain is to stop playing" fits perfectly as well. Finally, the criticism of being too on the nose and shouting "How could you!?!??!" too much applies to it, too.
3) Chicken and egg: Even if we could draw a line between chicken and pre-chicken and asked whether the chicken egg came before the chicken, it's merely a question of definition: Is a chicken egg an egg laid by a chicken or an egg from which a chicken will hatch? If the former, then the chicken was first. If the latter, the chicken egg was first.
4) On Ending D: I agree that the option comes out of nowhere. I feel like getting Weiss or Noir involved could have helped it seem believable. After all, they were to play a role in joining Replicants with Gestalts and recreating humans. No clue why they didn't at least grab Noir's "corpse" and used it somehow for that purpose.
5) Route E: Small note: The androids don't just use the faces of 2B and 9S but also their voice actors. Edit: Thinking about it, it's a bit weird. 2B is based on A2 ("Number Two" in the YorHa stage play) who is likely based on a previous model also called "Number Two" from the Nier Automata concert (also avilable as a reading in English on the RUclips channel of 9S' VA Kyle McCarley). Anways, a precursor to the model 2 line should, I think, be more similar to A2 than to 2B.
6) Ending E and Drakengard 3: The connection goes beyond just the flower in the eye. The final Drakengard 3 ending does feature a giant white flower coming out of the ground and a female character at its center which then turns into (almost) a copy of Drakengard 1's ending E battle. Considering how that one connects to Nier, I can't (or don't want to) believe that the imagery is just coincidental.
7) There's another connection to Drakengard (3) in 1.224...: One of the loading screen diary entries mentions a merchant called Accord which has to be the same as the timeline-hopping/controlling android from Drakengard 3 - especially seeing as Accord is also mentioned as a merchant in Automata. I believe this mention wasn't in the original Nier release.
Finally, I'd like to recommend Clemps' video essays on the Drakengard and Nier games - if you can deal with his... eccentricity. He goes into a lot of detail, not just summarizing the events of the games but also concerning the supplementary material (which a lot of people don't even know exists) and how it might all connect.
Great comment! We'll read this one on the next episode!
I feel like not feeling guilty about killing the shade and the robot was the point. Humans always believe they are doing the right thing with the information they have.
I don't know if it means anything (it probably does) but I love the bookend that the original version of Nier begins with Kaine's foul mouthed rant on Weiss in anger, and in this version, the game ends with Kaine cursing you the player/Nier out in anger but also a bit of love
his Tyrann impersonation is really good
26:30 Minor point but the name of the English sailor that Shogun's Blackthorne is based on was William ADAMS. The protagonist of the original Nioh was also based on him.
Cvit made a near 1 hour video comparing the two. Worth watching if you're curious
One thing to touch on while I'm only an hour in, Tyrann's name is pronounced differently from Gestalt (Tie-ran) to Replicant 1.22 (Tear-an). And that's why people debate over the correct pronunciation.
This has been such a great ride. I'm definitely gonna have to play along if FF6 or Xenogears get picked since I haven't played them before.
I know it's almost been two years but I just finished Ending E and can confirm that players who started with "random names" won't actually get stuck.
If you enter the Name at the very end wrong you'll hear the young Brother faintly saying some things. This repeats a few times until Grimoire Weiss just goes: "You really are a handful even at the very end." and if you enter it wrong one more time Weiss will just tell you which name you have to enter.
I was tempted to keep entering my name wrong after that but I'm pretty sure that the game would have just shown me credits and thrown me back to the main menu after enough tries and I didn't want to redo the whole section.
But I've tried looking up what happens if you keep entering the wrong name and it seems like nobody has documented this so now I kind of regret not pushing the game further.
Even though I'd never thought about it before, I kind of agree that the recontextualization is very arbitrary. I suppose it was too obvious they want to make you feel bad.
I have to admit though, they really get to me with story of the wolves.
I REFUSE to kill wolves in this game. Except for the ones that are story or quest mandatory, I never kill them.
That flashback that Roc has at the end, the innocence and the happiness in his younger self's expression when he remembers his grandfather, that scene crushes me.
