This review contains spoilers
The purpose of a critique is to take something apart to reveal a flawed construction or a shaky foundation, so it’s with some reluctance that I take on a modern classic with only an arm full of rocks to break the windows. I may have personally found this game to be a slog, but its straightforward action doesn’t actually have any fundamental problems. It tells a story with a lot of twists and turns, it develops its characters, there really doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it. So, here’s the brick I intend to throw at it:
What is Nier: Automata about? Not in terms of plot, what are its themes and core ideas?
This question probably sounds insane. How could you not pick up on its absurdist ideas? How could you not notice how existentialism is core to its central conflict? Well obviously, I did, but the ridiculousness of the question is exactly my point. Nier: Automata leaves so little to the imagination, so little for you to wonder about and consider on your own that it ultimately works against its own interests. Naming someone “2B” in an existential game is a pretty cheeky move, and naming a traitor character “A2” starts to get into eye-rolling territory. When the two protagonists who work for an inscrutable authority wear blindfolds, and the one who left the organization has her eyes open, it's just painfully on the nose. Introducing the machine-fighting heroes as androids themselves, and having them state “There’s no actual meaning behind anything machines do” within the first thirty minutes signposts the direction of the plot so clearly that it kills the intrigue. Examples like these are dotted all over the game, like how the moral absoluteness of Yorha has literally made their base viewable only in black and white, and how most secondary characters are named after philosophers who tangentially relate to the game’s themes. These details don’t draw you in and spark your imagination, but simply highlight how this was written by someone who didn’t want the time they spent reading philosophy to be wasted on people who wouldn’t pick up on messages less subtle than a chainsaw.
This sort of approach affects the gameplay just as much, with the most notable example being how the endings are paced. The first “ending” takes about ten hours to reach, but this is more of an intro than anything. The plot goes on to be resolved in the subsequent endings B through E, with the B ending being the second longest with a run time of six hours. During this time, you play as the sidekick 9S instead of 2B, and essentially replay the entire game with minimal changes other than a repetitive hacking minigame. The purpose was to force players into recognizing all the plot/character details they may have missed the first time around, grinding players’ faces into the story to ensure that they did not miss absolutely anything. Replaying games can be great, and picking up on details you missed is fun, but hiding the resolution to the story behind a boring replay is excessively self-indulgent on the behalf of the developers. This is incredibly damaging to its overall replay value, even when there wasn’t much to begin with, considering how the combat is similarly concerned with ensuring even the least attentive players see everything. The action is very simplistic, and the combination of strong upgrade chips and consumable items only incentivizes players to thoughtlessly break through the game rather than mentally engage with it.
That’s really what all these little nitpicky rocks pile up to become. I may have loved its style, its fashion, its sense of humor, and how it actually tried to do something philosophical, but a game that tries to be about philosophy, yet doesn’t let players think on their own, has an unavoidably detrimental irony. It’s a game that misses its own point, not letting people uncover meaning in a game about uncovering meaning. Even so, the character drama still works. The combat is still fun to watch, and for people who haven’t been exposed to this sort of topic, it wouldn’t feel as patronizing. Most people don’t replay games at all, so even the repetition I found to be so gratuitous could have been an eye-opening experience. Nier: Automata still stands tall in spite of my little complaints, but it’s not exactly a house I want to live in. Some asshole broke all the windows.
What is Nier: Automata about? Not in terms of plot, what are its themes and core ideas?
This question probably sounds insane. How could you not pick up on its absurdist ideas? How could you not notice how existentialism is core to its central conflict? Well obviously, I did, but the ridiculousness of the question is exactly my point. Nier: Automata leaves so little to the imagination, so little for you to wonder about and consider on your own that it ultimately works against its own interests. Naming someone “2B” in an existential game is a pretty cheeky move, and naming a traitor character “A2” starts to get into eye-rolling territory. When the two protagonists who work for an inscrutable authority wear blindfolds, and the one who left the organization has her eyes open, it's just painfully on the nose. Introducing the machine-fighting heroes as androids themselves, and having them state “There’s no actual meaning behind anything machines do” within the first thirty minutes signposts the direction of the plot so clearly that it kills the intrigue. Examples like these are dotted all over the game, like how the moral absoluteness of Yorha has literally made their base viewable only in black and white, and how most secondary characters are named after philosophers who tangentially relate to the game’s themes. These details don’t draw you in and spark your imagination, but simply highlight how this was written by someone who didn’t want the time they spent reading philosophy to be wasted on people who wouldn’t pick up on messages less subtle than a chainsaw.
