#yorha dark apocalypse

[sarakipin]

The Compound

[mosthuggableffxiv]

Bonus Poll: Most Puntable Lalafell

[battlecrazed-axe-mage]

Thoughts on the Nier raids?

They're about 20% too long but otherwise I don't mind them. I've never played the Nier games, but I have heard a lot about them from my partner, so I've got the gist of the lore. The mechanics are neat even if I can't remember how some of them work and have to just follow the crowd, and it always reminds me of the story where Yoko Taro asked Yoshi-P what kind of human he was trying to create by making a game where you just had to die repeatedly to learn mechanics (apologies if I butchered the phrasing, I can't find the original source anymore). The glams are top tier, I use the tall fending boots in most of my outfits. The building that comes up through the floor to squish you in the final fight is the Square Enix office building.

[astralartefact]

NieR Reincarnation The People and the World Satellite Spoilers, Feelings and a lot of YoRHa:Dark Apocalypse

Please read this post imagining silent sobbing in the background...

First off, I liked what they did with 10H, just skipping a recap entirely and making her Mama's ally right from the outset while leaving the in-between after the story we already knew for the EX Story.

speaking of which, I loved that they gave that ex story a straightforward happy ending (also, the carnation for reincarnation is just... so cute) I was so afraid that it was going to end with Mama betraying her again, but she didn't q___q And it makes Mama calling her 'our special girl' before the chapter hit so much harder q___q I love you Mama q___q

(also, food for thought, her ex story's name 'copied floral silhouette'... silhouettes are black on white, so it implicates a copied black flower)

I was thinking what the fuck they were going to do with her RoD story in the distant future though... but alas, I only opened Twitter after doing all of that.

So let's talk about it, I didn't expect it to EoS in APRIL. WHAT THE FUCK THAT'S SO SOON!! And I wasn't even expecting them to do another Season or anything, the story is in a perfect place to stop, all I was expecting them to do was drag it out a little bit longer with a skeleton crew only releasing RoDs and Costumes for a year or so until they didn't feel like it anymore - but this soon??? I guess the next NieR game must be closer than I initially thought, why would they just end it, surely they could have kept up the servers for a few more months with how much money and time they've put into the character models and stuff...

I do hope a Offline Version is coming, mainly so I can finally unironically call it the best NieR game without the looming "But it's a Gacha" threating my credibility as a... I don't have credibility, why am I even worried about that

Needless to say, my dream of #AnoggForReincarnation is probably dead in the water... But we'll get to her, because I have thoughts.

Two Big things from the Chapter that I want to talk about:

No.1: It's revealed that Humanity had a plan to "return" (to Reincarnate, if you will) after their Extinction

No.2: The "Earth" we return to is just the Cage again, but whiter and snowier.

I have two theories for what the "Earth" we saw might have been:

a) It's a sort of Meta-Earth where every structure represents every possible parallel Earth in existence - like how we have a Drakengard Earth that's seperate from the Main NieR Earth that's seperate from Hina and Yuzuki's Earth.

b) They don't use Earth meaning planet, but Earth as the place where Humanity is - this is just where the Humans actually are right now, after all they don't just need a place to return to, they also need a place to return from as well.

A notable line here includes 10H confirming to Yuzuki that the Round Egg in the Background (ROUND EGG, ROUND EGG, ROUND EGG!) "must be" the Cage, but that it's "not supposed to be here."

You know another Round Egg that can move around to anywhere it feels like at will and also contains the entirety of Human Memories within it? Well of course, It's time for me to bring up the only thing I ever talk about, YoRHa:Dark Apocalypse!

I've brought up before that there are certain similarities Anogg displays with Noelle's Introductory Chapter and at the time I thought that Noelle's whole deal might be involved in the creation of the Pseudo-Seed from Y:DA. But now that her backstory is fully revealed I actually think it's the other way around.

We now know that Noelle is actually a Human Clone that was created from a human after Humanity disappeared - but that makes it impossible that the Y:DA Pseudo-Seed was based on her if we do consider it to be the same or even just a copy of the Cage, because as we now know the Cage is part of Humanity's plan to Return - which means it must have existed before experimentation on Noelle even started.

Basically I think that Noelle was created using the same technology that was used to create the Cage - a Seed of Destruction. Which - if she actually is one of the pre-established "Dragon Weapons" - is actually pretty likely, because we know Accord had her fingers in making those Weapons happen and we know thanks to countless cameos that the Cage is Accords whole thing - and Accord is really the first and probably only person we know who could even possibly provide a Seed to do that with in the first place.

So while I had thought before that what we see the Red Girls do and what we see Anogg do in Y:DA with and/or caused by the Pseudo-Seed was just from whatever the Red Girls did to it, I think it's now much more likely that that's just how the Cage functions that the Red Girls copied. What if the Cage doesn't just store them, what if it can also Recreate Humanity when the time is right? And they were going to set that in motion after YoRHa defeats the Machine Lifeforms - which just doesn't seem to happen?

