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Saagonsa posted:Nier Automata is an ARPG, not a character action game. I have no idea why people compare it's combat to the combat in actual character action games The name creates expectations, fair or not. If the story was about a sexy badass epically destroying the evil villains and was presented completely unironically, Yoko Taro fans would probably be disappointed
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Jan 9, 2018 23:38
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I don't think there's much ironic or subversive about the game tbh, it's not like you're told to feel bad for staring at 2B's butt
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Jan 9, 2018 23:42
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DoNotFeedTheBear posted:In what way did the 9S playthrough change your perspective of the 2B one? Most of the machines' background stories and motivations are revealed through the new cutscenes. You also get to see what 9S discovers during the segments where he and 2B are separated. Their respective playthroughs actually kind of mirror their personalities: 2B's playthrough is straightforward without much backstory because she's resigned to doing her job and doesn't care, and 9S's playthrough has more revelations because he's super nosy and just has to know what's up. No Wave posted:I don't think there's much ironic or subversive about the game tbh, it's not like you're told to feel bad for staring at 2B's butt I do think the game is kind of meta-subversive because I was one of those people who went in only knowing that it was made by Platinum and thought it was gonna be Bayonetta 3: heavy action with a throwaway story. It turned out to be the exact opposite. Hikaki fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Jan 9, 2018 |
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Jan 9, 2018 23:53
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I got the game over Christmas and just finished route E tonight. I thought the game was awesome and the combat was good, for an RPG. I love some of Platinum's other stuff like Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising and W101 but never expected that from this and had a good time. The chip system was really cool, I never found enough materials to upgrade a single pod though? I know the game sold pretty well, have there been any rumours of a sequel at all?
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Jan 10, 2018 01:48
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I don’t think there is any concrete information about a sequel yet, but it’s probably well into the planning stages at this point. Automata saved Platinum and sold a lot more copies than Square-Enix assumed it would.
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Jan 10, 2018 01:56
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No Wave posted:I don't think there's much ironic or subversive about the game tbh, it's not like you're told to feel bad for staring at 2B's butt Nor should we be, for her butt is a gift.
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Jan 10, 2018 02:35
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Wait a tick. In Ending E, Pod 042 says "when the six of us were connected..." Pod 042, Pod 153, 2B, 9S, A2... was the sixth "of us" the player?
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Jan 10, 2018 04:28
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I think that’s just referring to the Pods themselves. They both have three separate Pod units each.
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Jan 10, 2018 04:35
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I think that's definitely referring to the player. The pods actually ask if you want to save 2B, 9S and A2 from being discarded like Project YoRHa. Ending E literally won't happen without your input and I think it's sweet.  Know Such Peace posted:I don’t think there is any concrete information about a sequel yet, but it’s probably well into the planning stages at this point. Automata saved Platinum and sold a lot more copies than Square-Enix assumed it would. Now watch as Yoko Taro's upcoming game about office ladies ends up being tied to Automata's mackerel ending.
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Jan 10, 2018 05:16
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Wanna play that Taro OL game
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Jan 10, 2018 08:01
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Hikaki posted:Most of the machines' background stories and motivations are revealed through the new cutscenes. You also get to see what 9S discovers during the segments where he and 2B are separated. Their respective playthroughs actually kind of mirror their personalities: 2B's playthrough is straightforward without much backstory because she's resigned to doing her job and doesn't care, and 9S's playthrough has more revelations because he's super nosy and just has to know what's up. Ah, I see what you mean. I thought you meant it actually changed how you viewed the 2B playthrough. I didn't get as much as you out of the 9S one, as I felt there was too much overlap between them.
