One of those tiny details that really show you how much care was put into the game, during the Amusement Park boss fight when she screams "Don't look at me!" No matter what you do you can not get the camera on her
Good point, but not quite correct. She does not scream 'Don't look at me' (she doesn't say much that is intelligible in Route A). In Route B she is desperate to be looked at, but her pleas are ignored - so your point is valid, because the game refuses to look at her. It is an amazing feature, as most players will not notice it (or, even if they do, will not connect it to her dialogue).
@45:25 I love how they are talking about not taking things too seriously and immediately his blood rushes to his head arguing about a make-believe conversation 🤣🤣🤣 I love these guys
Finally forced myself to give this a go this last weekend. 30hrs in 3 days later and I'm kicking myself for not playing this masterpiece years ago. What an experience.
It occurs to me that the way in which Casen described Yoko Taro’s writing style (“presenting a philosophical thesis and dramatically undercutting it with an antithesis”) is related to the popular understanding of Hegelian philosophy, most prominently his dialectic. Granted, it is still a matter of fierce debate, since Hegel never opted for the “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” triad and described his dialectic more in the sense of the movement between the “inner” and the “outer”. But if we were to take the popular construction of the dialectic as the point of departure for our thought, the major difference between Taro and Hegel, it seems, is that the more existentially inclined Taro is cautious of any grand “synthesis” that purports to be the answer of existence and bring together the opposites in the dialectic into a coherent whole. Much like Kierkegaard in The Concept of Irony, Taro is interested in the “paradox” or the position of extreme tension between two points of view, leaving it up to the player to come to their own conclusions and, by doing so, grow to develop a sense of self therein. Bereft of commonplace truisms that forestall thought, the individual now has to take on the existential responsibility of looking within and without, grappling authentically and wholeheartedly with the riddle of existence. He must realise, then, that there are no answers to be found from external authorities. He has to develop the answers for himself and simultaneously forge a ‘self’ capable of finding these answers. (A philosophically rich game that also tackles this concept is Fallout: New Vegas where a major figure in the game flat out discusses this theme. It would also be a great candidate for this podcast, having the same writer as Planetscape: Torment and KOTOR II.)
I'm loving this podcast, the impression at 45:10 absolutely killed me, Macho Man JP. Edit: regarding the screen going black and white, I think it's worth pointing out that the Goliath-class machine you attack there ends up being one of the first combatants you can speak to at length in the Machine Examination side quests. I wouldn't be surprised if the move to monochromatic there was just to draw contrast with how you treat the machine after the fight is over.
"I act as if God exists" is a JP (not Sartre) answer that has helped me in my own life. But also, the attitude that we shouldn't take ourselves (or our philosophy) so seriously is pretty good advice as well. Everything in balance; that curvy line is so hard to tame.
I really like the explanation of the name change from Dark Pixel to Resonant Arc. Just very cool how they reached that change and the shift in content between this migration.
The discussion on why we should not take ourselves so seriously, and how this applies to philosophy (and especially to our relation to the "Philosophers") was very reminiscent of my early days studying philosophy at the University. Even to this day I see "fandoms" for philosophers that struggle to understand this lesson and wholeheartedly defend every little thing about their work. Thankfully this is changing, and now I almost don't see it anymore as I moved to Norway and here the philosophy community is mostly working on things that go beyond what this or that philosopher once said, and more on updating their thought and bringing in interdisciplinarity to the field. I remember loving the Jean Paul character as he reminds me so much of the (bad) teachers I had, so narcissistic that they couldn't get out of this charade.
This was one of the first games I actually binged. I played every day for 2 weeks and finished. For the next 2 months I religiously watched every theory and analysis video on the internet about the game
The garbled script that names come up in when playing as 9S is the Angelic Script/Celestial Alphabet. It was created in the 16th century by occultist and theologian Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. It appears quite consistently in the Drakengard and Nier series, it's in the Black Scrawl, it's in all the magic circles for spells (and translated often describes the spell), it's used for the title cards in Drakengard, etc. Very commonly it will appear as the letters ACGT either in order or jumbled up.
@@novustalks7525 They're both the same concept and both from the 16th century, but they're different scripts. Enochian was created by John Dee and Edward Kelley based on Latin phonology, the Angelic Script is based on Hebrew. If you want to see Enochian in a videogame it's used for screen text for spells and enemy names in Bayonetta. (Also the things she shouts as she does climax moves are the Enochian names of the demons she summons, quite possibly the *only* instance of spoken Enochian, maybe ever as its creators probably only wrote it down).
@@AshenVictor yeah I'm a big fan of the first 2 bayonetta games so I was familiar with that instance of it but I thought it was what you see in automata too. Thanks for clarifying
One point that is useful and interesting about this game. Time is very abstracted. The events of each chapter, even within a chapter, don’t really take place in a constant or uninterrupted block of time. The events take place over months, possibly years. The machines in the beginning are very rudimentary and are ambiguous as to their sentience. By the time you reach Pascal’s village, then it’s unmistakable that they have a will and sentience. But it doesn’t happen in a brief span of time, though certainly not decades either.
@@GrAvYxxBooN It's as verified as anything can be in these games. As they mentioned, Yoko Taro is very close to the chest with anything official, but there's a lot that doesn't make sense unless time is passing. The behavior of machines from the first chapter to how they act in the village is a palpable evolution that doesn't really work if it's just the half hour or so of gameplay. So to answer, it's somewhere between headcanon and verified lore? Lol. Some of the stuff in Nier is gameplay conceit, but even those points usually have a lore reason at least passingly mentioned. Take the lack of a day/night cycle. It's a gameplay decision, ultimately, not to program that into the game. But it's also confirmed that the world is tidal locked now. Earth doesn't rotate anymore. No clue why, just that it doesn't. XD
@@PaladinGaymer But the machines that 2B and 9S encounter initially aren't the same machines as those within Pascal's village. They are two separate groups from what we see, which I think is supported by Anemone's chat with 2B about having traded with them before, so while the larger group of machines on the overworld (for lack of a better descriptor that isn't spoilery) slowly begin to show signs of some form of sentience, the village has clearly been there for some amount of time. Enough to build up and create a form of leadership, community, and establish a trading relationship with the resistance. However, there is Adam's literal evolution in the boss battle showing that, at least in its case, evolution can occur at a much more expedited rate than a normal human. I have no idea if this same idea could be applied to the other, less advanced machines, but it would be interesting and possibly answer the question of time in regards to the machines' evolution. I do agree that the game events take place over longer than gameplay hours, though, and personally figured that it's in a timespan of at least at least a month or two. Anyway, I think it's just a narrative method that video games tend to do because of the medium, and it's also convenient for layering away information for the player by not simply telling you at the beginning that machines are evolving in such and such ways at point A, B, C, etc. But if there's a NieR adjacent source or direct mention/confirmation of time abstraction from Yoko Taro, I'd want to read it since the game timelines are so interesting!
@@blootle There isn't an official source, just the interpretation, but I feel pretty confident in it. There are different groups that have evolved at different rates. I will just say that there are some plot points to come that both clarify and muddy the timelines. That said, it is absolutely open for interpretation and personal read, so far be it from me to claim that your take on it isn't valid. Yoko Taro basically goes out of his way to ensure that discussion and personal thoughts are the only ways to determine what tf is actually going on. XD
If I was to take a gander at the 2nd Goliath fight, I would imagine the colour palette adopts something closer to the Bunker because, unlike the opening sequence, the Bunker is more involved. The first Goliath fight took place through jamming signals and faulty bandwidth, so maybe that "this is all we've been hoping for" scenario didn't apply. Granted there's still shades of red, it could be just stylistic choices with all that stone and concrete dust clouds hovering about. Also, this is one of the alternate ending triggers.
Give or take, it could be an encounter that is more stylistic than thematic, though I feel it's usually both with Nier. Also, I believe that is ending H
something I learned through studying meditation is that, there is to know, and there is to be aware. sometimes you know "I think therefore I am" but you haven't really processed it so you aren't aware of it.
