Nier: Automata

• 1. Introduction

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  Nier: Automata, a 2017 action role-playing game made by PlatinumGames and published by Square Enix, ends with an unusual request. When the story is over, the closing credits turn into a shooting game that the player must fight through. Once that battle is done, the game makes an offer. The player can sacrifice their own save data to help other random players survive the same sequence. Few games ask people to erase their progress for strangers they will never meet. Why would this one? What war sits behind the story, and who is really fighting it? And what becomes of characters who may be doomed to repeat everything?

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• 2. Androids and Machines

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  In the year 11945 AD, androids built by humans fight an invading army of Machines built by aliens. This proxy war takes place thousands of years after the events of Nier, released in 2010. Nier: Automata is its sequel, and Nier was itself a spin-off and sequel to the Drakengard series. The Nier world sits in an alternative timeline within that series. It keeps Drakengard's dark atmosphere and branching storylines, though no direct narrative link joins the new game to the rest.

  The androids of the YoRHa force take their orders from the Bunker, a reconnaissance base that orbits Earth. On the ground, they fight beside the Resistance, a group of androids who existed before YoRHa. Androids are forbidden from having emotions, and none of them has a true name. Even so, each one has a distinct personality.

  The first protagonist is 2B, short for YoRHa No. 2 Type B, a combat android known for her calm composure. Beside her is 9S, short for YoRHa No.9 Type S, a male scanner android who shows more emotion than other YoRHa units. Later the game introduces A2, an obsolete attack android who prefers to act alone. Two floating, box-like robots, Pod 042 and Pod 153, support the androids as ranged weapons.

  On the other side stand Adam and Eve, twin controllers of the Machine Network, along with the Red Girls, a construct living inside that network. The wider cast includes the Commander, YoRHa's top officer, and Anemone, who leads the Resistance. Pascal is a machine who dislikes conflict and wishes for peace. Devola and Popola are early androids who suffer discrimination because of what their model series did. Emil, a character from the original Nier, has lost his memories in the years since.

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• 3. The Truth Under the War

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  Two viewpoints carry the opening of the story. The first playthrough follows 2B and the second follows 9S, as they take part in the latest android strikes against the Machines. After opening a route for future missions, they clear Machine threats on behalf of Anemone's Resistance. Along the way they notice that the Machines are copying human societies and concepts. They team up with a pacifist group of machines led by Pascal, and they battle Adam and Eve, who are physical forms of the Machine Network. Adam and Eve reveal that the Machines' own creators were destroyed centuries ago. 2B and 9S also cross paths with A2, a rogue YoRHa android.

  2B kills Adam after he captures 9S. While 9S recovers, he finds a glitch in YoRHa's servers as he syncs himself with 2B. Through it, he learns that humanity died out long before the alien invasion began. Its last remnant is a server on the Moon that holds human genetic remains. YoRHa keeps up the myth of human survival so that the androids have a reason to exist. With Adam dead, Eve goes mad with grief and drives connected Machines into a frenzy. 2B and 9S kill Eve, but 9S catches Eve's logic virus, and 2B is forced to kill him. His consciousness survives inside the local Machine Network.

  The third playthrough opens as YoRHa launches a full-scale invasion. A logic virus attack, made possible by the glitch 9S found earlier, corrupts every YoRHa unit except 2B and the restored 9S. The two are separated, and 2B becomes infected. She finds A2 and asks her to take her place. 9S, ignorant of the truth, sees A2 mercy-kill 2B and swears revenge. Then a tower built by the Machines rises from the land and keeps the two apart.

  A fortnight later, the story splits between A2 and 9S. A2 is the survivor of a test run for YoRHa, and she starts to feel empathy for the Machines. She watches Pascal's village be destroyed, and later its "children" take their own lives out of fear when it is attacked again. Pascal begs A2 either to wipe his memory or to kill him. She may do either, or leave him as he is. Meanwhile an increasingly unbalanced 9S studies the tower's resource-gathering platforms and learns that it is built to fire a missile at the Moon server.

  Devola and Popola sacrifice themselves to open the tower, and both 9S and A2 go inside. There they learn that YoRHa was designed to lose, so that the myth of humanity would live on. The Machine Network, for its part, uses the war to push its own evolution forward. Each side has trapped the other in an eternal cycle of war. A2 also learns that 2B's real designation was "2E", an executioner unit assigned to kill 9S again and again whenever he uncovered the truth. 9S had known this all along.

  Now insane and infected, 9S challenges A2 to a fight, and the player must choose which character to control. Choosing A2 means she saves 9S and sacrifices herself to destroy the tower. Choosing 9S means the two androids kill each other, and in his last moments he is offered a chance to join the now-peaceful Machine Network. The tower has changed its purpose, and it now launches an ark carrying the Machines' memories. Once both endings are unlocked, Pods 042 and 153 defy their orders to delete YoRHa's data. They believe that 2B, 9S and A2 may yet forge a new future for themselves, even if the events repeat.

