@@93vincentvalentine In ending E she says something along the lines of "I woke up crying this morning & felt a sad. I'll talk to Kaine about it later" I think she also has 2 birthday loading screens one for her birthday & Nier's pretty sure she just says "Since Nier wasn't here to celebrate his birthday I'll just have party for him" in part 1. The letter that you can read in the documents for her birthday says "Dear Nier - Today was awesome! Popola made me this HUGE cake that was really yummy, & everyone in the village has been wishing me happy birthday. It's fun! I feel like a princess or something. I don't feel sick at all today. In fact, I almost forgot I had this disease! So maybe you can forget about it too & come back home now? - Yonah.
@@eldarius237 Yeah it wasn't that grindy, when I started playing I didn't know about the weapons until the game told me and by that point I already had around 27 weapons and I had enough money to buy the rest.
I'm surprised you didn't mention that the Administrators referred to Kaine as a Singularity. That's a term used by Accord in Drakengard 3. It refers to items, places, or persons who when a significant amount of Maso is in one place that object can effectively alter causality, creating a new timeline. This term also can explain how the Administrators see "possible futures blending in the current time they inhabit"
@@Bryantzerox Kaine being a singularity could relate to the fact that she's an abnormality among Replicants due to the human she was based on being a result of mixing two bits of human DNA with Legion DNA. The original Kaine's body being partially connected to the Queen's body is actually presumably where her and her Replicant's powers really stem from, not so much Tyrann (which would explain her still retaining control of magic). This is also presumably why The Administrator/Sleeping Beauty made the Replicant Kaine intersex, as the original Kaine only only had female genitalia but the Replicant System couldnt really make proper sense of her DNA so just went with both.
@@OsnosisBones It could also have something to do with the events of ending D. The game never clarifies how World Ender giving up his existence saves Kaine from the Black Scrawl and the relapsing Tyrann. Rewritting reality in such a way probably had effects on the flow of time.
Yeah, since I played Automata before Replicant, I was quite surprised how similar A2 and Kainé were. I've read somewhere, that those similarities happen because both Replicant-Kainé and A2 share memories and personality traits with the original (human) Kainé.
@@katsu7626 makes sense since she was a 'singularity', a focal point of interest to the administrators who also basically said she's the strongest living thing alive rn. So its not really a stretch to have the prototype model unit A2 be desgined after her, A2 was intended to be the best of them all after all.
@@arcanaobscura3519 ya a short story HEAVILY implies that kaine was the basis of A2 possibly due to her actions in ending E shoeing her potential. In the novella of maybe a drama cd dont rightly recall a woman whose only good memories came from her gran mother who in tern is suggeted to be the woman who went mad fighting legion described in the text adventure segment in the forest in nier was the blue print for 2A. and it then ties further back to drakengard 1.
It took us 11 years to finish this game. Hehe, somehow these 11 years feel like they were part of this journey because NieR gives you this constant burning desire to change the story. No one can tell me that you never hesitated or tried to find another way during Route B/C/D. Ending D is the perfect metaphor why these 11 years matter. At some point you even accepted it, the story concludes, the game ends, your save file is gone, you are gone and no matter how hard you tried you couldn't change anything, no matter how many people you told to play this game, how much praise you gave it, you had to face reality and accept that it didn't sell well enough to continue this journey one more time. There are things in life you can't change and you have to live with this feeling that something is missing quite literally. ... And suddenly Automata happened ... Ending E exists because of us, yeah Yoko Taro and his team made it and i love this guy but it was born from the wish of every player who carried this desire of change, this need to continue for so many years in their hearts and spread it like a disease. NieR has a fantastic story but this isn't the secret of it's success. What puts NieR above any other game for me are it's characters and Ending E basically doesn't do anything for the story but it concludes the characters. The last sentences from Kainé and Emil explain everything. Your journey might have been meaningless and no matter how often you go back in time and try to change it, it's still meaningless, the story became meaningless, all that remains in Ending E are the characters you will remember for the rest of you life. And so after 11 years on this journey with you all here, NieR Replicant finally ends.
This just makes me want even more for a DOD3 remake with an added ending showing the branch that leads to DOD1 and Nier. I know, I know, its basically a mix of all the other endings but still... Also, y'know, just want a remade 3 to be more playable and seeing Zero kick ass again.
@@S0oo I would love nothing more than to be able to play a remake of Drakengard 1 & 3. But at the very least I'll take 1. They did such an amazing job with Nier.
Honestly, I don't need a remake for Drakengard 3 maybe just a remaster but the anestheticstill holds up fine in my opinion. I like that game a lot as is. As for Drakengard 1...I half hope they release that game exactly as is, no updated music, no updated combat, just ported to present day consoles without changing a single thing, except maybe retranslate the dialogue to be more honest to the Japanese release.
@@truegamerking My guess is we will get another NieR game that focuses on the Kingdom of the Night which has a project featuring the dragon. So basically a DoD Game with NieR title and after that maybe a remake/reboot.
I always interpreted that scene as a really sincere and somewhat desperate attempt to prevent Kaine from killing herself. It may come off as funny on one way but seems almost heartbreaking in another.
Hey, I can actually answer what happens when you don’t input the right name when restoring save files, and it’s pretty great. Essentially, for each time you get the name wrong, Grimoire Weiss shows up in intermittent bursts of dialogue, ending with just text in the middle of the screen saying “His name is Nier. Do try not to forget it.”
yeah, I couldnt remember exactly how I spelled whatever gibberish I put in the first save file, so all the emotional weight of that was lost as i spelled "shwimpfimble" as many ways as possible.
Hah, thanks for noting that here. I was afraid to intentionally do it wrong. There's no way I would accidentally get it wrong though. A year ago I played Automata. After that, so for the past year, id mainly been playing Elden Ring... So I named my Replicant character "Tarnished" 😂
The feel of kaine's combat really shows where they wish they could have gone with the remaster, but instead opted to just give the combat a face lift instead of an overhaul (which was the correct decision imo) but it just really highlighted how far they have come combat-wise and gets me even more hyped for whatever mainline entry comes next (on console and pc lol)
The combat is better than original but its not good either. They really should have brought it closer to Automata's pace. The game already suffers from its repetition and the new mermaid chapter extends that slog.
It is confirmed that Kaine can hear shades, when the bull is chasing you in the Shadowlord's castle it says something about forgiveness and she goes "we don't need forgiveness, asshole" and Nier goes "Kaine!?" because he's confused (he can't hear it)
Its confirmed outright in one of the other novella("The narrow gate" IIRC, been a while since I read them), as a pack of non relapsed shades attack her while she is tasked with protecting the village during some sort of festival(Popola asks her to take guard duty, rather rudely, then peaces out). They begin taunting her during the fight and she actively converses with them while fighting. It's also strongly implied by this novella that she is/has become aware of the shades true nature(as well as her own) in some capacity through her continued contact with them(by way of Tyrann) - though she either refuses to accept it, or simply cant bring herself to care. The scene in the novella has the shades taunting/tormenting her for being essentially "false"(I forget the exact wording, I haven't read these since Automata came out) and more or less pointing out her nature as a replicant(or otherwise "not human") in an roundabout way. Obviously the part in game with her directly talking to the giant boar shade(Goose) also cements this communication ability(routes B+ give us the subtitles for Goose's half of the conversation). As for the bit about her already knowing about the fate of humanity(at least to *some* extent), that adds some really depressing context to, well... everything, honestly. Would very likely make Devola and Popola's big 'plot twist' sting a hell of a lot more from her perspective. Then again, as was pointed out in the video, shes basically forced to stay locked on the path of 'murder death kill' in order to stop from being taken over by Tryann, so there really isn't much she can do with this knowledge other than feel like crap... (and if *you* want to feel like crap too, you can go read the novella "Witches Sabbath", *shudders*, someone really needs to give her a hug or something...) Also, to go off on a bit of a tangent, I believe the festival referenced in the novella might be the maso disposal "festival" which the replicants were originally tasked with, under the guidance of the observers(prior to them unintentionally becoming sentient), which was intended to rid the world of the WCS/Legion causing maso and allow Project Gestalt to conclude and reintroduce souls to their vessels. Yeah, I know its some kinda dodgy logic about the replicants doing all this stuff before winding up how we find them by the time act 1 starts up, but that's honestly how the source material presents it - I'm not exactly sure how they were supposed to do much of *anything* if they weren't sentient, but hey... Supposedly they were also used to fight Legion too(the second time, when they were wiped out for good), back when non Gestalt'd humans still existed, as replicants, being soulless, would supposedly be immune to WCS/becoming Legion as they have no soul to form a pact with the extradimensional gods with(hence their fitness for this purpose), but I'm a little fuzzy on this specific part(some of the logic and timetables here are.... "confusing", to put it mildly). Its important to note that the timeline places the [second] defeat of Legion a long time prior to where act 1 picks up, along with the whole 'replicants gaining sentience' thing as well. Even with Legion and Red Eye eradicated, they cant just kick off the end of Project Gestalt, as if any of the Queen Beast's maso still exists, WCS and Legion would just spring right back up(The Gestalt form apparently grants them immunity from Legion somehow). At some point the replicants do finally eradicate the last of the Queen Beasts maso and stop the possibility of WCS/Legion ever coming back, but alas, it kind of winds up being a moot point what with the whole collapse of Project Gestalt and all... Without Grimoire Weiss and Noir, they cant send the project into its end stage, and without the Shadowlord to sustain them, the remaining stable Gestalts will slowly relapse, and no new replicants will be able to be produced, leading to extinction of replicants within one generation after the end of the events of the game, and the extinction of humanity(Gestalt) some few hundred years later... The lore is spread out across so many different mediums that its kind of hard to keep track of it all upstairs. Grimoire Nier is just the tip of the iceberg(I'm kinda bummed that "The Lost World" is the *only* novella without a proper translation - sadly all we got was "budget Cliff Notes", with a few directly translated lines of dialogue thrown in for flavor). Looping back to Kaine as this point was talked about in the video; supposedly her physical prowess comes from her Gestalt, or rather the human which that Gestalt is based on; which was essentially a bit of eugenics mixed with I guess the maso equivalent of genetic engineering, in order to produce some kind of early prototype human weapon - or really, more like a 'super soldier' and less like the stuff the National Weapons Laboratory was working on(this was done separately from the projects that produced number 6 and 7, but during the same time period). Fun fact, she is the biological offspring of the female Crusader(who's name is Kali... yeah, awful lot of coincidences here...) who slew Red Eye the first time(though its implied that human Kaine was grown in some kind of lab, using extracted genetic samples from Kali and another Crusader, and then raised by Kali as her 'granddaughter'(again, lot of coincidences), who uses her influence and money as a literal world renowned hero(slaying Red Eye during the Crusades as a child soldier) to keep human Kaine safe and close at hand, as well as covering up her origins and getting her safely into Project Gestalt). She also runs into Tyrann during this period, who was still human at this point("Tyrann" is actually a moniker, I dont remember his real name, but he did have one, and was a member of the military), and destroys Kali and Kaine's mansion during a Legion outbreak in the area(surprise, Legion's still around despite Red Eye being dead - they're just a lot more like mindless zombies at this point without Red Eye to lead them([a model] P33 was there too! can you believe it?)), as well as human Yonah(its a small world I guess) just before the events of the prologue, and also Emil(*real* small world I guess). Tyrann is towing Emil(now in number 7 form) around as a trump card after things go sideways at the lab(Halua's rampage/the events of "The Stone Flower" novella) while simultaneously trying to pull a coup, and winds up being marked for death as a result when things go sideways and he takes off leaving his men to die, as well as a very irate Kali who now has a dead husband and a ruined house as a result of the collateral damage from the battle. He ultimately kills some unnamed person who was set to be Gestaltized, and passes himself off as them in order to take their place, only to be discovered later and have his corresponding replicant and associated genetic data destroyed, hence why he finds himself bouncing from replicant to replicant of his own accord, joyriding them until they burn out, as he doesn't have one of his own. His connection to the original human Kaine in the past also sheds some possible light on his sudden change of heart during endings C/D, as this guy is a *real* piece of work based on what we know from the source material(A little bit of this made it into the remaster in the form of Emil's text dump after the Devola Popola boss fight on the later endings, as all new material, which was neat! It essentially retells the events of "The Stone Flower", except from Emil's perspective(which believe it or not, is a *lot* less sad than Halua's perspective, presented in the novella(RIP nice lady scientist who lived in seafront; she gets turned into raspberry sauce by Halua))), and his actions during C/D toward replicant Kaine are probably the single act of his entire existence that could be considered "selfless". ...and *that's* all just stuff from the translated transcription of the drama CD, there's probably more I'm forgetting too... And that's of course all contingent on the drama CD being considered canon. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@craze42 I haven't read all of this yet but considering how long it is I'm gonna make sure I do, thanks for sharing because I'm actually a new-ish fan since automata and I didn't even know that existed, so thank you!
witches sabbath, noted, and I know nothing about the watchers so I better get watching the drakengard cutscenes 😂 Where can we find these novellas btw?
