The NieR story, part 7: Replicant & Gestalt

It’s time to begin on NieR proper!

If you’ve read this article before, this is an updated version, describing additions made in 2021’s NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139….

Contents

A quick recap

A few words about the game

NieR went through a variety of forms over the course of its development, including a turn-based JRPG, but eventually settled on an action-RPG inspired mainly by God of War. Compared to cavia’s preceding two Drag-on Dragoon games, the combat is a bit more complex insofar as each weapon type has more than one moveset, although in the end you will probably end up spamming the stinger a lot. You have a dodge roll with iframes, and most enemies telegraph their attacks pretty well so you can get decent at dodging.

You also have quite flashy spells, broadly on the theme of summoning dark spears and blades made out of Celestial Alphabet. Moreover, you can fire a constant stream of magic bullets from Grimoire Weiss, which is helpful for crowd control, chip damage and stopping enemy projectiles. The game at times resembles a shmup as much as an action game.

Unlike the DoD games, which presented the game in chapters on different maps with objectives to complete, NieR takes place in an open world, where you wonder around the different plot locations, free to take a break for sidequests or even fishing or gardening. The game experiments enthusiastically with genres: in one area you might be exploring a fixed-camera, greyscale mansion inspired by Resident Evil, another might have you navigating branching prose and solving reading comprehension puzzles, a boss might turn into something resembling a 3D bullet hell shooter…

There is a fairly rudimentary upgrade system, consisting of attaching magical ‘words’ to your weapons, and a variety of weapons to collect and upgrade. The weapon stories are unfortunately relegated to Grimoire NieR in the original, though they are readable in-game in v1.22….

Also unlike DoD, the plot does not really branch until near the end—but after you get the first ‘ending’, you get to witness the same events in a very different light. The game resumes about halfway through the plot; first, you receive Kainé’s backstory (one of the best moments in the game to me), and from then on you can hear the voices of the Shades (thanks to Tyrann). This reframes many of your previous actions, and nets you ‘ending’ B. For the final pair of endings, you must collect all the weapons, and play through this segment again, and here you do get a choice… one we’ll discuss later, since it’s a heavy one.

The game’s English dub is actually extremely good, especially Liam O’Brien’s performance as Grimoire Weiss and Laura Bailey’s as Kainé. Unlike the DoD games, the original NieR was not fully voiced: voice acting was mostly reserved for cutscenes on the main story, and certain conversations while wandering about the map. The sprawling array of sidequests were encountered mostly as text.

Alongside these quests you have optional minigames around fishing and gardening (which is based on real world time, and can be cheated using the system clock). They’re generally not quite as good a crop as Automata, though there are notable exceptions with moments of poignance, especially once they are fully voiced.

You may notice at a few points references to fairy tales and other famous childrens’ books like Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. This is a vestige of an earlier concept of NieR, planned as a world of fairy-tale characters structured by words. Yoko Taro later returned to this concept with the mobile gacha game SINoALICE, which is so far only loosely connected to the NieR world by special crossover events. In the final version of NieR, the only thing that’s really left of this idea is the character and boss names printed in Grimoire NieR.

ver.1.22474487139…

In 2021, NieR fans got one of the best things we could hope for: a ‘version up’ of the original game, not quite a full remake but more than a simple remaster. Only Replicant was remade, meaning this was the first time Western fans could play as Brother Nier in English.

It turned out to be pretty much perfect: preserving and enhancing all the things I loved about NieR like the voice performances and cinematography, redoing the combat to be much more satisfying and kinetic, and adding all kinds of story extras to spice up each playthrough. I’ll discuss the major additions as we come to them, but for a quick rundown:

Sources

The Grimoire Nier fan translation is available here, and has some interesting interviews in addition to the stories we discuss below.

If you want a somewhat more detailed video lets play of this game, I can highly recommend the Tumblr Something Very Special. The author has also provided a better translation of one of the stories in Grimoire Nier, and has quite a good collection of development art and some broadly solid character meta.

Meeting Kainé (yesssss)

Determined to stop at nothing to save Yonah, [replicant ]Nier sets out to acquire the Sealed Verses. Popola directs him to first travel to the Aerie, a village built on a series of rickety platforms above a gigantic chasm. The people of the Aerie are sealed in their houses when Nier arrives, and strangely hostile to visitors. A number of Shades manifest in the middle of the village, but Nier and Weiss make short work of them.

On the way back, he passes the shell of a caravan, with an awning outside of it—Kainé’s home. Inside, he spots a necklance of Lunar Tears. Kainé interrupts his musing, telling him to keep his hands off the flowers—and Nier perceives the signs of magic around the arm possessed by Tyrann, and starts suspecting she’s a Shade. So they end up fighting.

Kainé, it soon emerges, has pretty strong magic of her own. Nier seems to be getting the upper hand, but their battle is interrupted by the appearance of the big multi-Gestalt shade Hook. Kainé stops worrying about Nier, and both go after Hook. Ultimately, moments after saving Nier from a hefty blow, Kainé hits Hook with a hefty magic bullet and passes out. Fortunately, this is enough of a pummelling for Hook to retreat, granting the Sealed Verse ‘Dark Hand’ which creates large murky fists.

Weiss discerns that Kainé is possessed by a Shade, but nevertheless at least half-human, and this is enough to mollify Nier. He tends to her wounds, and when she wakes up the two part ways on relatively amicable terms. Weiss ruminates that Hook most likely contains another sealed verse, but Nier can tell he’s not yet strong enough to beat it.

The Junk Heap: there can be too many robots

The next two segments can be approached in either order. In one, Nier becomes convinced he needs a better weapon, and sets out to the scavengers’ shack by the Junk Heap.

As we read in The Magic Mountain, the Junk Heap is the site of an old military base built by the Japanese government during the war with the Legion. There, robots are manufactured, and apparently the factory can operate pretty well without any humans left to run it.

Nier and Weiss arrive just in time to save brothers Jakob and Gideon from starvation. Abandoned by their mother a week prior, they have no materials to forge weapons to sell at the Junk Heap shop. Jakob asks Nier to go into the junk heap and gather the necessary bits.

The Junk Heap itself is a series of more or less identical rooms containing a whole lot of identical robots. Nier returns with the alloys the kids need after fighting some P-33 humanoid robots, but Jakob asks him to go back in, deeper into the Heap, in the hopes of finding their mother Blue. This time, Nier finds himself fighting a gigantic robot in an enormous round chamber, which is named as Geppetto (Pinocchio’s creator) in Grimoire NieR.

It’s a classic Zelda-style glowing hands boss, equipped with a variety of lasers and missiles, but it can’t stand up to the awe-inspiring power of Grimoire Weiss. And curiously, it grants a Sealed Verse: Dark Gluttony, which allows the player to absorb projectiles and channel them into a laser beam.

After destroying this robot, Nier finds the body of Blue and the lover she was attempting to elope with: “in the arms of a swain” in the words of Weiss. Nier returns troubled to the brothers, and the player can decide whether to tell them the truth of what happened, or lie and say he couldn’t find her. Either way, Gideon, the younger brother, takes it especially badly—and if you lie, Jakob can easily tell.

Seafront: surprisingly okay, all things considered

Yonah’s condition is getting worse, so Popola directs Nier to acquire a certain fish in Seafront, which is pretty much what you’d expect from the name: a quiet, pseudo-mediterranean fishing town, with the ruins of a broken railway bridge just off the coast. Seafront is home to a post office which is surprisingly reliable, given the world is overrun by monsters!

So naturally, Seafront is where the game introduces its somewhat infamous fishing minigame. This was a bit of a stumbling block at the time of the game’s release, since some players (infamously, Justin McElroy) didn’t realise that you have to walk to a different part of the map in order to catch the one fish needed to progress the plot. So it’s a little amusing when you get there in the remake and it underlines it especially hard.

Nier can optionally do a whole series of quests to become better at fishing, spending progressively longer out at sea each time with the old fisherman, who each time tasks him with catching harder and harder fish around the world. Ultimately, having been bested at fishing, the man dies satisfied.

A second, surprisingly moving sidequest chain centres on the cranky old lighthouse keeper (named Ursula in Grimoire NieR). Pressganged into helping her, Nier discovers (by rifling through the back rooms of the post office) that, led by the postman (named Hans in Grimoire NieR), most of the townsfolk have for years engaged in an elaborate conspiracy to write letters in the role of her dead lover. Nier can choose whether to break the news before the lighthouse-keeper dies. Should you tell her, she asks you not to let on to the rest of the townspeople the game is up, and thanks you for confirming what she secretly suspected.

While there, Nier receives a letter to Popola from Seafront’s mayor, warning that contact is being lost with the Aerie coinciding with a lot more Shades appearing. Around this point, there’s a chance to drop by the bar and find a slightly drunk Devola. This sets up another sidequest, where you can later get both sisters to sing the Song of the Ancients together—but Popola can only sing with her special concoction of lizard and mouse tails…

The return to the Aerie: crying for Kainé

Now better armed, Nier heads back to the Aerie. Outside, he meets Kainé fighting off a group of Shades. She tells him that these Shades have overrun the village, and together they storm in, killing every Shade they see.

Before long, Hook arrives on the scene, now scarred by Kainé’s earlier attack. The pair engage, and smack Hook around, inflicting major collateral damage on the town. The villagers, hiding in their houses, are viciously hostile to Kainé, shouting out accusations that she’s the one who brought the Shades.

