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Working through C I like that you get a bunch of fetch quests in Pascal's town, A2 says "this sucks," and when you go do the easy book one first as you're likely to do, the village gets destroyed. Really quickly putting you in DONT YOU FEEL BAD NOW territory
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Mar 21, 2017 16:04
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I think I'm just gonna start a fresh save on Hard with the Japanese dub to freshen things up a bit.Cephas posted:Ending E chat: Yet simultaneously androids still haven't been able to truly free themselves of being chained by their programmed obsession on humanity and whatever authority truly engineered Project YoRHa is still out there. I can't help but feel like SE is really going to want another sequel.
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Mar 21, 2017 16:05
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The three of them being alive and free from YoRHa is way better than any combination of them being dead. They aren't part of an oppressive regime any more, and the networked robots flew off to another planet, so they aren't stuck in an eternal war anymore. 9S is no longer alone, 2B no longer has to execute anyone, and A2 got a chance to realize that she's actually a pretty kindhearted person who cares about other people. 9S definitely needs to be rehabilitated, but if anything, he and 2B can share their suffering together. He's had to kill copies of her so much, but now he knows almost exactly what it must have been like for her too. There's already been a bit of healing for him, even in some of the darkest parts of the game, in ending C--when he realizes that he doesn't hold any malice against the machines any more, and that he honestly never had a reason to in the first place. The three of them are good kids and will make it through ok. Also they have friendly Pods who will look after them.
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Nina posted:Yet simultaneously androids still haven't been able to truly free themselves of being chained by their programmed obsession on humanity and whatever authority truly engineered Project YoRHa is still out there. I can't help but feel like SE is really going to want another sequel. Project YoRHa is probably the most unclear part of that whole thing. It was obviously worked on by androids, considering how they say making YoRHa androids using standard AI would be inhumane, and the Commander knows about everything except the planned annihilation of Project YoRHa and the tower, but it's explicitly for the benefit of the machines. I feel like the entire plan was engineered by the Terminals and machines, with the YoRHa higher-ups informed up to the point of engineering the Council of Humanity, but the Commander really doesn't seem to know what's going on when the killswitch virus goes off in Route C and seems intent on trying to find a way to destroy the machines. It even seems like she wasn't previously aware of the aliens being extinct. I suspect she's the highest authority on the whole project below the Terminals, and they managed the android part by basically saying "look you can stay alive as long as you keep this war going and cull anyone who knows too much". The Commander does exemplify the idea that everyone needs something to fight for, so I feel like she honestly thinks that if the androids stick around and the machines/aliens don't get to the human genome information on the moon server, there's at least some hope.
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Mar 21, 2017 16:18
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Nina posted:I think I'm just gonna start a fresh save on Hard with the Japanese dub to freshen things up a bit. I imagine it would go something like this: S-E: Taro-san, we'd like another entry in the NieR series, set after Automata Taro: Hmmm, how about I make a game almost entirely unrelated to Automata, NieR and Drag-on Dragoon which provides no further closure to any of it but it will ask at least 20 more questions about the setting with no real answers. S-E: I dunno abo- Saito: If you say no, I quit S-E: ... for gently caress's sake, ok.
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Mar 21, 2017 16:18
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Josuke Higashikata posted:
I want him to just do his original idea for Drakengard 2 about dragons in space. Squidtentacle posted:Project YoRHa is probably the most unclear part of that whole thing. It was obviously worked on by androids, considering how they say making YoRHa androids using standard AI would be inhumane, and the Commander knows about everything except the planned annihilation of Project YoRHa and the tower, but it's explicitly for the benefit of the machines. The paradox about that theory is that if the machine network knows the humans are extinct why would they plan the whole giant moon cannon originally meant for destroying the human server.
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Mar 21, 2017 16:21
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Nina posted:I want him to just do his original idea for Drakengard 2 about dragons in space. Space boy Mikhail? Space boy Mikhail!
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Mar 21, 2017 16:24
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Nina posted:The paradox about that theory is that if the machine network knows the humans are extinct why would they plan the whole giant moon cannon originally meant for destroying the human server. Is there a place where it's mentioned they know that? I might've missed it in my last playthrough. I assumed it's a double-blind situation; the androids didn't know that the aliens were dead, and the machines didn't know that humans were dead, so they planned the master blaster as a final cleanup solution when they were done with their millenia-long evolution plan. Considering how the machines have worked it's also possible they wouldn't consider humans being on a server to be humans being extinct, though that's more of a stretch.
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Mar 21, 2017 16:27
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Do we ever even find out what YoRHa stands for?
