@ezekiel: Because she cares about him, obviously. She doesn't WANT to kill him. And that's only required when he learns the truth of YorHa/humans. She tries to do everything she can to save him under any other circumstance.

I'm pretty sure she was ordered to rescue him at that point anyway, because leaving someone like 9S in the hands on the machines is not good for YorHa.

Actually, in the beginning she wants to find him above all else, but command or her pod tells her that the priority is finding the downed YorHa soldiers. I get your point, though. There's a line 2B says at the end of A and B (when she kills him) that makes more sense thinking back. It goes something like, "It always ends like this."

Thanks for posting this - that cleared up a lot of questions I had!

Just finished this game and I have to say its one of the best games I've ever played. Not completely flawless but an absolute incredible marriage between an impactful story, really fun gameplay and one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard. I was really, really looking forward to this game and it knocked it out of the park. The ending 'decision' about your save data was also a really, really clever touch that I felt actually took the themes of the game and made it affect the player. Just fantastic stuff all around.

Also, to quote someone else from this forum who I can't quite remember at this time (apologies) - I played with English voices and I think the guy who played 9S gave an absolutely incredible performance.

I finished mostly everything story wise and now I'm going to try for the "joke" endings. Loved everything even though it was pretty easy to guess what the "twist" was gonna be about humanity.

Only real question I have, and I'm not sure if this is answered elsewhere, is why the robots are built to look like Emil. Even when they go nuts and cannibalistic, they appear to have a toothy grin under their metal face. Was it ever explained? Just a coincidence? Did the aliens, after years and years of fighting Emil and his clones refashion the robots to adapt and evolve like him?

@burncoat: I don't think that "toothy grin" is the same as Emil's.

I don't think they look that much like Emil, but I recall it being mentioned somewhere that Emil repurposed the bodies of the machines for his clones, and when you first meet this Emil he is encased inside that machine, so maybe at some point they integrated with eachother, somehow.

@ezekiel: Because she doesn't want to kill him. The only time she would have to kill him is when he becomes aware of the actual fate of humanity and the intended use of the YoRHa unit. As Zeik said, it's heavily implied that she has developed feelings for him, but acts aloof throughout the game so she doesn't grow too attached. But, I agree: They didn't spend enough time actually developing that relationship from the player's perspective. Although, if they did, that would've undermined the whole point of the 2E twist.

It's a relationship built on a lot of implication, but becomes especially heart wrenching on a (truly) second play through of the game. It also has the added bonus of clarifying 2B's actions and behavior. It doesn't make her a watershed character, but it definitely makes her miles more interesting.

In case you guys haven't seen this, this is another great essay about the game, this time more about the atheism/religious skepticism of the game among lots of other things (its looooong though). A bunch of really interesting points here that I completely missed.

https://tanoshimi.xyz/2017/03/21/violet-evergarden-spoilers/

BECOME AS, GODS

Just finished through ending E and wow this year continues to not disappoint. What a freaking roller coaster ride, easily one of my favorite games. Reading through this thread has pointed out a lot of stuff I didn't notice (Pascals shop.. fuck.) but I just can't stop thinking about that Amnesia side quest. It was something that I wasn't even going to do but it reveals what the E designation means for the androids. At first it just seemed like a creepy one off but then to find out that 2B was one of these E androids all along. What a punch to the gut. It was also cool how the relationship between 2B and 9S changes over the course of their story. The ending where you choose 9S is also fucking brutal. Or how about the twin robots that got manufactured to constantly feel guilt because of something they never did in the first place.

The machines were originally created by humans. You see that from the junk heap in Nier. They were capable of feeling a full range of emotions like the twin models but they had to learn it first. Fast forward to Niers death humanity(the replicants and remaining twin models) learn that emotion doesn't mix well with androids and remodels Yorha in the image of the machines not knowing that the network had evolved to feel emotion. Humanity launched what remained of project gestalts replicant and soul data to the moon. Hoping that the androids would watch over it until the black scrawl wipes out the remaining replicants. The goal was to try project gestalt again but from a different angle. While the androids were on the moon Aliens visited the planet and revamped the network. Which caused Emil to try and fight them off since unlike the shades or Kaine, he couldn't understand the machine language. Or perhaps due to his designation as a weapon he could infact converse with the machines and helped them kill the aliens(the Emil clone makes no mention of fighting machines nor does he seem concerned with their presence.) while yorha prepared to fight off the invasion. When yorha got back to earth they found just machines and no aliens. With the planet barren and machines ruling yorha, lost its morale which led to command fabricating that a small segment of humanity still lived on the moon. Yorha now had reason to make the earth hospitable again. Eventually Yorha realized that they couldn't continue project Gestalt because they didn't have someone to stabilize the gestalts, Nier himself was referred to as just blind luck since anyone who came into contact with a grimoire developed the black scrawl. With no hope Yorha decided to find a way to destroy themselves along with the machines. When A2 found out about this she abandoned Yorha. With A2's departure Yorha decided to keep their plan a secret as they built newer models.

