I finished Nier a couple of months ago, so I might be forgetting some stuff, but hearing Ben talk about the game on the recent bombcast made me want to bring something up.

Nier Automata ended up leaving me pretty cold by the end. Part of the reason for that was that I really didn`t like the characters. But I also wondered if a big part of it was that I am "used to" a lot of Yoko Taros tricks after playing Drakengard and Nier. Stuff like the different routes (endings), the changes in gameplay styles and the ways in which the story is told are things it seems has really made people fall in love with the game.

A specific example of this is route B where you play through the same chunk of game again as 9S. With the exception of the start and end it felt really unnecessary to me and was really weak compared to the second playtrough of the original Nier. The scenes from the perspective of the shades were mostly really effective in Nier because the fact that Shades could be conscious was revealed at the end of playthrough A and was a surprise to the player. Playing through the game again and having these extra scenes combine with being able to understand the shades language puts everything you did in a different light and makes going through the game again feel meaningful. It also makes in game sense to some degree since you kinda get Kaines perspective in the second playthrough and it`s hinted at that she could understand the shades all along. It`s far from perfect, but was mostly effective and felt important to the narrative.

In Automata though it`s obvious a almost immediately after the tutorial that machines can be sentient and "good". You also mostly find out what they are up to during route A. The only thing the extra scenes in Route B does is add a bit more detail to the story and try to shamelessly pull at your heartstrings (which to be fair Nier 1 also did). The Adam and Eve scenes felt more important, but also felt like they could have been inserted somewhere else or presented in a different way. For me it kinda made most of route B feel like needless padding, but I could also see someone who had not played Nier 1 thinking getting to see "the other" side was neat and novel.

This got a bit off track, but before i stop I wanted to just quickly bring up a couple of other examples. The save deletion stuff at the end of Automata is obviously different from the save deletion stuff in Nier 1, but I still felt it lost some impact for me because it felt like something that had been done before. The seeing stuff from different perspectives part of the story also felt like a rehash at times.

Sorry for this ended up a bit rambly. I am writing this before going to sleep, but I just wanted to get it out. The point I wanted to get to was asking any duders that have played previous Yoko Taro games what you thought of Automata and if things like the save deletion and the multiple playthroughs still had a strong impact on you?

I've only played Nier and Drakengard 3, but no, I didn't ever think something fell flat because it was similar to another game he's done. For one thing, letting you play as other characters and hiding the second half of the game in Route C was all stuff that felt like he finally was given the budget to really follow through with the multiple route thing. And I definitely don't agree that Nier 1 had the better route B, it just expanded on the Shade stuff (and I think it tried way harder to tug the heartstrings than Automata ever did, mostly because it became too predictable). There's definitely a lull in the middle of Automata's B route, but I thought it had way more going on in regards to new information and recontextualizing than Nier 1 did, Nier 1 just did it a little more consistently.

Same with the save file deletion, it heavily tied into the game's themes and didn't feel like it was there just because Nier 1 had it. I think it was done a hell of a lot better too, because it didn't rely on your emotional attachment to the game, but on whether you think it's worth helping others get to the happy ending, the way you were just helped, at the cost of your journey to get there.

Automata is probably the best execution overall of anything Taro's worked on as far as I'm concerned.

I never played the Drakengard games (although I know where their plot goes), but I have gone through OG Nier several times and I still loved Automata and I consider it easily Yoko Taro's best game to date. Storywise there are things OG Nier did better, and maybe some of the tricks Automata weren't as surprising knowing where those games go, but it didn't lesson my enjoyment of the game at all. For example, even though the E ending of Automata pulled off a very similar trick that Taro did already, I think they executed it much better with Automata.

I don't think the machines potentially being sentient and "good" is something you need to play his previous games to guess though. That's a common trope that I've seen people who never played any other Yoko Taro game figure out pretty quickly. I don't think that is supposed to be a major revelation in and of itself, at least to the player. It only matters to the characters in the game and by extension how they react to that. A big difference between OG Nier and Automata is that they give the characters much more time to set with that knowledge and react to it. In the first game you don't find that out until just before the end of the game and there's very little time for the characters to react to that knowledge before the story ends. Playthrough B is only about showing that info to the player and not the characters. But in Automata the entire second half of the game is about the repercussions of that revelation, among others.

I played through Nier 1. Nier Automata is just a way better game. The multiple playthrough stuff is also much better as it actually involves new story and gameplay mechanics. The twist in NG+ of Nier 1 was clever but no way in hell was I going to grind through that game a second time for something ''clever''. No way was I going to do those garbage side quests to get the true ending either.

While the side quests in Automata aren't much better I feel like that game has a better handle of its themes and characters. Each side quest relates the core theme of the game and strikes the appropriate tone. Alex Patrick and Austin dove into that stuff here https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/qk779d/giant-bombs-alex-navarro-joins-us-to-spoil-nier-automata

You can just go way deeper on that stuff than you could with Nier 1.

People who haven't played any other Taro/Cavia games definitely seem to react differently to certain aspects of the game than I did, but I don't like it less than them I don't think.

Playing the other games in the """Taroverse""" rewarded me in ways that people who don't know about those other games didn't. A lot of people new to NieR reacted a lot more passionately than me to the different route stuff and all the twists about the nature of the world (and it was almost adorable seeing people react to deleting your save data), but they also didn't get the satisfaction of getting a lot this stuff elaborated on or referenced, and of course also finally seeing Yoko's shmup dreams more fully realized.

Sure, NieR's characters and narrative were more emotionally resonant, and Drakengard 1/3 are weirder, but those differences just make Automata's contemplative nature even more enjoyable to everyone.

I too think this is Taro's most "realized" vision. I felt like he finally nailed it! I liked the Drakengard games, loved Nier, and really really really liked Automata. All of that to say, I do think his next game will need to change it up and not retread the same themes and style. If it does, it is at that point I will probably go, "Ok...I get it. Automata was the apex, you gotta change it up."