Nier

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Nier is a 2010 action role-playing game, and its own director summed up its commercial fate with a shrug: "we weren't really in the red, but it wasn't exactly a success either." Cavia developed it and Square Enix published it for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. On the surface it follows a protagonist who sets out to cure a sick girl named Yonah. Underneath, it hides a story that asks who the monsters really are. Reviewers found its graphics dated and its gameplay uneven. Yet players kept coming back to it, and a remaster eleven years later found a far larger audience. How did a game with such a modest start earn that loyalty? What are the shadowy creatures the hero keeps fighting? And why does the game ask the player to start over, again and again, before it reveals what happened?

• 2. Shifting Perspectives

  ›

  Step through the wrong doorway in Nier and the camera swings to the side, turning the game into a two-dimensional platformer. In certain battles it rises overhead instead, and the fight plays like a top-down shoot 'em up. Most of the time, though, the player controls a named hero from a third-person view, with a camera that can circle a full 360 degrees. The three-dimensional world is split into areas divided by loading screens. Within them the hero walks, runs, jumps and climbs ladders.

  The design borrowed from the God of War series, which director Yoko Taro and producer Saito both enjoyed. Those games were less popular in Japan than in North America. Even so, the pair believed that boss fights with a different fighting style from ordinary battles would appeal in both regions. The shifts in camera and movement were also meant to "accentuate the gap between real, modern scenery and the fantasy world," echoing the story. Producer Saito wanted to move away from menu-based combat. The team aimed at an older audience than Square Enix's Kingdom Hearts series, which is why the international hero is a man in his 30s and why the game has more blood and swearing than a typical Square Enix role-playing game. The mixing of styles was also a nod to older genres.

  Enemies include shadowy figures called Shades, large animals and robots. Winning fights earns experience points to strengthen the hero and money to buy items. Weapons come in many varieties and can be upgraded with materials that are bought, dropped by monsters or scavenged. Magic spells draw on a constantly refilling energy supply and include projectiles and large shadowy fists. New spells are earned in the first half of the game by winning set battles. Between the main plot and the combat sit numerous side quests, plus fishing and farming. One stretch of the game is presented entirely through text.

• 3. Shades and Replicants

  ›

  A snowstorm in the middle of summer opens the story, set in a ruined city of the mid 21st century. Ethereal black monsters close in on a sick girl named Yonah, and her protector drives them back with a magical book. Yonah touches the book, black markings spread across her, and her condition worsens. The story then leaps more than a thousand years ahead to a feudal civilization in decline. The black creatures, now known as Shades, are growing more hostile. The hero and Yonah live in a village built inside post-industrial ruins, where he takes odd jobs from the village leaders, the twin sisters Devola and Popola.

  When Yonah wanders into a temple in search of a rare flower, the rescue leads the hero to a talking book called Grimoire Weiss. Weiss proposes an alliance: his magic, and a hunt for a cure for her terminal illness, the Black Scrawl. Two companions join them. Kainé is a hot-tempered, foul-mouthed swordswoman, and Emil is a blindfolded boy whose gaze turns anyone he sees to stone. A giant Shade then attacks the village. Emil must petrify Kainé to seal the creature, and a master Shade called the Shadowlord carries Yonah away.

  Five years pass. The gaze that froze Kainé can now be undone, but the power needed to free her turns Emil into a skeletal figure the villagers fear. Under the twins' guidance, the party collects the pieces of a stone key that opens the way to the Shadowlord. After five Shades fall and the key is complete, Devola and Popola reveal that they serve the Shadowlord's greater plan.

  Thirteen hundred years earlier, humanity faced extinction from an incurable disease. To survive, people split their souls from their bodies. Today's humans are artificial bodies called Replicants, who grew their own personalities. The Shades are the abandoned souls, called Gestalts, slowly going mad because they cannot return to their bodies. The Black Scrawl is the damage that madness does to the Replicants. The Shadowlord is the prime Gestalt that keeps the system stable, and the twins are androids who oversee it. Emil gives his life as the party defeats them. The Shadowlord proves to be the Gestalt of the hero from the opening scene, driven by a wish to save his own Yonah by reuniting her soul and body. The reunion succeeds, but the Gestalt Yonah fades away to save her Replicant's life. Grimoire Weiss sacrifices himself to weaken the Shadowlord, and the hero then kills him.

