Nier has been seeing somewhat of a
renaissance lately now that its unsubtitled successor was announced at Square
Enix’s E3 Press Conference. The announcement came out like an unexpected bang
even after the previous night’s miracles have settled down in our scope of
reality. Also, with Platinum Games being confirmed for the sequel and Yoko Taro
taking the stage in an Emil mask the announcement was a shock that just kept on
escalating. The Nier franchise (I still haven’t gotten used to that reality) is
getting an unprecedented amount of respect being given the chance to be
continued by the finest in Japanese game development.
However, as exciting as this brave new world of Nier may
seem, at that moment I barely knew what Nier even was or what made it something
very special. I purchased Nier, ironically at the same time with Metal Gear
Rising: Revengence, (a Platinum Games successor to another series acclaimed for
its narrative feats) when I purchased my Playstation 3 earlier this year. I
actually missed out on a lot of games this last generation considering most of
my focus was on multiplayer shooters. Nier is game that I’d bet many people
slept on. On the surface it’s a pretty unimpressive looking action RPG, but
under that admittedly bland, unassuming façade is possibly one of the best
games of the last generation.
Right away, before I delve too deep into spoiler territory, I
want to say I fully recommend this game. The combat isn’t even close to
Platinum Games’s level or even on the level of more average action games, but
it is still serviceable. Nier might be a spin-off of the original Drakengard,
but trust me you will not need to suffer through the boring tedium of
Drakengard to get into Nier. The most from Drakengard that you even need to
know is to look up its Ending E as that is the only bit of Drakengard that is
even relevant.
The game starts you in the setting of a destroyed Tokyo. You
are an older man in search of help for your deathly ill daughter. Suddenly
mysterious creatures known as Shades appear and you must fight them off to
defend your daughter. In your desperation you call upon the powers of a
mysterious grimoire that gives you magical powers. No matter how hard you
fight, you can never save your daughter from her illness. Your fate is already
sealed.
Then the game inexplicably jumps forward over a thousand
years. You are now Nier, the protagonist of the game, father to Yonah who is
ill with a mysterious disease only known as the Black Scrawl. Like many RPGs
before it, our protagonist’s journey starts in a humble village. However, Nier
is no ordinary RPG story. Nier is a story about how the typical hero’s journey
is completely in vain. Nier subverts your expectations of a grand adventure and
gives you a sad tale. No matter how hard you try, Nier’s fight to save his
daughter is only fighting in vain.
The game is not only about Nier, Yonah, and a mysterious disease.
Nier holds one of the most memorable cast of characters I’ve seen in a long,
long time. Grimoire Weiss is a mysterious talking book that gives Nier the
ability to fight shades using magic, but Weiss—sorry, Grimoire Weiss is his own
full character. He speaks with god-like superiority over the lowly scum that is
the human race. His banter with other characters is some of the best dialogue
I’ve seen in a game.
Also in our cast is Kainé, a woman clad in strangely revealing undergarments who has a mouth
that would put sailors to shame. Her crude language is often times maybe a bit
excessive, but still extremely memorable. She often fights with Grimoire Weiss
and when these two butt heads, it’s some of the greatest banter you’ll see in a
video game. This includes the very first thing you’ll likely hear as your turn
on the game, the fan favorite “Weiss, you dumbass!”rant.
However, Kainé
has much more to her than her smack talk. Kainé’s story is probably one of my
favorite stories in a video game. She is a character I’ve gained a deeply
personal relation to. When Kainé was young she was often teased and abused by
people in her home village. The only person she had was her grandmother who was
tragically murdered by a Shade. The game briefly hints at it, but Kainé is a
hermaphrodite. Kainé was born with a penis. You can see how this can be really
relatable for trans women. Her whole character makes a lot of sense as you
apply transgender subtext to. Her ridiculous outfit is her trying to appear as
feminine as possible. She’s cold and distant from other people because she’s
used to a world of abuse. Though as amazing as this backstory is, the game
actually barely touches on it. The game doesn’t try to preach any major moral
with her identity, which is actually a nice change.
Also a member of Nier’s party is Emil. Emil is a precious young boy who
is cursed that everything he looks at will turn to stone, though he’s no
ordinary cursed child as he is actually an experimental weapon created by the
military. Eventually, Nier and Emil find the facility Emil was created in and
they awaken his true form. Emil’s true form looks like a strange skeleton doll,
but with this form he gains great magical power. Also a fun fact, Emil is
canonically gay.