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Mar 21, 2017 16:27
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Emron posted:Do we ever even find out what YoRHa stands for? Nope. Just like NieR, they just thought it looked cool.
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Mar 21, 2017 16:28
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Josuke Higashikata posted:Space boy Mikhail? Space boy Mikhail! Emil gets fed up with it all and rides into space on Mikhail's back to find planet Good Boy in the vastness of space. It's a shoot em up/musical hybrid. Send my draft to Taro please. Squidtentacle posted:Is there a place where it's mentioned they know that? I might've missed it in my last playthrough. I assumed it's a double-blind situation; the androids didn't know that the aliens were dead, and the machines didn't know that humans were dead, so they planned the master blaster as a final cleanup solution when they were done with their millenia-long evolution plan. Considering how the machines have worked it's also possible they wouldn't consider humans being on a server to be humans being extinct, though that's more of a stretch. If the theory you posted that Terminals are behind Project YoRHa which is explicitly meant for covering up the information that the humans are extinct were true they'd obviously know Nina fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Mar 21, 2017 |
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Mar 21, 2017 16:28
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It turns out that the moon has been a giant Emil head all along.
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Mar 21, 2017 16:33
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it wouldnt surprise me if the terminals never intended to shoot at the moon and instead where going to launch the machine conscious into space the whole time anyway like what happens in ending D. they just told A2 and 9S that tgey would destroy the moon to keep the evolutionary process going fir as long as possible
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Mar 21, 2017 16:33
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I really need to do a full run of the story again. Knowing the full context might help me pick up on new details.
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Mar 21, 2017 16:41
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Nina posted:I want him to just do his original idea for Drakengard 2 about dragons in space. Drakengard 5, the game about trying to find out what happened to Drakengard 4.
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Mar 21, 2017 16:44
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Squidtentacle posted:Nope. Just like NieR, they just thought it looked cool. I really appreciate that this game can be so dedicated to the "rule of cool" with respect to its visuals, while having a lot of substance to its story and themes. An not just the story, but the story-telling mechanism. The idea of the story being doled out over multiple playthroughs could be executed in a lazy and terrible way, but it's not. It's executed awesomely. Like, (route A/B stuff) the opera singer boss (Simone?)... on Route A, it's mostly cool spectacle, but at the very end, there's a flash of the two machine silhouettes. Just a little hint that there is more. Then, on route B, after you've already seen in route A how machines are aspiring to be human, you get a lot more of her story. It's great. I also like that it just doesn't care about any kind of technical bullshit. It's not that kind of scifi. The machine life forms look the way they do, and the function the way they do, because they are an allegorical construct, and not because of some technobabble bullshit. Also, fuckin lol at (route B)Eve being like "why do I have to eat this apple?" and Adam being like "Because humans gained wisdom from doing it, shut up and do it!"
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Mar 21, 2017 16:50
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Emil at lvl 99 was kind of a push over, but his guilt tripping after he lost was worse than anything he did during the fight. On to weapon grinding!
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Mar 21, 2017 16:51
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Nina posted:I really need to do a full run of the story again. Knowing the full context might help me pick up on new details. I fully recommend it, some things happen in some places where you'll be like "oh poo poo" when you know what it means
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Mar 21, 2017 16:52
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I really want my Cypress Stick to be overpowered as all hell at Level 4. Have I any hope?