So here we are to the 9s model.Yorha command has always been in contact with the red girls and the network, they watched as the machines gained sentience. It was when Adam gained life that Yorha decided to end the cycle of 9s dying. The machines had found a way to create human bodies using the magic created by project gestalt. The plan became to let 9s discover the truth and then make him God of the new world.(the commander even tells him the world needs a god and he is trusted to make the right decision.)

Now we come to the original failure of project Gestalt, emotion. The plan would have been simple, open up the back door to the Yorha network and allow the red girls to kill the remaining Yorha members and assimilate the human genome. But with Adam's death Eve lost his mind with grief and created the logic virus unknowingly. The commander knowing full well that Yorha was destined to die is surprised at the presence of the virus and tells 2b and 9s to run before they succumb to it as well. 2b becomes infected with the virus presumably while fighting Yorha members. Meanwhile with the appearance of the tower and the boxes, the red girls are preparing to destroy the moon. 9s sees A2 kill 2b loses his mind and forgets everything the commander told him about being god. Luckily the pods begin to gain sentience and figure out the original plan. They try to push A2 and 9s in the right direction. My guess is that the red girls want the boxes destroyed because while Adams body was dead his data was busy modifying the tower and boxes to become the new project Gestalt. So they could become as gods(human) which went against the red girls plan since they were all logic and no emotion. Blah blah blah, 9s fucks up his part in the plan. A2 realizes what's going on from 2b's data. Adam and eve deus ex machina humanity by creating the ark and the pods are the only ones with enough damn sense to say "if we're going to have emotion let's not let it Fuck everything up for everyone." And that's Nier Automata. Emotion gets you and everyone you love killed.

Gestalt Nier loved his daughter so much that he said Fuck waiting for a cure and stole replicant niers daughter. Devola and Popola nuked an entire city because they couldn't handle the other one dying. Eve followed in the twins steps and 9s said Fuck all y'all I'm in love.

That'd also be in line with the Romeos and Juliets performance. :) The game does tend to suggest that love is the most destructive of emotions which I'm inclined to agree with. You'd think it's hate, but most hateful emotions are the result of the many forms of love.

@tuffalobuffalo: Eh, no, this is only true if we're regarding poeticism. Unreasonable love isn't more destructive than unreasonable hatred, as one is more emotionally effective while the other will result in a longer approach and slower results of the damage done. So both can result in the same outcome but hatred is more direct in the approach.

Love, like hate can work in opposite directions, thats a obvious statement. Ultimately, its still results in a extreme form of inactment and can lead to the brain normalizing this due to the chemicals that are in your brain during the "act" so the brain thinks its wrong if you don't feel that way. In other words, its addictive and will turn you insane. I know of cases regarding depression that people don't want to feel happy again, mostly because thats what the brain got accostumed to.

Like, water is one of the most important things you need in life, yet drinking a lot of water will kill you no matter how you try to counteract against it. The same could go for emotion of any kind, not only love or hate philosophical extremes.

I disagree with the sentiment that love is the more destructive emotion because it ain't true if we would quantify "the damage done as we see it" but love can be more subtly damaging in a sense that you can break the bond between people, which is always a delicate and fragile thing and also a different subject philosophically.

@janosaudron7: The game does make the gigantic point that emotions are worth fighting for, as they define humanity (in a philosophical and literal sense) which the game is all about. To fight for this important thing even if pitted against nihilism and impossible/unrealistical outcomes. The game tries to point out that hope is one of the most important and destinctive things about human beings and in 2B's case, that hope is what has kept her fighting on.

EDIT: Hope its better readable now.

Yeah this is definitely one of the least disappointing sequels I've ever played. Just enough ties back to the original without relying on it as a crutch for the story, same thing for the soundtrack and bringing some of the old tracks back.

The first 2 playthroughs are pretty good, but I also spent a lot of them wondering if the story as really gonna be that shallow in a Yoko Taro game. Once I started route C, I didn't put the game down and stayed up all night to finish it... And I would've gone through with the save deletion if I didn't want to go back and 100% everything later. Some powerful stuff in there, and I'm glad this game took off (although maybe a lot of people won't even see the best parts of the game... aka everyone on GB staff aside from maybe Alex).

I see some people talking about Pascal here, and can't help but wonder... did any of you guys consider just... leaving? Because I'd just got done reading A2 and Anemone's backstory which has some parallels to what just happened to Pascal, and figured he might make the same decision to live as A2 and Anemone. So I just walked out the door. Never saw him again.

