|
Grapplejack posted:I assume it was the red dress girls ending their experiments and converting them to harvesting metal for the collectors Yeah but those machines were explicitly not on the network, no? So how come they got infected? Why weren't the kids affected? The other question is that there's a picturebook in route B that says a God came out of a volcano and gave the machines Treasures (i.e. emotions). When I was reading that I assumed this would be the Watchers or whatever, but that plotline just seemed dropped?
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2017 22:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 12, 2024 20:38 |
|
|
Fangz posted:Yeah but those machines were explicitly not on the network, no? So how come they got infected? Why weren't the kids affected? It's explained the network specifically allows entities like Pascal's community and the forest kingdom to exist as a part of its divergent evolution. It can just stop doing that when it's time to clean table Also the volcano god is Beepy. Look up the novella https://medium.com/@khodazat/nier-novella-the-flame-of-prometheus-bdb8738933cf#.ykz42urzn Nina fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Mar 26, 2017 |
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2017 22:06
|
|
|
Fangz posted:Yeah but those machines were explicitly not on the network, no? So how come they got infected? Why weren't the kids affected? quote:The other question is that there's a picturebook in route B that says a God came out of a volcano and gave the machines Treasures (i.e. emotions). When I was reading that I assumed this would be the Watchers or whatever, but that plotline just seemed dropped?
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2017 22:10
|
|
|
Oh I fixed my white screen on minimize problem. Apparently I changed the resolution from 1600xwhatever to 1920xwhatever, and even though it didn't actually make it look different, changing it back made things better. Funky.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2017 22:27
|
|
|
Lore from the first game is only really relevant with respect to the stuff about the Gestalt project and the ultimate fate of humanity. (Oh, and Emil, of course.) Robots (though not machine lifeforms) and androids and the issue of artificial humans developing self-awareness are all things that exist in the original NieR but the lore about them in Automata is largely self-contained. Funnily enough, I'm pretty sure Automata explains the relevant stuff from NieR way more directly and clearly than NieR ever did. There are some emotional beats that really benefit from familiarity with the first game, specifically the stuff with Emil, but in terms of understanding the story you're fine without it. Opposing Farce fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Mar 26, 2017 |
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2017 22:46
|
|
|
I had really mixed feelings about this game. I've just finished all the endings (save for the 19 joke endings) and I dunno, I feel like way too much of it just didn't work. Compared to Bayonetta and Metal Gear Rising, the combat is a dull, shallow grind where all enemies are weak to the spam-dodge-and-hit-it-sometimes strategy. Some of the chips available early in the game (Auto-use item, auto-heal, deadly heal and offensive heal) are completely game breaking and make meaningful combat pointless. The world is huge and empty for effect but it's also kinda boring to look at so getting around (especially with the way they hold fast travel away for the five hours) is just tedious. Some of the fights in The Tower are horrifically long and unfun. Plot wise (Nier 1 spoilers also here)there were so many issues. The way no one seems to mind hacking through the Forest Kingdom after realising that machines can be pretty human after meeting Pascal and the Forest Kingdom is clearly more advanced than machines just saying "kill". It's basically like if the shades=human twist was told to Nier in the first chapter and then he was like "eh, whatever". If you're played Nier 1, you already know the second play through's major twists that the humans are dead because we establish in playthrough 1 that this is the same world as Nier 1 and that Project Gestalt failed. 9S is the closest thing to a real character in the game, and his personality reaches the staggering heights of "male anime protagonist that the audience can project themselves on". 2B never transcends "being an android that gets things done" and A2 has only begun to become interesting when the game ends. The quest system feels meaningless, gather data, give this to so'n'so, I never really have a clear idea of what I'm really trying to accomplish on a macro level and everyone seems to stumble rear end-backwards into the conclusion. Maybe I'm being too hard on it because it should have been the amazing hybrid of a JRPG world I care about and incredible action game mechanics from other games I really love, but it's just kind of a mediocre action RPG with marginally above average combat that gets ludicrously dragged out in the last act. I loved the conversations in Nier 1, I loved the characters and they way they played off each other. Pretty much every conversation in Automata is either expodumping or task assigning. Cymbal Monkey fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Mar 26, 2017 |
