Thread: Revelations from Patch 5.5 (Part 1)

Originally Posted by Beddict

Ten characters.

In Drakengard 3 Ending D, Zero is consumed by the Flower and ends up sealed in the Spirit World. Accord mentions that Zero is still alive and that we'll meet her again one day and I think that's what happened here. I think that after Nier: Automata Ending E, Zero breaks out of the Spirit World - now a full Grotesquerie/Watcher - and creates 2P using a Seed of Destruction on the repaired 2B. Watcher Zero then leaves Earth to track down The Ark that left in Ending E because why not, the Watchers ain't exactly a friendly group of people. Watcher Zero catches up, The Ark crashes on Novrandt and gets corrupted by Watcher Zero, and the fully repaired and reawakened 2B and 9S catch a ride to Novrandt with Watcher Zero...somehow. Anyways, once on Novrandt, the Dwarves stumble across the Seed of Destruction, the Factory is discovered, we meet 2P, blah blah blah, end of the series involves us beating the tar out of the combined Watch Zero/Red Girl/2P thing while 2B and 9S once again seal her in the Spirit World. At least, that's my best guess from trying to make sense of the story. The third Alliance Raid is done, I don't think we're going to get much more explanations on what the hell happened outside of Konogg sending us the occasional message in his search for Anogg. It blows my mind that this story got added to the game with so many holes and is so disconnected from damn near everything in FFXIV. It's embarrassing and disappointing, especially as someone that is a fan of the lore for both Drakengard and Nier. It's just poorly done fanservice that doesn't tie into FFXIV at all and the barebones story doesn't even manage to provide any answers. It's just references all over the place, references that players new to the series won't get which kinda goes against that statement of "new players won't need Nier to understand what happens." I dunno, I expect nothing from the weekly quests going forward but who knows, maybe I'll be surprised.

I'm not a Yoko Taro buff, but...

As I recall none of the endings to Drakengard 3 lead to the first game; that timeline exists as a sort of mish-mash of various endings to 3 that's only fully detailed in a companion manga. It's Yoko Taro though, so timey-wimey shenanigans are plausibly in play.

The ultimate read I get is that the Machines (and 2B / 9S) didn't literally crash on Norvrandt; rather the Seed of (Resurrection / Destruction) somehow made its way there and recreated them, who then set about building the Factory and replica Bunker as per their directives. That would be why the Factory and Bunker are still around while the Tower is not; as the Tower was a direct creation of the Seed, it disappeared when Her Inflorescence was defeated, but as secondary products of its influence the Factory and Bunker are still around.

Anyway, those with eagle eyes will notice that the first two bosses (Knave of Hearts and Hansel and Gretel) also feature dialogue in hex. It's incomplete, so you have to transliterate it and fill in the gaps like a Wheel of Fortune puzzle, but I went through the trouble of translating it... regrettably it offers no real insight, being just more faux-philosophical dialogue as per Yoko Taro's idiom.

Knave of Hearts
Aggro: In distant memory
Roar (1st cast): Once we
Defeat: Were one

Hansel & Gretel
Aggro (Gretel): People
Aggro (Hansel): Need people
Defeat (1/2): Still you
Defeat (2/2): Take and take

... but yes, if they said you don't need to have played any of Yoko Taro's previous works to understand this they'd be lying. But it's Yoko Taro, so I dunno what you were expecting.