I mean I spent the entire game wondering if Yoko Taro just retconned the ending of the original Nier because he wrote himself into a corner... nope, I was pleasantly surprised he stuck to his guns on that one. It was less of a twist and more of a confirmation in my case.

Speaking of writing into a corner... I wonder if there's anywhere to go from here? I guess they could go the direct sequel route now, but they wrapped up all the threads at the end here enough that I wouldn't want to see any more machines or androids in a hypothetical followup.

@redyoshi: I absolutely swear the "you want to **** 2B" like is an uncensored "fuck" in the game and not asterisked out, and I've seen the quote passed around censored as well, but i do specifically remember the word being there

I'm interested by all the story stuff I hear about this game, but the gameplay and art looks so off-putting that I can't justify buying this game.

Just finished the first 3 playthroughs, and holy shit... what an amazing game! Easily the best game I've played in quite some time. I don't know if anything will top it for me this year. It's so astounding to me how this game tells such a human story (more than any other game in recent memory), yet there isn't a single human character in the entire game. A true masterpiece that I will play through again and again. Another Platinum hit

Now I might understand the purpose of the 'Easy' mode and not only this low difficulty itself but the curve of challenge mitigated further by the plug-in chips. They seem more like consolation for those who would come back after having 'sacrificed' their saves if they ever attempt to venture out again. It doesn't matter if there is a challenge to killing the machines if they are in fact meaningless.

Just noticed the similarities to this game and MGSV in regards to the "Preview" thing that happens after route B. I'm glad a game made good on the promise after MGS kinda blew it.

Also, has anybody listened to the credits song with Ending E in mind? It's actually a pretty neat realization that I totally missed at the time.

Yep! "Carrying the weight of the world" and "I'm only one girl" are very applicable themes in regards to that final ending. There's all sorts of fun stuff going on with that ending.

I bought them from him so that nobody else could.

I feel like I just wanna sulk around after finishing this game. I don't think I've ever played something so bleak and depressing. V_V

If you don't like the look or gameplay, this one isn't for you yeah. The story can be reallyneat, but there's a LOOOOT of game to get through. Took me ~65 hours (not even 100% completion).

@kishinfoulux The game has it's sad parts, but overall I left feeling pretty good about it. They went through hell...and survived. Nobody was ever really evil; despite all the stuff that happened, (all forms of) life goes on; there's hope...

So did anyone check out the DLC yet? I just finished up the last trial and this thing just got extremely Nier. Not gonna mention anything but if you happened to keep your save around or have one I recommend seeing this one through to the end. I wouldn't say its a new story expansion or anything, but its got waaaaay more story and meta stuff than I thought it would.

@dinosaurcanada: Yeah, I still have my save file (because I'm a scumbag that didn't delete it) and popped in quickly to check out the outfits but I guess you have to do the arena fights for them first, I didn't get around to those yet. I'm really excited now that you mention it's got some interesting story around it. I mean, I expected they probably wouldn't just do a straight-up arena fight thing and leave it at that, but it's nice to hear it confirmed.

How exactly do you access it? Just walk up to any apologetic robot?

@redyoshi: You'll get a ~mysterious email~ which adds some waypoints onto your map so its not hard to find.

I've been debating whether I want to pick the DLC right now, since $13 is a little steep, but if there's some actual story in there I think that's enough to convince me.

@zeik: I agree its a bit steep considering I beat it in an afternoon, although I'm level 91, so the early waves were nothing. You need to be a pretty high level to beat it (I think level 70?). There's some small backstory to the coliseums, and pretty small general through line which culminates in a Pretty Nier way. I don't want to say too much other than that, because surprise is definitely on its side.

If you want an excuse to play around with the combat and chip system again, then its pretty good, but again a bit steep. Also the cosmetics are Good As Hell.

After a few months of other games taking the wheel I finally was able to sink some time into the game. Just got endings C-E and all I can say is man, that was a ride. There are some things involving A2's past I would have loved to have more fleshed out (also "I have to kill all machines" is kind of a shitty reason to kill a baby king) but I am looking forward to getting the rest of the endings.

Has anyone been keeping up with Taro's post-release talkings? He's basically been adding stuff, like how the happy ending is actually depressing as fuck because 9S never wakes up, 2B is miserable and alone, and A2 is also just dead and also part-Kaine or something. After how much stuff the guy added to the original game's canon after the fact (most of it being trash) I'm not surprised, but... c'mon, just let me have this ONE happy ending! Just ONCE Taro!

@teddie: I don't think I like the stage play's implication that A2's memories are based on Kaine. There's a lot of fun stuff in these games where everything just seems to all add up nice and tight and effect everything else, which is satisfying to figure out if you're attentive, but a few things just seem a bit too convenient and superfluous.

