Nier Automata Retrospective - 6 Years Later, Still One of a Kind

so you could say this video has been a long time coming no matter how much I think about it it's tough to know exactly how to start this video off near automata is a special game to what I'm sure is not a small number of people and off the top of my head there's almost an endless number of reasons as to why that is I mean a bunch of those reasons are my reasons in an indirect way it's a game that's kinda responsible for everything I'm doing on this website right now which is kind of crazy to think about anyways near automata has been making massive waves ever since it was first released it's a game that in the simplest most basic terms of what a game is is great it plays great it's got an incredible soundtrack a great story but it's also way way more than that it's the the kind of game where you finish it and go lie down for like 48 hours straight because you got to process what you just saw it's the kind of game where it has a fan base that's as active as if the game came out last week much less six years ago and yeah when I say it came out six years ago my face starts rapidly aging too it's almost hard to believe this game came out almost half a decade ago it's the kind of game that can bring the entire internet to an absolute goddamn standstill for weeks at a time because some dude recorded footage off a Nokia phone camera with the caption how get in church door I mean even though by all accounts it could absolutely have not been official the fact that there was just enough doubt that maybe it could be should speak volumes as to the kind of personality the game's Creator yokotaro injects straight into his works I mean a secret level skip feature was found in literally 2021 and considering the requirement to access it was so clown World precise with that context the whole church thing didn't seem that unbelievable my vote was on an elaborate Unity Recreation by the way but that was probably the best way to announce Community made mod Tools near automata is a game that pushes the boundaries of what a video game is it's a game that does things that aren't traditionally thought to even be possible much less a good idea but it executes them well pretty much perfectly while near automata is an excellent video game it's also an incredibly important one and I know that's a big claim I know that sounds like hyperbole but that's why I'm about to explain what I mean in this video or at least get close enough to it so come with me as I talk about why exactly this game is so special why exactly this game is stuck around in the face of so many other games coming out both back then and today two things before we start one is ever since its release near automata has kind of become a big franchise with collabs stage plays novels etc etc while these are great and I encourage anyone who's played or is interested in the game to give them a check I won't be going over them in this video a because there's so much to cover already and I don't want to hold us all here hostage for like six hours and B Because Zaya already have gone over all them I've got a playlist of near videos where I extensively catalog and explain all the outer game side content so if you're looking for that check out my channel number two is it's kinda hard to talk about this game's most unique points without getting into spoilers and everyone who's played it is definitely nodding their heads right now so there's gonna be two spoiler warnings a soft spoiler warning about halfway in and an endgame spoiler warning near the end like usual I'll give you a good heads up before I say anything too spicy so with that Preamble out of the way let's get into this I've spoken about an error referred to as the Japanese game Dark Ages in my previous videos we're in the 7th gen stagnating ideas from the major Japanese companies a struggle to adapt to emerging Technologies and one slotted creators shifting to a clinical number focused perspective led to a solid five or so years where a lot of confidence in the Japanese side of the gaming industry was a bit shaken great even fantastic Japanese games were still coming out but a lot of the traditional mainstream players were getting in on that appeal to a western audience for big sales numbers poison which led to new entries and beloved franchises dropping out as emotionless potemkin Village style experiences that made most people check out well if that was the Japanese game Dark Age early 2017 was a period I can confidently call the goddamn Renaissance think back on it for a sec Persona 5 Yakuza 0 breath of the wild re7 Neo all back-to-back bangers All released in the same early 2017 time frame and more importantly all games that were absolutely unapologetically quote Japanese don't get me wrong I like Horizon zero Dawn but sorry fellow with this lineup you didn't stand a chance funny how the lion the Japanese gaming industry is dead became almost unheard of after this period and it was smack dab in the middle of this period that nier automata would also see its release on paper near automata sounds like the kind of game I would come up with what if you took this Niche series with Incredible storytelling and World building but literally painful gameplay and gave it to the kings of character action combat Platinum Games it sounds almost too good to be true like something I wished up in a dream but to be fair my dream game from the years 2010 to like 2018 was just Platinum Games crossed literally anything so you know OG near was great but anyone who's played it knows its gameplay amounts to find the good move and press only that button until you win AKA find the Phoenix beer and press triangle till credits well near automata made big plans to Buck that trend on the gameplay front Platinum Games had already proven their pedigree with Bayonetta 1 and 2 Metal Gear Rising Anarchy Reigns Etc so of course they could bring that to near automata then on the other side of the table you had the former caveat staff at Square Annex director yokotato composer keichi okabe producer yosuke Saito etc for those who don't know yokotaro is kind of like a hideo Kojima level of alter status where every game he works on is packed to the brim with his signature style and while his games are incredibly unique they're basically the nichest of the niche like I'm pretty sure the most successful one prior to automata was OG near which only sold about 500k copies over 10 years and speaking of Platinum Games wasn't exactly a frequent Milli seller either despite releasing practically all of my favorite 7th gen Games platinum never had a massive financial success they always joked about being one failure away from shutting their doors which is why despite me not agreeing with their current Trend chasing games as a service faff I hope babylon's fall doesn't literally kill them sales figures aren't exactly super available but I think their most successful game has been Bayonetta around 2 million or so I mean the wonderful 101 sold like five 5K copies in its first week like four digits 5K and 79k after a year but you know three of those copies are mine so I did my part yeah all incredible games but the character action genre isn't exactly the most financially lucrative one out there which is why I can say without exaggeration it is absolutely insane to me that as of this writing near automata a double punch of niches has broken seven million copies sold with wonderful 101's lifetime sales of 79 000 copies that means it is 88.6 wonderful 101s like that's nuts also please go play wonderful 101 it's really good I swear and it's on switch now so you don't got an excuse this game has been an absolute mirror circle of a success so much so that Platinum sodeki kamiya himself literally credits near automata for saving the company and that was back when it was only at the 1.5 million Mark now it's a multimedia franchise it's got a switch Port which is apparently a miracle Port that runs flawlessly and in about a month or so it's getting an anime this game was lightning in a bottle which is why it's kind of a shame that yokotaro hasn't really had a big game ever since he made one of square enix's new household names don't get me wrong I like voice of cards but they don't really have the same hard-hitting yokotaro feel like near and automata do I think they kind of took the piss by releasing three of them in a 12-month time span but that's neither here nor there look if that's what he wants to make I'm happy for him I'm just saying I'm looking forward to his next big project is all also I'm settling the automata versus automata debate once and for all right here right now please take a look at this two second clip the Creator says it that way so I'm saying it that way expected Counterpoint he's Japanese so it doesn't count my Counterpoint you can render both automata and an elongated automata in Japanese and I'm willing to believe that they at least put some thought into their game's titles so I'm still going for automata so now that we've established what near automata is it's time to establish what near automata is about after pressing start on the menu you're hit with what has become a pretty iconic quote foreign shooting section where your entire Squad gets taken out one by one you play as a sole survivor the Android 2B and you're tasked with taking out a machine Target in this Factory near automata takes place in the year 11945 in a world dominated by a proxy war specifically the 14th machine war what happened to the other 13 excellent question my candid friend don't worry about it you might think that that year number 11 945 is a bit on the nose well that goes double when you look into it a bit and find out that the 14th machine war started in 11 939 right off the bat the game is trying to draw parallel or at least invoke the memory of what we know as one of Humanity's most defining conflicts I see where you're going with this you Sly man you so thousands of years ago aliens invaded Earth and using their Advanced machine army they forced Humanity off the planet to take refuge on the moon but Humanity wasn't exactly without a fighting force of their own they had the Androids and to a greater extent jorha the group 2B is affiliated with these Androids fight for Humanity their creators to one day liberate their Homeland and return them to their rightful place however like I said this war started thousands of years ago and it's very clear that both sides are being attritioned into a fine paste the Androids especially