Amazing podcast guys, you are making me see the game in different ways after your commentary, especially how you are handling the philosophical commentary of Nier Automata.
Very interested in the switch to black/white in that Goliath fight. The Bunker scenes are black/white as well. The only other shift to black/white that comes to mind is the beginning of Route C...
1:09:43 Reminds me of the theological idea of the heavenly spheres. More mundane things live on earth, and as you ascend the heavens, you reach the realm of angels, of various ranks, etc, then in the highest sphere is God. It fits well with the idea of Humanity being the androids' gods. "Glory to Mankind" takes on new meaning with that in mind.
At 39:21 right now. I gotta say, I'm loving the game more than I did in 2017 when I played it the first time. Now that I already know what kind of story it is and what to look for, it's much less confusing lol. Your podcast is also helping too, especially with the analysis you guys did on the game's intro and all the mysteries it presents! I also really love your guys' discussion at around the 39 minute mark. I struggle with what Mike said too, about taking myself too seriously sometimes. I actually notice I'm significantly less happy when I am full on... reason and seriousness. And the quote is so interesting: "to make light of philosophy is to be a philosopher." Because if any one man DID figure it all out, so much conversation and discourse would be stopped. We'd have no connections. We need that balance between the serious and the playful, between being reasonable and emotional, the masculine and the feminine to get the fullness out of life. God gave us a right brain and a left brain for a reason, that's how I see it. Really impactful episode guys, I can't articulate how much I'm enjoying this. Also, Adam and Eve are my favorite characters in this game. They're extremely memorable to me, especially with some of the knowledge from route B.
The Amusement park boss became instantly my favorite boss fight in any game ever when I played it back in November 2017, can’t wait for you guys to analyze her properly
Remnant: From the Ashes had a very subtle exploration of the Ship of Theseus thought experiment as it relates to teleportation, where there is an unstable teleportation puzzle that dumps you out in random places in one of the dungeons, and it might take 8 or 10 tries before you randomly teleport to the right place. But when you do, you appear in front of an odd pile of incinerated corpses, with a fresh one falling from a chute in the ceiling as soon as you materialize. It's not explained overtly, but if you work it out on the map or have a co-op partner who is teleporting as well, you can see that the teleporter was in the room above you, and every time someone teleports, their original body is incinerated and discarded. So you're standing in front of a pile of your old bodies, one of them from just an instant before. Brings to mind The Prestige as you mentioned, and also Thomas Riker from Star Trek, etc.
I think the "teleportation" machines only tranfers their data and loads it on spare bodies. It still causes us to ask the same questions as the Star Trek teleportation, is the conciousness of the individual really transferred or is it just making a new copy and destroying the previous one? The teleportation machines in the game are also the explanation as to why you can die and come back. You transfer your data back to a new spare body, and you can even retrieve the chips you had equipped if you reach the place were you died. So the game does put the idea of teleportation and death side by side there.
I always saw the City Ruins fight's monochrome aspect as a representation of rejecting nuance. By this time you know there's more to the machines, there's an intelligence (or the possibility of one) beyond the slaughter. When another Goliath-class machine begins rampaging it would be natural to start asking "Why?", but the orders come through from YoRHa and you are forced to reject the possibility of nuance, of colour. Things must be black and white - like the colour palette of the androids themselves. To add to this, androids are clearly shown to have their own capacity for emotion by this time, but 2B states that emotions are 'forbidden'. There's a recurring theme of the androids forcing things into a black-and-white spectrum, refusing the possibility of anything else.
It is worth noting that while Sartre and Camus had a famous spat that put an end to their decades-long friendship, it had less to do with the philosophical differences between existentialism and absurdism and more to do with "political commitment" towards Marxism and on the question of whether it is justified to use political violence for a "worthy" cause. Sartre, becoming more radical in the latter half of his life, believed that it was, subordinating morality to politics; while Camus echoed Dostoevsky's Alyosha in refusing the use of violence in all of its forms, prioritising morality over politics. The differences between Sartre's philosophy and Camus' philosophy are very important, chief of which, I think, can be found in this abstract by Ronald Aronson: "Although both wrote important works of philosophy and fiction and successfully tackled a number of other genres, by temperament the one was primarily a philosopher, absorbed with theories and general ideas, the other primarily a novelist, most comfortably capturing concrete situations-Camus's distinction between 'intelligence' and the 'instinctive element.' The brilliant young philosopher [Sartre] took absurdity as his starting point and slowly, in the five years between Nausea and Being and Nothingness, explored how human activity constitutes a meaningful world from brute, meaningless existence. The philosophizing novelist [Camus] built an entire worldview on the sense that absurdity is an unsurpassable given of human experience."
Thank you so much for all this Nier series, really enjoying it so far, something that I think worth to mention is after the intro, and even after the bunker when you come back to earth, it is better (not a must) to go back to the factory and find your dead body and obtain the chips and weapons you had initially, and basically whenever you die you do the same. I know that the intention of this podcast is not to cover game play related stuffs, but there are some interesting designs and concepts here when you die, the messages you see on the screen, and even the option to change that message, and this metaphorically intended design of 'going back to the origin' or 'where something finish it starts a new beginning'. In the Persian mythology (and Greek and perhaps some other places) the bird Ghoghnus (Phoenix) burns itself and come back to life from its own ashes again with a new life cycle like a reset or a rebot, which it is believed that it carries only its memory from the past life cycle, and I think this design about Nier that you go and take your chips back is very amazing.
About the black and withe mentioned on 1:00:00, my personal interpretation is, 2B suffering form a PTSD stress, since she have memories of that unit killing her and 9S on the first hour of the game. Could be wrong, just a thought tho.
Ive been obsessed with the consept of YoRHa meaning passing leaf of late as well as multiple instances where the game uses plant and flower imagery. In the optional tank boss when you defeat it, it will proceed to drop the games first machine core. Your pod unit will then go on to describe it as similar to a plant cell. During the fight in the grave of the aliens Adam refers to their creaters as infintile almost PLANTLIKE. The title screen has an un blossomed plant weaving around creating a frame for the title. When Casen mentioned YoRHa being in the sky and the aliens below in the earth i began to imagine a symbolic tree like structure. Perhaps the aliens and machines representing the seed or roots (The decayed alien bodies have almost root like tendrils below their heads). And if YoRHa does mean passing leaf then the androids represent just that, at the top of the tree in the sky. Leafs culturally symbolize both life and death due to their duel nature. The YoRHa operators are the leafs remaining in the tree still apart of the greater body. Those sent to the earth are the passing leafs that promote new growth through their sacrifice to then be born anew in the bunker (data transfer, multiple copies of the same units used like dolls in an endless cycle etc.). ...Or perhaps im reading way too much into this
Guy on our right, been watching you uncontrollably cough in your content 2 years ago till today, If you haven't looked into it yet, I think you should, stay safe.
As much of a pain as it might be to set up due how non-linear it is, would you guys consider doing a podcast on 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim in the future? It is an absolutely insane sci-fi story, one of the best I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. It pays homage to all of the classic sci-fi stories, in particular the ones of the 80s, while managing to masterfully tie them all together in an original story with one jaw-dropping plot twist after another. It is a masterclass in non-linear storytelling, and I'd really like to see you guys break down the plot and storytelling techniques used in the game, for two reasons in particular. 1. There are seriously not enough videos out there analyzing this very niche and relatively unknown game. 2. Much like with Xenogears, you only get to experience this game's mind-screwy rollercoaster of a plot for the first time once, then all you can do is enjoy watching other people experience it for the first time. Again, might be a bit of a pain to plan out because of how non-linear it is, but I think this game truly deserves the State of the Arc treatment.
One thing I find interesting is that the aliens manage to do things that 2B's opening script says she wants to do. For reference: "Everything that lives is designed to end. We are perpetually trapped in a never ending spiral of life and death. Is this a curse? Or some kind of punishment? I often think about the god who blessed us with this cryptic puzzle… and wonder if we’ll ever get the chance to kill him." Aliens were designed to end. They brought new life to machines. They are the machine's gods. The machines got a chance to kill them and took it. The cycle continues.
