Looking at my steam profile, I spent 38 hours playing this game. I did many sidequests. There's this weird compulsion among fans to say "you didn't give it a chance", which pushes people to do the other playthroughs, but I spent thirty-eight good-faith hours with this game. There are themes of how people go through inescapable self-destructive cycles of hurting each other or whatever. Let's talk spoilers past this point, then - what are the deeply philosophical themes of this game in your estimation?

SPOILERS:

Not the person you're replying to, but

> what are the deeply philosophical themes of this game in your estimation?

Pascal's story is perhaps the most succinct microcosm of Automata's themes.

Pascal starts a village of peaceful machines disconnected from the network. They're trying to start a new life. There's hope of a future without violence; of growth and evolution for the machines instead of an endless cycle of death.

But then the cataclysmic events of Automata occur and the machines, fearing a painful, tortured death at the hands of the networked machines, choose to take their own lives.

Pascal had taught these machines fear. He(/She/They) is torn by feeling responsible for their deaths, because he is the one that taught them to fear. It is all his fault. He asks you to wipe his memory. He can't bare to live with the pain of knowing what he's done.

It's not known how much time has passed between the end of mankind and the events of Automata. It's not known how many times Pascal has started a village, taught his machines fear, watched his children kill themselves, and repeat the cycle. Just like all the other colonies of machines: endlessly repeating a cycle of hope and death.

But as the player, you get to choose NOT to wipe Pascal's memory. To let him live on, despite the pain. Through the seemingly endless cycles of pain and death you can choose hope. Hope that maybe, somehow, one day the cycle will break. You choose to push on despite it all.

Just like the ending credits. You, the player, have repeated the game OVER and OVER again. The same gameplay. The same story. Repeated endlessly. Not just by you. But by the machines and androids through NieR's history. And by all players who play the game. Repeated again and again.

But during the credits you FIGHT past that. You push on. Knowing all the pain, all the characters you've had to watch die repeatedly, all of Yoko Taro's torturous gameplay you've had to suffer through. You, the player, choose to push forward. You hope that by continuing, the cycle will end and you can find a GOOD ending for these characters you care about.

The philosophical implications of all this is that NieR: Automata's endless cycles of pain, death, and hope are reflections of human life. Your life isn't unique. Billions of humans, just like you, have come before you, lived their lives of happiness, sadness, pain, hope, and death. Again, and again, and again. To what end? What is the point? Why live on watching all that you love and care for die? And why live on knowing that you, too, will die and others will repeat your cycles?

Because by pushing forward despite the pain, despite how many cycles may have come before you and may repeat after, you CHOOSE to continue. You hope that one day, the cycle will break. Things will get better. Knowing everything you choose to fight.

As the lyrics of one of the first songs in Automata state so clearly, "This cannot continue. This cannot continue. This cannot continue."

> There are themes of how people go through inescapable self-destructive cycles of hurting each other or whatever.

So yeah, that's the point. The game is filled with cycles of inescapable death and hurt. 2B cries when she kills 9S, because she's had to do it SO MANY TIMES. It's her fate to continue the cycle of killing 9S.

But that's not the point of NieR, and why the last act of Automata is so important. You the player have to suffer through those endless cycles, and repeat the same gameplay, to put you in that frame of mind. So that at the end you can choose to CONTINUE despite it all. You the player don't know that the last ending is hopeful. You're choosing, even though you think the game is all about inescapable self-destruction, because you HOPE for something better.

Hope is the overarching theme of Automata. Perseverance in the face of seemingly endless cycles.

(And yes, I've repeated my point a number of times, as a reflect of the theme of repetition in Automata :P)

There are many other little philosophical ideas scattered throughout Automata. But the above is the main one (in my mind).

"The philosophical implications of all this is that NieR: Automata's endless cycles of pain, death, and hope are reflections of human life. Your life isn't unique. Billions of humans, just like you, have come before you, lived their lives of happiness, sadness, pain, hope, and death. Again, and again, and again."

