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Midjack posted:I was right to be concerned. Zack Ater posted:loving HELL
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Jan 7, 2019 03:19
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Midjack posted:I was right to be concerned. It's like you and Zack had the Pod 042 reaction and the A2 reaction. It's delightful.
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Jan 7, 2019 05:39
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If you knew anything about Yoko Taro, when you reached (Route C Spoiler) Pascal's village with A2 you knew what was to come, the dread merely came from when and how.
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Jan 7, 2019 08:52
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The game is currently being run at AGDQ as we speak! However, it's a FINAL FINAL SUPER FINAL ENDING run iirc so do not watch it if you're staying unspoiled. Not that you'll get much of the story, but you will have some real important stuff laid out in front of you.
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Jan 8, 2019 11:27
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exploded mummy posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TszeUg671Qc I watched this after having finished the game for the first time about six months ago and it loving broke me Goddamn this was truly the perfect game.
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Jan 8, 2019 12:13
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Man I finished this game the other day and was pretty disappointed. I actually enjoyed the relatively simplistic combat quite a bit, and I liked the (problematic) character designs. The world environment itself felt restrictive and a bit undercooked but the music was great and the minimalism at least played into the game's existential concerns. My main beef was with the narrative (I haven't really developed a general thesis so this is going to be a bit scattershot: My biggest problem was how little narrative momentum there is for the first 2/3rds of the game. It feels like a series of events linked by "and thens" rather than a coherent, escalating story. Go to the resistance camp. Now go the amusement park. Now fight this robot. Now go talk to the friendly robots. Now go run into the Adam and Eve (this at least counts as an event and an escalation). Now go fight the fish monster. Okay, now do it all again! This feels exacerbated by how lame and Adam and Eve are (the only real villains before the last hour of the game). I get that Japan loves its bishounens but these guys are ridiculous even by those standards. And what's worse is that when Adam reveals his villanous plan (such as it is) he's immediately killed! Oh well. Further compounding the above problem is that it feels like the two big developments of the game, the existential terror of the Machines and the duplicitous nature of YorHa/The Moon Base, are pretty much there from the first hour of the game. It's instantly apparent that the humans on the Moon probably don't exist, and it's equally apparent that the Machines are mostly kind of confused and vulnerable idiots. And that's fine as far as it goes, the Moon revelation still counts as a revelation for the characters and the Machines' plight is certainly something that the game elaborates on (ad nauseum) but I certainly wasn't propelled forward by a desire to find out What Was Up With Yorha. Now, I realize there's going to be a tendency to respond to the above with something like: "But this game is about Existentialism and God Being Dead and How Pointless War is of course the story isn't explosive and exciting! Is Waiting for Godot explosive and exciting?" Which, okay. But whatever N:A's strengths, Yoko Taro is no Beckett, and anyway the game is about 35 hours long. And it involves scantily clad anime waifs slicing things with 10 foot katanas. I'll also say, while I find the criticism that particular piece of art feels like "Philosophy 101" or "Existentialism 101" to be a bit facile (art is just doing different things from a didactic college course) I did find myself feeling that some of the material here felt both overdone and undercooked. Like, take how the giant fish monster operates in the game. In the first play through, it's a giant evil fish monster! Then in the second playthrough it turns out that fish you brutally killed? He had a family. This is conveyed through some still images and voice over. But games have been generating melodrama and sympathy for their villains for decades at this point, often through far more subtle avenues than spliced in cutscenes--this doesn't feel like any kind of subversion or development. It feels like the bare minimum. Like, what insight are we getting into organized religion in the Become As Gods sequence? They're crazy suicidal zealots. Some of them just wanted to get along. The story as a whole gets surprisingly far with how cute and ridiculous the Machines' design and audio are. But there's a limit. I'll close this all out by going through a few plot points I found confusing or bizarre; I'm curious if there's something I missed here. 1. Late in the game it's revealed that YorHa was designed to be destroyed in order to cover up humanity's extinction once and for all (which seems odd in itself since the Commander appears to be the only one who knows the truth). But for whose benefit is this supposed to happen? We never get any indication of a higher Android authority--have they just been killed off by the time the game starts? Do the Resistance give a poo poo about the Moon? Is there a greater Android society/military somewhere we never see? 2. It's revealed that 2-B is actually an assassin who is supposed to kill 9-S whenever he gets wise to the Moon thing, and it's implied by her reactions throughout the game she's had to do this many times before. But the first two playthroughs of the game do depict the same set of events, correct? At first I thought we were getting into some of idea of a series of similar events playing out over and over again but apparently not? And it seems a little odd that 2-B does end up having to kill 9-S...but for a different reason this time! 3. Who the gently caress are those twin girls supposed to be? The Machine central intelligence? Have they been pulling the strings all along? Relatedly, is it ever revealed why the Machines can only do the same thing over and over again and never correct their mistakes? Are they gathering data or something? Is this part of the twins plan? What is their plan? At the very end of the game its suggested they might want to wipe out the Androids once and for all, or use them to spur their own continued development and evolution. Is that what they've been up to all along? Were they just keeping the Androids around out of curiosity?