This is also related to your point about the flipping of humans and aliens geographically. This is a representation of the cycle too. At a certain point, aliens become earthlings and humans become aliens. Again, the cycle continues.
I think it's also worth noting that neither Kierkegaard and Kant were existentialists in the strict sense of the word, given that they lived far before the existentialist movement originated in 20th-century Europe. Kierkegaard was most definitely one of the key thinkers to inaugurate 'existential' thinking in texts such as Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, where he inaugurated the term “truth is subjectivity”. In one of his earliest journal entries, Kierkegaard writes: “What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.” Kant, however, is more often classified under the school of German idealism, noted for its prioritisation of ‘ideas’ over material reality (very simplistically speaking) and grand abstract systems of thought, along with other thinkers like Hegel and Fichte.
Thanks for the vid! Enjoyed hearing your discussion on the parallels between the bible and entering the Alien area and the nomenclature and nature of the Android space station
The fight with Adam & Eve in the underground bunker feels more like a cutscene disguised as a boss fight. Regardless of whether you do any damage or 'non' at all the fight will always end when Adam finishes talking. If you defeat the goliath south of the other in the city center before getting into the flight unit you will get a call from the operator congratulating you. This voiced line will not be played otherwise. The interactions between 2B/9S with their operators is so good that I was always disappointed when I return to the bunker throughout major story points that Operator 6O & 21O had nothing really interesting to say.
I really do think that you guys are critically underestimating how long this game is lol. At the rate that you are going, you won't be finishing covering the A ending for a while. Not that I'm complaining though, you guys are doing a great job covering this game so far! Just wanted to point out that the Ending A goalpost for the first week was actually insane lol.
On a related topic of the "ridicule of philosophy," we have also two other key figures in the history of philosophy (Socrates and Kierkegaard) who stand in close relation to Pascal. The archetypal philosopher, Socrates, was often seen by his contemporaries as an annoying and ridiculous figure ("a gadfly"). In many of Plato's works, Socrates pokes fun at the self-importance and the bombast of his contemporaries (those who pride themselves on knowing "piety" for instance), and who shows that these men actually don't actually know what they think they know. Instead of giving people definitive answers, what Socrates is interested in is disturbing commonplace truisms, such that people are left in a state of "openness" and hence able to take on the first step towards proper philosophical (that is, fuelled by a love of wisdom) inquiry.
There's no better example of a philosopher absolutely refusing to take things seriously than Diogenes, who managed to one-up Yoko Taro in terms of crazy stunts. One of my favorite stories about him is that, when Plato described man as "a featherless biped," Diogenes plucked a chicken and presented it to him saying, "Behold, a man!" Another relevant point of reference is what G.K. Chesterton said about angels -- "Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly." Continuing on, he explained, "It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity."
Is this Casen's first playthrough of Automata? I know in the Gestalt/Replicant series, he mentioned he hadn't played Automata at the time, so I'm curious if it's his first experience with the game.
About the 2nd fight with goliath , maybe the color turn into black and white again because that event leading to the truth of the yorha mission or the secret to the world itself , because after the fight there's is a big hole in the center of city that later revealing the white tower *little spoiler there
The machines killing their creators reminded me of what Isaac Asimov called the "Frankenstein complex," or the inherent fear that humans have that their creations will rise up and destroy them. Robot uprisings seem to be quite common in science fiction, and the fear of that seems to grow year by year, as technology takes over more and more parts of our lives. It's interesting that in the case of this game, the robots didn't destroy the humans, but there are robots that destroyed the alien invaders. One science fiction trope somehow defeated another science fiction trope. I also find it interesting that neither of you commented on the shape of the aliens, and its resemblance to certain parts of human anatomy. Perhaps you just didn't look closely enough.
The aliens' shape cannot be a mistake. Some of their "features" in the picture-book-style art from the memory cutscene are very... yeah. For anyone not familiar, google "nier 1st machine war".
I am wondering if description of aliens by Adam / Eve is based purely on dissection... Word "infant" could describe behaviour examined by closer observation but I am not sure if they would be able to give us this comparison by examining alien's organs. :D (I do not know how it's in original).
Question: were there a leader of the machines before Adam and Eve were born? Why were Adam and Eve born during the timeline of the game and not way earlier?
Any work of modern art is influenced by art that comes before it. I’m curious what connections to sci-fi anime you both might make between Nier: Automata and say, Akira or Ghost in the Shell? (Or other anime) Love the podcast! Keep up the great work guys
There’s all kinds of conundrums that’ll pop up concerning A.I. Selfishly tho, all I can think is; some talentless hack is going to write a hundred self published books with ChatGBPT while I’m toiling away on my own novels. I’m a flesh and blood hack dang it! But in all seriousness, I’m concerned about the further Marvel-isation of art due to these A.I.’s,”. Because we all know the money men will embrace them and screw over writers, directors etc Worse than that tho, is that I worry the audience would just accept it too. Unless we get an A.I. David Mamet or something
After the encounter with the machine at the amusement park and 9S begins to question if machines do have emotions, I interpreted 2B's response as somewhat as a self-defense mechanism, for if the person who has been reassuring her that nothing the machines do or say has any meaning brings to question that thought, what does that imply for actions so far? We know that even though she presents herself as stoic and regulations first, she does poses emotions and perhaps even an underlying kindness as she has a small reaction to hearing the machines speak words such as help in the desert. To question it now means to accept you were killing things that could posses emotions or perhaps even feel fear. Not to make light of the time, but It reminds of accounts of some Germans, after the removal of the Nazi party, would say they couldn't believe that something so horrible was happening at concentration camps and some historians question whether it was that they couldn't or that they didn't want too believe it as it puts responsibility on those who remained silent or were compliant even if to protect themselves. When first encountering Adam and Eve we see that they have no biological sex and, from what we're shown, they are certainly meant to embody concepts such as Yin and the Yang or the masculine and feminine. This makes me wonder if the choice to not give them a defined biological sex is too remove the conflation of the two from the player's perception when presenting the concept. Similarly I wonder if by having them both be of more or less the same origin is to remove the possibility of perceiving the thought that the concepts are two sperate perspectives rather than two parts of a whole. A quick question if I may, but is there a reason Casen refers to Eve as she or is it simply based in the biblical interpretation of Adam and Eve?
I love the Pascal quote, and think it encapsulates all that you are trying to do here on the podcast. One minor point to add: I wonder if this might be an occasion for us to better expand and nuance our understanding of "knowledge." We desire for people to tell us what we think we already "know" because it is through that act that we come to full knowledge of that thing in question. Hegel famously characterized thought as being a fluid, dynamic process, moving from the "inner" (in this case, something that is known by the individual on the innermost level) to the "outer" (a thought that is externalized by means of its transfusion by society and culture), and back to the "inner" again (the thought returns to its place of origin, transfigured into a higher version of itself). I wonder if there's something going on here, where our external discussions of these ideas with others might allow us to gain a sharper and more multi-dimensional grasp of these ideas, much like illuminating the different sides of a glittering diamond.
I was wondering if the placement of the aliens in the underground is some kind of "divine hierarchy" for humanity. The aliens are underground - sub human. The robots are on the ground - human. The androids are in the sky - approaching the divine. The humans are on another world - entered the divine realm. Is being human the equivalent to godhood?
