I hope route C will be better than route B

[DeadM00n]

I've just finished second walkthrough and, honestly, the entire route felt absurdly cheap. Whenever an important encounter with shade or shades happens, the game does everything to justify their actions ("they were just trying to protect forest in the middle of the desert, you bastard!") and make you feel guilty, and it does it by such a dirty and straightforward way I just cannot take it seriously. Maybe it even could work, if the player met more than 2 neutral shades (saying "neutral", i mean "who don't attack the moment they see you even if you just stay still for 10 minutes"). Or maybe i just misunderstood the game's aim in terms of narration here, who knows, but still, it's kinda wrong when you think "oh god, just kill them already" when the game tries to humanize your enemies
And yes, I know it's not 100% correct to use the word "routes" here

[TommySnare]

I checked this out because I wasn't 100% on the wording.



It's to do with a fault within the Gestalt Project.

The term relapse refers to the loss of sentience, turning Gestalts hostile and aggressive, leading them to even attack Replicants.

Ordinarily, all Gestalts that were created immediately relapsed. Thanks to the discovery of the Original Gestalt and the distribution of his maso, other Gestalts can assume a stabilised state. This would later be an inaccurate assumption due to the Original Gestalt's corrupted DNA and a bug in Project Gestalt.

Hope this helps

[DeadM00n]

Originally posted by TommySnare:

I checked this out because I wasn't 100% on the wording.



It's to do with a fault within the Gestalt Project.

The term relapse refers to the loss of sentience, turning Gestalts hostile and aggressive, leading them to even attack Replicants.

Ordinarily, all Gestalts that were created immediately relapsed. Thanks to the discovery of the Original Gestalt and the distribution of his maso, other Gestalts can assume a stabilised state. This would later be an inaccurate assumption due to the Original Gestalt's corrupted DNA and a bug in Project Gestalt.

Hope this helps :Lunar_Tear:

Uhh, it was stated directly in the documents given by Popola, except the "Maso" term, and I haven't missed this part

[TommySnare]

Sorry I misread.

I think the main thing to think about is that all Replicants do not understand what the Shades actually are and the fact that the majority of them have already relapsed becoming feral animals attacking everything on site. Our heroes are completely blind to the truth until the very end of the story, even then they are still very dismissive of the whole concept as seen when Nier strikes down the Shadowlord.

It's also implied that only Kaine and Tyrann can understand what the Shades are actually saying. Thus converse with a neutral shade would be out of the question. Kaine also clearly has some moral issues throughout the story whenever a sentient Gestalt is killed. But she is ignorant to the whole thing A probably because of what happened to her Grandma, B Tyrann is just a power hungry parasite C she doesn't know about Project Gestalt.

When you say the game is trying to humanise the enemies it isn't. You are directly told by D & P you have been killing humans the entire time, then the game just goes out of it's way to show you what these Shades actually are and that they are just trying to live their lives.

I think with the Wolves it was a little weird but even Weiss makes comments as to why the Wolves are there in the first place. Maybe the forefathers of the Masked people desolated the forests and drove the Wolves out, then started hunting them. The Gestalt Wolf Roc used to live with a human who he loved and cherished as a father, He knows humans and animals can co exist but for some reason the Masked People want non of it and continue to drive them out, eventually Roc and his pack are fed up and fight back.

I get what you mean though, some of it seems forced but when you think about the bigger picture taking everything into account, I feel it works. I have a dog and I totally understood Roc's emotions but this might make me Biased :P

[G3Main]

Originally posted by TommySnare:

Sorry I misread.

I think the main thing to think about is that all Replicants do not understand what the Shades actually are and the fact that the majority of them have already relapsed becoming feral animals attacking everything on site. Our heroes are completely blind to the truth until the very end of the story, even then they are still very dismissive of the whole concept as seen when Nier strikes down the Shadowlord.

It's also implied that only Kaine and Tyrann can understand what the Shades are actually saying. Thus converse with a neutral shade would be out of the question. Kaine also clearly has some moral issues throughout the story whenever a sentient Gestalt is killed. But she is ignorant to the whole thing A probably because of what happened to her Grandma, B Tyrann is just a power hungry parasite C she doesn't know about Project Gestalt.

When you say the game is trying to humanise the enemies it isn't. You are directly told by D & P you have been killing humans the entire time, then the game just goes out of it's way to show you what these Shades actually are and that they are just trying to live their lives.

I think with the Wolves it was a little weird but even Weiss makes comments as to why the Wolves are there in the first place. Maybe the forefathers of the Masked people desolated the forests and drove the Wolves out, then started hunting them. The Gestalt Wolf Roc used to live with a human who he loved and cherished as a father, He knows humans and animals can co exist but for some reason the Masked People want non of it and continue to drive them out, eventually Roc and his pack are fed up and fight back.