Over the course of the fight, Nier and Kainé start to establish a rapport, working together to corner Hook. Backed into a corner, the giant Shade attempts to imitate Kainé’s grandmother’s voice… trying to persuade Kainé to give up and die. Kainé is absolutely incensed,

You’re going to stop talking now. And then I’m going to walk over to you, and very carefully, extend my hand, reach into your chest, and pull out your fucking heart!

My grandmother would never say that! She’d never tell me to give up on life! Never! I’ve spent my entire life searching for a way to avenge her death! She gave me the strength to deal with this goddamn mutant body!

Do you know how long I’ve been like this!? How much I loathe myself?

Kainé and Nier make good on the threat. Ultimately, Nier smashes Hook right through the platform they’re fighting on, impaling it on the pillar underneath. Kainé lies down, her revenge complete.

But Nier won’t have it. Weiss rather callously advises him to let her die, but Nier runs to where she lies and begs her not to give in. Between Weiss’s prattle about what a true warrior would do, and Nier’s sincere entreaty to join the group as a friend, something reaches Kainé in the darkness, and she grumpily gets up to accompany Nier on his journey. She’s still reluctant to follow him into settlements, sleeping outside Nier’s village rather than face the suspicion of its inhabitants.

Façade, where ‘rules exist so that we may know our freedoms’

Kainé mentions that she knows a guy who also has the Black Scrawl: the King of Façade. And his kingdom might just have found a cure. So the gang pack up for the desert area. On the way across the desert, they’re attacked by groups of wolves, and an odd Shade wolf howls in the distance.

The player at this point does not have reason to see the wolves as anything other than enemies, but since this is a chronological presentation, let’s summarise what’s been happening in Façade. As the city has expanded, the humans of Façade have been killing the wolves; to the wolves, then, attacking the people is a matter of tit-for-tat revenge. Their leader is Roc, a dog who underwent the Gestalt process in lieu of its owner back when normal humans were still around—apparently you can just be like ‘hey could my dog take my spot on the Gestalt list’ and they’ll do it?? Roc has tried to live in peace with the people of Façade, but with no ability to communicate, the fight goes on…

As we read in A Little Princess, Façade is a city ruled by thousands of strangely specific rules, governing everything from architecture to the right way to do a birthday party. They also uniquely speak a different language to the rest of the people of the Replicant world, presented in the voice acting as rearranged, ungrammatical Japanese syllables.

Kainé is welcome, thanks to having saved Fyra from a pack of wolves at some point in the past. However, she’s still reluctant to go too far in, and waits by the entrance. Nier and Weiss wander around for a while, but they’re barred entrance to the King’s manor, and return to the gate—where they bump into Fyra.

Fyra, forbidden from speaking by the rules since she does not own land, instead communicates by a sign language which Weiss is able to follow. As the rules dictate, Fyra insists on giving the group a tour of Façade, using the improbable quicksand river circling the central pit. This gives Weiss enough of a corpus to start interpreting the language.

As they regroup at the entrance, a group of Masked People suddenly interrupt. The Prince has gone missing in the ‘Barren Temple’. Per Rule 83,348, they must immediately search for him. But per rule 50,527, only nobility can enter the temple! The contradiction can thankfully be resolved by sending outsiders, who are not bound by Façade’s rules, and so Nier et al. are sent off to rescue the Prince.

The Barren Temple

The Barren Temple consists of a series of puzzle rooms where you are subject to some kind of restriction (e.g. not jumping, standing still or using magic attacks). There are a large number of stone cubes which shoot out magic projectiles, recognisably the same Gargoyle Cubes as we saw in the DoD world. Where the people of Façade found the resources to build this elaborate temple complex and fill it with magic puzzles remains an open question! Grimoire NieR names the ‘entity’ residing in the temple as Shariyar, after the cruel king from the Arabian Nights. It is presumably a Gestalt, but even the Grimoire’s description is tentative!

Before long, they briefly encounter the Prince, who shouts at them to leave the temple. However, he soon gets grabbed by a magic cube (for standing still). A few rooms later, Kainé makes the mistake of breaking a no-magic rule, and also gets grabbed.

Eventually, Nier passes to the other end of the temple, and finds the Prince— but he’s surrounded by a swarm of Gargoyle Cubes which start flying in geometric patterns, including at one point a large humanoid. Kainé joins him, and together they dismantle the big cube… golem… thing… and earn a Sealed Verse for their efforts, and the Prince crawls out of the pit with a wooden mask.

It turns out that the King they were looking for has died, and this mask is the key for the Prince ascending the throne and becoming King himself. In return for the timely rescue, the King offers Nier a favour—and lacking a personal favour to ask, he decides to request a Rule Zero be added, which allows the population to vote to change the other rules.

Nier finally gets a chance to ask about the Black Scrawl. As you’d expect from the King being dead, the efforts of Façade were in vain. Still, Nier promises to come back to visit some time later. (Much later, it will turn out.)

The Forest of Myth: getting entwined

Returning to Yonah, Nier stays the night—and dreams of a silver-haired boy spelling out that a Sealed Verse is to be found in the ‘Forest of Myth’ along with the word ‘dream’. Surprisingly, on waking, it turns out Yonah has had the same dream. And Popola has received a letter from the Mayor of said Forest, which slowly devolves into just the word ‘dream’ over and over.

Nier heads off to investigate. He finds the Mayor sitting outside in the Forest, saying something cryptic about contagious words.

Abruptly, the game’s dialogue box is taken over by prose. It spreads to fill the screen: we’ve found the first visual novel section! (Though it might be more apt to call it a CYOA prose section, since there are no visuals.)

Along with the boss names, the Forest of Myth is probably the only remnant of an earlier incarnation of NieR’s premise, which was a world of words and fairy-tale characters. Yoko Taro would eventually come back to revisit this premise in his gacha game SINoALICE. The game does not give a lot of hints as to what’s really going on in the Forest; more is revealed in a post-game story in Grimoire NieR (or ending E in v1.22…), but for now, let’s discuss how it appears in the game.

Weiss and Nier appear to be able to perceive the narration, and semi-break the fourth wall to directly argue with its descriptions. It turns out a mysterious disease named the ‘deathdream’ has caught up everyone in the Forest of Myth in a series of illusory worlds. Each of the three villagers has a different story to explore, though only the Mayor’s is necessary to continue the story.

You can read the full stories here.

The Mayor’s dream

Nier and Weiss encounter the Mayor, who has been obsessively researching the Deathdream in his sleep. They discern that the transmission vector may be the phrase ‘those who dream’, and Weiss concludes that, if the Mayor is capable of imagining an exit, it must be possible to leave the dream.

The next segment sees Nier and Weiss walking through a forest. Nier has to take a rest, and abruptly the forest insects make a cacophony of noise, diminishing into something which can be recognised as a series of riddles. Weiss asks Nier (controlled by the player) to solve the riddles. One is the famous Riddle of the Sphinx. Finally you meet an old man in a house… who appears to be just the Mayor again. In fact, it is the Forest’s control system, assuming his identity. It cryptically tells Nier about having met his Gestalt, a long time ago.

They return to the Mayor, and the narration forces them to go to sleep. The game’s graphics fade back into view as the narration describes them coming to.

At the centre of the village is a ‘Divine Tree’. The Mayor reveals that the tree contains a Sealed Verse, but many of the villagers remain trapped in the dream.

The gothic horror story

This story is narrated in first person. The narrator is trapped in some sort of prison in a gothic castle, filling with water from a storm outside. As the player, in the role of the dreamer, explores the maze of the castle, they see all sorts of grim sights: piles of burned corpses, a banquet of maggot-filled corpses on spiky chairs that impaled their victims, a hall of paintings with corpses of the depicted people behind them, wine casks filled with blood.

You’re actually on a timer here, and if you take more than eight moves to escape the castle, you drown and get an actual game-over screen.

When you do escape the castle, it burns down behind you and all the many corpses inside turn into Shades. (This makes no sense, but hey, it’s a dream.)

The post-apocalyptic story

For the third story, we’re in third-person, past tense. Nier and Weiss are walking through a searing desert on a ruined asphalt road, with a city of skyscrapers in the distance. Weiss explains that they’re going to the ‘City of Art’. Nier sees a mirage and hallucinates water, chasing after it for an hour.

The City of Art turns out to be merely a modern city of tall skyscrapers, described in a defamiliarising way. Eventually, they find three statues labelled alpha, beta and gamma. A bird lands on it and speaks a riddle—a variant of the classic liar puzzle.

After the Deathdream

Once you’ve finished all three stories, you can talk to the villagers again. They catch you in long rambling conversations, presented in the same way as the dreams. The mayor talks about a festival. The gothic villager is having traumatised flashbacks all the time. The one in the city idolises Nier and goes on a ramble about travel and then starts going on about the need for a proper dictator to take over.

What’s really going on

In Grimoire NieR and Ending E of v1.22…, a little more is revealed about the Forest of Myth. The tree at the centre is in truth a huge maso-powered computer network called Sleeping Beauty, maintaining a store of memories. We’ll learn a little more about it later…

A letter from Emil

Returning to the village, Nier optionally gets a chance to ‘enjoy’ Yonah’s cooking. He discovers that Yonah has been corresponding with a boy called Emil, who lives in a mansion which you pass on the way to Seafront.

The mansion and its outskirts are rendered in greyscale—only the protagonists are coloured. This could be seen as a consequence of Emil’s petrification power, but it can also be read along with other greyscale sections as a symbol of death.