@@galactichog1480 Google "Grimoire Nier", and the first result should be on the fandom wiki. That page has links to the best quality translations of the novellas contained within Grimoire Nier(I believe all of them except for "The Lost World" have proper translations), as well as a link to a google doc of the translated Grimoire Nier itself(please note that the novella translations linked to from within this document are quite out of date, or missing entirely in some cases - use the links on the fandom wiki page instead). The table of contents in the Grimoire Nier google doc has an entry titled "Grimoire Nier Drama CD", which contains a link to a translation of that as well, in a seperate document(although I think there is a better translation out there, I cant seem to remember where it is at the moment - you might try googling for it, as this one seems pretty rough). The drama CD has a lot of supplementary and background information from the time period around the prologue, and is where all of the interactions between the human versions of the cast of characters that I referenced earlier takes place. It also goes into detail regarding Nier's transformation into the Shadowlord/Original Gestalt and other relevant events taking place immediately after what we're shown in the prologue in game. Hope this helps. The novellas are *seriously* depressing though. I thought Automata's novellas were sad, but these are on an entirely different level.
It would’ve been so cool to be able to switch between Kaine and Nier during the 2nd and 3rd playthroughs. I was dragging a bit by the 3rd, so having a new character with a whole new moveset introduced would’ve kept things fresh At the same time, having Kaine be playable only on route E makes it feel extra special. It’s like a big payoff, for all the replays and struggles you went to get to the final ending
@@silvesta5027 Agreed, I had no idea what to expect from Route E, so when it let you control Kainé I audibly went "YOOOOOOOO" I only wish it was longer :(
In Weiss' defense, if he got ALL of his memories back that would include the part where the humans forcibly shoved his (originally human) consciousness into a book-like machine and forced him to become a weapon. So he might have been a little cross with his fellow man.
I think by the time he was shown the truth by the twins, he had recognized the replicants had become sentient and realized project Gestalt had already failed (as shown by Yonah). So all he could do was help his friend reunite with his sister before the world died.
@@chrisdaughen5257 good point. Why did Yonah remain weak and ill even after her Gestalt merged with her? Shouldn't relapsing stop along with black scrawl after it?
@@eldarius237 you could say she stayed asleep for 5 years after she merged with her Gestalt because the minds of the Replicant and Gestalt were at odds with one another. Yonah only woke up when the replicant MC came and the Gestalt realized it wasn’t right to take away the replicant’s existence. I heard that Taro said in an interview that once a Gestalt relapses, that persons gestalt and replicant are doomed; merging together doesn’t help.
I just finished ending E and waited till I was done to watch the analysis... I really liked the point about forcing the player to confront whether they’re actions were right or wrong. I think for me personally, no one is really right or wrong. Everyone was just forced into a really shitty situation where all of their goals were mutually exclusive. One of Devola and Popola’s lines always summed it up nicely for me: “You have your own motives. Your own desires. And we have ours. I fear it really is that simple.” This comes through for me especially in the Roc arc, where we understand why Façade is so angry at the wolves for killing Fyra, but ALSO why the wolves are angry at Façade for killing all of those young wolves. I always feel REALLY divided there, and I ugly cried at “thank you for being my friend,” each time. They just have mutually exclusive goals that lead to conflict. No one really feels right or wrong there, it’s just a sad situation. This got longer than I wanted it to... but that’s what I felt, anyway.
I kind of disagree. Nier’s motivation might be legit, but the way he chooses to go about it is certainly not. He’s in a shitty situation yes, but that isn’t an excuse. In the beginning he gets into his head that killing shades and finding the sealed verses will be the key to save Yona. No one tells him this - Weiss and Nier do some serious mental gymnastics to get to that conclusion. Which means that while he THINKS he’s right, he is in fact, unambiguously wrong. And if he had stopped for a moment and actually paid attention to the world around him, perhaps he would have realized as much. Or not. Because honestly, even when people point out the truth to him, he makes it clear that he doesn’t care. He cares about only one thing - and that is saving Yona, which of course, is impossible. The fact that he starts the whole circle of violence by killing those children by the entrance of the village, which didn’t do anything except… hang around near the village (Idk if you noticed, but at the beginning of the game, they don’t attack you. Even when you attack them, they don’t) doesn’t make it better. And that’s BEFORE he even starts believing his made up story about the sealed verses. He’s already decided that shades are the enemy long before they start becoming hostile. Because they look different. That’s literarily the only reason. I mean, there’s a reason the shadow lord is Nier. They’re literarily the same person, equally selfish and prone to ruining the world. :/
@@Gladissims Devola and Popola were literally there when Nier and Weiss came to the conclusion that he needed to kill Shades and find the Sealed Verses. They didn't even bother correcting him, they just affirmed his assumptions and kept encouraging him so they could use him. He can't understand Shades and he's seen them attack people. He doesn't have any concept of a harmless Shade since it's a concept no one else has except for small children, which you can see in that one side quest. It's hard to break free from that kind of conditioning when no one else on your life tries to tell you otherwise, other than Devola and Popola towards the end, but they basically led him on the whole time for their own ends. Nier is definitely selfish, but if he wasn't that selfish then his life would just be completely hopeless. I'm sure a part of his mentality is willful ignorance, but I can't totally blame him for not seeing things outside the perspective of his people. Kaine's the only one in the party who knew the truth about the Shades and how they think, and she didn't say a word about it to anyone. In fact, one thing I honestly gotta wonder is why the Shades in the Aerie didn't say shit to Nier and the gang about their actual existence. Unlike every other Shade in the game, they can actually communicate with humans through the Replicants they're possessing, but they just go berserk the moment they hear Nier talk about killing Shades. Like, they understand that Replicants don't know the truth about Shades since they've spent time in the village, but they never tried correcting their ideas even with human bodies. I'm definitely not calling Nier innocent but it's unfair to blame him when everyone he trusts keeps pushing him forward into an awful situation. Devola and Popola were like parents to him and they used him the entire time. The only reason he even kills Shades is because Popola gave him a Shade-slaying contract so that he wouldn't have to continue selling his body for Yonah's medicine. That novella was honestly fucked, I legit can't blame him for doing the stuff he does in the game.
One small thing you unfortunately missed. When you save the guy from shade-induced death, you can *also* try to head for the Junk Heap. If you do, the gate leading to Two Brothers is closed, and a note on it states something along the lines of the factory suddenly beginning to have more robot activity, hence the store closing until further notice. In addition - at the bottom of the platforms leading up to the Junk Heap, there is something else. A single Lunar Tear, prompting some dialogue from Kainé. Missable and not *entirely* vital, but... Wager it's something to look into.
@@spyroschristoulakis6296 i didnt get the trophy when i did it- developers prob thought of this and made it so that the trophy only activates when you acquire a lunar tear as nier since the only way to do this would be to cultivate it through gardening as nier and when you get your save data back your inventory as Kaine is lost
This hour of content made buying and playing through the entirety of Nier again completely worth it. I had the goofiest grin on my face the entire way through.
In addition to trying to go to Yonah's village you can also try going to the Junk Heap to learn that they closed shop because it got too dangerous. There's also some good loot over there.
@@seniorsterling1064 I love how subtle they throw Yonah under the bus( even more than Furia from Drakengard). Kaine doesn't go see her in the village, all you hear from her are her diary entries talking about how she's sad and alone, and there's not even a scene of her seeing her brother again even though she was the MC's main motivation.
@@pee-bot I heard he hates the little sister trope in anime. Both Furiae and Yonah are clearly the useless sister who is always in danger. Whereas Furiae was a twist on the trope being dependent on their brother (with the incestual feelings), Yonah is the embodiment of the type of sister that creates trouble trying to help (going to the Lost Shrine to find the Lunar tear, touching Noir to help prologue Nier , and ridding the Overlord of his will to complete Project Gestalt).
About Kainé's powers without Tyrann, there is a Japanese drama CD that had lore stating Kainé's Original human was born from a genetically modified embryo that somehow included Legion data that made her much stronger than the average person. From the drama CD: Although Kainé is told that her parents have passed away, she is actually a “program baby” created by the genes of Kaali, her grandfather, and the combined analysis of Legions’ attack patterns.
Yeah, I'm also pretty sure that Legion DNA mixed in is partly responsible for her Replicant being intersex, as the original Kaine wasn't. The Administrator/Tree/Replicant System presumably couldnt make sense of the DNA part-way into production, so just gave her both genitalia. (I think the exact wording was something like the DNA got corrupted or something went wrong, but it's probably safe to assume that Legion DNA is why she's the only Replicant with this problem in production).
I've just completed Ending E... i'm without words to say... Just OMG. It was so worth it the grind and replay the same goddamed bosses and missions over and over just to see the ending e. Now i look Automata with another eyes. Can't wait for the next entry of NieR. Such an amazing franchise that wasn't known. Then Automata came out and destroy us all...
I don't... really think most people thought the flower WAS the exact same one Zero had. It's more of the flower imagery ITSELF that people freak out about.
What I like about the Yokoverse games is that, most of the time, the main cast is so likeable that you know you're not supposed to support what they are doing (especially in the second round where you KNOW you always did something wrong, but now have more context); but you end up rooting for them anyways. Which is the most human thing to do, Yoko Taro criticises that heavily in his games (repeating mistakes by doing what humans always do). This man captures you in the same goddamn loop he sets for the DrakeNier universe. And you know what? I don't care. Just hurt me more, crazy Japanese man.
5:28 Yonah and the old king of facade are the only main-story characters we know of with the scrawl, but a number of NPCs mention having it or losing a parent/sibling/etc to it between quests and random dialogue iirc.
When the gir Administrator says : "I hear a song" right before she 'dies', it is a reference to a quote in Grimoire Nier. If I remember correctly, when the Giant first appeared in the world, its song aka the bell sounds, drove some people insane, with one scientist last words beng "I. HEAR. A. SOUND". To me, it is a way of showing that Kaine kinda had the same role of the giant, killing all of humanity, but unlike the Giant, she did so to save those she loved.... i dont know, i think it gives a more uplifting meaning to the destruction of humanity, if that makes sense
Even knowing the full story, I still don't blame Nier for his choices. I mean, they aren't aware of the implications of their actions anyways. Regardless of how they came into being and why, Replicants are fully sentient individuals with their own thoughts and feelings. What makes them less entitled to the bodies and existence they inhabit than those that made them?
@@angele9375 But they are real...and it's made pretty clear in the game and additional source material that they have genuine thoughts and feelings. They developed sentience and individuality. I guess those are the questions the games want you to ask though.
yeah, not only does nothing Replicant-Nier learn tell him that killing Shadowlord-Nier will end the world, nothing in the entire game outright says that. it's clear project Gestalt will end, but the death of the replicants as a result of this didnt seem like a given to me. My opinion, even when playing automata (my intro to the series), was that humans were dead. to me gestalt was a pointless attempt to preserve a race that had died and been haunting the earth for too long. I understand as well as anyone the desire to cling to life, but I don't think the games pull any punches in showing you that the humans were all too willing to sacrifice other people to keep themselves alive. There's no reason they all couldn't have made the same choice as the human yonah, and leave the earth to those who were alive. be it androids, replicants, whatever. replicants are genetically speaking, essentially humans anyways. so is it really all that bad that the original humans died out? could you even really call the gestalts humans anymore? or alive? I dont think they are. Theyre ghosts, I think.
I feel really bad for him honestly, all he wanted was to save and protect his sister. He was a bit blinded by it in retrospect but he was ready to do anything just to see her again, it really got me. Also, how was he supposed to know it would end like this? Devola and Popola kept them in the dark about everything, from his perspective it's just the damn shades kidnapping his dear sister...
We know of a third person who had the Black Scrawl iirc, when you interact with the 15 Nightmares diary Nier mentions his mom (or wife in Gestalt) died from the Black Scrawl earlier.