they constantly receive headpats and messages of encouragement from the Council of Humanity on the moon heck even their salute references their undying affection for Humanity everything they do is in service of this fractured ghost of humanity that they've never met but it keeps them moving forward it's the only thing that does it's tied to their very purpose of creation their very purpose of being and that's outlined in a bunch of different pieces of side content but it's heavy spoilers so believe that for now after fighting through the first encounter 2B is nearly bested by a piece of construction equipment before she's Saved By The Game's secondary protagonists 9s it's clear that these two have definitely for sure never met before and we get a lot of World building and personality development carried on the backs of their dialogue in this early section the character interaction in this game is good like seriously good and you can bet this is getting brought up one or two more times in this video we learned Android aren't supposed to have or at least shouldn't display their emotions something 9s is evidently pretty awful at we get insights into 2b's personality like when she asks nainest to refer to her by her name instead of man which in Japanese is her asking him not to affix son at the end of her name remember this funny thing tip it for later the game does a great job naturally integrating in its exposition to get the player familiar with this complex world without needing to throw 40 minutes of cutscenes at them before they even get to use sword on robot eventually reach their target a massive Goliath class machine that serves as the player's first real challenge by working together the pair managed to barely squeeze out a w but it turns out not to be enough as multiple more emerge from underneath the water knowing they're pretty much for lack of a better word screwed they pull out their black boxes small devices every your high Android is implanted with they Clank them together which causes a massive explosion that destroys them and the surrounding Goliath machines and the screen Fades to Black a lot of games do a tutorial Mission protagonist fake out something like Final Fantasy 12 comes to mind but that isn't what's going on here to be seemingly unharmed wakes up on an Android orbital station known as the bunker and meets up again with 9s although while you're still the same to be he isn't the same 9s he only managed to upload 2b's data to the bunker before the explosion so while 2B retains her memories of the events who 9 is ETC to him they're basically meeting again for the first time a fact that seems to the stress to be greatly wonder why and for someone who sticks hard to the emotions our prohibited line she sure got upset when she saw 9s damaged on top that Goliath 15 minutes ago what's that about if you know you know but what I'm trying to say is this game is a lot of subtle details thrown in for people doing repeat playthroughs anyways what the game is done here is quickly establish what exactly the rules of death are for our protagonists in the near Universe obviously as Androids they don't die in a traditional sense their data can always be uploaded and stuck into a new body but that data needs to be synced to a server first I mean if you accidentally delete a local text document on your PC you ain't gonna find it sitting safe on your Google drive if you know what I mean near automatos thematically consistent with these rules when it comes to game overs fast traveling Etc and it's cool how it gives context to these mechanics that most video games have but they have them because they're a video game like fast travel doesn't really have any context in your average game it's just something you do you close your eyes and all of a sudden whoa I'm somewhere else now wow but in near automata fast travel is contextualized by you transferring your Consciousness data into another body again good consistent thematic World building we're already off to a hell of a start I like when games tie the game over State into the world and narrative I mean it's hard as hell to do but it's better than just pretending you went to the game over Dimension and came back fine like everyone remembers hollowing in Dark Souls hell they even worked getting frustrated and quitting into that narrative but we're not talking about that game today so we'll leave that for now but I am gonna bring Dark Souls up again for another thing later back to our plot 2B and 9s get an assignment to find a your ha contact that's been working with another Android group The Resistance remember this tidbit it's important the pair fly down to earth and after a short shooting section arrive in the game's Main and probably most iconic area the city ruins the overgrown dilapidated remnants of Tokyo they head off towards the resistance camp and the game begins proper which means it's time to talk about the gameplay considering all the lip service I gave to Platinum Games a few minutes ago you probably won't be too surprised when I say it's pretty damn good A little backstory I wasn't 100 sure I was gonna get this game back in the day I mean I was definitely gonna get it at some point but I didn't really buy many games at full price back then still don't while I thought the first near was fantastic I loved its story and its characters and considering automata was a game set 8 000 years or so later in that game's Universe I wasn't sure how the plot thread could be drawn between the two games yeah okay I get how wrong I was now but you know back then I couldn't exactly tell the future right that all changed in December 2016 when the near automata one two zero one six one one two eight demo came out I'm not memorizing those numbers for the line by the way you're getting that one wrong I don't even think I finished the demo I got halfway through hit the pause button and close the game I'd seen enough I was done I didn't need to play anymore that brief 15-minute session told me everything I needed to know I booted up my PC and pre-ordered the game on Amazon back when they were doing the 20 off all new game pre-orders thing anyways near automata's gameplay is pretty standard Platinum fair with a few unique twists thrown in the mix you've got the expected light and heavy attacks ranged attacks dodging The Works character action games are like fighting games which is why they're a different genre from beat em ups by the way don't at me you're incentivized to maximize the amount of damage you can do per opportunity to deal damage that you have if that makes sense while you can create multiple opportunities to deal a small amount of damage at a time there's no matching that big dopamine rush you get when you pull off big combo to this end near automata outfits you with multiple combo strings including mid combo weapon Loadout switches you can use to keep the momentum going nier automata also has a relatively High emphasis on Range attacks from your companion pod you can hold down the right bumper for a pretty much endless string of bullets that'll cancel out enemy shots as well as deal damage image or press left bumper for a powerful attack that goes on cooldown as for defensive mechanics near automata Sports a pretty hype Dodge mechanic you can hold down the button to extend the Dodge into a little drift and if you dodge at just the perfect time you'll get an opportunity to do a counter attack which feels hmm I wrote smack slips in my script but to be honest I feel a little gross making that noise so uh I'm just gonna say it smack slips the window is a bit more generous than you'd probably expect it to be and there's no cooldown on how many times you can Dodge in a row but that doesn't really take anything away from the feeling of satisfaction in fact I'd say it's even more satisfying when you pull off multiple of these Dodges in a row so yeah the basic combat is relatively simple but as expected of a platinum game there's a high skill ceiling I think the perfect example that illustrates this philosophy is your ranged attack you can fire while locked on but that increases your bullet spread so while you won't have to worry about aiming while throwing out your regular attacks you're not outputting optimal damage on the other hand if you're not locked on have to keep your reticle centered on the enemy but the bullets come out in a perfect straight stream this trade-off between precision and ease of use is an example of one of those small almost insignificant but really smart ideas that shows how much thought the developers put into the combat system overall battles are an intricate dance between you and your opponents and are really fun and satisfying which is important considering how much you'll play this game Platinum games games are designed to be replayed endlessly as you're always striving for a better rank near automata swaps out this character-based approach for a more RPG style structure so while you probably won't replay it solely for the gameplay sections as much it is factually bulkier than the average character action game and when I say it has an RPG style structure that's because it definitely leans on the RPG part of the whole action RPG thing it has going on it incorporates leveling up into its mechanics which might seem like a strange choice for a genre that relies so heavily on a precise balance to create a challenge one small nitpick I have for near is that it does suffer a bit by being unable to give the player this precise balance normal difficulty is and this explanation is going to sound like it's fresh out of a fever dream but stick with me too easy when it's easy and a little bit tedious when it's not you probably won't be challenged too much on normal difficulty what would there being a feature to ought to use healing items when you get low and being able to outpace the main story's level by just slightly veering off the main path every now and again okay you're thinking there are two obvious solutions to this the first is to play on hard difficulty which is something I too would normally do but near automata's hard difficulty feels almost like a mistake in how hard it is it's less Metal Gear Rising normal versus hard and more like Devil May Cry normal versus Hell and Hell okay then solution two is just a purposely under level yourself on normal to increase the challenge but this doesn't increase the challenge as much as it just increases the time it takes to kill enemies which will eventually start making things seem tedious and also you know