Perhaps it's because it's an animal, which would be unable to understand any better. Think about it, they are not killing children out of malice. Animals function in terms of survivability.
I don't know. What I know is that his story brings me to almost shedding tears every single time.
A shade is just the replicant's word for a gestalt. A shade that isn't aggressive hasn't relapsed. They only become aggressive once they relapse. The relapsing also causes the black scrawl to appear on a replicant. If their shade hasn't relapsed, no black scrawl. Tyrann also isn't a relapsed shade. He was a murderer while human. He does start to relapse after ending C/D, when you kill or save Kaine.
Those biceps, good God man!
Yoko Taro has never said that killing is bad or that that’s the the of or message of Nier, he once said that he used to think that someone that killed dozens and hundreds of people had to be a psycho (in reference to Caim) but years later he realized that that’s not necessarily true, but rather than being a psycho, that person had to think what they’re doing is right, and that’s what’s happening in Nier, he doesn’t kill people because he’s a psycho but because he thinks he’s the good one and noble and right.
Yep. And this is why the characterization of Nier as being nihilistic is so totally off base. The point of the story is that there is meaning and purpose on all sides. The error is assuming moral supremacy and using that as a justification for inhuman acts. No heroes, no villains just competing imperatives in an emotionally-driven world.
Emotion versus rationalization being the "wet" versus "dry" distinction in Yoko's approach between this game and Automata.
I wonder, had YT made it so that Ending B revolves around Kaine understanding the shades and facing this struggle of telling NieR what’s up and allowing herself to go soft and allow Tyrann to take control OR keeping the information from NieR and bottling up the pain of knowing what they’re doing in order to keep control over her own body.. I wonder if that would have made Ending B better at all.
Like you said, if Kaine had been the playable character. I’m not sure if that’s what you were trying to get at with that comment.
2:25:53 quick note: I believe it's mentioned in grimoire nier or one of the other stories that the scientist who was walking with Emil and abusive to him in that story segment was in fact Tyrann
1:39:34 I just wanted to touch on the ecosystem bit regarding the replicants turning a forest into a desert; Australia has experienced this with the introduction of rabbits, whereby they begin to compete with existing species (they've apparently contributed to the extinction of many animals in Australia) and overgraze, so they essentially eat the forests until there's little to nothing left. The damage is extensive but has only been occurring the last 150 years which, relatively speaking, isn't very long. And the gestalts don't seem to die of old age? (Someone correct me if I'm wrong.)
Another place that comes to mind is the island of Sicily; because of intensive agriculture the island is much drier and arid than before with parts of the island being completely devoid of forests. And it probably happened over the course of a few decades rather than a few millenia.
In one of those books they mention Red Eye leading legion. People online say that Red Eye must be Cain from Drakengard.
1:20:00 about you being the Shadowlord to the Shades. It's not just the Shades, Nier is remembered as the Destroyer or the World-Ender by the time of Automata.
One interesting thing about the robot, dubbed Beepy. It's one of the few almost direct tie ins with Automata. If you look up The Fire of Prometheus.
atlest with the wolves i feel the intention was for both to be in the wrong it is the most grey of the scenarios.
i think relapsed shades are meant to be the ones that fuse so the giant ones. goose is the one exception as she is still sane after fusing.
as the game does not make it clear if the small ones or the ones with armor are defending themselves or not.
I'm a little late but I didn't see anyone comment on it - I did the mansion library shade on play thru C, sadly the shade doesn't say anything at all 🤷 in case anyone still wondering
Hard disagree with the take on B.
There are only two cases of "black and white". Gretel and Kalil.
There is a reason it's the only two that come back to haunt Kainé in E, in her memories.
You guys mistook it for a boss rush. But it wasn't. It didn't have Roc (who btw is a gestalted dog, not a human), it didn't have the boar, it didn't have the aerie shades (but it had the actual villagers from her past!), it had no bosses outside of Gretel, Kalil, the androids tell you why they picked those two. It's because of how Kainé felt.
There is another scene they added from the original, that happens right after you kill Kalil. Gretel and Kalil (and I guess Louise) are the only times Kainé actually questions herself.
The weight of accepting these were not monsters is too much to handle so she is in denial. Even in E. The androids try to guilt trip her and she dismisses it.
