YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse - A summary, feelings and Final Thoughts, beginning to [E]nd

[Bright-Flower]

I consider it the single worst story I've experienced in XIV to this date. I'm also, like another poster, tired of hearing how it's "SO TARO" to excuse the shoddy and careless story. XIV is known for its story and for him to give us something like this spits completely in the eye of that reputation. I'm sure he was forced to do it, but he could have respected the game at least.

Frankly as a Nier/Automata fan, the story is bad and I would never think of excusing this as 'SO TARO.' Because while this story does have some quirks that feel like they came from him, it's still a terrible story. Be it because SE wouldn't let him do certain things or he didn't know what to do with it or whatever reason, this is a bad story. Now obviously an alliance raid story was never going to have as much room to tell a compelling story as a full game, especially games like his that tend to require multiple playthroughs. But that doesn't excuse the mess we actually got.

[Ceasaria]

Was hyped by fans to play Nier Automata : I was disappointed.
Was hyped again by fans how great Yoko Taro will do incredible things in FFXIV ("delete our character" this kind of thing, not so extreme of course I thought) : Well, I was disappointed again (mostly since the 2nd raid).
It's definitely the [E]nd for me for any Yoko Taro experiences.

[Iscah]

I'm sure he was forced to do it, but he could have respected the game at least.

I don't know if he's always like it in interviews, but I just remember when the collaboration had been announced and he was talking about... I forget the exact wording but using the crossover to ruin FFXIV. And obviously he's not going to do that completely even if he tried, but it just gave such an impression that he doesn't care about what he's creating and isn't taking it seriously, and it's such a contrast to the actual FFXIV team seeming so passionate about what they do.

Part of me thinks surely it's a front and he takes more pride in his work than that, but it did come across as disrespectful and it gave me a bad feeling at the time - and everything about the raid presentation seems to reflect that careless attitude. No effort to explain things, no effort to ground them in this game's story, no effort to write a story that stands alone and establishes things early on to create a satisfying conclusion at the end.

And if people are trying to say it was bad because SE wouldn't let him do certain things? Well, I don't think he can be that good a story writer if he can't adapt to still tell an enjoyable story within whatever supposed restrictions they placed on him. It certainly doesn't stop the regular writers from doing good work within their rules.

[Cilia]

YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse, or: Visions of an Auteur

Overall, I have to say I was terribly unimpressed with this raid series. Story-wise.

In terms of gameplay, the fights are all excellently designed and executed. Very intense, very difficult if you don't know what you're doing.

Aesthetically, it's great. Just like you would expect, using the grungy machine aesthetics for the Factory, the cool and sleek YoRHa designs for the Bunker, and the voxels of the Tower. All the outfits are neat (though I prefer my duster coat, thank you) and so on and so forth.

And all of the music is amazingly beautiful.

But the story is... well, I understand what the story is about, but it's so poorly integrated into the setting it's not funny.

The story is ultimately meant to be an aesop about how to err is to be human, and blaming others for the unforeseen consequences of their actions is all but pointless. What's best to do is pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep moving forward.

Even so, the way it's delivered raises more questions than answers.

Since the Factory lingers after the Sphere is gone, that would mean it was created using terrestrial materials and far too massive to be built overnight. It's also an open-air facility. How in the world did Eulmore not notice it?
If 2P and the machines were functionally one and the same, why were they attacking her when she's first found in the tunnels? Plausibly 9S could have hacked it, but... the whole factory and every single unit it produced?
What's the purpose of 2P betraying us? Why carpet bomb Komra? Why have the other P-units show up wearing black, only to immediately shift to white?
Where the hell did the Puppets' Bunker come from (an orbital space station is a bit too big to avoid), and why did it crash into the mountains behind Komra?
Why is the alien spaceship deep in the Bunker?
If the Anogg we knew was always a replica, and excepting 2B and 9S everything it creates is for the sole purpose of destroying the world, why does she act (more or less) like the "real" Anogg?
Did 2P have a will of her own, or was she just a vessel for the Grotesquerie Queen / Her Inflorescence?
What was Glagg's deal in the post-story? Was he replicated or real? If he was replicated, how is he still around without the sphere? If he's real, what was up with his weird behavior?
What happened in the end with Konogg? Did he go insane with grief? Commit suicide? Or did Anogg actually come back, and if so how?

There are just so many questions left unanswered... and even though it's possible to play and enjoy the story without knowledge of the DrakeNieR-verse, so much of it (especially the Tower at Paradigm's Breach) is informed by stuff so far back as the original Drakengard you can't really appreciate what's going on with it unless you get a digest (at least) of those games.

Ultimately this is a symptom of Yoko Taro being an auteur, and his particular style isn't to everyone's taste. People tend to be deeply loyal to auteurs they appreciate, so of course people are going to say "You just don't understand his genius!" regardless of how well-thought out the critique is.

My issue with it is that it's very, very poorly integrated to the world and leaves a boatload more questions than it answers. It's literally an extradimensional alien robot invasion backed up by a malevolent deity.

There are a lot of implications behind Her Inflorescence's dialogue, but I don't have time to get into it right now, and given the game doesn't provide any context to pretty much anything going on, it's all but meaningless. (It's implied Her Inflorescence isn't just trying to destroy the First, but remake it in the image of Earth from the time of the historical divergence that created the NieR timeline.)

... and I'm still disappointed the made 2P into nothing more than an evil knockoff of 2B, instead of having her be an interesting and unique character in her own right.

... aaaaaand there is absolutely nothing new behind NG+.