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Jan 10, 2018 08:26
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Lost at least 30 mins of progress because Decided to jump into the giant pit while 2B was being corrupted trying to reach the shopping mall. Got thrown around for a minute without being able to defend myself. It was pretty appropriate storywise, but now I have to do the raid part again
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Jan 10, 2018 11:33
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DoNotFeedTheBear posted:I thought you meant it actually changed how you viewed the 2B playthrough. In some ways, I do mean this. For instance, in the forest kingdom segment, when I saw the baby king at the very end, I just kind of brushed it off like "Haha ok, stupid machines made this baby their king, what a ridiculous idea." In the 9S playthrough, it's revealed that they actually have a reason why they're loyal to the baby. Or with Adam and Eve, I started off viewing them as "Dark Link"-like minibosses that mirror the player (a novel idea originally but cliche at this point), but their extra cutscenes made it clear that they are basically machines themselves with the same motivations despite having a human appearance (and that these motivations exist in sentient beings regardless of their appearance). I think a common theme here is that the enemies are almost more important to the story than the protagonists. They are set up in a way to appear cartoonishly villainous or simply shallow in a way that you'd expect from a video game boss, but subsequent playthroughs are meant to cast doubt on that. Nier 1 is especially heavy-handed with this, where you turn out to be the villain in basically every situation. Yeah, it's nothing earth-shattering, but all the little stories set the mood and help build towards the real emotional climaxes of the game. Nier 1 does this especially well, where the revelations that you are the villain to these third party characters builds up to the revelation that you are the villain to your very self. Nier 2 doesn't quite have that kind of thematic build-up, but I think the impact is amplified nonetheless. This is why I think that the multiple playthroughs are an essential part of Nier as a storytelling device. I do agree that the gameplay part of it still has a long way to go though.
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Jan 10, 2018 12:52
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I don't really get why the game chooses to withhold that information until the second playthrough. Is 9S somehow experiencing the little diorama cutscenes and the scenes of Adam and Eve? Like does he get them from machines he hacks? That's the only diegetic reason I can think of for it, and I don't know if that makes sense. If he knows where Adam and Eve are, why not tell 2B? For the first playthrough the game is pretty diligent about incorporating normal gameplay stuff into the "real" world of the androids, then in the second playthrough it starts discarding that, culminating in the end of the third playthrough where you receive an intel report from after the end of the game and zoom back and forth in time from save points via chapter select. I assume this is intentional, to make the player kind of a character (reminds me of Metal Gear Solid where it extends the fourth wall out to the player rather than actually breaking it) but i don't know if that effect is worth playing the same game twice with 90% identical content
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Jan 10, 2018 13:37
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2house2fly posted:I don't really get why the game chooses to withhold that information until the second playthrough. Is 9S somehow experiencing the little diorama cutscenes and the scenes of Adam and Eve? Like does he get them from machines he hacks? That's the only diegetic reason I can think of for it, and I don't know if that makes sense. If he knows where Adam and Eve are, why not tell 2B? This was pretty much my issue as well. In Nier 1 where you learn that the shades are the actual humans keeping this information back is critical for the twist to be effective, while in Automata you know that the machines are discovering humanity the second you reach Pascal's village and you talk to some loving machines. Hell, the game doesn't even see this as a twist, there's really no reason make you slog through the opening twice, it's not like you have information you didn't have the first time about the nature of the machines.
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Jan 10, 2018 14:10
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Cymbal Monkey posted:This was pretty much my issue as well. In Nier 1 where you learn that the shades are the actual humans keeping this information back is critical for the twist to be effective, while in Automata you know that the machines are discovering humanity the second you reach Pascal's village and you talk to some loving machines. Hell, the game doesn't even see this as a twist, there's really no reason make you slog through the opening twice, it's not like you have information you didn't have the first time about the nature of the machines. What you get from the second go is new information on the nature of 9S. In the first run, the humanity of the machines is a slower build. You're given to assume that Nines is working from the same Intel as the player, founding his denial in experience. The opening to B instead reveals that 9S has been staring at the truth all along, and his "nothing the machines do means anything" chant is an attempt to protect himself from the glaringly obvious contradictions of his work.
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Jan 10, 2018 14:24
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2house2fly posted:I don't really get why the game chooses to withhold that information until the second playthrough. Is 9S somehow experiencing the little diorama cutscenes and the scenes of Adam and Eve? Like does he get them from machines he hacks? That's the only diegetic reason I can think of for it, and I don't know if that makes sense. If he knows where Adam and Eve are, why not tell 2B? The chapter select has zero story significance, it's not trying to be meta or whatever, it's just a chapter select.