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Mar 21, 2017 16:52
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I don't know about the stick but the Iron Pipe has super good traits at level 4
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Mar 21, 2017 16:53
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Snak posted:Also, fuckin lol at (route B)Eve being like "why do I have to eat this apple?" and Adam being like "Because humans gained wisdom from doing it, shut up and do it!" I'm so happy every time someone totally misunderstand how humans work
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Mar 21, 2017 16:56
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After the gut-punch in route C where Pascal's village gets infected (reconnected?) and wrecked, did anyone else notice that the "world's best shut-in" bot's door and house are unharmed, and his little white minimap triangle is still alive in there? That made me feel just a whiff of relief, along with all the sorrow.Nina posted:There's one thing I'm legitimately surprised about and it's that we never get a detailed backstory for 2B. For 9S it makes sense since he's very much green, fresh from the assembly line but A2 gets at least a summary of the stage play operation and even Devola and Popola get a wholly unique backstory for the specific units that appear in the game so it feels weird they leave one of the core cast of characters as just a concept just quickly explained at the very end. I noticed a lot of side-quest stuff that all but spelled out 2B's history. 9S is sort of fresh from the assembly line, sort of fresh from the memory wipe line. 2B points out in the opening monologue that they're in a miserable cycle of fighting a pointless war and being rebuilt. 2B gets very few actual orders from command - blow up this goliath, then stick by 9S, then kill these traitors, then blow up this goliath. There's a 'woman in a red hood' side-quest that explains how she's an E-for-executioner model, and 2B is obviously uncomfortable as gently caress when talking about it with 9S. 2B's memory-ghost told 2A they were the same, and integrated without an issue. After A2's background terminal story, there's another lore archive somewhere that mentions her personality archetype was unexpectedly good at noticing logic virus infections, and they should re-use her personality specifically for that purpose. She's the mass-production version of A2, and she hasn't had much personal development before the game starts, beyond killing a shitload of robots and 9S a bunch of times. RanKizama posted:I really want my Cypress Stick to be overpowered as all hell at Level 4. Have I any hope? No.  What it does: it makes all chests look like big red-and-gold rpg chests while equipped, and is a weak weapon. I guess if you stack +crit chance with its ability, you could get a lot of crits to compensate for the low damage. StringOfLetters fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Mar 21, 2017 |
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Mar 21, 2017 16:58
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StringOfLetters posted:I noticed a lot of side-quest stuff that all but spelled out 2B's history. 9S is sort of fresh from the assembly line, sort of fresh from the memory wipe line. 2B points out in the opening monologue that they're in a miserable cycle of fighting a pointless war and being rebuilt. 2B gets very few actual orders from command - blow up this goliath, then stick by 9S, then kill these traitors, then blow up this goliath. There's a 'woman in a red hood' side-quest that explains how she's an E-for-executioner model, and 2B is obviously uncomfortable as gently caress when talking about it with 9S. 2B's memory-ghost told 2A they were the same, and integrated without an issue. After A2's background terminal story, there's another lore archive somewhere that mentions her personality archetype was unexpectedly good at noticing logic virus infections, and they should re-use her personality specifically for that purpose. She's the mass-production version of A2, and she hasn't had much personal development before the game starts, beyond killing a shitload of robots and 9S a bunch of times. My issue with it is that you can tell what she's been doing and so on but you don't get her own take on it. I want to feel like I know the characters instead of just knowing about the characters. Your knowledge of the characters in NieR becomes so intimate I guess I just find this distant read-between-the-lines characterization a bit off putting.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:03
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Also, 2B doens't have much of a personality so far, but her response to the aftermath of the Opera boss fight cracks me up every time: "We have to save these androids!" "Their circuitry is fried. I think that enemy was the only thing keeping them alive" *annoyed/exasperated*"oh". Something about the delivery is just so funny. English VA nailed it.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:08
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About 5 hours in Just got to the robots village, the music and the bots are so cheerful. Eventually this place is gonna get destroyed and all the good bots killed right?  (there are even some other players bodies lying around the village) I'm playing on normal, how hard is hard? And is there any benefit to playing on it ? (better chips or more money drops ?) Game owns so far.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:10
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ZZZorcerer posted:About 5 hours in Just got to the robots village, the music and the bots are so cheerful. Eventually this place is gonna get destroyed and all the good bots killed right? There are no rewards for playing on higher difficulties unfortunately.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:14
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ZZZorcerer posted:About 5 hours in Just got to the robots village, the music and the bots are so cheerful. Eventually this place is gonna get destroyed and all the good bots killed right? Hard is much harder than Normal, but manageable with good chips. The reward is the feeling beating a more difficult game and your own opinion is what gives that any worth.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:15
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StringOfLetters posted:After the gut-punch in route C where Pascal's village gets infected (reconnected?) and wrecked, did anyone else notice that the "world's best shut-in" bot's door and house are unharmed, and his little white minimap triangle is still alive in there? That made me feel just a whiff of relief, along with all the sorrow. I tried to save him after I returned with 9S but it's too late since he's gone just like his mother. And the Little Sister and Big Sister bots in town. Everyone is actually dead like A2 mentioned during the cutscene. Except for Sartre if you complete his quest.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:17
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I'd recommend hard just because you don't really discover the usefulness of a lot of the mechanics on normal since even though the enemies scale somewhat you quickly become really powerful after the first story route.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:19
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InfinityComplex posted:counter launch and counter shot I know that I'm the whiny, annoying pedant about this game's mechanics, but... Isn't this not very accurate? Not all melee attacks that follow a perfect dodge are launches. The small sword is when you're 2B, but the large sword isn't, and the spear is a knockback. As 9S (should I keep spoiler tagging that you play as 9S? I'm being overly cautious with tags so far), the small sword doesn't seem to be a launch. Although someone did say you can perform launches as 9S, but I haven't worked it out yet.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:19