Outside the mansion, Nier meets Emil’s mysterious butler, Sebastian. “We’ve been waiting for you,” Sebastian says, but leaves them waiting for an uncomfortably long period. They decide to go looking, and fight their way through some Shades in the mansions. Mysterious voices come from various other rooms. When they return to the starting room, Kainé disappears.

Eventually, they find Emil, who is blindfolded and sitting at a piano. Emil, it turns out, didn’t write the letter—it was Sebastian acting on his own devices. Emil is afraid to accidentally petrify Nier and Weiss, but gives them a key so they can go catch up with Sebastian.

Sebastian, it turns out, is basically inanimate when Emil isn’t in the room, and reactivates with a juddering, machine-like motion. He is presumably some sort of android or other magical creation. His letter was written for Nier—since he claims there is a cure for Emil’s condition somewhere in the mansion, but protected by a large group of Shades. And who’s gotten really good at killing Shades?

Emil joins the party as they make their way through the mansion, eventually arriving in a library where they are attacked by Grimoire Rubrum.

Rubrum must be a child soldier of the Hamelin Organisation, gestaltised and placed inside a book, but unlike the other Grimoires Weiss and Noir, Rubrum does not speak, merely cackling and flying about while launching various magical attacks in the form of large pages. Kainé, meanwhile, figures out where everyone is and rejoins the party about halfway through the battle.

Finally Grimoire Rubrum pops into a cloud of pages. One of them turns out to discuss annulling a petrification curse, but it’s written in an incomprehensible code. Sebastian declares his intent to decode it.

Before the party leaves, Kainé gives Emil a few words…

You’re eyes are not a sin. They’re nothing to be ashamed of. They’re part of you. A vital part of you. Do you understand?

She places Emil’s hand on her Shade-arm. She tells him how Nier recruited her. She promises Emil there’s a reason for it all—and asks him, in a whisper to petrify her if the Shade should ever take over her body.

With the defeat of Rubrum, all the Sealed Verses have been collected.

Part 1 Sidequests

I’m not going to cover sidequests in detail, since the vast majority are minor errands to buy items or obtain something. Nier just loves to volunteer himself to help out anybody and everybody, much to Weiss’s mounting frustration.

The most useful sidequest has you fight a boar (boars in the NieR world being much bigger, with a wide platypus-like tail!) and then you have the option of riding a boar between locations. The boar runs extremely fast and, delightfully, the main way to steer on the boar is to go into a drift. (Each time I streamed this game I made sure to put in some Initial D music for a good bit of boar-drifting.)

Here’s a rundown of the more memorable sidequests.

• a runaway child leads you on a merry chase across much of the map. Ultimately you track him down and he promises to return home (after a wolf attack), but then when you return you find that his parents were thieves and skipped town with him. Big whoops.
• a merchant asks you to help build up stock, only to end up seasick. We’ll see him again later.
• a man in seafront asks you to deliver a letter to his freesia-loving partner, but she is missing. A shade near the exit drops a freesia…
• a man asks you to find his dog, but when you find it, it has been killed by the Shades. When you return, you realise it was likely trying to retrieve medicine for the man, who has died…
• a girl is missing in Façade, and the evidence seems to suggest her boyfriend murdered her and stashed her body outside the city. But just as he’s confessing, she turns up alive, with no memory of the incident…

The Red Bag Man

In v1.22…, a new character is introduced shortly before the end of Part 1. Popola sends you to check on the man she’s asked to dredge the canals… and this ‘Red Bag Man’ is known throughout Seafront for staging dramatic arguments with his wife, who wears a matching accessory. The Red Bag Man sends you running to and fro looking for his wife, and for a moment it seems she’s one more casualty of a Nier sidequest… but then she reappears, turns out he’d just forgotten that she’d gone to her parents.

The player gets caught up in their argument, and you get several prompts from one or the other to act as an arbiter, but there’s not really any right answer to smooth things over. Eventually you just manage to wriggle out of it and remind the man of his job. We’ll be seeing them again later…

The Dark Colossus Destroys All

The title of this section is the title of a track from the soundtrack. We’ll soon see why!

Nier tends to Yonah, promising that he’s close to saving her as she morosely asks him not to hate her for her illness. He rushes to Popola to get more medicine, and she directs him to obtain some ingredients by the village gate.

But as he does so, Emil suddenly arrives. He reports some vast buildup of malice. Shades are coming.

An enormous Shade aggregating many Gestalts, named the Knave (or Jack) of Hearts in Grimoire NieR, attacks the village along with a small army of smaller Shades. In the game, it comes across as a mindless tentacled, semihumanoid monster, and this isn’t too far from the truth—but it remembers one thing, its ‘given duty’ to take Yonah’s Replicant to Gestalt NieR.

NieR, Weiss and Kainé engage, fighting a desperate battle to slow the Shade’s advance as the villagers retreat towards the library. By the time Nier gets there, the Knave is greatly reduced, but still formidable. Emil joins them, insisting that he can’t sit by while they fight—if his eyes truly have value, he’s determined use them to protect the people here.

The remaining parts of the Jack burst into the room, now more of a little squid than a humanoid. It regenerates too fast for the party to fully subdue it, and so they come up with a new plan: seal it in the basement.

The Shadowlord: getting hypnotised like a little bitch

But then, a dark spike suddenly pierces replicant Nier. Gestalt Nier (aka the ‘Shadowlord’) manifests in the room, along with Grimoire Noir and an unconscious Yonah. He looks like a paler, thinner version of Nier, with dark hair, with his body mostly made of Celestial writing. Alongside him, more Shades start to rise from the floor.

His sudden arrival wasn’t part of Devola and Popola’s big plan. He’s had enough of waiting for the supposed thousand-year period of providing Maso. If the World Purification Organisation won’t restore Yonah’s soul to her body, he’ll just have to take advantage of his cult among the Gestalts, and do it himself. As such, he’ll accelerate Devola and Popola’s plan to activate Grimoires Weiss and Noir together, meaning all the Gestalts will be returned to their Replicants, and Project Gestalt’s mission will have been fulfilled.

So Grimoire Noir opens, and Grimoire Weiss is abruptly pulled into a white void. The two books argue—and Noir manages, somehow, to sound even more smug than Weiss. Noir reminds Weiss of the truth: that their purpose is to fuse and ‘set free Shades to the world’. He does not do a good job of “not sounding like a bad guy”.

Kainé, desperately holding the Knave inside the basement, cuts in with the incredible rant from the game’s opening:

Weiss, you dumbass! Start making sense, you rotten book, or you’re gonna be sorry! Maybe I’ll rip your pages out, one-by-one! Or maybe I’ll put you in the goddamned furnace! How can someone with such a big smart brain get hypnotised like a little bitch, huh? “Oh Shadowlord, I love you Shadowlord, come over here and give Weiss a big sloppy kiss, Shadowlord…” Now pull your head out of your goddamn ass and START FUCKING HELPING US!

Emil intervenes as well, swearing to remember Grimoire Weiss forever.

I’ll chase you to the end of time, and bring you back to us!

Between Kainé’s strategic bombardment and Emil’s desperate entreaties, Weiss snaps out of his hypnotic haze. He gives a short speech and joins Nier in a boss fight against Grimoire Noir, as Gestalt Nier floats out of reach. The player’s magic powers are temporarily removed, stolen by Grimoire Noir, but as the fight progresses, you get each one back. The roof starts to collapse, and just as it seems that Noir is beaten, Nier takes another dark spike through the chest. He can only watch as his Gestalt flies away with Yonah.

The rampaging Knave is still present, and Kainé resorts to the only strategy she can see: having Emil petrify her in front of the door, trapping the Shade inside. The player is forced to ‘choose’ between petrifying Kainé or being annihilated but it’s a ‘but thou must’ situation.

An instrumental version of Ashes of Dreams plays as Nier begs Kainé and Yonah to wait.

Beepy makes a friend

A much later flashback will show us a Gestalt mother caring for her child (named Kalil in the localisation, but Grimoire NieR says this was originally supposed to be Cleo, after a goldfish in Pinocchio). Outside the room, we hear shouting voices; some Replicants are fighting through the Junk Heap, hunting Shades. The mother tells the child to run, while she challenges the interlopers.

A P-33 robot enters the room and sees Kalil sitting on the floor. It threatens to eliminate Kalil, but stops when he starts crying. After talking (apparently a P-33 can understand the Shade voices), the robot decides it has a new purpose: it will not permit the ‘humans’ to kill Kalil. Kalil, delighted, dubs his new protector P-chan (or in the localisation, ‘Beepy’, but I prefer P-chan!).

We cut to Jakob/Jiminy and Gideon exploring the junk heap (in the first playthrough, this is all you see). P-chan happens to be wandering nearby. Gideon accidentally dislodges a supporting structure, causing the ceiling to collapse; Jakob dashes in to save him, but in the process he is crushed. He sees P-chan watching nearby, and leaps to the conclusion that it’s the robot’s fault.

P-chan dispassionately observes to Kalil that one of the two ‘intruders’ has died, due to their own carelessness. To Kalil, though, they seemed nice…

5 years? You call that a timeskip?

The game resumes five years later. In Replicant, Nier is now noticeably older; in Gestalt he still looks like a foot, but now he wears a kind of half-blindfold mask. The cutscene opens in media res, with Nier cutting down Shades in his village.

