y'all who haven't played nier automata shouldn't read this
context: https://twitter.com/krustentier7/status/844508412729868288I wrote this half because I wanted to write down Automata thoughts somewhere and half because I feel like there’s parts of these claims could be articulated better; I find the game to have faults as well, but I think the critique here can be better articulated for this game.
Generally I strongly agree that the game's content puts its best foot out at Route A and the rest of the gameplay afterwards isn't necessarily as good. I think the enemy variety plummets after the first playthrough and more locations would have been extremely appreciated. Most bosses suck in Route C which is a shame considering I wanted to play as A2 more. Your criticism of recycled content is valid and I feel kinda disappointed in this aspect too. However, here I'm questioning two points:
- "NieR Automata would work better as something other than a game"
- “The gameplay was designed an afterthought”
I don’t necessarily agree with these aspects specifically for NieR: Automata. I think this is much more applicable for the Drakengard games, and partially the first NieR, but Automata handles the integration of story and gameplay decently enough that separating the two ends up losing something in the process. I think it’s appropriate to say perhaps it doesn’t do “game” as well as it could, but there’s merit in what the game does set out to do in its interactivity.
On the first point:
In digital games, interactivity is a way of immersing the player into the game’s fiction. The most immediate thing to come to mind on the first point is the hyper-literal way in which the “game” aspects are treated in the story.
The settings menu scene is a very cute but interesting moment that establishes every small, unimportant action in the game, even those that don’t necessarily act upon the world, as congruent with the fiction. This is never a point of any major decision or plot twist in the story, but merely to establish this relationship between the game and fiction. Saving is justified as uploading data to the Bunker, death means that a backup version of your data is sent to a new body a respawn, etc. The menu screen being seen in 9S’ final boss hacking sequences also reinforce this bonding. No gameplay feature is unjustified in the fiction. Although most of this can essentially ignored if we were to adapt NieR: Automata’s story to a new medium and most people won’t bat an eye, having the story without the gameplay would immediately lose the connotations of androids and machines being analogous to videogame players, which is essential to the types of thematic messages that Yoko Taro often injects into his stories. We could inject the “gamey” elements into an adaptation to keep these underlying messages, but then that adaptation would just be seen as “video-gamey”, which isn’t something I’m personally too hot about. I remember the YorHa stage play mentioning the characters’ stats (HP/MP/etc.), which is the kind of concept that only really works if you “get” videogames and sounds kinda corny anywhere else.
The few moments where interactivity is used to enhance the story is few and far between, but they’re present nonetheless and really serve the NieR: Automata’s flavoring. Playing the machine at the beginning of the game and playing a damaged 2B in Route C really connect the player to the characters in these scenarios. These gameplay sequences enhance the feeling of being pathetic or helpless, though I guess it can also be achieved someway in other mediums. A more effective, subtle example is the usage of non-hostility in the game, one example being that the first Adam fight never has Adam strike first, or the entire first half of the amusement park. By this point, most players react to machines and boss fight pop-ups with violence. A film/novel/anime adaptation of Automata calls into question the morality of characters, but the game silently questions players’ own morality. It’s not really the kind of thing that most players think about, and it can sound like pretentious reaching, but for some people (like in that one Waypoint article), it provides a kind of introspection that can’t be achieved without some form of interactivity. There’s also Pascal’s decision, one of the very few lasting player decisions in the game, and the entirety of the E ending, which is only impactful due to the way in which players of the game have interacted with the system.
Ending E is much more interesting as an example which leads to the second point:
I REALLY don’t think Yoko Taro puts the story ahead of gameplay. He might really REALLY take good care of his writing, to the extent of being a sole selling point in dreadful games, but if he didn’t give a FUCK about gameplay he wouldn’t have been so stressed in the development of Drakengard 1/3 and NieR trying to have a decent playing game. I get the feeling it’s the complete opposite. Even back in Drakengard 1 he wrote a game narrative to painfully justify the kind of gameplay he had to work with; killing thousands of soldiers? Psychopaths! Frankly, Yoko Taro's reasoning for Drakengard's gameplay being crap as "killing shouldn't feel good" is bullshit to cover up a piss-poor budget, but taking this into account puts into perspective the kind of thinking he puts into making sure the story makes sense with the gameplay, rather than the other way around. Yoko Taro's bad rhythm game shit was the only deliberately obtuse thing designed for Drakengard 1/3 as a punishment to the player for their killing, and while certainly awful, it’s simple enough to see the game design of “hack and slash that then suddenly turns into a rhythm game because fuck you”. “Backwards Scriptwriting” is certainly used for story, but it’s also used for the gameplay scenarios too, a sort of “Backwards Game Design”. I get the feeling NieR: Automata leans more towards this than the other games, since the other games probably had little to no seasoned gameplay designers.
