Here, in reality, we live in a period of unprecedented introspection with regard to robots and automation. Hastening developments in the fields of artificial intelligence and cybernetics are converging on the creation of machines that are independent from human oversight. A recent commission from the European Parliament demanded a set of regulations be drawn up to govern the creation, use, and even rights of robots. Luminaries such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have warned that AI presents the greatest existential threat to mankind.
NieR: Automata, a hyperactive action game from the idiosyncratic Yoko Taro—the closest Japan has to a Tim Burton—winds the clock forward to a time when humanity has been driven from Earth by their robotic creations. We have, in Taro’s fiction, been forced to take refuge in the stars. Only robots and androids, two distinct mechanical species, walk our now overgrown cities. They exist in perpetual war.
You play as YoRHa No. 2 Model B (hereafter 2B for brevity and sanity’s sake), a combat droid deployed by the human survivors who live on a spaceship circumnavigating Earth. 2B has been built in the shape of a waifish girl with a short, blonde bob and a taste for black clothing. Appearances deceive: 2B is whip-quick and deadly, able to wield two melee weapons (which she switches between depending on the ferocity of your attack) as well as an orbiting drone, which adds back-up fire as well as providing a floating support for when 2B performs a giant leap and needs a handhold for a gentle landing. 2B is supported by 9S, a boyish droid who, as well as providing AI-controlled backup, supplies a steady stream of quips to counter 2B’s rather stern outlook on life.
As with its 2010 predecessor, which became something of a cult classic, NieR: Automata is a fidgety sort of game, slippery in the hands of genre. Developed by the Osaka-based Platinum Games, the company behind contemporary action classics such as Vanquish, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and Bayonetta, it sits firmly within the Japanese action tradition with a deep and meaningful battle system that places an emphasis on pitch-perfect dodges and feints, and sky-rocketing combos.
Unlike the majority of other games in Platinum’s oeuvre, NieR: Automata also includes a deep RPG-like structure, with crowds of whimpering NPCs in need of assistance. Beneath an unpredictably twisty plot there are rich systems for upgrading your weapons using cogs and wheels harvested from downed robots, and tinkering with 2B’s design and abilities by crafting and implanting chips, which can even alter the look of the game’s HUD.
You can even equip your drone with numerous passive performance enhancing chips (as well as changing its paint job), enhancements that not only provide stat boosts but also have the capacity to automate commands. Fighting already requires a significant amount of dexterity to manage melee attacks, ranged attacks, and dodging simultaneously. Why not simply program your pod to automatically use one of your health items when your HP drops below a certain point?
While exploring deserts, forsaken fairgrounds, jungle-top settlements, and abandoned factories, the game slips elegantly between play styles. One moment you’ll be crowd-controlling a squadron of dusty robots as they lunge menacingly at you. The next the camera will swoop upward to a fixed point high above and, for a few minutes, the game will play like a side-scrolling shoot ‘em up in the tradition of R-Type or Gradius.
You might be sent on a search mission to find a lost girl in a sandstorm. Or asked to invest in a friendly robot inventor’s startup. NieR: Automata’s greatest asset is its ability to constantly surprise and upset expectations. When, after a few hours, other games may begin to weary their player through repetition, Taro’s restless approach to game design refreshes your store of patience, luring you onward to find out what happens next.
While the overarching quest is to bring peace to Earth either by force or negotiation, in order to allow humanity to resettle, the game focuses on a single dilapidated city in order to make the job (and the development budget) manageable. There is, nevertheless, a fair amount of backtracking if you decide to take on the cavalcade of side-missions thrown at you. As the game world slowly opens up you’ll be able to fast-travel between key encampments, but until then you’re forced to trudge on foot or, if you’re able, to hitch a ride via the local wildlife. These long traipses across the largely bland environments upset the pace established in the game’s first hour, but they do provide a strong sense of the scope and digital topography of the place, and you soon learn the shortcuts.
NieR: Automata, like the Dark Souls series, introduces a subtle multiplayer component that helps this feel like a living, connected world, despite the absence of humanity. The corpses of player droids who died in battle are sucked into your game. Find a corpse and you can either choose to resurrect the player, which will heal their droid in their game, if they’re still online, and make them an "ally," or, if you prefer, selfishly harvest the body in order to replenish your health bar and earn a few experience points while doing so.
As with its forebear, NieR: Automata features a raft of different endings, one of which is earned if you fail the game’s opening mission. Far from mere filler, these diverse endings are earned through different choices at key points, and follow unique paths and perspectives. Not until you’ve travelled every path will you gain a full understanding of how the game’s events slot together.
It’s testament to Taro’s talent for storytelling that the game inspires replay as much through its narrative hooks as its baser promise of trophies and a 100% competition record. And it’s testament to Platinum’s talent for action game design that the game’s systems remain crisp and engaging with each reinvestment. Indeed, this is bold, exciting game design from two of Japan’s most noteworthy creative powerhouses.
NieR: Automata was released on PlayStation 4 on February 23; its Windows release is on March 17.
Simon Parkin is an award-winning writer and journalist from England, and a regular contributor to the likes of The New Yorker, Ars Technica, the Guardian, and Eurogamer. His latest book, Death by Video Game: Tales of obsession from the virtual frontline, was released last year. You can find him on Twitter at @simonparkin.
This post originated on Ars Technica UK
4 Reader Comments
* the only exception would be Half-Life 3
The relatively low budget is obvious in a few places such as slight frame rate wobbles during environment traversal (which feel like streaming glitches) and the slightly too liberal use of invisible walls that stop you getting to places that look like they should be accessible but none of that takes away from the core combat mechanics and story.
I'm still on my first play through (seen endings K, T and W which are essentially joke endings for killing yourself in especially stupid ways) but the story fascinates me. Given the creative team, I'm quietly hopeful that what might be dismissed as bad writing and inconsistent characterisation in other games will ultimately be explained.
In particular 2B's and 9S' almost bipolar behaviour. For example in the opening mission 2B watches her squad mates get wiped out in the first minute without emotion, then almost has an emotional breakdown when 9S, who she's never met before and only started speaking to by radio maybe 15 minutes earlier, is injured. They also seem to switch between "kill all machines" and "let's help them out" in an entirely arbitrary way.
There's also something very clearly wrong with YoRHa as, the commander and 2B aside, the other military droids act like teenage schoolgirls (at one point your operator calls you sobbing because the android girl - so far as I can tell all the andriods seem to be gay - she asked out said no). I have some theories. I hope they don't end up being better than whatever the revelations turn out to be. I also hope this isn't one of those games where to get the true ending you need to do something insane like play through on very hard without taking any damage.
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