Quick Look: NieR: Automata

Become as Gods, Alex!

Uuuuh Vinny I dno if you noticed but the thumbnail for the video has a total undies-shot.

I don't know if I should be happy or sad this was the first comment (the constant panty shots were the first thing I noticed for sure) or to be happy or sad that in 48 minutes of playing and talking about the game no one brought it up...

And thanks guys for talking about the combat - I love me some JRPGs and anime crazyness (really looking forward to reanimators) but even the realish time combat in something like the modern Japanese RPGs doesn't work for me - I never finished witcher 2 even because the game told me to play it on easy and I got upset...(being older -old enough to have a beard - see if you can get that call back) stinks sometimes.

That's tough to avoid.

God, I just love this game's soundtrack and look. Wish I had the disposable income right now (or disposable time).

@visualizer: It's basically just a leotard anyway.

This game looks great. I only watched the first 10 minutes before I bailed. I just can't afford to grab it right now but I look forward to playing it.

This looks fun, but also Alexs playstyle is incredibly boring to watch. Then again I'm convinced I'll have fun when I get the game so whatever

The second playthrough you play as 9S. The third is completely different and features an as yet unintroduced character.

Why is no one capable of pronouncing automata? WTF is all this, then?! AWW-TAW-MA-TA.

@noxtis said:

That part, with that song, is so fucking cool.

I know it's not the same actor, but I can't not hear 9S as Yosuke putting on a slight accent.

Seriously. One of the most shocking revelations about this game was reaching the credits and realizing that was not Yuri Lowenthal. I didn't question it for a second.

I am avidly awaiting the release of this game's soundtrack. It is just wonderful.
The way the game will elegantly fade in and out vocals is great, too. More video games should do creative things with music.

@mems1224: The combat is what you make of it. There is plenty of room for interesting combos. Can't say the combat is boring if all you do is run around and let your pod shoot at things.

Or he represented a way that you can play the game and that some people will play the game as he is playing it the way he is.

Everything about the character design in this is soooooooo booooring... No personality, no flair, nothing interesting. Just Caucasian humanoids with no emotion, or even a cool look, at all.

Also, drooling over a fake computer girl's ass might be the saddest thing a person can do...

@frostmute: The emotion bubbles over the surface later in the game and pours out in full force shortly after that.

That fight took way longer than it should have. You really need to do melee and dodging.

I'm huge mass effect fan and never even heard if this game until maybe a couple weeks ago, but this looks great, dare I say, BETTER than mass effect andromeda....

@doe3879:

When and where was this? I remember Nier only getting a fairly mediocre reception QL. I really want to hear GB's take on some of the crazy things that happen in the game, but I don't think I have ever encounter any.

Concerning the complaints about the "anime voice acting," there is also a Japanese dub available on the disc. It's preferable to me, but I know the whole dub/sub thing tends to be a bit divisive.

Oh booo, these character designs are all Akihiko Yoshida's work. That dude's made awesome character designs for the Ivalice Final Fantasy Games, Final Fantasy 14, Bravely Default and Vagrant Story. 2B's design especially is up there as particularly good. He's the dude at Square Enix who does not do tons of belts or the crazy paintings of the early FFs.

Gallery

Boring to you....I think they are quite awesome.

Are you trying to say only things that exist in real life can be attractive to people?

I bet you're on the 2B subreddit, aren't you!?

@scorched: I had to turn of the English voice acting a DNA use Japanese, it's far better.

Until this QL this game wasn't even on my radar, but damn do I want this now.

The games director deliberately pronounces it weird. Everyone interested in the game just kinda rolled with it.

Also I'm with Vinny. Game looks cool, but the first time I heard the main character's name I rolled my eyes.

@zaldar: In my honest opinion there are parts of this game that can be difficult but you can also button mash this game and there is a no half second cool down when dashing. You can mash the dash button when it looks like you are about to get hit and 2b will do something like Bayonetta witchtime as many times as you need. I feel like this game even on normal will give you many ways to stay survivable.

I mean, the character explicitly says people who know him well call him Nines.

Oh also, yes there are moose in this game and yes you can ride them.

But I don't believe you can drift on one. However, you can totally drift on a boar so we've got the clear winner between the two.

They changed Jean-Paul's name for the english version. In the japanese version he's just straight up called Sartre.

I feel like I haven't seen that shade of gray in a UI since Snake Eater.

Not gonna get to this game for a while, but I do have a hankering for some character action.

Please don't kink shame.

you actually don't have to hurt that tank at all. They entirely do remain friendly.

Man, I'm on route C and the game, this game... it gets really really dark

Agreed, very fucking cool.

@aedouard: It'a weird that all three of them had the same misapprehension.

The fight 19-20 minutes in reminds me of the Toy Maker fight from Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 (the ONE good boss fight in that entire game.) Nier looks rad - I wasn't so sure about it for a while for some reason, but this quick look has sold me on it. Probably will be my next purchase.

@inresurrection: I stumbled into that Toy Maker fight on youtube one day, and it looks rad.

@redhotchilimist: Oh yeah, dude. In fact, that fight is so good it convinced me for a short while that I was actually enjoying my time with Lords of Shadow 2, which is still one of the most disappointing games I've ever played. I know Lords of Shadow gets a lot of hate, but that game had ambition, man, and some really fantastic art direction. LoS2 ditched all of the epic set pieces and varied environments of the first game and instead settled for a boring, repetitive "open world" which was awful to traverse. Even the combat was better in the first game. Blah.

So since its sounds like a playthrough isn't that long; how different are each of the playthroughs? Is it the same gameplay content with some different dialog or is completely different areas and bosses?

Shame on me. I haven't even started it yet. Still on Horizon.

This game looks dope af. I don't like DMC style games but I might have to make an exception to see where this story goes.

@fezrock: Playthrough 2 is largely the same, with a few new scenes and side quests and altered combat abilities. Playthrough 3 is dramatically different and the real reason it is highly recommended to not stop with Ending A.

@fezrock: Playthrough A is probably about 10-15 hours if you do some sidequests as you come across them

Playthrough B is a different perspective on the same events, a few missions are different, combat is altered a bit and all new sidequests open up. Maybe around 5 hours if you just critical path it.

Playthrough C is totally different and is essentially the 2nd half of the story.

Cool, was wondering why this was so highly rated. Looks like alot of variety.

@petiew: @zeik: Interesting. Thanks. I may need to give this a shot once I'm done with Mass Effect. It does look really good.

My one concern is that I played the first Nier (Gestalt I think, not Replicant) and I didn't like it that much; except for the voice acting of that book, which was just incredible. I never beat it even once, stopping around 10 hours in I think it was. A lot of it was because the world was so drab and barren that I couldn't stand looking at the game though; and this looks a lot more vibrant.

@fezrock: The original Nier is a game widely remembered for its story, characters, and music and everything else being mediocre at best. Don't worry, being a fan of the original is definitely not a requirement here.

There were exceptional elements in the original, but there's a reason that game got such low scores while Automata is one of the best reviewed games of the year.