I extend a giant and heartfelt tahnks to my friends Ecclesiastes and Angel Adonis for their generous and intelligent assistance with pre-reading this rant and sharing their thoughts with me on it. It's always a great source of reassurance to know that other, greater minds can confirm that my ramblings on more intellectually complex RPGs are reasonably on the mark. You blokes are the best, you truly are!
As I and countless others have stated before, Nier: Automata is filled to the brim with existential philosophy. An absolutely brilliant RPG that examines in a gaggle of ways the search for meaning to one’s existence, both on the level of individual and species, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that just about everything in this game is there for a reason, has a purpose in the grand scheme of Nier: Automata’s search for truth. And I daresay there are probably many who would agree with me on this point. As any creator does through their philosophical treatise, Yoko Taro wants us to think, long and hard, about ourselves.
And yet, at the same time, there are moments in Nier: Automata of self-awareness that seem to warn us--or perhaps it’s more accurate to say reassure us--that there are downsides to going too deep into this thoughtful realm. While Nier: Automata wants to make us question our existence and help us to find new perspectives through which we can arrive at our own truths on the matter, I think that it also, in at least a small way, wants us to confront the question of whether all these philosophical musings are even worth it.
This relates a little to some of what I spoke of in my rant about N2’s demise, so let’s start there. Recall that N2, the summation of the Machine consciousness and an otherwise unassailable opponent, is defeated by itself: once N2 has focused enough of its mental processing on the fight with A2 thanks to her following the Pod’s advice not to attack N2’s instances, N2 finds itself at odds with itself, split by indecision about how to proceed with its goals to the point that its different opinions destroy one another, just, as A2 points out, like humans destroy one another over differing viewpoints. Now, in my rant, I made the argument that this is way of NA telling us of the danger of unquestioningly following another’s path to enlightenment, and I’ll stick by that, but it’s also a tangible representation of a mind being undone by having mired itself too fully in a single matter. Becoming unavoidably preoccupied with this single battle has caused the mind that is N2 to fold in on itself, just as becoming too focused on his own pain and loss causes 9S to behave in self-destructive ways.
Now, this by itself doesn’t really act as an argument that getting too serious about existential philosophy, specifically, is a bad thing--9S’s deterioration can easily be seen as primarily emotional in nature (though I would, myself, argue that it’s half that, and half his continuing to learn the truth of YoRHa’s existence), and you can view N2’s downfall to be more of a commentary on human nature’s tendency towards indecision, and social in-fighting over trivialities of method. But it does act as supporting evidence if there’s already a case to be made for Nier: Automata possessing the intent to argue against the necessity of taking these questions of existence too seriously...and, indeed, that case is made in the game.
There are times in Nier: Automata in which the creators of the game outright poke fun at how seriously we take the questions that they themselves are exploring so diligently. I first noticed this during the sidequest involving the machine entity Jean-Paul. The gist of this venture is that Jean-Paul is a rather self-important philosopher, pondering and attempting to find high meaning (or an equally snooty lack of meaning) in existence, which has, peculiarly, made him something of a rockstar in the machine community, and it’s 2B and 9S’s job to act as courier for him, delivering to Jean-Paul love confessions from his groupies, and subsequently returning with the news of his rejection to each. While it’s a somewhat tedious sidequest, it’s also kind of amusing, because Jean-Paul has his round head so far up his shiny metal ass that his reaction to each admirer’s gift is to try to judge it on its merits as some representation of some higher purpose of thought--he seems actually incapable of viewing a basic, emotional purpose of these items, even though that would be the most obvious perspective to take toward them. Likewise, his enamoured followers are all too ready to read utter brilliance into his rejection. 2B and 9S come out of this sidequest thoroughly nonplussed at this weirdo and the nuts that hang on his every word,* and the overall purpose of this sidequest seems to first and foremost be to have a chuckle at the fact that these characters have taken their desire to contemplate existence so far that they’re actually missing the basic, overt facts of what’s in front of them.
When I played this quest through to the end, I was amused, and honestly, I respected it for being a little bit of tongue-in-cheek self-deprecation on the part of Yoko Taro and his posse, a little admission from them of perhaps taking the questions of our existence too seriously. I’ve always personally held the belief that it’s an easy pitfall for a thinker to get so wrapped up in finding deeper or grander meaning that they start to miss the obvious and find things that aren’t there, like the populists may have done with The Wizard of Oz, or as fans do for Rick and Morty to make themselves feel smart for the first time. But after feeling amused and appreciative, I simply moved on, assuming it was a one-off moment.
But it was not. There’s also a moment in the game in which we see Pascal reading one of Nietzsche’s works, and witness him reflect aloud that Nietzsche either was quite profound...or just drove straight past Profoundville and wound up in Crazy Town instead.** Additionally, there’s the post-game research report written by Jackass, in which she briefly details the now fully-revealed lore of the game, its events, and ends with a hilariously disgruntled and blunt summary of it all that points out that the whole conflict and everything they’ve all been doing is completely stupid and frustrating. It’s a remarkably straightforward, down-to-earth reaction that’s such a supremely stark contrast to the serious, earnest approach that Nier: Automata has otherwise taken with its complex and thoughtful story, that it winds up being hilarious, and even, in a way, a relief to the player, after having been caught up so deeply in the game’s conflicts and meanings for so long.
