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bluntsmoker666-blog · 7 years ago

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Minor spoilers; I was very careful not to reveal anything major, but NieR: Automata is one of those games I feel is best enjoyed without any prior knowledge of its content, so proceed with caution. I spent the last 30 days banned from Facebook; during this time, I did little of note. Afflicted as I was by a seasonal depression, I spent my days either sleeping in bed, attempting to be physically active, or consuming media and pop culture. Of course, this sort of thing is hardly exceptional, the winter months being nondiscriminatory in whom it chooses to oppress, yet I did find some solace in one of these meaningless ways I passed time; instead of merely being idle, I was able to enjoy a masterpiece of a video game, the title of which is NieR: Automata.

I must admit that this is my first foray into the DrakeNieR series, despite my awareness of Yoko Taro and his 'ideas'; the man has a reputation for eccentricity in both his interests and his works. To make amends for this, I have therefore spent the last week studying both the man and the lore of his creations; what I've discovered is a man who is so dedicated to his vision that he's willing to sacrifice good taste and accessibility; essentially, he is a modern-day idiot savant, a creative genius the likes of which have not for some time been seen. Indeed, contrary to NieR: Automata's positive stature within the gaming community, the other entries in his series are nigh-universally considered mediocre, suffering from a myriad of problems, among them of which the gameplay simply being boring is a consistent issue. Yet, I find myself completely fascinated by Yoko Taro; he's a man completely true to himself and whether it is through sheer force of will or the tides of fortune that he has survived at Square is as good as anyone's guess.

I must admit that I have completely and truly fallen in love with the world of NieR: Automata; it is not often that a game thrusts you into a world completely devoid of human life, having been utterly ruined by centuries of war between two different factions of automata, and despite my issues with some of the aspects of the open world-nature of the game (such as the frequent presence of invisible walls), I must say that the rather spacious map truly drives home a feeling of emptiness, of a planet long out of touch with mankind. Certainly, though the game is at its core very linear, the open nature of the game certainly compliments the main idea brought forth within its open cut-scene: that of life being an eternal struggle.

As the game begins, the protagonist, an android named 2B , opens up with a few lines of dialogue which the player is certain to remember as they play through the game;

"全ての存在は滅びるようにデザインされている。 Everything that lives is designed to end. 生と死を繰り返すと螺旋に…… We are perpetually trapped 私達は囚われ続けている。 in a never-ending spiral of life and death. これは、呪いか。 Is this a curse? それとも、罰か。 Or some kind of punishment? 不可解なパズルを渡した神に I often think about the God who blessed us with this cryptic puzzle いつか、私達は弓を引くのだろうか？ and wonder if we’ll ever have the chance to kill him."

As I heard this, I was immediately stricken; long have I viewed life as a trial that one must overcome; moreover, it has always been my opinion that it is too long and too tiring to be of worth and that in this bleak universe full of fear and despair, that the only thing worth attempting to discover is a meaning for oneself. So, naturally, I made sure to play through the game very thoroughly. Remembering 2B's words, I cleared the various side-quests which abounded in NieR: Automata and found myself both hypnotized and horrified by the various crises and pleas of the many side-characters. Many of those in need of help were robots, who without human masters or connection to a central network, struggled in finding purposes for themselves. I had at first interpreted this to be Yoko Taro's answer to the transhumanist movement; that machines might some day be so human-like as to render the distinction between flesh and technology indistinct.

However, upon further reflection, this is not the entire message of Automata; though transhumanist themes are certainly touched on, the game's heavy references to various Existentialist philosophers emphasizes that the game's overarching theme is meant for those sorry individuals lost in their own quest for meaning in the world.

Each of the primary character's motivations are tied to conflict and searching for meaning; 2B, for example, is a machine whose purpose is to kill in spite of her personal convictions, a piece of hardware engineered to murder those she loves no matter what the circumstances. 9S, a reconnaissance/hacking-oriented model, must deal with the inevitable consequences of his own natural curiosity; even the one of the antagonists, Adam, who represents a physical manifestation of the enemy network, is explicitly driven by his own quest to understand what it's like to be human.

Being an artificial construct, Adam has no inherent understanding of what it means to be human; in an effort to circumvent this, he emulates humanity as much as possible. Whether its through wearing clothes, reading books, or eating food, Adam attempts to get to the truth of what being human means; and yet despite this, or perhaps because of this, he never quite grasps it. The clothes he wears are, though fancy, mismatched; the books he reads are never more than literal stories to him, Adam never examining them through the use of metaphor; even the apples he eats, inspired as he was by the Bible, are not things to be enjoyed but tools to be gained in an effort to understand humanness. The apple is to Adam nothing more than what the Bible says it is to him, a fruit that bears knowledge, knowledge that to the end eludes Adam because he's never able to, or perhaps completely incapable of, understanding the meaning behind the Bible's words.

