The NieR + Automata Iceberg Explained

if you've been on youtube the past little while you've probably seen an iceberg explained video recommended to you by our algorithm overlords if you're not in the know basically pieces of knowledge on a game or series are separated into levels based on how obscure they are they're based off this ancient image of a gaming iceberg lately i've been given a few of them a go to brush up on my trivia for a few different game series i think popotaro's wild ride is a perfect fit for this kind of video so i decided to give it a go also i shouldn't have to mention this but massive spoiler warning for everything near related including the drakengard games beyond this point but to be fair a lot of this might not make sense if you never played the series i mean half the video is just going to be you wondering who the hell this madman named yokotaro is with that out of the way let's get ourselves started with the first layer level one starts off pretty simple first up we have the fact that near is a spin-off series of drakengard well it may not be initially obvious the near games are a spin-off series of the playstation 2 drakengard games specifically drakengard 1 also known as dragon dragoon both the drakengard and near games are known for their multiple endings and near takes place after ending e of drakengard despite being a fantasy game in the e ending the protagonist kaim fights the final boss the queen beast in modern day tokyo with the queen beast defeated the otherworldly particles called masos start falling onto the real world this would be the origin of the white chlorination syndrome forcing humanity to separate their souls from their bodies to avoid extinction and kicking off the events of near so we've already gotten into endgame spoilers for drakengard on the first entry of the list but this next one should be easier to swallow you might already know that the original nir has two protagonists defined by their relationship with yonah while it might seem easy to cut it perfectly in two with japan having brother near as the protagonist and europe and north america having papa near it's not quite that clean cut the game known just as near in eu and na was known as near gestalt in japan which did have papuaneer as the protagonist the thing is near gestalt was an xbox 360 exclusive and if you know anything about xbox sales in japan it might be a no-brainer as to why brother near is seen as the japanese standard the idea goes is that a father figure role would do better with eu and n a audiences so both our ps3 and xbox versions were locked in with the near replican remaster coming out soon that as brother nir is the protagonist in all regions it'll be interesting to see the plot from that point of view this next one is actually pretty straightforward a lot of bosses in nier automata are named after famous dudes who thought a bunch while some of these might be more obvious like marx angles and friedrich three the more interesting ones are roshi soshi and koshi these three names are based off the japanese pronunciations of certain chinese philosophers with the latter one koshi being the japanese pronunciation of confucius of course some non-boss characters also share names with philosophers like jean-paul and pascal [Music] sacrificing your save file for the greater good alright strap in for this one both near and near automata have a gimmick where after obtaining their endings you have the option to nuke your save file why would you ever do that you might ask well in nir your companion kaine goes sicko mode with the shade living insider and the only way to save her is for the protagonist to give up his entire existence i.e deleting your save file considering you're usually on your third or fourth playthrough by this point it might be a hard ask and the only concrete reward you get is a flower on the title screen seriously though delete that next in nier automata to finish ending e you have to do this brutally difficult shmup section unless you're a shmup god and maybe even if you are i'm not sure it's possible to beat this part on your own after failing a bunch of times help arrives in the form of other players who act as shields and power-ups for your ship while they provide encouraging messages the catch is every time one of these ships takes a hit for you you get a message that their save file's been thanos snapped from existence the music swells and you feel the emotion and it just it just hits you man fresh off that emotional high the game asks you if you want to delete your save file to help someone else finish the game the game even makes a point that it's a thankless task and you might even end up helping and dying for someone you hate and it lets you know you will lose everything if you hit that button but i mean come on you know you're gonna do it now these next two letters might sound a bit familiar nier automata's androids have a designation based on a number and a letter indicating their role for example 9s is a scout or android while 2b is a battler type well it turns out to be's designation isn't battler after all she's actually 2e an executioner type because of 9s inherent curiosity and fondness with the deep web he keeps discovering the secrets of jorja and every time he does 2b's got to take him out with that 9. bit wild out to be's primary function is to constantly ice his poor robot boy who browses too much jorah wikipedia for his own good but it do be that way sometimes if you've seen the little robot enemies you might notice that their heads look a little similar to yokotaro's i mean emile's face as arguably the last human on earth emil waged