And then there’s the endings. Nier: Automata has 26 endings (sort of; A and B are actually halfway marks), 1 for every letter of the alphabet, and the substantial majority of them are joke endings! Much like several of Chrono Trigger’s alternate endings, Nier: Automata has various quick little conclusions that more or less just toss away all the weighty heft of the plot, and end things on a mildly amusing and insubstantial note...ending the game because 9S decided to just wander off in curiosity when he was supposed to stick to the mission, or because you had 2B gum up her inner workings with a fish like that scene in AI where the robot kid breaks down from trying to eat spinach,*** or because you decided in your infinite wisdom to do your own tech support and accidentally uninstalled A2’s operating system...little joke endings like these are scattered throughout NA at every turn. At practically any time, there’s an opportunity to just drop all this high-falutin’ philosophy BS and end the whole adventure on silly, surface-level terms.
That, in my estimation, is enough occurrences to warrant consideration--particularly since Jackass’s report is sort of the final words the game has to share with us, which lends them great importance. Even as Nier: Automata plunges headfirst into the greatest depths of our search to understand the meaning of our existence, it also has no problem with some lighthearted ribbing to cut through all the heavy, even at times excessive, philosophy stuff. There’s a good-natured self-awareness to it...and that might even make it better as a work of philosophy.****
I mean, look at something like, say, Dragon Ball Z Abridged. DBZA is a work by fans which founds itself upon pointing out the amusingly dumb shortcomings of DBZ and its characters, a work for comedy, and yet, it’s made by hardcore fans of the original anime who also seek to communicate the parts of the show that made them love it in their parody series, and the result is a genuinely enjoyable interpretation of DBZ that a great many people (myself included) actually, legitimately believe is the better version. The rational, self-aware humor of DBZ Abridged allows it to be a far better vehicle for the anime’s story, cutting out the endless tedium of DBZ’s original narrative methods, acknowledging the incomprehensible stupidity of so many of its devices and characters, but asking, reasonably, that we allow ourselves to admit the parts within that stupidity that are actually kind of good as a basic concept.
Yoko Taro is doing the same thing, essentially. He seems, to me, to be showing a gracious, wry humility by allowing for the possibility that this is all an unnecessary bunch of hoopla, allowing us a reliable, universal access point, humor, through which we can enter into Nier: Automata’s depth, and likewise through which we can duck out for a moment of fresh air to get a joke ending for stupidly blowing up our home base, or appreciate the fact that even these possibly superior machine consciousnesses also wonder if maybe this whole business is trying to make too much of nothing.
I’d also like to say, lastly, that this occasional bit of poking fun at the intensity of our collective pursuit of existential truth is, in itself, actually a beneficial part of that very question. When your point is to question purpose itself, it’s only right that you be thorough enough to question the purpose of your method itself. Does exploring our own existence really even mean anything, have any value, when it doesn’t change the fact or nature of the world and events around us? Jackass is no philosopher, but her blunt, crude, surface-level summary of the existence portrayed in Nier: Automata might very well be the most honest and undebatable perspective in the whole affair. The machine Jean-Paul is a tenaciously dedicated devotee to finding the hidden truth of all he experiences, yet it is clear even to our protagonists that this is the very reason he misses the point, that he can’t see the forest for the trees. For all the penetrating, far-reaching intellectual paths we explore in a search for that which defines our purpose, there are some ways in which the more down-to-Earth perspective of most people, whose concerns are with living their existence rather than mercilessly interrogating it, does have the advantage. Within Nier: Automata, Yoko Taro offers us his own perspective on existentialism, he incorporates and provides others’ famous takes, as well...but he also provides the rejection of these quests of the mind as an alternative, and, interestingly, lends this approach legitimacy through the appealing power of humor.
* Although it probably would have done 9S some good to have given Jean-Paul’s “existence precedes essence” idea some more thought, considering how things go later for the guy.
** I especially like this scene, because Pascal’s next thought is that he’d best put away the books and go out and see the world for himself, which I believe is another major intention of Yoko Taro’s: to urge us to give the works of others their due consideration as guides (even including Nier: Automata itself), but ultimately to elect to find one’s answers about existence on one’s own.
*** Insert cliched 1950s joke about kids not wanting to eat their vegetables here.
**** I should note that the many alternate endings are not necessarily only intended for humorous purposes. 1 of the 2 fine gents I had proofread this rant, Angel, believes strongly that they also represent a take on free will, in allowing one to essentially walk off the stage rather than continue to play the rigid role assigned. I rather like this idea, too, as it squares very well with the concept behind the ultimate end to this game. But the minor endings would not need to be by and large amusing to accomplish that goal, and yet they are, so I do still feel that they fit with my interpretation in this rant, too.
Showing posts with label Nier. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nier. Show all posts
Saturday, September 28, 2019
Wednesday, September 18, 2019
Nier: Automata's Downloadable Content
Nier: Automata. It’s regarded as brilliant. It’s been called by some the most philosophical game ever made. It’s as powerful an argument that video games are capable of being art as any I’ve seen. It’s received universal acclaim and praise. It’s shown that despite almost every available piece of evidence to be found in the past decade and a half, SquareEnix is still capable of publishing quality work. And it’s...got an add-on, proving that there is no possible work of sufficient merit and dignity to be able to escape the grasp of greedy corporate scum. I guess I should just be glad they never got around to adding lootboxes to the game.
So yeah, unlike what you’d expect from a game designed to explore and illustrate the meaning and conflicts behind one’s existence, Nier: Automata has a DLC. And yeah, exactly like what you’d expect from a dude who has no good idea of how to spend his free time, I’m here to talk about it today.
3C3C1D119440927: Goddammit, Nier: Automata, I know you’re deep and artsy and you perfectly embrace the whole artificial intelligence angle of your story, but couldn’t you have put all that on hold for just 1 freakin’ second and given your DLC package a title that I won’t have to look up and copy-paste every single time I want to refer to it by name?