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2017 23:00
|
|
|
. I think the thing with the forest kingdom is that it's okay to kill them because they are openly hostile to everyone, including the village of machines (you can find a room where you can eavesdrop on them planning a preemptive assault on the village) but it's not really clear until you already murdering them all. It comes off as a bit strange
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2017 23:05
|
|
|
Instant Grat posted:Speculate with me (Big Spoilers): If 2B's job was to kill 9S whenever he unearthed the glasses from They Live, then does that mean by extension that 2B has known about the humans being dead the whole time? I took it as she didnt know the truth and her whole role was pretty much an anti yorha specialist. The only thing that particularly backs this up is the assignment to terminate A2 and the sidequest with the rogue yorha droids. The "glory to mankind" resentment could be the fact that she has to off her fellow androids from time to time.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2017 23:06
|
|
|
But they go there with a clear explanation from Pascal that they don't allow outsides in and then immediately decide the appropriate way to deal with this is ignore that and go anyway because gently caress their privacy.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2017 23:07
|
|
|
. Yeah, it's weird. It's like a reverse of the usual Yoko Taro thing. Instead of "actually, the thing that seemed good was bad all along", it's "actually, you were totally justified in attacking those guys that seemingly just wanted to be left alone, you just didn't know it yet". Doesn't mesh well with the themes of the game Edit: Just so we're clear, I mean the sudden murdering doesn't fit. The forest kingdoms theme of how blind loyalty can lead to betraying the very principles they swore to protect in the first place works well and I like it. Edit edit: To be honest the forest kingdom functions better as a criticism of religion than the factory part does Zinkraptor fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Mar 26, 2017 |
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2017 23:13
|
|
|
I'll never get why people think Metal Gear Rising is some benchmark in thoughtful combat when you can literally just tap forward and achieve literally the same thing as mashing dodge in this game. Like I finished Rising on the harder difficulties without bothering to learn proper timing because it's just so forgiving and it drops healthpacks like there's no tomorrow. (Not saying it's a bad game but always struck me as odd)
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2017 23:27
|
|
|
I was convinced that there was going to be a quest line of slowly making inroads with the Forest Kingdom and brokering trust between the kingdom, the village and the rebels. Then when I got there and the game was just like "nah, go for it, hack away" I was like  ThisIsACoolGuy posted:I'll never get why people think Metal Gear Rising is some benchmark in thoughtful combat when you can literally just tap forward and achieve literally the same thing as mashing dodge in this game. Bayonetta 2 is definitely the benchmark as far as I'm concerned. Cymbal Monkey fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Mar 26, 2017 |
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2017 23:41
|
|
|
Finally got around to finishing C and D, inadvertently triggered E before going back and finishing all the missing quests (have 89% completion or somewhere around there. This shooting bit was fun and chill and then suddenly became ridiculous really quickly. Am I being terrible if I give up now because I wanna go back and complete stuff before I finish it? I assume having 9S decide to stay is what triggered E?
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2017 23:44
|
|
|
Fuzz posted:Finally got around to finishing C and D, inadvertently triggered E before going back and finishing all the missing quests (have 89% completion or somewhere around there. Finish the ending, the game doesn't require you to delete your save.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2017 23:47
|
|
|
I'm not going to say Bayonetta 2 combat + Witcher 3 RPG wouldn't have been amazing and the imaginary comparison makes this game (and probably pretty much every other) look like a disappointment in comparison. And once someone actually makes that game and it's real i'll buy it day one and it'll be fantastic.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2017 23:47
|
|
|
Fuzz posted:Finally got around to finishing C and D, inadvertently triggered E before going back and finishing all the missing quests (have 89% completion or somewhere around there. Just keep going. Also what that guy said.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2017 23:47
|
|
|
Fuzz posted:Finally got around to finishing C and D, inadvertently triggered E before going back and finishing all the missing quests (have 89% completion or somewhere around there. If you want to take the option in the future you have to redo the segment, so keep that in mind.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2017 23:52
|
|
|
The plot connection between Drakengard and Nier is so insanely tenuous and ridiculous, yet vastly significant. Like, its the whole reason all the humans are dead. Nier to Nier Automata makes a bit more sense.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2017 23:54