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Jan 8, 2019 12:15
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The short versions of the answers to your questions are; 1. The androids on earth are the benefactors of the cover-up. If they lose their purpose (fighting the machines) then the androids might lose morale/will to live. The back story of YoRHa is explained in a short story/play only performed in Asia. 2. The game portrays the cycle that ends up breaking the chain, a short story released after the game portrays how one of these cycles went. 3a. The twin girls are a symbolic representation of the machine hive-mind. They are also echoing a kind of god-like antagonist from Yoko Taro's Drakengard series; but as of yet it's unclear if he is using that reference as a fun tease, or as an implication that they're controlling the Machines. 3b. The machines are purposefully gathering data about failure, as a kind of dark echo that "you have to make bad art 10 000 times before you create good art." The art they're creating is humanity, or a sense of human-like consciousness and purpose. 3c. It's not a part of the twins plan. Their plan is to shoot a cannon at the moon to remove the server that contains the data that has all remnants of project YoRHa, since they already know what's going on from the hack shown in 9S's playthrough. Ultimately the Machines want to wipe out all remnants of the Androids, just like the Androids with them. Their motivation for doing so is that their creators (the Aliens who invaded long after Humanity's extinction) gave the Machines this task, this task was the Machines' sole purpose for existance. If the Androids were all gone, then the Machines would have no reason to exist. Likewise the Androids would have no reason to exist if Humanity was gone, since their purpose is to serve Humans. The Machines, as a group, realized this and kept itself purposefully weakened and fractured in order to keep itself from wiping out the Androids. Once the Machines got to the point where they could have found a way to exist after the Androids, they went on their genocidal campaign. The short version as to "why" for any of this is that N:A is a game about exploring the Japanese Animistic belief that all objects have spirits, and what happens to these spirits when Humanity is gone. A good exploration and explanation of what I've talked about is in this (spoiler filled) video; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehM1m5-TG5g Edit: Added spoiler bars, sorry about that. Adeline Weishaupt fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Jan 8, 2019 |
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Jan 8, 2019 16:38
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Yo, spoiler tag that whole post
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Jan 8, 2019 17:04
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Just got the D ending and chapter select, I'm going to knock out the sidequests I missed and then do ending C tomorrow.
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Jan 13, 2019 06:47
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quote:Like, take how the giant fish monster operates in the game. In the first play through, it's a giant evil fish monster! Then in the second playthrough it turns out that fish you brutally killed? He had a family. This is conveyed through some still images and voice over. But games have been generating melodrama and sympathy for their villains for decades at this point, often through far more subtle avenues than spliced in cutscenes--this doesn't feel like any kind of subversion or development. It feels like the bare minimum. The thing that stuck out to me in that section was the way the story seemed to apply to many different aspects of the story at once. "The child held sway over enormous strength. But sadly, he was also a little bit broken... He spent his long days hurting those around him. He tried his best to be good and kind. But despite his best efforts, things never seemed to turn out. They told him he was unwanted. They abandoned him in the deep, dark ocean. And from the cold of the bottom of the sea, he cried out... Mother... Mother... Mother... Mother..." It applies to the androids and the machines--feeling abandoned by their creators and unable to refrain from harming those around them. And then on an individual scale it also feels like it applies to 9S and what will later be his grief over 2B, who he sees as a girlfriend/maternal family member at the same time. He wants her back, but like in the story about the fish, 2B is also one of the "they" who deems him unwanted and abandons him in the deep, dark ocean (killing him over and over). You could say the story also applies to 2B, a child of enormous strength who certainly tries to be good and kind, but whose job it is to constantly harm those around her. Compared to the other people the story could apply to, though, when 2B cries out in yearning to see her creator, it's because she wishes she could kill them as revenge for having such an unfair existence.
