Thread: Revelations from Patch 5.5 (Part 1)

Originally Posted by Cilia

NieR Raid - Because I haven't seen anybody else mention it.

I haven't seen anybody else mention it yet, at least not in detail, but the reason it's so confusing is that fully appreciating everything requires not only knowledge of NieR: Automata and its predecessor, but Drakengard (at least 1 and 3, since Yoko Taro wasn't involved with 2) as well.

The first two bosses, the Knave of Hearts and Hansel and Gretel, are lifted to the original NieR. The semifinal boss lifted from Automata, where it served as the final boss and orchestrator of the plot. The actual final boss, on the other hand, has a lot of allusions to Drakengard: its subtitle translates from hex to "Aberration," but the DE code translates to "Grotesquerie." In the original Drakengard the Grotesqueries were... a race of extradimensional, giant babies with sets of adult teeth, that don't seem to have had any goal other than destroying the world. What set the NieR timeline into motion was ending "E" from Drakengard, where the protagonist Caim is drawn through a wormhole and fights the Queen Grotesquerie in the skies above Tokyo (1999 A.D., if I remember right); though he succeeds in defeating the thing it comes at the cost of his life, and the Queen Grotesquerie's corpse slowly infects the world with White Chlorination Syndrome. This leads to the Gestalt Project in an effort to save humanity, but this ultimately fails due to the actions of Nier; past that comes Automata.

Thus why, though it's in a digital space, we fight Her Inflorescence in the skies above Tokyo.

"Her Inflorescence" further refers to the flower from Drakengard 3 (which is a prequel to the original), the source of the setting's song magic. It was apparently created by the Grotesqueries (or Watchers, if you prefer) as a first effort in destroying the world, but is ultimately thwarted by the game's protagonist Zero (cold comfort, considering regardless of ending it leads to the original Drakengard). Her Inflorescence also wears Lunar Tears in her hair, referencing Kainé from NieR.

So yeah, even without doing the weekly "NG+" stuff I'm calling shenanigans.

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.

Originally Posted by Cilia

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.

Ten characters

This is correct, none of the Drakengard 3 Endings lead into Drakengard 1. However, Accord is in Drakengard 3 and she's running around hopping timelines, and the Watchers are already dimension-hopping nutjobs so why not, maybe Watcher Zero was able jump timelines and dimensions like Accord and ended up in the Nier universe. Or maybe Yoko Taro didn't bother writing a proper story and we got fed garbage. I lean towards the latter.

Also, fun fact, Hansel and Gretel have different lines depending on who dies first. Rather than "Take and take", the final hex is "Give and give". So that's nice I guess.

Originally Posted by Cilia

/10 kharacthers

I wouldn't say the story's garbage, it's just that (from what I understand) Yoko Taro's more interested in having his stories be emotionally evocative than make logical sense. The denouement of telling off all the dwarves trying to blame Anogg and Konogg for the Puppet units laying waste to Komra is obviously his signature style, for example. Plus we still haven't seen the "true ending" yet, so I wouldn't be so quick to judge... but again, emotional evocation takes precedence over logical sense in Yoko Taro's idiom, so if you're holding out for an explanation you're (probably) approaching it from the wrong angle.

I figured Hansel and Gretel would have different dialogue depending on which is downed first, but given that I don't really have time to write it down while running the raid myself, and said dialogue is instantly buried in item rolls after the fights, I watched a YouTube video and went from there (and don't feel like combing through such videos to get two with the different results; I'm not that dedicated). Thanks for doing that other bit of work, friend!

Woo 10 character Nier shenanigans.

It is his signature style, but I think that only works if there is a proper build up with the characters. I didn't have any kind of emotional attachment to the Dwarves because I was with them for so little time, and any emotional attachment I have to 2B and 9S only exists because I played a lot of Automata. Even then, 2B and 9S are barely in the story. We bop 9S over the head in Factory, he spends the entirety of Bunker passed out, and he has some lines in Tower. 2B is absent from Factory, appears at the end of Bunker, and has a few lines in Tower but hey, at least she'll remember our time together I guess. There was such a long wait time between each Patch, not to mention a pandemic that further delayed Bunker, and it got real difficult to remember or care about the Dwarves. Going into this patch, I couldn't have told you if Konogg was the Black Dwarf or the White Dwarf, nor could I have told you which Dwarf if the brash one and which is the cautious one. Little characterization spread out over months just didn't allow for that emotional investment. Komra gets bombed and what's his face is upset his wife got injured? Literally who, I don't remember these characters at all. In fact, the most memorable character from the entire storyline is the Dig-site Chief purely because how he says his Lali-ho.

Yoko Taro has written some wonderful stories. I love Drakengard 1 and 3, I love Nier and Nier: Automata. These games work because I am able to get invested in the world and the characters which makes the emotional payoff work. These raids just don't do it for me. The story is too short with episodes spaced too far apart, the Nier characters that I do like barely appear and interact with us, and the Dwarves didn't have a lot of defining characteristics to make them memorable to me. The biggest enjoyment I got out of the raids, the things the evoked that emotional response, was seeing all the references and hearing the music I love. Except new players won't get those references and there isn't a whole lot else there.

I want to like the Nier storyline but it just fell flat to me. I need substance to the story and characters, something to get me invested, but the only thing rounded out was the 2B glamour in Factory. I'll keep doing the weekly quests but so far I've just been disappointed in the story.