a solo war against the aliens that created the machine life forms for centuries it's not 100 confirmed as to why the aliens decided to use emil's head as a model for their robot army or if the machines started shaping themselves in his image of their own accord could be that they thought this magic skeleton head dude was super hype and would make them more powerful could be the aliens stole one of the many emile clones he made to fight them off and base their robots off that either way it's up for debate the whole thing with the machines from nier automata is that they really like to mimic humanity and with emile being the last human could be a case of that okay let's hit up a level deeper with this next one near reincarnation is going to be the third entry in the near series and unlike the other two it's going to be a smartphone gotcha style rpg at first you'd be forgiven for thinking it's okay to give this one a miss seeing as it's a pretty big departure from the rest of the series but you hold up right there not only did popotaro confirm it was going to take place in the near universe he also confirmed it was going to be a sequel to automata considering the game of 3d chess you have to play to link drinking guard to near to near automata this one's gonna be wild to figure out it's set to release in the coming weeks so we'll have to see exactly where this one goes i'm no fan of gotcha games but i gotta do what i gotta do for near this next one's pretty easy to explain but you wouldn't really know it unless you know the cult of the watchers are a recurring group of antagonists in the drakengard series and the boss eve from nier automata sports a tattoo of their mark on his chest i'm not gonna lie to you it might be a bit difficult to make out but it's right here the face with the three eyes and the two noses this created a bit of a stir pre-release about how eve could have been related to the cult but ultimately it just ended up being a visual reference maybe i don't know you know how this stuff goes for this next one if you've played near automata you definitely remember this basically 9s gets to have a long conversation with a voice inside his head the voice eventually says you're thinking about how much you wanna four asterisks to be aren't you well my fellow party people i know what you're all thinking now it might be tempting to say that's the word that fits snugly right into this little space but may i present another option judging by what we learned about toby and 9s's relationship a little while ago and what we will learn a few levels down from now kill is a four letter word that could be the better option in this case but i mean who knows let's check the line in japanese maybe that is a clue to what it is omaiwa tubio ellipsis triangle asterisk so basically the same as english but even more vague alright thanks for nothing i mean either way it was left ambiguous for a reason so it's up to us to debate amongst ourselves what it could be one piece of information i do know about this line however is our habit of immediately thinking censored words are inappropriate or sexual ones these asterisks weren't meant to hide the word but to make its absence jump out of the player having the japanese translation also presents the idea that the english word may have an arbitrary amount of asterisks i mean sure there are four but there's no rule saying it's a four letter word realistically i think a verb of any size could be argued as fitting into this space looking at it this way i think it's evidence that big f is probably one of the less likely candidates to fill the gap but what do you think you might be reading this next one and thinking mechagodzilla isn't an optional boss in your automata well may i present this evidence to the court yeah i didn't know this either but this little robot godzilla shows up as a miscible boss during the twins request side quest say that five times fast he's a bit hard to find and most people can go through their entire playthrough without ever catching a glimpse of the big man but he's there now while he might resemble mechagodzilla well with him being a robot and all i mean all the enemies are robots judging by his breath attack he's more likely a reference to 2016's shin godzilla which was hot off the press when this game released okay alright i know how this one looks but let's handle it like adults no the androids do not have reproductive organs yes they can grow them if they feel like it this might seem weird in a who asked this question kind of way but this is fresh from yokotaro's mouth he said and i quote since they can copy anything they can create the white stuff change their sex and even mimic pregnancy to a certain extent but since they cannot become truly organic life forms they will not be able to undergo insemination or mitosis they can only create very convincing imitations of the real thing using other materials looks like the machine life forms aren't the only ones who are trying their best to imitate humanity which is kind of one of the major themes of this game so yeah if an android feels like it they can grow that kind of stuff let's smash out a two-parter real quick if you've noticed near's always written with a capital r at the end this isn't a case of selective caps lock it's intentional and it's the official way the name is written except on the north american box art where the entire title is in capitals sure whatever thanks i guess now you might be thinking okay i've seen how these videos go down so far why is the r capital to that i answer it's because yokotaro thought it looked cool no no seriously that's it that's the reason aha you