We can think back to NieR: Automata’s E Ending gameplay sequence through these lens:
- Player must fight the credits for a good ending
- In a hopeless situation, other players sacrifice themselves to help you and the player emerges triumphant
Hypothetically, what steps were taken to design the game to lead to this singular moment?
- Establish the credits sequence as possibly being congruent to the fiction; a minor element that nevertheless establishes the protagonists as androids, and all UI, including loading screens (in that one Pod scene), as part of their programming/network in the fiction. This makes it more plausible to accept the break from reality that the credits impact the narrative.
- Establish some way to incorporate combat against the credits. True to the NieR brand, shmup style gameplay is chosen due to previous series connotations, as well as providing a way to incorporate combat against simple entities with little animation (in this case, words/names). To integrate pure shmup gameplay into the fiction of literal UI, this style is introduced as a combat style of a character’s playstyle via hacking.
- Establish some form of network to connect players in order to help each other. As a single player game, the game would need to incorporate some form of online element to make sure this moment doesn’t catch players completely by surprise. This ending is thus the only reason a dead body/message mechanic and prayer is integrated into the game at all, to establish that people are in a common struggle and are willing to help. (This mechanic isn’t perfect since it isn’t integral to the main game and definitely does catch networkless players off guard and rightfully mad.)
- Establish a tangible sacrifice that players must make. This is a mirror of the original NieR’s final decision, which well establishes time and progress in a game as some of the most tangible sacrifices a player can accomplish through the medium.
From this one gameplay scenario comes many details in both the setting and gameplay that is established. Perhaps this isn’t the first idea that was conceived for the game, but we can infer that there has been some thought put into establishing this moment, particularly in the death mechanic, which has practically no other reason than to foreshadow this bit of gameplay. This goes for many other parts of the game, but it’s arguable where each point leans towards story or gameplay. For instance, in terms of gameplay, it can be thought that the Goliath battle in the City is only there to give an excuse to change the map, and that 9S’ hacking section in the Factory is there to utilize an interesting mechanic in control. Meanwhile, boss fights like Adam/Eve and 2B are mostly for introducing/giving characters screentime.
It’s variable, but it’s clear that priorities weren’t simply just to show off cutscenes. Route B has the same story but a different playstyle and some scenarios with radically different mechanics, such as the Factory. Route C has changing character perspectives that, while using the same map, does present a few new mechanics and story scenarios to make the gameplay interesting (special note to the dual machine Tower boss). I think a stronger argument that Platinum didn’t make these new gameplay scenarios more interesting or varied is valid here, but the idea that /everyone/ is playing “simply for the cutscenes” is a bit biased, as there definitely were gameplay ideas and scenarios that Platinum wanted to introduce that I was glad to engage with. Hacking may not be the most varied mechanic, for instance, but controlling enemies is something that I did enjoy quite a lot, maybe more than most people, making me insane.
Ultimately, for me at least, gameplay scenarios like that, the game settings scene, and the E ending are part of the reason I played the game; not JUST the story, but how that story is going to make me do a shit rhythm game at the end. Because at the end of the day, I think people give Yoko Taro too much credit for being “hahaha shit square enix meme guy that writes real good”, rather than the GAMEPLAY SCENARIO designer Yoko Taro, who manages to present interesting one shot bits of interactive out-of-the-box design that extends beyond mastery of game mechanics. Considering he works under the knife of Square Enix, who has painfully chased Western game design trends by the book, the few creative usages of interactivity is extremely notable. The death of 2B is not nearly as interesting as showing how dumb adjusting game settings looks from an outsider perspective. The quality and effective quantity of those mechanics are debatable, but I would argue that him being a creative game scenario designer sets himself apart far above from being just a creative writer that shouldn’t make games, and those mechanics are partially why people are obsessed with him as a designer despite his obvious failings.
This was WAY too long, but hey, I think(?) you like reading about game opinions(??)
TL;DR:
- The fiction of NieR Automata is effective and gains meaning from being a game
- The gameplay of NieR Automata dictates story development more compared to previous games
- The appeal of NieR Automata is the unknown in both story AND interesting usage of game mechanics
- I spent way too much time on stupid videogame bullshit, fuck me, ignore this
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