I agree partially with you but contrary evidence is that when you replay the game the second time it isn't actually a new cycle, it just shows events from 9s's point of view.

When you play it the third time it's not a new cycle either, just a sequel campaign.

That said, is what you wrote above really a philosophy? Or is it just a theme?

I mean, Blaise Pascal is most famously known for Pascal's Wager, an argument to believe that the Christian God is real.

Pascal the robot is a pacifist who likes children. Is there really a connection there?

> Is there really a connection there?

The parallel is that Pascal's Wager is an argument from fear. The Pascal in the game introduces his children to the concept of fear in the same way that the real Pascal proposes we should fear the consequences of disbelief in an unknown. Yoko taro then shows us what he believes to be outcome of the philosophy that underpins Pascal's Wager when the children destroy themselves out of fear of events that do not come to pass. They destroy themselves out of that fear of the unknown.

>It's not known how much time has passed between the end of mankind and the events of Automata.

Doesn't one of the texts you pick up state that the last humans were wiped out some time around the year 3,xxx? (so like 8,000 years prior to the game or thereabouts)

I may be misunderstanding the lore; I'm certainly no expert. But I was under the impression that YoRHa is the one that believes it's year 11XXX or whatever. And YoRHa and their backstory are fabricated. Basically most of the Automata story should have repeated many times before. It gets "reset" whenever the machines defeat YoRHa and the machines rebuild YoRHa and set them up with a fresh backstory. So YoRHa would always believe it's the year 11XXX. When actually it might be 110,000 for all we know (and poor Pascal's village will have been murdered 10 times...).

I guess it's not really important the exact chronology. Automata is abstract enough that story details are more like flotation devices than concrete structures. The point is that much of the Automata story has been repeated over, and over again, and both you the player and YoRHa are oblivious to this (until the last act).

It's my understanding that there are two different factions, Machines and Androids. The Machines were built by aliens and the Androids were build by humans.

I don't remember anything in the game about Machines rebuilding YoRHa. Did you mean Androids rebuilding YoRHA?

I don't remember anything suggesting this has been "literally" an endless cycle, in fact I believe they say the aliens were only killed 600 years before the events of the game. (Specifically the YoRHA commander says nobody has seen the aliens in 600 years and then the main characters find the corpses of the aliens and Adam says he killed them.)

So absent any further plot twists (and I don't recall any) the events of the game would have to be at least a bit different from previous cycles before 600 years in the past, and I don't believe there's a suggestion that the exact events of the game ever happened before.

I googled this very quickly and don't see any consensus that your interpretation is correct, but my search was hardly thorough.

One of the revelations from the machine AIs (red girls) is that they intentionally kept an opponent around to force their continued evolution (referenced in Jackass' report [1]). IIRC they also knew about (or installed?) the backdoor in The Bunker.

[1] https://nier.fandom.com/wiki/Machine_Research_Report

>that they intentionally kept an opponent around to force their continued evolution

I don't remember the details of the plot well, but from that report, it's more:

1. Assigned goal: Defeat Enemy

2. Defeats enemy, but realizes that if it's fully defeated, they can no longer fulfill their goal

3. Keeps the enemy alive, so they can have an enemy to defeat. But they're stuck with a contradiction

4. Start corrupting the network to force evolution, to find a solution

That is, keeping YoRHa alive and fighting is independent of the evolutionary task -- it's a side-goal, to fulfill their base requirement (Defeat the Enemy). Keeping YoRHa around is necessary for the android's continued existence, and really all it's for.

The evolutionary task is a search to find a way to get out of this current state (endless war; contradictory/nonsensical setup).

Interesting, I thought the repetition was the "machine wars" and they were on the 14th iteration or whatever it was. I've played through it twice, but I didn't pick up anything about the entire YoRHa setup being repeated. Maybe it's time to play through it again.

shrug I definitely don't know for sure. Clemps on YouTube has a theory that "Automata leads to the events of drakengard 3,which lead to events of drakengard 1,which lead to events of nier which lead to Automata." So there's at least the possibility that it loops that way. Which is a bit ... odd. I just thought it repeated in the sense that the machines use the YoRHa backdoor, wipe them out, and start over again.