For the aliens attack on earth, i never considered the question about space, when i first heard about the aliens in the game, i thought it as a dimension invasion, not space, from drakengard
I just realized this. Only after finishing Bioshock: Andrew Ryan is sooo one of those guys who took himself way too seriously. His ideas, his philosophy. And look what happened to him and his city? interesting connection
I think you guys are overstating the "how wrong we are" argument here. I mean sure. Newtons principle of gravitation doesn't even begin to try to explain why masses appear to attract each other. But he still managed to derive an inverse square law that was, and still is highly useful for nearly every single task one needs to involve gravity for. Sure, it breaks down for smaller things than most people will interact with and objects going (relatively speaking) faster than most people can imagine. But even-though Einstein can explain all of this to the point we can't measure any inconsistencies, no one can robb Newton of the pleasure of being able to see that the same "force" governed both heavenly objects and objects down here on earth. Be able to predict the motion of all Earthly bodies, comets, satellites, planets with extremely high precision. And heck, even use it to discover new planets. Newtons idea wasn't so much wrong as "incomplete". We are never going to discover that gravity actually obeys an inverse cube law, or that Einstein was completely wrong for that matter. We are (hopefully) going (to be able) to go even deeper and get a fuller understanding as to why Einsten and Newtons ideas work so well, but we are never going to be able to show that they were "wrong". Their ideas works far to well for that. I would like to direct you to Isaac Asimovs essay "The relativity of Wrong" which is quite a good read, and gets to the heart of why modern science works so well, and why not all ideas are equivalent. But of course, the larger point of not taking oneself too seriously, and be too sure of one self is a good one! Which is why modern science isn't so much about personalities as much as "Hey! I think it works like this, and I can't find any flaws with it. Can you guys help to prove me wrong?"
I still feel bad for killing them just to get the platinum trophy. There is the Nier: Automata raid in FFXIV and Yoko Taro had a hand in it. I don't know if this should be mentioned at the end or not. I personaly want it because I can't make heads or tail out of the Raid like many others and you "might be able" to explain it. It has a Yoko Taro ending.
@@jaron95 And what about the Seed of Destruction? It might not even have an explenation and he did it just to annoy us. We always try to find some deeper meaning in what he does but it's probably just for fun.
The raid is set after ending e. Its about what happens the ark when it left earth and how the machines created the flower which began this entire timeline in the first place
I'm bilingual since birth, French and English, and I've never heard that word you were saying meant "beautiful". Since French is a gendered language, beau is the masculine and belle is the feminine. "Jolie" could be synonymous although it's closer to "pretty" and more commonly associated with the feminine just like "pretty" is. To add the adjective in front of "man" (beautiful man) would be bel homme, which isn't the same as belle.
@@CasenSperry Oh ok. It makes sense as a name but not as a phrase. "Voir" is the infinitive verb "to see". It would translate to "beautiful see" or seeing. Bellevue is beautiful view, and some mountains are named that including one near me. As a side note, I would absolutely not get along with someone who gets all uppity and incensed if I ask for definitions while we're talking about religion, or any other complex topics. If I'm asked if I believe in God, my own personal answer doesn't really lead me to require specifics about what is meant by that, but some people might. They might say "A nonspecific God" rather than the stereotypical Abrahamic one for example. There are other monotheistic religions in the world. I'm agnostic but debate is probably what comes closest to a religion for me. I realize it's not realistic to think all problems can be solved through arguments, but imagine if people managed to get past their hang-ups about semantics. They actually _are_ important.. it determines how words are used. It's just that they tend to be addressed in bad faith one way or another. Just because that is often the case does not mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I think it's a right place to put my verses dedicated to a character from Nier: Automata maybe I'll wake up famous(joking): "Here always noon, the twelve o'clock The never setting Sun with Earth in tidal lock I like so much your elegancy, saddened look I know, it's so depressing, no creators anymore to talk No one will say, I will allow emotions, please, no restrain! Dilapidated homes won't be alive again No child will ever say, you did it great 2B! Inside of desolated building with overgrown three The tragedy prevails in world with only robots left Don't strain yourself, just cry and mourn our death Maybe you'll be a better human than we were 2B or not 2B, it's still a question, even more. (Alvi Chanti for 2B)
Alex Moukala did a video on the first boss in this video, and i thought his analysis on the lyrics and how they were made up, but similar to Italian really fit well with the point you made about the operatic theme for the fight and the overall point about beauty (at 7min): th-cam.com/video/Hzn_y1X7j1c/w-d-xo.html
A word on the AI of today; a lot of it is purely a series of algorithms designed to amalgamate existing data, in the form of either text or image. Calling them AI is a bit of a misnomer, there is no intelligence just regurgitation of human -built information. SPOILER BELOW: Which ironically does tie into a plot point that is crucial later in the game, the idea of machines simply recreating human ingenuity, not producing anything new.
I took 2B's earlier statement about 9S not calling her ma'am not as an invitation for 9S to be less formal, but that anything other than calling her by her designation (2B) was pointless, and that any other sort of "honorifics" were not needed. At this point, that seems to be the reason why she won't call 9S "Nines" either. They're also technically genderless, which might also contribute to her thoughts, which is interesting since the audience (and myself, since I just did it with 2B four times!) still designate them both as "he" and "she" because of how they look and how they're voiced. I still think 2B is one of the coolest designed female video characters ever. I like her so much that I have a print of a painting of her on my wall to my left of where I am currently typing this. But technically she's not female. However, I would argue that I'm sure all of the androids in fact do look at themselves as male or female though, and I'm sure that could play into the themes of this game quite well about what it means to be human.
The way I saw it, 2B didn't want to refer to 9S as 9s because it reminded her that she lost that person. It also reminds her how everything ends in death (the comment at the end of A and the clinched fist when she learn that 9S couldn't upload).
Heart in japanese DOES mean soul. Because the word he uses in japanese is "kokoro" and it's often use as soul. Not literally as the organ that pumps blood. And this is why you don't play games or movies dubbed.
![NieR Automata Analysis (Ep.4): Flowers For M[A]chines | State Of The Arc Podcast](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ODLqro_ZCyo/mqdefault.jpg)
![NieR Automata Analysis (Ep.4): Flowers For M[A]chines | State Of The Arc Podcast](/img/tr.png)
Man, when this podcast is doing a game you’re interested in, Wednesday afternoon when you get off work is pure bliss.
I literally request off wednesdays at my job for this
@@dayphaser weird
The clip of Yoko Taro rolling on the floor with a Nier Automata t-shirt and saying "S*** SquareEnix!" lives rent free in my head.
One of those tiny details that really show you how much care was put into the game, during the Amusement Park boss fight when she screams "Don't look at me!" No matter what you do you can not get the camera on her
Good point, but not quite correct. She does not scream 'Don't look at me' (she doesn't say much that is intelligible in Route A). In Route B she is desperate to be looked at, but her pleas are ignored - so your point is valid, because the game refuses to look at her. It is an amazing feature, as most players will not notice it (or, even if they do, will not connect it to her dialogue).
@45:25 I love how they are talking about not taking things too seriously and immediately his blood rushes to his head arguing about a make-believe conversation 🤣🤣🤣
I love these guys
Finally forced myself to give this a go this last weekend.
30hrs in 3 days later and I'm kicking myself for not playing this masterpiece years ago. What an experience.
You're not the only 1 but you experience it lol
same!
It occurs to me that the way in which Casen described Yoko Taro’s writing style (“presenting a philosophical thesis and dramatically undercutting it with an antithesis”) is related to the popular understanding of Hegelian philosophy, most prominently his dialectic.
Granted, it is still a matter of fierce debate, since Hegel never opted for the “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” triad and described his dialectic more in the sense of the movement between the “inner” and the “outer”.
But if we were to take the popular construction of the dialectic as the point of departure for our thought, the major difference between Taro and Hegel, it seems, is that the more existentially inclined Taro is cautious of any grand “synthesis” that purports to be the answer of existence and bring together the opposites in the dialectic into a coherent whole. Much like Kierkegaard in The Concept of Irony, Taro is interested in the “paradox” or the position of extreme tension between two points of view, leaving it up to the player to come to their own conclusions and, by doing so, grow to develop a sense of self therein.
Bereft of commonplace truisms that forestall thought, the individual now has to take on the existential responsibility of looking within and without, grappling authentically and wholeheartedly with the riddle of existence. He must realise, then, that there are no answers to be found from external authorities. He has to develop the answers for himself and simultaneously forge a ‘self’ capable of finding these answers.
(A philosophically rich game that also tackles this concept is Fallout: New Vegas where a major figure in the game flat out discusses this theme. It would also be a great candidate for this podcast, having the same writer as Planetscape: Torment and KOTOR II.)