Or maybe Humanity's plan was to shoot themselves into space and recreate their entire planet where ever they land, just like the Tower/Cannon the Red Girls create and the Dark Apocalypse they chime in on Norvrandt!

Whatever it turns out being, I think Humanity turned a Seed of Destruction into a literal Seed of Resurrection. And wouldn't that be poetic as fuck. long live optimism, humanity is good sometimes

[xivacademia]

[autumnslance]

Red Mages vs Red Girls

So on the Red Girl fight in Tower at Paradigm's Breach, another RDM and I had the same idea and no one else using our Alliance Limit Breaks...

Edited to remove all the NPC chatter and the innocent who've had their eyes seared. Transcript:

YellowA-Brynhildr: mY EYES

PurpleA-Goblin: TWO of them

GreenC-Balmung: *VerFlashbang*

Aeryn Striker (me!): there's 4 of us in this raid, no one's eyes are safe

YellowA-Brynhildr: f e a r

PurpleA-Goblin: only you (other dps) can prevent eye damage

OrangeA-Goblin: doesn't have to be dps

PurpleA-Goblin: yeah but if we have to use the other ones i think we are in more trouble than a verflashbang

YellowA-Brynhildr: more flashbang pls

(sadly this final request was not met, as the other DPS stepped up a bit quicker on Her Inflorescence)

[acidxshark]

LATER TODAY: Our tragic tale ramps up to its finale as we dive back into Final Fantasy XIV and the YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse raid series! Hope to see you there!

[2bschinmole]

gpose time with 2B

[koukouture]

An unnecessarily long essay/rant abt the Nier raids in ffxiv bc I feel cheated lol

The ffxiv Nier alliance raid series is such a letdown because the raids themselves are SO fucking good. Oh my god. As a Nier Automata fan there was just so much cool stuff. I haven't touched Replicant or the Drakenguard series, but man everything was so cool. All the references were top notch. No notes I ADORE the Nier raids as pieces of content.

HOWEVER

The story is so ass I'm sorry 🤮Like I physically do not have the strength to continue after unlocking Tower at Paradigm's breach.

I wouldn't have minded Konogg and Anogg being the main perspective characters if the whole thing was just written better. As it stands I don't think I cared about them at all until like the third act of the story where I started to get worried for them. Like they were occasionally funny but other than that they don't really have the most compelling anything, really. At least, it's not compelling until said third act. I'm not gonna say that everything peaked at the third act- I think a lot of stuff was just kinda lost by then- but the third act tries to pull at your heartstrings and it just feels like such an undeserved moment. It's such a last ditch effort to get the player to care about them and it kinda worked? But also, too little too late.

I think coming at Nier's sci fi elements from the angle of a fantasy world that's still largely stuck in a more archaic age was the right move so obviously the main perspective characters couldn't be androids. But I just wish the androids were actually in it more? And like explained their presence? And actually had more weight to their presence overall???

I feel like if I didn't like Automata so much I wouldn't have gone as far as I did. There is definitely something to be said about how differently Automata structures it's story compared to ffxiv, but I don't think it would really be a crime to lean towards one of them. Automata is much more vague and it often doesn't show you the full picture and I think that's what they tried to do but it fell flat just because the story felt like it didn't have a message or theme. It felt largely aimless and like that's fine sometimes for ffxiv- but raid quests in ffxiv always have something.

Like the Crystal tower raids were a delight and brought insight into the Allagan empire + set up Shadowbringers. The Bahamut raids kind of give Alisaie something to do during ARR and serves as a direct link to FFXIV's failed 1.0 launch. The Alexander raids... are mid lmao but I do think the themes of time and cycles was neat and fits really well into the wider narrative of ffxiv. The Omega raids were amazing development for Cid and I am ALWAYS a sucker for stuff about machines becoming human. Also Alpha is just the best. My point is; yeah, ffxiv raid stories aren't always the BEST but they at least have something to say. The Nier raids are literally just the raids and then the cool fashion WHICH I APPRECIATE thank you. I swear the 2B bottoms gave your character's ass extra polygons. (unrelated but not really, I heard the Heavensward Alliance raids r really fun but I keep putting them off for some reason lmao. Soon, trust. I finished Shadowbringers way too quickly I gotta find shit to do)

So yeah I guess that's just my beef with the YoRha Dark Apocalypse storyline. It's just so nothing. Automata and ffxiv are two games with amazing (albeit very different) writing. Both of them with profound themes and messages- and you'd think a crossover event between these two would have some semblance of a story but no <3 We can't have anything in this fucking house.

Sorry I am just kinda disappointed in this because when I saw 9S in the copied factory as a boss I thought this was going to be some cool dark Nier Automata timeline where 9S has already lost 2B- but no. And yk maybe I wouldn't have minded if I was proven wrong if the story actually utilized the Nier Automata universe at all.