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Jan 13, 2019 07:38
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porfiria posted:Man I finished this game the other day and was pretty disappointed. I actually enjoyed the relatively simplistic combat quite a bit, and I liked the (problematic) character designs. The world environment itself felt restrictive and a bit undercooked but the music was great and the minimalism at least played into the game's existential concerns. My main beef was with the narrative (I haven't really developed a general thesis so this is going to be a bit scattershot: Regarding the humans on the moon: It was never meant to be a twist. If you played the original Nier, you'd already know before even putting this game in your console that the humans have all been dead for thousands of years, before even the events of that game. The narrative intrigue comes from wondering how the androids are going to find out, not how you are going to find out, because the game assumes you already know or at least pieced it together very early on. CJacobs fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Jan 13, 2019 |
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Jan 13, 2019 14:23
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It's very clearly telegraphed even without playing the original, but I have to admit I got thrown by "Humans were already extinct when the aliens attacked." I guess it's the difference between "the humans are gone" and "there were never any humans
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Jan 13, 2019 15:16
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This was my first game in the NieR/Drakengard series, and I pretty much guessed humanity was already dead by the end of the prologue. But, until I got to the buried spaceship, I thought humanity had created both the robots and the androids and the "alien" menace was merely the justification either humanity came up with to sick their new creations on their old ones or the androids came up with to continue the fight after humanity disappeared.
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Jan 13, 2019 15:43
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Got ending C and was unexpectedly trying for E but decided to stop.
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Jan 14, 2019 06:40
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NOBODY STOPS
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Jan 14, 2019 06:49
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There are a couple of things I want to see before I torch my save.
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Jan 14, 2019 17:03
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Just fyi, that's optional. The game even tries to discourage you from doing it!
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Jan 14, 2019 17:44
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And you can always go back and do it later when you're ready.
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Jan 14, 2019 17:53
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Just see the ending, go help your orb son, then go back and erase your save. It's morally justified.
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Jan 14, 2019 17:55
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Don’t forget to buy all the trophies.
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Jan 14, 2019 18:06
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Kibayasu posted:Don’t forget to buy all the trophies. Please buy all the trophies. This is exactly how achievements should be treated in all games. You don't get more points for doing it yourself.
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Jan 14, 2019 18:40
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My favorite thing about buying the trophies in Automata is that for a lot of them you fulfill the requirement in the process of getting the funds to buy them. The one for having an obscene amount of money costs exactly that amount of money for example.Look Sir Droids posted:Please buy all the trophies. This is exactly how achievements should be treated in all games. You don't get more points for doing it yourself. I disagree. If you ain't gonna put in the effort then you better learn to accept that you won't have a little "100%" and a trophy next to the game's name. I object to including achievements that are pure tedium but if they are included and you don't wanna do em then don't. Being able to purchase the achievements in Automata highlights how they are ultimately meaningless for bragging rights but also does not count out achievements feeling like just that, an achievement, to the people who do them the 'hard' way. CJacobs fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Jan 14, 2019 |
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Jan 14, 2019 19:26
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Automata is the only game I know where you can buy achievements, and it's also one of 3 or 4 games where I incidentally got all of them without doing that.
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Jan 14, 2019 19:32
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Beefstew posted:Automata is the only game I know where you can buy achievements, and it's also one of 3 or 4 games where I incidentally got all of them without doing that. isn’t one of them for looking up 2b’s skirt repeatedly.
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Jan 14, 2019 19:51
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b_d posted:isn’t one of them for looking up 2b’s skirt repeatedly. 
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Jan 14, 2019 19:53
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CJacobs posted:My favorite thing about buying the trophies in Automata is that for a lot of them you fulfill the requirement in the process of getting the funds to buy them. The one for having an obscene amount of money costs exactly that amount of money for example. There’s no actual achievement to grinding for upgrade parts. I’m happy for people who think it is something to feel proud about not being able to distinguish themselves from people who just used the time saving route.