  Starting a new playthrough resumes the tale just after Kainé is freed, and her past comes into focus. She suffered discrimination after her parents died and because she was born intersex. Later a rogue Gestalt named Tyrann partly possessed her. Through Tyrann, the player can finally understand the garbled speech of the Gestalts. New scenes show these enemies as thinking beings, fighting for their own beliefs and goals. The second ending shows the spirits of the Gestalt hero and Yonah reunited in the afterlife, and it reveals that Emil survived. It also confirms that the Shadowlord's death dooms humanity, since Replicants and Gestalts can never be rejoined.

  In a third or later playthrough, Tyrann overwhelms Kainé and she goes berserk, forcing the hero to fight her. He can kill her to end her suffering, which is the third ending. Or he can give up his own life for hers, which is the fourth. That choice erases him from the memories of Kainé and Yonah, and it also deletes all of the player's save data. Only the updated version of the game offers a way back from that loss.

• 4. Roots in Drakengard

  ›

  Yoko Taro still regards Nier as the third Drakengard game, whatever label it carries. The idea first appeared after Drakengard 2 was released and the seventh generation of consoles was revealed. Production began in 2007. Ideas were reworked as the project evolved until it became a spin-off. Three years passed from planning to release, with two spent in actual development. What began as a small project grew into a full role-playing game. Early reports claimed the Xbox 360 was the lead platform before the PlayStation 3 was added. Yoko later said the PlayStation 3 had been the original plan, because the PlayStation 2, which Drakengard 2 was made for, was fading.

  Cavia built the game with help from Square Enix, which had also supported the earlier Drakengard titles. Square Enix gave little input on the atmosphere and story, so Yoko held a great deal of creative control.

  The setting is more than a thousand years after the fifth ending of the original Drakengard. In that ending, the heroes Caim and Angelus cross a dimensional boundary to fight a monstrous beast. They kill it, but a fighter jet shoots them down. The magic they brought into the world inspires research that leads to the Black Scrawl.

  After the darkness of Drakengard, Yoko wanted to stress friendship and shared effort. He also drew on the September 11 attacks and the war on terror. From those events he took the idea of a tragedy in which both sides believed they were right, and he wanted players to see the same events from several viewpoints. That is why the story is told again from the other side. The word Replicant came from the 1982 science fiction film Blade Runner. Yoko pointed to no source for the name Nier itself, calling it a codename that simply stuck through development.

• 5. Brother and Father

  ›

  An artist working under the name D.K. drew two designs for the hero. The team believed Japanese players would respond more strongly to a younger protagonist, and players elsewhere to an adult. Apart from his appearance and a few lines of dialogue that make him Yonah's father rather than her brother, the two versions are the same. For a time, many assumed the older design was the original.

  Other characters changed as the game took shape. Thirteen Grimoires were planned originally. All but Weiss, Noir and Rubrum were cut. Emil grew out of a female character named Halua. Kainé began as a far more feminine type who concealed her violent nature. Yoko was shocked by her final design at first, then warmed to it and kept it. The team made her intersex because it suited her gritty backstory. Yoko credited the suggestion to female staff on the project. The choice caused some "commotion" in regions outside Japan, which the team had not set out to provoke. Yonah's Japanese name came from the Biblical Jonah, but because that name is associated with a man it was changed to "Yonah" for localized versions. Studio Anima made the cutscenes.

  Nier was unveiled at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in June 2009. English, French and German localizations were produced during development, so every version could ship together and the developers could gather feedback from North America and Europe. Its heavy violence earned it a CERO D rating in Japan. There, the Xbox 360 received Nier Gestalt with the adult lead, and the PlayStation 3 received Nier Replicant with the young lead. Elsewhere, the adult version appeared on both platforms simply as Nier. The PlayStation 3 release kept the Japanese voice cast, and the Xbox 360 release used the English dub. The game reached shelves on the 22nd of April 2010 in Japan and Australia, the 23rd in Europe and the 27th in North America.

• 6. Invented Languages

  ›

  Emi Evans, a singer from England living in Tokyo, was handed an unusual assignment: write lyrics in languages that do not exist. She sings for the band freesscape and had earlier worked on video games including Etrian Odyssey. The composers gave her rough versions of songs and a style, such as Gaelic or French, and she invented the words. She wrote in versions of Gaelic, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, English and Japanese. For each, she imagined how the language would sound after 1,000 years of drifting.