you'd miss out on the side content it feels bad in the same way hard difficulty is sloppily implemented in a lot of other games where hard just equals bumping enemy numbers up it doesn't up the feel-good reward from overcoming The increased challenge as much as it just feels like wasted time maybe an RPG system is just fundamentally at odds with tight action focused gameplay you can certainly argue that's true the wonderful 101 doesn't have an exp Bar for a reason but then I look at the soul series and how they can consistently provide what feels like a perfectly balanced challenge while also integrating RPG mechanics is it a hard balance to strike yeah probably a super hard one so I can't really fault near automata for not getting it perfect I want to clarify it's not that the game consistently feels way too easy it's just that there are some points where you can't help but think that something should have been a little harder than it actually was which is enough to rob you of a little payoff while it may seem like I'm harping on this point a lot let's put it this way if the biggest criticism I have of near automata is that the difficulty about balances out of whack sometimes that should put into perspective how much other stuff this game Nails absolutely perfectly that said there's one criticism with near automata's combat I hear a lot that I take heavy offense to and that's the claim that it's too simple that it doesn't have the depth that other Platinum games like Metal Gear Rising do and that's kinda true while you do have light and heavy strings integrating them together usually only has a single finisher per weapon and while it does have a few button combinations like jump immediately followed by light attack for a launcher it's definitely a lot less than platinum's other dedicated character action games yes overall if you line the combo list and button combination moves of Bayonetta and near automata side by side it would look like automata pales in depth by comparison but that statement alone requires putting like 16 asterisks beside it and willfully ignoring a bunch of other mechanics to properly put near automata's combat in perspective with its character action game Piers I replayed the Bayonetta series wonderful 101 and fans made the MGR video earlier this year so I'd have a complete image in my mind to draw off of I mean now that I'm looking at it literally every single video I made this year except for a single one is either an action RPG or an action game so uh really showing off my tastes here first off I think a lot of this simple gameplay misconception comes from a misunderstanding of weapon combo levels which is a little Fair because the game doesn't outright explain them to you aside from leveling up your character you can also upgrade your weapons in near automata upgrading them provides you with a stat increase standard stuff but it also does a few other things the first is it unlocks a piece of that weapon story which are usually some super well written short stories that are a standard part of a yokotaro game some of these are genuine good pieces of writing that hammer home a particular pointer theme I really like cruel Oaths in particular when you start near automata the combos might seem a bit simple and that's because by leveling up your weapons you unlock further combo paths with them as shown by their primary and secondary weapon levels only having a two-hit combo that looks like it's lacking a finisher on your secondary weapon seems lame but that's because you're meant to level it up to develop its combo string so if you didn't know about this system which from keeping up with six years of automata discourse it seems like not a lot of people do I think it's easy to miss it and assume that's all you get which also leads into another unsung hero of the combat variety the amount of weapons you have at your disposal there are four main weapon types in the game sword Greatsword Lance and fist each of these weapon types has a different combo string depending on if you equip it as a light or heavy weapon which comes out to eight separate distinct strings but in addition to that remember that single mix string I mentioned earlier that's different depending on the combination of weapons you have equipped I'm not good at maths but that's a lot of different moves and considering you can swap between two loadouts on the fly as easily as Dante can switch weapons in double maker I5 I'm not quite sold on automata's combat being as simple as people make out which leads to my last point the chips which is where near automata's combat goes from varied to IDK my man just do whatever you want in near automata you can equip a Loadout of chips to your character these chips can have a variety of different effects from straight stat upgrades to entirely new mechanics with these chips you can create your own variety of play Styles no matter how gimmicky they might seem you want to do some Fringe high risk High reward counter lifesteal builds go for it you want a spec full into arranged attacks and play the game like third person nicaruga yeah sure if you want hey you want to literally have been at a witch time I know I sure as hell do and there's a chip for that if you need to learn how to talk to a lady ask your mum you want to be riding and use parries as your defensive mechanic why the hell not I bet there's even some weird ass Tech from the Activision licensed Platinum TMNT game in here I could go on and on with this but my point is while on the surface nirada Mata might not seem like it has the depth of a lot of other Platinum character action games the playstyles of each of those games are pretty much all found within your automata also I gotta ask the age-old question can 2B Dodge offset the answer is yes all right I'm sold automata's solid gameplay definitely keeps it Feeling Good from start to finish and if you're getting bored of the same playstyle you can basically turn it into a different game the only thing that could improve the experience is if the game had a ranking system but I know I might be asking for too much there it's just too open and encounters are too frequent it would be hard to design a ranking system that works for everything without making it feel tacked on I just love ranking systems you know yeah there's got to be an action RPG out there with this kind of structure that has a ranking system but none are coming to mind right now let me know if I'm missing something in the commentos the thing with these chips though is that you lose them on death well sort of at least like I said this game establishes very early some specific rules about how death Works in this setting and that isn't just for story purposes it's the same for the gameplay as well if you get a game over you leave a Dark Souls style Body behind and if you recover it you get your chipset back if you die on the weight of that body which is uh a lot more likely since you have to do it without your Loadout then they're gone like gone gone if I had to say one mechanic feels a bit out of place in this game it's this one you can also pick up the bodies of other Fallen players when other players die they leave behind a body and message in your world as well and you can either retrieve them to gain some money health and limited access to their chipset or revive them to have a little AI buddy follow you around for a bit again I had it in my head that I didn't really get why this mechanic had to be here was it just because it was the hashtag style of the time when it hit me that it thematically makes a lot of sense to be finding these other your high Androids out in the world in a setting that involves a basically endless war it makes sense that the Fallen would be strewn across the battlefields and it makes sense that when you find them you literally use them as tools this war isn't about the individuals anymore it's only about what use they can provide when I stopped seeing this as them trying to copy the current trends and thought about what they were trying to say with this mechanic I gotta say I get it that said mechanically gameplay wise I don't think it's got a great implementation and I'd say recovering your own bodies a bit badly implemented TBH especially with the chip permalos thing but I see what they were going for speaking of hashtag trends of the time structure wise I've seen near automata described in a bunch of different places as an open world RPG I don't really agree I mean it kind of is if you look at it from the right angle but the Platinum Games website says it's an open world RPG so I don't know maybe I'm the one that's full of [ __ ] it's structured in a very similar way to how the first near is which is structured in a very similar way to how something like Zelda Twilight Princess is you got your big open Hub area that branches out into more linear side areas which you'll go through as part of the main story I wouldn't call that an open world but I've clearly been outvoted here but let's go back to the first thing I said no not the long time coming thing from the intro the thing I said about near 10 seconds ago the reason the way this game is structured feels so much like near is because fun fact it's the same world or at least as parallels to it you'll probably see what I mean if I point it out but the factory is the junk Heap the desert is uh the desert and so on one of niron a lot of strengths is that its world has such a strong sense of personality you feel like you're experiencing a story just by wandering around it which has helped a lot by the character dialogue I could list a bunch of examples to try and convince you of my point but let me just move the queen into a Checkmate position I think I just have to say the words to be in 9s's conversation about a T-shirt and everyone who's played the game that's watching right now will immediately know how strong near automata's ability to turn a simple in-game area into an interesting plot point is and you're gonna get used to near automata's world because you'll be seeing it a lot optimistically you can call this Smart Level reuse pessimistically you'd call it backtracking I'd say near automata leans on the better side of this sure you go back to areas a few times but it's never usually like the same place multiple times in a row you get a good variety as you play out the main story but of course sometimes a developer can't account for exactly where and when a player will visit different areas if they stray off the main path and you know what that means because