  Three returning characters have optional arcs of their own. Devola and Popola were ostracized and programmed to feel endless guilt, because their model series caused humanity's extinction in the first Nier. They stay at the Resistance camp and take the riskier jobs. Emil lost his memories after copying himself to fight the aliens. A group of those copies, driven mad by the loss of their sense of self, appears as a secret boss. When the player wins, Emil dies after remembering his friends, who are long dead.

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• 4. Combat and Genres

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  Real-time hack and slash drives combat, with four weapon classes: short swords, long swords, bracers and spears. Light and heavy attacks chain into combinations, and attacks of any weapon type can be charged for extra damage. Well-timed evasion grants either invulnerability or counterattack bonuses. A flying Pod assists with customizable ranged attacks, which run from simple gunfire to heavy hammer blows. Each protagonist fights differently. 2B alternates between two weapons, 9S pairs light attacks with hacking into enemies, and A2 can sacrifice health to briefly raise her attack power.

  Nier: Automata also lets players travel across an open world on foot. Some scenarios involve flying mech battles, and a special item can summon wild animals to ride. Non-playable characters scattered through the world offer quests. Shops in hub locations sell items, including consumables that recover health. Fighting earns experience points, which raise health, defense and attack power.

  Attribute-changing items called chips handle character customization. They can alter the HUD, add new abilities and grant status buffs. The number a character can carry is limited by the number of slots available. Chips are bought in shops or collected from defeated enemies.

  Death carries a twist. A fallen character respawns at the previous save point and can then hunt down their original body. The player may attempt to repair it or simply retrieve items and experience from it for a bonus. A successful repair turns the body into a temporary ally, while a failed one turns it into an enemy to fight. With online features enabled, the bodies of other players can be retrieved or revived where they died.

  Twenty-six endings wait inside the game. Five main endings are lettered A to E, and 21 additional endings run from F through Z. The extra endings act as game over events, triggered by certain actions, by failing to advance the story, or by losing certain battles. At certain points the game shifts into other genres, such as shoot 'em up and text adventure segments. Many are signaled by a change from the usual third-person view to a top-down or side-scrolling one. Some areas add platforming, and four difficulty levels can be changed at any time. The "Easy" setting unlocks chips that automate attacking, dodging and Pod fire.

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• 5. Building the Sequel

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  Low sales of Nier made assistant producer Yuki Yokoyama unwilling when producer Yosuke Saito first raised the idea of a sequel. Fans then received the original game warmly, and Square Enix and the lead staff changed their minds. They still wanted a more action-oriented experience. They approached PlatinumGames, which had earned a reputation for high-quality action titles such as Bayonetta (2009) and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (2013). The two companies agreed to work together on one condition: director Yoko Taro had to be present for production. That meant moving from Tokyo to Osaka, where PlatinumGames is located. Yoko felt uneasy at first, but the studio's excitement and its promise to stay faithful to the original won him over. Designer Takahisa Taura, who had long wanted to make a Nier sequel, joined the team. PlatinumGames handled primary development, and Square Enix added staff and sound design.

  A farming game was the first idea. Yoko has said the team initially planned something inspired by FarmVille (2009), for mobile platforms or the PlayStation Vita. Development shifted to the PlayStation 4 instead, with Saito and Eijiro Nishimura co-producing. Work began in 2014 and included six months of pre-production. Relations between Yoko and the studio staff were tense at first, mainly because his freelance status meant a different daily schedule. The team set up a system of "free time" when Yoko would be available to work. They also studied fan feedback and critical reviews of Nier, and concluded that gameplay, graphics and character designs all needed to improve. Music and a complex story were the parts to carry over.

  For PlatinumGames, nearly everything was new. Taura had previously worked on action games, and Nier: Automata was his first role-playing game. He managed the action combat system, while designer Isao Negishi created the role-playing elements. The basic battle system was finished in only two months and then refined throughout development. The team drew on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015), including its high standard of sidequests. The side-scrolling stretches were inspired by the Castlevania series, which Taura admired.

  This was also the studio's first open world, after earlier games built on linear, story-driven structures. Negishi noted that the world holds fewer enemies than earlier PlatinumGames titles. The choice gave players room to "enjoy the still beauty of the game's desolate world". The shooting sections draw on bullet hell games, and the camera was designed to settle into "comfortable" angles during fights. The team also suggested multiplayer modes, though the idea never moved beyond the concept stage.