  The soundtrack came from the studio MoNACA, led by Keiichi Okabe and including Kakeru Ishihama and Keigo Hoashi, along with Cavia's Takafumi Nishimura. Okabe joined when the game's concept was first being shaped and worked on and off for three years. Most of the music was written separately from the game's development. Motifs return in different arrangements across the score, and even the thrilling tracks carry a sense of sadness. Yoko gave Okabe wide freedom, asking mainly for plenty of vocal pieces. The result is largely melancholy acoustic music built around Evans.

  Square Enix released Nier Gestalt & Replicant Original Soundtrack on the 21st of April 2010. It reached number 24 on Japan's Oricon charts and stayed for 11 weeks. Preorders of the game came with two mini-albums. An arranged album followed on the 8th of December 2010 and reached number 59 for a week. A tribute album, -echo-, appeared on the 14th of September 2011. A piano collection arrived on the 21st of March 2012.

• 7. Mixed Reviews

  ›

  In its first week in Japan, Replicant sold over 60,000 copies and topped the national sales list, while Gestalt sold over 12,500. Replicant passed 121,000 by the end of May 2010 and finished the year above 134,000. In 2019 Yoko estimated worldwide sales of around 500,000 copies.

  Critics were split. Almost all faulted the visuals. Ryan Clements of IGN called them "one of Nier's greatest flaws," Kevin VanOrd of GameSpot wrote of "flavorless visuals," and Dustin Quillen of 1UP.com said the game "looks downright primitive." Praise went to the sound. Clements called the music and voice acting "both quite excellent," and Adriaan den Ouden of RPGamer found the soundtrack "absolutely fantastic."

  The blend of play styles divided reviewers. Seth Schiesel of The New York Times felt it formed a "coherent, compelling whole." Patrick Kolan of IGN Australia argued the opposite, saying it left the game with "split-personality disorder." Den Ouden compared the variety to a buffet table. Side quests drew the harshest verdicts. Quillen said they were "about as numerous as they are totally mindless."

  The story fared better. Schiesel called it "provocative" and "profound." One Famitsu reviewer said he was "blown away" by the multiple endings and that "nothing like it's been done in gaming." In 2015 Jeffrey Matulef of Eurogamer called Nier "the rare game that gets better with age," crediting its cryptic storytelling and melancholy mood for a cult following.

• 8. Second Life

  ›

  Cavia made Nier as its last game, and in July 2010 its parent company, AQ Interactive, absorbed the studio. Producer Yosuke Saito hinted that something was coming in 2011. What arrived was a live concert of the music, called "Nier Night ~ Evening of Madness," on the 28th of October 2011. A PlayStation Vita port, planned with Takuya Iwasaki's company Orca, was shelved when Orca was chosen to help build Dragon Quest X. Several key staff, including Yoko and Okabe, later reunited to make Drakengard 3.

  A sequel, Nier: Automata, followed in 2017 from Square Enix and PlatinumGames, with Yoko, Saito and Okabe in their old roles. Its success even prompted a reprint of the original on the PlayStation 3 in PAL territories.

  The remaster was announced in March 2020 for the series' tenth anniversary. Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139... launched on the 22nd of April 2021 on console in Asia and the next day worldwide, with the Windows version on the 23rd. Toylogic built it, with Saki Ito as game director. Takahisa Taura of PlatinumGames, who had worked on Automata, supervised the combat redesign. Akihiko Yoshida, Toshiyuki Itahana and Kimihiko Fujisaka redrew the characters. Yoko chose to feature only the brother, as he had wanted from the start. The father protagonist survives in the "15 Nightmares" content, which began as downloadable content called "The World of Recycled Vessel."

  The update restored cut material, including a Mermaid story with a new character named Louise, dropped from the original for budget reasons. It also added a fifth ending. Begun as a backup plan in case the save-deletion idea was dropped, it was later written into a novella. Three years after the Shadowlord's defeat, Kainé finds a settlement slaughtered by robots from a tree that records Replicant memories. She destroys the Shade Hook and the AI behind the tree, and the protagonist returns in his young form. All the save data erased by the fourth ending comes back with him.

  By June 2021 the remaster had shipped over one million copies, double the estimates for the original. By February 2026 it had sold over 2 million. At The Game Awards 2021 it won the Best Score/Music category.