I walked away. Given the option between deleting someone's memory, killing them, and letting them live and get over their sorrow in time, why wouldn't you let them live? If my friend has just had his family killed I wouldn't knock him against a door till he either forgot them or was dead. After beating the game I looked up all sorts of resources and interviews about the game to get some more closure. One of the things I was gratified to find, though I don't have it on hand was a timeline of what happened after the end of the game. The most important one for me was that a colony lead by Pascal made contact with and peace with the Androids. Without the Machine Network or Yorha around to muck things up and perpetuate the conflict, I'm happy that their pacifism was succesful at last.

@redhotchilimist: well, I don't think it's something one can get over and the other choices can be viewed as merciful.

I didn't realize walking away was a possibility at the time so I erased his memories. The outcome of that choice was pretty dark.

Walking away is probably the best choice, but erasing memories is probably the most "Yoko Taro" choice, so I'm kinda glad I did it.

I walked away. When a fellow human has a traumatic experience, you do your best to help them through it, short of killing them, even if that is what they ask for. To be human is a combination of living through the best, the mundane and the worst. Unfortunately everyone goes through a cycle of all three at some point in their lives, at multiple points. It becomes a learning experience to know that time heals all wounds. You then learn that you don't always have the time for those wounds to heal but the reason you feel this pain was because something that gave you joy is gone/dead/changed. Pascal is a being with human emotion, to snuff him out, or even more cruelly erase his learning experience, and the meaning behind that experience (his friends, family, community) is a disgrace to his humanity and life in general. After all, living with no pain means there is no happiness to cause that pain, and what is the point of such a meaningless existence?

I walked away, I acknowledged and respected his humanity as any fellow human being would do.

I didn't know that walking away was an option, because the last time I walked away from something, I ended up getting one of the joke endings and lost a good 10 minutes. Also, I read 'hacking Pascal' as mercy killing him because I went back and forth between 9S and A2 during that part and I never ran into Pascal as 9S after that event.

Walking away from Pascal and erasing his memories just seemed like running away from the issue. Given no other choice I preferred to not let him suffer. If given another choice of staying to help him get over what he had done I would have gladly chosen that one.

You can find him back in the village as 9S, if you play as him after making that choice. (If you chapter select you have to play the whole chapter as A2 again and then switch to 9S.) When you find him again he's standing around the village as a junk dealer. Spoiler: The "junk" is the body parts of the dead robots and cores of the dead robot children.

I erased him.

Unlike the other people here I knew walking away was a possibility. I'm not sure I agree with @sinreaver that walking away constitutes helping Pascal get through a traumatic experience. It felt like callous disregard, especially in light of A2's less than empathetic personality. A2's narrative arc has a lot to do with learning how to care about things again. When I heard Pascal's pitiful voice asking "You're not just gonna leave me here, are you A2?", I knew I had to make a final choice between empathy and apathy. For me, it was no choice at all.

Pascal is an altruistic character in a Yoko Taro game. So I erased his memory because that's just no way to live.

Nothing good ever comes from being nice in a DrakeNier game.

But that's the thing. I played, let's just call route C/D/E Chapter 3 or 4, in order of A2, 9S, A2, and 9S. After beating that first boss in the desert as A2, I went to the village as 9S and no one was there. I wasn't given the choice to either kill or spare Pascal as A2 yet, let alone choose to erase his memories after the ritualistic mass suicide yet. And playing though more of that "chapter", because no one was at the village when I first played as 9S, I didn't think to go back to the village when playing as 9S again because I figured that no one would be at the village, and I just wanted to finish the story at that point because shit was getting real. Of course, now I know that there's some sort of order to playing as the two characters in order to get all of this stuff, but I decided to gain some good karma and give up my save so it'll take me roughly 40 hours to make those decisions again.

I killed him the first time. I just couldn't erase his memory, cause that seems messed up, but he doesn't deserve what happened to him. There are things worse than death.

Erased the memory. I didn't know walking away was an option. It was very sad. It's a very sad game.

I erased his memory which made my girlfriend and I extremely sad.

I walked away because that wasn't my choice to make. I was actually enough of a jerk that I thought him asking for a memory wipe was extremely selfish, let alone the part where he wanted to force the deed on someone else. He clearly didn't understand the weight of the situation and was just looking for a quick escape, and I personally didn't want to decide whether he deserved it or not.