|
|
|
ThisIsACoolGuy posted:I'll never get why people think Metal Gear Rising is some benchmark in thoughtful combat when you can literally just tap forward and achieve literally the same thing as mashing dodge in this game. The combat system was pretty deep and felt really good to play, even if it was possible to cheese your way through the whole game somehow. I don't own a Wii U so I don't know what Bayonetta 2 was like
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 00:01
|
|
|
Fortuitous Bumble posted:The combat system was pretty deep and felt really good to play, even if it was possible to cheese your way through the whole game somehow. I don't own a Wii U so I don't know what Bayonetta 2 was like You weren't missing much. It was a weak sequel.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 00:04
|
|
|
Zinkraptor posted:. Yeah, it's weird. It's like a reverse of the usual Yoko Taro thing. Instead of "actually, the thing that seemed good was bad all along", it's "actually, you were totally justified in attacking those guys that seemingly just wanted to be left alone, you just didn't know it yet". Doesn't mesh well with the themes of the game
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 00:11
|
|
|
Cymbal Monkey posted:Critiques. I pretty thoroughly enjoyed it and I enjoyed a lot of the same games you did so it may be a case of expectations not meeting reality. I agree that the combat is actually pretty shallow. I found that to be rather a question of enemy design and difficulty curve rather than the mechanics available to the player within instances of combat themselves. Health regen of some sort or another is simply too plentiful for combat to be consequential and the enemies are not relentless enough to punish you within individual instances of combat. Which is probably why they made Very Hard into instagib mode but that's kind of a cop out imo. After the (very excellent) intro, combat quickly becomes inconsequential as the game opens up. The game makes up for it though with how stylish that combat can be. Personally I found a lot of enjoyment in optimizing my plug-ins and playstyle to let me be as stylish as possible at all times. As for the story, I personally didn't feel any real discordance in the areas you mentioned. The androids are created to kill machines after all, the stranger part is how easily they accept Pascal's village. What I did notice was that I often felt like the game intended me to do certain open-ended events in a specific order and didn't account for you taking a different route (most noticeable during Emil's questline where the first Lunar Tear I found had him talking about remembering the sand pouring into the area we were in, which was the Flooded City). Similarly I sometimes felt that dialogue was out of order within conversations (maybe a translation issue?). However the story itself was pretty consistent with what I expect from Yoko Taro and I actually quite prefer the cast of Automata to the original, who I often found overly whiny (possibly why I dislike 9S as well). That's a purely subjective issue however. All in all, I didn't go in expecting greatness, merely competence with an engaging plot, and I was pleasantly surprised, especially by Ending E (which I thought was brilliant and a far better use of the medium than anything Nier ever even attempted). It may be that you had higher expectations and that could explain the difference in our perceptions of it?
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 00:11
|
|
|
AttackBacon posted:responses That's entirely possible, I certainly had high expectations of the combat and was basically expecting them to have just lifted Bayonetta's combat for it. I agree the plot is mostly okay, aside from the one major blunder where they try to reuse the "the humans are dead" twist from Nier 1. My big complaint on the writing is that I feel like the dialogue is weak and lifeless and I don't care at all the characters and whether or not they succeed.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 00:16
|
|
|
I thought the twist was less a surprise for the players who played nier, and more a twist for new people and for the characters.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 00:25
|
|
|
Cymbal Monkey posted:That's entirely possible, I certainly had high expectations of the combat and was basically expecting them to have just lifted Bayonetta's combat for it. I agree the plot is mostly okay, aside from the one major blunder where they try to reuse the "the humans are dead" twist from Nier 1. My big complaint on the writing is that I feel like the dialogue is weak and lifeless and I don't care at all the characters and whether or not they succeed. And as someone who never played Nier i thought the "twist" that humanity is extinct was incredibly obvious to see coming and the actually interesting part was what they build on top of that predictable premise. Though i agree that if anything, many of the interesting (and doubly so for more generic) sub quest and narrative lines could've profited from being expanded in depth a lot. "There wasn't enough of most of it" being a pretty funny thing to say about a game i just comfortably burned 60 hours on. I guess at some point there's just a sad reality of budget constraints ruining everyone's day. 