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Jan 14, 2019 20:19
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Look Sir Droids posted:There’s no actual achievement to grinding for upgrade parts. I’m happy for people who think it is something to feel proud about not being able to distinguish themselves from people who just used the time saving route. When I read this post I just realized I have a zillion machine cores and could probably outright buy all the trophies right now. Do the children's cores you get from Pascal have use besides cash?
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Jan 14, 2019 20:25
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Look Sir Droids posted:There’s no actual achievement to grinding for upgrade parts. I’m happy for people who think it is something to feel proud about not being able to distinguish themselves from people who just used the time saving route. the time saving route to getting achievements..?
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Jan 14, 2019 20:36
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Boogalo posted:RE: lategame Pascal am I the only person who walked away without doing anything? I did this on my first playthrough, too. If your understanding of and desire for Pascal is that he achieve true human consciousness, it's the most reasonable choice. Grief and pain are a part of life, too.
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Jan 14, 2019 21:10
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Regy Rusty posted:Just see the ending, go help your orb son, then go back and erase your save. It's morally justified. I went ahead and did the last couple of things I wanted to in the game and deleted my save. I admit, I teared up a bit with the messages of support at the very end and the offer of assistance. I really liked this game.
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Jan 14, 2019 22:50
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b_d posted:isn’t one of them for looking up 2b’s skirt repeatedly. I had to do that one and running around pantsless with 9S after beating the game proper. Everything else just kinda happened.
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Jan 14, 2019 22:51
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No. 1 Apartheid Fan posted:If your understanding of and desire for Pascal is that he achieve true human consciousness, it's the most reasonable choice. Grief and pain are a part of life, too. (almost?) everyone achieved that, despite the androids’ cynicism. pascal just saw some poo poo on top of that
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Jan 14, 2019 22:51
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b_d posted:isn’t one of them for looking up 2b’s skirt repeatedly. I got that one when I was running around the space station right at the start. I entered one of the bedrooms (the ones with the fixed camera angle from the side) and 2B started swiping at her skirt and I was just sort of wondering what was going on and then the trophy for it popped up. This definitely isn't going to sound made up.
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Jan 15, 2019 00:50
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Kibayasu posted:This definitely isn't going to sound made up. Definitely not. Isn’t there an achievement for running around pantsless as 9S for a while?
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Jan 15, 2019 01:03
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i am tim! posted:Definitely not. For an hour, yes.
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Jan 15, 2019 04:49
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The player's pants blowing up if you use the self-destruct is made so much funnier to me by the fact that it'll also de-pants the other android if they get caught in the blast. I'm just imagining 9S running around in his shorts like "Boy do I feel silly for telling you to keep that self-destruct enabled"
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Jan 15, 2019 04:53
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Buying achievements wouldve been funnier if you had to do it with microtransactions and thats all you could buy. Like a cruel social experiment "How many of you are this desperate?"
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Jan 15, 2019 06:50
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I've always felt the whole "buy it for piddly amounts of cash" thing seemed more to me like a "don't let game devs tell you what you consider your actual achievements, that's for you to decide. Here, just have them all if that's what is important to you, ours are meaningless anyway." move, which was about empowering the player, not mocking them.
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Jan 15, 2019 09:00
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WaltherFeng posted:Buying achievements wouldve been funnier if you had to do it with microtransactions and thats all you could buy. Capitalism, hoooo!!!
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Jan 15, 2019 09:33
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Had a question for folks that know the game better than I do. I'm trying to plan out my livestream so that I can do sidequests and plot quests in tandem without distracting from the story too much, and I've come to a logical rubik's cube I need help solving (route A spoilers). I need to do these sidequests during Route A. However I don't want to spend a whole stream just running around doing side-stuff so I'm trying to split it up. Once you do the Missile Supply quest and 9S is subsequently kidnapped, a number of sidequests become unavailable until (I assume) Route B. However, there is a brief window of time after you rescue 9S from Adam but before you go to the Machine Factory where you can free-roam with just 2B by herself. Can you do any of these quests during that time? Please let me know if you remember.
CJacobs fucked around with this message at 15:42 on Jan 15, 2019 |
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Jan 15, 2019 15:39
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