NieR Replicant is an alternate version of NieR released exclusively in Japan for the PlayStation 3. A remake was developed for PlayStation 4, PC, and Xbox One and released in 2021.
NieR is one of those games where I feel like I need to give some backstory with my history with the franchise before really getting into it. I didn't play the original NieR, but I was at least mildly aware of it at the time. Which is to say that I had seen the Quick Look, and (of all things) had heard about the game's true, final ending. Without getting into it (yet), let's just say that ending is kinda wild, at least conceptually. But as interesting as that stuff sounded, after watching the Quick Look, the game still looked kinda...bad. And granted, 2010 was peak me being into bad games that had compelling stories (it was the year of Deadly Premonition, after all), but I hadn't seen anything to make me think NieR actually had a compelling story. Just a weird gimmick around its ending.
So, time passed, and I didn't play NieR. Eventually, in 2017, NieR:Automata released, and that one I wanted to play. Not enough to get it right at launch, but eventually. Thing is though, at this point I decided I didn't want to go into Automata with basically zero NieR knowledge, so rather than track down a copy of the original, I watched an all cutscenes video on YouTube. In the moment, that felt like the smart thing to do, but after playing Automata, I wasn't quite so sure. I don't want to say Automata was just retreading the same ground as NieR, but there's enough thematic and idea similarities between the two that it can't be coincidence. As a fellow writer myself, I couldn't help but think at the time that maybe it was a bit of, “well no one saw these good ideas the first time, so let's just use them again.”
Anyway, I enjoyed Automata, even if to this day I'm still not entirely sure how much. The difference between my blog snippet right after finishing it (“really unique experience that will stick with me for a long time”), and the Moosies that year (“Is this a case for the game not sticking with me like I thought it would”) is interesting, to say the least. I don't remember why, but it's frustrating that neither of the times I wrote about it in the year of its release were big, in depth blogs. If anything, with a few years between then and now, and after playing Replicant, it only makes me feel like I need to replay Automata (and maybe finally write about it in depth?). One thing at a time, though.
Obviously now I've played Replicant to completion. That's 100% side quests done, and all endings, A through E. Not all the weapon stories, to head off anyone who might try to say you didn't have the complete experience without doing that. Honestly, I didn't care for the weapon stories I did see, and I already spent over sixty hours in this game, I don't want to spend another twenty just grinding for weapon upgrade materials. Anyway, I have thoughts, ranging from general stuff about the game itself, to end game SPOILERS that will of course be properly marked when I get to them.
Good dog.
Replicant, in a lot of ways, is an odd one, but in a lot of other ways, kind of not an odd one. It has some strange sensibilities to it, but in terms of the part where you play it, it's just a generic action-adventure game. It reminded me of the Fable games, more than anything else. Appropriately enough, it even released the same year as Fable III, which seemed to have sunk that franchise for a good long time. Neither had a fully open world to explore, but rather a series of relatively small interconnected areas. There's a main story thing to do, but lots of generic side quests to collect X number of a thing, deliver a thing to someone else, etc. But as I said earlier, I did all the side quests, so there was something compelling about it to me. Part of it was that just enough of them had something worthwhile in them, whether it was an interesting side story helping flesh out the world, or even just some snarky dialog from the game's most novel character, Grimoire Weiss.
That's not all of it though, because aside from Fable, the game that I thought about the most playing Replicant was...Death Stranding. A lot of this game's side quests mechanically feel like filler, just running back and forth between towns, delivering things to and fro. I couldn't help but think about how much I loved that part of Death Stranding, and it got me wishing for a game that played like that, but was set in and had the sensibilities of the NieR world. A game where traversing the environment itself was the challenge, and the payoff was story and characters that are actually worthwhile and interesting.
Sadly, that's not this game, instead this is a game where traversal is just running between areas, and the only obstacles being enemies called Shades. Shades that, I will always associate with Ryan saying they looked like, “Goldschläger ghosts” in the Quick Look. I can't really compare the combat between Replicant and the original, but I can compare it to Automata. It doesn't have the same depth, or level of nuance as Automata, but I do think it has the same core problem. The issue in both games (and this is something I said even back in 2017) is that while they feel good to play, they never give sufficiently challenging or interesting enemies/encounters to make use of what's available.