[MrThinker]

/snip

Just, all this. All this 100%. I could not have stated it any better.

[Yuella]

Why is the E in brackets?

[Raminax]

Why is the E in brackets?

It's a quirk of some of Taro's games when it comes to endings - they're usually titled something, and a letter in the title is either in brackets or coloured differently, and said letter signifies which ending it is (i.e. Ending F, or Branch B). For example, using some of the games he's directed:

the End of the Dragon Sphere (Drakengard 1)
the [E]nd of YoRHa (Nier: Automata)

And my favourite, [L]one wolf (Again, Nier: Automata), where 2B decides to go fishing instead of dealing with the more immediate matters of robot attacks.

As for the topic at hand, a few posters have already said the things I want to far better than I ever could. I just wonder, will they maybe release some sort of dev blog post on what would've happened if people had voted in favour of Konogg instead of Anogg? Would've been interesting to see the differences there, or at the very least a very general or rough draft of what could've been.

[Fenral]

I don't know if he's always like it in interviews, but I just remember when the collaboration had been announced and he was talking about... I forget the exact wording but using the crossover to ruin FFXIV.

As a complete outsider to the Drakenierverse, I've been able to glean that his public-"facing" (that's an Emil head) persona is a mix of self-deprecation and playing the heel (which I relate to deeply). He would almost certainly have to be a more caring and respectful person in the workplace or simply nobody would work with him (and SE wouldn't have gone back to working with him with NieR and Drakengard 3).

Yoshi-P still has final sign-off on pretty much everything in FFXIV, so I suppose the real mystery is what he was thinking. I know I certainly haven't been left this cold by a 24-man since CT, but that came around, eventually.


Japan will probably get a stage play or something.

[LineageRazor]

I was pretty deeply disappointed by the Dark Apocalypse story. I went into it, probably like many, having played Neir: Automata and nothing else from Taro's gameography. I expected the story to be coherent, even if I didn't have the Automata background. It seems that was not to be the case; the storyline assuming no background at all is very bare-bones: Alien robots invaded, we fought them, and they left. 2B and 9S were helping us, but it was not really clear what their motivations were. I guess the black robots hate the white robots, for some reason? (With my Automata background, I can maybe guess that the white robots are a new generation of experiments as Adam and Eve were, but there was certainly nothing spelled out.) The drama with Anogg and Konogg appeared to be COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT to the story as a whole; sure, one of them turned out to be secretly a robot, but it didn't matter at all. The artificial twin just goes, "Eh, I don't belong here," and leaves with the other alien robots.

I waited until after the weekly quests were done with to see if the follow-up cleared anything up, but it was not to be. Just journal reports about how our dwarf friend, too, can't figure out what happened. (Which brings up another thing - the Collection for the Neir raid was so badly utilized - it could have been used to give some much-needed background so that a neophyte could have SOME clue as to what was going on.) And in the end, that surreal reuniting; it was so dreamlike and weird that it could have been a dying delusion or it could really have happened - and I'm sure it was made so intentionally. The problem is that EITHER outcome is perplexing and disappointing.

There was a lot of stuff, particularly in the final raid, that struck me as likely being tied into the other games. In particular, the final boss, who had some girl with flowers in her hair draped over a giant 2P. There's no way that wasn't some kind of callback that happened in one of the other games, but no context is given for it at all, either before or after the fight. Probably the setting for the final fight is important, with all the buildings and trains and stuff, I dunno.

It strikes me solidly as an experience that a Yoko Taro fanatic, who's played every Taro game, could get excited about. ("Ooh, so THAT'S what happened to X!" "Oh, this is from Drakkengard Y!" "Oh, yeah, phenomenon Z is happening here!") But going through it just made me feel lost, like I'm stuck in a conversation with a nerd fangasming about their obsession, but they're terrible about actually describing the object of their passion. (No hate - I've BEEN that nerd, from time to time.) Being in those sorts of discussions is tiring, and rarely leads to actually becoming enthusiastic about the property. If this was intended to drum up enthusiasm to go play the other games, it failed in that regard.

All in all, a confusing mess of fanservicey elements that might appeal to fans, but not really to anyone else.

Great music, of course, and I did enjoy the glamours. But the story just left me cold. I appreciate that Yoko Taro might be an eccentric writer, but where Automata left me pondering deep thoughts, Dark Apocalypse just left me confused, and going, "That's it?"

[StriderShinryu]

All told, while I largely enjoyed the Nier raid series and associated quests, it does feel like they bit off more than they could chew, though I do wonder if the pandemic impacted their plans at all. Setting aside that the whole series didn't really fit into FF14 to begin with, I actually didn't mind the story and thought it actually ended pretty well. They just didn't have the time to properly tell the story they were wanting to tell. There just weren't enough quests and content in between the raids to put together what it seemed they were trying to create, and the final "weeklies" were, well, very weak except for the epilogue quest. Even in battle content, I found that the Tower had some very cool ideas but fell back on "sides or middle?" way too many times. It really does feel like they wanted to do more but the pandemic may have gotten in the way.

Ideally, I think the collaboration would have been best served by just ending it after Copied Factory. Copied Factory was really fun combat wise and it actually would have worked perfectly storywise as well. Sure a lot of things would have been left hanging but I feel that would have worked better for the feeling of the content. A mysterious white 2B as a friend or enemy? 9S appearing as an enemy with a room full of 2B bodies? Codex hints leading back to the origins of the series? Heck, even the weird Red Dragon glitch? It would have been better just to end it there with the exploration bit of Copied Factory.