When I first started to play this DLC, I was...pessimistic, to put it politely. At the outset, this package seems to just be about adding 3 coliseums to the game, which you can enter and win several matches of varying levels of challenge within. I’ve almost never found RPG arenas all that interesting, honestly--it’s like, oh boy, in addition to the literal hundreds of repetitive battles I’ll fight during the natural course of completing the game, here’s a gameplay feature where I get to fight MORE! What an innovative delight! Ugh. So yeah, as this DLC starts out by just inviting you to a handful of arenas to battle, I wasn’t thrilled, and that feeling persisted as I took part in each one’s matches.
I will say that the coliseum angle isn’t all bad here, though. While having to schlup your way through a bunch of new battles is boring as hell, there’s some merit in the lore surrounding some of the coliseum stuff. 1 coliseum shows a rather ugly side to the Resistance, which helps to round them out a little, because the main game’s focus, even in terms of lore-expanding sidequests, tends to be more on YoRHa and the machines as groups than on the Resistance: while you get to meet a few significant members of the Resistance over the game’s course, you never get to see the light and dark side of the group as a whole the way you do the other major factions of the game. And another coliseum establishes a small culture of machines who regulate their lives with thousands of rigid, completely arbitrary rules, which actually is pretty interesting--it seems like less of a random side-story gimmick, and more like a new perspective Yoko Taro wishes to share on methods we use to deal with (or perhaps ignore and deny) our existential dilemmas and fears. It at least feels like this arena’s lore is trying to say something to the player about purpose and society, so it seems like a good fit to the game, a more natural part of it than many add-ons tend to be.
I was pleasantly surprised, however, to find that once the arenas had been cleared, this DLC isn’t over--there’s a final sidequest to get through which, while not really acknowledged or advertised very much as the content pack’s attractive features, ends up being, I think, the real point of purchasing this add-on. In this finale to 3C3C1D119440927, you’re given the opportunity to learn the story of 1 member of the machines: a somewhat defective and constantly bullied robot who found love and purpose in caring for a doll, and what his fate was. It’s a small but emotional story, told well through his perspective and then later through the eyes of another machine, and I really like the window it provides us into the everyday operations and frustrations of the machines. I particularly enjoy that fact because it seems like the overworked, underappreciated life of a single machine in an overbearing workforce may be a connection to the famous writings of Engels and Marx, whose works have, before now, not been given the same time and exploration in Nier: Automata as those of most of the other philosophers that the game has referenced.
In the end, the purpose of the tale of this lonely machine, and of the music video that concludes this DLC, are not fully apparent to me, and open to a lot of interpretation...but it’s a story that nonetheless clearly has meaning and thought to convey to its player. Which is neither unexpected, nor a flaw: this is, after all, Nier: Automata. Much of it is meant to allow the player to draw his or her own conclusions and insights from the game’s material, and the question of what this machine’s existence and legacy, and the artful music video that follows, means for us and and our existence should be something with which we grapple with the help and guidance, but not the hand-holding, of the game.
It’s hard for me to say whether or not 3C3C1D119440927 is worth the $10 that I currently see it listed for. Conventionally-speaking, it isn’t, as you’re not likely to get a full 10 hours of additional play time out of it, and much of what time you do get from it is sadly taken up by tiresome arena challenges rather than anything that matters. Conversely, though, this DLC is worthwhile and thoughtful enough, once you get to its real content, that it feels consistent to Nier: Automata as a whole, and perhaps that fact does, indeed, make it worth the cost. I suppose the matter boils down to your general experience with NA: if it’s something you’ve gotten a lot out of, and you’re interested in examining another piece of it and finding how that piece fits into the philosophical treatise as a whole, then this DLC won’t be a bad purchase for you. If it’s a game of which you’ve enjoyed the surface story layer but not had much luck in following the deeper content, then this probably won’t be worth the price, at least not right now--maybe if it ever goes on sale for, like, $5 or less. And if you just haven’t really cared for Nier: Automata overall...well, then, no, obviously don’t buy this, why is this even a question for you. I, at least, found it satisfactory, and that’s certainly more than I can say for the majority of my add-on experiences to date, so good on Nier: Automata in this matter.
Oh also it’s hard to dislike any DLC that gives me the chance to beat the ever-loving shit out of the guy in charge of SquareEnix.
So yeah, unlike what you’d expect from a game designed to explore and illustrate the meaning and conflicts behind one’s existence, Nier: Automata has a DLC. And yeah, exactly like what you’d expect from a dude who has no good idea of how to spend his free time, I’m here to talk about it today.
3C3C1D119440927: Goddammit, Nier: Automata, I know you’re deep and artsy and you perfectly embrace the whole artificial intelligence angle of your story, but couldn’t you have put all that on hold for just 1 freakin’ second and given your DLC package a title that I won’t have to look up and copy-paste every single time I want to refer to it by name?
When I first started to play this DLC, I was...pessimistic, to put it politely. At the outset, this package seems to just be about adding 3 coliseums to the game, which you can enter and win several matches of varying levels of challenge within. I’ve almost never found RPG arenas all that interesting, honestly--it’s like, oh boy, in addition to the literal hundreds of repetitive battles I’ll fight during the natural course of completing the game, here’s a gameplay feature where I get to fight MORE! What an innovative delight! Ugh. So yeah, as this DLC starts out by just inviting you to a handful of arenas to battle, I wasn’t thrilled, and that feeling persisted as I took part in each one’s matches.