Nier notices that Popola has inexplicably not changed at all in this period. She brushes it off, and distracts with a letter from Emil: he thinks he’s close to find a cure for Kainé’s condition.

The end of Halua

Emil presents Nier with an ancient document from ‘Plan Snow White’, detailing an ancient archival room with information on all forms of magic. The entrance is hidden underneath the stairs in the mansion’s courtyard. There’s a warning, declaring the chamber sealed.

The rooms beneath Emil’s mansion consist of a series of dungeons viewed from a Diablo-like top-down view. Nier hacks his way dozens of Shades (presumably, the former staff of the laboratory?) through as Emil struggles with strange headaches. As you explore, you find reports on Plan Snow White, which transformed the ‘donor bodies’ Emil and Halua into weapons (No. 6 and No. 7 respectively).

Finally, they reach a gigantic circular chamber. Nailed and chained to the wall in a pseudo-crucifix pose is a semi-skeletal figure with a giant, round head locked into a strange smile, and red eyes.

It’s Halua. Emil finally remembers how Halua became the ‘perfect’ weapon—and how, once they lost control, he was created to petrify her and seal her away. And Emil realises that her magic could save Kainé, and everyone else. He tells Nier that if he should lose control, Nier should kill him… just as Halua drops from the wall onto all floors and swallows him whole.

The player fights Halua, Nier hoping to free Emil from inside. To protect Emil, you can only use magic; for her part, sprays out out hundreds of magic bullets in bullet-hell style patterns and climbing about on the wall of the chamber. At last, Nier pins Halua to the wall and smashes her head with a huge dark lance.

In a white space, Emil sees a vision of her original form. He exchanges a few words, and thanks her… and then it all fades to white. Outside the vision, Emil is surrounded by an enormous magic orb… and as it fades away, he is in a new body: like Halua, his head is a huge grinning orb, and his body is a skeleton. But Nier promises he’ll be there, no matter what…

Kainé reawakens

It’s from here that subsequent playthroughs start; from the second playthrough onwards, this is also where we hear Kainé’s backstory, which we discussed in the previous article. From that point on, we get to hear the voices of shades thanks to Tyrann interpreting. Witholding information like this creates a deliberate contrast: on your first playthrough, you think your mission is straightforwardly heroic, later you’ll find out that it’s a whole lot more complicated. But I’m going to tell you everything straight up.

As soon as Kainé is unpetrified, the Knave wastes no time in bursting out of the cellar. But this time, Nier is a lot stronger, and before long has it throttled in a swarm of dark hands.

Kainé opens her eyes, coming out of her memories, to see Emil—who she doesn’t recognise for a second, but pretends otherwise, saying she recognised him instantly, transformed or not.

This scene is actually slightly different between Gestalt and Replicant. Something Very Special, a Nier fan blog, describes the differences in some detail here.

Their reunification is interrupted by Popola, who presents a ridiculously cruel demand from the villagers to sleep outside the village. Nier is furious, but Emil and Kainé accept it—after all, they both have a lot of internalised shame and Kainé especially is used to this kind of treatment. Still, Nier has a whole go at himself. The next morning, he goes to apologise to Devola and Popola for solely blaming them, and for the next little bit he’s extremely guilty about the way he’s let the other two be treated.

The campfire scene

From Playthrough B onwards, you see a short campfire scene outside the walls when Nier goes to check on his friends. Emil relates a little of his attempts to rescue her, including pouring water, much to her amusement. Kainé for her part tells Emil a little of her story, and they make a promise: after Yonah is rescued, they’ll go on a quest to restore Emil’s body and eliminate Kainé’s possession…

Grimoire NieR: Strait is the Gate

This is also the broad period where a couple of stories from Grimoire NieR take place. It’s a little tricky to place these stories. In the game, the player travels to the Lost Shrine the morning after Kainé is unpetrified, and hears Shades speak while they are there. However, Strait is the Gate portrays the first time Kainé hears a Shade speak, and yet takes place during a festival when Kainé and Emil’s exile is already well-established. My only guess is that it’s an accidental oversight. As my best guess, I’m going to place Strait is the Gate here.

The title of this story is an allusion to a 1909 French novel La Porte Étroite by André Gide, which was a Freudian epistolary novel about the relationship between two cousins. The NieR story has been translated by Defade here and bears no resemblance to the Gide novel beyond the title!

We meet Kainé and Emil outside the gate to Nier’s village. Popola demands that Kainé and Emil ‘guard the gate’ during a festival thrown in the village, in a way that everyone understands as ‘fuck off and don’t come in’. Not long after, Nier comes out, not hugely enthused, and innocently suggests inviting Kainé and Emil, putting them in the awkward position of having to refuse without saying why.

Emil falls asleep, but Kainé can’t. Nier briefly appears to give her some food, but soon gets pulled back in. Her night is interrupted by a Shade—and this seems to be the first time Kainé hears Shades speak, apart from perhaps when Hook imitated her grandmother…

The Shade attempts to reach out to Kainé, even explain the real nature of Gestalts. But she can’t listen, flashing back to the death of her grandmother, not to mention Nier’s hatred of Shades. She cuts the Shade down, cuts the corpse to pieces, but she can’t help but hear the truth: gestalts are the ‘true’ humans.

As the Emil wakes to the village launching fireworks, Kainé resolves to keep this terrible secret, even as it isolates her even further…

Returning to the Shrine

Popola reveals some new information: the Shadowlord is based in the same Lost Shrine where Nier found Grimoire Weiss in the first place. I always assumed this was a desperate plan B, but in fact the extra scenes in v1.22… suggest that Devola and Popola did not know where the Shadowlord had been hiding until this point! They send Nier to investigate.

As Nier arrives at the shrine, we see a series of scenes of Gretel, one of the two armoured Shades who Nier fought when he first retrieved Grimoire Weiss. At first, Gretel mourns Hansel. A number of smaller Shades arrive, and Gretel furiously dismisses them as defective.

Nier and Weiss storm the Shrine, destroying what Tyrann calls ‘defective’, improperly formed Shades who reside there. All but Kainé are completely oblivious to their cries of fear. Nier talks about how he’s going to try and do something about the way Emil and Kainé are constantly left outside.

By the time Nier arrives in her chamber, Gretel has come to accept the small Shades a lot more. She starts to find a new purpose in caring for these flawed Shades. When Nier reaches Grimoire Weiss’s old chamber, Gretel enters through the roof, furiously trying to defend the Shades, but Nier is completely oblivious and massacres them along with Gretel. After all, it’s just another boss… and it’s standing between him and Yonah. Kainé, at least, able to hear the voices thanks to Tyrann, is starting to have her doubts.

During the battle, Gretel deflects a blow, sending her lance straight into Kainé’s chest. “Oh, you’re kidding me!” says Tyrann, as Kainé collapses. Gretel is stuck, unable to move her arm, but she talks about how—though she is mocked, abused, hated—her friends keep her strong.

Still oblivious, Nier steps up and runs her through. Gretel falls, and Nier and Emil rush to Kainé’s side.

Kainé loses control

Tyrann cackles: he’s finally going to get to run around in Kainé’s body. Celestial characters run over her skin. She transforms into a Shade—the same patterns of black writing in the shape of a body. Moving oddly, she attacks, as Emil begs the true Kainé to return.

In the wake of the battle, Kainé comes to. She starts to suggest that she is too dangerous, and she should leave the group—but Emil interrupts with an impassioned plea.

We’re always going to be together, Kainé. If you transform again, we’ll just stop it again, as many times as it takes! I don’t care how tough it is, we’re gonna get you back!

I like sleeping outside because I’m with you, Kainé! I’m able to ignore my appearance and keep going because of you! I’m weak, and sad, and lonely, but somehow you make me strong! You’re my friend and I need you, so you can’t go away!

Thankfully, the Shade regeneration means Kainé suffered no permanent injury. Picking themselves up, the group make their way to the magic seal at the end of the room, and discover a stone fragment that appears to be a piece of a pentagonal device.

The five keys

Back at the village, Popola reveals that the piece they’ve found is one of five, each one associated with a short phrase. These have been distributed to various guardians who must be allied with the Shadowlord, the five main bosses (sorta, in the case of the tree) of this part of the game.

• The Stone Guardian (Gretel)
• The Law of Robotics (the robot P-chan/Beepy)
• Sacrifice (‘Wendy’, in the Aerie)
• The Memory Tree (the tree in the Forest of Myth)
• Loyal Cerberus (the wolf leader, Roc)

The player has some choice as to which order they approach these segments, though they roughly come in pairs, separated by the Little Mermaid section in v1.22. In Route C, you get an additional cutscene of Devola and Popola commenting on the plan…

Red Bag Ferryman

The Red Bag Man returns in this half of the game, having established himself as the ferryman—though now his wife is more concerned with his overwork than his lack of work, and they love to argue as much as ever. Each time you meet him, he’ll have a little anecdote about his wife—and he gives you a short sidequest to try and find her a present, despite not remembering what promise he had made. He’s a total doofus but charmingly so.

Assuming you complete this quest before the Little Mermaid segment, Nier enjoys a dinner with the couple, which he narrates to us as a rare moment of comfort…

The Law of Robotics

Nier and the gang arrive in the Junk Heap, and meet Gideon, who’s now lost his entire family. He’s determined to hunt down P-chan, convinced the robot is responsible for Jakob’s death. Gideon comes up with a not-particularly subtle plan to get Nier to help: he offers him a powerful sword Iron Will, which he can repair only with some memory alloy from the lower part of the Junk Heap.

