Nier: Automata is one of gaming’s great success stories. Its predecessor, not so much. Given the massive gap between their receptions, some players may not even know that Automata is a sequel, and that the game that paved the way for it is just as philosophical and bizarre as its more successful sibling. But while it’s a much rougher game, Automata’s predecessor is as worth playing as the hit that followed.
Nier started as a joke. Creative director Yoko Taro’s 2003 Drakengard included a gag ending that saw its mythical creatures break through to modern-day Japan, in an homage to Neon Genesis Evangelion. That ending wasn’t meant to be taken seriously, but it eventually served as the basis for Nier, which launched 15 years ago today.
If you don’t know that Taro’s whole deal is making weird-ass games, Nier initially looks like a by-the-numbers post-apocalyptic fantasy. It begins with a sequence of a brother and sister fighting off monsters called Shades in the ruins of a city, then cuts to more than a millennium later. Here, nature has overtaken human civilization so thoroughly that only the barest remnants of bridges and buildings remain. Protagonist Nier is on a quest to save his sister, Yonah, from an illness that’s decimated humanity, but first, there are chores to do.
Nier is far more approachable than the abrasive Drakengard, but it’s still far from typical RPG fare. You may be on a quest to save humanity, but your errands come first. One of the biggest critiques of Nier is that it’s packed with busywork: you’ll spend hours running back and forth between the same handful of towns to complete side quests for your neighbors. You’ll repetitively hack and slash the same few monsters and waste time in a dreadful fishing minigame. But these slow moments build a familiarity with Nier’s world, making it all the more impactful when you eventually venture out and try to save it.
While its clunky combat and rote quest design might feel old-fashioned, Nier was ahead of its time. Taro has spoken before about his distaste for big-budget, violent video games, despite making them himself, and its director’s simultaneous abhorrence and attraction to bloodshed is present throughout Nier. It’s not always fun cutting monsters to ribbons or retracing your steps for quest after quest, and sometimes it’s not meant to be.
Nier’s story also breaks the fantasy mold. Without giving too much away, the game has a lot more in common with Automata than it might seem, and its exploration of humanity and the obligations that people have to each other feels just as pressing today as on release. A lot has also been written about Nier’s relationship to queerness, especially in how its three protagonists relate to each other. The game’s main trio includes an intersex woman and a gay man who are both shunned from their villages for the perceived monstrousness of their bodies, and both struggle with the ways bodily autonomy has been taken from them. Its depictions of queer found families aren’t perfect, particularly in the game’s leering presentation of heroine Kainé, but their tender story still sets Nier apart.
Automata got a lot of deserved praise for its unorthodox structure, where the player must reach several different endings to get the full picture. But Nier pulled off the same trick nearly a decade earlier, right down to a meaningful decision that asks players to delete their save file for the sake of one of the game’s characters.
For all its brilliant idiosyncrasy, Nier might have remained a forgotten cult classic if it weren’t for its sequel. Automata was a wild success, to the point that former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida claims it “revived” the Japanese games industry. That never would have happened without Nier laying the groundwork.
Maybe Taro is right about video games failing to live up to their potential, given that Nier still feels so singular 15 years after its release. It’s certainly not the most enjoyable game you’ll ever play, but there’s just nothing out there quite like it. Its touching story, its experimentation, and even its essential drudgery make it stand out among other action games, and in another 15 years, it will probably still feel just as unique.