(gonna get into mad spoiler territory for both games here oop-)

Like I think what could have been really interesting is WoL teaming up with the YoRha androids as they both battle the truth of everything. WoL and 9S have both fought for gods that were really just one huge lie. The revelation that Hydaelyn is a primal in Shadowbringers is such an insane thing to find out at this point in the story. I guess it would kinda require one to go into the post ShB content more but still my point still stands. WoL finds out the goddess that has made them everything they are is no different than the things routinely poses a threat to their world, and 9S finds out that humanity- his "god"- has been extinct for thousands of years. Idk I'm just spit balling ideas here. It's really a shame because obviously Shadowbringers is fucking peak, but the Eden raids were also so good. Like we could have had three for three but I feel like they kinda just half assed the Nier story.

Anyways

If I'm feeling cute I might rewrite the entire YoRHa x FFXIV storyline.

(This is a lie I have started drafting it already. Which is not the best thing for me to do bc I already have my major project/hyperfixation in the form of Hellbound and my last crossover fic got rlly popular and then I just kinda abandoned it so... yeah I don't have the greatest track record when it comes to these things. If I feel really ambitious I might make it a whole machinima thing but I shudder to think abt the editing that would take tbh. But likeeee I have lotsa ideas because I think Nier and FFXIV's themes would mesh rlly well together. Also it already has a title bc of course it does. It's YoRHa: Neo Fantasy. Yeah yeah it's cheesy whatever let me live.)

[jung-freud]

I am the drag-on dragoon (drag as in crossdressing).

Had to change my hair twice to make the YorHa headband fit, but I like the ponytail. Outfits are:

copied factory maiming gear, no gloves, with high house boots, in gunmetal black

ureaus coat in wine? red dye, craftsman's leather trousers, same boots, and rimless glasses

anemos trueblood armor cuirass with dragonlancer gloves, pants, and boots, along with a durium hairpin, all in ruby red

(spicy pics below)

Did you know 2B's leggings and panties make your but slightly bigger than with either tights or bikini bottoms? Thanks Yoko Taro

[melissa-robin-ultros]

Wondering what the fuck happened on The First for Nier stuff to be here

[voicelesshatred]

.:OOC「 Alright, I’m choosing violence. Consider this a small starter call.

[autumnslance]

Shadowbringers felt like a lot of threads from previous expansions finally coming to a head; I think they should have made Crystal Tower required from the start, but it pulls in from multiple raid stories as well as the Ascians after a much-needed expansion rest in Stormblood, and brought back Minfilia and the Warriors of Darkness. Lots of threads.

Lots of Ishikawa taking her plotlines and characters and putting them center stage, after creating many and having other writers kill them off or turn them into something else, so I can't entirely blame her. And there is definitely a shift in how the story is told.

Stakes are high, and while there is death--tragic and horrific at times--it's not the only way to raise the stakes, or to draw out player emotions. The Scions get far more screen time than previously thanks to Trusts, finally feeling like your actual Final Fantasy party members in other games.

And boy are Thancred's years-long mental health, emotional turbulence, and interpersonal issues on display. His and Ryne's relationship is fraught and difficult; if Shadowbringers was a tragedy, the trolley duty would have turned out much differently. But this is, despite all the darkness, a story of hope, and as a hero character, Thancred does what Ran'jit and Emet-Selch can't--puts the past behind him, makes peace with that, and becomes a better man for his daughter's sake.

(It was still a rough and weird time to be a Thancred fan, though. And I've taken to copying and annotating their textual interactions, cuz it's often not as horrible as folks think, or we're listening to one perspective and their assumptions at a time, but it's still so hard to navigate, and too close to many real life difficult relationships.)

The others don't get quite the development this go-round, but we see the culmination of Alphinaud's from the spoiled brat we met in ARR to his reactions to Vauthry and dedication to Eulmore here. Urianger finally shows his face (and dem guns!) and has his moments, using his capacity for subterfuge to move the plot along from the background again (exasperating Y'shtola the whole while).

There is a lot of build and the idea that finally unified as a team, the Scions are nigh unstoppable...until Mt Gulg. The Disc 2 villain's defeat leading to the Actual Final Boss is very classic FF, and the beats hit well, because the set up of the previous 8 levels works to build to it. It's not just spinning wheels, it leads into why the Tempest and that final trial with Hades hits so well on all levels. I wondered how they planned to top it. Especially since Emet-Selch raised the bar so far as sympathetic while still horrific frenemy antagonists go. Excellent animations, voice work, and storytelling combine to make one of the more memorable characters in the franchise.

(Even my WoW-playing roommate, who learns anything FF14 against her will, knows him as "that skunk striped villain everyone's in love with.")

The patches are a bit of a mess. Elidibus needed a little more grounding and work to make his slip out of control and into immediate threat land, and the Scions really didn't know what to do with him for 2 whole patches. But the solo duty in Amaurot was good, and Seat of Sacrifice is still an amazing trial in all ways; we get the long-anticipated "Warrior of Light" battle, and the music hits (especially after learning about how and where and when Soken composed that), and the surprise cameo almost had us missing the tank LB first time through. The long denouement and goodbye tour works to tie it all up.