There might not be moose to ride like Automata, but you can ride these giant boars.
I like stylish action games a lot, don't forget DMC 5 was my game of the year in 2019. So I know what I like out of that style of combat. The combat feeling good and having a variety to what the player can do is only part of it, the game needs to give you interesting things to do with those moves. In Automata, it felt like Platinum went all out on designing 2B's move set, but then never got around to fleshing out the enemies to the same extent.
Here, it feels like they took an older game where the extent of the combat was something like a three hit combo (based solely on the aforementioned Quick Look), expanded that out to the point where it feels good...and then that was that. Again, this is just me extrapolating from what little I know about the original NieR, so I could be completely wrong and the enemies were also redesigned for Replicant. If that was the case, then it didn't stop the game from having that same feeling as Automata, where the main character is way over equipped for what is actually required to deal with the enemies.
So, to put it another way, Replicant's a game with very generic side quests, and over designed combat for what the enemies are actually capable of. But I wouldn't actually put it that way, because despite all that, I enjoyed my time with the game. I did the thing I do in games like this, which is soak in the world, take my time, try to get to know the characters, whether they were companions like Weiss, Kainé, and Emil following along my quest, or NPCs I got to know along the way. Like the red bag wearing couple, or the old fisherman by the shore.
Which, oh I could go on about the fishing journey I went on with this game. But I'll keep that short and just say that to anyone playing this and using a guide for fishing: Don't believe what the guides say about using sardines to catch marlins. Use a lure instead. The sardines are just gonna attract sharks and a tougher fish that is basically impossible to catch at the fishing skill level you'd be at. Look up a video because there is a specific timing to the lure bobbing to get the marlins, but it's easy once you know it. Also, if you're going after the “catch every fish” Trophy and you think you've caught them all but the Trophy didn't pop, you're probably missing a carp.
The fact that I immersed myself enough into this world that I was able to prattle off a whole paragraph of specific fishing tips without looking that up says some things. Maybe mostly about how I spent too much time fishing, but also that the game succeeded in drawing me into its world. It made me care, and at the end of the day if a game can do that, it kinda doesn't matter if the rest of it is bad, or generic. And I wouldn't say bad in this case, I'd just recommend most people be a bit pickier about which quests they do.
Then there's the story, and the characters. I would really have to play Automata again to say which has the main narrative that I liked more, but Replicant easily has the better cast of characters. Weiss (who is a floating, talking book) just has such an air of pomp and circumstance around everything he does and says, and gets so upset so easily. But he still always goes along with what the main character says, always does the right thing, so you know deep down he cares. He's an a-hole, and I love him for it, but he cares.
Kainé, also an a-hole, just with a much fouler mouth. Maybe not as profane as people make her out to be, it's not like she drops an f-bomb every sentence, it's more that the ways in which she curses out others (both enemies and friends (Weiss) alike) are pretty creative. Definitely a lot of threats of shoving removed body parts into orifices they weren't intended to, things of that nature. Again though, just like Weiss, her heart is in the right place, even if she has to be dragged along for even her to realize it too.
And finally Emil, the wonderful lad who can do no wrong. Okay, that's a lie, no one in the world of NieR can do no wrong. He's different in that he's the one companion who isn't constantly sniping insults at the others, and his attempts to keep things civil between the others are honestly adorable.
Friends!
Of course there's tragic backstories galore, but I won't get into that stuff quite yet. At least in terms of what happens in them, so much as the how they're told. I guess for anyone with literally zero NieR knowledge beyond what I wrote above, this is your cue to drop out, because this is kind of an interesting “mechanical” thing the game does a handful of times, and would certainly be surprising the first time it happens. But also it's not really a spoiler, and the original game is eleven years old now, so I dunno.
Anyway, mostly Replicant is a third person action-adventure game, but at various points it turns into...I don't necessarily even want to call it a text adventure, because there's not really that much in the way adventuring, or choices. In fact, the ones relevant to Kainé and Emil don't even have choices in them, it's literally just pressing a button to advance lines of text.
