I just finished NieR: Automata in a (with-breaks) marathon overnight session. My impression is that this is actually one of the smarter games that's been released so far this year. Now before you look at the ridiculous costumes, the often-convenient camera angles, and the seemingly outlandish/cartoonish premise (to say nothing of the developer) and laugh, hear me out!
I actually read the storyline in this game as metafiction. Now before I go further with that, maybe I should qualify myself by pointing out that I'm sometimes known for my perhaps sometimes overreaching interpretations of things. For example, I've argued with people before that the first couple sagas of Dragon Ball Z (through the Frieza Saga) are intended essentially to be a metaphor for the struggle of the Japanese people to reconcile their imperial history with the need to maintain a meaningful sense of national pride in this age and that's been called a generous interpretation by some. My interpretation of NieR: Automata is another one of those that some may call overreaching. This is just what I see in it though.
[SPOILERS AHEAD!]
Many mainstream video games right now are offering a view of the tech industry (the one they belong to) and its role in the world via obvious metaphor. Horizon: Zero Dawn and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are two clear examples. Both of those games exemplify the overall rule of pro-technology themes that essentially seek to say that technology isn't the problem with the world, but rather that it's how people use it that matters. (Analogous to: "Guns don't kill people; people kill people", as the National Rifle Association in my country tells us.) I find that to be a bland and self-serving argument for technology corporations to make. In NieR: Automata, by contrast, we seem to be given a more pessimistic view.
The basic premise of the game is that our protagonists are androids fighting a war with machines for control of the Earth. The androids seek to liberate the Earth from machine control on behalf of human beings, who have fled to the moon. However, as the game progresses through its various playthroughs (in a clever gesture that keeps your interest piqued, it goes through some false endings along the way to the real ones), the player realizes that humanity has already been wiped out and that the androids are continuing to fight simply for the sake of their own morale, their cause having already been lost. Indeed, eventually, depending on which real ending you ultimately earn, either all the androids die as well or only one survives. It turns out that you've been fighting a losing war. The machines win.
Video games are often thought of as power fantasies (e.g. psychologists treat video game addiction as a form of addiction to power). Yet, in that connection, NieR: Automata possesses an interesting, apparently deliberate disconnect between its playstyle and narrative. In terms of game play, you fight, and ultimately win, a series of heavily stylized battles. But narratively, you're fighting a losing war, losing more and more comrades as you struggle on. It feels like you're watching these characters slowly descend into madness as the vanity of their efforts becomes more and more clear. If the playstyle is meant to make the player feel powerful (if in a very earned, challenging way), with you winning battles and leveling up your characters and whatnot as usual, the narrative seems to be suggesting that this whole power fantasy stuff is a load of BS.
The player, as at all times an android, represents a sort of compromise between full humanity and full machinery. Proper humanity has already been wiped out by machines and you, the player, are using technology to fight out these virtual battles in order to feel good about it. (Seeing the metaphor now?) But it's a losing struggle. Machines are taking over our lives and destroying what's left of our humanity. The ultimate conclusion places more faith in the ability of machines to evolve and develop humanitarian traits than it does in our ability to salvage what's left of our own humanity; our sense of empathy. I think that represents a much more audacious view of our current high-tech era and the kind of place it's leading us to internally than the generic, self-serving, pro-tech message that's common in today's video games.
And upskirt buttshots. So yeah, alternatively, maybe I'm just reaching way too far with this interpretation and this really is just a "crazy game" about nothing.
[/SPOILERS]
So whatcha think? Just plain crazy game or crazy game with a not-so-crazy point?
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