One thing you missed that may be important is the last thing the administrators say before dying is "I hear a song". This is very similar to the final battle of Drakengard ending E (I. hear. a .sound) and of course the song to end the world in drakengard 3 which is accompanied by the giant flower. I took this to mean that the same sound magic is being used to create the flower. It's unfortunate that the lunar tear story in Replicant is different than Gestalt. in replicant a lunar tear is rare and therefore expensive, but in Gestalt the lunar tear grants wishes which would further explain the ending.
Fun little fact: at 4:00 when you showed the diary entry of Yonah, notice how the entry was dated June 6th which is the fictional birthday (or Taro's real birthday) of the main character? I thought that was a nice little touch: since we know from previous entries that Yonah cares for her brother (the main character) a lot and has impliedly expressed the significance of the date during the previous playthroughs. It's heartbreaking that Yonah (and Kaine) harbours such strong feelings to the point where her subconscious remembers a shadow of the love she had despite being shelved into a reality which seemingly never had the object of said feelings i.e. the main character.
Seeing that "I hear a song" line + the giant flower had the Drakengard fan in me jumping in both dread and excitement. The way I see it, the flower is perhaps the price paid for creating this new future where Brother Nier lives. Now, is this Giant Lunar Tear the same type of flower that tried to end the world in Drakengard 3? Who can say? But Yoko Taro isn't the type of writter to make these sort of "deals" cheap, thematically and narratively.
There's also at least one other person in seafront with it, a young girl in the market complains that someone will not come out because of strange black markings.
As someone who has lost a sister, I sympathise with NieR, honestly I’d doom humanity if it meant she could live a life, not hesitation. It’s selfish sure but the alternative hurts. Maybe it’s cowardly. But damn this game really hits close to home for me.
Another really great video Brando!! Got a few things to say on this: 1. The bit where you speculate on Kaine telling Nier that he can`t sleep outside with her and Emil; i always thought that was her pushing Nier away to try and stop her feelings developing for him, because of the whole tyrann pact (that he will take full control over her body if she loses her anger/hatred) 2. I think the english voice actors of 2B and 9S did a gd job of putting on different voices for Replicant because i didn`t recognise them, even knowing it was them 3. When Nier sacrifices himself to bring Kaine back... HOW would that erase him from people`s memories? Would love to hear your thoughts on this if you happen to see this Brando, or anyone`s tbh. I have a couple of theories but i remember when i first reached that moment in Nier, i thought the memory erasure aspect of that bargain was a most curious thing
If you think about it from a more computer-esque aspect ((since ultimately no one is an actual human being-- we see this during Ending E when you enter the memory tree)) and Ending D is just the system wiping Nier's slate clean and deletin' it. BUT!! Much like how the internet works, the system wasn't able to completely wipe his existence away. Kaine, Yonha and Emil were able to hold onto those tiny threads of their memories of him which could've possibly been the reason why they were able to bring him back in his younger form at the end of Ending E despite the fact that his data should've been completely erased. This is all just a theory btw lol I've got brainworms after watchin' this video but none of my friends are actively into this series so I just kinda talk to the void.
@@RaineBarrage Wow thnx, this is great! This actually is very similar to my own theory which is that the entire games of Nier and Automata take place in a digital construct, kinda like the matrix, given that they actually do (because they`re games). I thought this could possibly be the case when i first entered the copied city in automata, but also again when I reached the copied city looking place in Replicant ending E, where it kinda looks like you`re stood in infinite space and not a part of the actual world. It could also explain a lot of the physics breaking stuff of the world, like kaine`s ending e combat, the fact that the planet has stopped spinning and some other things. There is always the possibility that the creators just didn`t analyze this from a contextual perspective but it`s fun to wonder. Maybe Yoko Taro just thought it was cool like putting a capital R at the end of NieR. xD i know what you mean about the brainworms, i actually struggle to put into words some of the thoughts i have on these games. And i too don`t know anyone who plays these games so i can relate to lobbing ideas into the void :D or the comments section of Brando`s Nier vids haha
The song that plays during the fight with Hook during ending E is crazy on multiple levels. The only version of Grandma in the original game is sad, melancholy, and slow paced. NieR: Automata includes Grandma (Destruction), which introduces percussion and a faster tempo leading to a high-action sound that is epic and scary to listen to. But Nier Replicant ver. 1.22… has Grandma / Reunion, which plays when Hook shows up at the end. This version is slowed down compared to Destruction, and has a almost marching feel with the snare drums added that were removed from this game’s version of Grandma. This all makes the sound terrifying to listen to as it feels like an unstoppable force. This ties into that moment in the game narratively as well, because Kaine is (for the second time in this ending) out of her depth and can’t win on her own. The song reflects that in how inevitable it sounds. But Kaine / Salvation starts playing as Weiss shows up and she is able to overcome her darkest memories with the help of her friends.
I really like how the ending slots into the game. It lets you skip c straight to d, so you can do what you feel like you should do, then gives you new context for Kaine's feelings, then after e you can see ending c with a new perspective. Also, at this point the thing the white-block city thing is just an AI thing they like to do.
Well its not like it's just some gimmick they implement for wow factor. It's a legitimate connection between automata and replicant. That technology served as the basis for the machines and for YoRHa androids.
Imagine letting a friend play through NieR on your system where you've already completed ending D and having them stumble upon this on their first run, they'd be so confused
Kira Buckland also changed her voice a bit for the English version, and 9S's voice sounded pretty much the same. It's such a cool detail of how consistent both versions are
Something that wasn’t mentioned (I think), the kid nier kaine is holding at the end is the copy of nier’s memories when he entered the forest of myth and into the tree’s text adventure thing way back in the first act of the game This would mean that this Nier has no memory of his adult life (after the time skip), and has no idea what happened after that point
Big coincidence, but I go into that specific point in a video I did with someone else just yesterday. Should be going up soon (not on my channel but I'll make a post about it) so stay tuned.
This theory makes little sense because adult nier also go to tree to obtain fragment of key and the most importantly tree collects memory even without replicant speaking with it
@@mellamosteve331 I made it on the community tab about a week ago. If you can't find it, try searching for the Yggdrasil podcast on TH-cam, it's the episode with me in it
I'm surprised no one has mentioned that one of the administrators says "I HEAR A SONG!" Right after the line about possible futures blending together. That doesn't seem like a throwaway line, considering that Intoners exist in the Yokoverse.
To me, the song/sound they hear is not a specific reference to the intoners, but to the gods. A sound is also heard as people are infected by white chlorination syndrome. In other words, references to sound/songs directly refers to contact with the gods of Nier/Drakengard or to magic. Note that Intoners use song to make contact with Angels (Watchers), which further strengthens the song/music = connection to the gods theme. So, here's some possible reasons why a song was heard: 1. Direct interaction with the gods of Nier/Drakengard. 2. Kaine using song/sound to re-create the MC: keep in mind what sealed verses are and what they do (magic = music), blood being connected to words etc. So it's not really a throwaway line, in my opinion, but it's not directly referencing Intoners either.
@@Bryantzerox or Kaine bringing Nier back was similar to what happened with Furiae in ending B, if you want to get into particularly morbid theories. Either way, the presence of that flower, the final boss arena evoking Drakengard's/the black and white ring attacks, and of course, *'I. Hear. A. Song.'* all has me unwilling to believe that The Watchers aren't in some way involved with Nier's ressurection in the Replicant remake, and that Kaine bringing him back is going to come with some serious consequences for the timeline they're on.
@@lolrus5555 The Watchers/Angels are simply agents of the will of the gods, who hate humanity and want to eradicate it and everything related to it. Why? Mostly because of the human ego from my recollection. Intoners are also just tools for this purpose. I see a lot of people trying to make ties to Drakengard by interpreting the Lunar Tear as something it’s not (namely, the flower from 3). This is unnecessary and stretching a bit as ties to Drakengard are already known. Although there’s some possible intervention by the gods here, I think it’s more fitting to think about the role Kaine’s ego plays into it. Clearly she has some understanding that what she’s doing is wrong/bad, but she does it anyways. Was intervention here really necessary? Also, from interviews with Yoko Taro there’s a sense that the war with the machines in Automata has great significance somehow, as he says that even with the removal of the Red Girls the war would still find a way to happen. I believe this scene is connected to that: in Automata, we get a line about machine cores being similar to plant cells. And in the original Grimoire Nier version, there’s mention/excitement about Kaine using magic to fuse human, plant, and machine. Anyways, thanks for contributing to the discussion in a thoughtful way. I’m always willing to listen to counter-arguments, given that things are kept civil.
Considering the presence of Accord in Automata by mention, as well as now in Replicant through a diary entry, I have a feeling, a lowball theory, that she's in this timeline to continue her examination of what happened to Zero after Branch D. After all, a part of her final words in her closing monologue were "I have a feeling that somewhere, Zero is still alive." I wouldn't put it past Taro to bring that full circle at some point if Squenix lets him pursue future installments into the franchise with the popularity these games have been getting.
Yo. What?! You just blew my mind with the boy and girl being the voices of 2B and 9S! I'm playing NieR Automata now. Just did Ending B in that yesterday.
Brando: "Alright let's unpack this ending..." Me: "Here we go..." This ending is dense. Good to see another opinion on it. I've definitely shared a lot of your thoughts on a lot of this.
I JUST CAME BACK AND I GOD DAMN KNEW IT I knew something was looking familiar at 14:54 you can see the cages from the new NieR Reincarnation mobile game
When I got to the scene of Kaine holding Nier on the flower's stamen I was kinda disappointed it was Boy Nier and not Adult Nier. If only because of their age differences and I want them to be able to love each other and it not be weird l0l. But damn did that ending make me feel good.
I mean, there would've always been an age difference between the two if Kaine hadn't been petrified for the timeskip lol She's just slightly older than the first time they met.
@@RaineBarrage it wouldn’t have been as significant, though. According to the Wiki, Part 1 Nier is 16 and Kainé is 17. Then she’s petrified for 5 years, so then in Part 2 Nier is 21 and Kainé is 17. Ending E is another 3 year skip, so now Kainé’s 20, but Nier comes back as a 16 year old. If he had returned as Adult Nier, then it only would’ve been a 1 year difference with Nier being 21 and Kainé being 20.
@@VinceOTL13 But why does this bother you so much when this series literally has so much worse characters and events? I feel like a small age gap between characters with an implied romance should be the least of your concerns when faced with characters like-- I don't know-- Leonard maybe? lol
@@RaineBarrage Oh, don’t get me wrong here. I wouldn’t say it bothers me to the point of affecting my enjoyment. I wouldn’t even say it bothers me a moderate amount. I just think it would’ve felt more appropriate. It’s also worth mentioning that I didn’t consider the plot reasons for why this might’ve happened and just assumed it was “just because” until I read some of the ideas in these comments for why it might’ve been the case and now I think it makes a lot of sense.
Come to think of it, Kaine's "staggered" animations that you can see in this video at 21:33 and 21:48 - those are 2B's animations from Nier: Automata, aren't they? That's a bit of a cheeky decision.
Something to point out is the combat abilities from Kaine were carried over to her Replicant from her human form, it's stated in the audio drama that Kaine was a baby with augmented capabilities that was made by petition of the human Kalil using her and his husband DNA, human Kaine was capable of take down red eyes by her own after her grandpa(Kalil's husband) was killed by the red eyes that would explain her abilities and why she was taken as the base of the model 2 in the future YorHa proyect.
Dude, this channel feels like a smurfaccount for a big youtuber. Really excellent presentation, narration and analysis. Ive watched all your Nier-related content after a 2 week binge of replicant + automata, really great stuff!
One more thing, not sure if anyone mentioned it here. But Taro had to give us one more jab at the end of the game in that bitter-sweet "thank you for playing message". Because Yona coughs... and she coughs repeatedly meaning... Nier never did manage to cure her of the black scrawl disease. At least that's my understanding.
Sadly as far I know she was doomed from the beginning, I've read that once the black scrawl appears and the corresponding gestalt starts relapsing not even merging body and soul will save the affected one. Who knows, maybe Shadowlord knew this but seeing how much Replicant Nier loves Yonah and did a lot of unreasonable stuff for her it wouldn't be a surprise that the Shadowlord as well despite realizing there was something wrong still tried to fulfill the process, even hurrying up because they were already running out of time. And I didn't read it anywhere but maybe that's the reason she was asleep for 5 years? That yeah they were merged finally but still she wouldn't wake up, and when she did she was really weak, even weak enough for her to disappear with the light of the sun despite being in her Replicant's body, when in other cases we saw that the merging occurred almost immediately and they were somehow back to normal(I'm putting the Facade girl who was "killed" by her bf I think? And the red bag guy's wife, two characters who made me freak out after somehow coming back after being presumably "dead" and which started my suspicious that there was def something wrong with all of this) Sorry for the long answer I just love this game lmao.