This sort of approach affects the gameplay just as much, with the most notable example being how the endings are paced. The first “ending” takes about ten hours to reach, but this is more of an intro than anything. The plot goes on to be resolved in the subsequent endings B through E, with the B ending being the second longest with a run time of six hours. During this time, you play as the sidekick 9S instead of 2B, and essentially replay the entire game with minimal changes other than a repetitive hacking minigame. The purpose was to force players into recognizing all the plot/character details they may have missed the first time around, grinding players’ faces into the story to ensure that they did not miss absolutely anything. Replaying games can be great, and picking up on details you missed is fun, but hiding the resolution to the story behind a boring replay is excessively self-indulgent on the behalf of the developers. This is incredibly damaging to its overall replay value, even when there wasn’t much to begin with, considering how the combat is similarly concerned with ensuring even the least attentive players see everything. The action is very simplistic, and the combination of strong upgrade chips and consumable items only incentivizes players to thoughtlessly break through the game rather than mentally engage with it.
That’s really what all these little nitpicky rocks pile up to become. I may have loved its style, its fashion, its sense of humor, and how it actually tried to do something philosophical, but a game that tries to be about philosophy, yet doesn’t let players think on their own, has an unavoidably detrimental irony. It’s a game that misses its own point, not letting people uncover meaning in a game about uncovering meaning. Even so, the character drama still works. The combat is still fun to watch, and for people who haven’t been exposed to this sort of topic, it wouldn’t feel as patronizing. Most people don’t replay games at all, so even the repetition I found to be so gratuitous could have been an eye-opening experience. Nier: Automata still stands tall in spite of my little complaints, but it’s not exactly a house I want to live in. Some asshole broke all the windows.
4 Comments
there's slightly more value to the games philosophical bent when you consider how the machines, desperate to invoke, interpret, and resurrect humanity, have all bastardized and misunderstood it in the process (every machine named after a philosopher gets these ideals superficially correct, but mostly wrong) but otherwise as with nier before it it seems to be a case of 'this game is far more interesting when you interpret it through a lens that the authors seem not to have considered or intended'. nier has far more going for it than automata, though
otherwise largely in agreement here on automata, as you say there's so little for me to chew on and really think about after the fact and even the soundtrack is a bit of a step down. and particularly id like to echo my similar issues with the constraints of ending E as well despite finding endings C and D moving on that character drama/theme level - highlights a lot of issues with taros backwards scripting process
otherwise largely in agreement here on automata, as you say there's so little for me to chew on and really think about after the fact and even the soundtrack is a bit of a step down. and particularly id like to echo my similar issues with the constraints of ending E as well despite finding endings C and D moving on that character drama/theme level - highlights a lot of issues with taros backwards scripting process
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No joke, this review has some balls. I haven't played the game yet, because I want to experience Drakengard first, but the use of phisolophy and abstract thinking as blunt as this videogame does did give me a lot of red flags. I haven't even tried the game yet and friends have this incessant rumbling about how smart is to use those names and whistles without elaborating on their meanings at all. It seemed spoonfed already.
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I think most of Taro's work is pretty on the nose, but I can definitely see why that wouldn't be effective for everyone. I disagree with pretty much everything here (mostly cuz my taste seem to vary greatly from yours), but you bring up a lot of great points. I can't really tell you what any of the Nier/Drakengard games are specifically about on a holistic level, they're mostly just aesthetic experiences with various philosophical and gameplay ideas laid upon a digestible structure (though again that's relative since I love the replay aspect, but I know that turns a lot of people off). Even the first Drakengard is relatively frictionless the majority of the time, Automata is just kind of the natural conclusion of Taro's body of work up to that point. And honestly, I was pretty lukewarm on Automata my first go around, but it became one of my favorite games of all time after I went back and played all the others and sort of built up that aesthetic/gameplay vocabulary of the games Taro has worked on as a director. Either way, good review!
Beepo
3 years ago
This all comes to a head at the true ending, where the game has to literally ask the player what they believe, because they want your explicit permission for what's about to happen. My honest answer to that infamous question, you know the one, was and still is "your game made me feel like they are."