of course what would a hug-based not open worlds open world RPG be without side quests because of near automata structure which we'll talk about in a bit the pace you get these side quests is kind of lopsided it can be a bit overwhelming the amount of side quests you get at like the four hour mark of the game you get access to most pretty early at basically the same time and the game shows you all available side quests on your map as well your map will fill up with red dots faster than if you jumped in a swamp covered in honey it can be a bit of a sensory overload I'm not gonna lie I was kinda tired of open world game style side quests by 2017. a lot of games would stuff themselves with boring throw away cookie cutter side quests made to dump truck a bunch of halfway worthless items on the player and pad out run time for a back of the box quote over 50 hours of exciting gameplay yeah how about I take a one-off your game score for every Tower I'm forced to climb it was because of this late 2010s open world fatigue apathy that I made the small brain decision in 27 17 that maybe I don't need to bother with near automata side quests then back in 2017 I did one side quests and was like okay that one was good but surely the next one can't be that high quality again then I did another one and I was like okay but surely the next one okay but the next one all right fine but the next one can't be alright I'm not gonna lie they're not all bangers but a lot do a good job at telling a compelling short story to the player I mean the setting is perfect to do just that like how about this one this Android asks you to help him pick up some chips you found out who's stealing them from your Hub but you can choose to let them have them anyway then later you find out it's because he's obsessed with having a family and use them to build a little sun while you can empathize with his desire it's kind of unsettling the way he went about it his creation begs you not to inform your ha about what he's done and let them live in peace but you can't be sure whether or not it genuinely feels this way or if it's been programmed to or how about the pacifist machines that disconnected themselves from the network and are encountering for the first time what it means to be an individual it's hard to truly reach a mutual understanding with another person especially if you only learned what those words meant like a week ago there's this one Quest where a robot mother drives her son to run away [Music] it's real ass almost struggles and when you reunite them they say maybe two people can never truly understand each other but that doesn't mean they shouldn't try the side quest even has an alternate ending if you mess up and let the Kid die and it's uh not exactly a happy ending anyways one of my faves is a side quest about the robot who pretends to be stupid to hustle people I like him he really speaks to me to sum it up if you're gonna play near automata don't skip the side quests at least like 85 or so are well worth your time the team said their inspiration for the side quests came from The Witcher 3 and my sense of time must be running backwards because I almost did a double take when I realized The Witcher 3 came out two years before near automata and that design goal makes sense The Witcher 3 has some substantial ass side quests I just looked a few up and was like wait that was a side quest I could have sworn that was part of the main path the entirety of Last Wish was optional the conclusion to the Bloody Baron storyline was optional bro what were they thinking do they know how many people might have missed that and ding ding that's the point like The Witcher 3 niranamada isn't afraid to let you miss content it had enough confidence in the player to let them seek it out too many games are so terrified of a player missing something literally everything substantial will be shoved into the main path which sounds fine but that usually means the side content is exclusively populated by well garbage starting to make sense why I was so exhausted by open world side stuff when near automata came out huh I get it games are expensive single side quests can cost tens of thousands of dollars in worker hours to produce it's hard for a developer to imagine that something they painstakingly created might only be seen by a small percentage of players but the thing is near automata side quests work because they're not pieces of throwaway content that were made because quote this genre needs side quests they're compelling and well written in their own rights and the way they're presented as you know side quests mean they can tell their own story without interfering with the game's overall pacing as for visuals well this game ends will run at a solid 60 frames per second on the PS4 and Xbox One so some sacrifices did have to be made I think the most noticeable graphical foible is the texture pop in sometimes you have to practically nose kiss a wall before the detail decides to show up it's not a deal breaker but like you literally cannot not notice it also by today's standards the visuals don't hold up the best it's really noticeable in the low detail on the foliage in the rocks in the desert the resolution on consoles is low but don't even get me started on the whole PC debacle where to get proper Graphics settings you had to download a mod to fix it until they finally patched the PC port in July of 2021 you know only a Solid 4 years after release the patch totally broke the game if you had the previous mod installed by the way but that kind of sounds like a me problem okay did you get all that good because that's pretty much all the complaining I have about the game's visuals and music some concessions to hit 60 frames per second on console and the slightly busted PC Port of a Japanese game from 2017 which to be fair means it's an above average PC Port of a Japanese game from 2017. what this game lacks in raw visual Fidelity it makes up for an incredible visual design which in my book is the better of the two I've already gushed about the environments but the distinct color palette of each one will really makes them stand out from each other the cold sterile Black and Whites of the bunker the Lush greens of the forests the rust-stained Browns of the factory there's even a slight color filter that displays over your character whenever you go into a different area I also really like the liminal space feel of areas like the copied City in the tower hey that's a thing that's trending right now right the design goal for the environments was to make them feel like places in the real world despite being places that don't exist in the real world near automata had a ton of artists hard at work to make sure not only the world design was perfect for the setting but the characters were as well and yeah the character design is pretty on point you could go like why make Android have big bum and you're not wrong but Focus here near automata Android ass is the gateway drug to an existential crisis you heard it here first quote me but I love how the designs of both the your high Androids and the robots convey so much about the world they're full of these minor touches that really make them stand out and I mean their designs have basically become iconic all you need to see is the cloth visor and there's nowhere else for your mind really to go put on the blindfold to hit the pinata more like sick near reference happy birthday Timmy I like how the robots have a very clear meal from near replicant design Motif but you've also got some really complex ones like the leader of the pacifist faction Pascal where you can clearly see the mechanics that govern his movement at work from behind and that's not even to mention the attention to detail that went into this game I love how the weapons float behind your back and seem to act almost independent from your body when you swing them my favorite thing is how your character will have a different animation for returning to their neutral stance depending on what attack you end the combo string in considering the amount of weapons in this game and how different each animation can be you can tell a lot of work went into this if you slow down the footage and just watch the attack animations play out you can tell how intricate they are and how your entire moveset has this kind of flow to it I know I'm gushing about simple stuff like animation but this is where Platinum Games really shines and I appreciate it and speaking about gushing it's time I talk about the music technically speaking some of the best and most unique sound design in gaming Metal Gear Rising might still be the king of in-fight dynamic boss battle music but the way near automata implements its Dynamic soundtrack is fire as hell each track is kinda like a layer cake first you have the foundation which is usually a low-key subtle back beat then as what you're doing changes it'll start adding new layers and new instruments to that Foundation completely changing the feel of the track then finally when [ __ ] really hits the fan the truck will get lyrics added to it and it just feels so good the lyrics are in a made-up language but I'm sure if you've played the game you can picture exactly what they sound like in your head so yeah technically speaking the music is great and the way it's implemented was really smart but none of this matters if the music isn't good so that's the big question then isn't it is the music good now look a bit off topic but I'm gonna get real with you all for a second if you've watched some of my pre-game retrospective stuff or have been around this channel from the beginning it's no secret that this is a bit of of a high pressure video and the thing is right I can't remake a video once I press upload to put it out that's it I've got one shot to do it right and tell the narrative about this game I want to tell to convey my thoughts about it to you the audience if I remember a massively important point a week after upload that's it I've gotta sit with that forever if someone drops a comment and I'm like oh man I can't believe I forgot to talk about that then I gotta hold that L for life I'm not trying to Garner sympathy or anything it's just you know reality it's a fundamental part of video making so for a long while I wondered whether or not I should even make this video whether or not I even could make this video If I Could properly shape my thoughts to talk about this series and long form and do it justice I always think what if I missed some integral detail that