I seriously wish that we got a sequel to nier replicants ending e so we could see what the characters lives were like when they brought nier back that would be amazing
Grandma (Rebirth) was the hypest moment of that section for me. Add Kaine's monologue to that and you've got yourself a fantastic game that shot to my #2 best of all time
Something that caught me during the boss was Weiss questioning Kaine about her plans with the Lunar tear (I forgot the lines specifically). Reminded me of ending C of automata with A2 and the pod before taking 9S away
it's nice to see the actual new content in the ending (besides recycled bosses ofc) and even though I love the series there is no chance of me playing through all the game again just to experience it myself, I strongly feel that the game design had to be remastered as well as the combat, Thanks for showing what it looks like
TH-cam recommended me this video, never watched your content before. But i'd definitely watch a video of you connecting ending e to automata Thank you for your hard work
Literally just finished ending E, I really like the story of this game...but it definitely had some issues. Still, the epilogue that connected to Automata was a great note to leave off on, along with the them all realizing they were wrong and deciding to keep fighting for each other
@@silvesta5027 the story itself is fantastic, the problem is the way it’s told. While the A&B routes are great, gating off C by an arbitrary means (collecting the weapons) destroys the flow of the story, on top of making you play it for a story that barely changes to see the new stuff at the final dungeon. C shoul’ve been consolidated into the B playthrough and they fixed it in Automata by having it be an epilogue instead of a third playthrough of the same crap you’ve already seen
@@jeffbezos3200 Yeah I pretty much agree. I played route B and C back-to-back. Luckily for me, the flow wasn’t too compromised since I only needed 3-4 weapons from either shops or quests I didn’t do. And despite that, even I was burning out by the 3rd play-through. B and C felt too similar and it was tiring going through everything a 3rd time. For those who had to grind for weapons, it must’ve been even worse Although I LOVE this game, maybe route C could’ve been handled differently. Perhaps a boss-rush of sorts with the Popola / Devola dialogue sprinkled throughout could’ve worked better rather than a 3rd play-through. It felt like slight overkill, even if the pay-off was 100% worth it
@@silvesta5027 would’ve been fixed if they just added the extra bits with the novel and the choice after the boss fight to the B playthrough. There was no reason for B and C to be separate, then you wouldn’t have had the pacing killed. C route only exists so people that didn’t pick up all the weapons have one last chance to grab them
one small error, but I believe that the lighthouse lady might have had the black scrawl too. And the reason Kaine was so strong was because her gestalt was a test tube baby made to fight The Legion, a product of White Chlorination Syndrome, the disease that set the world into ruin and led to the creation of project gestalt.
i sat here and binge watched all the nier videos you have, an amazing watch wit ha couple cups of coffee, though i wish you would make a kind of summary of the whole NieR storyline, everything we know in chronological order, though it might be a bit long.
I've got a 4-5 part video series coming out on that topic. Started working on them after finishing my Final Fantasy video. Will start releasing them when they're finished.
As someone who is part of the localization team for this game, thank you so much for showing English speakers the intricacies of the Japanese version. There are just a lot of things that get lost in translation, and we can't do much about it.
I'd like to believe the flower at the end is related to drakengard 3. True, the book came out long beforehand, but maybe Yoko Taro knew he wanted the alien flower parasite to be the big bad for a while, and he was laying the foundation early. I like the idea of forward planning for a story a lot more than retroactively changing details in previously written works to match a new narrative.
just finished automata and replicant back to back and man these repeated playthroughs was rough. Still dont understand why it all cant be intertwined in one sitting. Regardless the story and lore was all soo good. Soo happy I actually experienced it ...Looking foreward to the next installment..
I completely agree that the repeated play throughs can feel unnecessary. I think this was done way better in Automata since you get to play as 9S who plays differently to 2B. Also in Automata’s route B there are some new segments that take place since 2B was never there. In Replicant there was no reason the play the second half of the game again 2 more times just to get a few more cutscenes. I think they could have made it so that you were able to get ending B, C, and D on the 1st repeated playthrough of route B in the game.
13:45 Booklet of the Drama CD, it is explained that original Kainé was a experimental baby made by her grandparents DNA and Legion's combat data, her Replicant has this feature as well, this is why she's still a exceptional fighter even without Tyarnn
Everything that’s white and blocky straight up invokes the Tower in Automata and the Copied City, and the machines network got ahold of servers, since even the Red Girls are designed based on a human personality stored in the server. Taro Yoko decided to be cheeky and put a Lunar Tear on what is basically a 2B-Red Girl Grotesquerie Queen in the FFXIV Raids too.
Apparently the Accords come from organization stationed on the other side of Earth where it's perpetual night instead of day. However, this fact also states they're studying time distortions and creating weapons called 'dragons' (no mention if they're actually reverse engineered artificial dragons or just named that) to fight the aliens and prevent the singularity at around year 6000. Now, whether this means that some Accord androids hopped to the past to interact with the pseudo humans, and the organization was built by androids, or whether Accords existed for a very long time and began as just mercantile androids I couldn't say. If the Accords don't get their role to prevent the singularity until much later it'd make sense, since this added detail of the Replicant system's AI going on about seeing multiple timelines could itself lead up to it feeding this info to other databases, leading the creation of the Accords to prevent this, as prior to being tasked with making Replicants, the Memory Tree's original role was to be a quantum computer tasked with the study of maso and multiverses.
@@OsnosisBones The original Accord was created arround 6230. But because of their role as Recorders, we met or find references to Accords in most point in time (and timelines). When asked if Accord was present during Replicant area, YOKO TARO answered that "she was always there, she’s always watching". From Yonah's diary, we know she visited Nier's village, and from the black journal entries, we know "Accord Corporation" already existed in 2026. Also, the dragons, Flower, magic and Cathedral City entered the world of Drakengard during the Cataclysm. If you read Mikhail's novella where he explain what the Old World was like (the world from which all of the above comes from), and you read Accord's book from SINoALICE, it is eminently clear that they are talking about the same thing, the same place. So the TL;DR is that the timeline is most likely a causal loop, DOD3 -> DOD1 -> NieR -> DOD3. So between this, and Accord ability to travel at any point in time, it's tricky to pin point where the role of "studying timelines and prevent the Fall Down" comes from.
Great vid. I agree about the flower, I don't think it's the D3 flower. As someone who played automata before Nier and Drakengard series ending E was so nostalgic and mf hype. I doubt it will play much of a role in whatever the next big Nier project is, but who knows. Question: would you rather the next Nier game be a huge departure from automata the same way automata was a hug departure from Nier, or would you rather it be super connected and tie into the previous games?
@@ThBrando hopefully you had a chance to play NieR Re［in］carnation, if not you have until the end of the month to do so, but the reason why I'm mentioning it is because Yoko Taro mentioned not long ago that it was actually NieR 3 and I rushed to play it and the end proves it! Plus, it is directly connected to the ending E! Hopefully you'll read it and can think about doing a video since your NieR content is really good! Cheers!
9:28 "There's a good reason why there are two voices." Yeah.... that reason became WAAAAYYYY more serious with the 3rd act of Nier Reincarnation. Like HER's importance is unironically essential to Nier Automata's story.
Great video! I feel now that yoko taro is gonna make the next Nier after Re[in] to be a completely desolate one and one where the flower will completely destroy everything again
I personally didn't liked Replicant, but man I wish I could play as Kaine more in New Game+ or something, that would be keep me interested in going back at the game and not just making me feeling like not playing this ever again.
I just finished this game with ending E and it was unique. It really feels like it had some connection to nier automata. I also already finished Nier Automatas ending A to E. Both are really good games.
I think what is right and wrong when it comes to killing shades is complicated. For the most part it's messed up. Then again it's messed up to create replicants with their own thoughts and feelings and steal their body to take a physical form, Dooming the replicants to be a witness with no control. I will say that shadow lord Nier had it coming.
Well, it wasn’t intended for replicants to have their own thoughts and feelings- they were literally empty shells (and meant to stay that way) until after some time they began to develop self awareness and personality
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 88 | คู่เอก "ป้อมเพชร vs อัสลามจอน"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1ZqTVVbMgbo/mqdefault.jpg)
If you did a one hour video of the connections between this ending and Automata I would watch all of it.
One hour? Tall order, but I do wanna be thorough. I'll see how long it gets once I put it together. Really like your content btw!
He should AND I WILL WATCH ALL OF IT. lol
@@ThBrando you can do it.
Lol
I would watch a 4 hour video; my body is ready!
It's also important to note that with that diary load screen where Yonah is waking up crying....It's on the protagonist's birthday.
YOOOOOO
I noticed this too and it choked me up. I had seen the journal entry about missing my birthday so many times. Broke my heart
That's sad 😭
What exactly did she say in the dairy for the birthday?
@@93vincentvalentine In ending E she says something along the lines of "I woke up crying this morning & felt a sad. I'll talk to Kaine about it later" I think she also has 2 birthday loading screens one for her birthday & Nier's pretty sure she just says "Since Nier wasn't here to celebrate his birthday I'll just have party for him" in part 1.
The letter that you can read in the documents for her birthday says "Dear Nier - Today was awesome! Popola made me this HUGE cake that was really yummy, & everyone in the village has been wishing me happy birthday. It's fun! I feel like a princess or something. I don't feel sick at all today. In fact, I almost forgot I had this disease! So maybe you can forget about it too & come back home now? - Yonah.
Yoko Taro flexed wildly and added an ending that was described 10 years ago
This time with sick Automata references.
He said “ok just a little extra as a treat”
@@VermilionRen more like I'm sick of Automata references
@@DGP406 it better connects the games theyre sequels dude its a good thing
Ending E made the grinding for 33 weapons worth it
That it did
Wasn't much grinding for me to be fair, had to get most of them from vendors and you get quite a fortune from selling your inventory stuff.
@@eldarius237 Yeah it wasn't that grindy, when I started playing I didn't know about the weapons until the game told me and by that point I already had around 27 weapons and I had enough money to buy the rest.
33 weapons wasn't that grinding, nah. But the side quests were annoying
@@dvornikovalexei Yeah most side quests are terrible, I only finished around half of them before giving up.
Emil goes on to become an insane drummer.
Emil has 70 Alternative accounts. You'll never know his main
The guy can play piano twice as good now too.
each arms pinning Nier's limbs while Kaine blast his ass
I'm surprised you didn't mention that the Administrators referred to Kaine as a Singularity. That's a term used by Accord in Drakengard 3. It refers to items, places, or persons who when a significant amount of Maso is in one place that object can effectively alter causality, creating a new timeline.
This term also can explain how the Administrators see "possible futures blending in the current time they inhabit"
@@Bryantzerox Kaine being a singularity could relate to the fact that she's an abnormality among Replicants due to the human she was based on being a result of mixing two bits of human DNA with Legion DNA. The original Kaine's body being partially connected to the Queen's body is actually presumably where her and her Replicant's powers really stem from, not so much Tyrann (which would explain her still retaining control of magic).
This is also presumably why The Administrator/Sleeping Beauty made the Replicant Kaine intersex, as the original Kaine only only had female genitalia but the Replicant System couldnt really make proper sense of her DNA so just went with both.
@@OsnosisBones It could also have something to do with the events of ending D. The game never clarifies how World Ender giving up his existence saves Kaine from the Black Scrawl and the relapsing Tyrann. Rewritting reality in such a way probably had effects on the flow of time.
@@chrisdaughen5257 i always assumed it was related to the Shadowlord’s DNA being in him and the shadowlord’s ability to prevent relapsing
Im going to point out that Accord seems to be monitoring kaine. Yonah has a diary entry that directly references her
@@rosaistired Not knowing where she's coming from and why she's everywhere still drives me crazy.
Kainé thanking Weiss sounds similar to A2 "thanking" the pod: "You're not so bad at all".
Yeah, since I played Automata before Replicant, I was quite surprised how similar A2 and Kainé were. I've read somewhere, that those similarities happen because both Replicant-Kainé and A2 share memories and personality traits with the original (human) Kainé.
@@arcanaobscura3519 Thtat's why only A2 wears the NieR's outfit in Automata.
@@arcanaobscura3519 from what i heard it was hinted in the plays that A2 was modeled after kaine
@@katsu7626 makes sense since she was a 'singularity', a focal point of interest to the administrators who also basically said she's the strongest living thing alive rn. So its not really a stretch to have the prototype model unit A2 be desgined after her, A2 was intended to be the best of them all after all.
