The NieR + Automata Iceberg Explained

[@costadinover]

Even deeper iceberg level: We live in the canonical future of Nier Automata millions of years later, and Yoko Taro is, in reality, Emil, chronicaling his ancient history.

[@glitchtale688]

YOOOOO WTF?! BUT IF EVERTHING IS CANON. YOUR THEORY CAN TOO! ITS CRAZY MAN

[@charencewong6183]

@@glitchtale688 only if it’s written in official works

[@NieR.Amanda]

I'm pretty sure we are the "ancients".

[@arran4285]

Why do i feel like he will do that

[@reasonablekinda2269]

But then how is humanity alive since you know, we kinda died or is this another dimension that Emil (Yoko Taro) went to somehow like In the Drakengard 1 ending E with Caim?.

[@xenohans9364]

Yoko Taro is shitposting personified. "Next I'll drop some lore on someone's voicemail. Let's see if anyone notices" I could see happening.

[@ThBrando]

Drop some lore during a delivery order call to the local pizza place

[@loserprime4324]

@@ThBrando yeah can I have one large cheese pizza a soda and don’t forget the l o r e

[@OhHeBustin]

@Lyric Donald thanks bro!!! I'm not a bot don't download that lol

[@rabbidguarddog]

@Lyric Donald calm down 9s jeez 2b is gonna be pissed when she finds out!

[@JohnLeeCaskey]

@Greyson Kendrick Obviously fake comment

[@chaincat33]

NieR Automata's Final Secret is a cheat code that was used by the developers to flood the servers for ending E with save files. Ending E isn't randomly generated, the people who help you aren't a grab bag of names. It's all actual people who deleted their save data. But, that begs the question, who helped the first person to ever beat Nier Automata? To answer that, the devs scrambled to put the cheat code in (hence why it's hard coded into the engine) and on launch day at midnight, the dev team went on a mad dash to finish the tutorial as fast as possible so they could upload their saves to make sure the first person to beat the game would have someone to help them. The cheat code doesn't just put you at the end of ending E, it puts you at the prompt if you have any words to say to people trying to get through ending E

[@Salence]

TBH, this ALL stems from one thing. Yoko Taro just wants everything to be canon. Anything and everything gets fanfiction, and no matter how weird it gets, Yoko taro just Oprah meme's it up with canon. "You're canon. You're canon. Everything is canon."

[@qxz9p]

Fanfic about 95 smelling like a cat’s asshole after being resurrected following a black box suicide? Canon.

[@eddydelacruzdelacruz7406]

Me naming the protagonist with my name is canon.

[@conormcguire4306]

Multiverse theory is a beautiful b**** ain’t it. :)

[@FromBeyondTheGrave1]

It's actually cause Drakengard is based off the romanticized hero's tale, and how details are changed as it's passed from generation to generation

[@silverreaps6803]

Nomura moment

[@EnteringMyFlopEra]

9S keeps forgetting to turn incognito mode on when he scrolls through YoRHub, thus leading to 2B killing him. Perfect theory

[@AymuM]

Everything about this comment is perfect.

[@savinsnsn]

You know that if you ask Yoko Taro he will 100% tell this is a cannon event

[@hoshizawa]

Yorhub lmfao i spitted my food😂💀

[@42Kurama]

Someone needs to inform Yoko Taro about this asap so he can make it cannon lmfao 😭

[@fluffykitten077]

2P (the character that ended up being in the FFXIV events) was "born" in SoulCalibur VI. Bandai were showing off 2B to Yoko in a mirror match. In fighting games if you pick the same character you're usually forced into a different colour. One was black with white hair in 1P (player one) position, and a another one with a white outfit and black hair in the 2P position. Yoko asked "What's that?" "Oh, that just means player two". He liked it so much he decided to make 2P her own character. And eventually put her into FFXIV raids.

[@InhumanFan98]

Dispite appearimg in soul calibir 6, it was the fanbase created 2p with fanart and alot of populaity, yoko taro loved the character from all the positivity and decided to make her canon and to use her in ff

[@stamossarris7969]

Jokes aside i can see this happening

[@cdm966]

Something else worth noting about SINoALICE is the fact that the whole game literally takes place in the DrakenNier canon.

[@ThBrando]

Haha, at this point I'm not even surprised

[@dogsoldier123]

You can add Final Fantasy 14 to that list too

[@Onionhorse]

WHAT now i have to download it!

[@hardluckmk.52]

Sorry Um What?

[@DeeRadens]

@@hardluckmk.52 yep.

[@panele3525]

NieR imo has the R capital cuz backwards ReiN is short for Reincarnation, a shared theme in a lot of Taro’s works, obv including the NieR sequel

[@StealthMaster5k]

Another canon detail, good lord

[@olotocolo]

i think Yoko just like symmetry and cyclical themes. So he obviously likes titles with symmetrical capital letters

[@robing.9849]

My theory on the name of the game is as follows. "Nier" in French means "to deny". It is also the MC's name in original game, and it is a way to convey that, even though all the odds are against him, he refuses to give up, he refuses to consider that he might actually be in the wrong. And they also do that a lot in Automata

[@ShikyoGryfyn]

Pretty sure he confirmed that it was to make the name look more interesting but on the other hand, YoRHa is actually significant, the spelling does mean something

[@fabin3ko448]

Rein als means Pure in german

[@sen8368]

i really love the idea that the line is actually "your thinking about how much you want to LOVE 2b". 9s struggling with his feelings towards 2b after what she has done fits perfectly into their personal narrative and relationship

[@shybandit521]

It really could be all of the above and the asterisks could represent that its very vague. It could be kill, and it could be love, because they have a really love-murder relationship. It could also be fuck, because well 2B is hot and 9S was programmed as male.