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Nina posted:If the theory you posted that Terminals are behind Project YoRHa which is explicitly meant for covering up the information that the humans are extinct were true they'd obviously know Fair point. I'm going through the game again to finish all sidequests and see how everything shakes out when I have the understanding from later events in the game, and it's been worthwhile so far; I'll probably have a better idea of how it all fits together when I actually get to that end point again. I at least encourage you to do the same, since you mentioned considering it! Snak posted:I really appreciate that this game can be so dedicated to the "rule of cool" with respect to its visuals, while having a lot of substance to its story and themes. An not just the story, but the story-telling mechanism. The idea of the story being doled out over multiple playthroughs could be executed in a lazy and terrible way, but it's not. It's executed awesomely. This is probably why I love this game and the original so much. I've seen people complain about having to do multiple playthroughs, but the execution of revealing more stuff when you go back through makes it so worthwhile and all the more impactful. Like I mentioned before, the last ending wouldn't have had the impact it did for me if I hadn't gone through everything else first. Nina posted:Your knowledge of the characters in NieR becomes so intimate I guess I just find this distant read-between-the-lines characterization a bit off putting. Automata and NieR definitely have very different stories, concepts, and characterization. I don't blame you for not liking the way it's handled. I almost feel like this is why Yoko Taro was really pushing "don't expect anything from this game, it's all poop", since I've seen people coming into it with expectations (fair or otherwise) and not having them met for various reasons.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:21
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Alder posted:I tried to save him after I returned with 9S but it's too late since he's gone just like his mother. And the Little Sister and Big Sister bots in town. Everyone is actually dead like A2 mentioned during the cutscene. C/D route. Oh poo poo, that's right! I can just not do Sartre's quest and then kill that rear end in a top hat.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:21
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Squidtentacle posted:Automata and NieR definitely have very different stories, concepts, and characterization. I don't blame you for not liking the way it's handled. I almost feel like this is why Yoko Taro was really pushing "don't expect anything from this game, it's all poop", since I've seen people coming into it with expectations (fair or otherwise) and not having them met for various reasons. In some ways I'd say Automata feels more like Drakengard than NieR. NieR is actually the outlier when it comes to Taro's games because it's just so heavily character driven and the actual weirdness of the setting takes a backseat to the motivations of the characters. With Automata it's more of the overall conflict and the broader story of the two sides that are the centerpiece of the story rather than the individual characters which is a pretty big departure from what NieR did. I can appreciate it but I'm a sucker for a really good character-driven narrative. And I adore the characters of NieR. I could probably write several essays on how much I love just Kainé alone.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:26
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I think the English dub doesn't do 2B's characterization any favors. She ends up coming off as a hardass at times when the Japanese VA is more emotional.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:29
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Nina posted:Yet simultaneously androids still haven't been able to truly free themselves of being chained by their programmed obsession on humanity and whatever authority truly engineered Project YoRHa is still out there. I can't help but feel like SE is really going to want another sequel. The androids' obsession about humanity is something that I think is pretty interesting. The androids were designed to have a certain base instinct to obsess over humans. This is something that clearly differentiates them from real life humans, if only by virtue of: We know that humans made androids, but we don't know what made humans. So when we look at androids, we can see that their creators (their gods, in a sense) were self-centered and bit narcissistic, to have created a new life form only in service of themselves. In a way, that marks a bit of a separation between the player and the characters in the game: they *are* different from us because they're supposed to be something humans created, so when we witness their suffering in the story, instead of fully identifying with them, we can see them as almost like our hypothetical children. It's like if the game were saying, "if humans ever do get the power to create artificial life, please take this story as a warning to create them humanely rather than selfishly" or even in a more mundane way, "if you have kids, don't instill them with self-destructive tendencies." If you look at the androids that way, it seems rather tragic that they'd be stuck in a world where their gods are literally all dead, but they fundamentally can't help but obsess over them. On the other hand, N:A is a game that's all about base instincts like sex/violence/all that good stuff, and we know that androids aren't unique in their obsession with violence, warfare, and sex. Their obsession with finding something to cling to for meaning is pretty human. Humans are probably just as obsessed with the thing that created us--it's just that we don't know for a fact what that thing is, so we conjecture about gods, evolution, ancient aliens, etc. and base the way we're supposed to live off of the creation story we choose to believe in. Pascal literally starts reading some Nietzsche in the middle of the game, so we know that "God is dead," a human idea, is at the heart of the story. Basically if you read the androids one way, it can be a cautionary tale for humans to create things responsibly. If you read them another way, there's absolutely nothing different about them compared to humans, and humans, despite their existentialist dilemmas about their mysterious and seemingly unreachable creators, still manage to scrape by. It's just something you have to deal with. Also, who knows--9S can seemingly hack just about anything in the world, maybe he could hack into androids and delete their obsession with humans.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:35
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lets hang out posted:I think the English dub doesn't do 2B's characterization any favors. She ends up coming off as a hardass at times when the Japanese VA is more emotional. I think it might be a consistent thing with 8-4 at this point. They seem to take cool, detached and levelheaded as "hard". 2B in the Japanese dub has her hard moments but most of the time when she's not trying to be detached from a situation, she's actually pretty panicked about something. I don't think 2B's a hardass at all because nothing about her tone or temper in Japanese shows her that way. Isn't a thing with the localisation of Zero where they took her from someone who's basically fed up with all of the poo poo and just wants it done with and turned her into the pissed off, angry at everything Zero in English?