@@arcanaobscura3519 ya a short story HEAVILY implies that kaine was the basis of A2 possibly due to her actions in ending E shoeing her potential. In the novella of maybe a drama cd dont rightly recall a woman whose only good memories came from her gran mother who in tern is suggeted to be the woman who went mad fighting legion described in the text adventure segment in the forest in nier was the blue print for 2A. and it then ties further back to drakengard 1.
It took us 11 years to finish this game.
Hehe,
somehow these 11 years feel like they were part of this journey because NieR gives you this constant burning desire to change the story.
No one can tell me that you never hesitated or tried to find another way during Route B/C/D.
Ending D is the perfect metaphor why these 11 years matter. At some point you even accepted it, the story concludes, the game ends, your save file is gone, you are gone and no matter how hard you tried you couldn't change anything, no matter how many people you told to play this game, how much praise you gave it, you had to face reality and accept that it didn't sell well enough to continue this journey one more time. There are things in life you can't change and you have to live with this feeling that something is missing quite literally.
...
And suddenly Automata happened
...
Ending E exists because of us, yeah Yoko Taro and his team made it and i love this guy but it was born from the wish of every player who carried this desire of change, this need to continue for so many years in their hearts and spread it like a disease.
NieR has a fantastic story but this isn't the secret of it's success. What puts NieR above any other game for me are it's characters and Ending E basically doesn't do anything for the story but it concludes the characters. The last sentences from Kainé and Emil explain everything. Your journey might have been meaningless and no matter how often you go back in time and try to change it, it's still meaningless, the story became meaningless, all that remains in Ending E are the characters you will remember for the rest of you life.
And so after 11 years on this journey with you all here, NieR Replicant finally ends.
This just makes me want even more for a DOD3 remake with an added ending showing the branch that leads to DOD1 and Nier.
I know, I know, its basically a mix of all the other endings but still... Also, y'know, just want a remade 3 to be more playable and seeing Zero kick ass again.
@@darkuscarlet I would prefer an entire reboot for the Drag-on Dragoon series
@@S0oo I would love nothing more than to be able to play a remake of Drakengard 1 & 3. But at the very least I'll take 1. They did such an amazing job with Nier.
Honestly, I don't need a remake for Drakengard 3 maybe just a remaster but the anestheticstill holds up fine in my opinion. I like that game a lot as is. As for Drakengard 1...I half hope they release that game exactly as is, no updated music, no updated combat, just ported to present day consoles without changing a single thing, except maybe retranslate the dialogue to be more honest to the Japanese release.
@@truegamerking My guess is we will get another NieR game that focuses on the Kingdom of the Night which has a project featuring the dragon. So basically a DoD Game with NieR title and after that maybe a remake/reboot.
3:18 You're right. Seeing a grown ass man who's extremely buff saying this instead of a 15 year old kid makes this cutscene soo much funnier.
I always interpreted that scene as a really sincere and somewhat desperate attempt to prevent Kaine from killing herself. It may come off as funny on one way but seems almost heartbreaking in another.
Hey, I can actually answer what happens when you don’t input the right name when restoring save files, and it’s pretty great.
Essentially, for each time you get the name wrong, Grimoire Weiss shows up in intermittent bursts of dialogue, ending with just text in the middle of the screen saying “His name is Nier. Do try not to forget it.”
yeah, I couldnt remember exactly how I spelled whatever gibberish I put in the first save file, so all the emotional weight of that was lost as i spelled "shwimpfimble" as many ways as possible.
Should mention this is almost identical to what happens when you repeatedly give Yonah the wrong name in ending A.
Hah, thanks for noting that here. I was afraid to intentionally do it wrong. There's no way I would accidentally get it wrong though. A year ago I played Automata. After that, so for the past year, id mainly been playing Elden Ring... So I named my Replicant character "Tarnished" 😂
The feel of kaine's combat really shows where they wish they could have gone with the remaster, but instead opted to just give the combat a face lift instead of an overhaul (which was the correct decision imo) but it just really highlighted how far they have come combat-wise and gets me even more hyped for whatever mainline entry comes next (on console and pc lol)
The combat is better than original but its not good either. They really should have brought it closer to Automata's pace.
The game already suffers from its repetition and the new mermaid chapter extends that slog.
@@tokyobassist They'd have to remake the whole game. Automata is so much less of an RPG than Replicant
@@tokyobassist the whole point of it being slower is that they aren’t androids. They can’t swing heavy ass swords like they’re paper.
@@julianworkman8340 yeah, but heavy ass swords. Of course thats the real reason behind this decision. *Dumb*
I like that it stays true to the original. This game isn't automata obviously.
It is confirmed that Kaine can hear shades, when the bull is chasing you in the Shadowlord's castle it says something about forgiveness and she goes "we don't need forgiveness, asshole" and Nier goes "Kaine!?" because he's confused (he can't hear it)
Its confirmed outright in one of the other novella("The narrow gate" IIRC, been a while since I read them), as a pack of non relapsed shades attack her while she is tasked with protecting the village during some sort of festival(Popola asks her to take guard duty, rather rudely, then peaces out). They begin taunting her during the fight and she actively converses with them while fighting. It's also strongly implied by this novella that she is/has become aware of the shades true nature(as well as her own) in some capacity through her continued contact with them(by way of Tyrann) - though she either refuses to accept it, or simply cant bring herself to care. The scene in the novella has the shades taunting/tormenting her for being essentially "false"(I forget the exact wording, I haven't read these since Automata came out) and more or less pointing out her nature as a replicant(or otherwise "not human") in an roundabout way. Obviously the part in game with her directly talking to the giant boar shade(Goose) also cements this communication ability(routes B+ give us the subtitles for Goose's half of the conversation). As for the bit about her already knowing about the fate of humanity(at least to *some* extent), that adds some really depressing context to, well... everything, honestly. Would very likely make Devola and Popola's big 'plot twist' sting a hell of a lot more from her perspective. Then again, as was pointed out in the video, shes basically forced to stay locked on the path of 'murder death kill' in order to stop from being taken over by Tryann, so there really isn't much she can do with this knowledge other than feel like crap... (and if *you* want to feel like crap too, you can go read the novella "Witches Sabbath", *shudders*, someone really needs to give her a hug or something...)
Also, to go off on a bit of a tangent, I believe the festival referenced in the novella might be the maso disposal "festival" which the replicants were originally tasked with, under the guidance of the observers(prior to them unintentionally becoming sentient), which was intended to rid the world of the WCS/Legion causing maso and allow Project Gestalt to conclude and reintroduce souls to their vessels. Yeah, I know its some kinda dodgy logic about the replicants doing all this stuff before winding up how we find them by the time act 1 starts up, but that's honestly how the source material presents it - I'm not exactly sure how they were supposed to do much of *anything* if they weren't sentient, but hey... Supposedly they were also used to fight Legion too(the second time, when they were wiped out for good), back when non Gestalt'd humans still existed, as replicants, being soulless, would supposedly be immune to WCS/becoming Legion as they have no soul to form a pact with the extradimensional gods with(hence their fitness for this purpose), but I'm a little fuzzy on this specific part(some of the logic and timetables here are.... "confusing", to put it mildly). Its important to note that the timeline places the [second] defeat of Legion a long time prior to where act 1 picks up, along with the whole 'replicants gaining sentience' thing as well. Even with Legion and Red Eye eradicated, they cant just kick off the end of Project Gestalt, as if any of the Queen Beast's maso still exists, WCS and Legion would just spring right back up(The Gestalt form apparently grants them immunity from Legion somehow). At some point the replicants do finally eradicate the last of the Queen Beasts maso and stop the possibility of WCS/Legion ever coming back, but alas, it kind of winds up being a moot point what with the whole collapse of Project Gestalt and all... Without Grimoire Weiss and Noir, they cant send the project into its end stage, and without the Shadowlord to sustain them, the remaining stable Gestalts will slowly relapse, and no new replicants will be able to be produced, leading to extinction of replicants within one generation after the end of the events of the game, and the extinction of humanity(Gestalt) some few hundred years later...
The lore is spread out across so many different mediums that its kind of hard to keep track of it all upstairs. Grimoire Nier is just the tip of the iceberg(I'm kinda bummed that "The Lost World" is the *only* novella without a proper translation - sadly all we got was "budget Cliff Notes", with a few directly translated lines of dialogue thrown in for flavor). Looping back to Kaine as this point was talked about in the video; supposedly her physical prowess comes from her Gestalt, or rather the human which that Gestalt is based on; which was essentially a bit of eugenics mixed with I guess the maso equivalent of genetic engineering, in order to produce some kind of early prototype human weapon - or really, more like a 'super soldier' and less like the stuff the National Weapons Laboratory was working on(this was done separately from the projects that produced number 6 and 7, but during the same time period). Fun fact, she is the biological offspring of the female Crusader(who's name is Kali... yeah, awful lot of coincidences here...) who slew Red Eye the first time(though its implied that human Kaine was grown in some kind of lab, using extracted genetic samples from Kali and another Crusader, and then raised by Kali as her 'granddaughter'(again, lot of coincidences), who uses her influence and money as a literal world renowned hero(slaying Red Eye during the Crusades as a child soldier) to keep human Kaine safe and close at hand, as well as covering up her origins and getting her safely into Project Gestalt). She also runs into Tyrann during this period, who was still human at this point("Tyrann" is actually a moniker, I dont remember his real name, but he did have one, and was a member of the military), and destroys Kali and Kaine's mansion during a Legion outbreak in the area(surprise, Legion's still around despite Red Eye being dead - they're just a lot more like mindless zombies at this point without Red Eye to lead them([a model] P33 was there too! can you believe it?)), as well as human Yonah(its a small world I guess) just before the events of the prologue, and also Emil(*real* small world I guess). Tyrann is towing Emil(now in number 7 form) around as a trump card after things go sideways at the lab(Halua's rampage/the events of "The Stone Flower" novella) while simultaneously trying to pull a coup, and winds up being marked for death as a result when things go sideways and he takes off leaving his men to die, as well as a very irate Kali who now has a dead husband and a ruined house as a result of the collateral damage from the battle. He ultimately kills some unnamed person who was set to be Gestaltized, and passes himself off as them in order to take their place, only to be discovered later and have his corresponding replicant and associated genetic data destroyed, hence why he finds himself bouncing from replicant to replicant of his own accord, joyriding them until they burn out, as he doesn't have one of his own. His connection to the original human Kaine in the past also sheds some possible light on his sudden change of heart during endings C/D, as this guy is a *real* piece of work based on what we know from the source material(A little bit of this made it into the remaster in the form of Emil's text dump after the Devola Popola boss fight on the later endings, as all new material, which was neat! It essentially retells the events of "The Stone Flower", except from Emil's perspective(which believe it or not, is a *lot* less sad than Halua's perspective, presented in the novella(RIP nice lady scientist who lived in seafront; she gets turned into raspberry sauce by Halua))), and his actions during C/D toward replicant Kaine are probably the single act of his entire existence that could be considered "selfless". ...and *that's* all just stuff from the translated transcription of the drama CD, there's probably more I'm forgetting too...
And that's of course all contingent on the drama CD being considered canon. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@craze42 I haven't read all of this yet but considering how long it is I'm gonna make sure I do, thanks for sharing because I'm actually a new-ish fan since automata and I didn't even know that existed, so thank you!
witches sabbath, noted, and I know nothing about the watchers so I better get watching the drakengard cutscenes 😂 Where can we find these novellas btw?
@@galactichog1480 Google "Grimoire Nier", and the first result should be on the fandom wiki. That page has links to the best quality translations of the novellas contained within Grimoire Nier(I believe all of them except for "The Lost World" have proper translations), as well as a link to a google doc of the translated Grimoire Nier itself(please note that the novella translations linked to from within this document are quite out of date, or missing entirely in some cases - use the links on the fandom wiki page instead).
The table of contents in the Grimoire Nier google doc has an entry titled "Grimoire Nier Drama CD", which contains a link to a translation of that as well, in a seperate document(although I think there is a better translation out there, I cant seem to remember where it is at the moment - you might try googling for it, as this one seems pretty rough). The drama CD has a lot of supplementary and background information from the time period around the prologue, and is where all of the interactions between the human versions of the cast of characters that I referenced earlier takes place. It also goes into detail regarding Nier's transformation into the Shadowlord/Original Gestalt and other relevant events taking place immediately after what we're shown in the prologue in game.
