Having seen the ending of that big explore-’em-up game on that new-fangled games machine that I can play on the toilet, I opted to finally go back to spending time playing games that were not Zelda. The first one on the list is the highly anticipated (by me) NieR: Automata.
You may or may not recall that NieR is one of my favourite video games of all time. I’ve probably mentioned this many times already, but I think it bears repeating, as most people don’t even know that NieR is a thing that exists. Fewer still understand why it is such an outstanding video game. After all, the gameplay is janky, the graphics weren’t anything to write home about even at the time, and it necessitated an inhuman amount of grinding to reach the final ending.
Back to the point, though. I’ve been pretty hype for the sequel. And after dunking nearly an entire week’s worth of evenings into it, I can confidently say that NieR: Automata far exceeds my expectations. It’s very pretty, the story has been 100% bonkers so far, and the combat has been made considerably more enjoyable thanks to Platinum Games’ experience in the field.
The games journalism industry has taken to calling NieR: Automata an open-world game. That’s only somewhat true. It’s actually fairly linear, in the same way that the first game was. You’re given a vast world to explore, but certain areas are only made accessible after certain events. You can’t just go anywhere you please right off the hop like in, say, Fallout 4 or a certain recently-released game from a 31-year-old series that has been getting perfect review scores all over the place. There are plenty of places to go at the beginning, but I didn’t bother exploring too far off the beaten track because I realized how the game worked early on. Also, they dole out game mechanics (like fast-travel) after certain story beats, so that’s another good reason not to stray from the plot for the first few hours.
The game begins with the same factory sequence that was in the demo, but with a few changes. Mostly there’s just an extra shmup sequence at the beginning. I don’t know if anything else had changed, as it all seemed fairly familiar. I think the music changed when you fight the first buzzsaw boss, as I recognized it as a remix of “Song of the Ancients” and I don’t think that was the case in the demo. I feel like it would have been hard to miss for someone who has listened to the NieR soundtrack as much as I have.
What has blown my mind the most is the revelation that NieR: Automata has a whopping twenty-six endings. The Drakengard games and NieR all had four or five each, so this is an unprecedented increase. I have looked at no further spoilers, so I have no idea what kind of criteria is necessary to achieve all these endings, but I am very anxious to find out. I’ll just have to burn through to Ending A (presumably) so that I can even consider digging up a road map to all the endings. But even that seems like it’s probably quite a ways off!
I’m not in that big of a hurry, though, as I’m really enjoying my time with the game. If it’s another 70-hour journey, so be it! The Dark Id has allegedly reached all of the endings already, if his Twitter feed is to be believed, so I’m not too concerned that I’m going be spending several months playing nothing but this. But hey, that really wouldn’t be the worst thing…