Though Adam is but one character, this underlines the next part of the theme of struggle; that even if one struggles as hard as they can, that they may fail and die regardless. And this is a tale relevant to the whole of humanity; each and every individual on this earth has their own goals; each and every individual on this earth ends up in a different state, even if the goals are the same; each and every individual on this earth lives, struggles, and dies and even that despite the unchanging result of all of these lives, the contents contained between these beginnings, middles, and ends is so varied as to be immeasurable.

Now the idea of struggle being at the center of life is one that Nietzsche discusses frequently; myself being something of a Nietzsche acolyte, I've spent more than long enough thinking about the meaning of 'pain' and whether or not the presence of it adds value to our lives. Nietzsche was of course very fond of this idea; he famous stated

"To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities — I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not — that one endures."

Essentially, as I have long believed, if one were to view life as one big test, or even a game, of such a high difficulty as to make the majority of participants regret attempting it, would not persisting in spite of this be the grandest example of flourishing? After all, if such an arduous tribulation is able to be triumphed against, who comes out looking the mightier? The wise yet coddled masses who choose a life of comfort and grow to live to an old age? Or those impetuous and courageous few who decide that despite such treats and treasures that they're willing to elect for themselves what or what doesn't make them feel fulfilled?

The reptile brain within yourself should naturally be inclined the latter; though the former choice offers a wonderful choice bereft of the unknown, the animals inside us are naturally wont to side with the mighty few able to choose their own destinies, our ancestors living as violently as they did; the world before man, or even when man was still uncivilized, was filled with blood. Death, sex, and hatred abounded, early hominins, protosimians, dinosaurs, and even sea creatures struggling as hard as they could so that they might pass on their genes to the next generation. Certainly, the logical part of our brains desires an easy and comfortable life, but the truly primitive part of ourselves wishes nothing more than to be one of the few at the top, overlooking the masses, ensuring that they're able to reproduce and indirectly persist in the future.

Therefore, it might be said that violence is at the heart of what it means to be human; and indeed, Adam broaches this topic through his challenge of 2B and 9S at various points of the game, his explicit motivation being that through his hatred he hopes to discover more about humanity. I, given my background within the anthropology field, find this to be something worthy of affirming to myself; for if we are to truly understand ourselves, we must understand our ancestors, and if we are to understand our ancestors, we must understand those parts of ourselves we share in common with our ancestors. Thus, it might be said that the idea of struggling is inherent to the human condition, if not altogether essential to it, given that it has been the constant friend of mankind since before life even left the ocean.

So then; what might we say of those who are able to be those few? Does that make those masses less human or, perhaps, more? For certainly, though logic and sentience are altogether human inventions, to deny our own feelings regarding strength is to deny ourselves the truth and fall away from the world in which we actually live, which is to say that the only things with meaning in the world are those things in which we can actually prove. Thus, I find that in order to be truly human, we must pursue the shadows of those victorious few, for none can deny power when power is manifested; of course, to sleep in is nice, but are we then able to prove the value of our lives? Because again, if we truly live and have lived, we must leave SOME proof of our existence, whether it be children or something else; if there nothing exists that is left of us, how can we prove that we ever existed at all? And certainly no one remembers the statistic, the victim, no matter how good a life they were able to live, even if the means of forgetting that person means a 100 or 10000 years have passed. Yet everyone remembers Alexander, even if he did die young and in pain.

Which leads me back to my point; is not struggle the meaning behind life? For if it truly is, then that makes NieR: Automata the most life-affirming game of all, despite its dark themes; because despite how much it attempts to crush its characters, and despite many of its characters dying and failing, none of them ever attempts to give up. And it is this determination that characterizes them, that tells the player that despite whatever hardships afflict them, that life is worth living.

So perhaps this is why I have found myself so deeply touched by this game; for a man who similarly has struggled near endlessly his whole life, I cannot help but be moved by the story of people trying to survive a land that doesn't them to. Because, despite the length of time between the world of 2B and my own is separated by a span of some 9000 years, we each of us do our best with the hard circumstances we find ourselves in. And I think that's incredibly beautiful.

What do you think? Perhaps I feel as if I have talked myself into circles. Still, I definitely feel like going through the game again as, despite the loss of my save data, I am more than willing to get inspired by 2B and 9S once more.