I don't recall exactly what the Red Girls say, but I thought they implied that they'd built YoRHa multiple times. Don't remember now though...

Apologies for the late reply, but I am busy these days.

Sorry, I didn't mean to say that you hadn't played it well. What I meant with giving it a chance is... "accepting it", for lack of better words. Like, someone can force me to do a certain task with the aim that I'd learn something, however unless if I accept that reasoning and open up to the task (thus giving it a chance), I wouldn't really learn anything and that task would instead be a needless, wasteful chore. Basically, it's not for you, you understandably wrote it off, but pushed on through it due to the fans' comments that it will get better in the third act... but since it's not for you, it didn't click.

Media, philosophy, etc. are quite subjective, and affect each one of us differently. I was not trying to push you towards something, nor blame you for not enjoying the game -- I only replied to that part of your original comment because I felt that it was too dismissive.

Regarding your second point, I don't have too much time to reply with a long post, however I will write some of the things that stood out, in the same way they're presented in the game. Warning, some spoilers ahead for anyone reading:

- Given the reveals in the story, do the androids' lives and stories have meaning? Why / Why not? Does the answer differ for the YoRHa ones, after knowing their fate and also the way they're created? Finally, if you see that their lives don't have meaning, do they at least have the ability to give their lives meaning? If they do, why aren't they taking the chance to give their lives meaning?

- In a similar vein, what is the point of the whole conflict and war between the machines and the androids? And how would things be different if both sides "freed themselves" from their bounds to their creators? I.e. instead of the machines trying to claim the Earth for the aliens, and the androids defending it and constantly rebuilding it in wait for the humans, they both did something different and started anew? Instead of being stuck in their tasks, they carved out a new path for themselves? And do they actually have the choice and ability to do that, or are they genuinely stuck? See the various stories of the different machine cultures and how they failed and what, precisely made them fail and caused their downfall. Pascal and feelings, the Forest Kingdom and their misguided (but pure) intentions, etc.

Check the implications of your answers with your real world experiences, and how many times there's something that people are stuck doing despite all signs pointing to it being fruitless and they're better off starting anew. The various stories of the failed machines also have many implications on things that we come across a lot in real life.

- Ostracism, hate, punishment, and forgiveness. Devola and Popola, two androids who messed up rather badly (and it wasn't entirely in their hands), are reprogrammed to feel intense guilt and shame, as well as being constantly ostracized by all other androids with absolutely no chance of forgiveness despite the passage of time. Yet, what is the point? The androids are content with this punishment, but ultimately what happened happened and hate won't reverse the past. I suppose this does fall under "inescapable self-destructive cycles of hurting each other", though.

- "Something to fight for" is present extensively in the game, and it tries to portray multiple viewpoints related to it. For instance, what happens to someone when their reason to fight is jeopardized? What if it's entirely destroyed in front of them, what happens to them, then? What if someone doesn't have a reason that really resonates with them? And can someone pick up anything to act as their purpose, or are some things more important than others?

- The ability to commit atrocities without batting an eye by believing you are on the right side. (Further enforced with the DLC) This is actually really profound given how things are going in the real world these days.

- Perspective. This follows up from the above point. The main principle behind multiple playthroughs is to make the player reflect on his/her actions in the game, with the power of hindsight added as well as revealing 'the other side'. This point is further reinforced with 9S in the third act, who chooses to ignore all signs that A2 was forced to kill 2B, and stick to his own 'side of the story' so to speak. Again, this is more commentary on human nature and while it may not be a very deep philosophical theme, its execution is quite great and does lead to some players contemplating this issue.

- Ending E, with its interesting gesture of helping someone you don't know and probably won't ever know with a sacrifice of your save file in order to break the cycle the characters are in. (However I admit that Souls games do convey this better). Now, this may be reaching a bit, but I also feel there's something to be said about dehumanizing the developers and publishers into a bunch of titles, murdering them, and continuing to push on through the intense bullet hell, all with the promise that there's a good ending for the characters at the end, somehow.

