The Most Powerful Ending in Video Game History | Nier Automata Deep Dive

everything comes to an end the job of an ending is to evoke a final summed feeling from the time and effort culminated throughout a story's journey no matter how big or small that emotion may seem take iron man's journey in the mcu for example he starts off the first movie as arrogant brash and irresponsible and upon being thrusted into facing his neglected responsibilities goes on a quest to reflect and deal with his past the movie ends with tony announcing his identity to the entire world i am iron man a moment of what would be fitting revelry for past tony but now comes across as a moment of self-actualization the movie is able to leave you with a feeling of eagerness waiting to see how he develops himself even further from here and through tony's 10-year journey his final outing comes back to the first time we saw him ending in the same way but in an entirely new context a new evoked feeling for us the viewer not of eagerness but of empathy and bittersweet hope all stemming from a new choice his choice sacrifice now even though endings throughout media remain the same in its practice of an emotional delivery the journey to get there can be lived in many different ways depending on how you the viewer experiencing it just like iron man's journey led him to the choice to sacrifice himself it is choice itself that defines the difference between watching a story and living it the choice to take a left turn instead of a right one the choice to let someone live or die the choice to give when you yourself have nothing traditionally as consumers of media we have to sit back and watch characters at the helms of these choices not always leading to the best or most genuine outcome so this is where the video game medium is able to break this mould okay in only the span of the last 30 years video games have branched out from just fun you could have with friends to some of the most powerful and pure stories you could possibly imagine never able to be truly replicated in any other form all stemming from the power of interactivity interactions and games have gotten more and more astounding especially in recent years with the more story focused games and this emphasis of choice has led to some of the most powerful endings in gaming history games like detroit become human with its undefinable amount of different endings and paths undertale with its extreme and meta nature and how it defines its either genocidal or pacifist endings and especially the walking dead journeying through city wastelands or to protect a little girl making choices along the way with surviving parties deciding who stays with you and who you leave behind leaning to a very raw and emotional end to your job as a protector it seems that with the more choices you have as a player comes the trade-off of actual gameplay value as the games i've mentioned just involve walking and dial up prompts at the most and thinking logically about the fiction of these choices there is no right or wrong simply due to the fact that at the end of the day they are just that fiction there is no penalty for making a choice that affects you or someone else in any way in the real world but what if there was a title that transcends choice beyond the bounds of its game that's where nir automata comes in near automata is a game that deals heavily with the existential philosophy of choice and responsibility the setting is the far-flung future of earth aliens have invaded using their army of machines plunging the world into so much chaos that humanity has all fled to the moon as refuge while the human army of androids are kept on earth to continue the fight against the alien machine uprising he plays androids accompanied by a little pod to fight against the supposed machine threat learning new moves adapting playstyles and uploading your consciousness to new bodies if you are destroyed at first this blurb of a machine and android proxy war on a post-apocalyptic earth seems very far-fetched and not at all relatable for empathetic response but it excels with its themes with one key notion nihilism nihilism in essence is the philosophy of no god what this means is that there is no higher being predetermining our actions and we have to take life into our own hands and make the best with what we have it's not about finding out what the meaning of life is but creating meaning for ourselves without spoiling the entire game in case you do want to play it for yourselves nihilism surrounds every corner you come across your second play through onwards yes second playthrough nero automata has a total of 26 endings each corresponding to a letter in the alphabet the majority of the endings are abrupt and more joke ended mostly used as a form of trapped collectible but in total there are five real endings that all come together to form the total story and the main ending we're looking at is ending e what is special about ending e is that it can only be unlocked after getting endings a through d where this is the true end to the game to preface the entire game you play as three androids 2b 9s and a2 all of whom after their trials journeys and reaching their natural landings are all in one way or another incapacitated however just as the credits roll 9s's and 2b's companion pods reveal that they have access to all of their consciousness and ask if you would like for them to all survive upon pressing yes ending e begins completely abandoning the gameplay loop of flashy combo moves and stunning visuals you are launched into another credit screen but with a twist