Ending E made me smile a lot.
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Ending E spoilers
Yeah it lands for me because unlike The Avengers movies in which all of society has been uplifted and then asked to return which is insane this is about you the player making a ridiculous sacrifice only seeing the briefest result of that sacrifice.
Then we have a return where we see what the results of the sacrifice was. And that “the actual story” did not matter just the emotional truth. Kaine is confronted again with “You’re the real monster” and again “I’m a video game character and I must kill.”
Kaine and the player travel to regain what was lost. The structure of it is you have what you always wanted. A save file of both Young and Adult Nier. Atrus has said you are free to explore now.
And the best kind of happy ending you get a reunion of Young Nier and Emil and Kaine.
My main complaint is we don’t get an adult Yonah outside a letter. The world is doomed we already know that. That doesn’t mean happiness can’t be found.
And a giant white flower as seen in the end of Drakengard 3.
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Reactions to Nier a few days later, spoilers and such.
The whole thing being about dealing with sickness, death, and the loss of people you care about and trying to figure out how to handle that hit real hard just today. It's been about a year since my stepmom started dying, as in went into hospice and was clearly not doing great. About this time last year I started needing to drive across town on a nearly daily basis to give my dad some time to go get a shower and eat and take care of himself. I think a lot about the last day I spent with her, where she was unconscious most of the day, full of painkillers and anything that could help her relax. I stayed there for hours, and she only said two things to me: "I'm running through fields in my mind" and "I used to write poetry". Those were the last actual words she said to me ever before she died a few days after that, and I think about them regularly.Andrea and I, we were never totally good with each other. She came into my life when I was trying to deal with the emotions of my parents’ marriage falling apart, and she had no idea how to handle a teenager. We fought a lot. A lot of resentment was built. I cared about her a lot, but I was barely ever able to express that while she was alive.
In terms of what you do, Nier is largely about running through fields. I realize my emotions about her and her death have never totally been sorted out. I mean, they won’t be, closure is a fucking myth, and that’s to be expected. Ending E seems to acknowledge this, after Kaine does so much to get Nier back, and a giant flower blooms over the world, and who knows what happens after that? Shit always keeps happening. Andrea would have liked that flower, as she loved her garden, even as she couldn’t keep up with it physically. She wanted things to keep happening. She left so many books for Logan.
Almost everyone you meet in Nier is dealing with losing people, and they all do it differently. The whole world exists post loss, and there’s not a right way to deal with the larger or the far more personal losses of these people. Anger is a normal response. The king of Facade goes on a revenge rampage. Kaine swears a lot and fights with everything. Popola rages at the player for the loss of her sister.
Hiding is another response. Emil hides himself as much as possible, either in the mansion or avoiding your eyes when he is floating next to you. The Shadowlord mostly broods in his tower and tries to make things back to what he dreams of as normal. There’s so much loss.
Nier is the most honest character about this for me. He rages. He hides. But mostly, he lets himself be distracted by sidequests, journeying across fields and towns to get the next random thing for a person who he barely knows. Nier basically plays a videogame. I never really identified with Nier as a character, but dang do I get that. It’s what I did when Andrea died. I played a lot of Destiny 2. Fulfilling requests for NPCs sure felt like doing something. It wasn’t dealing with the problem, but it was dealing with myself a little. Sidequest progress carries over; each time Nier does it again, there is less to do, less ways to distract himself, less ways to avoid doing what has to be done. Which is why, a year later, maybe I am processing Andrea dying a bit more. I’m not distracting myself as much, even if playing Nier was maybe an attempt at distraction. It failed in the best way.
I was running through fields in my game; I’m probably not gonna write any poetry though.
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here we go. . .
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I hang my head in shame.
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i too live in shame, brother
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Nearly at the final stretch and am about to complete ending D and E
Ending C is a funny one and it has only occurred to me that Nier basically just kills all his friends or leads them to their death.
