Revelations from Patch 5.5 (Part 1)

[KizuyaKatogami]

Little late to the party, but here are my thoughts. Sorry if there's any repeated points here.

MSQ

Honestly, the first thing I think about when it comes to the new story update is Estinien mistaking Alisaie for Alphinaud. That was absolutely hilarious. He even patted her on the head. I was dying. Other than that, the rest of the story was just sort of...okay. It was really cool meeting Tiamat again, I'm curious to see what part, if any, she'll have in Endwalker.

And speaking of Endwalker, I hate to say this but if Zenos and Fandaniel are the main antagonists that is going to be very underwhelming. Though I suspect the actual bad guy will be Zodiark himself. After all, Y'shtola asked us when was the last time Hydaelyn spoke to us. She and Krile have been conducting an investigation into this, and now Krile is off to Sharlayan. So I guess that's confirmed we are going there in the next expansion. The obvious answer to the question of who or what is preventing Hydaelyn from contacting us is Zodiark.

There's also a bit of mystery as to what weapon Zenos finally chose.

I also liked seeing Fordola again and her evolution as a character. I ship her and Arenvald. Speaking of the latter, it was quite obvious something bad was going to happen to him with the prominent way he was being shown at the start of the update. I had no idea Alphinaud admired him the same way he admired Estinien. But as soon as that was shown, I was like, "K so Arenvald's dead." And sure enough. He's not dead but close to it, it sounds like. I'm far more interested in Fordola and to see where she goes. A reunion with Zenos is inevitable.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Looking forward to going back through this thread and reading everyone else's.

Ten characters

In regards to Zodiark, i don’t think it’s obvious or even hinting to him having anything to do with Hydaelyn tbh. For one, Fandaniel says he’s dormant. That conversation seemed to be going moreso toward, what has Hydaelyn been doing this entire time if she hasn’t been speaking to us yet she’s on auto-pilot with hear,feel,think. I also don’t see Zodiark as the bad guy of 6.0 either though considering Yoshi even said there’s is no bad regarding him.

[Fenral]

Huh. My first post was deleted and I have no idea why. I didn't actually swear in that one, IIRC, so not sure why it got moderated. (Though I prefer silence to public shaming, at least.)

YoRHa

It seems like NG+ isn't even available for these quests yet (now that I've remembered to unlock it). That probably means there's something substantial after the weeklies, but how would that even work on a replay? Leaving the same NG+ running for several months?


NieR and Automata both had you obtain multiple endings, then delete your save data for the true end. That's not functionally possible here, so I guess we'll just have to see.

[KizuyaKatogami]

About Nier raid

Maybe he did that in his games but he is only a guest in this one and imo we should have gottenat least a mostly whole story line when running it the first time. Right now we have nothing at all. If you had not played his other games you wont really know or imo care about the Nier characters and I really doubt that they will go out of the way to include redoing the whole raids but with a twist. (Which would mean a whole lot of new cutscenes for all of them + all the missing information) Of course I dont know how long these weekly quests will go until they are finished but I doubt that most players will even try to do them. At most (imo) we will get another cutscene at the end where we will meet the brother again and maybe find a way to save his sister or conclude it in another way.

Also what realistically could the player even sacrifice if we would get such another ending? The other dwarf?

Yeah and the weird thing is

They said that this would be its own standalone story that people wouldn’t need to have played Nier games to understand. But after talking with a lot of people, it seems like 90% of the inferences you won’t understand unless you played the games. This is why i really don’t like these kinds of collabs and i’m looking forward to them moving on to stories that have to do with this actual games story.

[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.

[Beddict]

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.

[Cilia]

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.

[Beddict]

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.

[Cilia]

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.

/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!

[KizuyaKatogami]

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

The thing is though, they promised you wouldn’t need to play the other games to fully understand the story, but now that seems to not be the case. It just feels like them advertising the other games so we can understand wtf is going on in the story.

[Cilia]

Ten characters

The thing is though, they promised you wouldn’t need to play the other games to fully understand the story, but now that seems to not be the case. It just feels like them advertising the other games so we can understand wtf is going on in the story.

tl;dr: I completely agree.

The issue is that rather than trying to integrate the YoRHa stuff at all, they ultimately went with an alien invasion plot from the NieR-verse. While I agree this is a bit clunky and requires lots of legwork (either playing the previous games, watching videos of such, or just doing plain old research) to understand everything... I'd have to argue it was better implemented than the Return to Ivalice series, which features more coincidences than plausible accompanied by egregious infodumps. (Though I admit to being biased against Ivalice, so take that for what you will.)

You can understand the story without said legwork, but you won't grasp the implications of everything otherwise. Her Inflorescence even provides a few lines of dialogue - more than has been given by Grotesqueries beforehand - that hint at things not being entirely what they seem and suggest 2B and 9S might not be telling us (or even aware of) the whole truth.

Regardless... "you don't need to have played the previous games to understand it" is obviously shenanigans, which is hardly surprising considering it's Yoko Taro, who is (in)famous for lying about those sorts of things to the applause of his fans. Auteurs being hero worshipped; gotta love it.

The first "NG+" weekly quest just provides a datalog from Konogg that goes into the Collection.

If anything, when all is said and done I'm expecting something akin to an actual NG+, after a fashion, where after completing all the post-story quests for the Doomsaying Dwarf and Dig Site Chief it resets the storyline and offers a new questline that provides greater context.

Maybe. Possibly. Who knows.