Though Kainé and Emil’s backstories are tragic, the two find a sibling
like relationship. In this harsh world, they finally found someone who they can
look for support. Kainé acts as the older sister and reassures Emil that his
existence is not a cure, but a blessing. Emil acts as a younger brother to Kainé
and is one of the few people that Kainé has ever known who would never hurt
her. Sadly they aren’t allowed in towns due to villagers thinking they are
monsters, but they make the best of it by bonding over campfires. I feel I can
definitely read into this text of solidarity under oppression. The two live
harsh lives but are able to make it more manageable with each other. There’s
definitely a queerness solidarity you could read there too, but like I’ve said
the game doesn’t focus too much on these identities.
Nier’s journey takes him and the others on a quest to find the Sealed
Verses as well as find Grimoire Noir to try and cure Yonah’s illness. The
journey takes them to many lands including an old factory where two brothers
and their recently deceased mother try to survive, and a village of strange
rule bound masked people. The stories of these locations are also ultimately
tragic as one of the brothers is killed by a machine which apparently inspires
the older brother to use the factory to make killing machines. (Maybe we’ll see
the extent of this cruelty of man in the sequel) Also a helpful young girl of
the masked village and bride-to-be of the king is tragically murdered by a
Shade.
However, it seems Nier’s journey was a shame constructed by the
mysterious Shade, The Shadowlord, who looks suspiciously like Nier. Nier’s
quest was actually a plot for Grimoire Noir to merge himself with Grimoire
Weiss. Also, it turns out the major twist of the story is that Shades are
actually human beings and the humans of this world are actually beings called
Replicants, who are bodies that the Shades would return to once the world was safe,
and the merging of the two Grimoires would trigger this event. However, Weiss
resists Noir and the party go on to destroy the Shadowlord’s plan. Turns out
The Shadow is lord is really the original Nier and he needs Yonah to bring his
own daughter back.
This twist is extremely interesting for a ton of reasons. First off,
Nier’s journey to save his daughter ultimately damns mankind into extinction.
Also, recontextualizing the Shades as human beings makes Nier’s quest seem
wrong and much more tragic. In Playthrough B you get to actually hear the
Shades speak and former bosses become tragic stories of Nier murdering these
people. All of this supports the message that Nier is doing the wrong thing.
His quest to save his daughter is really just a father who cannot accept his
daughter’s eventual death. Perhaps if only Nier would’ve stayed home and spent
Yonah’s remaining time with her, none of these tragic events would’ve ever
happened. To top this all off, according to Yoko Taro, the director of Nier, in
no ending is Yonah ever cured of her illness, though this is sadly not made
very clear by the game itself.
A stable of Yoko Taro’s games are multiple endings, which Nier also has,
though most of these don’t change events nearly as dramatically as the game’s
predecessor Drakengard. The game has 4 endings. Ending A is pretty standard.
Nier and Yonah are reunited, Kainé leaves the group, and Emil sacrifices
himself. Ending B is technically the same, but it shows things through the
perspective of The Shadowlord being reunited with his daughter in death, also
it is revealed that Emil actually survived, but is just a tiny bouncing head
now.
Ending C and D however are choice endings for the “True” Ending of Nier.
The Shade, Tyrann that was possessing Kainé takes over her body and Nier must
fight it. Ending C is where Nier chooses to put Kainé out of her misery, but
Ending D is much more special. In Ending D, in order to save Kainé’s life Nier
must sacrifice his very existence and all memory of him. However, the game
takes this to even the player as Ending D erases the player’s save file
symbolizing Nier’s erased existence. Ending D is probably one of the strangest,
but amazing ending options to a video game. After Nier is gone Kainé speaks
with Yonah saying she feels like she lost “something very special”.
Nier is a game about fighting in vain. It’s a game where your goal is
subverted and rendered completely pointless. It’s a game that says the very
journey you want is wrong. Eventually the game goes so far that a “hero’s noble
sacrifice” is completely subverted to the game erasing that this hero’s journey
ever happened. Nier is a very, very sad, tragic, depressing game that is also a
text about the lie of masculinity, of fatherhood that is this hero’s journey. Nier
is probably my favorite JRPG of the past console generation and maybe even
possible THE best game of that generation. Yoko Taro, the now defunct Cavia,
this is their masterpiece.