[@Nadeli0]

Damn i like this better than the F*** one

[@darielvillatoro8365]

SinoAlice got a collaboration with Drakengard 3 too. And that collab is actually a sequel for that game in a strange way, and had a cliffhanger that might be important in the future for Drakengard or even NieR. Yeah, I love Yoko Taro as much as I hate him.

[@ThBrando]

Haha, I'm not even surprised that's a thing.

[@victorhugocosta1127]

Too bad the gameplay sucks (as usual)

[@imanoljesusdelpozo4907]

Regarding the "**** 2B" thing, I'm sure both kill and fuck are canonical intended options. In Jackass' Research sidequest, after you finish the first trial she tells you that android battle fever is quite similar to the human emotion of love. In a later trial, she even says that android brains contain an algorithm that allows them to derive pleasure from battle, making it so that they more easily have the drive to continue fighting. Making those scenes even more freudian...

[@ronandread5141]

Interesting

[@Pandanonimus]

I thought "Hack" made more sense based on the fact that 9S pretty much does that, it kinda made sense to me

[@ajflink]

A literal rage boner.

[@shinra6913]

wow all of that and there's even some you missed. like the entire war with Legion (the army of berserked people who get infected with white chloronation syndrome) that takes place after drakengards ending E, around the time of the prologue of NieR and before the main game. there's the origin of project gestalt, a drug called luciferace to make super soldier teens, the red dragons body being studied before the lab get raided and stolen, eventually ending in a huge climactic battle in Jerusalem. the lore of this universe is amazing :D

[@ThBrando]

There's just so much, its great

[@alanalb1449]

Cain is red eye, I hope they could make a game during the whole war against the legion or during the start of emil war against aliens.

[@TheAntiYuu]

“You want to PUSH 2B, don’t you?”

[@midnightdarkness5119]

Kill*

[@tonywalker1954]

Kiss

[@Official_MikeyT]

*slap. I wanted to slap her when she went from "feelings are prohibited" to being jealous and saying "Well aren't we generous. All this help, for no personal gain? I know she's pretty but -"

[@nfspbarrister5681]

Nah, the japan version is 3 character word., if from the whole sentences probably :" ...と *性交* する..." /to seikko suru

[@InformatrIIcks]

Love ? Am i too optimistic to want to see them happy together ?

[@egebamyasi2929]

The "The games play bad on purpose" hit me during my playthrough of NieR after Ending A. Since videogame players always seek to optimize their play, it makes sense that in Endings B, C, and D you'd run past non-essential enemy encounters which would make sense since you now know that the Shades are humans and get a glimpse into their thoughts through Kainé. So despite Nier not knowing anything, the player involuntarily doesn't kill Shades which is probably something Nier would do if he knew. It'd be different if the games would be fun to play but instead you just want to run from point A to B. I'm probably giving Taro too much credit but it was something that came to mind and I kept entertaining that thought while I ran across empty fields.

[@Salzgard]

even once he found out about all the shade stuff, he still only cared about rescuing his sister at any cost

[@faeranni]

The NieR Raid was ... intense. and for those who thought playing Automata is enough to understand the Raid... nope. Drakengard and Gestalt/Replicant also have their turn into this (Just played the last part of the NieR Raid in FF14 yesterday, as it was released

[@DeltafangEX]

Her Inflorescence is just...yikes, Taro, stop with the feels already, christ. There's only so much I can take.

[@hondshoven8477]

@@DeltafangEX Just the bells threw me for a loop... I was freaking out while most of my team was confused 😅

[@grilledeel6042]

So fun fact, in Nier Replicant remake, Accord is mentioned by Yonah in a diary loading screen.

[@victorhugocosta1127]

The Weapons seller in the resistance camp in Automata also mentions her

[@InformatrIIcks]

Never understood what this "her name was accord" deal was about. It looks like she's super important, but never heard of her in Automata and Replicant

[@grilledeel6042]

@@InformatrIIcks That's cus she is in neither. She is from Drakengard 3

[@voice-less]

@@grilledeel6042 she is mentioned in both replicant and automata, and she's an android that was created by the "Old World". The "Old World" was used multiple times in automata too, it refers to the world before humanity went extinct due to the WCS, make of that what you will.

[@delayed_control]

They actually turned the ending E of original Nier into proper gameplay segment with Kaine as player character in the remaster. And it recovers the save file "deleted" to obtain ending D.

[@RJLuigi]

16:34 "There is no sun." Well if I am not mistaken if you complete 9S' story and select the option "I'll stay." I am pretty sure you see the sun through the clouds.

[@banzeyegaming2234]

It’s confirmed that the world is rotating at the same rate it’s orbiting the sun, leaving one half of the Earth in perpetual darkness, with the other in perpetual sunlight. How isn’t everything burnt to a crisp? Maso. No seriously, considering the wacky shit you can do with it, I would not be surprised if that is the actual answer.