I’m a masochist so I’m doing a separate play through for both C and D but to alleviate the pain I turned on the Japanese dub for ending C play through. It’s not especially bad but I found that the game was much less enjoyable with it on. Weiss in particular is a really unremarkable performance. I like what they’re going for with Kaine but overall it’s a generally very subdued cast. I got the impression that Shades are referred to as something else and I looked it up as being Devil or demon? Does anyone know the exact title/sense of meaning that the shadow Lord has in the Japanese dub? Curious if the light-phobic nature of the shades is naturally implied by labels like Demon in Japanese.
For ending D’s final run I switched the automata music on and played around with costumes. Automata has some good tracks but I really felt it was much more of an empty vacuum than the Nier OST. Automata battle tracks tend to be really good but doesn’t quite hit emotional beats in the same way. Feels like you’ve gotta have those strings to activate melodrama.
There’s a new remix of the track that plays when you are finally ascending the loss trying for the final time where the brass kicks in and sounds really dark.[/spoiler] Probably the best new musical addition to the game. [spoiler]Finally sells the idea that you are a horrific force to be reckoned with and that nothing will save anything at this point.
The new Devola and Popola scenes added in the final play through her welcome for context and make the ending sequence make a lot more sense, particularly given that they send you to find all the keys. Still not completely clear why there are keys and why they are owned by the specific shades but whatever. Generally it seems like there’s a lot more work done to add motivation which is probably one of the best additions. Just short scenes here and there just to give us a little glimpse into what others are thinking. Much less egregious than mermaid. Is it my imagination or were the campfire scenes and the scene where Kaine and Emil talk about looking for a cure after saving Yonah added in this version?
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魔物(mamono) which is what 90% of enemies in JRPGs are referred to as. Like say Dragon Quest! Shades like give it more personality. There is a whole lot of personality slathering going on in the English Dub and it is better for it.
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8-4! See also Metal Gear Rising, the only Metal Gear better in English
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Ending D and E now make a really nice complementary pair.
I was not prepared for how far they were gonna go with ending E.
Spoilers
I recall reading the basic scenario in grimoire Nier a while back and it looks like they flipped it on its head to be more optimistic and involved. Initially I balked at the prospect of having to replay the first half of part one again but they framed it in a pretty interesting way. It’s crazy to me that they came up with a full animation and move set for Kaine despite her only really being playable for about an hour.
I know for a lot of people Nier is about loss in the grief sense, but I feel like the ending completely reinforces my burrowing into the game being about language. Language as a point of cultural difference and memory. Ending D to me is about finally considering your own cultural oblivion having relived the extermination of others literally through the power of words. Finally you consider the possibility of another’s survival depending on your own obliteration, in this case from memory. Ending E is a really interesting take on revival in this sense. The memory of Nier is almost completely gone and this is tantamount to him never having existed in the first place.
While the suppression or outright extermination of another culture is often the sad result of those cultures encountering each other for the first time, ending E is optimistic in the sense that even when the world is facing total destruction from these actions, ultimately what really matters is connections, not oppositions and difference. Even in a meaningless world plagued by the mistakes of history, it is still meaningful to preserve memories and records of the past and ultimately search for love (in the general sense). Even traumatic and unpleasant experiences. Nothing exists without them, or more accurately we have little of value otherwise.
‘Life is better when you have someone to fight for’
It is a shame we never really get to see Yonah again but I believe her character was always meant to be intentionally distant from the player.
As a fan of the series this does raise interesting questions about the dreaded ‘canon’ since this ending seems to conflict with what is presented in Automata. Like other multiple endings from previous Nier/Drakengard games it serves as an interesting alternative. I suspect that the next major Nier entry is setting up for something involving Accord and knitting together different timelines (how did Emil come back with four arms!?). Whatever nonsense comes from it, I’m in.
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game advice needed: so like, i’m on Route C now and i guess i have to get all the weapons.
part 1: if i missed any weapons in the first part of the game, am i screwed or something? or is that not a thing?
part 2: some of these weapons cost a lot of money and i don’t have a lot of money. any recommendations for making a lot of money?
No, it’s impossible to miss a weapon, you will always be able to access all weapons.