I will say that the coliseum angle isn’t all bad here, though. While having to schlup your way through a bunch of new battles is boring as hell, there’s some merit in the lore surrounding some of the coliseum stuff. 1 coliseum shows a rather ugly side to the Resistance, which helps to round them out a little, because the main game’s focus, even in terms of lore-expanding sidequests, tends to be more on YoRHa and the machines as groups than on the Resistance: while you get to meet a few significant members of the Resistance over the game’s course, you never get to see the light and dark side of the group as a whole the way you do the other major factions of the game. And another coliseum establishes a small culture of machines who regulate their lives with thousands of rigid, completely arbitrary rules, which actually is pretty interesting--it seems like less of a random side-story gimmick, and more like a new perspective Yoko Taro wishes to share on methods we use to deal with (or perhaps ignore and deny) our existential dilemmas and fears. It at least feels like this arena’s lore is trying to say something to the player about purpose and society, so it seems like a good fit to the game, a more natural part of it than many add-ons tend to be.
I was pleasantly surprised, however, to find that once the arenas had been cleared, this DLC isn’t over--there’s a final sidequest to get through which, while not really acknowledged or advertised very much as the content pack’s attractive features, ends up being, I think, the real point of purchasing this add-on. In this finale to 3C3C1D119440927, you’re given the opportunity to learn the story of 1 member of the machines: a somewhat defective and constantly bullied robot who found love and purpose in caring for a doll, and what his fate was. It’s a small but emotional story, told well through his perspective and then later through the eyes of another machine, and I really like the window it provides us into the everyday operations and frustrations of the machines. I particularly enjoy that fact because it seems like the overworked, underappreciated life of a single machine in an overbearing workforce may be a connection to the famous writings of Engels and Marx, whose works have, before now, not been given the same time and exploration in Nier: Automata as those of most of the other philosophers that the game has referenced.
In the end, the purpose of the tale of this lonely machine, and of the music video that concludes this DLC, are not fully apparent to me, and open to a lot of interpretation...but it’s a story that nonetheless clearly has meaning and thought to convey to its player. Which is neither unexpected, nor a flaw: this is, after all, Nier: Automata. Much of it is meant to allow the player to draw his or her own conclusions and insights from the game’s material, and the question of what this machine’s existence and legacy, and the artful music video that follows, means for us and and our existence should be something with which we grapple with the help and guidance, but not the hand-holding, of the game.
It’s hard for me to say whether or not 3C3C1D119440927 is worth the $10 that I currently see it listed for. Conventionally-speaking, it isn’t, as you’re not likely to get a full 10 hours of additional play time out of it, and much of what time you do get from it is sadly taken up by tiresome arena challenges rather than anything that matters. Conversely, though, this DLC is worthwhile and thoughtful enough, once you get to its real content, that it feels consistent to Nier: Automata as a whole, and perhaps that fact does, indeed, make it worth the cost. I suppose the matter boils down to your general experience with NA: if it’s something you’ve gotten a lot out of, and you’re interested in examining another piece of it and finding how that piece fits into the philosophical treatise as a whole, then this DLC won’t be a bad purchase for you. If it’s a game of which you’ve enjoyed the surface story layer but not had much luck in following the deeper content, then this probably won’t be worth the price, at least not right now--maybe if it ever goes on sale for, like, $5 or less. And if you just haven’t really cared for Nier: Automata overall...well, then, no, obviously don’t buy this, why is this even a question for you. I, at least, found it satisfactory, and that’s certainly more than I can say for the majority of my add-on experiences to date, so good on Nier: Automata in this matter.
Oh also it’s hard to dislike any DLC that gives me the chance to beat the ever-loving shit out of the guy in charge of SquareEnix.
Sunday, April 28, 2019
Nier: Automata's N2's Defeat
Don’t read this if you haven’t played (and beaten) Nier: Automata.
No. For real. Don’t. Spoiling Nier: Automata for yourself is as extreme an act of self-harm as spoiling Undertale is. So don’t do it.
We good? Good.
Also: Major thanks to my buddy Ecclesiastes, and my work buddy Guy Whose Name I Forgot To Ask Permission To Share So I Won't Although Honestly Dude People Would Just Assume Your Real Name Was An Internet Handle Anyway Because It's Pretty Weird (But In An Awesome Way). I usually have my sister read my rants before I post them, so that they don't suck, but she is unfamiliar with Nier: Automata, and I don't want to spoil it for her, so in cases like this, I outsource to other educated parties. Thanks, Ecc and work buddy, you guys rock!
Nier: Automata is brilliant. We all know this. It’s brilliant from the beginning, and it only gets more so as it goes along. It’s the latest great work of philosophy, in my opinion, and it says so much about existentialism, social purpose, trust, the fatal flaws within us as individuals and as a species, our obsession with the past, and even just our own mental framework in our approach to video games, that I’ve more or less avoided ranting about it in any substantial way here for the same reason I rarely do so for Planescape: Torment, or Neverwinter Nights 2’s Mask of the Betrayer DLC: because most of what I could say about them has been said before, by more thoughtful intellectuals than myself, and, frankly, the level of higher contemplation and genius behind these works feels a bit out of my range. I have a healthy respect for my own intelligence, but the minds behind some games are intimidating in their scope, and Nier: Automata’s one of those games.
Still, every now and then I’ll have an insight that I haven’t really seen during my internet ramblings, and I feel compelled to share it. And that’s why we’re here today: because although I’ve seen quite a few people go into the many ideas and intents of Nier: Automata, and why they’re brilliant, I haven’t really seen anyone talk in detail about 1 moment in the game that I thought particularly well-crafted: the defeat of arguably the main antagonist of the game, the manipulative machine consciousness that serves as a God analogue in the game, N2.
