Yoko Taro is a very funny individual. I don't say this to dismiss the insights and depth of his work, or to ignore his respectable politics. I mention this because the first ending I got was Ending K/"aji wo [K]utta." You have been fishing for, if you're at all like me, a few hours in the game to grind out cash. And you're doing sidequests to get the upgrades, the weapons, all that. You've never thought to eat the fish, but then Jackass says "Hey, I need you to eat this mackerel," and everything in your gamer brain is telling you this will be a funny sidequest for some quick cash.
You eat the mackerel and you die. You get a brief paragraph, and the credits roll in their entirety in 3 seconds.
I burst out laughing, despite the fact it had been a few hours since I saved. Whatever frustration I felt was overridden by the fact that I had been duped totally. There were a few warnings, but I figured they were just flavor text. The simple fact is, my desire for completion, for reward, ended up killing me.
The entire game is a rewarding experience. I think it goes without saying that a PlatinumGames title has extremely solid gameplay. Fast, frenetic, and the customizability of your loadout makes it one of most enjoyable I've played. Though I find the mechanics of Bayonetta more technically complex, Astral Chain more unique, the experience of Nier: Automata always felt like if I made a choice, I would see the immediate consequences of it. There's been a lot of talk in recent years about miniscule and percentile upgrades over actual changes to gameplay, but the programs actually felt fairly noticeable in terms of damage output, speed, etc., no matter how minute the increase. The program loadout is very diverse and incentivizes experimentation. On top of the general parameter increases, every level I felt like I was finding a program that created a new mechanic. Exploding projectiles, bullet time, or upon getting to 9S, the wide array of hacking programs. Expanding my memory to make room for more programs became an immediate priority as a direct result.
This is to say nothing about the weapons. I initially felt there weren't enough weapon types, but the way each weapon combination creates new combo lines or even just the difference in feel between weapons of the same type (no surprise, I was a sucker for the Berserk-styled great sword, despite how much slower it was in comparison to every other great sword) pretty quickly put that concern aside.
What really engages me about the weapons, despite the fact I had more fun playing with programs, was the weapon stories. Many games include simple bits of text for various weapons, but I haven't seen many with expanding fairy-tale-like entries. Even when I didn't like a weapon, I'd go out of my way to upgrade it just to know more. My favorites were the machine series in this regard, because of the personal angle on each one of a machine trying to feel beautiful.
Nier: Automata is so much about emotions. Repairing a downed boss sees it become burdened with the concept of sin and the weight of the lives all its fellows have taken. Hacking transitions from a quick way to blow up enemies to often providing insight into various bosses' lives and experiences, an exploration of memory that forces 9S to empathize with his lifelong enemies. Getting back to the mackerel, what struck me was that despite how funny the event was, there was such a genuine sincerity to 2B's enjoyment of the mackerel, that it was almost worth it to die to experience a simple pleasure like that. Even a gag game over screen has some tug-at-your-heartstrings line.
Rare though are the gameplay specific moments that get me to feel. Hacking is a big one, as I mentioned; the simplicity of it as a mini-game yet with each encounter slowly expanding what’s possible in the digital landscape, coming to fruition where the standard gameplay now combines with the hacking inside the mental landscape, which sells the notion that inside our heads is just as real as the world we live in. I was moved when the game took away my attack button, then my drone, then the gradual decay of my loaded abilities, and yet I still had a boss to fight! Movement was all I had, desperately trying to dodge when I could only shuffle and not even run. It’s moving that first time at the end of Route A, but despite my sympathy for 2B and 9S’s decayed states during Route C/D, I have to say, it didn’t hit the same, as it lacked a more emphatic idea than the breakdown of your character’s body. A lot of gameplay features plateau in their use and novelty fairly early in your time. Though fun, they often aren’t carrying the thematic ideas of the game. It is definitely the story and sidequests bearing the load of the game’s emotions.
Among my favorite sidequests is "11B's Memento"; the quest sees you find the remains of 11B for her student 16D. However, before she was killed, 11B was planning to desert. Deserters weren't unknown to me at this point, and I had already begun to sympathize generally with the notion that the YoRHa androids probably ought to defect if they can. However, I was afraid to share that intel with 16D, so I kept it to myself. She was saddened by her mentor's death, and explains their relationship as lovers, so she opts to be altered to a combat model in order to avenge her partner. Knowing this would almost certainly doom 16D, I reloaded my save and chose to tell her about 11B's attempt to defect--maybe she'd follow in her lover's footsteps and 16D would run away! No. She revealed this time that 11B was controlling and abusive, heaping work onto her. Now, she was spiteful, resented 11B more than ever, and decided to fully devote herself to her work. This in some ways felt like the better choice, but knowing about their relationship made me question it. Beyond just that you cannot expect how people feel, the game gets at the idea that the only truths are emotional truths, and that there are no hard and fast answers. 11B was a lover and an abuser. Was she actually as protective and caring as 16D portrays when she thinks her teacher was a loyalist? Or is she really as cold-hearted and overbearing as 16D says when she finds out she was a defector? I think it's both. I think wrestling with the complexity, the imbalanced power of their relationship meaning that it was abusive even when 16D loved her posthumously, and the nature of their world making love precious even when 16D hates her afterwards, is the core of Nier: Automata.
This dynamic is at play with every character, the androids and the machine lifeforms. There are no right choices for them, only the choices they make. From Pascal's fate to who you decide to play for the final battle, you are never sure if you've made the right choice for these people.
