Pod 153: Warning! Massive Spoilers ahead! (Nier and Nier Automata are analyzed assuming both have been completed prior to reading this).
A future is not given to you. It is something you must take for yourself.
Pod 042
When I finished Nier Automata, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing. This is a sensation that repeats three times (or four, or five, if we count up to ending E) after finishing any of its main routes. First, because both the name and the structure of the game remind us somewhat of the original Nier. In both, the repetition of certain parts of the game from different viewpoints is used to offer a choral vision of a complex reality where information is distributed unevenly among the characters. Each part of the game, therefore, ends up being a simple piece of the puzzle that will allow us, once completed, to gain the necessary perspective to understand its entire message.
But although there are similarities with the first installment of this saga, there are also two clear differences (one in form and one in substance), which might make us miss what the original Nier could have been. The formal structure of the routes takes a slight turn between the two games. If in the first one we had a first part that served as an introduction, and a second part that we has to repeat twice under two different viewpoints; in Nier Automata it will be the first part the one we repeat under two viewpoints, this time much better crafted by allowing us not only to handle a second character, but to see alternate or parallel events to those we attended the first time. The second part (route C) is the final culmination that takes us straight to the end of the game.
I must say, as an additional note, that Nier seems to me an absolute marvel with significant errors that I attribute to lack of time or money. I missed not being able to control Kainé during the second version of the second part, something that, in light of the new Nier Automata, was possibly (my hypothesis) more a technical than an artistic flaw. A game where you could control Nier, Kainé, and Emil in each of their repetitions would be for me a masterpiece. And although in this regard Automata wins, the idea I have in my head of the original is too powerful to just shake it out with this new one.
The change in the underlying idea (the substance I wrote earlier) seems much more interesting to me. In Nier, ten minutes into the game, a tremendous question is posed that will leave us thinking and pondering throughout the entire game about what the heck is going on: After the introduction (which is a way of showing you the mechanical potential of the game as well as a simple tutorial) 3,000 years pass and the characters we just controlled have not only not changed but seem to lead a life… let’s say “normal”. Therefore, right from the start, we are aware that there is a mystery that we are not able to decipher beforehand, something that makes no sense at all. This serves as a perfect carrot to force us to keep walking to reach the end and try to discover how all this is even possible. The repetition of the second part with the ability to listen to the shadows thanks to Kainé’s power gives it a perfect twist that would almost suffice to justify the entire game.
In Nier Automata, on the other hand, there is no initial enigma. The game unfolds as a series of events, without pause, yes, but without mystery. Or at least without us being aware of that mystery. We do not play to “understand” but to “see what happens now.” The speculations are short and are resolved very continuously, so there is no “great final revelation” that, like a Deus Ex Machina, explains everything at once. Everything is explained little by little and gradually. I found it very funny that during the game I was reflecting on what could be this “great final revelation” that I expected and how predictable it would be and it ended up happening during the following stages of the game, as if nothing. This happened to me two or three times. Is something that at the time I really loved.
Don’t get me wrong, there are mysteries, there are inexplicable things (What the fuck is this Adam?), but everything is left more like a simple reality that happens around us without much meaning, without giving it much weight, so that the poor characters (and the player) realize how the action makes less and less sense. It could be argued that the game is not about “something” making sense, but about how we keep trying to find meaning in the things we do.
Because if Nier Automata is about anything it is, above all, about this search for meaning. About the futility of fighting against its non-existence and the need to fight against ourselves to find it. It is an eminently existentialist game (and it doesn’t hide it in the slighlest), and this active search is clearer in the evolution of the machines themselves, whose intellectual progress seems to move them in a quite clear direction: Escaping from war. The intelligence they develop allows them to gradually understand the absurdity of a situation where the fight lacks meaning: Intelligence is linked to peace.
We could also talk generically about conflict, an element that already appeared in the first Nier and which Yoko Taro himself has highlighted in many interviews as one of his main focuses: The idea of generating a conflict or war between two sides incapable of understanding each other where each one has “its reason” (its vision, its piece of incomplete information). In both cases, we see the clear idea of wanting to destroy an “objective” and superior reason.