I miss job/class quests, but I get it; we have over 20 jobs now. They already struggled making all their quests serviceable, let alone good. Role Quests being more focused works much better (and now with duty support one can level 1 job of each to get the story and not worry about other players). The Virtue Hunters leading into another thread wrap up with the Void Quests is great...at the time; it makes the EW patch story a little weird now, honestly. I wish they weren't locked behind that much effort and content. Everyone needs to get Cyella as the midnight visitor (I think of her as the "true option" there) and experience her story as it ties so much together for our fallen fellow WoLs and Norvrandt's history, and into the 13th.

I have no problems with Eden; the story works, has a creepy villain with understandable motivations in context with the greater story, gives great world lore, pays homage to one of my first and favorite classic FFs.

Bozja was way better mechanically and how the story was parceled out than Eureka. They do the war torn battlefields well, but that means Eureka's more visually interesting. Also I maintain Bozja's areas are too big and waiting on Fates to pop for group content sucks. Still better than trying to coordinate Arsenal runs, though.

I loved the glimpses we had of the Gaius and Estinien buddy cop storyline through Garlemald. The RP duty at the end of 5.1 is really great. I'm still sad they abandoned the Shadowhunter plotline so abruptly, though, even if we handled the Unsundered.

Werlyt...I may give another chance when Iyna gets there. Taken all at once, expecting the mundane horrors of Valens' scenes, there is good stuff in that series; I think spread over patches, with the shock factor scenes, and how disjointed some of it is, and who the focal character is, led to a lot of disgruntlement. I do still think the WoL's minimal involvement with the characters and plotbeats outside of beating up the mechs is a core problem, though. But a lot of it comes down to "trying to fit an entire Gundam season into 5 patch quests" and having to accept the shorthanding of those familiar plotbeats--which if not a mecha anime fan, can be a lot to ask.

And YoRHa's such a missed opportunity it's ridiculous. I'm still salty and always will be, as I was looking very forward to seeing how such a rich world and story would fit into FF14--and it doesn't. Great fights, great glamour, great music, I like the characters. Story started strong, ended with a wet fart. Again, de-centering the player characters and having major events happen offscreen is not a good idea. We're not playing FF14 to be the NPCs is some other heroes' story (that conceit is better handled in FF14's own framework). Auteurs who can't play even temporarily in someone else's sandbox should not be strong-armed into doing so when they so clearly...don't want to. For those who love the NieR series, it was a fun reference-fest. For those completely unfamiliar with the games, it was infuriatingly confusing (and the dismissal of that dissatisfaction from YT fans made it worse at times).

Shadowbringers is immersive (I just didn't even consider that I had the ability to return to the Source at any time while plowing through MSQ initially), draws together a ton of storylines and plot threads scattered through the previous 3 expansions to resolve many--and leave us asking new questions, throwing everything we thought we knew about the world, and even the WoL, into confusion. It's highs soar to new levels; it's lows are...actually pretty good, too, there's merit to be found in all of the content; even if a story doesn't hit, the gameplay, combats, music, glamours, updates to older content, flight in ARR--there's something for everyone.

I do think some of the ARR streamlining went too far in some places. We lost a good Scion chain in the Sylphlands, and the "Pray at Azeyma's Marker" quest post-Waking Sands. On the other hand, tossing water on a drunk at Buscarron's Druthers is no longer a 12-step process. You win some, you lose some.

And we're without Hildibrand this time. The Inspector take a break, there's enough going on, we coulda used some levity after...all that...but they wanted a good story worthy of him. And the work they put into the animations and cutscenes, using them as testing grounds.

So next we Walk to the End, to help those in need, find missing friends, and learn the final truths of Hydaelyn, Zodiark, the WoL's ties to this grand arc, and what is up with this little blue bird...

Shadowbringers took Emet-Selch from ARR Lahabrea levels of mustache twirling, Saturday Morning Cartoon villain. All monologue and evil laughter while his evil boobs malevolently boobed down the Post-Stormblood's darker breast boobily and changed him into an actual character. And the first Ascian who actually spent time with us in a more meaningful way. Flipping them from one note, evil that must be defeated. To one we came to understand and a group that connected to our character's literal past reincarnation that we do not recall.

Additionally, atmospherically, Shadowbringers brought us to Post-Apocalypse that wasn't 28 Days Later, Mad Max or Rapture-esque. While pulling from all those series. Its a world 100 years after the Apocalypse was averted but still causes the world to live in its shadow.