you can now pilot a small drone facing off against the toughest obstacle the game has ever placed the creators themselves you're tasked with shooting down the names of the devs whilst avoiding any form of contact from a red projectile as it will be a one-hit kill doing so is easier said than done with constant barrages of on-screen bullets you need to weave through and shoot past in order to kill off the targets you need to this boss idea is so great to me because coming from a game development background myself studying a course for it for four years and just getting my degree a couple days ago it does mean a lot to have your name featured in such a transformative way like this and seeing as how big projects and games feature hundreds if not thousands of people collectively working on a title together you gather very quickly that this boss battle will take quite some time to complete the onslaught is unrelenting only getting more and more chaotic as time goes on and bigger development titles reveal themselves all until of course you don't give up at this point so close to the end another try is an easy option but time and time and time again is it really all worth it even the game poses this question at you but the game's voice is not the only one you see the screen is filled with written voices of those before you those who have completed this unrelenting journey themselves somehow showing support in the best way that they can you take those words and try try again but even still the journey may prove to be too difficult until [Music] a chorus of song breaks out and fills you with determination as you see drone after drone flying to your aid the music grows grander and grander as your firepower increases and you fill the screen with a barrage of bullets it was two years ago at 4am on a monday night when i finally reached this part of the game absolutely dominating the game after countless deaths even though i was sleep deprived dying of heat and having no chair to sit on while i played all of that melted away as i was transfixed by the swelling emotions after constant failure and the building irritation and rage i was almost ready to throw in the towel but the game knew that this would happen and upon seeing my helpers come to my aid hearing all the individual backing tracks unify and seeing the immense damage i could do now all of those negative feelings immediately springboarded into an overwhelming sense of joy relief and pure euphoria that no game has ever made me feel neither bullets nor drones nor death itself can stop this inevitable end as one by one you blast through the credits of the game and finally reach your end goal you've done it with the overwhelming weight of the world lifted from your shoulders you can ease back as you watch the final resolution of the game play out but the real challenge finally arrives at the end you get the chance to become one of the many voices you had to inspire you to keep going writing out something to keep another player's resolve in check but your help doesn't end just there pawn 0-4-2 to player please respond to this query you thankful player of this title have lost your life multiple times to make it this far you have faced crushing hardship and suffered greatly for it do you have any interest in helping the week selecting this option enables you to save someone somewhere in the world however in exchange you will lose all of your save data do you still wish to rescue someone a total stranger in spite of this it is here where you realize what it meant for you to be able to reach this ending it is here where the nihilistic mantra of creating meaning the hardship of the journey and the power of interactivity all coalesce into a single choice all the features and achievements you've unlocked all the 26 endings you've collected all the side stories yet to be completed the 20 to 30 hours of time you've poured into the game this is where it all could mean something something real sacrifice you realize that you couldn't have made it to this point without someone else having to make this choice erasing all their hard work for someone they don't know and will probably never meet it's here where choice is able to transcend beyond the bounds of its game world beyond the bounds of your one playstation and out to the real world for someone to be grateful for it's a transformative form of choice baked into the gameplay itself not just as a potential story path like in the previous games i've mentioned you've gotten the ending you wanted whether you choose to erase your data will not change the outcome of your fictional ending but it will change the outcome for someone else's real experience you choose to delete your progress not for the good of yourself but for the good of that person to reach their final summed feeling you do it gladly so that someone else will be able to feel that swelling orchestra and that immense overwhelming euphoria after constant death just like you did it's an ending that doesn't have much to do with the story of the game but with the story of our lives how we choose to be for others even when they don't know it and how we can show kindness without being rewarded for it because sacrifice is where true kindness happens [Music] you

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Keywords: video game, nier, nier automata, 2b, 9s, a2, analysis, endings, ending, nier automata ending, nier: automata, yoko taro, nier automata walkthrough, platinum games, nier automata analysis

Id: OQKPtp6RkaU

Length: 11min 18sec (678 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 06 2020