To me, this scene is a really great moment in the game because it manages, in a single clever moment, to accomplish several functions of storytelling, theme, and philosophy. First of all, as a moment within the story, it is, of course, a rather cool and unexpected way to bring about the end of what is arguably the main antagonist of Nier: Automata: through intelligence rather than strength, by the villain’s own hand rather than the heroine’s. Yes, you could argue that it’s important for an audience’s satisfaction that the protagonist be the one to finish the ultimate baddie of a story, and that’s often true (and failing to do so can result in a catastrophically anticlimactic ending), but at the same time, there are times when more can be said through a villain falling to some force other than the hero, and that, I believe, is the case here--there are deeper aims achieved by having N2 destroy itself, as I’ll soon get into. I’m reminded of Shishio’s epic demise in Rurouni Kenshin: he dies not from an attack from Kenshin, but rather from the fact that he has overexerted himself in his battle against Kenshin, and he perishes in the flames of his own lust for conflict. Shishio represents anarchy and rule of the fittest, and so it means far more that Kenshin, a representative of peace and order, wins the fight not by outright strength, but simply be the fact that Kenshin can endure, and Shishio cannot.
More important than the unexpected coolness of N2’s defeat, story-wise, is the fact that this scene serves to enhance the depth of 1 character, and to reinforce the development. To understand each, we need to first understand 1 of concepts that N2 represents: self-aware intelligence. See, N2 is the overall machine consciousness, right? Basically a mind. And each freaky little girl image that we see it use to interact with, and later attack, A2 is essentially a thought, a feeling, an idea...a single little firing of the N2 mind. With an infinite number of incorporeal thought-selves that can be called on to attack A2, it’s beyond her conventional ability to stop.
However, eventually A2 stops attacking the N2 entities, even as more and more flood into battle to eliminate her, and with enough instances of itself gathered in a single place, N2 becomes more and more conscious, as it devotes more and more of its attention, more and more of its processing power, to the matter at hand. With more and more “thoughts” gathering together to focus on a single task, eventually the inevitable happens: a division between them on what the next step will be. It’s the equivalent, I believe, to a moment of indecision, of second-guessing oneself: having put more and more thought into the matter, part of the mind rethinks its plans, and suddenly can’t decide what the best option is. The N2 instances lose unity and cohesion, and begin to war with each other over their differing opinions, dooming themselves to failure even as their enemy watches them--it’s basically that moment when your indecision costs you both things you were trying to decide between.
With this perspective that N2 represents a mind, its destruction is a great moment for reinforcing what we’ve seen happening to 9S in these last chapters of Nier: Automata: he’s mentally self-destructing. Unable to focus on anything but his own grief at the death of 2B and the rage at the truths he’s been discovering about the world, 9S is coming undone, pursuing nigh-directionless vengeance with no regard for his own wellbeing, even going so far as to infect himself with a logic virus just because doing so will let him keep attacking and destroying everything before him, even if only for mere minutes more. 9S can’t get out of his own head, can’t focus on anything else; he’s letting the turmoil within his mind destroy him as a whole. And what we can see through slow symptoms in 9S, we see mirrored quickly and directly in N2: a mental turmoil that leads it to self-destruct.
What’s even greater, though, is that this doesn’t just reinforce the development of 9S (and, for that matter, the important idea that the androids and the machines are the same). It also is a refreshing and welcome moment enhancing the personality of another character: Pod 042! The reserved personalities of both Pods don’t get to shine very much, but here is a masterful exception. It’s Pod 042, not A2, who realizes the only way to defeat N2 is to let it keep devoting more and more “thoughts” to a single task, let it keep getting more and more consciously intelligent, until it turns on itself. And that probably doesn’t seem all that important--Pod 042 came up with a clever idea to beat an enemy, what’s the big deal?
The big deal is how Pod 042 came up with the idea. How could this simple character, ostensibly the most limited consciousness present in that battle, be the one to come up with an idea so brilliant that the supposedly greater mind of an android couldn’t think of it, and the surely superior mental entity of an entire race’s collective consciousness couldn’t foresee the danger of? The answer’s simple: because Pod 042 is an observer.
This entire game, he’s observed 2B suffer the pain of a conflict of interests, as her devotion to her duty waged war with her sorrow at having to continually kill her friend 9S. He’s observed (through reports from his counterpart, at least) the deterioration of 9S’s mental stability due to being unable to focus on anything but his own loss. He’s observed the self-destruction of the pacifist machine children, who died by their own hands for fear of the pain their attackers would cause them. He’s observed the subsequent end of Pascal, who could not find it within himself to continue living with such sorrow. Over the course of this game, time and time again, we’ve seen the main characters and those they interact with suffering and come partially or even totally undone by the turmoil in their own hearts, as their thoughts and feelings become entrapped by 1 particular memory, emotion, conflict of interests, etc. And all the way along has been Pod 042, observing everything with us. He’s seen over and over what self-aware, conscious beings do to themselves when something weighs too heavily on their mind to escape. And so he knows what beings theoretically far his mental superior do not: that to defeat a powerful mind, all that’s needed is to simply let it think too much about something. Pod 042’s just giving N2 the chance to fall into the same pitfalls that he sees his charges constantly deal with.
And the positives that N2’s death serves for the storytelling are just 1 facet in which this is a great scene! It’s also great in terms of furthering the game’s purpose of examining and commenting on human society as a whole. While Nier: Automata is certainly first and foremost all about existentialism in relation to the individual self, it also has a lot to say about humanity as a group and whole (which is unsurprising; it’s an inevitable extension of any philosophical musing, no matter how individual-oriented, I should think). While N2’s self-destruction is an excellent analogy for our own self-destruction as we mire ourselves too deeply in our inner conflicts, it also serves as a commentary on our self-destructive social behavior, as well. When the two groups of N2 consciousnesses disagree on their next step--a disagreement so trivial that it’s not about differing desires, but about how they should proceed to achieving the same goal--they recklessly and arrogantly attack one another, even while their actual enemy stands right in front of them! A2 outright spells it out for us as she watches in amused awe at the sight of N2’s consciousnesses destroy themselves over nothing: “They’re acting like humans...” So the scene not only shows us how we defeat ourselves on a personal level by letting ourselves fall prey to our own intellect, but it also shows us how we so frequently doom our own efforts as a species by letting trivial squabbles distract us from our real problems.