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Jan 10, 2018 14:50
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Post-game spoilers: There are several 'point-of-no-returns' throughout the entire game. Even by Yoko Taro standards, it would have been unnecessarily cruel to not include a chapter select option for completionists. The characters in the game are never aware of the chapter select. The question that I have is how are the pods aware of the player at the very end of the game? Another example of the player/character disconnect is the prologue to Route B. 9S blew himself up before backing up to the bunker. There is no good reason for 9S to remember what happened, unless he lied about not backing up. During my first playthrough, I thought they were setting up a plot twist, but there was never a direct follow-up so I don't believe the player is meant to actually 'be' any of the characters. On the other hand, the recorded startup sequence from the beginning of Route A that plays shortly after Route B's prologue seems to point towards the player 'being' 2B. 9S's voice actor narrates the boss story cutscenes, but it is never confirmed whether or not the character 9S sees these visions. It adds depth to his opinions towards machines, but there is definitely some information that would have been helpful to share with his teammate. It's interesting to note that Emil's backstory at the conclusion of the Lunar Tears sidequest has a similar aesthetic to those other stories. tl;dr: I think the development team just had some cute ideas for how they could integrate the menu system into the gameplay/story and ended up not worrying that much about diegesis.
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Jan 10, 2018 14:50
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Cymbal Monkey posted:Let's do the RLM test! Describe both of them (ed: 2B and A2) without mentioning anything they do or what they look like. (A dozen enthusiastic responses later) Cymbal Monkey posted:My favourite thing about the RLM game results is no one even tried with 9S 
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Jan 10, 2018 16:38
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Problem?
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Jan 10, 2018 16:45
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Know Such Peace posted:Post-game spoilers: The player has been directing their movement throughout the entire game, so I guess they picked up on who was doing that.
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Jan 10, 2018 16:46
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The bait was too obvious.
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Jan 10, 2018 16:56
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Avoiding this thread since I've been steamrolling through the game and want to avoid spoilers but holy gently caress I just finished ending C and jfc this is like my #1 game of all time right now. Fuckin, Its been a looooong time since I've been this hyped/emotional playing a game.
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Jan 10, 2018 18:28
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queeb posted:Avoiding this thread since I've been steamrolling through the game and want to avoid spoilers but holy gently caress I just finished ending C and jfc this is like my #1 game of all time right now. Fuckin, Its been a looooong time since I've been this hyped/emotional playing a game. Come back when you've got E. Shouldn't take too long. Glad you're enjoying it. But there's a little further to go.
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Jan 10, 2018 18:31
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Ending D i can just use chapter select to go to the end of C right?
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Jan 10, 2018 18:38
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queeb posted:Ending D i can just use chapter select to go to the end of C right? Yes
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Jan 10, 2018 18:40
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queeb posted:Ending D i can just use chapter select to go to the end of C right? Yep. And it should be easy to figure out how to go for E from there.
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Jan 10, 2018 18:40
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Oh hey I found this thread finally! I just finished this and God damnit I have a million questions that the game didn't seem ready to answer. But I'm also missing a poo poo ton of Intel reports so maybe that will fill in gaps. Going to tag my poo poo anyways because manners. Why does Eve have the black scrawl or is it just a little Easter egg? So project YoRaH was to be the catalyst for new synthetic life? Hence old man little girl right? How did they know aliens who fight using complex robots would show up? The game tries to really push the whole memories makes us who we are, and then under cuts it in weird ways. Putting memories in a sword? Oh no worries I uploaded a fragment of my really important self into an enemy robot but actually it totally rebuilt me as a person also PS I have a big murder boner for bots now. What happened to mecha 9S after getting choked the gently caress out? So they make a grand reveal of the black boxs being machine cores right? Which means in order for the YoRaH to exist we needed the robots on Earth right? So... The resistance made YoRaH? gently caress I'm so confused. Oh and the machines are yonahs ghost because the robots found her data? The index says the robots found human data, and that data was of patient 001 right?
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Jan 10, 2018 21:37
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Moochewmoo posted:Oh hey I found this thread finally! Somebody linked a google doc with a bunch of Q&A to Yoko Taro and this was one of the questions he answered, actually. It was an interesting one.
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Jan 10, 2018 21:44
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There's a whole wiki maintained by the enthusiastic Nier afficianados from Reddit for lore and back/sidestory information. Spoilers alert, even though a lot of it concerns out-of-game information: https://theark.wiki/w/Welcome
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Jan 10, 2018 21:47
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quote:Q42. When Eve is overwhelmed by his emotions, the markings on his left arm start to enlarge - what’s up with that? Is it related to the black scrawl in the previous NieR? And why is it that only Eve has those markings? Honestly doesn't add much and is probably more of a thematic link between whatever the black scrawl represents and eve's character (I'm unfamiliar with it)
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Jan 10, 2018 22:02
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I still prefer thinking the Watcher's influence has just evolved to the point that they're essentially part of the machine network as some sorta virus or whatever.