Point is, Replicant turns into just pages and pages of text on (mostly) black screens. I don't mind that, but the weird thing is, the first time it happens (and at least one other time I remember), some of the dialog between the characters is still voiced. But even in that first instance, after a few lines the voices stop, and it's just the text. I get that these sequences are supposed to invoke a weird dreamlike feeling, and I'm sure the lack of dialog is part of that, but I really like the voice acting! And given this remaster has full voice acting for literally everything else, so I kinda wish all the dialog in the text sequences was voiced too.
If I had to pick a favorite part of this game, it'd easily be the acting. Laura Bailey's Kainé is as good as any other character she's done, but really it's Liam O'Brien's Weiss that steals the show. I don't know how much of the dialog in Replicant is new (if I had to guess I'd say they probably redid everything for consistency's sake), and maybe he was just extra playing it up because NieR became what it did over the years, but he was on top of his game here. Just chewing through every line, I loved it so much. And because Weiss is the companion that joins up earliest, and the one that follows the main character into every town (as opposed to waiting outside like Kainé and Emil), he also has a lot more dialog than the others. He's the one constantly grumbling about the main character being unable to say no to literally any request, no matter how inane or tedious. And if his performance wasn't spot on, a character like that would get annoying fast, instead of being a delight to hear grumble and complain.
Speaking of audio related things, the music. It wouldn't be a NieR game without the music being interesting, and I quite liked it here. There's no one song that leaped out at me as an all time banger like BECOME AS GODS from Automata, but a lot of it felt like...how I was feeling at the time? This is a weird thing to write, but I saw the news about Vinny, Brad, and Alex leaving Giant Bomb on my phone while I had Replicant paused, and now a particular music track playing at the time is connected to that news in my brain. Later that day I spent a solid ten minutes idling in the tavern in the main village listening to Devola sing, just trying to process what was going on. There's a deep melancholy to most of the music that simply felt...right, for as sad as it was. And even if it weren't for this weird association through sheer chance, the game's music is still really good, and does what it sets out to do well.
I think I've exhausted what I can reasonably say without getting into spoilers, unless anyone wants to read about how long it took me to cross pollinate and grow every type of flower. Too long, is the answer. Thus, unless you've played either the original NieR, or Replicant (and I will be writing about Replicant's new Ending E), or have no intention of ever playing it, just enjoy the following image of my Replicant garden, and stop reading. For whatever faults it has, I did enjoy my time with NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139... a lot, and I think for most people it's easily the best way to experience this story in the year 2021. Unless you're the sort of person that really wants to suffer, I guess. But also if you liked Automata, give it a shot.
I tried to make this a trans pride garden, but one of the pinks decided to turn white, and none of the flowers wanted to face the same direction!
Rather that one giant block of spoiler-y ramblings, I'm going to try breaking them up into sections, and label each one outside of the spoiler block, in the hope that makes it a bit easier to navigate for anyone who might not want to read every last word I say.
NieR and Queer (characters).
Because I'm me, I didn't know where else to start, and the characters are the most endearing part of the game, I thought I'd begin with Kainé and Emil. NieR is still a largely cis-heteronormative game, but as one could guess, there's at least two characters here that aren't that. In Emil's case, it's pretty obvious from what he says in one scene that he's gay. And that's fine. Given his character (despite being extremely old) is stuck at the age of a preteen boy, giving him a big romantic arc would've been weird.
Kainé is the character that's more interesting in this regard. When the main character and Weiss first meet her, they learn that she's been possessed by and/or is half Shade, and that she's been shunned by the local village. Thus, she lives in a ramshackle shack just outside the village (though one that's certainly on much sturdier ground (which is to say ground) than anything in the Aerie). With that info, and a lot of the mean remarks from the villagers in the Aerie, the initial implication is that she was an outcast because of her Shadiness.
Except that's not the real reason why. Later in the game (at the start of Route B), during one of those text flashbacks it's revealed that she was bullied, and hurt by the villagers years before she was possessed. And unless I missed something, I don't think the actual reason for why is stated in game, or even implied in a way that someone could reasonably figure out what it was without reading an outside source. Which is not to say her backstory doesn't work without the full context, and there's always something to the idea of there being enough ambiguity that more people can project themselves onto a character. More room for more people to relate, after all.