So they then send her worst memory, Hook.
All the other bosses, have your actions being justified in some fashion. It was either self defense or revenge. The backstory just means "it sucks" for everybody. Not "oh I guess you were a terrible person the whole time". Obviously not.
The kids with Gretel don't understand what they are and they kill themselves, they run into the sun, which I guess Nier should have questioned. And for Kalil, the whole Junkheap is about how irrational hatred makes someone, no one is supposed to side with Gideon. His hate infected Nier and us into doing this pointless thing that we don't question either at first glance. Nier realizes it was wrong, it's the only time he actually reacts that way in the whole game. Gideon is also the only "important" character of a fragment arc not to get any proper cutscene for his adult self, because this game uses cutscenes to tie emotional beats to characters, and they wanted to separate Gideon from it as much as possible, there is a wall. A disconnect.
You did correctly point out why shades don't bother trying to communicate with replicants, they see them as soulless shells that are refusing to hand back their bodies.
It's only a matter of time until Gestalts relapse because of Replicants becoming sentient, they do not want to "cohabitate", they just want their bodies back.
So for some of them, the sooner they die and get reborn, the less likely they are to develop a consciousness.
As to why they're within human bodies in the Aerie, I think they touch upon that in Grimoire Nier. (which btw gets a new updated version on July 9th, so maybe wait for that date for the next podcast in case some important stuff is added)
Regarding D, Nier says he loves Kainé during the final boss fight. He wouldn't give up on someone he loves, he literally says that.
Yonah has been saved (that he knows), of course he'd give up his existence up for Kainé. He knows Kainé can watch over Yonah.
He thinks Yonah is finally cured, and she is safe from the Shadowlord. Keep in mind, at the end, Yonah is temporarily healed, she can stand, she can jump, she is smiling, she isn't coughing anymore, the black scrawl disappeared etc..., in Nier's mind, he "saved" her. That's why he can let go and then save Kainé.
Thank you for the comment, Slaythe. Good perspective, and we'll respond to this in full on the final episode next week!
I only made the comment about the project, because in the last podcast you guys confused the details or at the least presented them in a confusing way. But if you guys understood, it was probably just a mistake in the moment. Thank you for clearing that up.
It happened exactly the same to me with the Kaine first text. I just wanted to go bed but didn't want to rush through it.
I know i’m late, but i just finished nier replicant and this has been a really great way to digest it. thank you so much for the great content. It is so fascinating to come to this understanding and here y’all’s perspectives on it, though i can’t say i entirely agree with the stuff about part B feeling hamfisted with the guilt it’s trying to instil into you. A and B both give contrasting views, and i think that creates the moral grey of the game since both sides can’t possibly interact. One gives a black view of things and another white, but viewed in tandem that IS grey, giving that chicken or the egg feeling you both talked about. Even with the robot in the Junk Heap, you appear and Beepy immediately says “Exterminate” before you start fighting. it’s not meant to make you feel guilty the whole way through but make everything into a tragic misunderstanding
I know I’m late, just finished the game a couple hours ago, but I just want to say that, regarding the “what comes first, chicken or egg”… I think in the case of NieR, relapsed shades didn’t appear until the first replicant didn’t gain self-consciousness. A healthy Gestald wouldn’t attack a replicant, but I think a non-sapient replicant wouldn’t attack a shade either. So I think it is kind of a system in a perfect 50-50 balance that simply becomes exponentially unstable until it can only destroy itself entirely (both parts)
The 15 nightmares, world of the recycled vessel DLC I'm looking forward to plus the lower of text is telling information from the drama CD which is cool. And I like how you play us brother and Papa Nier. Depends on which version you have.
@Resonant Arc
Okay, so here's just a few more corrections. When looking at some of the things you were talking about.
First off, The Shade Wolf known as Roc, is actually a wolf.
This is something they actually show in the B scenario. Roc was a Pet to a human owner. During the commencement of Project Gestalt, Roc's owner had the dog undergo the Gestaltization process, separating Roc's soul from his body. Causing him to become a Gestalt.