This expansion seems to be the beloved darling of the community. Even topping Heavensward in most regards. But, also, personally, I feel like Shadowbringers is only good Shadowbringers for the last three levels of it. And rest is just so much set dressing and putting together the A-Team. For lack of a better comparison, 70 - 79 is our Avengers Infinity War. We get the band back together, fight off the big bad and actually almost win. But then we lose and we lose HARD and we spend a handful of quests somewhat wandering aimlessly until we resolve to go after the one who took victory away from us. That lead up, to me, is alright but the story didn't really HIT, outside of my long winded story analysis reasons, until we reach Amaurot.

Even its Post-Patches seemed to struggle to figure out what to do. Having Elidibus bounce hither and thither without the Scions really trying to stop him because, "We don't know what he is up to." which was counterproductively frustrating to me. You are literally not stopping and banishing the villain so the plot can happen. Alisaie literally kept tabs on the Warriors of Darkness because we were focusing on dealing with Nidhogg. Why the hell couldn't they have kept tracked and harassed Elidibus at least? But no, the sky starts to shower stars and then it is go time. And while To the Edge and the Seat of Sacrifice are awesome. My suspense of disbelief that our Scions would just shrug and only off screen keep tags on lesser Ascians and then just be like, "I dunno fellas, this here Elidibus is tricky." strikes me as dense. Like, this is denser than a dead star. They let things happen for the sake of it happening.

Bottomline, there is some wiggle room here. Shadowbringers may be the community's darling. But I wonder if, its just because we remember the super highs of Amaurot to Seat of Sacrifice. And kind of brush things like; the Ran'jit fights, the Supernatural problem of Lucifer's Cousin's Roommate being the big bad in Lunar Primals, Thancred's treatment of Ryne and Speedrunning him some redemption in the Amh Araeng second half.

I'm rambling now, as a whole. Did you enjoy Shadowbringers? If not why? Vote your answer and leave your opinion in the tags if you'd like.

Note: I am aware that the Post-Patch production was stunted by the COVID Pandemic. Still, I'd like your opinion about anything you felt lacking. Even with that dead whale hanging over the entire thing.

[canmom]

The themes of NieR Reincarnation

A post about the recurring elements of Drakenier and the use of branching timelines as a storytelling device. I'll be discussing spoilers for basically every DoD/NieR game.

Records

A somewhat understated recurring motif of the Drakengard/NieR series is the idea of stories or memories of humanity being stored in some massive archive.

It's an idea that first entered the series in NieR Gestalt/Replicant. Early drafts of the game focused on the idea of a world built out of stories and fairytale characters, and while most of this was cut, some remained in the Forest of Myth area.

Following NieR's obsessive love of hopping between different game genres, the story here is delivered through prose/text adventure segments. There is a sense that this area of the game exists as prose, with the characters slightly aware of narration - narration which absorbs the characters until you find a way to escape. Eventually you find out - it's rather cryptic in the actual game, but spelled out explicitly in Grimoire NieR - that it's a huge computer system storing records of the deceased humanity.

In your second visit to the area, the story focuses more on distant history, that all these stories are fragments of memory of the lost pre-apocalpytic world. You encounter a Gestalt (human soul extracted from body) that is eating the memories stored in the tree, and kill it, and for Nier and co., this is enough - but for the player, you really don't know half of what is going on.

In the story The Lost World, which was adapted for the additional Ending E added in the Replicant remake, Kainé returns to the Forest of Myth and finds the computer system expanding. She fights clones of herself before eventually speaking to a mysterious administrator and descending into a virtual world that seems like a corrupted version of her memories. But she's able to connect to her memories of NieR, Emil and Grimoire Weiss, and through that connection cause a kind of timeline collapse effect that allows her to resurrect Nier. Terms from DoD3 such as 'singularity' come back again.

In NieR Automata, the idea of the legacy of humanity becomes increasingly central. While the androids believe they are reclaiming Earth for humanity, the Machine Lifeforms' motivation is in large part driven by their efforts to pore over the records of humanity and learn how to evolve their condition, even by blind imitation. Many of the different Machine Lifeforms you encounter are shaped by their interpretations of human society. The motif of human buildings recreated in white blocks recurs at certain points.

In the final sequence of the game, you climb a tower, and inside it visit simulacra of locations from the Replicant/Gestalt. You learn that the machines have infiltrated the androids' network and downloaded basically all the information the androids have, including all their records of humanity. When the machines' 'Ark' is launched into space, it carries their memories and consciousness in data form.

The YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse raid series in FFXIV continues this idea of obsessive, blind reconstruction. The machines you fight here are now all the more explicitly connected to the apocalyptic shit in DoD; they have also been frantically creating duplicates of YoRHa android 2P, the Bunker and so on in corrupted form. Although the story here has mostly other interests, it's another recurrence of the idea of trying to recreate things that were lost.

Along with this idea of the archive comes the idea of preservation of that archive. Whether by accident or deliberate attack, the survival of the archive is not guaranteed.

This is all absolutely central to what Reincarnation is about.

Branches

The Drakenier series has played around with branching narratives pretty much from the start. It's somewhat infamous for it in fact - did you know that NieR is actually a spinoff of ending E of Drakengard, the one where you appear over Tokyo and have to do a rhythm game? Yeah, so...