On the other hand, Kainé is canonically intersex, which is not something that most games would even consider attempting to include. And I'm kinda torn between wishing this was something the game was more upfront and direct about, and thinking that maybe the ambiguity is why there isn't any aspect of it that rubbed me the wrong way. I'm not intersex myself, but it's pretty evident by the number of times I bring this stuff up in my goofy blog here that queer topics in games matter to me, and I want to make it known when they screw up, just as much as I want people to know when they get it right.
“Queer person who was bullied and traumatized by others because of their queerness” is certainly something that has happened to far too many people in the real world, and been used in plenty of fiction (hell, even if my writing is generally lighthearted and uplifting, I've basically done this in my stories!), but not too much in games. Or rather, that same thing I say any time I write one of these, at least not in “bigger” games that get attention. Even as weird as it is to think about NieR being a “bigger” game now, when it was a budget release most people hadn't heard of, let alone cared about.
To get back to the main point, as much as I do think Replicant has good writing (I'm sure due in no small part to the quality of the localization), I'm always skeptical of (presumably) non-queer people writing queer stories. Not to say there aren't good examples where it's happened, I'm just skeptical of it. And I do think that part of this is my lingering fury from Dead2y Premonition still smolders within me, especially given how convinced I felt after THE MISSING that Swery and company learned better, only to get so much worse.
I got off the point again. I like Kainé as a character, and I think that as sad as her backstory is, that's the vibe of the NieR games. That's the tone of the world, and I think threading the needle of making a tragic/traumatic backstory work without feeling exploitative, or gross is tricky. And I think hers was handled well, even if part of me wishes I knew she was intersex from something in the game, rather than reading it online, outside of the game.
And if nothing else, for once it's good to have a tough lady with a tragic backstory where the backstory is something other than sexual assault. Unless there was supposed to be something other than nonsexual violence in her backstory that I also missed, in which case I rescind this paragraph. And maybe “good” isn't even the right word, given ladies can be tough without preexisting trauma.
The serious point being that probably the trope I hate the most is “tough lady who's tough because of tragic sexual assault backstory.” Granted, “tough lady who's tough because of tragic queer related bullying” is close to that territory, but for whatever reason it didn't feel quite so exploitative to me. Perhaps that's just because I haven't seen it poorly implemented nearly as often.
Anyway, here's hoping whatever is next in the NieR series can have more in the way of openly queer main characters, who if they are traumatized, maybe it can be for something else. Also less in the way of the creepy Trophies for upskirting, I hate that they added one to this game for Kainé. And also, Yoko Taro, I know you're reading this (sarcasm), tone down the horny on the ladies, or tone up the horny on the dudes (assuming they're adults because come to think of it I don't know how old the “adult” main character is actually supposed to be in this game). Maybe just tone down the horny.
Mixed thoughts on vengeance.
About midway through NieR's Route A (the first playthrough), there's a five year time skip, and the main character goes from a young teen, to someone who at least looks grown up. According to what I found online, he goes from sixteen to twenty-one, but sixteen felt a bit older than I would've guessed. Anyway, he grows up, and changes quite a bit as a character, accentuated by the change in voice actor from a plucky, happy go lucky kid, to brooding Ray Chase doing his best Noctis again. Funnily enough, the voice actor for the younger version, Zach Aguilar, is actually a lot closer in age to the older version than Ray Chase, who's in his early thirties.
I jest, but that's not entirely fair, as I feel the biggest difference after this time jump is just how bitter, spiteful, and how much of a killer the main character has become. Specifically toward Shades. Of course the younger version still didn't hesitate to fight and kill Shades, but the older one delights in it, and all but brags about how he wants to kill every last Shade on the planet. Frankly it's off putting, and disturbing at first. And that's not to say it becomes more acceptable to keep the murder going as the game goes on, so much as I just got used to it after the repeated replays to get the other endings.
Even before Route B starts giving more context for the Shades that get slaughtered along the way, and even before the twist near the end of Route A where it's revealed that Shades are the remnants of the original humans of planet Earth, it's pretty evident that the way the main character acts, and talks is wrong. I think the game knows it, the writers/localizers knew it, I think Ray Chase knew it, and yet... I feel like in most stories about how “vengeance is bad,” there's some moment where the main character realizes they were wrong. This game doesn't have that?
