Nier Automata is a work whose narrative pacing reflects the player's experiences with it.
It is an action game whose combat is flashy; stylistically incorporating design and framing schemes from shmups, belt scrollers, and twin sticks - but at its core, lacks mature enemy design or engaging systems.
It is a story that spends 80% of its runtime middling around, compacting the majority of its truly dramatic character moments into the last 5 hours of a 25-hour runtime.
Most of my playtime with Nier Automata was flaccid. I felt many positive, fleeting feelings towards surface-level elements, but never carried those reactions with me into my everyday. I felt few overtly-negative emotions, but always felt... emptiness, like there was something better I could be doing with my time.
It took me 5 months to finish.
Am I doing it wrong?
Nier Automata's feelings are expressed through the hollow: Its RPG growth systems tedious to engage with and providing little felt reward, its story signaling plot twists extremely early through shamelessly on-the-nose beats, and its core loop being built on world navigation and battles that never inconvenience but always instigate hypertension.
Its ludonarrative framing devices constantly tease and twist the player's perception of itself. Will something bad happen later if I kill these enemies now? Will this dialogue choice be unfavorable? Am I flirting with combat, items, loadouts and my general playstyle wrong? Is the experience I am having right now - in this present moment, - optimal or objective?
But
What appears to be a choose-your-own-adventure wonderhorse turns out to be an extremely linear and objective throughline. You will start and end at the same points, no matter how much you kick and scream.
It's a pretty transparent echo of meaningless war, conformity, and faceless capitalism - buzzwords buzzwords buzzwords, but their cold hollowness is undeniable, nor their presence in the game's ludonarrative and overt text.
It's unmoving. It's concrete. It's inhuman.
What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point?
I need an answer. A sign. A hand to hold. A mother. A God.
My God is... "humans fight for themselves", or is it "humans fight for love"? What piece of the "humanity" puzzle is it that makes us what we are, when any one piece of the puzzle is disposable or - heaven forbid, replaceable? Is it the collective sum of these pieces that makes us, even if the humanity we perceive in others can be entirely faked?
What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point?What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the answer? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point?
My answer is,
to refuse to answer.
For now.
Maybe tomorrow's me will have a better one.
Exciting, isn't it?
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Nier Automata is not a subversive piece of media. It is not "a mecha that focuses on the characters". Not one drop of spirit poured into it appeared out of thin air, and its ultimate takeaway is not even unique or a medium first. It is a synthesis of the experimental, messy ideas that have fallen into the gaming ether - from the talented and ameteurish, to the beloved and unseen. Judging from its impact over the last half-decade, it's impossible to deny it struck a chord in a way, time and place that others haven't yet.
The pieces of its puzzle are the sum of 4 decades of designers using inherently-inhuman tools to create life. To make people we perceive as real; to simulate action and re-action; to incite joy, anger, community, division, love, intolerance, laughter, despair.
"DO YOU THlNK GAMES ARE SILLY LITTLE THINGS?"
I guess it has an answer for itself. Huh. Good for them.
It is an action game whose combat is flashy; stylistically incorporating design and framing schemes from shmups, belt scrollers, and twin sticks - but at its core, lacks mature enemy design or engaging systems.
It is a story that spends 80% of its runtime middling around, compacting the majority of its truly dramatic character moments into the last 5 hours of a 25-hour runtime.
Most of my playtime with Nier Automata was flaccid. I felt many positive, fleeting feelings towards surface-level elements, but never carried those reactions with me into my everyday. I felt few overtly-negative emotions, but always felt... emptiness, like there was something better I could be doing with my time.
It took me 5 months to finish.
Am I doing it wrong?
Nier Automata's feelings are expressed through the hollow: Its RPG growth systems tedious to engage with and providing little felt reward, its story signaling plot twists extremely early through shamelessly on-the-nose beats, and its core loop being built on world navigation and battles that never inconvenience but always instigate hypertension.
Its ludonarrative framing devices constantly tease and twist the player's perception of itself. Will something bad happen later if I kill these enemies now? Will this dialogue choice be unfavorable? Am I flirting with combat, items, loadouts and my general playstyle wrong? Is the experience I am having right now - in this present moment, - optimal or objective?
But
What appears to be a choose-your-own-adventure wonderhorse turns out to be an extremely linear and objective throughline. You will start and end at the same points, no matter how much you kick and scream.
It's a pretty transparent echo of meaningless war, conformity, and faceless capitalism - buzzwords buzzwords buzzwords, but their cold hollowness is undeniable, nor their presence in the game's ludonarrative and overt text.
It's unmoving. It's concrete. It's inhuman.
What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point?
I need an answer. A sign. A hand to hold. A mother. A God.
My God is... "humans fight for themselves", or is it "humans fight for love"? What piece of the "humanity" puzzle is it that makes us what we are, when any one piece of the puzzle is disposable or - heaven forbid, replaceable? Is it the collective sum of these pieces that makes us, even if the humanity we perceive in others can be entirely faked?
What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point?What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the answer? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point?
My answer is,
to refuse to answer.
For now.
Maybe tomorrow's me will have a better one.
Exciting, isn't it?
---------------------------------
--------------
------
---
-----
--
-
-----
-
--
-
Nier Automata is not a subversive piece of media. It is not "a mecha that focuses on the characters". Not one drop of spirit poured into it appeared out of thin air, and its ultimate takeaway is not even unique or a medium first. It is a synthesis of the experimental, messy ideas that have fallen into the gaming ether - from the talented and ameteurish, to the beloved and unseen. Judging from its impact over the last half-decade, it's impossible to deny it struck a chord in a way, time and place that others haven't yet.
The pieces of its puzzle are the sum of 4 decades of designers using inherently-inhuman tools to create life. To make people we perceive as real; to simulate action and re-action; to incite joy, anger, community, division, love, intolerance, laughter, despair.
"DO YOU THlNK GAMES ARE SILLY LITTLE THINGS?"
I guess it has an answer for itself. Huh. Good for them.