I'm on the 3rd playthrough, played as A2 and now 9S...and I have no idea why 9S is suddenly all mean and wanting to kill every robot? That's not where this whole thing has been going, 9S has hacked and seen these Robots be something other than a mindless enemy. He's spared & been "friends" with tons of robots up to this point. Then an Android (A2) kills 2B, and now 9S is wanting to kill all Robots as vengeance? Why? Why isn't he mad at androids/the bunker? Or Adam/Eve, who started the chain of events leading to her death?

Maybe I missed something, or will get more info, as I'm just entering the tower thing now. But this seems like a huge break in character. Like "A rogue android killed 9S, so now I'm going to go commit genocide on all the Boars & Moose!" I just don't get it? It's pretty much ruined the game for me, since the characters/story are the only thing keeping me interested.

Thanks in advance for any answer/explanation (please don't spoil the ending {or ending "E" at least, I think?}) :)

Sounds like you forgot the part where the machines started the virus and destroyed the Bunker.

ENDGAME SPOILERS MAYBE? Dunno if it counts as such, let me spoilertag it. Spoilertext includes parts of the endgame of the third playthrough so beware. Not the ending per se, I removed that part. Hope its alright for ya.

Characters in Nier never made much sense but thats because considering that the situations the chracters are in are total extremes of the situation that is happening in any specific situation, causing the characters to reacting extreme in return. Thats like the point, they could totally react differently to certain things, even react "normal" to something, but that would break the subjectivity of the situation in return and thats not what Yoko Taro stories are all about. Humanity is not an objectively graspable thing and often enough a cause can be due to selfishness or plain just cause or in other words, everyones an asshole because the situation is severely fucked up, though they have the choice to act better but from their perspective they just don't seem to know.

9S is in a blind rage so to speak due to his love to 2B that died by the hands of A2. He doesn't give whatever happens to the robots but A2 on the other hand does care and even goes so far to try to act rational but ultimately fails because 9S doesn't care about any of it.

Because 9S believes that she is evil and not worth listening to even though explaining the whole damn thing to 9S would actually make sense and not be that complicated considering they're robots-in-human-clothing and A2 and 9S both know about hacking and data transfering. None of that would break chracter but it would damn dilemma the characters are into rely on it. The only choice, from the perspective from 9S there is, is to keep on fighting, even though there really is no point and it doesn't even make sense.

Wasn't that Eve? He's an Android, I thought.

Edit: OH OH OH, I get it. With Adam & Eve looking like humans/androids, and stuff in this game being really weird, I forgot some of the early story. Like Adam being made by the robots. @dray2k I forgot that a lot of the times it was 2B who didn't attack the robots, with 9S being like "They don't know what they're actually saying, they're just robots, kill them". With that and Adam/Eve being robots, not androids, it makes a lot more sense. Thanks :)

9S pretty much has a mental breakdown after 2B dies (compounded with the revelations and disasters that happened shortly before) and loses all sense of reason.

While his reaction is (very) extreme, it makes perfect sense from a story perspective, especially as route C goes on.

Also both Adam and Eve are definitely machines. The game makes that very clear over the course of route A and B. They may look more human than the others you see, but they are 100% machine.

It was not, Both Adam and Eve are pretty much dead and finished at that point. Adam and Ever are part of the Main robot AI, even if they kinda look like androids. They are subdivisions of the main AI that made an effort to imitate humans behaviour. In order to understand it better, they took humanlike appearance and then tried on clothes, etc.

@ethanielrain: Hmm well, come to think of it, you don't have to fully understand the story and I really came to believe that you don't even have to understand it partially to feel the impact of it wholly, the game paces itself just so it becomes really emotional even if you don't 100% overanalyze everything and all that fuzz. In a sense, the game leaves a lot up to your own interpretation. The storytelling seems real honest, if you think that parts of the game are bullshit, then its a rightful interpretation also. The game doesn't go the way that it throws around how deep and complicated, or that it is even trying to be true, though it tries to be thoughtful. I think its one of those games game were many interpretative viewpoints seem be truthful to the game.

Anyway, I'm really sorry that I initially didn't used spoilertags, I should've read your initial post more carefully. I didn't seen the "on" in your first sentence. Hope I didn't ruin the fun, didn't want to look like some asshole there.

EXTREMLY MINOR ENDGAME (maybe?) SPOILERS BEWARE! I tag this just in case.

I think its pretty much obvious that Robots = Androids, as in it doesn't freaking matter who are the humans but its the desire of confirmation that the humanity has to come back. The "machines" want to meet the humans to find their equals. The androids want to bring back the humans because they need a goal to live, its like their state of being so to speak. The Androids wear a cross between matrix-movie industrial clothes and maid outfits because they're servants to humanity.

During the boss battle Adam for instance, he said something amongst those lines like (not accurate): "Humans both destroyed and loved in equal measure. That ballance is what made Humans interesting for us." and that basically what 9S became after he seen 2B died. All 9S wanted was revenge, no matter the cost. That was because he was blind with love for 2B and blind with hate on everybody else, expecially A2.

In a way, the main characters of the whole story turned into the humans/humanity they always wanted to fight for. The became the humanity everyone was seeking, in one way or another. They turned from the rational robots they should've been into irrational beings with a heart.

Nier: Gestalt/Replicant is a interpretation about the question of "what makes a human?" while Nier: Automata is a interpretation on the question about "what makes humanity?". In a way they're both recurring themes (as in, the basic gist of the story is the same) yet its still different. Interpretation-wise, the games are a little bit vague, but thats on purpose, because humans are vague and complicated creatures and never really objective, like Robots and Androids should be.

@zeik: During the middle of the game it really had a ton of implications about the whole Robots = Androids thing. As in it really doesn't matter who belongs to which part of the "demographic". They both share the same traits and behavior of humans but in different ways. In fact, Adam/Eve are pretty much indestringuishable from Androids, apart from the whole being-connected-to-the-net kind of thing, which in turn isn't much as different as the save-system though and Anime/Nanomachine magic powers that are compareable to the swordplay and also just about as impressive. I mean its even in the definition, a Android is just a Robot that is akin to humans, but they're still robots.