I'm loving this podcast, the impression at 45:10 absolutely killed me, Macho Man JP.
Edit: regarding the screen going black and white, I think it's worth pointing out that the Goliath-class machine you attack there ends up being one of the first combatants you can speak to at length in the Machine Examination side quests. I wouldn't be surprised if the move to monochromatic there was just to draw contrast with how you treat the machine after the fight is over.
"I act as if God exists" is a JP (not Sartre) answer that has helped me in my own life. But also, the attitude that we shouldn't take ourselves (or our philosophy) so seriously is pretty good advice as well. Everything in balance; that curvy line is so hard to tame.
Loving the pace of the show, guys. Please don't rush it! It's going great!!!
I love how deep these breakdowns are. It's so heavily philosophical and respectful to what the game deserves
I really like the explanation of the name change from Dark Pixel to Resonant Arc. Just very cool how they reached that change and the shift in content between this migration.
The discussion on why we should not take ourselves so seriously, and how this applies to philosophy (and especially to our relation to the "Philosophers") was very reminiscent of my early days studying philosophy at the University. Even to this day I see "fandoms" for philosophers that struggle to understand this lesson and wholeheartedly defend every little thing about their work. Thankfully this is changing, and now I almost don't see it anymore as I moved to Norway and here the philosophy community is mostly working on things that go beyond what this or that philosopher once said, and more on updating their thought and bringing in interdisciplinarity to the field.
I remember loving the Jean Paul character as he reminds me so much of the (bad) teachers I had, so narcissistic that they couldn't get out of this charade.
This was one of the first games I actually binged. I played every day for 2 weeks and finished. For the next 2 months I religiously watched every theory and analysis video on the internet about the game
The garbled script that names come up in when playing as 9S is the Angelic Script/Celestial Alphabet. It was created in the 16th century by occultist and theologian Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa.
It appears quite consistently in the Drakengard and Nier series, it's in the Black Scrawl, it's in all the magic circles for spells (and translated often describes the spell), it's used for the title cards in Drakengard, etc.
Very commonly it will appear as the letters ACGT either in order or jumbled up.
The four nucleotide bases.
Hol' up. That's legit!
I thought angelic was the same as enochian?
@@novustalks7525 They're both the same concept and both from the 16th century, but they're different scripts. Enochian was created by John Dee and Edward Kelley based on Latin phonology, the Angelic Script is based on Hebrew.
If you want to see Enochian in a videogame it's used for screen text for spells and enemy names in Bayonetta. (Also the things she shouts as she does climax moves are the Enochian names of the demons she summons, quite possibly the *only* instance of spoken Enochian, maybe ever as its creators probably only wrote it down).
@@AshenVictor yeah I'm a big fan of the first 2 bayonetta games so I was familiar with that instance of it but I thought it was what you see in automata too. Thanks for clarifying
I've never thought about adam wearing leather pants as wearing skins. That's sooo cool
One point that is useful and interesting about this game. Time is very abstracted. The events of each chapter, even within a chapter, don’t really take place in a constant or uninterrupted block of time. The events take place over months, possibly years. The machines in the beginning are very rudimentary and are ambiguous as to their sentience. By the time you reach Pascal’s village, then it’s unmistakable that they have a will and sentience. But it doesn’t happen in a brief span of time, though certainly not decades either.
Is there a source for this theory, or is it just headcanon?
@@GrAvYxxBooN It's as verified as anything can be in these games. As they mentioned, Yoko Taro is very close to the chest with anything official, but there's a lot that doesn't make sense unless time is passing. The behavior of machines from the first chapter to how they act in the village is a palpable evolution that doesn't really work if it's just the half hour or so of gameplay.
So to answer, it's somewhere between headcanon and verified lore? Lol. Some of the stuff in Nier is gameplay conceit, but even those points usually have a lore reason at least passingly mentioned. Take the lack of a day/night cycle. It's a gameplay decision, ultimately, not to program that into the game. But it's also confirmed that the world is tidal locked now. Earth doesn't rotate anymore. No clue why, just that it doesn't. XD
@@PaladinGaymer But the machines that 2B and 9S encounter initially aren't the same machines as those within Pascal's village. They are two separate groups from what we see, which I think is supported by Anemone's chat with 2B about having traded with them before, so while the larger group of machines on the overworld (for lack of a better descriptor that isn't spoilery) slowly begin to show signs of some form of sentience, the village has clearly been there for some amount of time. Enough to build up and create a form of leadership, community, and establish a trading relationship with the resistance.
However, there is Adam's literal evolution in the boss battle showing that, at least in its case, evolution can occur at a much more expedited rate than a normal human. I have no idea if this same idea could be applied to the other, less advanced machines, but it would be interesting and possibly answer the question of time in regards to the machines' evolution.
I do agree that the game events take place over longer than gameplay hours, though, and personally figured that it's in a timespan of at least at least a month or two.
Anyway, I think it's just a narrative method that video games tend to do because of the medium, and it's also convenient for layering away information for the player by not simply telling you at the beginning that machines are evolving in such and such ways at point A, B, C, etc. But if there's a NieR adjacent source or direct mention/confirmation of time abstraction from Yoko Taro, I'd want to read it since the game timelines are so interesting!
@@blootle There isn't an official source, just the interpretation, but I feel pretty confident in it. There are different groups that have evolved at different rates. I will just say that there are some plot points to come that both clarify and muddy the timelines. That said, it is absolutely open for interpretation and personal read, so far be it from me to claim that your take on it isn't valid. Yoko Taro basically goes out of his way to ensure that discussion and personal thoughts are the only ways to determine what tf is actually going on. XD
If I was to take a gander at the 2nd Goliath fight, I would imagine the colour palette adopts something closer to the Bunker because, unlike the opening sequence, the Bunker is more involved. The first Goliath fight took place through jamming signals and faulty bandwidth, so maybe that "this is all we've been hoping for" scenario didn't apply. Granted there's still shades of red, it could be just stylistic choices with all that stone and concrete dust clouds hovering about.
Also, this is one of the alternate ending triggers.
It seems very random.
Also which ending are you talking about?
Give or take, it could be an encounter that is more stylistic than thematic, though I feel it's usually both with Nier.
Also, I believe that is ending H
@@Acatia2 what's the trigger?
@@novustalks7525 Ignore the command to engage the Goliath, just bail to the Desert or Amusement Park.
@@Acatia2 Oh lol I must try that
something I learned through studying meditation is that, there is to know, and there is to be aware. sometimes you know "I think therefore I am" but you haven't really processed it so you aren't aware of it.
Amazing podcast guys, you are making me see the game in different ways after your commentary, especially how you are handling the philosophical commentary of Nier Automata.
Not to kiss ass, but Mikes ruthless self analysis will surely make the channel better and on track. Good stuff.
Very interested in the switch to black/white in that Goliath fight. The Bunker scenes are black/white as well. The only other shift to black/white that comes to mind is the beginning of Route C...
1:09:43 Reminds me of the theological idea of the heavenly spheres. More mundane things live on earth, and as you ascend the heavens, you reach the realm of angels, of various ranks, etc, then in the highest sphere is God. It fits well with the idea of Humanity being the androids' gods.
"Glory to Mankind" takes on new meaning with that in mind.
Great discussion as usual fellas
At 39:21 right now.
I gotta say, I'm loving the game more than I did in 2017 when I played it the first time. Now that I already know what kind of story it is and what to look for, it's much less confusing lol. Your podcast is also helping too, especially with the analysis you guys did on the game's intro and all the mysteries it presents!
I also really love your guys' discussion at around the 39 minute mark. I struggle with what Mike said too, about taking myself too seriously sometimes. I actually notice I'm significantly less happy when I am full on... reason and seriousness. And the quote is so interesting: "to make light of philosophy is to be a philosopher." Because if any one man DID figure it all out, so much conversation and discourse would be stopped. We'd have no connections. We need that balance between the serious and the playful, between being reasonable and emotional, the masculine and the feminine to get the fullness out of life. God gave us a right brain and a left brain for a reason, that's how I see it.