Did I miss something? Like, the main character's arc is that he wants to do what he can to help his sick sister Yonah, so he goes off on an adventure to power up a mysterious book, and meets some weird friends along the way. Yonah gets kidnapped, so he spends five years brooding and training, then continues the quest with his weird friends. And as the quest resumes, he even encounters other people and situations wrapped in cycles of violence (the humans of Facade and the desert wolves), or consumed with vengeance (Junk Heap kid and the robots). At one point he even says something about how the poor kid can't look past his vengeance on the robots, yet at no point does the main character self reflect on his own quest for vengeance. He's just convinced that he's doing the world a favor, and that anything he needs to do to rescue Yonah is justified.
Of course, I don't think the game just ending on the main character monologuing about how he learned his lesson would have been great either. So I dunno what would've been better, or at least seemed better to me. For all I know, feeling conflicted was the whole point, rather than the game explicitly wanting the main character's actions to feel fully justified, or fully wrong. Though, considering what happened to the Aerie, it's kinda hard not to lean more toward it being wrong than right.
The nature of humanity.
Years ago, when I first watched all of original NieR's cutscenes on YouTube, the Shades being the “real humans” was the big twist, and I vaguely remember wondering if NieR was a “you played the bad guy all along” story. The whole game was spent playing as an “empty shell,” a being “without a soul,” at least according to Devola and Popola.
I don't have anything profound to say, just think it's funny that now, having played the game, even though some of the things the main character does are pretty awful (like murdering Shade younglings), the Shades aren't really any better. I feel like they gave up any claim to those bodies the second the bodies developed their own consciousnesses, their own personalities, their own lives. Again, I don't have anything profound to say, just interesting how a mix of experiencing the game in its full context, and those four years between watching those cutscenes and now gave me a different takeaway from that aspect of the game.
It is a really clever idea for a story, though. Humanity needed to create new bodies for themselves, but before they could get transferred in, the bodies developed minds of their own. The fiction writer in me just wishes that someday I could think up something as clever as that. This is really a different topic altogether, but a lot of my favorite stories leave me feeling inspired. They fill me up with ideas for my own stories, my own worlds, characters, etc. Gets the imagination revved up like nothing else, but there's another level beyond that. The stuff that's just so incredible that it leaves me awestruck, and feeling like I'll never be able to make anything that good
Replicant isn't at that level. It definitely left me more inspired than awestruck, even if these days it's all I can do to get myself to write these blogs, let alone full on stories.
Okay, to get this back on track, I guess I do have something to say about how the game hands out its info about the Shades. The twist at the end from Popola and Devola is fine, it's the part where you need to play through half the game again, and it just arbitrarily adds in cutscenes that's a bit irksome. The extra dialog in fights sort of makes sense because the context is that it's what Kainé hears, but also not really because you're not playing as her. Automata tried to rectify that by making 9S the character in Route B, but he's such a slog to play as that I know multiple people who gave up on the game because of it.
Not only does having to replay the game to get extra cutscenes feel like filler, I think a lot of it isn't really necessary in the first place. Even before the twist, even before the extra dialog, it's obvious enough that the Shades aren't just mindless automatons, not just evil demons, or anything like that. So those extra scenes feel like they're layering it on a little too thick, I guess is my point.
Conversely, those scenes of stuff like Emil and Kainé camping? Those should have been in Route A! That camping scene is one of my favorite bits from the entire game, and I wish it had more sequences like that.
Time for a quick camping break before discussing the game's endings.
Sacrifice, and the Power of Friendship (Endings D and E).
To me, the most noteworthy thing about original NieR eleven years ago was its true, final ending. Ending D, the one that requires deleting your save to achieve. That was the thing people talked about from NieR, and it became the thing the game was known for. Or at least the thing I knew it for. Of course I had zero other context for it, so to me it was just a novelty, just a weird thing from this oddity of a game I'd never play.
Now here I am, having played it, and I'd say I have...mixed feelings on it. On the one hand, the point of this ending isn't supposed to be about deleting the save, it's supposed to be about sacrifice. The main character is sacrificing not only his life, but his entire existence to save a friend. As in, not only did he cease to exist in the present, but also the past. And that's why the save is deleted, to remove any record of his actions, his deeds, his existence from memory.