made it stick with me so hard all those years ago or even worse what if I know what that detail is but it doesn't hit the me of today the same way I think these are relatable worries that can apply to pretty much anything not just video making the thing is it's true I I had all these thoughts in my head but then I legit listened to five seconds of any song from this game and all of a sudden every reason why it's so special every reason I love it just comes flooding back I remember after uploading the binary domain video before I was 100 sure I was gonna commit to this game I came across a clip of the song Kaine salvation on Twitter yeah not technically from this game but it is in this game so don't get at me it counts all I had to do was listen to 30 seconds of it and I was like nah I remember exactly what made this game so great we're doing this it's so unlike anything else it's the ultimate memory trigger the way the robot chantic is integrated into birth of a wish the upbeat yet somewhat sad sound of the city ruins theme I even liked the dumb Supermarket remix of Emil's theme he sings when he drives around by far my favorite clip from the soundtrack is from the Japanese version of weight of the world we're at the very end the Way Marina kawano delivers that last book like she's literally on the verge of tears incredible [ __ ] man hits you like a punch to the gut I used to listen to that track at the gym and it always got me to push out that one extra rep of course this music is all made possible by The Dream Team at monaka headed by long time near composer keichi okame fun fact a monaka is this Japanese snack where it's usually a Zuki bean paste but also a lot of the time ice cream surrounded by these two wafer things would recommend another fun fact keichi okabe and Emmy Evans who did a lot of vocal tracks for near automata did the soundtrack for uh some Japanese early morning soap opera of all things look if I gotta bear this curse knowledge no you do too so this is where I dropped my soft spoiler warning what I'm about to talk about is like a fundamental thing about near automata that I'd be genuinely shocked if someone didn't know about in current year around our sun 2022 but you know I ain't trying to ruin anyone's day you feel skip to here if you don't want to know what happens in the first half or so of the game wonder what the percentage on that one was at least you're still here yeah you anyways you head to the desert area where you find a bunch of machines that are um doing things that you wouldn't expect machines to do let's put it that way 2B and 9s don't really question what's going on though they just pull out their swords and start junking the little toasters on Mass I don't know after defeating a handful a bunch of machines combined to create a new machine that looks suspiciously human after killing it another machine bursts out of its chest making 2B and 9s flee the scene after a bit more exploring around you find out that the aliens the Android's Enemy Number One have been dead for thousands of years the machines have gone Rogue and turned on their masters now being led by Adam and Eve the two humanoid machines from the desert similar to near replicant this game can be cleanly divided into sections the desert fighting the boss robot Simone in the theme park taking out the Engels robots in the city which leads you to finding the aliens heading to the forest where you fight against the kingdom of robots and meet the enigmatic yorha runaway Android A2 but it's heading to the flooded area of the city and fighting the massive Kaiju robot grun where the story takes a big turn 2B is separated from 9s who's been brought by Adam to the underground copied City Adam is obsessed with Humanity what drives them their purpose for existence he comes to the conclusion that Humanity was driven by violence and it's only by disconnecting himself from the robot Network can he risk his life to truly feel what it means to be human you can't exactly blame the guy T-minus five seconds after being born you a your high Android in the closest current analog to humanity in his eyes immediately started throwing wrists so whose fault was it fundamentally speaking he isn't exactly wrong life being given meaning by death is a common theme in philosophy and that's one way to interpret what he's saying but that's neither here nor there what is here and there is that this gamble doesn't play out well for him and 2B kills him and rescues 9s after one more return to the factory to meet a group of cultist robots a section that contains some of my favorite scenes in the game foreign the machines connected to the network all go berserk at the same time from Eve's grief from losing his brother Adam so to put him down by hacking into him but 9s gets infected by yokotaro's favorite side content get out of jail free card if you know you know the logic virus this means 2B has to end him herself it's not death per se but remember the rules this world established about an Android dying 9s can't upload its infected data to the bunker which means while he will survive and be remade it won't be the him he is now the him who has memories with 2B the self being separate from the body 2B finishes the job and drops a curious line it always ends like this before it's revealed that a part of 9s's Consciousness was left over in the machine Network meaning he's fine all's good credits roll you might be thinking to yourself that was pretty good A solid game but you might not really see why people love it so much yeah sure it was an engaging story but nothing mind-blowing a bit short all in all and there seems to be so many questions left unanswered what happens now with the aliens being dead and all what about A2 she seemed like a major character but you meet her like once I'm willing to bet that there's some people out there who hit these credits and then put the game back on the shelf forever but no no we're not even close to done here when the credits finish rolling you get smacked with this screen near automata aggressively encourages you to do a new playthrough now you might think this is optional it's not I'm not asking the game isn't either I know this isn't standard but by the time you hit credits on ending a you're not even like 30 done with this game's major plot Revelations for anyone who's played a single Drake and garter near game before they know what the deal is but near automata is the first one to be so heavy-handed with asking you to hit that new game button like hey haha you really want to hit that new game button signed at the bottom by square nxpr not the games director yokotaro I'll bet the execs at Square Enix were like listen here you robot head [ __ ] we are not spending 16 million to let you make this game just to have the majority of players only see a quarter of it the ending thing seems like it's a bit of a hurdle for some people and that's because on paper it doesn't sound like the most enticing concept I've spoken to people who are like yeah the game looks good but I don't want to play a game I have to beat four times technically near automata has 26 endings but other than a to e the rest are joke ones but that's not really important although I'm sure we all know someone who's gone an hour without saving and then eating the fish but was me that that someone was me okay everybody yes you have to roll credits on near automata five times to finish the game but I think the point that should be emphasized is that you're not doing the same thing every time I mean calling them playthroughs almost feels like a misnomer to me it's more like you're playing through a game and the credits pop up Midway for some reason after route B you see a cutscene cut like a trailer and you're like okay near automata finished this must be setting up for a sequel or something no just hit that continue button again that's still this game for simplicity's sake when describing to other people how near automata handles its endings I always use the Resident Evil 2 analogy route a is Leon a route B is player B and then route C is like popping in Resident Evil 3. and speaking of Claire B it's time to talk about a part of the game I've seen a lot of people claim as their least favorite route B aka the 9s playthrough I think the dislike for this route comes down to two things in particular and I'll address each and how I feel about them the first is the gameplay 9s plays a little differently from 2B instead of having heavy attack strings on the triangle button he can instead hack into enemies this plays out like a little shooting game where you have to place a ship and shoot down a few enemies and then a core if you succeed the enemy you hacked will explode in an AOE burst that damages other enemies nearby if you hack an enemy that hasn't noticed you you can either take control of it directly or subjugate it to have it fight for you these shooting sections might seem out of place in a third person character action game but the near Series has had a long tradition of flirting around with multiple genres I mean who can forget the literal Diablo level from near replicant and basically half of automata is a shooting game I'd say the two gameplay styles are mixed together pretty well for the most part but I'm not gonna lie the grunt shooting section drags on a bit too long that [ __ ] exhausts me anyways the main complaint is that because hacking is a hard start and stop from the regular gameplay it breaks the pace of fights on top of this without having a heavy attack button nidus's moveset is simpler overall but I gotta defend my boy nines here despite having a gold medal Contender for the worst Dodge attack in a game where you're frequently dodging I don't think it's fair to call his moveset brain dead simple yeah he doesn't have a heavy attack button like to be but he has something to be doesn't have pause combos this combined with again being able to switch between two weapons on the Fly I found 9s's moveset to be pretty substantial not quite as complex as 2B but you also play as him for a relatively shorter period as for whether the hacking minigame is a pace breaker I can't say 100 the best I can do is list what I liked slash didn't like about it and let you come to your own decision I think it's great as a quick cut to a different style of gameplay I like how when you use it you get an 8 bit rendition of the song that's currently playing in the background no matter what that song is I dislike how it's essentially a get out of jail free card you can spam it against