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• 6. Themes and Translation

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  Yoko wrote most of the story himself, and it demanded more work than any of his previous games. The story changed only slightly during production, yet it arrived nearly five months late. Yoshiho Akabane of the company Highestar and Hana Kikuchi, who had worked on Nier and Drakengard 3 (2013), served as sub-writers. Yoko was hesitant to include Devola and Popola because of their role in the original, but he later decided to bring them back.

  Yoko describes the emotional content of Nier as "wet". For Nier: Automata he wanted a "dry" narrative about confronting prejudice and unfairness. He felt he had gone too far in humanizing the antagonists of the first game. This time he left more room for the player to interpret the story. Saito observed that the story is about love, which is unusual for a tale of robots, since robots are usually written without emotion.

  The team named its central theme "agaku", a Japanese word for struggling out of a bad situation. Yoko used the androids' and Machines' reverence for long-extinct humanity to argue that a person's sense of self and worth rests on belief in something beyond oneself. He also saw in the factions a reflection of how people keep fighting and building boundaries despite their progress. A recurring subject in his work is why people kill. It grew from watching players come to enjoy killing enemies in games, which suggested to him that something is wrong or missing inside them.

  The endings follow a similar spirit. As in Nier, there are several, though the conditions are less strict. Yoko wanted a happy conclusion, which made other staff members skeptical. He only found it after the characters' motivations led him there logically. The credits sequence, where the player fights through a hail of fire, represents the characters breaking out of a known system toward hope. The chance for strangers to help one another came from a Coca-Cola campaign. Drink machines in India were linked by livestream to machines in Pakistan, encouraging the two peoples to set aside their political rivalry. The idea left a strong impression on Yoko, who turned it into encouraging messages from players around the world. A similar mechanic had appeared in the original Nier.

  Philosophy runs through the names. The Machine Pascal recalls Blaise Pascal, the boss Simone recalls Simone de Beauvoir, and the NPC Jean-Paul recalls Jean-Paul Sartre. Yoko consulted books by Will Buckingham and Nigel Benson that explain philosophy and psychology in plain language. The English localization came from 8-4, the company that had translated Nier. They adjusted parts of the script for each region, since some Japanese concepts do not translate directly. Their hardest task was the androids' dialogue, which had to balance forbidden emotion against emotional relationships. 2B was rewritten to seem "droll" in English rather than emotionless. Because the estate of Sartre guards its copyright strictly, Square Enix advised Yoko to rename the character outside Japan, and he chose Jean-Paul. Cup of Tea Productions handled the English dubbing.

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• 7. Look and Sound

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  A broken elbow changed who designed the characters. Saito first wanted to bring back D.K, the character designer of Nier, but D.K could not draw with his injury. He recommended Akihiko Yoshida, known for his work in the Final Fantasy series. The developers doubted Yoshida would have time, yet he agreed because fans of Nier worked at his company, CyDesignation. He joined late in the process, and Yoko gave him a simple brief of sleek designs with black as the dominant color. PlatinumGames staff struggled to make mechanical characters feel "alive". Unlike Nier, which had two different protagonist designs for different markets, this game kept one design for all regions.

  Other artists shaped the rest of the cast. Yuya Nagai designed the Commander, Adam and Eve. Square Enix artist Toshiyuki Itahana redesigned Devola and Popola. Hisayoshi Kijima handled concept art for enemies. Kazuma Koda, Yasuyuki Kaji and Shohei Kameoka worked with Yoko on the environments. They aimed for settings that resemble real places players might visit.

  Keiichi Okabe led the score, with fellow members of his studio band Monaca: Keigo Hoashi, Kuniyuki Takahashi and Kakeru Ishihama. Okabe had also worked on Nier and Drakengard 3. The music is influenced by classical styles and echoes the melancholy of Nier. Where that game centered on grasslands and villages, Nier: Automata is harsher and more mechanical, and the score follows. Okabe composed with an open world in mind, so pieces blend into each other as situations and environments change. Pro Tools was used to balance the music.

  Emi Evans sang on the soundtrack, as she had for Nier, and Shotaro Seo added male vocals. Nami Nakagawa, Evans and J'Nique Nicole formed a three-part chorus for pieces such as the boss theme. Nicole, Evans and Marina Kawano each recorded a version of the theme song "Weight of the World". In the final ending's version, the development team sings the chorus.

  Masato Shindo, the sound designer, faced a problem with echoes across such a large world. He built a system that manages echoes in real time according to the player's surroundings. Masami Ueda implemented the sound, which involved more work than on his earlier projects. A good working relationship with Okabe helped. The soundtrack album came out on the 29th of March 2017, and first prints included a sixteen-track bonus album called Hacking Tracks.

