NieR Automata: Dark Apocalypse - Hints and Predictions

[ObsidianFire]

So in NieR: A, one of the big things 9S can do is hack machine lifeforms. If they already know he's there, he only can destroy them. If they don't know he's there, he's got a couple of options about what to do with them. These include swapping around their Friend/Foe IDs so they attack other machines automatically, or 9S can directly take over their bodies and control them like the machine's body is his. Or he can destroy them like normal. One of the effects of doing this on 9S is that he ends up getting the machine's memories mixed in with his own... and even finds himself inside the machine network on occasion. It should be mentioned that he knows they have a will of their own, but he hates them in spite of that and really, really wants all the machines dead. Probably more then 2B herself does.

My take on what 2P said about the machine's will by the end of the raid was that 9S had hacked the entire factory and was either manually controlling everything himself or had programed the machines to do attack anyone going against thim. So yeah... the machines are probably innocent bystanders... that are attacking us and want to kill us and the only way we can probably talk with them is taking out the person hacking them... which is most likely 9S. It's worth noting that right before she shuts down, 2P is less concerned about the machines and more concerned about other androids finding the factory and what they'll do once they find it. In fact, she implies that would be as bad for us as if the machines started attacking us.

It's probably worth mentioning too that the title of the entire raid is YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse. And YoRHa only ever is a reference to a sub-set of androids in NieR: A. It is never used to refer to machine lifeforms. So I wouldn't be surprised if the next raids have us fighting more against other androids and less against machines.

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

Yeah, the Raid has at least three instances of 9S hacking machines (the Flight Unit, the Tanks, and the Marx arms), and the tank that he attached himself to is completely immobile when he decouples from it despite having robots on it.