enemies that are way above your level range and as long as you're even half decent to Twitch I am not and could still clear them no problem you can basically win any fight as long as your patience holds out it's great when you pick out an opportunity where an enemy jumps into the middle of a crowd of its homeboys you hack in then it blows up half the room but it's not great when you're just rehacking the same boss for the eighth time part two of the criticism towards the 9s playthrough is that it's the playthrough in the game that shares the most similarities so the one that came directly before it it's the only playthrough in the game that repeats events you're just seeing the same events through 9s's perspective so it stands to reason it would be the most similar in the one that's most likely to feel like you're doing the same [ __ ] over again but nir automata doesn't just cheaply throw a second play throughout you to pad out run time the whole game was built with this structure in mind no [ __ ] right but let me tell you what I mean if route a presents you with Concepts route B is where you're made to understand those Concepts like how 9s has to be told by 2B not to call her 2B son again because to him they're meeting for the first time like how the actions you took during 2b's boot sequence didn't say they were being recorded for the funny meme they were actually recorded and are played back to you on this playthrough like how robots won't attack you until you attack them first a direct callback to how Shades aren't aggressive to you until you attack them first and near replicate it's just they're portrayed to the player as an enemy a threat so most people won't notice and immediately go in it's a video game that's the bad guy swing the sword what are you waiting for even A2 isn't hostile to you until you make the first swing that is unless 9s chooses violence there are chests you can find during the 2B playthrough that have seemingly no purpose but you subconsciously tuck a little mental note of their location somewhere in the old brain cave then you find out you can open them as 9s it's a subtle way of getting you to pay attention more to the world around you you notice even subtler stuff like how 2B and 9s are sent to Earth to investigate The Disappearance of a yorha resistance contact and how that plot thread gets um forgotten like I paid extra attention this run through the game just to make sure but uh no I I think yokotaro forgot that one on the drawing room floor somewhere that and while the 9s playthrough is similar it's not the same and while that sentence sounds like I've misunderstood what a thesaurus does It's actually an important distinction even the camera perspective difference when 2B first meets 9s seems to highlight this change there's new content I mean 9s isn't with 2B the whole time after all he was off doing his own stuff at some points even the character interaction Dynamics are different 9s is a different operator from 2b6o who is uh totally moe by the way foreign [Music] [Music] contrast to six O's bubbly personality the 9s 21-0 Dynamic is basically the opposite with him trying to evoke emotion out of her and basically hitting a brick wall one of my favorite interactions is when 9s replies to her orders with an emphatic hi hi and she tells him that he only needs to say it once which he responds to with a dejected hi the 9s playthrough also Doles out this new content at a pretty good Pace every milestone in the main story pretty much equals a new scene even though a lot of the playthrough itself is mostly similar you still have these hooks that draw your interest as if it were all new you might worry you have to complete all your side quests during the 2B playthrough but the ones you finish stay finished and the ones you didn't are waiting right there for you when you hop into 9s in addition to that there are a lot of 9s exclusive side quests like this one where you hack into a robot that's disconnected from the network and struggles with the meaning of life and who can forget that side quest you know the one red hood no knowing what I know now and seeing how to be reacts to it a quick aside for this video I aim to finish the game with the highest completion percentage reasonably possible the last time I did the majority of the content outside the main story was my first playthrough in 2017. now that all the books drama CDs stage plays music videos Etc have been released I was actually kind of surprised by just how much of that stuff was already in the game itself you don't need to watch bhutai orha it's all here even Plato 1728 the doll loving machine from the music video is found in a weapon story like a new image came out recently for the anime of a character named Lily and I saw people calling her a character from mutayorha I'm not going to argue particulars but uh here she is in the game and everything in playthrough B there's also a lot of new scenes featuring the robots in their backstory alawa near replicant did with its shades on playthrough B you learned that while the robots are the enemy of humanity they also have human qualities like desires wishes hopes dreams you learn they desperately try to mimic Humanity playing out their political structures societies relationships it's almost like they worship Humanity more so than the Androids who've sworn Eternal fealty to them the robot Kingdom in the forest is just trying to raise a new king to be like the one they lost they don't understand that as robots they can't age and grow meaning they literally cannot have dynasties and royal families they're just mimicking what Humanity did also fun fact the force robots speak with a Hokkaido accent in Japanese a fun little detail that's hard to carry over in a localization without sounding too heavy-handed with it [Music] you get more insight into Adam and Eve and why they're so obsessed with Humanity you get other scenes about other boss robots for example the boss robot Simone is the way she is because of unrequited feelings she desires attention love admiration and is willing to go through any lengths to get it and uh believe me these are some really unsettling lines and this is told through of all things of visual novel section plot wise these can feel a little strange it feels like there was no thought of this won't play test well with the average player we should optimize retention by doing this and that it feels like a game where the Creator was left to their own devices to make the game they wanted to without thinking about optimizing the experience for maximum Mass Market penetration or something it in a word Unapologetic but at the same time has this uniqueness that can't be found literally anywhere else and maybe that's why the near series sticks out to so many people doing stuff like this is a quick ticket to making your game Niche yeah I mean near in the Drake and guard series barely sold but then you have Platinum Games on automata delivering the banging gameplay to lure more people into the series to get them to experience something they might not have otherwise or maybe it was the 2bs doing the luring I guess Android s and top tier action gameplay are the gateway drugs to an existential crisis and the thing about the visual novel sections right is that the writing is so strong you don't give a [ __ ] that you're just sitting there reading texts on a page like okay there's this one visual novel backstory that you can only access if you talk to the right NPC at the right time that is no Quest marker or anything indicating that you should do so the literal definition of missable low priority content I'm a fast talker I purposely slow my voice down when I record for a video because one no one wants to hear a guy going a mile a minute liaisoning every second word and two I know English isn't everyone's first language so I want my voice to be easy to pick up sometimes I forget to slow it down and it's noticeable but you know no one's perfect the point is I'm a fast reader too I can skim dialogue pretty quickly probably to an annoying degree for anyone who watches my videos that feature text dialogue I'm not telling you this because I've lost my mind and have decided to go on a tangent or some kind of d-tier flex I'm telling you this because right here you can clearly see in the footage that I physically pause while reading through this visual novel section because the writing is just dropped a brick on my chest without experiencing it for yourself I can't quickly describe why the writing in this game is just so far above the level of most others it just hits and Nails it every single time they even managed to make the relationship between A2 and a floating garbage can feel extremely compelling this game does things that games just don't do things you'd think games couldn't do I'll talk about that point specifically when I get into the ending but how's this for things games aren't supposed to do near automata lets you buy trophies with in-game money like for real if you have a friend who brags about having the platinum trophy slash all the achievements check their timestamps if something don't add up call them out tell my sonsha donut don't check mine though of course I did it legit who do you think you're talking to so uh where where were we with all this again oh right playthrough B overall I think it's an integral extremely important part of the game as a whole that said I also do think it would be fair if someone said it's the roughest part of the game to get through I wouldn't change anything about it myself but it's what lies Beyond playthrough B that elevates near automata to a game deserving of the status it holds on to today and speaking of things games don't do I think it's time to tackle the big one I'm not exaggerating when I say that I could not have seen near automata's success coming even if I had them Dr Strange see all the outcomes Powers what's here should legitimately be the nichest of the niche but it managed to resonate hard with a mass Market in the same way the rest of the games in its series did with their respective niches the Drake in near games have never been mass-market successes despite their unique take on storytelling and themes I mean Studios have sunk around them rest in peace kavya even thinking what it must have taken to get near automata greenlit like it makes me wonder if there was a hostage situation or something but near automata success is in no small part due to the game's director yokotaro and his absolute unique way of Storytelling