say your has a capital r and an h surely there must be a reason for that and yeah you're right the capitalization of yorha does have some significance oh uh you you want to know what it is well yokotaro has decided that's a secret and he's not going to tell anyone so yeah do not leave you high and dry i'll give you a little bonus in japanese yorha has written yoruha which is passing leaf that's it for that one the square enix ceo is a boss yet yeah seriously him and the platinum games ceo nir automata got a piece of dlc content a few months after release it makes my head hurt just looking at the name this dlc dropped to little fanfare so it's not crazy that most people didn't care much for it as for the contents it's nothing special a few costumes from the original near in a battle arena mode given that the target audience who would care enough to buy a dlc like this had probably already nuked their save file by this point not many people gave it a go if you did you'd find at the end of the arena there's a boss based on yosuke matsuda the square enix president pretty wild but mostly par for the course for near then halfway through the battle he's joined by kenichi sato the platinum games president next one is for you final fantasy 14 players i've only played 14 to the end of the base game content so i don't have any personal experience with this one but here's how it goes final fantasy 14 got a collaboration event with nir automata in the form of your ha dark apocalypse pretty cool sick reference points for near fans right well in what's an absolute twist of madness there might actually be non-inconsequential near-automatic plot details in the raid let that one sink in for a quick second a crossover event in an unrelated mmo contains exclusive relevant plot details for nier automata absolute lunacy this one is still ongoing as a part 3 recently got revealed during a final fantasy 14 live letter if taro is going to keep pulling stuff like this i might have to subscribe myself to see what's going on this next one about the red eye disease goes real deep so let's do a quick summary the red eye disease is from the drakengard games basically our boys the cult of the watchers spread the red eye disease which manifests itself in the victims by causing berserk tendencies super strength and uh red eyes and then in near when people are infected by the white chlorination syndrome from the queen beast's magic powder snow they're forced to make a pact with god or be turned into table salt what a bad deal so what does this have to do with the logic virus from nier automata well papa taro said it has a connection so who might argue again we're going into deep theory territory here but you could argue the similarities and how they affect their victims humans with the red eye disease turn into mindless soldiers of the legion androids with the logic virus turn into mindless soldiers like observe and attack their comrades okay i'm starting to see the threats the logic virus was actually created by the androids to wipe themselves out if they started getting too close to the truth that humanity's gone and has been gone for thousands of years thanks to the actions of the near protagonist so they could be mimicking the events of humanity's first extinction 9s remembers remembers what to put the kettle on to take the meat out of the fridge well remember the four cheeky asterisks from a few months back how it could very well be kill there are a few hints dropped in the game that 9s might remember if only vaguely his past lives are being endlessly killed by 2b while he does lose his memory every time he's destroyed it seems eventually enough for maine for him to at least have a clue what was going on especially after he's pressed by adam he seems to be aware what happens to him at least enough to have an unconscious feeling of hatred for 2b if you take a cheeky gander a few levels down there's an entry on this iceberg called memory cage so we'll revisit this one down there the games cross genres this one might be a no-brainer at least thirty percent of nier automata is a shmup in some way shape or form you've got these 3d shooter segments and even top-down twin stick bits where you hack machines with 9s the original nier had some bullet hell elements too with your projectiles cancelling out others and some projectiles you have to dodge here's a good example of the genre twist during the mansion level in near where you and emil explore the basement to find a sister the game goes into a top-down dungeon crawler diablo-style view and you play like that for a while alright starting off the second half of this roller coaster is the a2 prequel stage play a2 is a protagonist in your automata and being an earlier model android she looks visibly more robotic than her counterparts 2b and 9s she was deployed to a battle during the machine war with her squad of homies during the battle her squad mates pull a halo reach and she ends up being the sole survivor goes a long way to explaining her distrust for yorha and her subsequent branding as a traitor she also maybe possibly has some memories that belong to kane from near as them early model androids have false memories and she says she remembers living on a farm with her grandmother now as this isn't in the game at all it sounds like i pulled this all out of my ass but nah it's confirmed canon where do you get this information you might ask well of course a stage play yeah this was all done in a stage play called jorja performed about a year after the game was released this may sound super wacky but we're going to get weirder before this iceberg is done trust me the phrase sino-alice's