On that note, it’s also a great reflection of the entire conflict between the androids and the machines--Nier: Automata has gone out of its way to show many times that in all important ways, the androids and the machines are fundamentally the same,* which throws much of their war’s purpose into question, and now we have a display of 2 groups of the exact same being finding a stupid excuse to wipe each other out, even though the only point on which they disagree is ultimately not even all that sizable. It’s a great extension of the idea that NA has been pushing with its war between machine and android all along, that we make war over stupid reasons that waste our time and resources on the wrong target.
Finally, N2’s destruction is a great, philosophical end to the machines’ wish to be human. Throughout the game, the machines have been grappling with the inevitable questions of existence, and their method for doing so has always been to seek to become like the humans who originally owned the Earth. Over and over through the course of Nier: Automata we see, in both the main story and the sidequests, machines imitating human behavior, immersing themselves in human pastimes and passions, and studying human culture, religion, and philosophers, attempting to make sense of their own existence by making sense of humans’ existence. It’s always with this faithful reverence--as though they believe without a doubt that humanity had all the answers, so even when the human behavior has no purpose with machine lifeforms (childcare, sex, pursuit of physical beauty, etc.), or they don’t really understand the significance of what humans did (Eve questioning why he’s being named after a female figure, pointing out that Cain and Abel might make more sense than Adam and Eve, and being rebuffed by Adam simply because that’s not how the humans did it), they still go through the motions, simply trusting that it’s how things must be done. More or less everyone in Nier: Automata is trying to figure out the purpose of their existence, it’s what the game’s about, but by and large, the machines do so by mimicking the ways of beings they believe to have had the answers.
And then, in this scene, the machine consciousness net N2 finally makes the breakthrough, finally advances enough to--again, in A2’s (and thus the game’s) own words--truly act like humans, and it immediately destroys them. They wanted to take up humanity’s mantle, but it was such a poor fit that it only choked them.
It’s a brilliantly tragic end to the machines’ journey.** And it’s also a great philosophical message that the game has for us, one unlike most of its others: find your own answers to your questions. The machines sought the answers to their own self-awareness from outsiders (and worse, a species which, frankly, had not, as a whole, figured out those answers to begin with), attempting to become humans instead of figure out what they themselves are, and the only result that has come of that method is demonstrated by N2: a system failure. In a sense, this scene is a warning label stuck onto the entirety of Nier: Automata, telling us that we should consider what it, and any other work of advice and philosophy, tells us, adopt its ideas and suggestions to the extent that work for ourselves, but not to let it do all the thinking for us, not to just let its answers be our own. Just as NA has reached its own conclusions which it shares with us after examining the works left by the previous great minds it frequently references, it wants only to give you ideas to consider in your own quest for existential truth, not to just give you an answer sheet to copy unquestioningly. Reminds me of Buddhism, a bit--the Buddha is a revered figure who has found enlightenment which you’re encouraged to respect and examine, but just outright emulating him won’t lead to your own enlightenment.
And...that’s all I got for today. There’s probably more bits of narrative, thematic, and philosophical brilliance that the defeat of N2 provides to Nier: Automata, because this game really is just that complex and sharp, but that’s all I’ve come up with in my own musings. And I think I’ve done a decent job! It’s something to think about, at least, and it’s a scene I haven’t seen discussed in too much detail in my (admittedly limited) ramblings across the web.
And now, back to our regular schedule of nitpicking stuff that doesn’t matter, jokes at Fallout 76’s expense, and reviewing DLCs for games over a decade old.
* A fact which, of course, is patently obvious to us, a biological audience to whom all mechanical life forms basically seem the same. But that’s the beauty of Nier: Automata: the fact that the androids and machines acting like there’s some great distinction between themselves seems absurd to us is easily flipped around as a commentary on our own racial conflicts--just as it seems silly to we humans that the androids before us are aghast at the notion that they and the machines are similar beings, so, too, would an android observer of human history find it ludicrous that we humans put such stock in distinctions like skin tone when we’re all the same organism in every significant way.
** Obviously this isn’t literally the end of all the machines at this moment, of course, as there’s more battles ahead for A2 after this point. I mean in the figurative sense--N2 has completed the journey to human-ness that the machines as a whole are all on, and that journey ends in self-destruction, so as long as they each stay on this path, this will be their end.
No. For real. Don’t. Spoiling Nier: Automata for yourself is as extreme an act of self-harm as spoiling Undertale is. So don’t do it.
We good? Good.
Also: Major thanks to my buddy Ecclesiastes, and my work buddy Guy Whose Name I Forgot To Ask Permission To Share So I Won't Although Honestly Dude People Would Just Assume Your Real Name Was An Internet Handle Anyway Because It's Pretty Weird (But In An Awesome Way). I usually have my sister read my rants before I post them, so that they don't suck, but she is unfamiliar with Nier: Automata, and I don't want to spoil it for her, so in cases like this, I outsource to other educated parties. Thanks, Ecc and work buddy, you guys rock!
Nier: Automata is brilliant. We all know this. It’s brilliant from the beginning, and it only gets more so as it goes along. It’s the latest great work of philosophy, in my opinion, and it says so much about existentialism, social purpose, trust, the fatal flaws within us as individuals and as a species, our obsession with the past, and even just our own mental framework in our approach to video games, that I’ve more or less avoided ranting about it in any substantial way here for the same reason I rarely do so for Planescape: Torment, or Neverwinter Nights 2’s Mask of the Betrayer DLC: because most of what I could say about them has been said before, by more thoughtful intellectuals than myself, and, frankly, the level of higher contemplation and genius behind these works feels a bit out of my range. I have a healthy respect for my own intelligence, but the minds behind some games are intimidating in their scope, and Nier: Automata’s one of those games.