- There's so much to say about Pascal, but another comment already took care of this. Particularly the moment he decides to help A2, and completely abandon his principles of pacifism and peace, forced to do that and broken by the surrounding world. However, did Pascal actually have a choice in what he did, or was he really forced? What if the burden of the world is really too much to bear for someone with their principles? Moreover, the children killing themselves in fear of an unknown that does not come to pass is an answer to Pascal's Wager.

Finally, I just want to thank you for keeping an open mind and asking.

There's so much more I would like to mention and more details I would love to go through (what I said is shallow), but I really really don't have time.

I do agree that the whole concept of the story and history is deeply philosophical and in fact apparently NieR:Automata and even NieR:Replicant are only a fraction of the whole story.

BUT calling the gameplay boring with lots of running around is a fair statement. NieR:Replicant is worse. And reading through what others have said/shown about previous games in the series is that they're even worse.

The gameplay looks beautiful, but it grows only very little at the beginning of the game. After that nothing changes, there is no complexity to it. If you wanted to, you could get by with circling around enemies and pressing two buttons.

Yeah, the combat / gameplay is quite dull (which is a shame because there's a great variety of combos with great animations[1], you're just not incentivised to use them at all), this is something that I agree with. I was only addressing the original comment's final remark.

[1]: https://youtu.be/QAU_8GEgSwI This has all of 2B's moveset and all combos with different weapon sets.

I'll never understand how game artists put such immense effort and detail into hardly visible in-between frame details, while putting zero effort into 80% of the time visible base animations. They don't even bother to attach weapons to the character properly (huge sword hovering 20cm away from the back). The transition from slow walking to an intense dash is also hysterical

Aren't both of these examples just stylistic though?

The swords sort of materialise in a "digital" manner that I feel helps to convey that the androids aren't humans. It also enables a lot of the flashy moves that involve attacking with the weapon while not touching it.

Lengthy transition animations can make movement more realistic but it also can degrade gameplay by making the characters feel slow or clunky when responding to input. This works well for games like gears of war or where the character's motion should obviously be restricted but not so well when the combat is meant to feel fast paced and fluid.

> "BUT calling the gameplay boring with lots of running around is a fair statement. NieR:Replicant is worse."

Both Niers are RPGs after all, in terms of mechanics, and traditional RPGs are even duller (attack/defend/item/flee menu choices) but still manage to be enjoyable. From that standpoint, the bullet sponge nature of the enemies, being unable to defeat them until the player characters have leveled up enough, and backtracking is understandable.

Personally, I found the combat adequate (yes, even Nier:Gestalt) and sufficiently varied to keep things interesting.

Don't get me wrong. It's a beautiful game, but I guess I have a completely different understanding of RPGs. Leveling up building up different skills, magic, builds, etc. that are actually necessary to be able to advance to the next stage of the game is my understanding. In the case of NieR you can play through the entire game start to finish with your initial weapon set and drone and it would be fine.

And yes, you still assume a characters narrative in this case and you still have to level. Technically yes it is, but then again, I guess our understanding of what used to be RPGs has changed massively over the recent past I would say.

EDIT: Just googling around a bit it seems like the correct definition seems to be open world action adventure with RPG elements.

Hmm, isn't Baldur's Gate (2) considered to be a "traditional RPG" any more ?

It's philosophical in roughly the same way The Matrix is - whereas that was "Plato's Cave as a sci-fi action movie", NieR is "Existentialism 101 as a sci-fi video game".

I liked it a lot more than GP did but if you don't have a high tolerance for anime BS (e.g. can you deal with the fact that the protagonist is a sexy lady robot samurai in a skimpy maid outfit?) or have actually spent any serious time reading philosophy, the anime BS is going to overwhelm and/or the philosophical themes are going to underwhelm.

Some people demand to be spoonfed their philosophy, do not appreciate being asked to dream it.

There was a similar reaction from Europeans confronted with east asian philosophies in previous centuries. The question is, whether to be Leo or H.H., that’s all.