As Nier and co trash a whole pile of robots, we see a few glimpses of P-chan and Kalil. Kalil is telling P-chan all about the world outside, as the robot rests on its back in a large round chamber.

At this point, the player is sent to deal with one of the other segments while Gideon works on the sword.

After doing any of the other quests, the player returns to the Junk Heap and gets the sword Iron Will. Gideon asks Nier to go and avenge his brother—his project as a weapon-making for the last few years. The mention of a Shade is plenty to motivate Nier to go in and hunt it down.

At the centre of the Junkheap, Nier arrives in a large round chamber. Kalil is sitting on top of P-chan’s head. P-chan has a lot more attack patterns than the other P-33 robots you’ve fought, and a lot more health.

As you fight, Kalil begs P-chan to stop fighting, and not leave him alone. But P-chan’s ‘mission’ is to defend Kalil. Kainé, able to understand Kalil’s voice, is increasingly disturbed.

Abruptly, metal detritus rises into the air and attaches itself to P-chan. The robot grows large junk wings like an angel, and rises into the air. (This, we’ll see later, is only a precursor to P-chan’s ability to grow and transform!) P-chan starts talking about escaping, to go see the world, but first, it will defeat Nier. And as Kalil begs his only friend to stop, Nier smashes P-chan’s wings and cuts Kalil down. P-chan shuts down, and Kalil apologises as he finally dies.

Gideon enters, and starts hitting the defeated machine in a final act of spite. He breaks down into laughter, talking about how he’ll now explore the whole mountain and build ‘killing machines’.

Good job, Nier!

In v1.22…, there is an additional cutscene after killing Beepy where the party discuss what happened. Kainé is almost ready to confess what she’s learned about the true nature of Shades, but Nier launches into talking about how he must kill them all, and she reconsiders, instead worrying about what happens if Tyrann should take over her body.

The Memory Tree

Nier et al. return to the Forest of Myth, not particularly thrilled by the prospect after the whole time in the Deathdream. They approach the Mayor, who advises them that there is a strange ‘presence’ around the sacred tree at the centre of the village. By tradition, nobody is supposed to go near the tree.

If you talk to the villagers at this point, you just get long strings of ellipses interspersed with connectives.

Approaching the tree, Nier hears a strange voice. It identifies itself as “the trees, the grass, the woods”—and it is the magical computer system that’s running the store of memories, named Sleeping Beauty in the Grimoire. The narration tells how the computer functions on words and feelings. You can read a full transcript of this story here.

The tree shows Nier and Weiss a series of treasured memories. This is actually the setup for a puzzle: each time you play through the sequence, a certain number, colour, etc. mentioned in the story will be different, and later on you’ll be asked reading comprehension questions.

The first memory, ‘Envy’, concerns a terminally ill boy, and his simultaneous comfort and resentment towards a girl who cares for him.

The second memory, ‘Loss’, concerns a soldier who fights a red-eyed member of the Legion. As each enemy dies, and turns to salt, others rise, and her companions fall. The Legion destroys the town which contains her daughter.

The third memory is incomplete, but begins with the arrival of Angelus in the Nier world.

Over time, the tree has been losing memories. It struggles to process the loss. When Nier arrives, all that’s left is ‘a few crystals’. A small Shade appears, apparently eating the tree’s memories, and Nier cuts open its belly, freeing many of the memories. But, if I’m parsing the story right, this ‘Shade’ actually is actually the mind of the tree itself; it tries to talk to Nier as Nier continues to cut it apart. It touches him, and feels things it hasn’t in centuries in its nascent, rudimentary soul. The world of words starts to fall apart and time slows down. At the end, it asks one question: what is the most important thing in the world? You can only answer “Yonah”.

The tree’s ‘identity dissolves’, and we return to the game, having found the ‘Memory Tree’ key. I’m honestly not fully sure of the larger significance of this sequence.

The Little Mermaid

The “Little Mermaid” section was originally a short story in Grimoire NieR. In v1.22…, it becomes a whole playable story segment. Previously I had a summary of the story, which remains in this fine box…

In v1.22…, there are some changes to these events. The section begins with Popola asking you to check on the Red Bag Man, who has not been reporting in to work. At Seafront, it emerges that a massive ship has washed up on the beach, drawing a great deal of curiosity… and as you run around trying to find the Red Bag Man, it’s apparent he’s not the only one to have disappeared.

From Route B onwards, this is interspersed with cutscenes. Seafront’s Postman boards the ship, and inside, finds a young girl who does not seem to be able to speak. He gives her the name Louise, and over time, attempts to teach her to sing and write. At one point, he even offers to adopt her into his house, but she refuses. A red bag appears on her shoulder, and in some scenes where he’s absent, we see her shade body manifesting. Her speech becomes more comprehensible between routes B and C. Curiously, the parts where they sing are performed on something like a harmonica for both Louise and the postman. The framing of these scenes is very much like a stage.

In the last such cutscene, the postman sees a pool of blood on the floor, and leaps to the conclusion that she’s on her period. He runs off to fetch something to clean up.

In route C, we learn a bit more about this whole situation in a brief scene with Devola and Popola. Louise is a special shade raised by the twins as an insurance policy: if the Shadowlord does not cooperate, Louise will be able to subdue him. But her desire to be human is a fatal flaw—she does not, for some reason, have a corresponding Replicant, so she will always be a Gestalt. Whether they know she’s the cause of Red Bag Man’s death when they send Nier to investigate is unclear…

As Nier runs to and fro, Kainé gets a horrific sense of looming Shade magic. So when Nier finally heads towards the ship, she and Emil appear in town to join him. They find a hole which provides access to the ship’s lower levels.

Inside the ship, Kainé’s overwhelmed by the stench and the power of the Shade, has to back off with Emil and leave Nier and Weiss to explore alone.

The segment takes the form of something like a point and click adventure: you poke around the various rooms of the ship, finding hidden chambers and keys. The puzzles are more like speedbumps, but it builds a powerful sense of foreboding. There’s a very cute touch where Nier and Weiss catch a glimpse of Louise, but then she disappears, and Weiss becomes afraid the ship is haunted.

Gradually, a picture emerges: the ship was a slaver vessel (appalling Nier and Weiss alike), but at some point it was attacked by an unknown sea monster who slaughtered the crew. A single survivor barricaded himself in a room and maintained a diary, gradually running out of ink to write and resorting to writing ‘help me’ in blood. (As one does.)

Eventually, Nier falls through a hole in the ground and finds the bottom of the ship contains a large pile of half-eaten corpses—among them, the Red Bag Man. Horrified, he climbs out of the bilge to meet Emil and Kainé, and they enter the final cabin where Louise is standing. The postman enters, oblivious to the danger, but when Kainé points out Louise’s true nature, all hell breaks loose.

Louise loses control of her physical form and transforms into an enormous tentacled form that looms over the ship, replete with mouths, with her own little girl body in the highest mouth of the creature. Her tentacles start to break up the ship, and Nier fights his way to the deck, where a multi-phase boss fight begins.

The flow of this boss fight begins the same in all variants. Starting in Route B, Louise’s speech is translated; in Route C, the distortion lessens on the voice acting and it becomes comprehensible English. She talks about how the postman was the only person who ever treated her with kindness, desperately hoping to become human and be with him.

The boss fight is definitely one of the most elaborate, Toylogic really put in their all. The first phase sees you dodging her scream attack and destroying face tentacles on the deck of the ship. After a point, the characters unlease a furious flurry of attacks, slicing off huge chunks of Louise, but her regeneration is so strong that it does almost nothing.

Louise smashes the ship and the characters land on the beach. Tyrann encourages Kainé to exploit Louise’s protectiveness of the postman and threaten him, but at first she refuses—she won’t use her blades on a ‘human’. You smash up some more tentacles and bombard the mini-Louise in the tentacle monster’s mouth with magic.

At a certain point, Louise starts a scream attack that covers the entire beach. A damage clock ticks down at the same time. In the first two runs of this fight, there is no way to beat this damage clock in time (I assume it’s rigged), and the whole party is overcome by the attack. Kainé grabs the postman and threatens him, but gets knocked away—but the fight ends with the postman intervening to shout at Louise and tell her she’s a monster, and they can never be together. Louise turns to the sun and shuts down her regeneration, allowing herself to be destroyed.

In the aftermath of this version of the fight, there is a cutscene where Kainé finds the “thank you” letter from Louise, though the player can’t see its contents. Tyrann asks what it says, but she tears it to peaces.

In playthrough C, the fight changes. This time, it’s possible to overcome the damage clock, at which point Louise collapses, allowing the player to run up her tentacles and face her little girl body directly. She spits out a lot of bullet hell patterns. Unfortunately by the time you reach this point, you can make short work of her, even on hard mode.

This time, the postman does not need to have a go at Louise, and Kainé does not threaten him. When Louise takes enough damage, she dies in much the same way as before.

In all versions, you get a little coda scene where you talk to the postman, and the Red Bag Woman bursts in, desperate to find out what happened to her husband. You can either tell her the truth that the Red Bag Man was killed, or lie to her and say he left because of their arguments. Either way she’s understandably extremely upset!

This time, when Kainé catches her letter, she takes a minute to present it to the postman before the player leaves Seafront. He admits that, as much as Louise was a ‘freak’ and a ‘monster’, he still cared for her. We can only imagine what those all too familiar words mean to Kainé.