Most games are fairly cagey (ha ha) about the mechanics of these branches. Indeed, although we speak of branches, the structure of these games is not really a branching one like a visual novel. The branches and 'endings' are usually unlocked sequentially.

Drakengard/Drag-on Dragoon (DoD1) is probably the closest you get to a traditional branching structure. You can unlock routes in certain missions by fulfilling certain conditions. The exact logic of these branches is not really explained - you can go back to a point before you recruit a party member and get a different branch where they're present for example. That said, it's not like a visual novel where you can be 'on' one branch or another - you can always jump to any level from any timeline.

This oddness of the branches is also lampshaded a little more in DoD3, the game that is most explicit about the nature of the branching timeline. DoD3 is, from the player perspective, a linear game. After you complete the first 'ending', you unlock new levels that appear at earlier points in the timeline, and diverging branches appear. In the later branches, the logic of the world is starting to break down. Party members who you'd recruit later in the story are in your party much earlier, in some cases suffering from amnesia, the implication being that it's an effect of the Flower's corruption.

The game is intermittently narrated by a character called Accord, an android 'Recorder' whose job is to document all the different versions of the story for an unknown party. Accord isn't supposed to intervene in the story, though she occasionally talks to protagonist Zero, and in the final D route, she decides to break the rules and save Zero. Otherwise, she's responsible for 'sealing' branches where it seems the world cannot be saved.

This is Accord:

The final cutscene of DoD3, available only after you beat the ludicrously difficult rhythm game that is the 'final song', shows a bunch of other Accords appearing and talking about what a mess this all is.

Accord's other role in the game is to sell weapons. Another series tradition running back to DoD1 is the 'Weapon Stories'. In each game, you can collect weapons, which can be upgraded through a series of four stages. Each stage unlocks another part of a story. These stories tend to be quite brief - each entry is at most a short paragraph. They also, particularly in the DoD games, tend to be comically grimdark.

DoD 3 came out after NieR Replicant/Gestalt, but in every game since then, there have been cryptic mentions of Accord. In Automata she's mentioned in a note as a weapons seller; in the updated version of Replicant she is mentioned as visiting Nier's village while the party is away on her adventures, and you see a documention that mentions the 'Accord Corporation' supplying magic weapons.

OK, so, put a pin in that, we'll come back to her later.

The side material commits further to the branching idea. The original Drakengard is established to follow from the DoD3 Story Side novel, while Branch A gives rise to the Shi ni Itaru Aka manga and the DoD 1.3 novel. The YoRHa stage plays spawned alternative versions, namely YoRHa version 1.3a and Shōjo YoRha version 1.1a, with the gender of the casts flipped. YoRHa 1.3a also has Accord in it. The anime NieR Automata ver. 1.1a also presents an increasingly diverging version of the events of the game - notably, Adam turns into a multi-armed monster.

DoD2, something of the black sheep of the franchise, was originally written to follow DoD1 ending A; later it was retconned to belong to its own branch. Just 'cause.

With me so far? ...no? Yeah, that's fair. You can read about all the details I've gathered so far here, but in short, there are lots of timeline branches, and multiple versions of several stories with small or large divergences.

Reincarnation

NieR Re[in]carnation is a gacha game that's been running for the last three years, and is going to be shut down at the end of April. At the time it came out, it was acknowledge for having unusually nice graphics for a mobile game, but rather desultory, grindy, repetitive gameplay. Which remained true throughout the game's life, so I can't exactly recommend playing Reincarnation, especially at this point.

But! I would definitely say it's worth your time to dig up the story on Youtube/Accord's Library if you're into NieR stuff. I won't be going into all the ins and outs of the story and how it all fits together in this post, but I am gonna talk about how it's structured.

NieR Reincarnation places you in a vast stone city called the Cage, calling to mind the environments in Ico. At the outset, you play as a young girl travelling with a weird ghost-like creature called Mama, tasked with restoring the memories stored in objects called 'dark scarecrows' which are being subverted and corrupted by black birds which form into various monsters.

Within each chapter of NieR Reincarnation, you get a short story in four parts, presented in a kind of cutout style, which are the four segments of a weapon story. You collect the weapon and the character.

The Cage is shaped by the content of the weapon stories somehow bleeding into the simulated setting. A character's memories can be used to restore the stories to their proper course. It is possible to interfere in small ways with the worlds of the stories.

The corruption of the stories tends to involve subverting characterisation to make them crueller, more prone to random violence etc. - or points when a character could be threatened in a narratively unsatisfying way. For example, a peace-loving runaway prince could be turned into a warlike king.

Over the course of the first arc, you discover that the girl you are playing is actually a monster who has taken the form of a human girl and, regretting it, wants to give her her embodiment back. The second half of the arc has you playing the girl trying to reunite with her monster friend; at the end, you get her own backstory as a victim of brutal prejudice. After all is said and done, both characters transform into weapons, which Mama picks up and hides away.