Really impactful episode guys, I can't articulate how much I'm enjoying this.
Also, Adam and Eve are my favorite characters in this game. They're extremely memorable to me, especially with some of the knowledge from route B.
This was one of the funniest episodes of this channel yet. Love it.
You guys are the best! One of my favorite podcast out there (I listen more than watching the actual vids).
The Amusement park boss became instantly my favorite boss fight in any game ever when I played it back in November 2017, can’t wait for you guys to analyze her properly
When you receive orders feel like a "Would you kindly" moment. You are no longer exploring but focused on an objective beyond your own will.
Remnant: From the Ashes had a very subtle exploration of the Ship of Theseus thought experiment as it relates to teleportation, where there is an unstable teleportation puzzle that dumps you out in random places in one of the dungeons, and it might take 8 or 10 tries before you randomly teleport to the right place. But when you do, you appear in front of an odd pile of incinerated corpses, with a fresh one falling from a chute in the ceiling as soon as you materialize. It's not explained overtly, but if you work it out on the map or have a co-op partner who is teleporting as well, you can see that the teleporter was in the room above you, and every time someone teleports, their original body is incinerated and discarded. So you're standing in front of a pile of your old bodies, one of them from just an instant before. Brings to mind The Prestige as you mentioned, and also Thomas Riker from Star Trek, etc.
great episode funny and like you guys get into ot as deep as it can get
I think the "teleportation" machines only tranfers their data and loads it on spare bodies. It still causes us to ask the same questions as the Star Trek teleportation, is the conciousness of the individual really transferred or is it just making a new copy and destroying the previous one?
The teleportation machines in the game are also the explanation as to why you can die and come back. You transfer your data back to a new spare body, and you can even retrieve the chips you had equipped if you reach the place were you died. So the game does put the idea of teleportation and death side by side there.
I never knew how badly I needed to hear Mike clowning on Jordan Peterson 😂
This channel is such amazing.
Thanks for covering this game; I've been looking for an excuse to replay it for ages and now I have one!
On the point of 2B acting on instinct, it might be worthwhile to consider/discuss the connection of her name to Hamlet. Lol.
That's a spoiler for the end
I always saw the City Ruins fight's monochrome aspect as a representation of rejecting nuance. By this time you know there's more to the machines, there's an intelligence (or the possibility of one) beyond the slaughter. When another Goliath-class machine begins rampaging it would be natural to start asking "Why?", but the orders come through from YoRHa and you are forced to reject the possibility of nuance, of colour. Things must be black and white - like the colour palette of the androids themselves.
To add to this, androids are clearly shown to have their own capacity for emotion by this time, but 2B states that emotions are 'forbidden'. There's a recurring theme of the androids forcing things into a black-and-white spectrum, refusing the possibility of anything else.
Interesting hypothesis
It is worth noting that while Sartre and Camus had a famous spat that put an end to their decades-long friendship, it had less to do with the philosophical differences between existentialism and absurdism and more to do with "political commitment" towards Marxism and on the question of whether it is justified to use political violence for a "worthy" cause. Sartre, becoming more radical in the latter half of his life, believed that it was, subordinating morality to politics; while Camus echoed Dostoevsky's Alyosha in refusing the use of violence in all of its forms, prioritising morality over politics.
The differences between Sartre's philosophy and Camus' philosophy are very important, chief of which, I think, can be found in this abstract by Ronald Aronson:
"Although both wrote important works of philosophy and fiction and successfully tackled a number of other genres, by temperament the one was primarily a philosopher, absorbed with theories and general ideas, the other primarily a novelist, most comfortably capturing concrete situations-Camus's distinction between 'intelligence' and the 'instinctive element.' The brilliant young philosopher [Sartre] took absurdity as his starting point and slowly, in the five years between Nausea and Being and Nothingness, explored how human activity constitutes a meaningful world from brute, meaningless existence. The philosophizing novelist [Camus] built an entire worldview on the sense that absurdity is an unsurpassable given of human experience."
So glad you guys are doing this game! My vote was put to good use! I knew it would lend itself to some amazing discussion.
33:30 What a great way to describe this amazing channel
I always like starting my off days to these videos. Keep up the philosophical & analytical break downs!
You guys are truly the best channel that analyses narratives from videogames. The amount of knowledge you have is truly amazing ❤
Thank you so much for all this Nier series, really enjoying it so far, something that I think worth to mention is after the intro, and even after the bunker when you come back to earth, it is better (not a must) to go back to the factory and find your dead body and obtain the chips and weapons you had initially, and basically whenever you die you do the same. I know that the intention of this podcast is not to cover game play related stuffs, but there are some interesting designs and concepts here when you die, the messages you see on the screen, and even the option to change that message, and this metaphorically intended design of 'going back to the origin' or 'where something finish it starts a new beginning'. In the Persian mythology (and Greek and perhaps some other places) the bird Ghoghnus (Phoenix) burns itself and come back to life from its own ashes again with a new life cycle like a reset or a rebot, which it is believed that it carries only its memory from the past life cycle, and I think this design about Nier that you go and take your chips back is very amazing.
very funny the pot calling the kettle black. (and again to add a second layer)
But as some say: knowing is the first step. Or is it
About the black and withe mentioned on 1:00:00, my personal interpretation is, 2B suffering form a PTSD stress, since she have memories of that unit killing her and 9S on the first hour of the game. Could be wrong, just a thought tho.
Ive been obsessed with the consept of YoRHa meaning passing leaf of late as well as multiple instances where the game uses plant and flower imagery.
In the optional tank boss when you defeat it, it will proceed to drop the games first machine core. Your pod unit will then go on to describe it as similar to a plant cell. During the fight in the grave of the aliens Adam refers to their creaters as infintile almost PLANTLIKE. The title screen has an un blossomed plant weaving around creating a frame for the title.
When Casen mentioned YoRHa being in the sky and the aliens below in the earth i began to imagine a symbolic tree like structure. Perhaps the aliens and machines representing the seed or roots (The decayed alien bodies have almost root like tendrils below their heads).
And if YoRHa does mean passing leaf then the androids represent just that, at the top of the tree in the sky.
Leafs culturally symbolize both life and death due to their duel nature.
The YoRHa operators are the leafs remaining in the tree still apart of the greater body. Those sent to the earth are the passing leafs that promote new growth through their sacrifice to then be born anew in the bunker (data transfer, multiple copies of the same units used like dolls in an endless cycle etc.).
...Or perhaps im reading way too much into this
Oh, this is interesting! Good read.
Plants or rather flowers are really important in the lore. "The flower" is actually an eldritch abomination
Guy on our right, been watching you uncontrollably cough in your content 2 years ago till today, If you haven't looked into it yet, I think you should, stay safe.
Also the Star trek thought experiment is generally called "ship of theseus" there was also sth similar in Marvels wandavision surprisingly
Solid snake and 2B would be best friends
They both operate on instinct
I enjoy this podcast very much.
As much of a pain as it might be to set up due how non-linear it is, would you guys consider doing a podcast on 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim in the future? It is an absolutely insane sci-fi story, one of the best I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. It pays homage to all of the classic sci-fi stories, in particular the ones of the 80s, while managing to masterfully tie them all together in an original story with one jaw-dropping plot twist after another. It is a masterclass in non-linear storytelling, and I'd really like to see you guys break down the plot and storytelling techniques used in the game, for two reasons in particular.
1. There are seriously not enough videos out there analyzing this very niche and relatively unknown game.
2. Much like with Xenogears, you only get to experience this game's mind-screwy rollercoaster of a plot for the first time once, then all you can do is enjoy watching other people experience it for the first time.
Again, might be a bit of a pain to plan out because of how non-linear it is, but I think this game truly deserves the State of the Arc treatment.
One thing I find interesting is that the aliens manage to do things that 2B's opening script says she wants to do. For reference:
"Everything that lives is designed to end. We are perpetually trapped in a never ending spiral of life and death. Is this a curse? Or some kind of punishment? I often think about the god who blessed us with this cryptic puzzle… and wonder if we’ll ever get the chance to kill him."