Loyal Cerberus

There are two more keys to go! Let’s check one out.

One such segment concerns Façade. We finally get to see the wolves’ side of the conflict. Roc says that the people of Façade have destroyed their forests, yet knows that the wolves cannot defeat them in battle. He insists that the humans will eventually live alongside others—remembering his own master.

Meanwhile, Nier receives an invitation to the King of Façade’s wedding! The bride is of course none other than Fyra. She’s dressed in a much more elaborate bridal robe with lots of decorations. The King eagerly welcomes them, and invites them to stay overnight as guests.

We see another scene of the wolves. In preparation for the King’s wedding, some of Façade’s soldiers have gone out hunting wolves, killing dozens of them in a large pit.

We get a few scenes before the wedding. Kainé wonders whether she should even be present at the celebration. Weiss heckles her as ever.

There’s a significant conversation with Emil here. In Gestalt, Emil eagerly asks Father Nier about his own wedding. In the original version of RepliCant, he instead asks whether Nier might like to ever get married, and even suggests he might be interested, though Weiss hurriedly closes the conversation. The updated version of RepliCant changes this a bit to really underline the point that Emil is gay: Emil wishes he was in Fyra’s place, and when Weiss jokes that he’s confused and they’ll find him a nice bride, he says “yeah, that’s not really it” as they leave.

Finally, Nier chats politics with the King on the roof, where he explains he’s throwing the wedding to give his people something to celebrate in the harsh times.

Roc sees the bloodstained bodies of the slain wolves, pierced with Façade’s spears. He tries to save one young wolf, but the wolf dies before he can extract the spear. He decides he’s waited long enough: the humans have to pay.

The wedding starts out well, with all the citizens out dancing, and as rule 904 dictates, Fyra and the King go to seal the wedding with a kiss. Abruptly, an injured guard stumbles in… and the wolves attack. Roc grabs Fyra in his jaws and kills her. Furiously, Roc lists the crimes of humanity, but of course only Kainé can understand what he says. Nier and the gang fight him off, and Roc calls a rapid retreat.

The King cries of Fyra’s body. Now she is married, she can speak… and she thanks him for the care he’s given before finally passing away in his arms. Furiously, he calls for revenge on the wolves, vowing to go personally… The advisor intervenes, reminding him of his royal duty. But he will not ultimately be deterred. Nier and Weiss agree to join the King on his campaign for revenge, for Fyra’s sake.

Before the King leaves, the Advisor appears with a group of soldiers. He reminds the King that going out alone is a violation of the rules. The King is prepared to break the rules, again for Fyra’s sake—but the advisor reminds him that this is the job of the Men of the Mask. He gives a short speech, and reveals he’s talked to every citizen and obtained consensus before going to war. The King is humbled, and thanks his ‘foolish people’ for being willing to follow ‘an idiot like himself’.

Roc also gives a speech, affirming the intention of the wolves to die with honour. Yes, this is basically Mononoke-hime, isn’t it?

Nier and the Men of the Mask attack the wolves, and the battle begins. Dozens of wolves come in, but quickly die to Façade’s spears. “There shall never be peace between us!” Roc cries; Nier, meanwhile, declares that even one Shade is reason enough to kill every wolf here.

At last, Nier inflicts a severe injury. There is a final exchange between the two leaders:

King of Façade: Horrid beast! Die! We cannot know peace as long as you draw breath!

Roc: Those were my very words, human!

The King runs Roc through, and he dies, asking why he deserved such a fate. The last we see of him is rejoining his master in the white void of death, the final moments where Roc’s master chose for him to become a Gestalt. The player receives the Loyal Cerberus key.

The player goes to Façade’s graveyard, and the King delivers a final eulogy for Fyra. Weiss assures the King that Fyra was surely content with the life she had, and asks him to honour her memory. He asks them to leave before he cries, as the rules dictate.

Grimoire Weiss: Is that another infernal rule?

King of Façade: The People of the Mask live and die by our rules. And sometimes we even break them. Isn’t that right, Fyra?

Sacrifice

After the player has done one of the other sections, Popola receives a letter from the Chief of the Aerie. Bizarrely, the people of the deeply hostile town have thrown open their doors and invited all and sundry to visit their new shop. They claim they might be able to assist with the ‘Sacrifice’ key.

Deeply skeptical, Nier and the gang set out back to the Aerie. On the way, Tyrann needles Kainé about all her horrible memories there.

As the player arrives, we see a black screen. “We do not desire needless conflict.” says a nameless villager in a strangely slow voice. But they’re afraid: ‘that man’ will come, and kill everyone.

Nier enters the village, and finds a weirdly polarised situation. The houses are full of despairing people proclaiming that everyone is doomed; but there is a thriving marketplace out in the open.

Nier reaches the chief, and is surprised to find he has no memory of the letter. Nor does anyone else he asks: the people in the houses seem varying degrees of terrified, while the people outside in an open market seem quite cheerful.

Eventually, Nier speaks to a guard at the edge of the market. The guard is vague about the letter, but asks Nier if he’s here to hunt Shades. Sure, says Nier, every last one. The guard starts to panic, and a bunch of the villagers at the market lose their humanoid forms and transform.

What’s going on? It seems the Replicants of the Aerie have been attempting to live in peace with the Gestalts. Nier, oblivious to the difference between a relapsed Gestalt and one that’s in control, starts killing all the ‘Shades’ in sight.

Kainé also enters the village, and Nier catches up with her as she attacks a woman who she claims is a Shade. The woman’s brother tries to defend her, but Kainé was right, the woman either was a Gestalt in humanoid form, or a Gestalt possessing a Replicant. Either way, the brother’s challenge to Kainé makes her hesitate long enough for the sister to cut her down.

As Nier and Emil fight off a large group of Gestalts, Tyrann eagerly awaits the moment when he can take control of her body. The Shades’ blood is sucked off to the side and starts forming into a large orb in the centre of the valley. As Nier cuts down the last of the shades, the swirling blood transforms into a sphere with flower-petal like shapes around it.

This aggregate is named as Wendy in Grimoire NieR, which notes that it has absorbed not just the Gestalts in the village, but also the consciousness of the Replicants! THis comes at the cost of its reason and identity, a ‘lump of hatred’.

As it forms, Wendy starts questioning, what, where and who it is. Wendy sents out swarms of orbs from its large central ‘eye’, and Nier and the gang retaliate with their own magic. As they fight, Emil panics, able to tell that there are ‘people’ in the aggregate.

At last, Nier runs the Shade through with a gigantic dark lance. Emil joins in with a magic beam. Wendy bursts, leaking spikes and clouds of blood. But Emil has lost control. An enormous white orb manifests, rapidly swallowing up the buildings of the Aerie.

Emil and Kainé come to at the edge of the pit, and see Emil floating at the centre of vast, completely empty spherical space. He cries, and Emil tries to comfort him. “Don’t look back.” he says, and the player receives the “Sacrifice” key.

The new Emil story

In v1.22…, we get a new little dose of story here! From route B on, after Emil destroys the village, we get a flashback to his confrontation with Halua—essentially Emil’s side of The Stone Flower. You can read it here. The first part of the story shows Emil’s trauma: blindfolded and pushed into the confrontation by a terrified man who stomps his head into the dirt when he makes the slightest mistake—lest his deadly eyes point the wrong way. He faces Halua, and starts transforming her. She stops her rampage and lets him do it, and as she petrifies, ‘her memories flood into his mind’.

At the end, Emil narrates his fears:

It was our combined power that destroyed The Aerie. Whole existences. Entire lives. Even their memories. We took it all. We took EVERYTHING.

My sweet, gentle sister turned into a monster. And the same thing will happen to me, now that I have her power.

If my instincts as a weapon win out and destroy me in the process… If that power ends up hurting someone I love… I…

Part 2 sidequests

As in the first part, there are a lot of sidequests of varying levels of interest.

One of them has you look into records of Emil’s childhood. Ultimately, you find an encrypted letter from a researcher feeling immense guilt over his transformation, which has been held for a long, long time by a Replicant family. At first glance we might think this is the ‘teacher’ we meet in The Stone Flower and Emil’s Dream, but since she was killed early in Halua’s rampage, it’s instead likely the relatively protective scientist from the Drama CD. Another quest sends you to kill a Shade in the mansion library. This shade is strangely non-hostile…

One of them has you looking for cargo from a shipwreck. If you look inside, it turns out to be a smuggling operation. You may report it to the authorities, or hand it in to the smuggler.

Another has you look to help a sick child, who turns out to have eaten poison berries; the whole party tries them and Nier immediately collapses with sickness, while Kainé loves them.

A long one them has you tracking down a man who has left broken hearts in a number of different towns across the land. You remember how Jakob and Gideon’s mother Blue ran away, abandoning them, in part 1? It turns out the ‘swain’ accompanying her was this man Carlo, and so he died alongside her.

The King of Façade sends you back into the Barren Temple after it is breached by bandits, awakening a powerful Shade. This gives you several more difficult variants of the rule rooms, with one timed one nigh impossible on hard mode (for me, anyway!).