Still, every now and then I’ll have an insight that I haven’t really seen during my internet ramblings, and I feel compelled to share it. And that’s why we’re here today: because although I’ve seen quite a few people go into the many ideas and intents of Nier: Automata, and why they’re brilliant, I haven’t really seen anyone talk in detail about 1 moment in the game that I thought particularly well-crafted: the defeat of arguably the main antagonist of the game, the manipulative machine consciousness that serves as a God analogue in the game, N2.
To me, this scene is a really great moment in the game because it manages, in a single clever moment, to accomplish several functions of storytelling, theme, and philosophy. First of all, as a moment within the story, it is, of course, a rather cool and unexpected way to bring about the end of what is arguably the main antagonist of Nier: Automata: through intelligence rather than strength, by the villain’s own hand rather than the heroine’s. Yes, you could argue that it’s important for an audience’s satisfaction that the protagonist be the one to finish the ultimate baddie of a story, and that’s often true (and failing to do so can result in a catastrophically anticlimactic ending), but at the same time, there are times when more can be said through a villain falling to some force other than the hero, and that, I believe, is the case here--there are deeper aims achieved by having N2 destroy itself, as I’ll soon get into. I’m reminded of Shishio’s epic demise in Rurouni Kenshin: he dies not from an attack from Kenshin, but rather from the fact that he has overexerted himself in his battle against Kenshin, and he perishes in the flames of his own lust for conflict. Shishio represents anarchy and rule of the fittest, and so it means far more that Kenshin, a representative of peace and order, wins the fight not by outright strength, but simply be the fact that Kenshin can endure, and Shishio cannot.
More important than the unexpected coolness of N2’s defeat, story-wise, is the fact that this scene serves to enhance the depth of 1 character, and to reinforce the development. To understand each, we need to first understand 1 of concepts that N2 represents: self-aware intelligence. See, N2 is the overall machine consciousness, right? Basically a mind. And each freaky little girl image that we see it use to interact with, and later attack, A2 is essentially a thought, a feeling, an idea...a single little firing of the N2 mind. With an infinite number of incorporeal thought-selves that can be called on to attack A2, it’s beyond her conventional ability to stop.
However, eventually A2 stops attacking the N2 entities, even as more and more flood into battle to eliminate her, and with enough instances of itself gathered in a single place, N2 becomes more and more conscious, as it devotes more and more of its attention, more and more of its processing power, to the matter at hand. With more and more “thoughts” gathering together to focus on a single task, eventually the inevitable happens: a division between them on what the next step will be. It’s the equivalent, I believe, to a moment of indecision, of second-guessing oneself: having put more and more thought into the matter, part of the mind rethinks its plans, and suddenly can’t decide what the best option is. The N2 instances lose unity and cohesion, and begin to war with each other over their differing opinions, dooming themselves to failure even as their enemy watches them--it’s basically that moment when your indecision costs you both things you were trying to decide between.
With this perspective that N2 represents a mind, its destruction is a great moment for reinforcing what we’ve seen happening to 9S in these last chapters of Nier: Automata: he’s mentally self-destructing. Unable to focus on anything but his own grief at the death of 2B and the rage at the truths he’s been discovering about the world, 9S is coming undone, pursuing nigh-directionless vengeance with no regard for his own wellbeing, even going so far as to infect himself with a logic virus just because doing so will let him keep attacking and destroying everything before him, even if only for mere minutes more. 9S can’t get out of his own head, can’t focus on anything else; he’s letting the turmoil within his mind destroy him as a whole. And what we can see through slow symptoms in 9S, we see mirrored quickly and directly in N2: a mental turmoil that leads it to self-destruct.
What’s even greater, though, is that this doesn’t just reinforce the development of 9S (and, for that matter, the important idea that the androids and the machines are the same). It also is a refreshing and welcome moment enhancing the personality of another character: Pod 042! The reserved personalities of both Pods don’t get to shine very much, but here is a masterful exception. It’s Pod 042, not A2, who realizes the only way to defeat N2 is to let it keep devoting more and more “thoughts” to a single task, let it keep getting more and more consciously intelligent, until it turns on itself. And that probably doesn’t seem all that important--Pod 042 came up with a clever idea to beat an enemy, what’s the big deal?
The big deal is how Pod 042 came up with the idea. How could this simple character, ostensibly the most limited consciousness present in that battle, be the one to come up with an idea so brilliant that the supposedly greater mind of an android couldn’t think of it, and the surely superior mental entity of an entire race’s collective consciousness couldn’t foresee the danger of? The answer’s simple: because Pod 042 is an observer.
This entire game, he’s observed 2B suffer the pain of a conflict of interests, as her devotion to her duty waged war with her sorrow at having to continually kill her friend 9S. He’s observed (through reports from his counterpart, at least) the deterioration of 9S’s mental stability due to being unable to focus on anything but his own loss. He’s observed the self-destruction of the pacifist machine children, who died by their own hands for fear of the pain their attackers would cause them. He’s observed the subsequent end of Pascal, who could not find it within himself to continue living with such sorrow. Over the course of this game, time and time again, we’ve seen the main characters and those they interact with suffering and come partially or even totally undone by the turmoil in their own hearts, as their thoughts and feelings become entrapped by 1 particular memory, emotion, conflict of interests, etc. And all the way along has been Pod 042, observing everything with us. He’s seen over and over what self-aware, conscious beings do to themselves when something weighs too heavily on their mind to escape. And so he knows what beings theoretically far his mental superior do not: that to defeat a powerful mind, all that’s needed is to simply let it think too much about something. Pod 042’s just giving N2 the chance to fall into the same pitfalls that he sees his charges constantly deal with.
