Fighting In Vain - NieR

            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.