The seasick sailor from Part 1 asks you to fetch him some materials for seasickness medication. Unfortunately it doesn’t go great: the first concoction turns out to work something like viagra (‘grawwwl’ he says to a clealy uncomfortable Nier), and the second is a drug that keeps you awake. Ultimately, the sailor decides to become a pharmacist instead…

An odd series of quests sees you encounter the supposedly murdered girl from Part 1, who is wandering strangely in the desert. Each time you visit the desert, you find her walking slightly closer to Façade. At the end, it turns out she was a disguised Gestalt, and Nier attacks her—alongside the King, who emerges from his city to fight the Shades.

An obsessed man sends you looking for treasure, but at first you find only rubbish. His wife persuades you to give him her hair ornament and pretend it was the treasure to satisfy him, and he gives you one final map… which turns out to actually lead to treasure, the weapon Labyrinth’s Shout.

Storming the Shadowlord’s castle

The key is complete, and Nier can finally climb the Lost Shrine. Before you return to the town, 1.22… adds a little extra conversation in which he tries to persuade Kainé and Emil to let him do it alone, with little success:

They extract a promise: after Yonah is rescued, they can go and explore the world looking for cures to Kainé’s possession and Emil’s body, and sample all the food they find along the way.

Poor bwabs.

Devola and Popola almost challenge him… but ultimately give him their blessing. Their plan, we see in a final cutscene in route C, is to have him go to the Shadowlord under his own power (opening the gate on the way), and then overpower him and force him to accept his Gestalt before he can kill the Shadowlord… Devola almost gets cold feet, thinking of all the time they had spent with the young replicant. But they both agree, they don’t have a choice to defy their design.

Nier et al. climb the Lost Shrine, and open the seal which Hansel and Gretel once defended. According to Yoko Taro, behind the seal is a lift leading to a long underground tunnel.

At the other end, they emerge into a lush, though slightly overgrown garden with a broken down greenhouse. At the end of the garden is a small bird-feeder with two birds sitting on it. When Nier approaches it, they starts reciting a cryptic call for a passphrase. Luckily, Weiss is able to answer. (In each case, you are also offered a wrong answer. If you pick it, you teleport to the start of the area and have to start over.)

Bird: To whom does the true voice speak? Two whom does the true form show itself? You must answer.

Bird: I ask: why did humans disappear from the world?

Grimoire Weiss: I answer: Because of a black disease.

Bird: I ask: How can humans extend their lives?

Grimoire Weiss: I answer: By separating body from soul.

Bird: I ask: What is the destination of souls?

Grimoire Weiss: I answer: they are placed in their corresponding shells.

Bird: Very well. You are acknowledge as master. You may enter!

The door unlocks. In the next room are… Devola and Popola!

Battle against Devola and Popola

Nier asks them what they’re doing here. They make a rather desultory attempt to get him to turn back—the player can actually turn back, in which case you just reappear in the village and have to redo the climb up the Shadowlord’s castle.

But inevitably, the canonical course is to press on. The two twins regretfully raise their staffs. “We didn’t want to fight you.” They wanted to put it off to the next generation of Replicants—but Nier got too strong. They cast a spell which copies the Sealed Verses from Weiss—power which came from them in the first place, and they ‘loaned’ to Grimoire Weiss.

Eventually, they retreat further into the castle. They tell Nier that the answers lie with the Shadowlord, and fly away. Weiss, affected by the twins’ magic, starts to develop a speech impediment…

The Gestalt ballroom

Nier and the rest emerge in a ballroom. Translucent phantoms are dancing a gentle waltz. One of them transforms… “They’re all Shades!” Nier declares. As he kills them, more and more Gestalts start to transform—determined to protect the ‘sanctuary’. Kainé works on the door as Neir and Emil kill the Gestalts in the room.

Finally, Kainé kicks the door open. A bunch of strange Shade orbs roll into the room. These are young, not-fully-formed Gestalts, and they cry out like children.

The mother Gestalt looking after the children calls for them to merge with her. Together, they transform into a boar, named Goose (Mother Goose) in Grimoire NieR. Unlike other aggregates, since the component Gestalts have not relapsed, Goose fully retains her mind. She denounces Nier for all the killing he’s done, though as ever only Kainé can understand.

Tyrann abruptly interrupts. Something has changed in Kainé’s heart, displacing the usual ‘hatred’ and ‘sadness’.

The boar is a fairly straightforward battle if you learn the timings to avoid her charges and jumps, but each time she falls down, she swiftly recovers, somehow gaining armour in the process, and emitting a noxious fog. Nier and the gang can’t hope to defeat her alone, and Kainé forces the door while you keep her busy. He flees up a spiral concrete staircase, the boar in close pursuit.

But at the top of the staircase is another large room… and this time the door is sealed too well for Kainé to open. The boar charges in behind.

As they fight, Tyrann taunts Kainé, comparing her to the boar. Kainé retorts by psychoanalysing him:

Kainé: Like you’re any different.

Tyrann: Eh?

Kainé: Hate is just another crutch for you.

Tyrann: Hey now—

Kainé: You’re in pain. You’re lonely. No-one likes you. So you try to dull it all with violence and hate.

Tyrann: I’m not like that at all.

Kainé: It’s okay.

Tyrann: …It is?

Kainé: Look, I’m the same way. But just realising that isn’t going to help. It’s too late for us now. It’s too late for everything. We’re too far gone, you and I. That’s why we—

But she’s interrupted by the battle.

Nier manages to bring the boar down one more time. It once again starts to attempt to release the noxious fog, and the party collapse. The boar prepares to charge and crush them…

…and a swarm of spears fly in. The People of the Mask, led by the King of Façade and the Advisor, have arrived, surrounding the boar. Together, they’re able to push the door open. The King explains how he swore to defend people from shades, on Fyra’s grave, and opens the way. Nier refuses to go, but the People of the Mask push him through the door.

King of Façade: Say, how many rules are there about what to shout before dying in battle?

Advisor: Eighty-eight, my liege.

King of Façade: Amazing. How do you remember all these things?

Nier pounds on the door, trying to go back to help. Kainé slaps him, and reminds him what they’re fighting for.

Devola and Popola, again

Nier advances into the last room before the Shadowlord himself. There is a covered bridge between two large buildings, but in front of it is a wooden stage with two chairs, on which Devola and Popola are sat.

Popola decides to briefly explain the background of Project Gestalt to Grimoire Weiss. A series of documents flash briefly on the screen, and finally Weiss remembers. He realises that Devola and Popola are androids, and that the Gestalts are the ‘true’ humans. And now, it’s their duty to take Nier’s shell, and return it to its owner—“he’s been waiting a very, very long time”.

Popola: You have your own motives, your own desires…

Devola: And we have ours. I fear it really is just that simple.

The Song of the Ancients plays as Nier engages the twins. Popola hangs back on the stage, dancing and shooting out rains of projectiles, while Devola goes down to fight hand to hand, teleporting to and fro. There’s actually a very rare attack where Devola jumps up on stage and dances with Popola, launching a special projectile pattern.

Eventually, Devola falls. Popola runs to her side…

Devola: Hey Popola, you crying?

Popola: No! Don’t die!

Devola: You know, I understand now why we’re twins. It’s because…because we were born without souls.

Popola: Devola, I can’t stop the bleeding. Oh god, I can’t stop it!

Devola: This world is too lonely for one without a soul. There’s too much…emptiness.

Devola: Our souls are missing, but our tears still work. That’s kinda weird.

Devola: Sorry, Sis. …I love you.

Popola screams as Devola passes away. Nier attempts to end the fight peacefully…

Nier: Popola… let’s stop this now.

Popola: Stop? Stop? You want me to stop?

Popola: You think I have the luxury to stop?

Popola: You cut down my sister like an animal and you tell me to stop!?

Emil: Popola, wait! It doesn’t have to—

Popola: No one stops! It’s way too late to stop! No one stops!

She screams furiously and releases an enormous cloud of magic bullets. Reluctantly, Nier has to keep fighting.

Emil’s end

At last, Popola gives in and summons an enormous magic orb, surrounded in chains of the Celestial Alphabet, destroying the bridge in the process. Emil creates a bubble around himself, Kainé and Nier, but Popola starts to draw it in with a magic tendril.

Emil: You know, when I was young, I hated my eyes.

Emil: And now, I hate what my body has become.

Emil: But there’s something else there now. Something like…pride. You know? I mean, without all this…

Emil: I couldn’t have become your friend.

Emil: Good-bye my friends. Thank you for everything!

Nier: Emil?

Emil: For so long, all I could do was destroy. But now, I have the chance to save something.

Emil splits the magic bubble, allowing himself to be drawn towards Popola while Kainé and Nier are sent forwards to the other side. He sinks into the dark void around Popola. The bubble around him cracks, and Emil curls into a foetal ball in the darkness, quietly saying he doesn’t want to die. And then the ‘ultimate weapon’ detonates, leaving a perfectly spherical hole in the structure of the building, before collapsing to a tiny black orb. Emil’s staff falls down.

The second Emil story

In Route C of v1.22…, we get another prose segment. Emil remembers a better time: when he and Halua enjoyed their birthday together, receiving a cookie from the Teacher which he shared with Halua, and Halua’s portrait of him using every crayon in the box. (Parallels, eh.)

In the present, Emil is on his way to being obliterated by his magic, but Halua somehow manifests—and intervenes, using her magic in an explosion of colour to arrest the destruction. She promises Emil that she’ll always be with him. Emil reflects on his promise:

The darkness enveloping me flows away, replaced by a brilliant blue sky.

I don’t know where I am or what I’m supposed to do…

But it’s okay that I’m here. I know that much now. She’s given me the courage to accept that…

No more crying.