[@vergil8833]

@@banzeyegaming2234 Being in the sun doesn't mean it's always hot. The arctic regions see months with only daylight in the summer and months with only darkness in the winter, it's still not actually warm.

[@natchu96]

@@vergil8833 when you reach arctic regions the temperature variance from day/night ain't gonna be that extreme, though the atmosphere does provide enough insulation to stablize temperature ranges in most places. In deserts and such places the temperature varies drastically between day/night. Still one side getting baked perpetually for thousands of years would not do wonders for heat dispersal...Mercury is a hellhole due to that on top of the lack of atmosphere and just how close it is to the sun.

[@KiraHunter12]

One of the most interesting Job Stories from SINoALICE is the one for Young Emil, where it says that sometime after Automata he re-merges with his clones and turns into a human again.

[@xsmoelf]

In the ending of nier automata (E ending). it says that destiny is for people that don't fight for their own future. alot of the everything is canon meme, could maybe explain why he says everything is canon. He want you to choose your own future. Ok that got pretty deep, but it wouldn't surprise me.

[@Mike-ix5sv]

Being that in automata its revealed that battles and killing for androids is like arousal for humans....so both kill and f*** make sense. You understand why 9s would want to kill 2b, and you also know there is some feelings ( as far as androids go )

[@axlorg89]

It’s probably f*** if I’m honest. Yoko was asked if 9S had any dislike for 2B but he said he didn’t write it with that intention(and in any collabs/bonus short stories, he readily accepts to dying so long as he can meet 2B again, even if it’s his version that will die.) I’d also say the strategy book confirms this since 9S was thankful he had a blindfold on after being saved from Eve. The reason was so 2B couldn’t see his “filthy thoughts. These human like emotions were prohibited.”

[@lautaro3365]

Maybe has not been translated well but I played it in spanish and there also appeared four asterisk if I think about it, it could also be love (amar 4 letters) from my point of view I felt that 9S and 2B cared from each other but at the same time had fate that couldn't be corrected. And that would explain to me why he reacted like that to her death because she's dead for real this time and she cannot revive like it was possible before, so he couldn't tell her that he loved her. Why? There are a ton of references to love in the story specially from Pascal he loved his community and the fact that it was willing to do an act so selfless like fight against all odds to protect the children well that shows that to me. The opera robot wanted to be loved, that's why she had a dress to make the one she loved pay attention to her. A2 had to love her crewmates (dunno exactly what happends) but she hates YOrHa. I dunno that's my take. Also we use make love in society to well say fuck but with feelings, it adds up.

[@midasvijfwinkel6116]

@@lautaro3365 All the points you make are very good imo, but it's a damn shame that the sentence 'you're thinking about how much you want to love 2B, aren't you?' just doesn't make any sense. I really wish you were right, but it sadly seems impossible in the English language at least..

[@charliegraham2789]

It's the whole science behind love and hate being rather similar in terms of how far someone will go for either really~

[@KaitouKaiju]

@@midasvijfwinkel6116 Love is an action after all, and the word is commonly used in place of f***

[@hankhill7827]

One detail that gets overlooked is the Ace Combat connection, I know that this is more Drakengard than Nier but, a lot of the main staff who worked on Drakengard 1 were from Namco or had connections to them and of course Drakengard 1 was designed to be "dragon game with Ace Combat aerial dog fights". What gets overlooked though is the influence that Ace Combat had on the narrative design of Drakengard and Nier, specifically Ace Combat 3 which had staff like Takuya Iwasaki, director of AC3 and producer on Drak1 and Nier, and Toshiyuki Koike, Toshiaki Matsuno long time Ace Combat programmers also worked on Drak1 and Nier. What's interesting about Ace Combat 3 (at least the Japanese version) is that it has branching "timelines" that lead to 4 different endings that all intertwine before revealing a 5th ending after getting the first 4.

[@ThBrando]

Damn, that's definitely something I didn't know, thanks!

[@victuz]

I played AC games in my childhood and was already a big fan of it before I met Nier.

[@CoconutChriss]

"Drakengard makes Nier look like Devil May Cry 5" xDDD You, sir, earned a new subscriber. Great humor and a lot of information presented in a fresh way.

[@ThBrando]

Thanks my guy

[@Guitar-Dog]

That took me a while. But Nier has bad combat and Drakengard has really bad combat?

[@algomi9280]

Yorha for some reason I always believed it was a miss spell of yonah. The “n” could have been on a tablet and broke off making r.

[@victuz]

Yeah, they're alike.

[@matteodonofrio9612]

Amazing theory

[@WilkersonWhittle]

Bruh you had me geeking. I think I found THREE plot devices under my couch.