If it exists, reality and meaning are subjective. The will and justification for battle of one side is as important and real as that of the other. Although we come from a time where it is quite normal to populate story plots with shades of gray (the gray scale has surpassed the dichotomy of black and white, perhaps we could even talk about the appearance of the color scale), it is not so common to make us see that not even one gray is darker than the other, in some circumstances.
This quasi-nonexistent apparent reason for the war is even more magnified in this game by not having clear from the beginning the differences between sides. This is, for me, its clear success. Yes, androids fight from the side of humans, and machines fight for the side of the aliens, and although we can understand the animosity derived from the desire to dominate the Earth by both beings, much more stupid is the idea of “hatred” between two “artificially” created entities. In Nier the animosity begins in your head when you see shadows wanting to attack a defenseless girl, probably creating the perfect excuse not to feel bad while blowing up the monsters. In Nier Automata we start with a perfect set piece where we engage in shooting and fighting from the very beginning with all kinds of machines without really knowing why we have to do it. Machines and androids, like aliens and humans, are two versions of the same idea. Living beings using artificial beings to fight for them. Although we start from an initial vertical relationship within each side (some, the artificial beings, are built by others, biological), this quickly becomes distorted by not seeing any trace of either aliens or humans (at least at the beginning), and by understanding that part of the behavior of the artificial beings is becoming more and more like human behavior (we know little of alien behavior). The only real reason for the war between androids and machines (that the higher-ups indicate it so), is completely blurred when we see, firstly, that the aliens have been biting the dust for a long time and that, secondly, the humans have probably been even longer on the side of the dead. Once we realize the absence of the root cause of the war, what sense does a war between, we could say equals, have?
None, of course.
But this senselessness does not appear only when a previously existing reality perishes (it would then do so within an objective framework based). What existed in our minds was a series of constructed ideas that morally supported that war (that somewhere there are two sides with opposing ideas where my side is right). As the support for this series of ideas disappears (the sides vanished centuries ago) what we can observe is the true, raw reality as it had been all this time. A fall of the veil that supported the animosity that gave meaning to the life of both sides. Death and destruction. It is not a change in the war, but in our perception of the war. A unique tool to understand how useless and meaningless past armed conflicts are when we are able to observe it at present with different eyes. Stopping believing in war also has a total effect on the perception that androids and machines have of themselves. The war was not something they participated in, as if they had the ability to choose, and fate had led them down that path. The war was the only thing that underpinned the very existence of machines and androids; they were born to kill. One might wonder, is war then legitimate, if it is the only option to underpin the existence of beings that can feel? Being able to live at the cost of killing.
We may escape to answer that question, but Nier Automata allows us to observe what happens to the machines when this occurs. When the war no longer makes sense and, at the same time, was the only thing that gave meaning to their existence. A particular search begins for something more. Something capable of replacing their reason for being. Maybe is the same feeling I had when I ended the game.
The “Network” then, breaks. Initially as an evolutionary mechanism: A way to allow differentiation in the behavior of the machines to improve. But with it they ended up dividing in search of their own goals, aims, and desires.
Here lies the Forest King, Ernst […] This exalted individual was the earliest among us to awaken his own will
Its Citizens, As One
One of the first to “awaken” and achieve its own will is the one who would later become the King of the Forest Machines. This entity declares its independence, presumably from the rest of the machines, believing that its way of life in the forest is not as good as it could be, neither for itself nor for its companions. Thus, a seed of rebellion is sown. The goal it seeks is independence itself, both individually (it seems) and as a group. However, this independence does not bring about such a radical change as it does not renounce war. Its group forms more as a fierce defense of its independent reign. Freedom, yes, but understood again under the same prism: to kill in order not to die. To kill, now with a known purpose.