Aliens were designed to end. They brought new life to machines. They are the machine's gods. The machines got a chance to kill them and took it. The cycle continues.
This is also related to your point about the flipping of humans and aliens geographically. This is a representation of the cycle too. At a certain point, aliens become earthlings and humans become aliens. Again, the cycle continues.
I think it's also worth noting that neither Kierkegaard and Kant were existentialists in the strict sense of the word, given that they lived far before the existentialist movement originated in 20th-century Europe.
Kierkegaard was most definitely one of the key thinkers to inaugurate 'existential' thinking in texts such as Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, where he inaugurated the term “truth is subjectivity”.
In one of his earliest journal entries, Kierkegaard writes: “What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.”
Kant, however, is more often classified under the school of German idealism, noted for its prioritisation of ‘ideas’ over material reality (very simplistically speaking) and grand abstract systems of thought, along with other thinkers like Hegel and Fichte.
Thanks for the vid! Enjoyed hearing your discussion on the parallels between the bible and entering the Alien area and the nomenclature and nature of the Android space station
The fight with Adam & Eve in the underground bunker feels more like a cutscene disguised as a boss fight. Regardless of whether you do any damage or 'non' at all the fight will always end when Adam finishes talking.
If you defeat the goliath south of the other in the city center before getting into the flight unit you will get a call from the operator congratulating you. This voiced line will not be played otherwise.
The interactions between 2B/9S with their operators is so good that I was always disappointed when I return to the bunker throughout major story points that Operator 6O & 21O had nothing really interesting to say.
33:34 And It was Warialasky before that.
I really do think that you guys are critically underestimating how long this game is lol. At the rate that you are going, you won't be finishing covering the A ending for a while. Not that I'm complaining though, you guys are doing a great job covering this game so far! Just wanted to point out that the Ending A goalpost for the first week was actually insane lol.
Great podcast as always!
On a related topic of the "ridicule of philosophy," we have also two other key figures in the history of philosophy (Socrates and Kierkegaard) who stand in close relation to Pascal. The archetypal philosopher, Socrates, was often seen by his contemporaries as an annoying and ridiculous figure ("a gadfly").
In many of Plato's works, Socrates pokes fun at the self-importance and the bombast of his contemporaries (those who pride themselves on knowing "piety" for instance), and who shows that these men actually don't actually know what they think they know. Instead of giving people definitive answers, what Socrates is interested in is disturbing commonplace truisms, such that people are left in a state of "openness" and hence able to take on the first step towards proper philosophical (that is, fuelled by a love of wisdom) inquiry.
There's no better example of a philosopher absolutely refusing to take things seriously than Diogenes, who managed to one-up Yoko Taro in terms of crazy stunts. One of my favorite stories about him is that, when Plato described man as "a featherless biped," Diogenes plucked a chicken and presented it to him saying, "Behold, a man!"
Another relevant point of reference is what G.K. Chesterton said about angels -- "Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly." Continuing on, he explained, "It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity."
Is this Casen's first playthrough of Automata? I know in the Gestalt/Replicant series, he mentioned he hadn't played Automata at the time, so I'm curious if it's his first experience with the game.
This is my first playthrough of the game. However, I have already had a few things spoiled about the end. So I'm not 100% blind
@@CasenSperry Gotcha, thanks! I'm envious of anyone's first time with the game, and I'm looking forward to your insights later on in the game. :D
17:49 the feelings thing you're talking about sounds like a double empathy problem.
They think the goliath attack is a trap and they are set in their idea that the mechines are bad.
Are you guys gonna cover some of other side quests that are directly relevant to the games' themes and story overall?
About the 2nd fight with goliath , maybe the color turn into black and white again because that event leading to the truth of the yorha mission or the secret to the world itself , because after the fight there's is a big hole in the center of city that later revealing the white tower *little spoiler there
Was it me or were Mike and Casen on fire in this particular episode?
Love the JBP reference 😂
Yes the person who asks "what do you mean by God" gets on my nerves too
yall should watch the anime Vivy Fluorite Eye's Song. It has major Nier Automata vibes, and its also highly rated.
The machines killing their creators reminded me of what Isaac Asimov called the "Frankenstein complex," or the inherent fear that humans have that their creations will rise up and destroy them. Robot uprisings seem to be quite common in science fiction, and the fear of that seems to grow year by year, as technology takes over more and more parts of our lives. It's interesting that in the case of this game, the robots didn't destroy the humans, but there are robots that destroyed the alien invaders. One science fiction trope somehow defeated another science fiction trope.
I also find it interesting that neither of you commented on the shape of the aliens, and its resemblance to certain parts of human anatomy. Perhaps you just didn't look closely enough.
The aliens' shape cannot be a mistake. Some of their "features" in the picture-book-style art from the memory cutscene are very... yeah. For anyone not familiar, google "nier 1st machine war".
The aliens look like the machines because they were made in their image
I am wondering if description of aliens by Adam / Eve is based purely on dissection... Word "infant" could describe behaviour examined by closer observation but I am not sure if they would be able to give us this comparison by examining alien's organs. :D (I do not know how it's in original).
Question: were there a leader of the machines before Adam and Eve were born? Why were Adam and Eve born during the timeline of the game and not way earlier?
Terminal is their leader. Adam and eve are just evolutions. It took them thousands of years of studying humans to get to that point
Any work of modern art is influenced by art that comes before it. I’m curious what connections to sci-fi anime you both might make between Nier: Automata and say, Akira or Ghost in the Shell? (Or other anime) Love the podcast! Keep up the great work guys
All that I know, is that I know nothing...PSYCHE! -Yoko Taro
Yoko Taro is an Op Ivy fan confirmed
There’s all kinds of conundrums that’ll pop up concerning A.I.
Selfishly tho, all I can think is; some talentless hack is going to write a hundred self published books with ChatGBPT while I’m toiling away on my own novels.
I’m a flesh and blood hack dang it!
But in all seriousness, I’m concerned about the further Marvel-isation of art due to these A.I.’s,”.
Because we all know the money men will embrace them and screw over writers, directors etc
Worse than that tho, is that I worry the audience would just accept it too.
Unless we get an A.I. David Mamet or something
JP: What do you mean by “is”?
Me: 🤦🏻♂️
HERE WE GOooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
After the encounter with the machine at the amusement park and 9S begins to question if machines do have emotions, I interpreted 2B's response as somewhat as a self-defense mechanism, for if the person who has been reassuring her that nothing the machines do or say has any meaning brings to question that thought, what does that imply for actions so far? We know that even though she presents herself as stoic and regulations first, she does poses emotions and perhaps even an underlying kindness as she has a small reaction to hearing the machines speak words such as help in the desert. To question it now means to accept you were killing things that could posses emotions or perhaps even feel fear. Not to make light of the time, but It reminds of accounts of some Germans, after the removal of the Nazi party, would say they couldn't believe that something so horrible was happening at concentration camps and some historians question whether it was that they couldn't or that they didn't want too believe it as it puts responsibility on those who remained silent or were compliant even if to protect themselves.
When first encountering Adam and Eve we see that they have no biological sex and, from what we're shown, they are certainly meant to embody concepts such as Yin and the Yang or the masculine and feminine. This makes me wonder if the choice to not give them a defined biological sex is too remove the conflation of the two from the player's perception when presenting the concept. Similarly I wonder if by having them both be of more or less the same origin is to remove the possibility of perceiving the thought that the concepts are two sperate perspectives rather than two parts of a whole. A quick question if I may, but is there a reason Casen refers to Eve as she or is it simply based in the biblical interpretation of Adam and Eve?
Yeah, I say she out of habit. It's unintentional.
I love the Pascal quote, and think it encapsulates all that you are trying to do here on the podcast. One minor point to add: I wonder if this might be an occasion for us to better expand and nuance our understanding of "knowledge."