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 00:30
|
|
|
DMC4's combat system has yet to be beaten imo
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 00:35
|
|
|
Well i just got ending E and i'm glad i still have some of this. In all seriousness the game was incredible as a work of fiction and i'm looking forward to doing every little sidequest i missed. (all ending spoilers) and then doing the credit sequence again, one last time
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 00:36
|
|
|
Cymbal Monkey posted:That's entirely possible, I certainly had high expectations of the combat and was basically expecting them to have just lifted Bayonetta's combat for it. I agree the plot is mostly okay, aside from the one major blunder where they try to reuse the "the humans are dead" twist from Nier 1. My big complaint on the writing is that I feel like the dialogue is weak and lifeless and I don't care at all the characters and whether or not they succeed. Well that sucks. I finished ending A a day ago but if it gets suckier, I guess I can shelve it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 00:38
|
|
|
Tae posted:Well that sucks. I finished ending A a day ago but if it gets suckier, I guess I can shelve it. Comparatively, I thought the dialogue served its purposes well, and the situations the characters found themselves in made me care about their predicament. I think this is one of those areas where it's simply a matter of taste, so I encourage you to play the game as much as you can enjoy it. Cymbal Monkey posted:Ending A is terrible, for all my criticism at this point you might as well power through to ending E, which doesn't take as long as you think it will. Route A is probably the weakest part of the game, since it's essentially only there to set the table for route B and its perspective flip. I think it's an incredibly necessary table setting, but I can understand people getting frustrated with it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 00:41
|
|
|
Tae posted:Well that sucks. I finished ending A a day ago but if it gets suckier, I guess I can shelve it. Ending A is terrible, for all my criticism at this point you might as well power through to ending E, which doesn't take as long as you think it will.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 00:41
|
|
|
Route B can be done super fast if you aren't doing side quests.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 00:42
|
|
|
RoadCrewWorker posted:I think they probably started with Bayonettas combat - there are abilities for various dodge techniques from most of their games including witch time - and then ran into the problem of an RPG context meaning a designer basically has no control over how strong a rushing or powergrinding player is or can be in encounters, also adding various progression systems. Which is an incredibly hard problem to solve and i thought they got pretty far. Yeah, I think expecting Bayonetta from an open-world RPG is...naive, even if Platinum could've just copypasted it into the game. The boss fights could've been more complex though, I think they missed some beats with those. I just wanted fun combat and I got that. Movement is fun, it has the best feeling on a dodge since...well, Bayonetta, and you have a lot of freedom when it comes to melting enemy crowds. I also agree on the twist parts - actually, a lot of Automata's plot beats felt like plays on the original game's stuff. Plus, I can't agree with dialogue being lifeless - maybe the Resistance members are kinda boring, but I liked 9S being an awkward nerd and everything relating to self-serious bot and Doofus having to deal with machines.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 00:45
|
|
|
You can probably get through the entire main story in something like 15-20 hours, maybe less.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 00:44
|
|
|
So uh, (superboss spoilers) I fought Emil next to his house, beat him but he didn't drop the weapon. I didn't accidentally pick it up and it is nowhere on the ground. I've watched some videos so I know the weapon is supposed to just drop, so now I have no idea what to do. I really don't want to have to repeat the fight.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 00:54
|
|
|
Alright, so I'm positive I missed a pod somewhere, there's a third type beside gatling and missile, right? There was some stuff implying one could be found in the flooded city but I can't find it at all... Speaking of that area, how the heck do you reach the chests on the building way over in the water?
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 01:00
|
|
|
try fishing in the flooded city. if i remember right theres two diffrent that npcs talk about pods, one saying theres a pod in the flooded city and another says you can get a pod by fishing.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 01:02
|
|
|
Obligatum VII posted:Alright, so I'm positive I missed a pod somewhere, there's a third type beside gatling and missile, right? There was some stuff implying one could be found in the flooded city but I can't find it at all... There is, it's a laser and as your going into the flooded city from the pipe fish in the first body of water to your right.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 01:02
|
|
|
Instant Grat posted:The only thing that's permanently missable is a joke ending related to an optional superboss. Just play the game, yo. Just for reference when I reach said boss, what are the conditions of said joke ending?
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 01:27
|
|
|
Obligatum VII posted:Just for reference when I reach said boss, what are the conditions of said joke ending? You'll fight a bunch of giant balls, then they'll start a 10 second countdown to explode. Let them explode for the joke ending.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 01:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 12, 2024 20:38 |
|
|
Fangz posted:Things I don't particularly understand: why *did* the machines in the fairground and the village go crazy? Belated, but my take on it as follows (spoilers for whole game follow): The explanation from earlier in the game was that these separate groups of machines were different and eccentric because they had separated from the greater machine network. By the time you reach the tower and understand the network's greater plans, however, it's possible to see this as a complete lie. The network intentionally made these machines substandard in order to slow down the inevitable victory over the androids, who they still wanted around to provide an enemy to fight and to prompt evolutionary progress through the selection pressure provided through their war. It's only when YorHa is eliminated that they decide to take their current wins, wrap up their plans on the surface, and send their ark into space. The machines in the fairground and village going crazy is just an extension of this - wrapping up side projects, just like their fight with YorHa. Think about it how Adam intentionally "disconnects" himself from the network way back in route A and yet when you go through the tower there's still files related to both him and Eve, and he's completely fine in ending D when he offers to bring 9S along with them. Eve is there too, despite being ostensibly being the last boss of two routes. There is still perfect immortality for all machines. The idea is that the machines have "won" the conflict on Earth for a very long time, and were never in true danger of being defeated - they simply defer victory over their opponents until they're ready to leave. E: While we're talking about things we didn't really understand - is there a reason that in the C/D Route the three resource collectors are named, respectively, meat box, soul box, god box? I didn't understand that reference at all.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2017 01:48
|
|
