falseinflorescence

[falseinflorescence]

NieR Replicant Ending E speculation. The flower, singularities, etc...

The Twins detecting a “singularity signature” from Kainé:

Ok so what i think is going on here is that obviously Kainé was not meant to remember Nier, that was the whole point of Ending D, and during the battle against the Kaine copies Emil shows up and gives Kainé dejavu about fighting alongside someone else and she tries to remember Nier. This piques the twins interest and they remark detecting a “unusual phenomena-fluctuation” and “singularity signature” coming from  Kainé, apparently spurred by Kainé’s attempt to remember Nier.

What the twin ai’s are sensing is Kainé’s potential to create a new “branch” in the timeline. “Singularities” being a term first introduced to the series in Drakengard 3 as Accord observes events in that game and how they splinter off at certain points.

(https://drakengard.fandom.com/wiki/Singularities)

Skipping forward to the end of the Hook battle, Kaine and Weiss deliver a powerful magic attack to finish the fight:

The twins are also affected by the magic blast and begin to disappear, their final words being VERY interesting!

“Possible futures are.... blending with the time we currently inhabit!”, this is in reference to the singularity signature they had detected earlier, Kaine has just created a new “branch”, Ending E. They can sense all the new possibilities in this new world Kaine has led them to.

“The light...”. This line is intriguing! This is likely a reference to the blast of light from the singularity that’s occurring at that moment.

But i do feel the need to bring up the “light” mentioned just 10 days before NieR Replicant’s release in Final Fantasy XIV during part 3 of YoRHa Dark Apocalypse. The final battle of this raid series has us fight the furthest evolution of the Machine Network: The False Idol.

There’s a lot going on in this raid series and it does connect with Replicant in some interesting ways so if you’d like to see my HEAVILY biased and speculative recap of it i’ll link it below. 

(https://twitter.com/Crescent_Nex/status/1384554369337552897)

But the important part for now is that the False Idol also mentions a “light”. Partway through the battle. She will look up toward a magic gate and exclaim “Let the light in!” before disappearing into the gate herself. This process seemingly results in the False Idol undergoing a further evolution and becoming Her Inflorescence, the Machine Network’s attempt to create a Mother Angel!

Is this the “light” the twins are referencing? Idk. Possible futures are blending together in that moment when Kaine creates a new branch, so maybe they saw something in the future that really got their interest. The “light” could be any number of things, evolution, the magic gate, other worlds... or just the literal blast of light that engulfed them lol.

“I hear a song...” Terrifying. My first thoughts are that they hear a Mother Angel’s song in one of these possible futures. 

In YoRHa Dark Apocalypse, a canon story to the wider Drakenier universe, we even see the machines try and copy a Mother Angel’s song.

Maybe during thee moment of the singularity occurring, when they had a glimpse into all the possible futures to come, they saw a Mother Angel singing in one of them and would eventually try and mimic them. Idk.

I say specifically from the “future” because the Divine Tree already has all the knowledge of the past, so it should already know about the Grotesquerie Queen from Drakengard 1′s Ending E. Meaning if it hears a song during the singularity... then it heard it probably heard a new song in the future! Imo at least.

The Giant Flower:

Why is there a giant flower here? Well it's described as "techno-organic" in the novella, and called a “Lunar Tear” in the script, and the digital space we just left was shaped like the inside of a flower so this is likely just another form of plant/machinery fusion at work originating from the Forest of Myth.

(https://nier.fandom.com/wiki/The_Lost_World)

And given that we find Kaine holding a newly reborn Nier at it's center this probably has something to do with the origins of replicants or at least the process of how they're created.

Something that adds further weight to this conjecture is the little known fact that during the period of time when Legion was still around, replicants that became Red Eyes and were killed would leave behind something shaped like a egg.... or a “seed”, if you would. So... if replicants are born from a flower, well it wouldn’t be too big a stretch to imagine they might leave behind a seed of some kind under the proper circumstances. 

(https://nier.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Eye)

Another thing, Her Inflorescence, the final boss of YoRHa Dark Apocalypse and the furthest known evolution of N2, sprouts from a "Seed" and blossoms to grow dozens of lunar tears atop her head, and given that you can trace back the origins of N2 in some form to the Forest of Myth well....

We also know Machine Cores (and by extension YoRHa Black Boxes) are plant like too, just like The Forest of Myth.

I think a lot of longtime fans have felt like there's been a growing amount of evidence that the Machines are influenced and/or evolving into Watchers and may be the origins of "The Black Flower" from Drakengard 3 in some way, but  that's just speculation at this point. Who knows. You do you, i aint gonna snipe you for it.

Disclaimer: I do not profess that any of this is canon, these are just my own thoughts in written form, please do not attack me or snipe me or whatever the lore masters do whenever they see a lowly person like me think thoughts for hot minute.