[@MrDoot-hj2ir]

So... In Final Fantasy XIV's YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse, the final Raid called The Tower at Paradigm's Breach is actually not just a homage to all Drakengard-NieR saga but also a closure. To summarize, we discovered that 2P and her fellow androids were created by a Seed of Destruction that made contact with the Red Girl and arrived on Norvrandt, the continent were the story is set. 2P finally reunites with the Seed and it creates more copies of herself, but 2B and 9S are also there to help us. It seems that the Seed opened a portal between NieR: Automata's world and Norvrandt, causing the YoRHa base to fall through the portal. By making contact with the Seed, both 2B and 9S were replicated by the eldritch sphere. The same happened with a dwarf called Annog, the sister of another dwarf called Konogg, a male. They are a reference to Devola and Popola because of their similar names and red hairstyles. At the Tower, the Red Girl merges with the Seed of Destruction and becomes the False Idol, a black and white entity trapped in the lower half of the Seed. But after we depleted her HP, she reopens the portal from Ending E of Drakengard in a illusory scenario very similar to Tokyo. From the portal, comes Her Inflorescence: an entity consumed by the Flower of Drakengard 3 and with the heads of 2B and the Red Girl. Her Inflorescence is not only a reference to the Queen-Beast and Zero, but it's probably the full incarnation of the Flower itself, hence the title Her Inflorescence. Kainé's theme starts playing, we cry, we defeated Inflorescence, 2B and 9S' versions fades and the Tower crumbles. Yoko Taro made an ending in another game, tying Drakengard-NieR in the best Raid series I've ever played in a MMO. Oh, and we face some Automata's philosopher robots along the three missions, like Hobbes and Engels at The Copied Factory, and the YoRHa security androids at The Puppet's Bunker. Edit: At the ending of The Puppet's Bunker, from the body of 2P, several mannequins identical to female Grotesqueries tries to "copy" a Seed by fusing their bodies into one solid sphere, but they soon try something else and create a gigantic 2P. I wonder who let Yoko Taro and Naoki Yoshida work together.

[@peterfthagn3646]

Not an MMO guy and i've only understood half all that, but thank you for the closure

[@tomgu2285]

What?

[@Eukleides89]

@@tomgu2285 The appropriate reaction to any Yoko Taro plot.

[@merchantslullaby]

My first thought about the Asterisks was 'love'. Because 9S talks so much about doing things that 2B considers unnecessary to androids, i.e, taking a bath and such. So maybe he wants to love her like one human would love another.

[@kt249]

This was my first thought at well, since 9S is much more emotional than any other android. Then again, I'm sure it's kept vague for a reason. I think player have to fill that **** with their own interpretation.

[@aidan8473]

Ending E no longer constrained to a book!

[@chrisfanner]

"Yoko Taro thought it looked cool" fits allot of his creations lore XD

[@zenithmushroom3393]

I know I’m super late but the FFXIV/NieR last raid got HUGE lore drops in case you didn’t already know. I’m talking not only Automata, but Drakengard and Replicant. If you don’t wanna get through the ffxiv story up to level 80 to be able to do the raids, I suggest you watch the cutscenes on KZbin. (Although playing through the raids yourself is really fun, if you’ve got the time to sink into the game, I think it’s quite worth it!)

[@tackwardsfongjump1800]

Smh no mention of my boy Adler the Science Wizard from the western only NIER comic 0/10 Real talk tho, this is a pretty good video. A lot of stuff is missing from that iceberg however. Here's all the ones I can think of. - The aforementioned western only NIER comic, which detailed the creation of project Gestalt in the first issue (though it's questionable canon). - There is a fairly lengthy award for beating all of NieR Automata's dlc arenas where you play as a dysfunctional machine named Plato 1728, who stars in the weapon story for the machine spear. This all concludes with a Japanese music video. - Angelegna, which was a game doc for a Drakengard 2 dating sim which was created as a joke by the dev team. - The official NieR Replicant high school AU, which was the second half of the drama CD. - The "C" in NieR Replicant was originally capitalized but was dropped around the time the drama CD was released. - Additionally, the "i" in NieR Gestalt is extra long. - Yoko Taro's famitsu interview, which I mostly wanted to mention because of how hilarious it is. From Yoko Taro stating that if NieR were to be turned into a movie he would cast everyone as Christopher Lambert in his hayday to Yoko Taro saying that he murdered one of famitsu's editors in a love hotel after they said they would expose him for being a girl. You can find it on the fire sanctuary website. - Other than Weiss, Noir, and Rubrum, there exist ten other unnamed grimoires. - During early development of NieR Emil's sister Halua was intended to be the one who joined the main party. - Emil's Butler Sebastian is an android. There's probably something I forgot but that's what I would add to the iceberg.

[@ThBrando]

Thanks! The video was getting to over half an hour and I decided to cut it somewhere, but I'd love to do a sequel to this video. If I do, these suggestions will be extremely helpful!

[@TofuSG98]

Thought the rest of the grimoires "died" during the experiment that put Weiss into his grimoire.

[@TofuSG98]

nier.fandom.com/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None

[@lucidlullaby894]

“The western only comic detailing the Gestalt project” *The WHAT* I gotta read that asap, the Snow in Summer point on the timeline is one I’ve desperately wanted to know more about

[@tackwardsfongjump1800]

@@lucidlullaby894 If you want to get more info about that point in the timeline I highly recommend reading fan translations of the drama cds if you haven't already.

[@edims6001]

The Meme that 9s thought about how much he wants to F 2b is so engraved into my mind i thought he was actually told so ingame

[@JMSK248]

I was cleaning my ear the other day and some NieR canon fell out.