Hope this helps. The novellas are *seriously* depressing though. I thought Automata's novellas were sad, but these are on an entirely different level.
There are plenty of scenes in your second and third playthrough where it becomes clear that she can understand other shades.
Kainé dodges like 2B and A2. I absolutely loved fighting as her, wish we could play more of the game as Kainé.
It would’ve been so cool to be able to switch between Kaine and Nier during the 2nd and 3rd playthroughs. I was dragging a bit by the 3rd, so having a new character with a whole new moveset introduced would’ve kept things fresh
At the same time, having Kaine be playable only on route E makes it feel extra special. It’s like a big payoff, for all the replays and struggles you went to get to the final ending
@@silvesta5027 Agreed, I had no idea what to expect from Route E, so when it let you control Kainé I audibly went "YOOOOOOOO"
I only wish it was longer :(
Then play Automata, as A2 and 2B (2E) are basically Kaine's robot clones.
Fun Fact: Weiss knew that NieR was going to end all humans but still helped him kill the Shadow Lord.
In Weiss' defense, if he got ALL of his memories back that would include the part where the humans forcibly shoved his (originally human) consciousness into a book-like machine and forced him to become a weapon. So he might have been a little cross with his fellow man.
@@OsnosisBones True lmfao
I think by the time he was shown the truth by the twins, he had recognized the replicants had become sentient and realized project Gestalt had already failed (as shown by Yonah). So all he could do was help his friend reunite with his sister before the world died.
@@chrisdaughen5257 good point. Why did Yonah remain weak and ill even after her Gestalt merged with her? Shouldn't relapsing stop along with black scrawl after it?
@@eldarius237 you could say she stayed asleep for 5 years after she merged with her Gestalt because the minds of the Replicant and Gestalt were at odds with one another. Yonah only woke up when the replicant MC came and the Gestalt realized it wasn’t right to take away the replicant’s existence. I heard that Taro said in an interview that once a Gestalt relapses, that persons gestalt and replicant are doomed; merging together doesn’t help.
I just finished ending E and waited till I was done to watch the analysis... I really liked the point about forcing the player to confront whether they’re actions were right or wrong. I think for me personally, no one is really right or wrong. Everyone was just forced into a really shitty situation where all of their goals were mutually exclusive. One of Devola and Popola’s lines always summed it up nicely for me: “You have your own motives. Your own desires. And we have ours. I fear it really is that simple.” This comes through for me especially in the Roc arc, where we understand why Façade is so angry at the wolves for killing Fyra, but ALSO why the wolves are angry at Façade for killing all of those young wolves. I always feel REALLY divided there, and I ugly cried at “thank you for being my friend,” each time. They just have mutually exclusive goals that lead to conflict. No one really feels right or wrong there, it’s just a sad situation.
This got longer than I wanted it to... but that’s what I felt, anyway.
100%
You've nailed it my guy
I kind of disagree. Nier’s motivation might be legit, but the way he chooses to go about it is certainly not. He’s in a shitty situation yes, but that isn’t an excuse. In the beginning he gets into his head that killing shades and finding the sealed verses will be the key to save Yona. No one tells him this - Weiss and Nier do some serious mental gymnastics to get to that conclusion. Which means that while he THINKS he’s right, he is in fact, unambiguously wrong. And if he had stopped for a moment and actually paid attention to the world around him, perhaps he would have realized as much. Or not. Because honestly, even when people point out the truth to him, he makes it clear that he doesn’t care. He cares about only one thing - and that is saving Yona, which of course, is impossible.
The fact that he starts the whole circle of violence by killing those children by the entrance of the village, which didn’t do anything except… hang around near the village (Idk if you noticed, but at the beginning of the game, they don’t attack you. Even when you attack them, they don’t) doesn’t make it better. And that’s BEFORE he even starts believing his made up story about the sealed verses. He’s already decided that shades are the enemy long before they start becoming hostile. Because they look different. That’s literarily the only reason.
I mean, there’s a reason the shadow lord is Nier. They’re literarily the same person, equally selfish and prone to ruining the world. :/
@@Gladissims Devola and Popola were literally there when Nier and Weiss came to the conclusion that he needed to kill Shades and find the Sealed Verses. They didn't even bother correcting him, they just affirmed his assumptions and kept encouraging him so they could use him.
He can't understand Shades and he's seen them attack people. He doesn't have any concept of a harmless Shade since it's a concept no one else has except for small children, which you can see in that one side quest. It's hard to break free from that kind of conditioning when no one else on your life tries to tell you otherwise, other than Devola and Popola towards the end, but they basically led him on the whole time for their own ends. Nier is definitely selfish, but if he wasn't that selfish then his life would just be completely hopeless. I'm sure a part of his mentality is willful ignorance, but I can't totally blame him for not seeing things outside the perspective of his people.
Kaine's the only one in the party who knew the truth about the Shades and how they think, and she didn't say a word about it to anyone. In fact, one thing I honestly gotta wonder is why the Shades in the Aerie didn't say shit to Nier and the gang about their actual existence. Unlike every other Shade in the game, they can actually communicate with humans through the Replicants they're possessing, but they just go berserk the moment they hear Nier talk about killing Shades. Like, they understand that Replicants don't know the truth about Shades since they've spent time in the village, but they never tried correcting their ideas even with human bodies.
I'm definitely not calling Nier innocent but it's unfair to blame him when everyone he trusts keeps pushing him forward into an awful situation. Devola and Popola were like parents to him and they used him the entire time. The only reason he even kills Shades is because Popola gave him a Shade-slaying contract so that he wouldn't have to continue selling his body for Yonah's medicine. That novella was honestly fucked, I legit can't blame him for doing the stuff he does in the game.
Humans also completely destroyed the forests and turned it into a barren desert. So, there's also that.
One small thing you unfortunately missed. When you save the guy from shade-induced death, you can *also* try to head for the Junk Heap. If you do, the gate leading to Two Brothers is closed, and a note on it states something along the lines of the factory suddenly beginning to have more robot activity, hence the store closing until further notice.
In addition - at the bottom of the platforms leading up to the Junk Heap, there is something else. A single Lunar Tear, prompting some dialogue from Kainé. Missable and not *entirely* vital, but... Wager it's something to look into.
Damn, wish I had thought to go that way
@@ThBrando Theres also a giant armored shade that drops a White Moonflower if you kill it.
@@badmanmcanderson4819 and a dead boar that Kaine looks at and goes 'huh, will i be dead like this someday?' or something along those lines.
@@badmanmcanderson4819 wait a minute. Does that mean this is an easy way to harvest a Lunar Tear and get the damn trophy?
@@spyroschristoulakis6296 i didnt get the trophy when i did it- developers prob thought of this and made it so that the trophy only activates when you acquire a lunar tear as nier since the only way to do this would be to cultivate it through gardening as nier and when you get your save data back your inventory as Kaine is lost
This hour of content made buying and playing through the entirety of Nier again completely worth it. I had the goofiest grin on my face the entire way through.
Me too lol especially when I seen Emil show up again 🥲
In addition to trying to go to Yonah's village you can also try going to the Junk Heap to learn that they closed shop because it got too dangerous. There's also some good loot over there.
That’s really sad when you think about it Gideon probably lost his mind and died in that mountain.
@@RulerOfYore i wonder of gideon met his father again, guy who runs the tavern inseafront
@@seniorsterling1064 I love how subtle they throw Yonah under the bus( even more than Furia from Drakengard). Kaine doesn't go see her in the village, all you hear from her are her diary entries talking about how she's sad and alone, and there's not even a scene of her seeing her brother again even though she was the MC's main motivation.
@@chrisdaughen5257 I don't think she ever was anything more than MC's motivation. Maybe even Yoko Taro doesn't care about her
@@pee-bot I heard he hates the little sister trope in anime. Both Furiae and Yonah are clearly the useless sister who is always in danger. Whereas Furiae was a twist on the trope being dependent on their brother (with the incestual feelings), Yonah is the embodiment of the type of sister that creates trouble trying to help (going to the Lost Shrine to find the Lunar tear, touching Noir to help prologue Nier , and ridding the Overlord of his will to complete Project Gestalt).
About Kainé's powers without Tyrann, there is a Japanese drama CD that had lore stating Kainé's Original human was born from a genetically modified embryo that somehow included Legion data that made her much stronger than the average person.
From the drama CD: Although Kainé is told that her parents have passed away, she is actually a “program baby” created by the genes of Kaali, her grandfather, and the combined analysis of Legions’ attack patterns.
Yeah, I'm also pretty sure that Legion DNA mixed in is partly responsible for her Replicant being intersex, as the original Kaine wasn't.
The Administrator/Tree/Replicant System presumably couldnt make sense of the DNA part-way into production, so just gave her both genitalia. (I think the exact wording was something like the DNA got corrupted or something went wrong, but it's probably safe to assume that Legion DNA is why she's the only Replicant with this problem in production).
Ending E: when Taro got into the trend of turning his main characters into babies
I've just completed Ending E... i'm without words to say... Just OMG. It was so worth it the grind and replay the same goddamed bosses and missions over and over just to see the ending e. Now i look Automata with another eyes. Can't wait for the next entry of NieR. Such an amazing franchise that wasn't known. Then Automata came out and destroy us all...
The next entry was nier reincarnation. A gacha mobile game that is canon
I don't... really think most people thought the flower WAS the exact same one Zero had. It's more of the flower imagery ITSELF that people freak out about.
Kaine: "Shitpurse!"
Weiss: "That's not even a word, and you know it!"
What I like about the Yokoverse games is that, most of the time, the main cast is so likeable that you know you're not supposed to support what they are doing (especially in the second round where you KNOW you always did something wrong, but now have more context); but you end up rooting for them anyways. Which is the most human thing to do, Yoko Taro criticises that heavily in his games (repeating mistakes by doing what humans always do).
This man captures you in the same goddamn loop he sets for the DrakeNier universe. And you know what? I don't care. Just hurt me more, crazy Japanese man.
Wym? Caim did nothing wrong
5:28
Yonah and the old king of facade are the only main-story characters we know of with the scrawl, but a number of NPCs mention having it or losing a parent/sibling/etc to it between quests and random dialogue iirc.
When the gir Administrator says : "I hear a song" right before she 'dies', it is a reference to a quote in Grimoire Nier. If I remember correctly, when the Giant first appeared in the world, its song aka the bell sounds, drove some people insane, with one scientist last words beng "I. HEAR. A. SOUND". To me, it is a way of showing that Kaine kinda had the same role of the giant, killing all of humanity, but unlike the Giant, she did so to save those she loved.... i dont know, i think it gives a more uplifting meaning to the destruction of humanity, if that makes sense
Even knowing the full story, I still don't blame Nier for his choices. I mean, they aren't aware of the implications of their actions anyways.
Regardless of how they came into being and why, Replicants are fully sentient individuals with their own thoughts and feelings. What makes them less entitled to the bodies and existence they inhabit than those that made them?
@@sarethdarva Oooh, that's a very good explanation of the themes! Just gave me goosebumps haha! 😄
Because there not real everything they feel is fake
@@angele9375 But they are real...and it's made pretty clear in the game and additional source material that they have genuine thoughts and feelings. They developed sentience and individuality. I guess those are the questions the games want you to ask though.
yeah, not only does nothing Replicant-Nier learn tell him that killing Shadowlord-Nier will end the world, nothing in the entire game outright says that. it's clear project Gestalt will end, but the death of the replicants as a result of this didnt seem like a given to me.
My opinion, even when playing automata (my intro to the series), was that humans were dead. to me gestalt was a pointless attempt to preserve a race that had died and been haunting the earth for too long. I understand as well as anyone the desire to cling to life, but I don't think the games pull any punches in showing you that the humans were all too willing to sacrifice other people to keep themselves alive. There's no reason they all couldn't have made the same choice as the human yonah, and leave the earth to those who were alive. be it androids, replicants, whatever.
replicants are genetically speaking, essentially humans anyways. so is it really all that bad that the original humans died out? could you even really call the gestalts humans anymore? or alive? I dont think they are. Theyre ghosts, I think.
I feel really bad for him honestly, all he wanted was to save and protect his sister. He was a bit blinded by it in retrospect but he was ready to do anything just to see her again, it really got me. Also, how was he supposed to know it would end like this? Devola and Popola kept them in the dark about everything, from his perspective it's just the damn shades kidnapping his dear sister...