The second arc, The Sun and the Moon, deals with a brother and sister from present-day Tokyo. Both of them have been transported into the Cage by more of the weird ghost thingies, to participate in a strange ritual that is allegedly going to restore the Cage. The rules are highly mystical - a significant sacrifice is needed.

In the most recent arc, The People and The World, the characters all emerge from their stories as the Cage becomes increasingly corrupted. We finally get the long awaited point where these characters can interact with each other, and advance the stories from a series of tragic vignettes to something more. At the same time, we get a lot more allusions to other games in the series - from the Lunar Tear room where Emil memorialised Kainé and later 9S memorialises 2B, to a brief appearance Devola and Popola.

There's even a nod to Yoko Taro's other terminated gacha game, SINoALICE, which is going to be made into a movie oddly enough. There's a wry nod to the game being shut down.

And in the most recent chapters we find out that the Cage is actually a server on the moon containing records of humanity - 10H from A Much Too Silent Sea is one of the main characters. 'Mama' is actually the Pod tasked with overseeing the archive, and wiping 10H's memories whenever she learns too much - though it seems at some point 10H learned the truth and affirmed that she'd protect the archive anyway and they stopped wiping her memory.

Over the course of the chapter, 10H helps the gang make their escape from the moon through the androids network, to Earth. But when they get to Earth, they find themselves in a strange white city more resembling the Cage.

We'll finally get some answers, maybe, later this month. Anyway...

So, these records come from multiple diverging timelines, and they take the form of weapon stories. You have a unity of the ideas of character - weapon - memory - world. A record is simultaneously a tragic series of events, a person who can manifest inside the Cage itself, a simulated world which other people can visit, and a weapon.

In addition to the main storyline chapters and 'character stories', each character is associated with two additional 'EX' storylines, termed Dark Memories and Recollections of Dusk. Each one is a much more substantial narrative than most in the game.

Some of these EX stories clearly take place in different timelines to the first ones we encounter. Akeha's story, for example, takes place after her death in the original version. For the brother and sister from the Sun and the Moon arc, originally from present-day Tokyo, their Dark Memories take place in the backstory to NieR Gestalt/Replicant - the period where humanity is dying out to White Chlorination Syndrome and fighting monsters called the Legion. In this one, before the siblings could be torn apart by family drama and resentment, the apocalypse happens. Both of them end up coming into their own as heroic fighters. In the finale arc, the characters learn a bit about these alter egos, and it's made very explicit that this is a different timeline.

The monster Levania's Dark Memory is especially weird. It's the story of a salaryman who plays a monster called Levania in an MMORPG. His MMO character inspires him to live more bravely in the real world, and his life seems to be improving, but he is murdered by a jealous coworker. He wishes for reincarnation as he dies - classic isekai stuff. But the connection to the Levania you encounter in the main story is far from clear. Are all versions of Levania derived essentially from this man's tulpa?

The nature of the 'enemies' attacking the Cage is still not yet clear. They take the form of black birds. The birds are given a small amount of dialogue and characterisation, and they seem to not be malicious, just confused. The girl from the first arc in particular tends to interact with them sympathetically. However, they seem to be connected with the mysterious 'God' who was trying to destroy the world in DoD1, and the Angels and Flower of DoD3.

The birds are able to gathe together to manifest much larger monsters, the largest being giant elk and fish called Cursed Gods. During the finale arc, one of these becomes something that resembles the Mother Angel from DoD1 - and yes, there is a rhythm game - though mercifully a pretty easy one.

In the same arc, the character Yurie, an AI city overlord with grandiose ambitions and a loathing of imperfection attempts to download the entire history of humanity from the Cage and become a more perfect being. She succeeds, only to find the answers disappointing...

This is perhaps the closest thing we ever get to an explicit statement of what all these stories and histories add up to, but despite all this, the throughline is very strongly that these stories are essential to preserve. NieR characters exist in small groups, and it is their intense connections to these others, their treasured memories of travelling together, that motivate them to fight to preserve that thing, even if the results are destructive.

Similar themes emerge for example in Noelle's Recollection of Dusk story, which sees her travelling to preserve a place valued by her sister in crystal. And they also connect to the theme of sacrifice - the recurring ending device where the player must delete their save data in order to help someone (something echoed in Hina and Yuzuki at the altar of the sun and moon, or Levania and Fio). It's perhaps fair to say that nothing is more valued in the world of Nier than memories of a treasured person.

What about Accord? She has in fact made a brief cameo in Reincarnation already...

It seems incredibly likely that Accord originates from the Cage, and the accumulation of weapon stories is accomplished by androids like her. Definitely in the fandom there's a lot of excitement for the idea that Accord - something of a fan favourite - will show up at Reincarnation's ending.