required content is usually quickly followed by the phrase what is sino-alice anyways again we're looking at a smartphone only gotcha game and again we're talking about something i have no personal experience with but i'll do my best as far as i know it's a phone rpg with atb gameplay where you play storybook characters trying to revive their authors the game got a collaboration with nir and nier automata adding in characters like 2b and 9s great no problem cool collab pass right well the game also got in-game weapon and character stories that contain information about niranamata that isn't found in any other media as well as an exclusive story called recollection of the puppets in case you're keeping track we currently have near story content scattered across a ps2 action rpg series two smartphone games an mmo a stage play and i'd say that isn't even half the full scope so drakengard ending e was originally considered to be the joke ending of the game basically yokotaro watched end of evangelion and thought yo that was pretty sick and decided to put an ending like that in his game i didn't make that up for a reference by the way that's real the ending was worked on in secret and it got snaked in during the final stages of development upon which point the rest of the team collectively lost their while it was originally conceived as a non-canon alternate ending who's to say people haven't started considering it the definitive one over time i'd say you can make a pretty strong case for it being definitive ending if you were to argue about it at your next drakengard theme cocktail party another entry further down the list is kind of like a part two to this one so let's shelve it for now something to think about in the meantime there's no sun no no that's it there's just no sun the earth has stopped rotating in the near games meaning some areas in constant daylight and some are in constant dark despite it being bright at all times there's no point in near where you can look up and see the sun in the sky likely because programming day night cycles and light sources are hard hey this one was pretty simple for level four man what is with the near series and having cursed dlc content no one pays attention to the world of the recycled vessel also known as 15 nightmares is a devil may cry bloody palace style combat encounter dlc for the original near i don't know why you would want something like this for the original near unlike automata which has tight platinum games combat playing the original near and drakengard is about as fun as playing dynasty warriors with your controller covered in honey overall i mean it's pretty forgettable but it did have some plot juice to be squeezed out you could find a diary the protagonist's wife mother if you're playing the brother near version and how she succumbed to the same black squirrel disease jonah has other than that some costumes and a remix tracklist it's a pretty forgettable piece of content little fun fact though it's the only way for people in north america and europe to play his brother near since you played the dlc using the opposite protagonist from the main story we're gonna bang out two part twos back to back so i hope you've been taking notes so here's a hot take i don't really believe but i think you could properly defend it if you really put your mind to it think about this right what if the drakenguard games are actually the spin-offs to the near series i'm not going to go as far as to claim drakengard was written with the existence of near in mind like some clown world version of the star wars machete order but think about this drakengard 2 takes place in an isolated timeline separated from the first game and drakengard 3 is all about wacky woohoo timeline hijinks all this considered you could argue that the series that continues in a linear fashion directly from one of the drakenguard endings is not in fact drakenguard 2 and 3 but near instead if you count drakengaard as some amorphous origin point for both series each was followed by two more games with an unknown amount of further sequels dropping for near meanwhile it's a very likely possibility that the drakenguard series isn't going to get revisited again like i said it's a big stretch but you get a more interconnected plot line playing drakengard near then near automata than you do playing drakengard 3 two and one so maybe you could argue the true spin-off games in this katamari damascene series are drinking guard two and three the next part too is memory cage it's a prequel to a prequel novella that takes place before the main game it's a short read that you can finish in about 15 minutes or so but it's absolutely packed to the brim with information on 2b and 9s relationship the story goes tubes and 9s are investigating a temple in the desert which is quite possibly the same temple from the original near judging by the way they speak to each other we can take a guess that this is a 9s that's known 2b for quite a while and we all know what goes down around that time 9s has been saved in too many files in the yorhasecrets.zip file and 2b's gotta take them out since a battler type can snap a scanner type in two like a breadstick toby doesn't really need to team kill him in one hit but she'd rather get it done quickly since she doesn't exactly enjoy making the homie suffer much to her surprise 9s actually sets a trap up for her first and manages to get the upper hand by hacking her the journal commander acknowledging that possibility pulled out a nuno reverse card for this and installed a virus in 2b that would kill 9s if she was hacked before he got smoked inside tooby's head he said he