#nier #nier: automata

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bluntsmoker666-blog · 7 years ago

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i realize this post is almost a year old but it made me really angry. the foremost among these is that i am a japanese person and i hate it when cultural imperialists like you try to tell me how MY PEOPLE need to do things YOUR WAY. we already fought one war over it and it ended up with westerners like you committing AN ENTIRE WARCRIME upon two of the biggest cities in japan. this is even more infuriating to me since i spent my childhood in the city NAMED AFTER THIS MAN (miura, which is about 3 hours south by train from tokyo)

anyway enough about my personal reasons for being upset at you. allow me to tell you more about why you suck and why your opinion doesnt matter.

reason 1: having a foreigner as a protagonist is FANTASTIC for player immersion.

when beginning a game, it is incredibly important to make the player character feel as powerless as possible; this means being weak, unskilled, and not knowing what is going to pop up at the next corner. william adams is a fantastic way to keep this principle in mind; he literally washes ashore onto japan not knowing any ninjutsu, onmyoudo, martial arts, and BOY does he have no idea what the fuck every demon is. by starting out the player as someone as equally foreign to the game environment as the player, the player is allowed to build a sense of progression; william learns with the player as new techniques are learned, his education by violence of the culture of japan being rendered all the more significant because, again, hes literally a nobody there. he has no friends, no enemies; every new obstacle is as strange to him as it is to the player.

tl;dr by making the player character as alien as possible to japan, a player’s sense of accomplishment is made incredibly significant

reason 2: japan IS a xenophobic country and having a foreigner as the protagonist helps open up the country to the rest of the world

you might not know this since all you do is read tumblr and whatever else echo chamber that reports on the latest trump debacle (oh no, donald trump said something mean!!! better riot!!!!), but japan does not like foreigners. no, i have friends who are literally expected to do nothing but sit and look pretty because their japanese bosses think foreigners are ‘stupid and incapable of learning the japanese language’. even now, foreigners are only thought of as attractive people that don’t really have a place there. william adams is koei’s way of saying ‘hey dudes, you know, foreigners CAN do badass things’. given that every other named character except a few are japanese, he helps native japanese players feel out of sorts with the world through, again, being foreign. japanese players can live vicariously as a foreigner through william and maybe learn to sympathize with how foreigners are treated by japanese society at large. this goes back into reason number 1 in that it helps with immersion; since even native japanese are made to feel ‘different’, the game world is rendered ever more strange and fun for the player to learn about.

tl;dr william builds empathy for foreigners by allowing japanese people to feel like they dont belong, like a foreigner would normally while living in japan

reason 3: william adams is a historical figure who is ideal for this kind of setting

again, you probably dont know a lot about japanese history because all you do is look at tumblr gifs and get mad (i know its hard work but stick with me) but because of the ever shifting power dynamics of the period, its very difficult to use characters like nobunaga or masamune to go around slaying demons without significantly altering the flow of events. given that koei seems to have wanted a game that generally follows the historical timeline, this is an incredibly awkward situation. therefore, they used a character who, other than giving helpful advice, didnt actually do much in history. william helps keep koei’s historically-based theme while allowing the degree of creative freedom to keep both the levels and the story interesting

tl;dr william is just obscure enough to be both relevant AND usable for the creative directors to bend to their whims

but wait! you might add. why not use yasuke as the main protagonist? hes a foreigner too! cause remember, using a black guy is always better than a white guy because like in america everything in the world is trayvon martin and evil white nazis! well, here is the thing! you might have a case!!! yes, yasuke is a fantastic character and hes probably only a LITTLE less obscure than william, since hes always portrayed with nobunaga to help exemplify nobunaga’s obsession for all things foreign.

well, i have a counterpoint for you: yasuke is incredibly valuable for the sake of player progression. here we have a dude who is just like william, a complete stranger to a foreign land who had to learn how to be a samurai just like william! this means he acts very much as sort of rival and counterpart to the player; he shows up near the end as a way for the player to demonstrate that even though yasuke mastered the same things as the player, the player is even more skilled because hes gotten to that point of the game on the player’s own merit! like you know how dark link exists in zelda to show that even without player input that link is pretty fucking tough? that dark link exists as a way for the player to prove to themselves that theyve gained complete mastery over their video game avatar? yasuke does this. he does this beautifully. i LOVE yasuke in this game. and because he showed up in japan long before william did, he helps further prove that though the player (and william) are newbies at the samurai game, that they can triumph over people who have done it longer.

tl;dr yasuke is a fantastic foil for william, since they’re both foreign samurai and yasuke has been doing it longer

and dont bring up why a japanese character would have been better; weve gone over why that wouldnt cut the cheese; everything i have said becomes infinitely weaker through replacing william with someone like a random farmer or hattori hanzo

anyway, you suck, dont ever come to japan. you are not welcome and foreigners like you are the reason why i am glad that japan has such tight immigration standards.

ps: i think its hilarious how you think japanese people are being racist to themselves by not using a japanese main character. who would do such a thing as to be racist towards themselves? get a grip. not everything is race-baiting and cnn

Nioh could have been great with a Japanese lead in a Samurai game

Watching Phenom play Nioh and all I can think of is this is Dark Souls: White Savior - Last Samurai edition. Protag is blond & blue eyed. I lost any interest in it after trying the Alpha build, not my jam but it’s irritating me to no end that a samurai game has a white lead.

What is this?

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