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• 8. Release and Legacy

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  In January 2014, after Drakengard 3 came out, Yoko said he was interested in making a second Drakengard spin-off. By December he had confirmed that he was working on a new game. It was first shown at Square Enix's E3 2015 press conference as Nier New Project, which staff later said was 10% complete. At Paris Games Week 2015, Square Enix revealed the official title, a provisional release date and a gameplay trailer. The rock band Amazarashi, whose singer Hiromu Akita was a fan of Nier, wrote a promotional song called "Inochi ni Fusawashii". Yoko supervised its music video.

  Yoko wanted to call the game "Nier: Android", but Square Enix rejected the title over a possible trademark conflict with Google's Android operating system. In trailers, the team hid the fate of 2B and A2's later role by using A2's early model, short-haired in-game, for some footage. The team also postponed release to late 2016 or early 2017, which eased competition and gave more time for polish. Japan received the game on the 23rd of February 2017, in standard editions and a Black Box Collector's Edition. The PlayStation 4 version reached North America on the 7th of March, and Europe, Australia and New Zealand on the 10th of March. In April 2017, Chinese players review-bombed the game to demand a Chinese translation.

  The Windows version arrived through Steam on the 17th of March 2017. Both companies worried about piracy of the PC version, which was expected to delay it. Graphical and performance issues went unaddressed, so fans made an unofficial patch. An official patch fixing them was released in July 2021. Saito once said an Xbox One version would not be developed, citing low Xbox sales in Japan. One arrived anyway on the 26th of June 2018, subtitled Become as Gods Edition. QLOC ported it to Windows for the Microsoft Store and Xbox Game Pass on the 18th of March 2021.

  The Nintendo Switch port arrived on the 6th of October 2022. Saito requested it to celebrate the game's fifth anniversary, after being impressed by Astral Chain (2019), which Taura directed. Porting studio Virtuos capped the frame rate at 30 fps and made a racing-based side quest easier. Costumes and items themed after the mobile game Nier Reincarnation were added at Yoko's request. A downloadable pack titled 3C3C1D119440927 appeared on the 2nd of May 2017. It brought Nier costumes, hair options, battle colosseums, and boss fights with Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda and PlatinumGames president Kenichi Sato. The Game of the YoRHa Edition, which included it, followed for PlayStation 4 and Windows on the 26th of February 2019.

  Reviewers were warm. The PlayStation 4 version scored "generally favorable reviews" on Metacritic from 107 critics. The Xbox One version earned "universal acclaim", with a score of 90 from 30 reviews, and the Switch port scored 89 from 35. The Japanese magazine Famitsu gave a near-perfect score. Melanie Zawodniak of Nintendo World Report gave a perfect score and called it one of the best games ever made. Miguel Concepcion of GameSpot described its gameplay as "the closest thing there is to a spiritual successor to Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance". Jeffrey Matulef called it "the most captivating game I've played in ages" despite rough edges. Complaints centered on graphical pop-in, frame-rate drops and long loading times, and several critics found the combat shallower than earlier PlatinumGames titles. The music drew unanimous praise. The game also appeared on award lists including The Game Awards 2017, the 2018 British Academy Games Awards and the Game Developers Choice Awards.

  Sales began strongly. Nier: Automata sold over 198,500 copies in its first week in Japan, topping the charts and far outpacing the 2010 original. By April 2017 it had passed 500,000 copies across Japan and Asia, and by May 2017 it had reached 1.5 million on PlayStation 4 and PC. Most of those sales came from overseas, which surprised the companies. Shipments hit four million by May 2019, and another 500,000 sold by March 2020, credited to the Game of the YoRHa Edition. Today all versions have sold over ten million copies worldwide. Square Enix began to treat Nier as a franchise. PlatinumGames credited the sales and reviews with saving the company after several disappointing releases.

  The story kept growing beyond the game. During pre-production, Yoko created a musical stage play called YoRHa, performed in 2014, which tells a backstory for A2 and Anemone. Asakusa Kaoru wrote its script. Further productions followed, including an all-male spin-off and a musical version. Yoko and Jun Eishima wrote novels set in the same universe, including Long Story Short and Short Story Long, published in North America by Viz Media. The manga YoRHa Pearl Harbor Descent Record, drawn by Megumu Soramichi, saw its first North American volume on the 13th of December 2022. An anime series, Ver1.1a, ran across two cours from 2023 to 2024, produced by Square Enix and Aniplex and animated by A-1 Pictures.

  Crossovers spread the characters further. In December 2018, 2B joined Soulcalibur VI as a guest fighter, along with an alternate white version called "2P". Yoko suggested that the "P" stands for Panasonic. A scenario called YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse, outlined by Yoko, joined a content patch for Shadowbringers. From the 10th to the 24th of March 2026, Blizzard Entertainment's Overwatch offered skins of 2B, 9S, A2, Adam and Commander White.

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