[@ThBrando]

Yo send that over this way

[@murciadoxial8056]

Man... We were all blindsided by that 2Booty, weren't we?

[@ThBrando]

Some people still are.

[@azadalamiq]

@@ThBrando they rendered her butt well actually, if you pay attention it does have a realistic jiggly to it too. I noticed after trying to use self-destruct to complete the no dmg 30 sec kill enemy quest as part of the drug questline. her wrap just nuked and see her booty, did some exploration and climbed a latter and saw a bit of as jiggle.

[@arcanask]

@Kazi Again? That happened when it first released on PS4, and then once more when it got released on Steam. 🤦‍♂️

[@damnvier3897]

@Kazi Just be Happy that thanks to the bootylovers we got more fantastic games and lore around the universe!

[@Mysticsloth]

Not all.

[@purgatoriprytania5382]

The machine lifeforms' link to the Watchers is no mere visual reference. The NieR raid series in FFXIV makes this quite clear.

[@jackrom75]

Where do they say that

[@purgatoriprytania5382]

@@jackrom75 Seeds of Destruction only come from one place, soooo...

[@Silphiroth]

@@purgatoriprytania5382 Taro just inserted a ton of nonrwlates bs for fanservice reasons. You guys trying to make smth out of this shit raid series is a joke

[@carlos-zy7vx]

@@Silphiroth thats.. kinda the point of a crossover my dude

[@ContentSavant]

Thanks for still making Nier Automata content in2021! This game changed my life in 2017 and I've been revisiting it recently. I genuinely love the whole game so much.

[@MackleNGAnimations]

Love this video, deserves more views, keep on that youtube grind!!

[@ThBrando]

Thanks! I intend to

[@olookslike0]

I really like how specifically NieR Automata and all the meta aspects of it work as a backwards psychological case study of Yoko Taro. Even though it was a team effort to make, he's kinda the heart behind the philosophy and vision of the series. And I don't always agree with the times he believes, but I feel like you could learn to love this guy without ever having met him just by analyzing this game as a portal into his anxieties and philosophies.

[@RAND0Mx1]

Wait, I thought the concert epilogue part was another big jebait by yoko taro. From what I've read, the pamphlet released for the concert has the script reading the sadder epilogue but no one expected them to read a good ending. Of course the point still stands that yoko taro leaves it up to the person on which ending they prefer (believe he wanted the sadder one) but it also adds on another level of shitpost to do a different ending compared to what was printed and distributed to the attendees.

[@daffanier]

It's a false one, yoko taro knows the script gonna leak, so he made the false one first, and it's true, its really leaked. And when the concert epilogue part started, yoko taro drop a big happy ending bom as the cannon and true ending.

[@Christian-gr3gu]

i cant find the script for the happy version of the epilogue, do you know where it is

[@rydiavalentine]

Emil and his sister were created to fight against Legion, right? The ones that didn't melt into salt statues were turned into Legion and had the red eyes disease, too. Also, from the DLC and the diary entries I can guess that Nier's wife was somehow involved in Project Gestalt. She knew too much about the events that lead to Nier, while no other character in the game does. This is not surprising, since Nier was the first human in which the experiment was applied. I have the suspicion that Nier's wife changed the Project Gestalt initial goal and she did something to give Replicants their own souls, so his husband would be immortal. There was nothing to be done to save original humans since the very development of the Project Gestalt.

[@victuz]

Since I learned about the lore at wikia, I wanted to see a game set in the War against the Legion.

[@voice-less]

Emil was specifically made not to fight legion, but to be a counter to his sister in case they couldn't control her, his sister on the other hand was made to be the ultimate weapon, so yes, she was made to fight legion and any other threat. As for Nier and his wife, at least in the gestalt version, you're not completely wrong, someone did indeed cause replicants to become self-aware, they don't have souls but still have the ability to develop self-awareness, an "unknown" insider in the project made replicants able to become self aware since he thought they were superior lifeforms due to their non-finite lifespans and wanted them to rule earth instead, a stupid idea since gestalts are still necessary to create replicants, but whoever that insider was, he sure didn't think his plan through. Nier was the first successful human to stay stable even after his soul was split from his body, it gave hope to humanity's survival, and even with replicants gaining self-awareness it was still possible for the project to succeed, but so many things went wrong and they kept going wrong until the project's failure became inevitable, if weiss had fused with noir the project would have still succeeded, if weiss didn't push replicant nier to kill gestalt nier there could still have been hope for the project, but none of that happened and humanity endedup being doomed. Only chance for humanity to come back is for the androids to find ways to clone humanity from whatever genetic material is left on the moon, but seeing how they haven't discovered the ability to do so in neither automata, or the far future of automata, it's likely they never will.

[@VannTheDawn]

As much as I love Taro’s work, he’s essentially the Japanese version of JK Rowling, adding snippets of lore, in Taro’s case important Lore, that should be in the main game! Like why the heck is the true ending in a concert that was never officially subbed? He’s trying to create a media empire like Inafune hoped to make with Mighty no. 9, only with better success. If you’re a casual fan of the series, you’d believe the ending was open-ended. Then you dive into Taro’s rabbit hole and you find out that no, there is a canonical ending, and it’s in Japanese. There’s a fan sub, but it has less than 100k views, meaning out of 5.5 million people who bought the game as of Feb 2021, less than 5% know the true ending.

