Like many people on this site, I enjoyed the recent Nier Automata demo while only having a passing awareness of the original Nier. I knew it was a cult followed game from Square Enix on the PS3.I had gathered that people loved the story and that was about it.

Now having played the Automata demo and having become more curious about the original game, I've read up on some of the craziness that happens in the back half of that game. Seems to even out MGS and Kojima in the Japanese, surreal, meta commentary oddball stuff. Automata seems to be much more of a mainstream push, and I'm having a hard time imagining the game that I played through the demo of having those levels strangeness to it.

What do you guys think? Is Automata a much more polished, game by a different developer that's only tangentally related to the original Nier? Or are a lot of newly interested customers about to walk into a MGS2 meets Frog Fractions type of shocker in March?

As long as Yoko Taro has the reigns I have no doubt things are going to get weird eventually. That's his M.O.

I doubt the demo is any real indication of any of that, considering Nier didn't amp up the crazy until quite a few hours into the game. Just from the trailers I'm already seeing hints of that, especially in regards to a certain character from Nier.

I don't doubt that Automata is gonna be nuts. And I'm hopeful it'll be a cool/interesting kind of nuts and not Drakengard 3... But yeah, Yoko has never made a normal game in his life, and he's not going to start now. Something weird is absolutely going to happen. Nier is probably the best game he has worked on too, and with the added Platinum gameplay it's about as good pedigree as one of his projects were ever going to get.

Yeah, Yoko Taro games have kinda all been like that, though I wouldn't say they're as fourth wall breaking as MGS (except, probably, Drakengard 3). I do also wonder if this one's going to go as crazy, or if it's going to be a bit more of a push into the mainstream. I'd really like it to be a bit of both, retaining the aspects of the original Nier's story structure while remodeling its gameplay. Which, to be fair, seems to be the idea on the dev's part. I just can't shake the feeling that with so much assumed polish on the latter, there are going to be concessions made on the former, and that would be upsetting.

@tobbrobb: Out of curiosity, what is it that you felt wasn't cool/interesting about Drakengard 3 relative to the other two in the series (Yoko games, I mean)? I just beat it recently, and I thought it did a great job of expanding on the universe of Drakengard while still being very much its own thing. I don't think I liked it as much as Nier, overall, but there's some very cool stuff that happens around the resolution of that game. I'd also be very interested in seeing if certain aspects of D3's narrative will make their way into Automata. It might be a long shot, but I think they will.

We haven't seen a whole lot, but having 2D style platforming, the top-down shooting style sections, and the twist that the environment you were traversing was actually the enemy you were there to fight is very reminiscient of the weirdness Nier got into. The story alone is kinda weird and goes into some weird and depressing areas (specifically on second playthroughs) but the real bizarre stuff came from environments and gameplay changes. It went from 3rd person open world RPG to 2D platformer, to isometric camera angles, to otherworldly environments, and to text-based adventure elements pretty smoothly all while keeping you engaged in the story. The problems were really from the ho-hum combat and the very lame out of combat gameplay (also playing through the game multiple times to get every ending) which is why a lot of people are glad Platinum is involved.

I would highly recommend watching an every-ending playthrough of it on YouTube, which is what I did, if you care about the story. I think the world takes place ages into the future since Nier, but I would expect a ton of call-backs and tie-ins that you might appreciate more if you knew more about the world.

@omgrich: People can definitely get into Nier easily, the problem is staying there long enough to get to the good parts.

@humanity: Automata just seems like a grossly different game from the demo I played and trailers I've watched. But like I said, that's just based off of me doing an hours worth of reading about the original Nier on here and Neogaf. I was just curious if it seemed that way to all of you as well or if you think there's actually a similar set of values in Automata behind the Platinum gameplay.

@nonused: The parts that did expand the universe were ok, but few and far between and honestly not that much new for the franchise. They just weren't interesting enough to make up for suffering through the character interactions and comedy... Playing the game basically put me off the things I usually like in his games by it's proximity to poop. I did like the art style and the music a lot though, and they did pretty well with earning all the secret weapons and stuff compared to older entries. So it wasn't all bad, I was just mad disappointed. One of few times where I hyped myself up pre-release when I really shouldn't have.

I actually don't think it's a long shot at all. I'd almost be surprised if Nier and Drakengard won't be tied more closely together in this one, especially after both Nier and 3. There's definitely some precedent being set.

@omgrich: it's honestly hard to tell how different it really is without having seen the majority of it. From an aesthetic perspective it seems fairly similar - dilapidated world and weird machines that seem more goofy than menacing. The little dialog we heard in that demo was pretty bad in my opinion but not in the same way that it was "bad" in the original. In the first Nier people said ridiculous things but there was an aura of mystery around it that while grimacing made you cock your head to the side and go "hmmmm? What?" Automata in comparison seems cliched and trite, forcing me to roll my eyes more than anything, but that's just the experience from the demo.

The combat really reminds me of the first game as well although it's obviously a bit more involved. They nailed the camera perspective swaps and bullet hell.

So who knows. The original Nier was surprising because the moment to moment gameplay was very mundane and then you got to a boss fight and it was really interesting and surprising. On top of that the further you got in that game the more questions popped up until you finally beat it and your first clue and order of business for figuring it all out was to immediately start a second playthrough which was a real clever and eye opening experience. As long as Automata manages the same level of ingenuity throughout its campaign I think it will earn its title as an actual sequel of sorts.

I think it's impossible to look at the demo and the trailers and say that this is going to be a more straight faced, less mental game than the first one. If you're making a game with a crazy spin in it, you don't give away the spin in the trailers.

I do believe that they will relate to Nier in a lot of ways.

That would be nice. Nier was about creating a different expectation while playing. The game isn't good from the get-go. I believe that Nier:A will shift towards a major revelation during the last parts of the game but I also expect the game to have a secret ending or several.

Don't know about the FF part though but I'm already expecting shifting expectations (in a positive way), tie-ups (or the opposite of that) ending and the typical P+ action formula. I do hope the gameplay gets more interesting by upgrading stuff. Crafting does exist for better or for worse so I have high hopes and P+ seldom does disappoint in that regard.

My inner gut feeling tells me there will be things "off" so my expectations aren't exorbitant.

@tobbrobb: Ah, gotcha. Yeah, I could t definitely agree with that. I guess I was more or less expecting a bit of a slog through the first couple of branches, but, yeah, your interactions with the disciples come out to be immensely underwhelming. I was really hoping they'd go somewhere with what essentially became their gimmicks. I really did like the Intoners, though, but it takes a very long time before they get interesting AND a lot of that interesting stuff is locked behind DLC/external reading.

Still, I guess it was one of those "greater than the sum of its parts" things for me. The actual game part of it is ass, but there're aspects of its story that keep picking at the back of my brain.

@nonused: Yeah I definitely can relate to looking over flaws for some cool stuff, all his games are a love/hate relationship at least to some extent. I guess I should really be surprised it's only one of them that had the wrong ratio for me. XD

@dray2k: I only use Frog Fractions as a point of reference because, from what I've read, Nier seemed to switch up genres mid game and model chunks of the later fame off of specific franchises completely unrelated to it (Resident Evil in particular from what I've read.).