And all that's left is a short ending cutscene, and a different look for the main title screen. In the original NieR, that was that, and frankly if I hadn't known there was another new ending, I would have turned the game off and started writing then, instead of playing for another four or five hours to finally finish Replicant. But I'm not quite at that yet, I still have a few thoughts about Ending D.
Which is that...I don't know that I actually like Ending D now that I've seen it in the full context of the game, rather than just after a series of cutscenes. The worst part is, my problem with it isn't even about thinking the characters would act differently, or it not fitting thematically with any other parts of the game, because I think it does. My problem is that the sacrifice just feels completely out of nowhere.
Okay, the context for the scene is that Kainé finally fully loses control, and turns into a Shade, or a Shade like thing. She and the main character have a brief fight, and then the Shade who had been possessing Kainé can now talk to the main character, and tells him that he has two options. Either kill Kainé (Ending C, which I hate and think is the worst ending in the game by far), or erase himself from existence, everyone's memory, and make Kainé fully human again.
The thing that I don't like about this, and I hate that this is the thing that bothers me so much, is that there's no foreshadowing for this. There's no point anywhere else in the game where there's even the slightest reference to this being a thing. It's just something the main character can do? Is it something that Shade can do? I know “why and how is this a thing” is not at all what I should be getting stuck on, or thinking about at all, but...it is!
I think the reason it irks me so is that so much of the rest of the game doesn't feel like this. There's always some foreshadowing, or some reference, or anything. I'm not saying there should have been a whole big quest dedicated to the concept of erasing people from history, but even just a few off hand comments from Weiss could have helped alleviate this. Or maybe foreshadow it in a fairy tale that the main character tells Yonah at some point early in the game.
It also comes off as this arbitrary way to force the game to have a sad ending, which feels needless because with Weiss and Emil disappearing, there already had been plenty of sacrifice in the lead up to the final confrontation. Granted Emil reappeared as just a head (and with a jaunty shop theme in Automata), but I would have preferred Emil still be presumed dead and not have this weird choice at the very end of the game, frankly.
Anyway, if the sacrifice had just been better contextualized in game, it would have worked better for me.
But, since this is NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139..., that's not the end of the story. And for anyone who played the original NieR, but hasn't gotten to Replicant yet, this is your last chance to hop off before I spoil it. Because I'm gonna spoil it!
Last warning!
With the previous save deleted, to get E, that requires starting a whole new save file. And using a different name for the file, because the game blocks the original from being used again. Sadly MOOSE was lost to history... So I started a new character named Nier (which is the canonical name for the character, I've just avoided using that to save on the confusion with the game), and played through the first two and a half hours of the game again. When I heard about the new ending after deleting the save, I kinda just assumed it was something that would pop up in the first like, ten minutes of the game or something.
Of course that would be too easy, and wouldn't have me second guessing that I had done something wrong, or missed something. Luckily not, I just had to get up to the boss in the Aerie, after which the cutscene differs, and the game jumps forward to three years after Ending D. Kainé is living on her own in that shack outside the Aerie, and now the playable character. The thing that I thought they should have done for Route B, finally in Route E.
One thing I didn't do, but I wish I had just to see, was spend any time exploring. I just ran along the main path, which very quickly puts Kainé into a new area, with no way back out into the open zones. So I have no idea if there's optional stuff to do, conversations to have, anything like that. Probably not any side quests, but my attempts to search for if there's side stuff to do in Route E have yielded nothing either way. So if anyone knows if I did or didn't miss anything worthwhile, please let me know. It'd take a fair amount of doing for me to get back to the point where I could play Route E again and see for myself, and I'd rather not go through all that and be met with nothing.
Anyway, I'm not going to beat by beat give a synopsis of Route E, but I will mention the biggest points. Kainé ventures into the big tree in the Forest of Myth, which turns out to be a weird cyber lair for some creepy android twins. Then Emil shows up with his body again (with two extra arms, for some reason), and they both realize that there's something, or someone that they just can't...remember... But that's not going to stop them from fighting to find out what, or who, and to bring them back.