We desire for people to tell us what we think we already "know" because it is through that act that we come to full knowledge of that thing in question. Hegel famously characterized thought as being a fluid, dynamic process, moving from the "inner" (in this case, something that is known by the individual on the innermost level) to the "outer" (a thought that is externalized by means of its transfusion by society and culture), and back to the "inner" again (the thought returns to its place of origin, transfigured into a higher version of itself).
I wonder if there's something going on here, where our external discussions of these ideas with others might allow us to gain a sharper and more multi-dimensional grasp of these ideas, much like illuminating the different sides of a glittering diamond.
I was wondering if the placement of the aliens in the underground is some kind of "divine hierarchy" for humanity. The aliens are underground - sub human. The robots are on the ground - human. The androids are in the sky - approaching the divine. The humans are on another world - entered the divine realm. Is being human the equivalent to godhood?
Well, in some ways, yes. I don't want to get into everything until all is revealed at the end of the game, but I think that's correct.
A lot of this discussion makes me hope they play Star Ocean: Til the End of Time at some point. For no reason what so ever.....
For the aliens attack on earth, i never considered the question about space, when i first heard about the aliens in the game, i thought it as a dimension invasion, not space, from drakengard
The beginning of the game literally explains they're from space
@@novustalks7525 yeah, but the beginning also explained humans were alive
@@MFF25 Yes because that was the lie. Why would they lie about aliens? You even see their spaceships underground when you fight Adam and eve
Yes.
A genius is the first one who states the obvious.
This cannot continue as logs 🪵…………………
I just realized this. Only after finishing Bioshock: Andrew Ryan is sooo one of those guys who took himself way too seriously. His ideas, his philosophy. And look what happened to him and his city?
interesting connection
HELL YEA
nephilim looked like clowns.
I think you guys are overstating the "how wrong we are" argument here. I mean sure. Newtons principle of gravitation doesn't even begin to try to explain why masses appear to attract each other. But he still managed to derive an inverse square law that was, and still is highly useful for nearly every single task one needs to involve gravity for. Sure, it breaks down for smaller things than most people will interact with and objects going (relatively speaking) faster than most people can imagine. But even-though Einstein can explain all of this to the point we can't measure any inconsistencies, no one can robb Newton of the pleasure of being able to see that the same "force" governed both heavenly objects and objects down here on earth. Be able to predict the motion of all Earthly bodies, comets, satellites, planets with extremely high precision. And heck, even use it to discover new planets. Newtons idea wasn't so much wrong as "incomplete".
We are never going to discover that gravity actually obeys an inverse cube law, or that Einstein was completely wrong for that matter. We are (hopefully) going (to be able) to go even deeper and get a fuller understanding as to why Einsten and Newtons ideas work so well, but we are never going to be able to show that they were "wrong". Their ideas works far to well for that.
I would like to direct you to Isaac Asimovs essay "The relativity of Wrong" which is quite a good read, and gets to the heart of why modern science works so well, and why not all ideas are equivalent.
But of course, the larger point of not taking oneself too seriously, and be too sure of one self is a good one! Which is why modern science isn't so much about personalities as much as "Hey! I think it works like this, and I can't find any flaws with it. Can you guys help to prove me wrong?"
I still feel bad for killing them just to get the platinum trophy. There is the Nier: Automata raid in FFXIV and Yoko Taro had a hand in it. I don't know if this should be mentioned at the end or not. I personaly want it because I can't make heads or tail out of the Raid like many others and you "might be able" to explain it. It has a Yoko Taro ending.
Some theories on the FFXIV raid say that it's a branch of the timeline following Automata Ending D.
@@jaron95 And what about the Seed of Destruction? It might not even have an explenation and he did it just to annoy us. We always try to find some deeper meaning in what he does but it's probably just for fun.
The raid is set after ending e. Its about what happens the ark when it left earth and how the machines created the flower which began this entire timeline in the first place
@@Lamasis2he said it was canon
@@novustalks7525 The Anogg and Konogg thing.
2B or not 2B that is the question
I'm bilingual since birth, French and English, and I've never heard that word you were saying meant "beautiful". Since French is a gendered language, beau is the masculine and belle is the feminine. "Jolie" could be synonymous although it's closer to "pretty" and more commonly associated with the feminine just like "pretty" is. To add the adjective in front of "man" (beautiful man) would be bel homme, which isn't the same as belle.
Mike was referring to the name Beauvoir.
@@CasenSperry Oh ok. It makes sense as a name but not as a phrase. "Voir" is the infinitive verb "to see". It would translate to "beautiful see" or seeing. Bellevue is beautiful view, and some mountains are named that including one near me.
As a side note, I would absolutely not get along with someone who gets all uppity and incensed if I ask for definitions while we're talking about religion, or any other complex topics. If I'm asked if I believe in God, my own personal answer doesn't really lead me to require specifics about what is meant by that, but some people might. They might say "A nonspecific God" rather than the stereotypical Abrahamic one for example. There are other monotheistic religions in the world. I'm agnostic but debate is probably what comes closest to a religion for me. I realize it's not realistic to think all problems can be solved through arguments, but imagine if people managed to get past their hang-ups about semantics. They actually _are_ important.. it determines how words are used. It's just that they tend to be addressed in bad faith one way or another. Just because that is often the case does not mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater.
That's what I was thinking. I'm half French
I think it doesn't go black and white, it looks like ground zero or nine eleven, full of white dust
I think it's a right place to put my verses dedicated to a character from Nier: Automata maybe I'll wake up famous(joking):
"Here always noon, the twelve o'clock
The never setting Sun with Earth in tidal lock
I like so much your elegancy, saddened look
I know, it's so depressing, no creators anymore to talk
No one will say, I will allow emotions, please, no restrain!
Dilapidated homes won't be alive again
No child will ever say, you did it great 2B!
Inside of desolated building with overgrown three
The tragedy prevails in world with only robots left
Don't strain yourself, just cry and mourn our death
Maybe you'll be a better human than we were
2B or not 2B, it's still a question, even more.
(Alvi Chanti for 2B)
Did anyone else see the Romeo & Juliet play in the theme park? It was wild.
Complete Nier timeline video
th-cam.com/video/9WU1mvH6bqo/w-d-xo.html
Alex Moukala did a video on the first boss in this video, and i thought his analysis on the lyrics and how they were made up, but similar to Italian really fit well with the point you made about the operatic theme for the fight and the overall point about beauty (at 7min): th-cam.com/video/Hzn_y1X7j1c/w-d-xo.html
A word on the AI of today; a lot of it is purely a series of algorithms designed to amalgamate existing data, in the form of either text or image. Calling them AI is a bit of a misnomer, there is no intelligence just regurgitation of human -built information. SPOILER BELOW:
Which ironically does tie into a plot point that is crucial later in the game, the idea of machines simply recreating human ingenuity, not producing anything new.
I took 2B's earlier statement about 9S not calling her ma'am not as an invitation for 9S to be less formal, but that anything other than calling her by her designation (2B) was pointless, and that any other sort of "honorifics" were not needed. At this point, that seems to be the reason why she won't call 9S "Nines" either. They're also technically genderless, which might also contribute to her thoughts, which is interesting since the audience (and myself, since I just did it with 2B four times!) still designate them both as "he" and "she" because of how they look and how they're voiced. I still think 2B is one of the coolest designed female video characters ever. I like her so much that I have a print of a painting of her on my wall to my left of where I am currently typing this. But technically she's not female. However, I would argue that I'm sure all of the androids in fact do look at themselves as male or female though, and I'm sure that could play into the themes of this game quite well about what it means to be human.
The way I saw it, 2B didn't want to refer to 9S as 9s because it reminded her that she lost that person. It also reminds her how everything ends in death (the comment at the end of A and the clinched fist when she learn that 9S couldn't upload).
2B was originally a male android called 2D but had gender dysphoria. This is in the novels
Lol at making fun of JP's non-awnser BS.
these guys go on those psuedo philosophical rants way too much. "Profound" has lost its meaning on this podcast
Heart in japanese DOES mean soul. Because the word he uses in japanese is "kokoro" and it's often use as soul. Not literally as the organ that pumps blood. And this is why you don't play games or movies dubbed.