[@Holy_King_Brian]

Damn...

[@Mysticsloth]

He's also the Oda of video games lol

[@robsta653]

Yeah right. This is so exhausting. Imagine every game was like this and after finishing it you have to go on a search for a few hours to figure out what really is happening. You simply don’t get it through the normal playthrough and ingame information.

[@HelloOnepiece]

Honestly it feels more like that he does not give a shit about lore, or he only means it for truly hardcore lore people. Most of his stories can be understood/enjoyed without lore, and considering his writing method it's more likely that he comes up with the story then twists the lores enough so he can fit it in. In a sense of drun"hey wouldn't it be cool if this was canon?""

[@aquafinna007u8]

Wait so what is the true ending??

[@sqlace3577]

The fact that I knew most of these entries shows and more information thanks to some of the newer content makes me realize how far gone I am in this series

[@Aurwenn]

Recently was announced the last Nier Raid in Final Fantasy 14 and Taro y cramming the AI overlord girl from Automata which is summoning digitalized freaking shades and one of the orbs from drakengard 3. Yes, Taro, make it even more jumbled.

[@MmeCShadow]

5:26 I'm pretty sure it was confirmed (or at least heavily intimated) that the aliens designed the machines specifically in mimicry of their most powerful foe when they started the attack on Earth. ...but holy *shit* I have made the 'Emil the thousand-year-old skeleton boi is the last true human' observation to people so many times and I NEVER connected him to the machine's fundamental fixation on humanity! (Edit) Just gotta give it up to 15 Nightmares. It is, in fact, *extremely* fondly remembered by a certain subset of the OG fandom for being the easiest way to get Eagle Eggs. Look it's real important.

[@JustBasicJoseph]

Incredible explanations man, you go so deep in the lore even going off the game. Especially the Plays

[@JohnSegway-RainingLamppost]

Great vid! Gotta love Yoko Taro, dude knows how to make stuff endlessly interesting as well was gut wrenchingly sad 👍

[@ThBrando]

Word my guy

[@AnotherCamilo]

16:08 I was sure Yoko Taro was writing "all work and no play makes Taro-san a dull boy" time and time again, but he was actually writing "I can't see the cursor at all" time and time again. 24:48 Lol! They have the Horse glitch from The Witcher 3 in a frame!!! And I wonder if Soul Calibur VI is also canon. Anyway, please Yoko Taro, never change.

[@SirTeflon]

According to the NieR Expanded Universe, IT IS! 2B's appearance is marked with the arrival of the "absolutely canon" Player 2 color counterpart... *drumroll*... 2P. And the FFXIV collab has us meeting... 2P. And exploring the Puppet's Bunker with 2P. And eventually connecting into NieR Automata. And soon... RepliCant as well.

[@TheNobodyNamedDubyaBee]

The Resistance aircraft carrier Blue Ridge II is a reference to the US Navy command ship USS Blue Ridge. 23:15 Simply put, *story-based games with compelling story and message-budgetary and resource issues aside-don't need to have compelling gameplay features **_at all in the first place_** to have the most compelling experience.* Period. Additionally, my favorite theory is that Nier: Automata's Ending E credits brings to a full circle Yoko Taro's "murderers don't deserve a happy ending" premise and kicks it to a meta level through the ending sequence's irony of players dehumanizing and mowing down the game's *real-world* creators, all for the sake of changing the game's outcome.

[@ThBrando]

It's great when a game is far better than the sum of its parts

[@Zidakuh]

In all 5 playthroughs I have on the game so far, I have never once battled the mecha godzilla I didn't even know it existed till I saw this video

[@hijarian]

I was 100% sure that the line with four * was a 4th wall breaking. I still am.

[@miiks...5...3...9...]

9S has to remember the pictures in the background at 13:17 are from before he died at the start of the game, if he forgot they shouldn't be there. That's probably the junk data hidden in the yorha server that is mentioned in some of the mails

[@ThBrando]

Could be a good point

[@tatri292]

Also the fact that he fights the blocky figure because it is "stealing his memories" and obviously represents 2B, with the turning into her and all.

[@kuroneeko64]

Ok, so turns out THE FUCKING MADMAN YOKOTARO ACTUALLY ADDED THE ENDING E ON NIER REPLICANT 1.22

[@kalandarkclaw8892]

The NeiR content in ffxiv was so well done. I would recommend it to anyone.

[@Nesaru]

The last NieR raid is looking pretty damn interesting based on what was shown in the 5.5 trailer (big Automata spoilers. Hansel, Gretel and Jack showing up for some reason. A seed... wait). Heck, they even teased a little bit of Kaine - Salvation in the live letter... with ominous bells faintly heard.

[@ThBrando]

Damn I wish it wasn't such a commitment to experience it or else I'd go all in.

[@stealthyshibe4904]

What's next? Hiding important plot details in fortune cookies?