Phew. Got all 26 endings and the Plat trophy. I cleaned up 90% of the arena parts of the DLC but I haven't touched that other thing that takes place in the Fairgrounds yet. I'll probably finish the DLC later today but man, I really feel like I need to play a bright, happy and cheerful game as a palate cleanser.

@teddie:

Would you mind sharing the source where you've heard this from?

Technically, ending E is in itself rather harsh. Whilst it might seem like it is the happy ending most players want, ending E means that A2, 2B and 9S will have to continue their pointless struggle rather than being given a release from their suffering existence. This is especially true for A2 and to a certain extent 2B. Besides with the bunker gone, 2B and 9S would probably be seen as renegades just as A2 were by whatever new YoRHa squad that will take their place.

@joptt: I heard it second-hand on a podcast, it actually turns out it was a "leaked" script for a music concert (that had additional canon story elements in it, yes) before said concert had happened. The actual concert diverged from the script and gave it a happy ending. Someone posted translations if you want to read them (number 5 is the one I was talking about).

@teddie:

Thank you very much, this is very interesting. I've only skimmed through it but I will be taking my time to read the whole thing. But it affirms my personal opinion that Yoko Taro probably planned for the game to be longer and larger, perhaps he had to sacrifice a chunk of what he had wanted to appease Square Enix. Personally, I've always felt that the game was somewhat incomplete.

@joptt: Taro just seems to like adding and adding to Nier. The original Nier had an entire companion book released post-game with a bunch of extra stories that are... mostly trashfires, but also some fun stuff like Emil fighting aliens and an "Ending E" that wasn't in the game. I can see it being a budget/time thing, but it's also more likely that him being the sole person in charge of "lore", he can just add stuff to the canon whenever he thinks of something.

Easily the best game I have played in years (well since Bloodborne)... The story, world, soundtrack and characters are so damn good, I can't help but platinum it (no pun intended).

@teddie:

It certainly is just like him to do that. There was an audio drama for Nier as well if i recall. I still can't help but feel that Automata feels "short", like there are something missing. It's been a while since I've played Nier but I remember it being more wholesome. Maybe it's just me wanting more game time out of automata.

I just finished my time with this game by buying the last four trophies and the platinum. It's completely amazing they gave me that option. And some of those trophies were pretty stupid (Play as 9S for an hour in some "state". Presumably the one where he's breaking down or whatever. Discover 2B's secret ten times. Ugh.. No thanks!) so I'm very glad it was there. I just hit sixty hours. Not bad for a platinum. There are some really phenomenal design ideas in this game. I really, really hope they get to refine some of them with a sequel. Though I thought some of the boss design was a step back from NieR's.

I beat Emil's second form today which was a great surprise. I spoiled his first form looking through wikis trying to find upgrade materials, but had no idea there was a second form. Easily the hardest fight in the game. It was a beautiful cap to a beautifully depressing experience and even made me feel better about the first NieR which I ultimately soured on after slogging through the second half so many times to get the endings. I don't think I've ever gotten this kind of resolution from a game before that also left me with so many questions (seriously, what is the deal with the aliens? Are they going to tell us anything about them? Drakengard maybe explains them better?)

I did not get all the endings. The "joke" endings I stumbled on were nifty, but hardly seemed worth it. Some of them are pretty involved and all you get is two lines of text. It's like the NES all over again. "THANKS FOR PLAYING!"

Maybe if I've got a free hour sometime this weekend, I'll finish ending E again and delete my save this time.

This is easily my GOTY 2017. Also likely the only 2017 game I play this year. Too much backlog, not enough time and nothing this year as high on the priority list as this game was. No, not even Zelda. I'm not convinced it's as great as everyone says, and I despised Skyward Sword.

I finished the main endings last weekend and earned the Platinum last night.

The game hit a lot of sweet spots. Along with the gorgeous art direction and sincere story, it reminded me of times spent playing 8-&-16 bit, isometric action-RPGs, particularly some of the Ys series.

The biggest compliment I can probably pay is wishing there was more of the game, which makes the DLC tempting, even knowing it doesn't provide the extension I'd really want to the world and story. I also don't think I'd be too interested in a direct sequel, picking-up soon after Ending E, but I wouldn't mind a companion text, along the lines of "Grimoire Nier." (Actually, some kind of multimedia archive/visual novel, fleshing-out the Automata world would be awesome.)

Unless I grab it off the Square Enix store first, next time I order from Amazon.jp, I'll probably place the soundtrack in my cart. Can anyone comment on, or point towards a source covering, the quality and contents of the Japanese "World Guide" and "Strategy Guide;" I'm interested in both, but am hesitant to buy either, sight unseen?