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Jan 10, 2018 22:05
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Momomo posted:I still prefer thinking the Watcher's influence has just evolved to the point that they're essentially part of the machine network as some sorta virus or whatever. Wait, aren't they? Large technical advances occurred due to the Tokyo incident right? Who knows how magic works. Gonna pour through that wiki someone linked though. I felt I was pretty good about looking for secrets and really don't feel like combing the same places over and over again.
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Jan 10, 2018 22:26
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I thought that specific answer was sort of weak too, haha. But I agree that even if the Nier 1/Drakengaard stuff doesn't exactly affect Automata's course of events, it's still interesting backstory that makes year 11,000 on earth seem meaningful. Even not knowing all of it before I played through Automata, the glimpses of the past makes the final events feel weighty even while the characters become submerged in the pointlessness of their existence. And not that the backstory itself is all THAT interesting on its own (again as a Nier newbie, concerned mostly with the story and themes of Automata here), but it strengthens Automata's point. It makes exploring the environment to a wistful tune like City Ruins way, way more meaningful when you know that something specific has happened to it in the intervening years.
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Jan 10, 2018 22:35
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More post-game spoilers for a few of Moochewmoo's questions: It's "YoRHa", not "YoRaH". There is no known reason for the name "YoRHa", aside from it also being the name of the idol group that was formed during the making of Drakengard 3. It is sort of similar to "Yonah", but there is no concrete connection there as far as I know. The 'android illuminati' tried to convince androids throughout the world that a small group of humans were still alive on the moon with Project YoRHa. YoRHa was also meant to be expendable, but the intended backdoor was pulled early when the creepy machine girls discovered the security flaw. At the end of A/B, 9S uploads tiny fragments of himself to a bunch of different machine lifeforms. It takes a moment for him to coalesce into one coherent 9S. 'Corrupted 9S' dies, while 'big-machine 9S' lives. It isn't shown in-game, but he presumably then transfers back into a local body. The Yonah/machine connection is covered in side-materials, which I'm not super familiar with. Yonah ghost driving the machines seems vaguely correct, but it can be tough to tell with how Yoko Taro writes the plots to these games.
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Jan 10, 2018 22:57
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Know Such Peace posted:More post-game spoilers for a few of Moochewmoo's questions: Ah, thank you for the response. I think I'm most the way there with understanding it all, but after looking at the side materials I'm extremely disappointed they aren't in the game. I enjoyed the first Nier a ton and it felt like that game was a bit more self contained than this one. Maybe not. Man I don't loving know anything anymore.
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Jan 10, 2018 23:19
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Know Such Peace posted:More post-game spoilers for a few of Moochewmoo's questions: I always figured that N2/Red Girls were based on the data of the Shadowlord, since they're so obsessed with Project Gestalt, and ultimately decide to replicate it by separating their consciousness/memories from their bodies as a final escape from the conflict. Furthermore, I imagine N2 is a cheeky pun alluding both to "network" and "Nier 2".
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Jan 10, 2018 23:20
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Moochewmoo posted:Ah, thank you for the response. I think I'm most the way there with understanding it all, but after looking at the side materials I'm extremely disappointed they aren't in the game. I enjoyed the first Nier a ton and it felt like that game was a bit more self contained than this one. Maybe not. A lot of the stuff you don't exactly have to know to get a satisfied feeling from the ending so they could have pared it to make things less complicated. I did enjoy the lore files that were in the game though, so being able to find out things like who started Yorha or see the interludes with 9S and 2B's past adventures in-game might have been nice. It is a weird way to tell a story. If you watch the concert on youtube, the readings that the characters' voice actors do are pretty great.
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Jan 10, 2018 23:36
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A significant portion of A2’s backstory and character motivation is in the first stage-play. The overall experience works well enough, but there are a few places that feel like the devs just ran out of time/resources.
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Jan 11, 2018 00:28
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I'm still  that the YoRHa stage play was actually a long con for Nier Automata. I have to ask, but is there a full copy of the stage play online somewhere? Just looking at this brief snippet of beginning of the play and it's already magical.
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Jan 11, 2018 01:08
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