obviously it was a big effort from a bunch of different people but he's kind of the face of the series pun intended so I'll refer to him you can read articles and interviews about his Inspirations for his storytelling process and it legit sounds like it came from another unit Commerce I mean we're talking about the guy who When developing drakengard watched End of Evangelion and was like damn that was a good ass movie then he went into the office the next day and was like alright fellas this is what we're doing for ending e the staff were like haha good one funny joke but then he went yeah yeah joke Hmm this is what we're doing though for real and yeah I remind everyone that that's the ending that led to the entire near series we're talking about a guy who told his team I'd like to give nir automata a happy ending and they spent the entire development waiting for him to say psych there's so many complex themes presented in this game but unlike most it doesn't feel like it's just trying to sound smart what if robot think they human is like the first sci-fi plot ever conceived I mean Blade Runner came out 40 years ago this year which is based on a book that came out 55 years ago these aren't New Concepts but nier automata doesn't take that concept the same way it's been done so many times before near automata does something different it's hard to describe the feeling but I'm human you're human I mean I assume you are can't tell how far Bots are progressing these days nirana Mata does such a good job at presenting its themes you kind of feel out of body which is what the game is going for you see these themes of humanity and you're sitting there like do I do the things that make me human literally all I know how to be is human but do I even know what that means am I even good at it I'm not trying to be deep the game is designed to make you question what it means to be Human by showing you the struggles of characters coming so close to it but missing one or two critical things doing something wrong something you and me must have something we in the Real Worlds do right right the theme of the game is the Japanese wordagaku which means to struggle side note I was gonna sound all smart and make a cool reference haha skull Knight and berserk calls gutsag akumono but when I went to fact check myself turns out I misremembered it and he actually calls him literally a synonym but whatever fine don't let me have that one it do be that way sometimes I just wanted to share my failure both Androids and robots struggle to find a meaning in life a reason to keep going once the robots disconnect from the network and become individuals they lose their absolute single driving goal and what do you fill a hole like that with maybe it's the Androids that are the biggest hole to fill but I'm starting to realize I can't keep dancing around these topics without getting into spoilers which leads me to this to make my last points I can't hold anything else back so this is the big spoiler warning from this point on anything is fair game again skip to this timestamp if you're still planning on playing the game for yourself all right we're all in at the end of playthrough B the truth is revealed to you Humanity aka the Android's sole purpose for existing is gone in fact they've been gone a long time and they're never coming back now this is a knowledge check to see who played near one if you finish that game you know Humanity was for lack of a better word [ __ ] and that their Extinction was a foregone conclusion but the Androids don't know that and specifically your ha doesn't know that in the side content there's a story about a faction of Androids who wanted to live for themselves instead of just existing to serve Humanity this thought is so hostile to the main Android faction that they drive and Exile these separatists to the single most inhospitable dangerous place on the planet Queensland I mean it's only kind of a joke they do drive them to Australia that's how dependent the Androids are on the mere shadow of Humanity's existence and that bomb has just been dropped on 9s a member of the most Humanity dedicated Android faction joha but this isn't the first time he's heard this information it's only the first time this hymn has heard it I mentioned a certain side quest 2B has a certain reaction to and that side quest has to do with an incredibly secret your ha model the type E Series short for executioner 9s is too curious too good at hacking and scanning no matter what happens he'll always eventually find out that humanity is gone it's when that time comes to be or as she's better known to e will have to kill him and she'll have to do it over and over remember the line at the end of playthrough a it always ends like this there's also a bit of foreshadowing to this after A2 fights the robot in the desert we're just witnessing another spin in this cycle the only thing is 9s doesn't know about 2b's true identity yet but maybe he's catching on when 9s is captured by Adam after the grunt fight you get to see one of near automata's most infamous lines you're thinking about how much you want to four asterisks to be aren't you this line works on so many levels it's almost fourth wall breaking in its directness like are you asking 9s or are you asking me because uh I I can't answer that question right now your honor it's really tempting to think haha four asterisks must be the naughty word tihi but the word is left ambiguous for a reason after beating the game and looking back you realize how many verbs would be a viable option here kill save free hurt the complex nature of 9s's relationship with 2B means there's no right answer to this but he'll never get the chance to do any of it when playthrough C starts the Androids launch of final invasion of Earth an all-out attack to reclaim Humanity's planet from the robots but things don't go as planned the robots utilize an intentionally placed back door in the yarha servers to infect every Android with a logic virus that makes them turn on their allies jorha was always destined to fail it had to to keep the lie of humanity alive there's this one really gut-wrenching moment when you return to the bunker and are fighting off your former comrades and you realize one of the Androids you killed was operator 6-0 foreign [Applause] [Music] eventually 2B Falls victim to the logic virus as well she reaches A2 and asks her to take the memories from her sword the last records of her existence before mercy killing her the only thing 9s sees from afar though is A2 pulling your sword out of 2b's chest routes C and D have been simultaneous to each other with A2 picking up the pieces to be left behind and 9s working to open the newly formed machine Tower with the help of Android stevelon Poplar these routes are pretty straightforward but there are two standout events I want to talk about one in C and one in D the first is that due to the influence of the tower in N2 the machines in Pascal's pacifist Village go berserk and start attacking their friends and family A2 who's gradually growing as a person and realizing machine doesn't automatically mean enemy possibly due to the influence of 2b's memories helps him Evacuate the children to the factory A2 helps fight the attacking robots off but is hopelessly outnumbered which is when you take control of the game's technical fourth playable character Pascal you box out in angles in this poorly control set piece they love so much they stuck it in Bane at a three as well and then you walk back to where you left the children and they're gone Pascal taught them fear a human emotion because he thought it would keep them safe but instead it had the exact opposite effect compounded with the literal loss of everything he built and the people he loved imagine the guilt Pascal must feel especially since he believes what happened in this room was his fault so he turns to you and gives you an ultimatum delete his memories or destroy him what is the ethical option here if you delete his memories without the knowledge of why what happened happened it might happen again but then is destroying him the right answer there is no right answer especially when you consider that there is a third answer just leave despite being mechanical Pascal is for all intents and purposes alive he will hate you for not giving him what he wants in the moment but is the death of the self via memory pressure or the loss of existence from destroying him really the right answer like I said there is no right answer if you leave him in English he says A2 how could you in Japanese he says which is a really powerful hate like I resent you it's hard to hear those words come out of Pascal a character you've known for the whole game one you know would never say that to anyone but it just goes to show how having everything taken from you can really change someone the next thing is in route D 9s gets devil on Poplar to help him open the tower which they can do but it'll cost them their lives this one is for the near one players in the audience you get a flashback via visual novel scene telling us what happened after the incident with the shadowlord devil and popular units were the standard Android meant to oversee project Gestalt well they Sure Shot the bet on that one after the incident the remaining dnp units were literally programmed to feel unimaginable guilt over their failure to protect humanity and as a cherry on top they were pretty much ostracized from all of Android Society the devil on Poplar we meet are basically the ones that get the best treatment and their prize who have to do all the worst jobs the Androids who almost chose to cease existing rather than to find a purpose to live that didn't involve Humanity found their scapegoat and with that all dnp had were each other but these two got to be together until the very end they got to choose to be my mind always goes back to that one scene from near you know the one no one stops it's way too late to stop that one hits me every time I think about it was it their guilt that led them to throw their lives away to help 9s we'll never know but in their last moments they were together and maybe in some way they managed to save Humanity after all and then 9s fights a bunch of replica 2bs gets his arm cut off and decides to replace it with one that's swimming in logic virus juice great idea we're in the end game now A2 comes face to face with the entity you could probably call the leader of the machines N2 aka the red girls you can see hanging around the background of a few cutscenes