[@CLxJames]

2:10 - As a guy who has younger sisters and now as a father with a young daughter I can tell you that Papa NieR is the NieR for me. It just makes more sense to me

[@highlonesomed]

About the whole fuck/kill thing. There's an old french term for orgasms called "the little death." Lot of western and eastern esoteric traditions have described sex and death as two sides of the same coin. For several reasons, really, but the main one being the annihilation of your sense of self with your partner. Who the fuck knows what Taro meant but I just always thought it was cool how it fit so neatly into the ambiguity of that part of the game.

[@ancientnight]

Wait the "mechagodzilla" was a miniboss? I thought it was a random spawning enemy. Ye it took a while to kill but it was still easy.

[@SilverJack]

i always had a hunch that A2 was similar to kaine, in appearance.

[@doublestakked1041]

i always thought the alternative word to "youre thinking of how much you want to **** 2B, arent you?" was "save". 9S never had a desire to kill 2B (at least not that i recall) though he did have a thirst for A2's head, but that was after he thought she murdered 2B. and because he couldnt save her then and the game ending prompts you to delete your "save" file, (ntm many other little nods in that direction) got me thinkin it was save although i could just be readin too much into it. misdirection is something the series gets off on

[@nanachimakenshi2512]

Can confirm with datamining and Yako Taro being Yako Taro, that the FF XIV portion of Nier Automata, is considered canon and that there is going to be MORE past the three raids.

[@ThBrando]

Damn, it's great, but subbing to FFXIV and getting all the way to the point you can do the raids is too much of a commitment for me

[@trinkwinkel2012]

@@ThBrando if you REALLY want to commit with less effort, theres an option to buy yourself a class up to level 70 and then grind the last needed 10 levels for the raid. i think you will need to buy the story skips tho. but maybe there are videos of the entire raid story on youtube you can watch.

[@leightonreisinger8444]

This is like a more refined version of “that’s a jojo reference”

[@yogiefebriady3073]

At least Jojo references referred to some things quite light and "friendly"... NieR references/lore are just THAT bleak, man...

[@hpmachina5876]

"The Drakengard games will probably never be revisited." The False Idol and Her Florescence: Hey did we mention we have lore in an MMO?

[@_sargentocoelho_4441]

[Important lore being kept behind other games, random coments, stage plays and concerts] *Yoko you fucking madman*

[@BigBoss-gb4cx]

The true ending of Nier in the LN is adapted in the new reboot.

[@bowlingvanjapan4099]

Nier’s(the first one) combat is great. You as the player have to get better and more skillful and it’s incredibly rewarding when you can finally kill your first enemy. Also the fishing made the game a masterpiece.

[@joshorganika]

this is the iceberg ive been waiting for

[@ThBrando]

Hope its worth the wait!

[@NapoleChan]

27:28 I am not surprised it was Lance McDonald that found the last secret. That dude has been tearing down the Dark Souls games and Bloodborne in a similar way. He was one of the guys that found the unfinished bosses including a different version of the final Moon Presence boss by digging through the almost infinite Chalice Dungeon codes in Bloodborne. So much stuff he found by finding and fixing the alpha versions of levels and boss encounters to get them to play their cutscenes even on the native playstation system.

[@ThBrando]

Truly heroes we need

[@poisenbery]

18:26 honestly i was under the assumption that the recorders were androids. like they figured out how to go back in time and they're trying to find a timeline where all of the events of the entire series did not happen, and humanity was able to like....exist and stuff

[@KyleTO7]

The recorders are, drakenguard ending e you can see one of accords bodies all messed up missing. A head and arm

[@KyleTO7]

I don't get how we could of made them though

[@iQKyyR3K]

You do understand that we need a complete history of Drakengaard I, Replicant, Gestalt, the 69 different books, stage plays, concerts, Automata and so on...

[@agustinmz]

great video dude!

[@ThBrando]

Thanks!

[@notreallydavek7237]

Im pretty sick of ice berg videos but this was still worth a watch and a sub.

[@ThBrando]

Thanks! Glad you liked it

[@loganyoung2820]

Don't know if this was mentioned, but there is a manga that seems to be unrelated to the Nier series that was written by Yoko taro. It is called Kimi Shi Ni Tamafu Koto Nakare.

[@UnrebornMortuus]

10:20 YRH is moon in hebrew, this is clearly what he was going for. Perhaps oa still has meaning.

[@DeltafangEX]

Just wanted to pop in and mention that IN FFXIV'S NIER raid collab, they continue the philospher naming convention all the way up to redoing the Tower elevator fight - only against Meng-Zi and Xun-Zi as your "annoying orb robot" fight. I'm glad Taro can give us more of the same yet with a twist.

[@carlos-zy7vx]

The system messages when they do their AoEs also says something like "The philosophers ready a jointed assault"

[@zombruv2698]

Finally got around to play it, 100%ed it. And fuckin the ending E... Seeing my shit get deleted to help someone.. made me cry man. Hope whoever needs that help gets it.

[@eggcartonej1785]

I truly do wanna watch this but I wanna start the game off knowing nothing.... this is proving to be very difficult

[@ThBrando]

Play the games first, they're something special. The video ain't going anywhere.

[@sneakyeto5596]

this is good video! keep up the good work

[@ThBrando]

Thank you!