During the 1400 years that took place between project gestalt beginning and NieR Replicant's story, Roc becomes the leader to a pack of wolfs, the territory they resided in was once a Forest. However, due to either the Replicants or humans (prior to or after them being transformed into Gestalts) the Forest underwent Desertification, in which what was once the Forest the wolfs lived in slowly transformed into a barren Desert that is now inhabited by the Replicants. In this case, the people of Facade.
The story surrounding the conflict between the wolfs and Facade's people isn't clear cut, it wasn't a matter of "The Wolfs were eating the peoples children which is why Facade are killing them". To the Wolfs, The Kingdom of Facade are trespassers on their territory, they were the one's who turned their home into mostly a inhospitable desert, contaminating the water with sand and their streams and due to the desertification, the wolfs literally have no source of food. They're not likely to find sheep, goats, or buffalo to hunt down and eat. With maybe the only things that could even *possibly* be a potential substitute being the mutated Scorpions, Spiders, and Bats, all of which reside in Facades territories just outside the Kingdom and within the Barren Temple. Both of which the Wolf's wouldn't even have a chance to eat because the Barren Temple is riddled with magical guardians and seals that force you to obey Facade's rules and of course the Scorpions are outside Facade's Kingdom itself, which is guarded by the Men of The Mask. So you take into consideration all of that, the wolfs effectively no longer have a food source, the only thing keeping them alive is the last pure water well spring that is located in their den.
And if the wolfs being slowly starved to death isn't enough for Roc's pack to deal with, they're constantly being hunted and killed literally for NO REASON. We actually see this in the side quest in Act I for NieR Replicant's story after we first visit Facade.
We're forced to save the Facade Blacksmith's son from becoming a Man of The Mask in the side quest "The Littlest Hero".
It's shown to us that for citizens of Facade who wish to become Men of The Mask, there is a ceremony where they go to the wolf's den and basically kill a bunch of them. In the side quest itself it's revealed that the blacksmith's son isn't actually a part of the Men of The Mask yet because they weren't given a letter of approval from his father, which is required as per Facade's rules, so the son travels to the wolf's den to prove he's worthy to become a Man of the Mask, which ends up roping us (NieR) into going into the wolfs den with him, killing a couple dozen of wolfs.
So given the evidence from Act I and what we come to find out later supported by evidence in Act II Route B and onward, the People of Facade were basically carrying out genocide against the wolfs. Albeit unknowingly given them not knowing the state of Roc and what his pack was forced to endure, but still a genocide nonetheless.
The finale straw that broke the camels back in the end being The Men of The Mask killing more of the Wolfs in the packs Den in which finally sees Roc's hope for peace with the Human-Replicants futile as they have quit LITERALLY have only killed them simply for being. Which lead to the Wolf's attack on Facade, Roc killing Fyra, and the King of Facade along with the Men of the Mask and NieR with his companions exterminate the Wolf's, kill Roc, and finally the genocide is complete.
As for Roc and his nature as a Gestalt, it is to be assumed that he has a Replicant, in which could be a Wolf that resides somewhere in the world. So had Weiss and Noir merged, Roc would become a wolf again. It is also to be inferred that Roc also receives the Maso that is harvested from the Shadowlord, therefore that being the reason he still has his sentience.
Although it could also be speculated that given Roc isn't even a human and instead is a wolf, the nature of his Gestalt could be totally different. In which case he may not suffer a relapse like humans would. But that's only speculation on my part.
@Resonant Arc
As for Louise, well... No one really knows *what* she is/was, if you read/listened to the dialogue with Devola and Popola in the extra scenes from Route C, Devola explains that Louise doesn't have a Replicant and she was more or less intended to be used by the twins to help them apprehend the Shadowlord, since by this point in the story he has gone rogue and was speeding up Project Gestalt far more then what was intended, forcing Popola and Devola to help him override the Replicant system so Gestalts could be united with their Replicants.
So Louise was not possessing a Replicant, but much rather was so powerful in Magic that she tried to suppress her power to assume a more human form. This is alluded to with other Magically powerful Gestalts too in various side quest you take during Act II. With the only real case of Gestalt's possessing Replicant's being the story quest when you investigate the Arie Village.