I get what you mean though, some of it seems forced but when you think about the bigger picture taking everything into account, I feel it works. I have a dog and I totally understood Roc's emotions but this might make me Biased :P

One of the weapon stories confirms that the ancestors of Facade indeed did destroy the flora and fauna of the area leaving desert, but yea I second everything you've stated

[Vinnolo]

They arent humanizing enemies, they are literally humans, except Roc, there are no good or bad guys, only grey characters with conflicting objectives, and lack of communication, thats the whole point of the game

[DeadM00n]

Originally posted by Vinnolo:

They arent humanizing enemies, they are literally humans, except Roc, there are no good or bad guys, only grey characters with conflicting objectives, and lack of communication, thats the whole point of the game

Humanize != to be human. Saying "the game tries to humanize them", I meant that the game tries to give them the reasoning and actual personality. Right now, after ending D, I actually like the main idea of the game, simply the fact that this game made me not see neutral (in actual gameplay) opponents and just kill them means a lot. But the second half of the game mainly consists of a bunch of shades with separated stories, and hell, how plain and cheap are they... As for me, this game somehow managed to give them sad backstories and only make them worse

[DeadM00n]

About wolves: according to the story, they either were expelled from the forest or the forest was turned into desert. Anyway, they decided to try to coexist with replicants. The next thing we know is that youngs were killed by replicants near town because of the preparations to the wedding, and only then they decided to attack. However, i'm not sure if you can believe this story, because in the first half, before agression from replicants, they attack everyone passing by

[DeadM00n]

Originally posted by 白の書:

Originally posted by DeadM00n:

Humanize != to be human. Saying "the game tries to humanize them", I meant that the game tries to give them the reasoning and actual personality. Right now, after ending D, I actually like the main idea of the game, simply the fact that this game made me not see neutral (in actual gameplay) opponents and just kill them means a lot. But the second half of the game mainly consists of a bunch of shades with separated stories, and hell, how plain and cheap are they... As for me, this game somehow managed to give them sad backstories and only make them worse

The gist of it is that the Replicants are just as much of bad guys (and this includes Nier) as the shades are. In fact, every Replicant has its Gestalt (shade), the player is no exception. As you may have figured by now, Nier's Gestalt is the Shadowlord, the Original Gestalt, which is the human Nier that you control in the prologue 1,400 years prior. They are one in the same.

The moral dilemma here is that due to the fault in Project Gestalt, Replicants eventually achieved sentience, and as expected of mankind, developed their own interests, and one can argue, a soul of their own. Replicant Nier and Gestalt Nier, not only are one in the same: they also want the exact same thing, which is to protect Replicant/Gestalt Yonah, their beloved sister.

Don't read below if you have not played and finished NieR Automata:

This is the same moral dilemma presented in Automata, except that, at the cost of mankind's extinction, Replicant has a happy ending.

YoRHa androids being genuinely human despite their predetermined fate and machine-core design, many major characters and machine models being named after philosophers and thinkers of humanity (Pascal, Sartre, Marx and Engels are all mentioned in Automata), while not even being aware of it would be the ultimate example of the problem presented by Replicant, especially considered that physically, they are fully mechanical, and their mind, memories and soul are merely sentient computer programs, or as ending C attempts to imply, meaningless [C]ode... yet they have developed the most genuine human feelings and instincts, including sex drive - the love/hate dynamic presented in 2B and 9S's initially strenuous relationship, his disgust for learning the truth about the one he loves... and the despair he felt when he was powerless to save her, leading him not only to the obscure truth about Project YoRHa's evil nature and of humanity's demise, but to the most legitimate descent into madness that would make the Joker himself proud.

What if scenarios are a big thing to Yoko Taro, Automata having an extra 21 endings on top of the canon triggered by player actions shows this and hell, Reincarnation, the mobile game is entirely about it.

Once again, i know what does replicant tries to achieve, and i like the idea by itself, but the way this game tries to do it sucks, check my previous comment for one of the reasons. Sorry, but because of those problems, game simply failed to make me feel like "Replicants are just as much of bad guys as the shades are", and thanks to that, core dilemma does not work
Btw, wasn't ending E in automata happy-end?

[Jet Surge]

Old topic but i understand the sentiment, I want to point out that Nier is a really old game compared to Nier Automata
While Nier Replicant Ver. 1.22474#… is said to be remake, it feels more like a extended remaster to the originals (Nier Gestalt and Nier Replicant) and very little was changed (Only minor changes and Ending E was added) Much of the original games’ flaws had remained.
Nier Automata is basically “Nier 2” and has improved in the areas where Nier fell flat on, sympathizing with the machines were handled much better than the shades/gestalts.

[七七 ඞ]

Originally posted by Jet Surge:

Old topic but i understand the sentiment, I want to point out that Nier is a really old game compared to Nier Automata
While Nier Replicant Ver. 1.22474#… is said to be remake, it feels more like a extended remaster to the originals (Nier Gestalt and Nier Replicant) and very little was changed (Only minor changes and Ending E was added) Much of the original games’ flaws had remained.
Nier Automata is basically “Nier 2” and has improved in the areas where Nier fell flat on, sympathizing with the machines were handled much better than the shades/gestalts.

Yes, Automata is NieR 2, and Reincarnation did qualify to be NieR 3 in my opinion, it was very lore rich and had lots and lots of interesting bits about it - shame that Square Enix shut down instead of having the game's technological problems fixed. They were expecting revenue compared to the other big name gachas out of it, and it just didn't have the polish it needed to achieve that. 1.22 is only an enhanced version of - and for the most part, identical to the Japanese version of NieR Replicant.

The westernized NIER (NieR Gestalt) was just an attempt to make the game more bearable to audiences in the United States, which are generally freaked out by the whole "bond between siblings" trope popular in Japan, more than likely at the request of SQEX lolcow concerned about potential sales being lost.

That game is the only piece of NieR media that can be safely discarded, you don´t need to play or watch it to get the whole picture nor the best experience while playing the series, something evident because it's pretty much never spoken of, nor any of the NieR stories - including everything that came with Reincarnation ever touched on that.