It is interesting to me that the game wants you to play it multiple times. The game is by no means "over" when you've reached Ending A, and is only arguably finished by Ending C/D. Each subsequent run expands the gameplay and story. However, I feel more could've been made of this. 2B's absence from the game from the first ending onwards is important and palpable, and yet, given how often we find out new details about characters by playing the game from their perspective, it's only in other characters' shoes that we find out the truth about 2B. I feel this at least somewhat hurts that motif through the playthroughs, and in some regards, 2B as a character. Yui Ishikawa's performance gradually becoming more emotional is incredible, the "real" 2B always on the brink of breaking through til she finally shows what she really feels during Ending A and the beginning of Route C, but the fact that a lot of her backstory is both vital to the narrative and yet only revealed by characters' other than her? Well, it weakens it just a little.
Of course, much has been made of the game's bosses being named after various economic and political philosophers. Given Adam and Eve's own discussions about the importance of reading and engaging with philosophy, it seems Yoko Taro of course wishes to suggest engaging with certain works to bring to the table of Automata. Communism is the one everyone always posts about, and it certainly jumps out to me, considering Marx's frequent theorizing about automation and autonomy of workers--though I don't wish to dismiss the importance of Mozi and Confucius, among others, but I lack the familiarity to speak to those ideas.
By the time of Nier: Automata, humans are dead. This is fairly obvious and teed up early on once you discover the fate of the alien enemy early in the game. Yet their impact and control of the world is still felt, eons afterwards. I will argue the war of Automata has some characteristics of class struggle, as a proxy war of two artificial and indentured classes of people, androids and machine lifeforms. I believe the obvious similarity, that they are both machines, is deliberate. That the characters often act as though they are different is an imposed belief by their creators.
Interestingly, it is the machine lifeforms, the enemy, that have achieved autonomy first. Not only has Pascal cast off the purpose of violence and domination of the Earth, but by and large the machines lacking orders by virtue of their creators being dead. Although humans are dead, the YoRHa androids are convinced they live. Adam and Eve even deliberately ignore the purpose which their creators left behind--though still interested in killing humans, if they exist, it is more as a matter of scientific study than world conquering. It strikes me that they are open to the androids, almost inviting, perhaps wanting to give them the freedom they have. However, although they ignore their creators wishes, it is obvious they are still burdened by history, by humanity especially. Adam's wishes for him and Eve to engage with human philosophy, to become more intelligent, appears as a desire to become more human. While Eve lacks his brother's same scientific interest, he cannot escape it, and his brother's conflict becomes his. But without his brother, Eve is more willing to rip away the freedom of his fellow machines. What is the point of being human in a world that would let his brother die?
Although the parallel to machine lifeforms’ burgeoning humanity is present in all androids, I think the most obvious foil is surely 9S. His own fascination with both machine lifeforms’ imitations of humanity, such as the siblings in the beginning of his route, or his desire to emulate human behavior, like taking 2B on a date after the war is over; these make the comparison to Adam quite easy. However, when Adam points out this similarity to 9S, when 9S enters the Tower and has the history of androids explained, when he sees machines demonstrate emotion, he resists the comparison at every moment! While aware that androids are not permitted to feel emotions, he knows he feels them, and yet when he is told machines aren't able to think or feel, even when presented with evidence, he commits himself to behaving as though it is true. 9S doesn't really believe this and the hypocrisy is apparent to him, given his behavior with Pascal, but he has to be a good soldier. Despite his own desire for freedom, to be treated as a person, to feel, he must strip autonomy and personhood from the enemy.
The tragedy, the constant desire for personhood and the belief they aren't yet human, is almost entirely self-imposed. I think this is fairly similar to Nobodies from Kingdom Hearts--they believe they don't yet really feel, that they aren't actually human, despite the fact they constantly deal with intense and incredible displays of emotion. Like I said, emotions are what the game is about, more than anything. Autonomy, who has it, whether or not they deserve it, all in the service of the ability to feel.
And I gotta say, it made me feel, deeply. I often find the robot revolution a sort of tired story device, played out since the days of Asimov. Either you've got your Terminators, where machines become self-aware and self-perpetuating and eventually malicious, or your Mega Mans, about the integration of these sentient robots into society. It's a pretty played out trope, and though I enjoy both aforementioned series, it's worth noting how rarely the topic is dealt with in any unique way. Some have engaged with it seriously, but it does sort of feel like it's hard to get past Bladerunner, and we're just sort of spinning our wheels on "woah, humans and machines are so alike. Does the machine deserve human treatment even if it isn't?" Yes, done, asked and answered! All creatures are deserving of empathy, it's wrong to strip a sentient being of freedom, this is not so complex a moral topic! It's just not a novel or intriguing question to me at this point, and almost every iteration of thinking robots comes back to that idea. I feel the absence of humanity and the earnest vulnerability of every character really sells me on its use here. Machines inherited the Earth, almost more beautiful than ever, but they don't feel like they get to live in it. It's not about whether we should give machines autonomy, but whether they can give it to themselves. Can you, even when you are a person, treat yourself like one?
Despite the fact the gameplay isn’t breaking any particularly new ground, the story and characters are so strong that it’s more than worth your time. Although I’m interested in gameplay as the primary mode of how games are art, look, I’m not gonna complain about a decent hack and slash upholding an extremely beautiful story about personhood, learning to own the emotions you feel, and realizing there are no enemies. Automata is definitely a game that you get more out of the more you bring to it as a player. Your knowledge of philosophers (and perhaps of previous Yoko Taro projects, I couldn’t say myself) will definitely make you aware of a lot of the allusions being made and get you more out of various tidbits dropped throughout. Your willingness to play the game over and over nets you a deeper story, equipment choices are always immediately consequential and fun to experiment with, and though at points simple in its design choices, there’s no denying it’s effective at creating emotional moments. It is a fun but repetitive game, yet a fiercely raw and empathetic story.