had a feeling this would go down after he discovered some sensitive journal information and had to be assigned to accompany him on a survey mission something scanner types usually do alone he can't really help himself when it comes to accessing the orha data either as scanner types are programmed to constantly seek information it's a read that'll make you feel bad and it gives a great insight to the 2b 9s relationship doing a sharp curve from near essential character interactions that take place in prequel novellas that'll make you introspect and we have shoden yorha also known as jorja boys which is another example of valuable character backstory being hidden away wait a minute this is our second stage play and despite it being performed before the a2 play it's definitely the lesser known of the two so it features a gang of type m yorha a squad of all boys your guess is as good as mine but i'm pretty sure the m stands for male pretty deep these models interact like shonen anime classmates they even got a teacher and everything but eventually they all face the same conclusion the characters from the previous stage play did and they get iced one by one and who can die the fastest in the strongest contest i don't really know any other games that tell their prequel content through stage plays but what i do want to know is what we got to do to get a second run of these plays on broadway around the world in 80 days is a popular 1872 novel by world renowned french writer jules verne it's also not what we're talking about today if you'll remember at the end of near emil apparently dies to let kaine and the protagonist move forward to rescue yonah since emile is basically immortal we learned he managed to walk it off but his body's been completely destroyed around the world in 80 days is the title of a short story featured in a near art book titled grimoire near that consists of a diary emil wrote as he tries to find his long gone friends how does he write a diary when he's just ahead don't ask questions it's masso i ain't gotta explain if you're keeping track near story can be found in pretty much every form of media known to man in fact do me a favor and go check under your couch there's probably a plot detail under there that hasn't been discovered yet a few months after the game dropped in an interview with japanese magazine dengeki playstation yokotaro engaged in a quick q a where the man slammed out some plot details rapid fire don't expect the content of the dead sea scrolls here though literally every single answer the man gave ended with i was told to give brief answers so that's all i can say about this he's also banged out a few more q a's with some pretty hefty information crammed into them i mean sure half of it is him answering questions like why do androids have beauty marks and what does android skin feel like it's very soft and warm by the way but on the other side of the spectrum you have things like what was in the pod launch at the end of the game or how a2's berserk mode works there was even a talk show yokotaro did where you discuss near-atomata spoilers over dinner i'd highly recommend you go give them all a read it's a good way to spend a lunch break the novellas of which there are a lot like a lot a lot a quick search reveals there are about seven for nier automata alone you can fill a library with these things there are prequel novels sequel novels novels that take place during the main game it just never stops if there was a novel i'd definitely recommend it's the sequel to memory cage memory thorne it tells a story about a 9s that learns about 2b's designation as 2e while he's still alive and what he does with that information we've made it to level six the deepest strata of this iceberg nightmare with the exception to nier automata the yokotaro reverse games aren't exactly known as being uh acceptable in the gameplay department i mean the original drakenguard is near suffering in terms of how poor the gameplay is if playing near is like walking around in wet socks playing drakengard is like stuffing the socks with legos and running a marathon drinking guard makes near look like devil may cry 5. the levels just drag on endlessly and all you do is swing your janky sworded enemies by the thousands as the game struggles to run at a higher frame rate than the amount of hours it takes to finish the game this has led to the popular fan theory that the games play bad on purpose the protagonist kaim is a cold ruthless killer who just runs through enemies without giving any thought you know kind of like the player after you've taken down poor ps2 model number 6000 and just want to see what the rest of the plot has in store it's not fun and you know maybe that's the point killing isn't supposed to be fun the gameplay is just there to numb you to the absurd violence going on kind of like how kaim is everything is canon well i mean it kind of speaks for itself doesn't it we've got novellas stage plays q a's final fantasy mmos strategy guides and art books all forming some nightmare lore of ultron all contributing to this series and i mean that's just the stuff i thought up before i decided the voice line was getting too long normally when something gets this bloated like say the star wars extended universe there are way too many fingers in the pie everyone has their own ideas on how a series should go so you start to get contradictions eventually the bloke gets so massive you have to start quarantining things on a separate wiki entry just so the content makes sense not near yokotaro signs off on everything that's written every piece of flavor text in that strategy guide can and will be