they're sort of like a representation of the machine Network since the machine network has Consciousness it's basically infinite it can spend eternity learning so it chose to evolve The Twist is that this entire war was orchestrated by them they could have won at any time but by keeping the Androids alive they can keep the world in a state of constant war and use that to evolve Adams said the machines killed their masters the aliens because they were stagnant almost like plants so how do you beat this infinite Consciousness well you do nothing you let its Consciousness multiply until it fractures and it begins to disagree amongst itself also they say I see a light after A2 is free from their trap you do a double boss fight with 9s until both Androids arrive at the top of the tower let's check what we're working with here 9s's logic virus stop was kind of losing his grip on reality anyways just found out a fundamental part of the Androids their black box was machine made and oh yeah hates A2 for thinking she killed 2B a fight is inevitable here you choose who you want to play as and depending on who you pick you'll get ending C and D respectively in ending C A2 sacrifices herself to remove the virus from 9s and save his life and in ending D A2 and 9s kill each other but 9s is given a chance Center the machine Network as they launch their data into space so we're done here but yokoti promised a happy ending and neither of these are particularly Happy Endings also you might be wondering is ending C Canon or is ending D Cannon well it doesn't really matter which of these two is Canon because once you clear them both niranamada does something I can definitively say no video game has ever done before and I'm serious so you've beat both endings and you're watching the credits like usual when the pods start talking they say project your ha is complete and their mission is over it's bittersweet and as a player you can't help but feel a bit of emptiness in your chest over the outcome these characters got then all of a sudden the screen pauses and pod042 says I have come to the conclusion that I cannot accept this resolution stories end and sometimes those endings aren't happy ones but a story that invokes a genuine feeling of sadness from a player is just as powerful as one that invokes any other kind of emotion happy ones included media has an incredible power to present literal made-up [ __ ] to us and give us the opportunity to live through it to feel the emotions as if they were our own but you can't choose these emotions you can't choose how a story ends the author does you simply get to experience it but this time right here in near automata you're being given the opportunity to choose pod042 asks 153 if she hoped they would survive he's not asking the Pod he's asking you you're being asked Can you accept this resolution and of course you say no ending he begins you control a little ship like you have so many times before and you start playing through a shmup segment with the credits the music's playing and you're on the edge of your seat because assuming you haven't been spoiled there is no precedent for what's going on here you have no possible way of knowing what's coming next if this is you by the way trust me turn off this video and go play the game like right now now it doesn't matter who you are it doesn't matter if you can one coin clear a kuruga or do a no bomb run of embodiment of scarlet devil on lunatic you will lose on this shmup stage and you will lose a lot you'll lose so much you might think you weren't meant to beat it like this is awesome joke about how futile it is to struggle against fate I mean that'd be pretty on brand but after you die a few times something changes you get these messages from other players they all tell you how they were where you are now and that you shouldn't give up they're cheering for you you specifically and you keep losing and you keep getting more of these messages every time the game asks you to give up you tell it no you won't give up everyone is here for you they want you to succeed but you can't their words aren't enough it's action that matters and that's when the game asks will you accept someone's help and when you do everything changes you're surrounded by other ships your Firepower is Multiplied and what seemed impossible before now seems completely doable you're plowing through the credits and whenever you take a hit a message comes up on the side of your screen that a player's data has been lost the messages start to increase and the music swells becoming a multi-layered vocal track consisting of the different language versions the weight of the world you feel like you're a part of something and it's absolutely Indescribable it is 100 emotional manipulation in the most literal meaning of the term your emotions are being manipulated by the game by the author this part of the game is like a goddamn switch no matter who you are you will feel something in this moment I'm seeing it for like the 15th time and it still hits me and then just as quick as it came it's over the Music Stops and the scene Fades you see the pods fly out into the distance carrying Parts until the camera zooms up on who else but 9s and 2B the game ends on a somber message that maybe it won't have been worth it maybe everything you did was all for nothing maybe you did it all just for the same result to one day happen again but those are all just maybes it's just as likely that something different will happen after all the future isn't just given to you it's something you have to take for yourself and just before the screen Fades out you see A2 perched on a windowsill they have a chance to live and while it's not exactly a happy ending it's definitely a hopeful one unless you dig too deep into the side materials which uh let's not spoil the mood to finish off the game asks you one last question those messages saying that other players data was being lost each of those people gave up their save file to help you and now the game is asking you if you'd like to do the same you don't have to the game makes it clear that you've just unlocked a bunch of new stuff for completion and there's a chance that your save file would go to help someone you absolutely hate this also raises a lot of logistical questions in my mind like what about the literal first person to reach the credits who helped them but you know I don't think we'll ever get an answer to those questions whatever let's not ruin it if you choose to delete your save file you get the chance to leave a message after all your data save files and records of you playing this game are gone that message serves as definitive proof that you were here that you existed I shouldn't have to say this but games like don't do this they're not supposed to be able to do this is a way of turning the fundamental mechanics of video games like save files Etc into a never before done kind of Storytelling device which is why I think this mechanic should be put on the back burner for a while see no Alice a mobile game directed by yokotaro is ending service soon and it's ending by giving players the option to delete their saves everyone is like it again the funny head man but the reason it was so special in near automata and replicant is because it was just that special I'd hate to see it become running to the ground by becoming the trademark gimmick or something anyways we're running a bit heavy on time so with all that out of the way I think it's time to wrap this up it might not be an exaggeration to say near automata Center Ripple down the gaming landscape significant enough that we're still feeling it today there just isn't much out there that meshes the unique take yokotaro has on storytelling with the ace gameplay of a platinum game you know a non-babylons fall Platinum game with everything from stage plays to novels to music concerts supplementing near automata's already thorough and fantastic story it's easy to see just how much of a success this game was for Square Enix it's hard to tell at this point just where yokotaro and the near series are going to go from here I don't think anyone expected near automata to get announced but the time between the first game and automata was about seven years and we're uh just about pushing that on the amount of time it's been since automata released I guess if you count the near replicant remaster remake in near reincarnation it hasn't actually been all that long since the newer game came out but uh yeah I've done my time in the near reincarnation Minds I'm good I'm free the Dre breaking guard games are unfortunately pretty hard to access in the hashtag modern era so while it wouldn't be the most exciting announcement in the world uh drakenguard123 HD Collection would be welcome I mean I'm not gonna stand here and lie to you by saying they're even 1 100th as enjoyable to play as near automata but maybe if Dragon Dragoon 3 had a consistent frame rate it'd be tolerable who knows and as I'm writing this paragraph I think I've come to the conclusion of my head I was looking for the reason that despite their flaws the draken guard games plus near one of such a following is because there's nothing else really like them near automata not included on that list because it has significantly less flaws but it's there in spirit there's nothing quite like the near games there isn't really anything else out there that scratches that specific itch there are imitators games that pay homage and games that have been inspired by them and some of those games are great but they're not quite the same and maybe that's okay because it's that that specific thing that this Series has that brings everyone to it it's probably what brought you here right here however many minutes into this video and you know what I wouldn't have it any other way as much as I love playing good games nothing beats a unique one and when that unique one just so happens to be good as well that's the part of the Venn diagram you'll find me in as always a really big thanks for watching I wouldn't be able to be here talking to you all like this today if it wasn't for the people who watch my videos if this video gets I don't know 100K likes or something I'll record a karaoke cover of the Japanese version of weight of the world you think that's a joke but I'll do it anyways till next time

Channel: BrandoSP

Views: 328,987

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Id: _CJNYTs3O-U

Length: 80min 39sec (4839 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 19 2022