Due Replicants having sentience, this makes Gestalt's *physically* unable to possess Replicant bodies, therefore resulting in heightened aggression, which we see the reason behind in Route B as we know by this point the Shadowlord is trying to merge Weiss with Noir, which would not only see Yonah saved by having her Gestalt unite with her Replicant body, but also every human Gestalt unite with their own as well.
However, if a Gestalt forcibly tries to take possession of a Replicant body, this results in a Relapse due to the Souls of Replicants and Humans not being able to reside in one vessel, this starts turning Gestalts into the mindless Monsters we see. Creatures such as Wendy, which is a relapsed Gestalt you fight in the Arie in Act II, and also Tyrann after we kill the Shadowlord.
@Resonant Arc
Also when responding to the criticism that you guys had about Route B and how it was done, the reason why every boss we fight in the 2nd Act we fought are pitched as sympathetic is because we're supposed to empathize with them.
When it comes to the Gestalts (Shades) we fight in Act I, there are many clues that we could glean that point to our actions having consequences, Route B doesn't only just show us reasons why we should empathize with the Shades we have fought and killed, but showed us that we have also been responsible for many of the tragic things that have happened to these characters.
In Act I, we killed Hansel while trying to save Yonah. This results in Gretel mourning the loss of his brother and in Route B it shows us how Gretel comes to terms with the Death of his brother and move on, becoming a Guardian to the Orphaned Shade children whose Parents we killed in Act I. With this, we see Gretel find a new purpose and a New family in the form of the orphaned children. Shades, who Gretel once saw as Inferior, he now values them as the people they really are. Had we not come to the Lost Shrine, Gretel would've left with the Orphaned Shades and see the world living peacefully with the new family he found in the children.
Obviously with Route B in the Junk Heap, we see that Gideon was responsible for the death of his brother and given the presence of P-33 and Kalil (the orphaned Shade boy) Gideon assumed them to be responsible for the debris falling and collapsing onto Gideon's brother. However in Route B, we come to see the story of both Kalil and P-33 expanded upon so we can empathize with them. Kalil and his Mother lived in the Junk Heap, to seek refuge from the hostile Replicants. But do to Replicants having been occasionally known to venture into the Junk Heap to salvage medal alloys to help them enhance their swords, Mercenaries raided the Junk Heap believing there to be a Shade Nest. This results in Kalil and his mother being cornered by the Mercenaries. Out of a desire to protect her son so he may continue to live, Kalil's mother sacrifices herself to lead the Mercenaries away. This results in her death. We then later see P-33 discover Kalil, initially intending to kill the orphaned Shade seeing it as a trespasser. However upon seeing Kalil mourn the death of his Mother, P-33 inquires why Kalil is crying. Upon Kalil explaining his Mother's death and also how he can't go outside because of the Hostile Replicants were going to kill him, meaning he would die, P-33 suddenly remembers his creator and that he died thousands of years ago before Project Gestalt. P-33 held an attachment to the person that created him because he counted how much time had past since the death of his maker.
Realizing that P-33 had also lost someone very close to him, Kalil was immediately able to empathize with the Robot.
With P-33 realizing that he himself had no purpose anymore since his creator died, P-33 swore to protect Kalil. During the Junk Heap segment in Route B, we are then treated to scenes where we see Kalil and P-33 bond with each other. So much so, that they have become friends. Upon witnessing the death of Gideon's brother Jakob, P-33 correctly points out because of Gideon's carelessness, he ended up indirectly causing Jakob's death saving Gideon from the falling debris. As we see NieR reunite with Gideon for the first time after 5 years and help Gideon in his quest to avenge the death of his brother at the hands of the Robot he believed killed him, we are treated to more scenes of Kalil and P-33 bonding and becoming friends.
We see that at this point, Kalil has finally moved passed mourning the death of his Mother, having found companionship with P-33. And we see that P-33 has moved passed the loss of his Maker, having found a friend in Kalil and a purpose in protecting him. With the both of them making plans to finally leave the Junk Heap and explore the world. Something they would've done had NieR and his companions not showed up to kill them both.