considered unbending cannon under orders of the king nothing gets cut nothing gets left behind if you read something and it's official it's true no questions asked see noah's collaboration canon handbook included in the dvd release of the stage play canon this next one yeah yeah it's definitely canon if you ask me this is the apex this wild near lore roller coaster nier automata has an amazing soundtrack this is fact not opinion this cannot be disputed of course similarly to final fantasy when a game gets a soundtrack this good people are going to want to see it live understandable near gets a few concerts cool sound then at the fifth concert let me emphasize the fifth concert this goes down try to imagine this right in october 2017 at the fifth concert in tokyo after the music finishes and everyone claps the voice actors show up on stage and start reading the epilogue to ending eve of the game not a prequel not a side story the epilogue to the ending of nier automata never before seen being read there on a stage after a music concert i had the words but i lost them this sounds like the greatest of posts and i can barely believe it but it happened so to roll it back a second there's basically two epilogues to the end of the game the one right at the concert is known as farewell the sad ending basically a2 is too far gone she just doesn't wake up period 2b wakes up but she has to agonize as 9s life is in flux for ages right in front of her he dies but manages to pass on a message saying goodbye before fading forever unable to live with the grief 2b ceases functioning soon as well the other ending is a more positive one with the androids waking up and looking forward to the future without endless war the ending e content in the game left players with a hopeful tone but it ultimately left the future up to the player's imagination yokotaro has basically said the canon of these two endings is the one you want it to be and that both choices are equally valid if i had made this video not two months ago this entry would have been completely different basically ever since launch yokotaro has been going on about at least one last secret near automata that no one has discovered yet three plus years on since the game's release everyone just chalked it up to yokotaro being yokotaro and didn't really pay it any mind hard cut to january 2021 and after performing what i can only describe as arcane magic with the game's source code twitter user lance mcdonald found that if you input a specific button combination in a specific way at a specific spot during a specific time in the game you can yit yourself all the way from the first level to ending e what i can't really imagine getting much use out of something like this other than re-unlocking all the stuff you lost if you already garbage can your save file but damn they managed to keep this hidden for near on four years yokotaro confirmed that this was the real deal so it looks like nier automata is a solved game at this point last on this list is going to be ending eve the original near now while drakengard and nier automata both have five canon endings you might be forgiven for thinking the original near only s4 the last being ending d well that's because the true final ending to near is in an art book look you've gotten this far are you really surprised titled ending e the lost world and yes i do understand that jurassic park reference it puts kane in the main character seat for a bit despite all memory of the near protagonists being wiped from the world like game of thrones was after season 8 she just keeps having these nightmares that something's missing something should be there that just isn't since she can't drown this feeling out by binge watching netflix she engages in the healthy escapist activity of shade killing until she finds herself in the forest of myth eventually she stumbles across an old world machine construct that's attempting to reset the entire gestalt system after its failure she takes a few l's but then emil shows up out of who knows where to back her and they take it down defeating the construct kane finds herself between the borders of reality and she feels a familiar presence she desperately tries to reach out for it and it asks her to turn back but eventually she catches up to it causing a giant lunar tier flower to appear kane at the center is holding the person that was so important to her and the story ends with her saying his name and with that near definitively ends on a positive note except for you know the whole making humanity extinct good job guy so we're done for now but honestly the near series stretches so deep i could probably make a full second iceberg out of stuff that is included in this one no problem that and the near series is far from over two games are coming out this year alone and i guarantee each of those could probably manage to fill an iceberg of their own let me know if you have any cool ideas for what could be included in a hypothetical second one if there's enough demand for it i can make a proverbial near iceberg r i'd also like to shout out the neer community i've played the drakengard in near games to full completion but that's not enough as you can probably tell i stand on the shoulders of giants here big shout outs to the ark near automatowiki which has most of the information regarding popotaro's insane multimedia empire anyways with that out of the way 1 million likes and i'll release my karaoke single for weight of the world until next time [Music] you

Channel: BrandoSP

Views: 493,004

Keywords:

Id: fRa60mAn_Mw

Length: 29min 48sec (1788 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 19 2021