Disclaimer 2.0: I wrote up a more detailed version of this post almost immediately after i beat the game but for some reason tumblr glitches out EVERY TIME i try and edit it to add more or just post it publicly. I give up. I’ve broken down the thing into this.

[falseinflorescence]

(Cw, content warning for blood, gore, body horror in above video)

NieR & Drakengard speculation and whatnot. Spoilers for FFXIV: YoRHa Dark Apocalypse, NieR Replicant ver. 1.224etc, and Drakengard 3.

So i made the above video a couple years ago and shared it on twitter while theorizing about the connection between Intoners, The Watchers, and Machine Lifeforms, with this video showcasing Adam mimicking an Intoner regeneration.

But recent developments in NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139... and Final Fantasy XIV YoRHa Dark Apocalypse got me thinking even more about this and i just want to write out my thoughts so i can come back and look at em at my own leisure.

N2, the ego of the Machine Network of course looks like any number of Cult of the Watcher twin archetypes from the series, as does her precursors, the Divine Tree administrators from the Forest of Myth. 

I’ll get to my point eventually but in the meantime in case you weren’t aware of the connection between N2 and the Divine Tree ai (Gestalt Terminal).... Basically, the timeline is:

-Aliens arrive on Earth

-Aliens make Machine Lifeforms

-Machine’s evolve and eventually kill their creators, the aliens

-The machines extracts data from the Divine Tree and somewhere during the process it’s implied that the ego N2 is born

(So it’s likely that the Twins are N2, or part of N2, idk come to your own conclusions that’s legal)

(link to Machine Research Report: https://nierautomata.wiki.fextralife.com/Machine+Research+Report)

(link to 50 Questions Yoko Taro interview: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F7KM18848_HHlQFviGCkJbXV1M-5SKm_HnVBTzzYlDg/edit)

Just wanted to get that outta the way for anyone that didn’t read the reports from NieR Automata.

What i’m just now realizing tho and something we’ve all been thinking really but only just now getting multiple allusions to, is that N2 isn’t just a reference to any ol’ Cult of the Watcher twin, but more specifically the Intoner One and Brother One:

-Brother One is born from Sister One’s ribs

-Eve is born from Adam’s ribs

-N2 wears a hairband like One of course, but the Divine Tree ai hairband is distinctly different and more akin to Brother One’s and some art depictions of One.

-The False Idol, an evolution of N2 in FFXIV takes the form of a white giant and more closely resembles One when a part of the Flower

 -The False Idol uses a form of One’s chakrams

While these references to Drakengard have been obvious since day 1, i’m beginning to wonder if there is a deeper meaning to these now, especially with direct references to One now being more spelled out than ever before.

In YoRHa Dark Apocalypse we even see 2P (A similar being born the same way as Adam) replicate herself from her own wounds like Adam did, and this isn’t just a reference to Intoner regeneration, because Zero’s version of this has her regenerate from the flower in her eye. One, Adam, and 2P do it via their ribs!

Anw. I just find it interesting that One seems to be the one being referenced in all these instances. Specific references to One. Not Manah, not Zero.

A side note to all this: the other Divine Tree ai twin not only looks like 9S, but also Eve, to me at least. 

I’m willing to buy into this theory for a couple reason:

-It fits my bias that Adam and Eve were an attempt to mimic Intoners (I get into this more in this one very long twitter thread i made because there’s something wrong with me: https://twitter.com/Crescent_Nex/status/1384991006156738561)

- There seems to be a memetic legacy going on when it comes to machine cores and since both Machine Cores and YoRHa Black Boxes can trace back their lineage to the Forest of Myth then mayhap some identical seeds of data might pop up here and there and manifest in these shared appearances we see between the Divine Tree Ai, 2B, 9S, and Adam/Eve.

-Even YoRHa clothing seems to draw inspiration from this legacy

(Friendly disclaimer here: These are just theories, fun speculation, please do not take offense at my tiny lore meat if you happen to know more than me or i got something wrong, i’m just thinking thoughts and typing them out, don’t snipe me, i don’t claim this is canon, i’m speculating.)

The way “multiple worlds” work in Drakenier is also kinda funky, at least the way i understand it. It seems like another “world” for instance would be another “branch”. 

So for instance what if Drakengard 3′s Ending D, in which the Intoners are “sealed off in another world” means they were sealed and sent into Drakengard 1′s “world”. It’s a different branch after all, Ending D doesn’t lead to Drakengard 1, the “Side Story” novella leads to Drakengard 1.

Idk man, i’m just guessing here, for fun, “another world” could mean anything.

But I do wonder if we’ll ever see the other Intoners show up as Mother Angel’s at some point.

One final note, are we gonna have to start including 2B and 2P into the Watcher Twins family whenever the subject comes up from now on?