With P-33, now Beepy, no longer wanting to see Kalil die, the Robot attacks our main characters to protect Kalil, who at this point simply wants to leave the Junk Heap so Beepy could survive. After we defeat Beepy, we end up fighting Kalil, who ends up using magical abilities to duplicate himself and protect Beepy from being Destroyed. Of course though, we successfully kill Kalil, which now sees Beepy mourning the death of his friend that gave him new purpose to live right before being destroyed.
We then meet Louis in Route B. Louise is a powerful Gestalt with almost an unlimited affinity in Magical power. When we see her in Route B, we look at her perspective featuring the Postman. Someone who we previously met in Act I of the story.
To simply put, the Postman ends up taking care of Louise. During the time we see him take care of her and Louise's bond to the Postman becoming closer, we see the Postman still mourns the death of the Light House Lady from Act I. This ends up seeing the Postman take care of Louise, who gives him a means to help him move on. And given how strongly attached to the girl he becomes, he eventually desires to adopt her as his daughter.
Since we discover Louise to be Shade, this causes Louise to attack us in defense, due too us discovering her having kidnapped and eaten the Replicants that lived in Seafront. Louise believed that by eating people she would become "human" and be able to live with the Postman as his daughter. Of course, given that he knows she is a Shade at this point, we know how the story ends with them. In Route C however, when we successfully kill Louise without the Postman's help, at the end of the Main Story Quest "The Mermaid" Kaine gives the Postman Louise's letter, since the Postman taught her to write, Louise intended to give him a "Thank You" letter. Out of appreciation for all the Postman did for her. As a result, despite knowing Louise was brutally killing the people of Seafront and also a Shade, the Postman still couldn't help but mourn her death, as he still cared for and loved her.
We then have the Arie Village in Route B. Basically what we have here, are Shades that desire to become human again and live peacefully, without the threat of being killed.
NieR and his companions investigate the Arie upon hearing strange news that the village has now opened up to outsiders.
This results to NieR discovering that the Shades have possessed some of the Villagers and due to the Gestalts having become aware of NieR's reputation by this point, they attack him and his companions in self defense, telling him that NieR had been responsible for the deaths of well over hundreds of men, women, and children at this point. Most of whom never even harmed him. The Shades tell NieR that they want him to leave them alone so they can live in peace.
NieR doesn't understand them though and just keeps killing them. Due to the Gestalts and their desire to become human again, but also their inability to maintain their Replicant bodies because of Replicants being sentient, this results in the Gestalts now becoming fully relapsed. With the Gestalts and the souls of the Replicants they once possessed now becoming the fully relapsed Shade known as Wendy.
Who we end up killing with the combined power of Grimoire Weiss and Emil. Due to Emil tapping into his nature as a magical weapon though, he ends up destroying the entire Arie Village. Which killed not only the Relapsed Gestalts, but also the remaining Replicants that were still alive.
Emil is understandably upset, since he realized that he killed innocent people. NieR however, helps him cope with this.
Then last but not least, we have Roc the leader of the Wolf Pack. Roc laments how the "humans" have come into their once dense Forest territories and have transformed it into a inhospitable Desert. Despite the wolfs of his Pack having suffered a great deal at the hands of the people of Facade, Roc still has hope that the Wolfs and the Facade people would be able to coexist together, fondly recounting the memories he had of his owner prior to becoming a Gestalt.
Unfortunately though, Roc and his Pack return to find that many of their Wolf kin had been brutally slaughtered by the Men of The Mask while the Pack was away from the Wolf Den. Due to the Wolfs having suffered at the hands of the Facade people, having been killed for Years without ever harming them unless out of self defense, Roc become outraged and stopped persisting with any false hope for Peace with the Facade people.
This leads to the Wolfs attacking The New King's wedding, killing a hundred or so people including Roc killing Fyra, the King's bride and Kaine and NieR's friend. This results in the King and the Men of The Mask, along with NieR and his companions to retaliate against the wolfs and finally exterminate their remaining population. This ultimately ends with the King killing Roc, to avenge the death of his bride Fyra.
As we see the Shade Wolf Die, questioning what happened for the Wolfs to suffer and die as they did. We see Roc think back to the time he departed his owner before getting transformed into a Gestalt. Ending with his owner telling Roc to think of him every now and then. With Roc viewing his owner as his Father.
