Quote Originally Posted by Rosenstrauch View Post
Count me among those who aren't terribly impressed with the Nier Automata raids thus far.

The Copied Factory setting up the plot with a bunch of mystery boxes was one thing, but we're two acts into a three act story now. Only one of those boxes has been opened: "Who is 2P?" That answer came along with a host of other mysteries, meaning that it's all up to Act Three to explain why all of what we've seen has happened. That's a tall order for any writer, and it's entirely reasonable to be concerned that Yoko Taro won't be able to pull that off—and that's if he even tries to.

But that's not the real problem with the Automata raids, I think. The truth is, the overall story thus far has been painfully sparse. This is partly the fault of the story's format—Three Allied Raids and the quests surrounding them is a far cry from a full length RPG, to say nothing of 2 1/2 full length RPGs (which Nier Automata kind of is). But previous raids were able to do more with the space they had than the Automata raids thus far.

So to be frank, I don't expect the final raid to make good use of the space it has, and I don't see how it can. That doesn't mean I'm not hoping for it to turn out great—just that I'm not exactly holding my breath anymore.

As an aside, 2P is actually kind of interesting and it's a shame she had to die to make that happen.
Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how much of my disinterest in the Yorha raids is due to my own dislike of Nier Automata, and how much is due to the raids itself.

Like, when we get the information that the machine lifeforms are aliens and they're trying to understand humans by emulating us in weird ways, I really wanted a dialogue option or acknowledgement going "yeah, it's a thing that happens, the last time the machine at least tried both male and female forms".

I strongly suspect one of the problems crossover plots like this has is that they want to tell a story based on the themes of their original source, without taking into account whether those themes have already been covered and addressed in the wider FFXIV lore. "The monsters you fight are the real People, while you are a simulacrum" should be answered with "yes, we've heard that one from Emet-Selch, and we rejected his conclusion that we are any lesser for being simulacra". "You should consider what lives those you fought have led" is met with "Frey and Myste hammered the point home several times, yes". And "what is a person, and can a machine like me be one" is "break out of your programming like Alpha did and Omega failed to do".