Side quests and/or selling rare fish that you can get from fishing. Farming machines in the junk heap can also net a bunch of money if you’re lucky with drops. Just sell their parts if you don’t care about upgrading every single weapon
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finally finished this up and grabbed Ending E
ending thoughts; no major spoilers, but…thought spoilers, i guess
Summary
it feels like Taro is opening up the possibility here of more games with these specific characters, which, honestly, i wouldn’t really mind. overall, i think the characters in Replicant are more “likeable” than anyone in Automata. 2B and 9S etc. seem more like vehicles for delivering depression, whereas Replicant is full of a lot of heart, for lack of a better word. i love both equally and maybe Automata spoke to me more personally than Replicant, but it feels like a vaguely-more hopeful tale than what Automata presents.
happy to have played through the game, and happy a lot more people have had the chance to see it, as well, and now i’m just looking forward to seeing where he goes next with all of this stuff. i hope he doesn’t (and doubt he will) try to tie everything up neatly, and rather just allows for multiplicities within the NieR/Drakengard universe, with new tales that keep on spinning us in new directions, with new priorities. maybe a bit like Twin Peaks, i guess.
anyway, gg
also, like others here, i changed up the voice acting on a Route C playthrough and while some characters come across as more authentic, i really feel like the English cast does an amazing job, and the localization touches add a lot of the vibe that isn’t really in the Japanese.
both are cool, but unlike Automata, both feel valid, to me
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im playing the gacha
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I couldn’t make it past the second story but am trying to catch up watching the story on YT. I just can’t face the slow progress. If there were no battles I’d totally do it.
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the early reg stuff gave me so much materials i rolled a 2B and just boosted to 70 and that gets me through almost everything. they seem very generous in the first month (of course they do, i get how these things work), and i think that will get me through most of the story stuff.
generally, this game is all vibes, i just have everything on auto and watch it go.
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After singing the praises of the original Nier in this thread, I have to admit that I completely fell off of it before I even finished the first playthrough. I got too bored of the endless back-and-forth walks between the same 4 locations.
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I’ve been wondering about this because it feels hypocritical to hate pacing in one form (gacha) and not another (RPG). I can’t really articulate it super well but I think Nier Replicant gives you a lot more to chew on than Reincarnation. Replicant promises a lot of strange and unusual stuff where Reincarnation does not, even if both are extreme slogs to play through at times. Reincarnation just revels in having no context for too long but Replicant’s intro at least suggests some crazy stuff is going on (in your immediate vicinity) and you meet fairly interesting characters relatively quickly. Replicant is a carrot you can see, Reincarnation is the vague distant aroma of a carrot.
I actually feel the back and forth makes me value fast travel when it does open up (which is everywhere in games now), and helps to make a small world feel big. I won’t defend it wasting anyone’s time though. If it’s dull, it’s dull.
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i’ve always loved the travel between areas in the original nier, because so many sidequests are very basic things like food delivery/collections. the spread of items across the world map feels very consistent and the economy and trade rings true. maybe more so than games that will try and add variety into the sidequests, the mundanity in nier makes me care more.
reincarnation has 0 interest in doing anything with the gacha mechanics to feedback into the game (from what i’ve seen, around chapter 5). i don’t think it’s hypocritical at all, or at least not with these games. it’s not that nier is ever hiding the numbers going up, but that is never a thing it cares about or expects you to care about, to the point where those repeated playthroughs are just on autopilot because you are so overlevelled.
reincarnation is very much a gacha game in it’s structure and wants you invested in the gamble not anything else. i think if it was trying to subver that in some ~yoko taro~ way, it would be far more insidious than other games in the genre.
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Absolutely dig all of this.
This is not a crap on Automata but I felt that Automata lacked this a little given the inherently temporary feel of the world and towns. Routes to towns always felt a little fussy as well (fussy by Nier standards I guess). Reincarnation just needs the Nier juice. The closest it gets is having weapon stories, ‘Nier-y’ character designs, and a camera that moves along a fixed rail. Perhaps I’ll see it the more I watch.
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