We know of a third person who had the Black Scrawl iirc, when you interact with the 15 Nightmares diary Nier mentions his mom (or wife in Gestalt) died from the Black Scrawl earlier.
One thing you missed that may be important is the last thing the administrators say before dying is "I hear a song". This is very similar to the final battle of Drakengard ending E (I. hear. a .sound) and of course the song to end the world in drakengard 3 which is accompanied by the giant flower. I took this to mean that the same sound magic is being used to create the flower.
It's unfortunate that the lunar tear story in Replicant is different than Gestalt. in replicant a lunar tear is rare and therefore expensive, but in Gestalt the lunar tear grants wishes which would further explain the ending.
Your Nier content is amazing, just had a binge watch and I have to say TH-cam recommend me something good for ones!
Thanks a lot! Glad you liked it
Fun little fact: at 4:00 when you showed the diary entry of Yonah, notice how the entry was dated June 6th which is the fictional birthday (or Taro's real birthday) of the main character? I thought that was a nice little touch: since we know from previous entries that Yonah cares for her brother (the main character) a lot and has impliedly expressed the significance of the date during the previous playthroughs. It's heartbreaking that Yonah (and Kaine) harbours such strong feelings to the point where her subconscious remembers a shadow of the love she had despite being shelved into a reality which seemingly never had the object of said feelings i.e. the main character.
Seeing that "I hear a song" line + the giant flower had the Drakengard fan in me jumping in both dread and excitement.
The way I see it, the flower is perhaps the price paid for creating this new future where Brother Nier lives. Now, is this Giant Lunar Tear the same type of flower that tried to end the world in Drakengard 3? Who can say? But Yoko Taro isn't the type of writter to make these sort of "deals" cheap, thematically and narratively.
I'm pretty sure the lighthouse lady is confirmed to have the black scrawl as well at the end of her questline
There's also at least one other person in seafront with it, a young girl in the market complains that someone will not come out because of strange black markings.
Plus I'm pretty sure Replicant Nier & Yonah's "parents" died from the black scrawl too.
And everyone forgets Kainé has it too
As someone who has lost a sister, I sympathise with NieR, honestly I’d doom humanity if it meant she could live a life, not hesitation. It’s selfish sure but the alternative hurts. Maybe it’s cowardly. But damn this game really hits close to home for me.
Another really great video Brando!! Got a few things to say on this:
1. The bit where you speculate on Kaine telling Nier that he can`t sleep outside with her and Emil; i always thought that was her pushing Nier away to try and stop her feelings developing for him, because of the whole tyrann pact (that he will take full control over her body if she loses her anger/hatred)
2. I think the english voice actors of 2B and 9S did a gd job of putting on different voices for Replicant because i didn`t recognise them, even knowing it was them
3. When Nier sacrifices himself to bring Kaine back... HOW would that erase him from people`s memories? Would love to hear your thoughts on this if you happen to see this Brando, or anyone`s tbh. I have a couple of theories but i remember when i first reached that moment in Nier, i thought the memory erasure aspect of that bargain was a most curious thing
If you think about it from a more computer-esque aspect ((since ultimately no one is an actual human being-- we see this during Ending E when you enter the memory tree)) and Ending D is just the system wiping Nier's slate clean and deletin' it. BUT!! Much like how the internet works, the system wasn't able to completely wipe his existence away. Kaine, Yonha and Emil were able to hold onto those tiny threads of their memories of him which could've possibly been the reason why they were able to bring him back in his younger form at the end of Ending E despite the fact that his data should've been completely erased.
This is all just a theory btw lol I've got brainworms after watchin' this video but none of my friends are actively into this series so I just kinda talk to the void.
@@RaineBarrage Wow thnx, this is great! This actually is very similar to my own theory which is that the entire games of Nier and Automata take place in a digital construct, kinda like the matrix, given that they actually do (because they`re games). I thought this could possibly be the case when i first entered the copied city in automata, but also again when I reached the copied city looking place in Replicant ending E, where it kinda looks like you`re stood in infinite space and not a part of the actual world. It could also explain a lot of the physics breaking stuff of the world, like kaine`s ending e combat, the fact that the planet has stopped spinning and some other things. There is always the possibility that the creators just didn`t analyze this from a contextual perspective but it`s fun to wonder. Maybe Yoko Taro just thought it was cool like putting a capital R at the end of NieR. xD i know what you mean about the brainworms, i actually struggle to put into words some of the thoughts i have on these games. And i too don`t know anyone who plays these games so i can relate to lobbing ideas into the void :D or the comments section of Brando`s Nier vids haha
Yeah I remember finishing route A and reading through the credits like “Kira Buckland and Kyle McCarley play ??? What?”
The song that plays during the fight with Hook during ending E is crazy on multiple levels. The only version of Grandma in the original game is sad, melancholy, and slow paced. NieR: Automata includes Grandma (Destruction), which introduces percussion and a faster tempo leading to a high-action sound that is epic and scary to listen to. But Nier Replicant ver. 1.22… has Grandma / Reunion, which plays when Hook shows up at the end. This version is slowed down compared to Destruction, and has a almost marching feel with the snare drums added that were removed from this game’s version of Grandma. This all makes the sound terrifying to listen to as it feels like an unstoppable force. This ties into that moment in the game narratively as well, because Kaine is (for the second time in this ending) out of her depth and can’t win on her own. The song reflects that in how inevitable it sounds. But Kaine / Salvation starts playing as Weiss shows up and she is able to overcome her darkest memories with the help of her friends.
I really like how the ending slots into the game. It lets you skip c straight to d, so you can do what you feel like you should do, then gives you new context for Kaine's feelings, then after e you can see ending c with a new perspective.
Also, at this point the thing the white-block city thing is just an AI thing they like to do.
Well its not like it's just some gimmick they implement for wow factor. It's a legitimate connection between automata and replicant. That technology served as the basis for the machines and for YoRHa androids.
@@trevorveillette8415 not saying it's a gimmick I think it's just an aesthetic for the AI which I really like
Imagine letting a friend play through NieR on your system where you've already completed ending D and having them stumble upon this on their first run, they'd be so confused
I just completed all the endings and feel empty as fuck....In a good way.
this ending was so bloody good and an amazing send off to the replicant story
Kira Buckland also changed her voice a bit for the English version, and 9S's voice sounded pretty much the same. It's such a cool detail of how consistent both versions are
*Get this man a million likes.*
The real ending is where Kaine kills you, the player, after looking up at a certain angle 10 times
Something that wasn’t mentioned (I think), the kid nier kaine is holding at the end is the copy of nier’s memories when he entered the forest of myth and into the tree’s text adventure thing way back in the first act of the game
This would mean that this Nier has no memory of his adult life (after the time skip), and has no idea what happened after that point
Big coincidence, but I go into that specific point in a video I did with someone else just yesterday. Should be going up soon (not on my channel but I'll make a post about it) so stay tuned.
Doesn't he go into the tree as an adult though? I remember getting annoyed as adult Nier also
This theory makes little sense because adult nier also go to tree to obtain fragment of key and the most importantly tree collects memory even without replicant speaking with it
@@ThBrando Where is it? I don't see any post
@@mellamosteve331 I made it on the community tab about a week ago. If you can't find it, try searching for the Yggdrasil podcast on TH-cam, it's the episode with me in it
I'm surprised no one has mentioned that one of the administrators says
"I HEAR A SONG!"
Right after the line about possible futures blending together. That doesn't seem like a throwaway line, considering that Intoners exist in the Yokoverse.
To me, the song/sound they hear is not a specific reference to the intoners, but to the gods. A sound is also heard as people are infected by white chlorination syndrome. In other words, references to sound/songs directly refers to contact with the gods of Nier/Drakengard or to magic. Note that Intoners use song to make contact with Angels (Watchers), which further strengthens the song/music = connection to the gods theme.
So, here's some possible reasons why a song was heard:
1. Direct interaction with the gods of Nier/Drakengard.
2. Kaine using song/sound to re-create the MC: keep in mind what sealed verses are and what they do (magic = music), blood being connected to words etc.
So it's not really a throwaway line, in my opinion, but it's not directly referencing Intoners either.
@@Bryantzerox or Kaine bringing Nier back was similar to what happened with Furiae in ending B, if you want to get into particularly morbid theories.
Either way, the presence of that flower, the final boss arena evoking Drakengard's/the black and white ring attacks, and of course, *'I. Hear. A. Song.'* all has me unwilling to believe that The Watchers aren't in some way involved with Nier's ressurection in the Replicant remake, and that Kaine bringing him back is going to come with some serious consequences for the timeline they're on.
@@lolrus5555 The Watchers/Angels are simply agents of the will of the gods, who hate humanity and want to eradicate it and everything related to it. Why? Mostly because of the human ego from my recollection. Intoners are also just tools for this purpose.
I see a lot of people trying to make ties to Drakengard by interpreting the Lunar Tear as something it’s not (namely, the flower from 3). This is unnecessary and stretching a bit as ties to Drakengard are already known.
Although there’s some possible intervention by the gods here, I think it’s more fitting to think about the role Kaine’s ego plays into it. Clearly she has some understanding that what she’s doing is wrong/bad, but she does it anyways. Was intervention here really necessary?
Also, from interviews with Yoko Taro there’s a sense that the war with the machines in Automata has great significance somehow, as he says that even with the removal of the Red Girls the war would still find a way to happen. I believe this scene is connected to that: in Automata, we get a line about machine cores being similar to plant cells. And in the original Grimoire Nier version, there’s mention/excitement about Kaine using magic to fuse human, plant, and machine.
Anyways, thanks for contributing to the discussion in a thoughtful way. I’m always willing to listen to counter-arguments, given that things are kept civil.
Seems Like a Drakengard 1 reference to me, where the final chapter of ending e had the description
"I. Hear. A. Sound."
Considering the presence of Accord in Automata by mention, as well as now in Replicant through a diary entry, I have a feeling, a lowball theory, that she's in this timeline to continue her examination of what happened to Zero after Branch D. After all, a part of her final words in her closing monologue were "I have a feeling that somewhere, Zero is still alive." I wouldn't put it past Taro to bring that full circle at some point if Squenix lets him pursue future installments into the franchise with the popularity these games have been getting.
"And finally the novela uses kaine's thighs as a unit of measurement"......yoko taro.......you mad.....mad man
Yo. What?! You just blew my mind with the boy and girl being the voices of 2B and 9S! I'm playing NieR Automata now. Just did Ending B in that yesterday.
Brando: "Alright let's unpack this ending..."
Me: "Here we go..."
This ending is dense. Good to see another opinion on it. I've definitely shared a lot of your thoughts on a lot of this.
I JUST CAME BACK AND I GOD DAMN KNEW IT I knew something was looking familiar at 14:54 you can see the cages from the new NieR Reincarnation mobile game
When I got to the scene of Kaine holding Nier on the flower's stamen I was kinda disappointed it was Boy Nier and not Adult Nier. If only because of their age differences and I want them to be able to love each other and it not be weird l0l.
But damn did that ending make me feel good.
I mean, there would've always been an age difference between the two if Kaine hadn't been petrified for the timeskip lol She's just slightly older than the first time they met.
@@RaineBarrage it wouldn’t have been as significant, though. According to the Wiki, Part 1 Nier is 16 and Kainé is 17. Then she’s petrified for 5 years, so then in Part 2 Nier is 21 and Kainé is 17. Ending E is another 3 year skip, so now Kainé’s 20, but Nier comes back as a 16 year old. If he had returned as Adult Nier, then it only would’ve been a 1 year difference with Nier being 21 and Kainé being 20.
@@VinceOTL13 He still has his memories of 21 though. So he is still Nier.
@@VinceOTL13 But why does this bother you so much when this series literally has so much worse characters and events? I feel like a small age gap between characters with an implied romance should be the least of your concerns when faced with characters like-- I don't know-- Leonard maybe? lol
@@RaineBarrage Oh, don’t get me wrong here. I wouldn’t say it bothers me to the point of affecting my enjoyment. I wouldn’t even say it bothers me a moderate amount. I just think it would’ve felt more appropriate.
It’s also worth mentioning that I didn’t consider the plot reasons for why this might’ve happened and just assumed it was “just because” until I read some of the ideas in these comments for why it might’ve been the case and now I think it makes a lot of sense.
I regretted naming my character Y0k0_t4R0u so much after all those name inputs.
Come to think of it, Kaine's "staggered" animations that you can see in this video at 21:33 and 21:48 - those are 2B's animations from Nier: Automata, aren't they? That's a bit of a cheeky decision.