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Mar 21, 2017 17:35
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lets hang out posted:I think the English dub doesn't do 2B's characterization any favors. She ends up coming off as a hardass at times when the Japanese VA is more emotional. I haven't tried the Japanese VA yet, but I really like her characterization in English. She comes off as someone who does have emotions, but doesn't think they are professional in the workplace. So they are a bit repressed. I've only completed Route A, but I really liked that, over the course of it, she becomes more outwardly expressive as the stakes rise and it becomes more than just a mission and following protocol. Like her investment in the events of the story mirrors my own.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:35
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Noticing early on that 2B and 9S seem to swap personalities on a regular basis. One moment she's the one who's unnerved by the implications of what's going on while he's just duty-minded saying "Don't think about it, Morty", the next it's the other way around and 9S is unnerved while 2B is single-minded and saying "Don't think about it, Morty". It's weird.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:37
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Yeah, and that's something a couple of reviews picked up on too. I think you can probably handwave it but as a whole, I'm pretty sure it's just wonky characterisation. It doesn't pop up that much but it's pretty jarring when it does.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:40
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Cephas posted:The androids' obsession about humanity is something that I think is pretty interesting. The androids were designed to have a certain base instinct to obsess over humans. This is something that clearly differentiates them from real life humans, if only by virtue of: We know that humans made androids, but we don't know what made humans. So when we look at androids, we can see that their creators (their gods, in a sense) were self-centered and bit narcissistic, to have created a new life form only in service of themselves. In a way, that marks a bit of a separation between the player and the characters in the game: they *are* different from us because they're supposed to be something humans created, so when we witness their suffering in the story, instead of fully identifying with them, we can see them as almost like our hypothetical children. It's like if the game were saying, "if humans ever do get the power to create artificial life, please take this story as a warning to create them humanely rather than selfishly" or even in a more mundane way, "if you have kids, don't instill them with self-destructive tendencies." One of my very favourite moments about the story actually is 9S' rumination about how even knowing humans don't exist anymore he still feels that preprogrammed intense longing for them and it's tearing him apart. You could think creating the androids as they did makes humans pretty horrible but the great thing about the story is that androids consider humans this mystical glorious species of beings yet for all intents and purposes androids are just as human as their creators. In both good and bad since they replicate similar atrocities through stuff like horrifying collective punishments by reprogramming androids and building entire android types only to die.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:44
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Augus posted:Noticing early on that 2B and 9S seem to swap personalities on a regular basis. One moment she's the one who's unnerved by the implications of what's going on while he's just duty-minded saying "Don't think about it, Morty", the next it's the other way around and 9S is unnerved while 2B is single-minded and saying "Don't think about it, Morty". It's weird. I noticed this to, but I think it's about kind of different things. They make a point to establish that 2B and 9S have different professions, and therefor different operational knowledge. So there are things that they each have experience with and feel strongly about which the other one isn't very familiar with. As a scanner, 9S is much more familiar with signals and communication, and so, while 2B is surprised to hear machines communicating, 9S's training has told him that this is insignificant an that machines just say random words. Likewise, as someone who specializes in communication, 9S has a tendency to want to be more social, while 2B (and most operators) initially find this unnecessary and unprofessional. And later, as the guy who studies comms, he starts to recognize that the machines aren't just saying random poo poo before 2B, so who seems to have just taken 9S's initial word for it. Like, at first 9S is like "machines don't even know what they're saying." then "they're just blindly imitating humans" then "they are saying some pretty weird stuff... almost like they're choosing to say it" then "we can't trust what they say!" having made the full realization that they are communicating consciously. But I'm still pretty early in the story, so these are just my initial impressions. edit: also, pod 042 cracks me up.
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Mar 21, 2017 17:46
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