@Resonant Arc
From all of the re-contextualized scenes in Route B and onward, we see a very specific theme. One that you guys already figured out when looking at Ending B for the Shadowlord.
And that is the acceptance of Death, moving on, trying to find a new purpose in life, and not being chained to the past or stuck mourning or returning to it. We see many of the bosses we have faced embrace this theme in Route B one way or another when looking at the stories of Gretel, Beepy and Kalil, The Divine Tree, The Arie Shades, Louise and the Postman, Roc the Shade Wolf, and last but not least the Shadowlord and Yonah.
With this all being brought to head with ending B, in which not only just shows the Shadowlord and Yonah reunited in the afterlife, but also the many Shade bosses we fought throughout the game being reunited with their loved ones, as we see them in the background as Human NieR and Yonah are reunited with each other again after everything we see them endure throughout the story.
That is why ending B and onward, in my opinion at least, is not only good in making us feel horrible for what we did in the game's story, but also even better in hitting home the themes of mourning a loss and how we are able to deal with it, in either accepting or denying it and move on.
Something you guys kind of missed in this video. Hopefully after reading this comment this is a better appreciation of route B and the characters we end up getting the perspective of in the game.
As for the criticism of Children dying always being the empathy card in this game, this is a Taro Yoko game.
Child murder is basically a given. You had it in Drakengard 1, NieR Replicant/Gastalt, Drakengard 3, and NieR Automata.
As disturbing it seems, it's kind of the meme/tragic weight of every or most games that Taro creatively directs.
As for there being phases Gestalts go through when under the threat of relapse, I think you guys are right. As it is implied in route B when we see Gretel trying to ward off the orphaned Children Shades, he refers to them as "imperfect" or "incomplete" Gestalts, despite them not acting unstable. This basically gives us the implication that humans first underwent the Gestaltization process, their Gestalts were supposed to look more human in appearance prior to relapsing. Basically meaning that they were supposed to look like those Ghost people we see when we enter the Ballroom upon entering the Shadowlord's castle.
So the Gestalts looking like Shades seems to be the first indicator of Gestalts being under the threat of relapsing, before losing Sentience.
Beyond that, I really enjoyed the video. I'm excited to see the next episode when it comes out. I appreciate that you read my comment too, thanks for the shout out and reference.
See you next time.
Not all Shades are *relapsed* Gestalts.
Shade is just the informal name for Gestalt because the general population does not know about project Gestalt. All shades are Gestalts, some have relapsed and some have not. All Gestalts are Shades. Relapsed Shades are aggressive, but not all aggressive Shades have relapsed.
I don't know if it's one Grimore Nier, but Emil and Kainé go to the memory tree on the forest of myth to restore Nier.
If you're confused on the air some of the replicants are giving up their souls for shades to enter that's why like the letter in the area. Is acting odd in that town and then it fuse into big shade for the boss named Wendy.
love the direction this channel is taking! is there a way to see how much content the patron has? thinking of supporting and never used that site before. loved this video! 😌
i love this podcast as someone who just doesnt have the time to get all endings.
I really liked the game. Automata is the better experience for me, but the two offer something different I think. Replicant felt more like mythic storytelling to me. Best way I can describe it is . . . well for some reason it reminded me a lot of Beowulf. Not one for one, but Replicant had a kinda episodic 'this happened, and then this happened' flow whereas Automata felt more linear.
And more than that. Replicant felt like folklore. As though it exists as a story handed down, and outside the realm of logic. I mean, the forest becoming a desert thing? Shorthand for consumption. A similar kind of short hand you find in fables. And I really liked about it. Gave it some power that I believe will be dissipated by too much explanation. I know there is material out there that makes the connections between the games more clear, but for me, it's not as interesting as letting the story take root in the minds of fans and become alive.
Don't get me wrong; I love context and backstory. What I mean is, when the details of a story are a little vague, it feels alive. When everything's spelled out, it's just a thing what some bloke came up with. Despite Replicant and Automata being connected, it's better I think it's more powerful when they relate to each other as stories being told around the same camp fire, if that makes sense. Like Zelda was before that stupid timeline was made.