Hey ,anything that saves devs from overwork goes. especially if it's a very small thing like that
Emil didn't have a crush on Kainé because it was confirmed that Emil was gay and had feelings for NieR.
Something to point out is the combat abilities from Kaine were carried over to her Replicant from her human form, it's stated in the audio drama that Kaine was a baby with augmented capabilities that was made by petition of the human Kalil using her and his husband DNA, human Kaine was capable of take down red eyes by her own after her grandpa(Kalil's husband) was killed by the red eyes that would explain her abilities and why she was taken as the base of the model 2 in the future YorHa proyect.
Dude, this channel feels like a smurfaccount for a big youtuber. Really excellent presentation, narration and analysis. Ive watched all your Nier-related content after a 2 week binge of replicant + automata, really great stuff!
One more thing, not sure if anyone mentioned it here. But Taro had to give us one more jab at the end of the game in that bitter-sweet "thank you for playing message". Because Yona coughs... and she coughs repeatedly meaning... Nier never did manage to cure her of the black scrawl disease. At least that's my understanding.
Sadly as far I know she was doomed from the beginning, I've read that once the black scrawl appears and the corresponding gestalt starts relapsing not even merging body and soul will save the affected one. Who knows, maybe Shadowlord knew this but seeing how much Replicant Nier loves Yonah and did a lot of unreasonable stuff for her it wouldn't be a surprise that the Shadowlord as well despite realizing there was something wrong still tried to fulfill the process, even hurrying up because they were already running out of time.
And I didn't read it anywhere but maybe that's the reason she was asleep for 5 years? That yeah they were merged finally but still she wouldn't wake up, and when she did she was really weak, even weak enough for her to disappear with the light of the sun despite being in her Replicant's body, when in other cases we saw that the merging occurred almost immediately and they were somehow back to normal(I'm putting the Facade girl who was "killed" by her bf I think? And the red bag guy's wife, two characters who made me freak out after somehow coming back after being presumably "dead" and which started my suspicious that there was def something wrong with all of this)
Sorry for the long answer I just love this game lmao.
It only happens once too! I learned that the hard way. Also saved over my ending D by accident.
A F in the chat
Same with me. Damn shame. It happens really quick if you don't pay attention during saving. Intentional?
@@marcusettling9016 I don't know.... Perhaps it is intentional... It's really easy to do.
thanks man been waiting for this for so long
Hope you enjoyed it!
At 3:53 the Yonah diary entry when she says the woke up with tears in her eyes is on June 6th, the date of Nier's birthday.
Just wanted to say thank u man. This video means a lot to me. Way more than I can describe, but all i can say u saved neir in my eyes forever.
I seriously wish that we got a sequel to nier replicants ending e so we could see what the characters lives were like when they brought nier back that would be amazing
Bro really doing the English VA dirty in this video, but good job!
Great vid Brando, I look forward to any further analysis of the links between Replicant and Automata you may do in the future.
Thanks for another great video! This ending makes so much more sense now :P
Glad you learned something from it! I sure did making it
Im pretty sure weiss and the friend who got book'd are the personalities in the pods in automata 🤔
Grandma (Rebirth) was the hypest moment of that section for me. Add Kaine's monologue to that and you've got yourself a fantastic game that shot to my #2 best of all time
Something that caught me during the boss was Weiss questioning Kaine about her plans with the Lunar tear (I forgot the lines specifically). Reminded me of ending C of automata with A2 and the pod before taking 9S away
it's nice to see the actual new content in the ending (besides recycled bosses ofc) and even though I love the series there is no chance of me playing through all the game again just to experience it myself, I strongly feel that the game design had to be remastered as well as the combat, Thanks for showing what it looks like
TH-cam recommended me this video, never watched your content before. But i'd definitely watch a video of you connecting ending e to automata
Thank you for your hard work
Thanks a lot! That video is coming, but I got a few more things to make first.
@@ThBrando but of course. It is your channel. I shall patiently wait. 👍
Here after Nier Reincarnation
Good explanation AND the whistle song from Deadly Premotition in the end?
Well that's a thumb up.
Literally just finished ending E, I really like the story of this game...but it definitely had some issues. Still, the epilogue that connected to Automata was a great note to leave off on, along with the them all realizing they were wrong and deciding to keep fighting for each other
What issues did you have with it?
@@silvesta5027 the story itself is fantastic, the problem is the way it’s told. While the A&B routes are great, gating off C by an arbitrary means (collecting the weapons) destroys the flow of the story, on top of making you play it for a story that barely changes to see the new stuff at the final dungeon. C shoul’ve been consolidated into the B playthrough and they fixed it in Automata by having it be an epilogue instead of a third playthrough of the same crap you’ve already seen
@@jeffbezos3200 Yeah I pretty much agree. I played route B and C back-to-back. Luckily for me, the flow wasn’t too compromised since I only needed 3-4 weapons from either shops or quests I didn’t do. And despite that, even I was burning out by the 3rd play-through. B and C felt too similar and it was tiring going through everything a 3rd time. For those who had to grind for weapons, it must’ve been even worse
Although I LOVE this game, maybe route C could’ve been handled differently. Perhaps a boss-rush of sorts with the Popola / Devola dialogue sprinkled throughout could’ve worked better rather than a 3rd play-through. It felt like slight overkill, even if the pay-off was 100% worth it
@@silvesta5027 would’ve been fixed if they just added the extra bits with the novel and the choice after the boss fight to the B playthrough. There was no reason for B and C to be separate, then you wouldn’t have had the pacing killed. C route only exists so people that didn’t pick up all the weapons have one last chance to grab them
one small error, but I believe that the lighthouse lady might have had the black scrawl too. And the reason Kaine was so strong was because her gestalt was a test tube baby made to fight The Legion, a product of White Chlorination Syndrome, the disease that set the world into ruin and led to the creation of project gestalt.
i sat here and binge watched all the nier videos you have, an amazing watch wit ha couple cups of coffee, though i wish you would make a kind of summary of the whole NieR storyline, everything we know in chronological order, though it might be a bit long.
I've got a 4-5 part video series coming out on that topic. Started working on them after finishing my Final Fantasy video. Will start releasing them when they're finished.
As someone who is part of the localization team for this game, thank you so much for showing English speakers the intricacies of the Japanese version. There are just a lot of things that get lost in translation, and we can't do much about it.
I'd like to believe the flower at the end is related to drakengard 3. True, the book came out long beforehand, but maybe Yoko Taro knew he wanted the alien flower parasite to be the big bad for a while, and he was laying the foundation early. I like the idea of forward planning for a story a lot more than retroactively changing details in previously written works to match a new narrative.
just finished automata and replicant back to back and man these repeated playthroughs was rough. Still dont understand why it all cant be intertwined in one sitting. Regardless the story and lore was all soo good. Soo happy I actually experienced it ...Looking foreward to the next installment..
I completely agree that the repeated play throughs can feel unnecessary. I think this was done way better in Automata since you get to play as 9S who plays differently to 2B. Also in Automata’s route B there are some new segments that take place since 2B was never there. In Replicant there was no reason the play the second half of the game again 2 more times just to get a few more cutscenes. I think they could have made it so that you were able to get ending B, C, and D on the 1st repeated playthrough of route B in the game.
Nice work, nicely placed and on point humor. Gj man
13:45 Booklet of the Drama CD, it is explained that original Kainé was a experimental baby made by her grandparents DNA and Legion's combat data, her Replicant has this feature as well, this is why she's still a exceptional fighter even without Tyarnn
Everything that’s white and blocky straight up invokes the Tower in Automata and the Copied City, and the machines network got ahold of servers, since even the Red Girls are designed based on a human personality stored in the server.
Taro Yoko decided to be cheeky and put a Lunar Tear on what is basically a 2B-Red Girl Grotesquerie Queen in the FFXIV Raids too.
Accord from Drakengard 3 is mentioned in Yonah's diary. This makes me want to believe that there are some connections hidden there.
Apparently the Accords come from organization stationed on the other side of Earth where it's perpetual night instead of day. However, this fact also states they're studying time distortions and creating weapons called 'dragons' (no mention if they're actually reverse engineered artificial dragons or just named that) to fight the aliens and prevent the singularity at around year 6000.
Now, whether this means that some Accord androids hopped to the past to interact with the pseudo humans, and the organization was built by androids, or whether Accords existed for a very long time and began as just mercantile androids I couldn't say.
If the Accords don't get their role to prevent the singularity until much later it'd make sense, since this added detail of the Replicant system's AI going on about seeing multiple timelines could itself lead up to it feeding this info to other databases, leading the creation of the Accords to prevent this, as prior to being tasked with making Replicants, the Memory Tree's original role was to be a quantum computer tasked with the study of maso and multiverses.
Accord is also mentioned by the weapon seller in the resistance camp in automata when you do a mission for him
@@OsnosisBones The original Accord was created arround 6230. But because of their role as Recorders, we met or find references to Accords in most point in time (and timelines). When asked if Accord was present during Replicant area, YOKO TARO answered that "she was always there, she’s always watching". From Yonah's diary, we know she visited Nier's village, and from the black journal entries, we know "Accord Corporation" already existed in 2026.
Also, the dragons, Flower, magic and Cathedral City entered the world of Drakengard during the Cataclysm. If you read Mikhail's novella where he explain what the Old World was like (the world from which all of the above comes from), and you read Accord's book from SINoALICE, it is eminently clear that they are talking about the same thing, the same place. So the TL;DR is that the timeline is most likely a causal loop, DOD3 -> DOD1 -> NieR -> DOD3. So between this, and Accord ability to travel at any point in time, it's tricky to pin point where the role of "studying timelines and prevent the Fall Down" comes from.
Fun fact: This ending already existed more than 10 years erly but then it was a Book that tell the story of Kaine after the games ending
Hell yeah man! Keep it up! Been looking forward to it
Great vid. I agree about the flower, I don't think it's the D3 flower. As someone who played automata before Nier and Drakengard series ending E was so nostalgic and mf hype. I doubt it will play much of a role in whatever the next big Nier project is, but who knows. Question: would you rather the next Nier game be a huge departure from automata the same way automata was a hug departure from Nier, or would you rather it be super connected and tie into the previous games?
Huge departure with the callbacks
@@ThBrando ye same
I wish we got a scene where Nier returns to Yonah. She just kinda gets brushed aside the moment Kaine steps foot outside.
i just finished nier replicant today, now im about to watch all ur vids to understand all of NieR lol
Had a PTSD flashback about those damn Memory Alloys.
God what an amazing video that’s how you earn a subscription
Awesome video bro. I really didn't feel the time watching it.
PS. now I need that Automata vid plz
Stay tuned
@@ThBrando hopefully you had a chance to play NieR Re［in］carnation, if not you have until the end of the month to do so, but the reason why I'm mentioning it is because Yoko Taro mentioned not long ago that it was actually NieR 3 and I rushed to play it and the end proves it! Plus, it is directly connected to the ending E! Hopefully you'll read it and can think about doing a video since your NieR content is really good! Cheers!
What about the text portion relating to Kainè going back to the village, and everyone in the Aerie turning into ash?
9:28 "There's a good reason why there are two voices." Yeah.... that reason became WAAAAYYYY more serious with the 3rd act of Nier Reincarnation. Like HER's importance is unironically essential to Nier Automata's story.
Great video! I feel now that yoko taro is gonna make the next Nier after Re[in] to be a completely desolate one and one where the flower will completely destroy everything again
I personally didn't liked Replicant, but man I wish I could play as Kaine more in New Game+ or something, that would be keep me interested in going back at the game and not just making me feeling like not playing this ever again.
YES I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS
Just found a new favorite channel.
Thanks homie
Love u so much for making the Vietnamese sub
Man your videos are top tier shit. you deserve so much more attention. congrats doing 'em
I just finished this game with ending E and it was unique. It really feels like it had some connection to nier automata. I also already finished Nier Automatas ending A to E. Both are really good games.
I think what is right and wrong when it comes to killing shades is complicated. For the most part it's messed up. Then again it's messed up to create replicants with their own thoughts and feelings and steal their body to take a physical form, Dooming the replicants to be a witness with no control. I will say that shadow lord Nier had it coming.
Well, it wasn’t intended for replicants to have their own thoughts and feelings- they were literally empty shells (and meant to stay that way) until after some time they began to develop self awareness and personality
@@EverythingIsNothing4 yes, but after that happens it then becomes seriously messed up to take their bodies.
Yoooo, can you do a vid about 80 days around the world, Im really curious about it.