[@Halldinoka]

It's great that Ending E of Nier is in the game now

[@ThBrando]

Agreed! I think the changes make it better tbh

[@rickkcir2]

If you think about it, the Nier timeline split from our timeline in 2003, when Caim arrived from Drakengard to fight the Queen Beast, but around that time Drakengard 1 was already under development, which means that it’s entirely possible that the Yoko Taro from the Nier timeline quite literally saw his creation come to life.

[@lordlofus1399]

Wow an iceburg video without overused creepy music

[@silvesta5027]

So you’re telling me Nier as a series is actually just a spin-off of Drakengard 1’s joke ending that ripped off ‘the End of Evangelion?’ I…I have no words

[@azadalamiq]

funny thing is as a long time gamer... I knew those barrels did a thing before lances video. no dev in no game places such a specific set of assets in a specific spot in a specific way and it not be something.

[@christopherrichardson2945]

I have a head canon theory that makes no sense: Accord was created by Humanity to search alternate timelines where Humanity survived so we could invade or whatever More sensible: just finished YoRHa Boys novel - good read

[@dylannance4772]

Passing leaf I think means YoRHa is a passing resistance or control. A passing leaf also gives YoRHa less meaning because in the passage of time the resistance is nothing. Coupled with the new phone game that is after the events of Automata.

[@zadayaz]

this is a bit late so someones probably pointed it out, but for the fact at 7:00 the idea of that line is that its actually supposed to be both words. Theres a sidequest with jackass i believe that talks about how bloodlust and actual lust overlap for the yorha androids, since theyre programmed for combat. iirc all translations for that one line are similarly vague and could always be taken as some equivalent of “kill” or “fuck” in that language

[@gustavonomegrande]

9S (the original before YoRHa) is the creator of the YoRHa program.

[@ThBrando]

Yeah based off Number 9.

[@hashenone]

Thanks for the great vids I’m sure someone else has pointed this out, but I can’t dig through all these comments: The part in Replicant that has the Diablo-like perspective, it was pretty clear to me that this was a tribute to MGS1. The colors, textures, key cards, sliding doors, the sound of walking on the metal grates…. Even the music, if you listen, you can hear a military-style snare tapping out a marching style tune. The boss of the area looks like Metal Gear Rex. Sort of like how Emil’s mansion, you’re suddenly inside RE1. And the end of the shipwreck part is Silent Hill 1. The playroom is obviously from Akira, then you’re in Evangelion w the reveal of Emil’s sister These big tributes to Ps1 games that Yoko obviously loved were one of the most mind-blowing & awesome parts of the game for me.

[@MrInuhanyou123]

What a great video. Thank you man

[@ThBrando]

Hey thanks a lot!

[@arcanerune9134]

The NeiR raid in FF XIV just got its conclusion and man Yoko Taro is a mad man! I think you would find it rather insightful. A friend and I were also talking about the YorHa and my friend came up with this: YorHa Yor Ha ... Your Human.

[@ThBrando]

Damn, it really do be tempting

[@DeltafangEX]

Prepare to speculate about Watchers and Seeds. There's gonna be a lot of that.

[@stillwaitingforgodot3341]

I thought the two bosses Ko-Shi and Ro-Shi were a play on the Japanese word "Koroshi" meaning "murder" because the bosses keep saying that word in the Japanese dub lol

[@AJFatherOfDunclips]

And here i thought the game developers where calling my out on my r34 2b history

[@TopCape]

"The original Drakengard is near suffering in terms of how poor the gameplay is." I agree, except for the dragon gameplay. It has a nice weight to it and all that. Once you get used to it, that shit slaps.

[@yumpox]

21:00 There is a Resident Evil Stage play called BIOHAZARD THE STAGE that has some prequel story about Rebecca at her university before the events of RE:Vendetta

[@GenderlessP]

8:12 I always took it as meaning both. If you do that side quest with Jackass, where she asks to study you while you fight (if I remember correctly, its been years since I've played), she says that YoRHa androids essentially gain almost sexual, carnal pleasure from killing machines, or things in general. I think 9S both wants to kill and f*ck 2B. He wants to kill her for what she's done, but he also wants to be beside her. Love is too complicated. No matter what he did, he'd get the same feeling.

[@Aisubun]

I think that "****" is probably meant to be multiple things, not just one, which is why it's left open to interpretation

[@drewhalcro6082]

I played Drakengard years ago and I was enthralled by it. I played the 2nd one and was let down. I discovered that NieR was a a true sequel and it lived up to its' predecessor.

[@luxsignifer6996]

dude, at this point, I'm positively sure that Yoko is just fucking with us, nothing has any real connection with anything and he is just making shit as he goes. He references his own games to make it look like everything is related just to fuck with us...

[@The_Lost_Lament]

So the part with the Asterisk i read it as how much you want to love 2b; 9s seems to care deeply and shows a lot of emotion to her and they are prohibited from emotion. So the censorship could be that strong emotions like love and hate are just censored to them

[@F66x]

You need more subs buddy. The discord server I'm in is also making a Taro-verse iceberg. Would it be okay to use some of the stuff here?

[@ThBrando]

Absolutely my guy, go for it

[@F66x]

@@ThBrando Thanks!!

[@RuneKatashima]

You should share back. Be nice since he might do a part 2.

[@ThBrando]

@@RuneKatashima I already have a part two ready and up on the channel! But if they're willing to share, I would like to see it anyways, just for my own curiosity!