So mystery solved, the Cage exists in the world of NieR Automata on the moon server? Not so fast - there are various discrepancies which seem to suggest that the world of the Cage exists in a separate branch than the one we see in Automata. For example, the androids are aware that the humans are dead and what remains on the moon is a huge archive of their memories; the humans seem to have survived much longer; 2B and 9S seem to have died in different circumstances. There are other oddities which fans have compiled.

And yet, despite being a divergent timeline with a much older point of divergence, some things seem to be fixed. There is still a YoRHa, still a 10H deceived about being on the moon, still a 2B and 9S.

One popular fan theory is that Reincarnation belongs to the NieR Automata anime (ver1.1a), since Adam turns into a monster there similar to the ones in Reincarnation. The black birds are reasoned to be the Machine Lifeforms, since we know they come from Earth. I'm not 100% sure of this, but maybe?

Anyway, that's basically the gist of it.

A story told through permutations

In many fictional series with a shared universe, there is an effort to maintain a consistent shared universe, so all the different events can fit into a timeline with understandable cause and effect and characters living out their lives. Even when this proves impossibly unwieldy, as in comic books or Star Wars, the attempt is made.

NieR does not really take this approach. The creators leave many details of the world, such as place names, incredibly vague - the focus is always on telling an emotional story with characters. There is, as we've seen, an almost gleeful willingness to declare another new timeline.

There is also a certain aspect of repetition, or more kindly reiteration - the same core character dynamic revisited and retold in various forms. (2B9S gets the worst of it). A character is something like a principle or ideal, and each story shines another light on that 'core'. In the earlier storylines of Reincarnation, it became quite frustrating because it seemed like e.g. the character event stories were just rehashing the same idea rather than advance the story.

However, the more accustomed I get to this style of storyline, the more I think this kinda works. It is of course quite similar to the ideas proposed towards the end of Homestuck, or to time loop stories - the idea of varying the contingent circumstances to try to better illustrate the core characterisations and dynamics.

Yoko Taro has talked about how he constructs stories from a very simple idea, typically a moment of high emotional impact at the climax, and then works backwards to figure out what sort of story could lead into that. In Reincarnation, each character gets fairly limited time to establish themselves, so they tend to be defined in terms of a pretty narrow high concept.

For example, Akeha is an assassin in a vague historical Japanese setting; her introductory story sees her decide for the first time to disobey her lord after she finds another person who has been treated as instrumentally as her. Most Akeha stories focus on her assassinations, her relationship to her retainer, and what she sacrifices to perform the duty. Only her Dark Memory lets us see an Akeha who has escaped that life - it's a simple story about preparing food, but that's given meaning by all the other Akeha stories.

Hina and Yuzuki are defined by the same traits in their flashy scifi Dark Memory stories as in the more mundane ones - Yuzuki the quiet outcast, Hina the self-sacrificing star. Fio is defined by kindness in the context of abjection, seeing the good in monsters. Levania stories are about the desire for escape and transformation. Argo is always a shitty dad who only feels alive while climbing mountains.

The staticness of these characters seems on some level to be the point - in that we are told in Hina and Yuzuki's story that the mechanism of the Cage is to sort characters into 'Light' and 'Dark' natures, and push them to inevitable conflict, even if they try to break free. In the final arc, the characters seem to finally approach some resolution as they leave their contexts behind. Given the themes of Automata in rejecting an inevitable tragic fate, similar movement may be at work. There's an ambiguity - the need to hold on to even tragic histories, vs the wish to not be confined to them. (Perhaps it's significant that it's called the Cage...)

With so many balls in the air and so many mysteries still unanswered, it's hard to figure out how Reincarnation can deliver a satisfying resolution in just one remaining chapter, but the final arc has been really cooking so who knows! But I'm also coming to appreciate it as a kind of broader lens to notice all these recurring elements and tie them together.

Stories about alternate timelines and branching narratives are very common nowadays, particularly as a tool for revisiting a nostalgic franchise. Something something effect of the fan wiki era. So I can't exactly say NieR is doing something completely unique, but I do think there is something to its fragmented, collage-like approach to putting together story elements. There's something quite honest about it - an ability to say 'these details aren't important'.

Yoko Taro always talks about himself as an entertainer rather than an artist. And probably it is true that a lot of this eemerged from an iterative design process rather than being the plan from the beginning (the first draft of NieR envisioned it as something closer to what SINoALICE ended up being, about a world of fairytale characters; NieR Automata began life as backstory for an idol project). There's definitely a strong sense that it's being improvised. And yet despite that, it does feel like it is cohering into some sort of picture, that there is an artistic throughline to all this.

Or perhaps that's just the effect of getting way too invested in something. I won't deny that NieR brings out the fan in me.

Anyway Accord had better show up next month. Guys. You've been teasing us for so long...

[astralartefact]

Paper Menphina and the Paper-thin Apocalypse Anomb, Konomb, 2Binji and 2Pinji

For anyone who missed the first post there is no coherent explanation for this.

[xivacademia]