This cannot continue
Desert machines
In another area, we can find particular strange machines that desperately try to imitate humans. Not only physically, by wearing masks that remind us of the inhabitants of the city of Facade, but also in their attempt to “behave in the same way”. This is the beginning, and the first time we see that everything is not going to be as simple as seeing a machine and immediately thinking of killing it without any moral doubt on our part. The game reinforces this by having to catch a machine that begins to run in fear, talking, as a human would. When we meet them, we start to see that they have a certain use of language and, at least, a purpose. In this case, reproduction, which is nothing more than the most present and tangible (because visible) representation of the evolutionary process they have been pursuing for so long. We not only see the machines in certain sexual postures, but in the midst of battle, they create (in some scarcely described way) the “ultimate machine”: Adam. For machines that try to resemble humans, they have managed to create a machine that is almost indistinguishable from them. And following tradition, Adam will continue to be fascinated by humans and, like them, will end up reflecting more on death than on life.
Oh, wHat fUN! Oh, whaT FUn!
Amusement Park machines
Taking another step further, we encounter the machines of the amusement park. These machines initially do not attack unless they are attacked, which brings us closer to a behavior increasingly distant from war itself. They follow a more hedonistic strategy that prefers to escape from the horrors of war by focusing on love and happiness. When we help them organize a certain parade, we learn a bit more about their philosophy of life: The world is full of love, we need to express more happiness in our lives, we must strive for an ever-better world. And nearby, as a more evolved extension of this pseudo-peaceful branch (though somewhat simplistic), we find the village of the machines. We meet Pascal.
I taught the children what fear is
Pascal
Pascal achieves what seems to be the final evolutionary step of the machines in their flight from war: Peace. He forms a small society of machines that even allows the entry and protection of certain androids. He educates the machines in the value of peace and the need to think about the actions we take and their effects. To do this, he talks to them about fear, as a mechanism to prevent the smaller machines from taking actions that could harm them later on. We already know that war is partly based on the dehumanization of the opponent, but self-conviction as a source of energy that can combat the fear of confrontation is no less important. Awareness of the world and its relationship with us brings with it the emergence of fear (the possibility of an unwanted future), but fear itself also shapes our way of relating to the world. There are few fears more important and relevant in the modern world than not finding meaning in what we do. The more we move away from simple dogmas and the closer we come to a complete understanding of a whole in which our existence is insignificant, the more we start to fear that our life loses meaning, even to ourselves.
2B, the protagonist, in clear reference to the Shakespearean quote, tries to reflect as little as possible on the world around her. Not because she is unconscious, but for fear of feeling something that is not allowed to her. 2B, like us, moves forward avoiding all kinds of changes, maintaining a constant, impassive, and unalterable state where sensations do not distract her from her role. The internal struggle against this mental structure is one of the fundamental roles of the work, and the evolution of her relationship with 9S is the best demonstration of this struggle. As I said at the beginning, after finishing, I couldn’t stop thinking about the lack of a final meaning. After finishing, a feeling similar to a sad emptiness arose, but over time I begin to believe that it is thematically the best possible way to express a reality that needs our continuous effort to be understood, enjoyed, and lived. Why do I prefer a grand revelation? Why do I require direct and easy interaction from a being foreign to me or from a reality that I have been unable to understand? Perhaps because of that constant search for a God, whatever that may be, for that need to find someone who, even being superior, believes that I deserve their attention. A recursive action where I give meaning to someone who gives meaning to me. A human way of trying to create a structure above our simple existence that embraces us. A way to give meaning to our life.
No.
I often think about the god who blessed us with this cryptic puzzle… and wonder if we’ll ever have the chance to kill him
2B
It makes me understand that the only mystery is life itself, which, like a time bomb, is destined to perish and, with it, take away any hint of meaning. In any case, we live surrounded by conflicts, by a strange reality where we have to continually find ourselves, understand ourselves, and decipher the possibly indecipherable mystery of our existence, without expecting a grand final revelation. Along the way, perhaps, all that remains is to marvel at what surrounds us.
We must kill God, stop questioning the meaning of life, and simply attend to the beauty that surrounds us.
I never quite realized, how beautiful this world isA2
Pod 153: Proposal: R should end here.
Non-Game Fish 