The short version is that they venture into a cyber-y cube world (that reminds me a lot of Automata), Weiss reappears, and after some more soul searching, inner reflection, and one last fight with her inner demons, Kainé does the impossible.
She brings her friend back from the oblivion of erasure from existence...and un-deletes the deleted save file. There's a cutscene where the main character returns (in kid form instead of adult, for some unknown reason), and there's a giant Lunar Tear, also for some reason beyond my understanding.
Now, when I told someone who played the original NieR, but didn't really intend to play Replicant for various reasons (I think ranging from having too much fondness for the jank of the original, and its grizzled middle aged protagonist) about Ending E, she seemed all but livid about it. I'm not going to directly quote what she said, but it was something to the effect of calling Yoko Taro a coward, and going back on one of the most memorable parts of the game.
I totally get how a lot of the original NieR heads would have that reaction, and heck, maybe I'd lean more toward that if I'd played that game without any of the foreknowledge that I went into Replicant with. But to me, this doesn't feel like an act of cowardice, so much as just asking the question, “what would Kainé do if one of her best and only friends in the world was gone?”
And I think the answer, as seen in Route E, is fight to bring him back, no matter what. Kainé being Kainé, she doesn't let anything stop her, only slow her down a little, so of course she finds a way to do it. Even if the actual happening of it left me a little baffled as to why the main character was a kid again, and the whole giant flower thing.
So yes, I like Ending E. I have no idea at all what the general consensus amongst NieR fans is of the ending. I've talked with no one about it, and I'd certainly be curious to see if other people are like me, and like that the power of friendship was able to overcome this, or if they're like my friend, and think Yoko Taro is a coward.
Though if anything, I'd say that considering most NieR fans seem to enjoy the melancholy and sadness of the series, that daring to add a happier final ending isn't cowardly.
At this point, I think I've exhausted everything I can reasonably write about Replicant, and a fair amount more too. If you read all that, thank you as always for giving me the time of day! I really do appreciate it, given this is something I do mostly for fun. As for what's next in my blog writing, I do want to replay Automata and see if I can finally give that a proper in depth write up, but I don't think I'm going to get to that any time soon. Otherwise, I had started a “potpourri” write up about all the games I'd been playing this year that didn't warrant long discussions like this, and maybe I'll finish that soon. We'll see!
I have a lot of similar mixed thoughts in a way that I kind of really love. Nier: Gestalt was one of my all time favorite games and "coming back to it" years later, and particularly at a time when I can see the world pissing itself down the drain in real time, is an experience. One of those "how have I personally changed". So a lot of stuff that didn't stick out before definitely sticks out now. Some "Oh wow, they did a better job of this than I thought" and a lot of "... yeah... this was probably still good for its time but yeah...."
Regarding Kaine: I want to say that some of the dialogue in her text in Gestalt may have more heavily implied abuse as well as her being intersex but it has been ages. Shitty as it sounds, I think I "knew" or at least strongly suspected even before checking wikis and art books back in the day.
And regarding Ending E: Yeah, I also kind of really disliked it. Don't get me wrong, I loved the aspect of it and even really liked that you basically get the Automata HUD once you enter the core. And I do like that it kind of bridges the gap and heavily implies that the combat androids are at least partially modeled after our favorite rage beast as opposed to Yoko Taro just having a thing for scantily clad women with silver hair. And I definitely gave a "oh fuck please no" when The Twins started talking about hearing a song and the giant lunar tear flower appeared. I am still scarred from Drakengard 1 and 3... But yeah, undoing the save deletion kind of pissed me off. I like that we got the more hopeful end from the art book but I wish the save had stayed deleted and it very much undid the sacrifice. Better than Kaine sacrificing herself to undo it but still kind of shit.
Overall? I think this is definitely a top twenty and maybe even top ten game for me. And I will never play it again because holy shit was I sick and tired of those five or six maps by the end of C.
Ending E: I think I liked that the data is restored because it kinda just waves away the illusion I think that ending D creates in a fun way.
It feels very momentous and important when it prompts you to delete everything because like... oh no that's all the stuff I did. Do you know how many times I walked across that desert?! Gone?!
I think there's something to undoing it now that is like... oh come on this is not the big deal you thought it was you would have just turned off the game otherwise and put it on a shelf.
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