And the positives that N2’s death serves for the storytelling are just 1 facet in which this is a great scene! It’s also great in terms of furthering the game’s purpose of examining and commenting on human society as a whole. While Nier: Automata is certainly first and foremost all about existentialism in relation to the individual self, it also has a lot to say about humanity as a group and whole (which is unsurprising; it’s an inevitable extension of any philosophical musing, no matter how individual-oriented, I should think). While N2’s self-destruction is an excellent analogy for our own self-destruction as we mire ourselves too deeply in our inner conflicts, it also serves as a commentary on our self-destructive social behavior, as well. When the two groups of N2 consciousnesses disagree on their next step--a disagreement so trivial that it’s not about differing desires, but about how they should proceed to achieving the same goal--they recklessly and arrogantly attack one another, even while their actual enemy stands right in front of them! A2 outright spells it out for us as she watches in amused awe at the sight of N2’s consciousnesses destroy themselves over nothing: “They’re acting like humans...” So the scene not only shows us how we defeat ourselves on a personal level by letting ourselves fall prey to our own intellect, but it also shows us how we so frequently doom our own efforts as a species by letting trivial squabbles distract us from our real problems.
On that note, it’s also a great reflection of the entire conflict between the androids and the machines--Nier: Automata has gone out of its way to show many times that in all important ways, the androids and the machines are fundamentally the same,* which throws much of their war’s purpose into question, and now we have a display of 2 groups of the exact same being finding a stupid excuse to wipe each other out, even though the only point on which they disagree is ultimately not even all that sizable. It’s a great extension of the idea that NA has been pushing with its war between machine and android all along, that we make war over stupid reasons that waste our time and resources on the wrong target.
Finally, N2’s destruction is a great, philosophical end to the machines’ wish to be human. Throughout the game, the machines have been grappling with the inevitable questions of existence, and their method for doing so has always been to seek to become like the humans who originally owned the Earth. Over and over through the course of Nier: Automata we see, in both the main story and the sidequests, machines imitating human behavior, immersing themselves in human pastimes and passions, and studying human culture, religion, and philosophers, attempting to make sense of their own existence by making sense of humans’ existence. It’s always with this faithful reverence--as though they believe without a doubt that humanity had all the answers, so even when the human behavior has no purpose with machine lifeforms (childcare, sex, pursuit of physical beauty, etc.), or they don’t really understand the significance of what humans did (Eve questioning why he’s being named after a female figure, pointing out that Cain and Abel might make more sense than Adam and Eve, and being rebuffed by Adam simply because that’s not how the humans did it), they still go through the motions, simply trusting that it’s how things must be done. More or less everyone in Nier: Automata is trying to figure out the purpose of their existence, it’s what the game’s about, but by and large, the machines do so by mimicking the ways of beings they believe to have had the answers.
And then, in this scene, the machine consciousness net N2 finally makes the breakthrough, finally advances enough to--again, in A2’s (and thus the game’s) own words--truly act like humans, and it immediately destroys them. They wanted to take up humanity’s mantle, but it was such a poor fit that it only choked them.
It’s a brilliantly tragic end to the machines’ journey.** And it’s also a great philosophical message that the game has for us, one unlike most of its others: find your own answers to your questions. The machines sought the answers to their own self-awareness from outsiders (and worse, a species which, frankly, had not, as a whole, figured out those answers to begin with), attempting to become humans instead of figure out what they themselves are, and the only result that has come of that method is demonstrated by N2: a system failure. In a sense, this scene is a warning label stuck onto the entirety of Nier: Automata, telling us that we should consider what it, and any other work of advice and philosophy, tells us, adopt its ideas and suggestions to the extent that work for ourselves, but not to let it do all the thinking for us, not to just let its answers be our own. Just as NA has reached its own conclusions which it shares with us after examining the works left by the previous great minds it frequently references, it wants only to give you ideas to consider in your own quest for existential truth, not to just give you an answer sheet to copy unquestioningly. Reminds me of Buddhism, a bit--the Buddha is a revered figure who has found enlightenment which you’re encouraged to respect and examine, but just outright emulating him won’t lead to your own enlightenment.
And...that’s all I got for today. There’s probably more bits of narrative, thematic, and philosophical brilliance that the defeat of N2 provides to Nier: Automata, because this game really is just that complex and sharp, but that’s all I’ve come up with in my own musings. And I think I’ve done a decent job! It’s something to think about, at least, and it’s a scene I haven’t seen discussed in too much detail in my (admittedly limited) ramblings across the web.
And now, back to our regular schedule of nitpicking stuff that doesn’t matter, jokes at Fallout 76’s expense, and reviewing DLCs for games over a decade old.
* A fact which, of course, is patently obvious to us, a biological audience to whom all mechanical life forms basically seem the same. But that’s the beauty of Nier: Automata: the fact that the androids and machines acting like there’s some great distinction between themselves seems absurd to us is easily flipped around as a commentary on our own racial conflicts--just as it seems silly to we humans that the androids before us are aghast at the notion that they and the machines are similar beings, so, too, would an android observer of human history find it ludicrous that we humans put such stock in distinctions like skin tone when we’re all the same organism in every significant way.
** Obviously this isn’t literally the end of all the machines at this moment, of course, as there’s more battles ahead for A2 after this point. I mean in the figurative sense--N2 has completed the journey to human-ness that the machines as a whole are all on, and that journey ends in self-destruction, so as long as they each stay on this path, this will be their end.
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