@teddie: It may have been a bit selfish but at that point he earned the right to ask for a favor. For what he's done for me I figured I may as well give it to him.

What happens when you walk away? Can you talk to him again later?

I didn't really want to but I killed him. Felt like it was what A2 would do. Did not know you could just walk away and would probably have done that if I knew it was an option.

Erased his memory, then came back to the Machine Village. There he is, peddling body parts of the children robot, since he can't remember a damn thing.

I would also like to know the answer to this question.

Walked away-painful memories exist in order to learn from your mistakes. It's what it means to be sentient and alive, which is part of Pascal's journey as a character (as sad as that maybe).

That being said, I went back and erased his memory in order to get all the weapons and also buy materials from him later on, since you need to do that in order to get all the endings.

I erased his memory, just because there was suicide in that room and I was afraid he'd kill himself, too.

But nah, instead he sold me machine arms to level up my weapons. So I guess things worked out ok?

so can anyone answer what happens when you walk away? lol

btw it sucked that pascal didn't get the proper treatment before the game ended. He was such a crucial character. I thought pascal should be given the chance to remember his memories and overcome his heartbreak rather than be defeated.

I can say that I never saw him again. After Pascal dies/loses his memory/is left you're pretty much done, as far as I recall, and I didn't go out of my way to check in on his village, if he's there. I did go back through the door as A2 in the next chapter, which would've been very embarrassing if he was still around, but he had vanished.

Reason I didn't answer sooner is that that's not much of an answer. For all I know he went back to his village and moped and I just never saw it, or is just wandering the desert or whatever.

I walked away. He's the one that wanted to be human. I can't just delete bad memories.

Wait.. why are these two posts the same? O.o

I started to walk away...

I don't quite recall if it was his pathetic screaming or the language of video games making me think I couldn't leave, but I came back, and I sure as hell wasn't going to erase his memory. That seemed far colder than leaving him to square himself or killing him.

...So Pascal got got.

I didn't realize walking away was an option, so that was out for me, but I think that's probably the best option. As horrible as the pain of losing those children was for him, part of conscious existence is learning to deal with intense hardship and keep going. I feel like it would help him eventually avoid the same mistakes if he were to rebuild the village--i.e. you can't teach people about fear without also teaching them about courage and perseverance.

My thinking was that at least with a wiped memory he would have another shot at a happy existence. Pascal deserves that chance if anyone does.

I wiped his memory. I didn't know you could walk away, and I might have chosen that given the option. I appreciate that he'd earned the right to ask that favour, but I think having him live on feels appropriate. Hopefully his experiences would lead him to fostering hope in the remainder of society - and the world certainly needed people like Pascal around.

I wiped his memory first mainly because I didn’t know I could walk away. Once I found out that walking away was an option I literally replayed that chapter again to walk away, because in my mind that was the only correct choice. He wanted to be as close to human as possible and that means not being able to forget. I also firmly believe as a person that the only way we, in our own lives, can overcome repeating the mistakes of our past is to learn from those mistakes.

Hopefully Pascal can recover from such a loss, if he does then I feel the only way to stop the same thing from happening to the village he starts in the future is by remembering what he did wrong in his previous village.

I walked away, super fucking sad, especially the way the camera frames it as you walk away.

I feel like as much as he wanted it, that in the long run he would be glad he didn't have his memory wiped.

I feel like A2 wouldn't erase his memories, I mean she probably has tons of bad memories because of the machines too, she doesn't have the luxury of not remembering.

Erased memory. Glad I did because I understood the point they were trying to make, but it's still just a video game, and erasing his memory has a video game benefit (he becomes a vendor of some crafting parts that don't drop very often).

Walking away was an option?
"cries" what have I done?

So I never had much affinity with Pascal and never really saw him as an important character. It wasn't until the Waypoint spoilercast and Giant Bomb GotY deliberations that I had any deeper understanding of him, but of course this was long after I had finished Nier: Automata.

In any case, I did what I figured A2 would do and chose the most merciful option--and killed him. Destroying who he is without killing him--that is, wiping his memory--is a fate worse than death. Didn't know about the third option. But I figured it was a really clear-cut case and I'm surprised so many chose the alternative.