I’ll live with a smile on my face.

Because that’s the promise I made her.

The King’s end

We cut to a bloodstained King of Façade, surrounded by the bodies of his people. The boar charges, and he raises his spear, bracing it against the wall. He drives the spear into the boar’s head, and she dies for the last time. The King slumps against the wall, and whispers Fyra’s name as he passes away.

We see Gestalt Nier, standing over Yonah. He’s waiting for his body to arrive, so they can be together.

Kainé and Emil collapse in the hallway, shaken and out of breath. Kainé starts kicking and punching Nier, holding him against the wall, but she backs off. Per Yoko Taro, this scene is intended to have something of a romantic overtone, at least with Brother Nier. (Everyone’s horny for Nier.)

At last, they reach the Shadowlord.

The Shadowlord’s chamber

The shadowlord is in a long, brightly lit room with a projector screen at the back, and windows along each side. Replicant!Nier runs towards Yonah’s bed, but Gestalt!Nier rises up on magic wings in front of him.

First, the player must beat Grimoire Noir a second time; then, Gestalt!Nier drops down to join in. Weiss’s speech impediment grows as the fight progresses. He’s not just stuttering, but having trouble thinking, and seemingly in pain.

Tyrann comments (from route B): there’s ‘something weird’ going on in Kainé’s heart. Her hate and sadness has been replaced with ‘white light’.

Kainé: Don’t you get it, Tyrann? You’re not the only voice in my life anymore. I’ve spent time with others. I’m a curse. A freak. I know that, and he knows that too. But guess what? He still accepts me. He still forgives me.

Tyrann: Oh come on. You’re doing this for him?

Kainé: I’m tired of this world and everybody in it. I’ll become his sword one last time!

Replicant!Nier overwhelms Gestalt!Nier, but before he can deliver the final blow, Yonah interrupts: “Wait!” There’s a great shot where Replicant!Nier and Yonah appear to walk towards each other… but in fact she’s going to Gestalt!Nier, as Nier turns in befuddled surprise.

Because of course, the Yonah piloting the body here is the Gestalt, not the Replicant. “I don’t want this anymore.” she says. “I don’t need someone else’s body.” She can feel “another girl” crying inside her—the other Yonah, who loves her dad/brother just as much.

Gestalt!Yonah faces the window, as Gestalt!Nier, lying on the floor, begs her not to disappear. And then, she vacates the Replicant body and disappears into the bright light outside the window.

Furious, Gestalt!Nier gets back up and attacks again. Replicant!Nier affirms his determination to protect Yonah, and his friends, avoiding waves of magic. As the two Niers fight, Weiss loses even more control. Suddenly he loses the power of flight, and starts pulling himself along by his cover. He’s gone ‘beyond his limits’. With a final bit of sarcasm, he sets out to do a final task.

Nier: You can’t! I swore to fight by your side!

Grimoire Weiss: Bah! You are an exceedingly stubborn man. You know that, don’t you? Perhaps that’s why I’ve so enjoyed our time together. But I fear this is where our journey ends.

Nier: Weiss!

Grimoire Weiss: Oh, and remember what I told you about using my full name?

Nier: Urgh…

Weiss: Well forget it! I’ve grown rather fond of ‘Weiss’.

Nier: Weiss… I knew you’d come around.

Weiss: Don’t let it go to your head now.

From this point on, Weiss has no powers and loses his physical form. You must push through a final bullet hell pattern to land the last few hits on Gestalt!Nier. At last, the Replicant strikes the killing blow, and Gestalt!Nier explodes into a ball of black spikes before fading out as ash.

Nier approaches Yonah, seemingly dead…

Ending A

The ‘endings’ in Nier are mostly not distinct timeline branches as in DoD, but instead different perspectives on the same event.

In ending A, Weiss’s disembodied voice advises Nier not to give in, but to call Yonah back with the memories they’ve shared, which show their lives have meaning. Yonah asks some rhetorical questions about her favourite things, ending with ‘who do I love more than anyone?’, at which point the player must type in the name they set on the save file.

Yonah opens her eyes, and sees Nier. She’s back in her body, and to her the prior five years passed as if she was in a sleep.

Kainé walks away, and Nier invites her to stay with them. She holds tight to her arm. She has ‘personal shit’ to take care of… before Nier can inquire further, Yonah calls his attention to the bright sky outside.

We cut to some time later, a sunny day in the village. Nier and Yonah are sitting outside, Nier having now discarded his mask. Nier passes her a Lunar Tear and lays back in the grass.

As the credits song Ashes of Dreams begins to play, we fade to the white void, where Gestalt Nier stands hand in hand with Yonah.

Ending B

This ending shows Gestalt Nier’s side of things. After Nier strikes him down, he sits alone in the void, lamenting his failure to save Yonah and all the pain he’s brought her. The game loads the scene from the very beginning, with Nier and Yonah in the store, and Yonah passing him a cookie. He tries to let her have it all, but she persuades him to take half.

The screen fades to white, and he continues to cry. The images of all the game’s bosses appear briefly in the background. And then Yonah’s voice cuts in. She appears just as she did in that first day in the shop, and thanks Nier for always being there for her, before presenting him with his half of the cookie.

We abruptly cut to a desert. A black dot resolves itself into Emil’s head moving at tremendous speed. He bounces twice, and manages to start himself rolling. But first, he’s gotta find a body and some legs.

I sure hope Kainé and Weiss haven’t killed each other yet. I swear, you leave them alone for one minute!

Ending C/D: the choice

Kainé stands some distance away, watching Nier reunite with Yonah. Her body is covered in black Celestial letters—the Black Scrawl. She walks away. Tyrann talks about what a rush it’s been, all the killing. Kainé staggers, holding tight to her arm. Tyrann starts to realise that being a pantomime villain isn’t all it’s cracked up to be…

Tyrann: But goddman, we had some fun, huh? Killing and killing and more killing… what a rush!

Kainé: Yeah? Ngh…

Tyrann: Wait, no. No, no, no! It wasn’t fun at all! I turned you into a killing machine! I spread evil and chaos around the world! But it all feels so empty now! Why? I don’t understand?

Kainé: Sorry, ‘sunshine’. Maybe I’m just nicer than you thought.

Tyrann starts to realise that he’s about to swallow up Kainé’s consciousness—but he doesn’t really want that anymore. Kainé warns Nier of what’s about to happen. With Emil gone, no-one can hope to stop her. She begs Nier to kill her before the transformation starts, her voice taking on a Shade-like edge. An orb appears around her, and she rises into the air in full Shade form, surrounded by magic circles.

Kainé starts to saturation-bomb the room with complex 3D bullet-hell patterns, still begging Nier to kill her. He swears to kill her, but Tyrann cuts in. He promises to pin Kainé down, and that if Nier stabs her through the heart at that exact moment, he might be able to save her.

Kainé falls down, and we enter the familiar white void. Tyrann explains that there are two ways to save her from living as a relapsed Shade: to kill her, or for Nier to ‘exchange his own life for hers’, allowing her to be restored to human form rather than being possessed. But the cost is that Nier will be erased from history.

This is the only storyline branch. For Eishima Jun, in interview, her opinion is that Father Nier chooses to kill Kainé and live on with Yonah; Brother Nier chooses to sacrifice himself for her. But ultimately the ‘canon’ is vague on which is the ‘true’ ending which leads on to NieR: Automata.

Ending C

If the player chooses to kill Kainé, Nier kisses her, and her body fades away. “Kainé, let’s go home.” Nier says. But Tyrann has some final words. He talks about his years in Kainé’s body, the pain she felt. He promises Nier that Kainé is free—that she’s been ‘forgiven’, and ‘saved’. And she had a final message: thank you.

Ending D

If the player chooses to sacrifice themselves for Kainé, they are warned that they will disappear from this world; that everyone will forget that Nier existed. The player is warned that all of their save data will be deleted, and given several chances to back out. Then, they must type their character name. The game pages through the menus, showing all the player’s items, quests, weapons, words, fishing records, documents, stats and the five keys disappearing.

Then, they get to watch a brief cutscene. Kainé comes to, back in human form. She stares at her hands… Yonah approaches, and asks if she’s all right. “Are you… are you the one who helped me?” Yonah says. The room is otherwise empty. Kainé stares about, bewildered, as Yonah thanks her, getting brief visions of Nier. “But you don’t look happy?” Yonah says.

Yonah sees a Lunar Tear fall from Kainé’s hair. She passes it back, and Kainé cries quietly, unable to say why. Side by side, they stare out at the sky.

It’s like… I just found something special. Something very special.

In all endings, the credits roll to a version of Ashes of Dreams.

There is one final ending in version 1.22…, but we’ll come to that shortly.

The failure of Project Gestalt

It is not stated explicitly in the game, but Replicant Nier’s victory has doomed the Gestalts. Without Gestalt Nier providing a steady supply of ‘stable’ maso, or a replacement, all surviving Gestalts will relapse. The Replicants will then develop the Black Scrawl, and even if they didn’t, they’re unable to reproduce without Gestalts as a source. One way or another, humanity—Gestalt and Replicant alike—is doomed. This is discussed in NieR Automata: Project Gestalt report 11.

Not that it would have done much good if Gestalt Nier had had his way. If he’d returned to his Replicant body and become a ‘normal’ human once again, he would no longer be able to provide a source of stable maso. Only Devola and Popola’s plan to use the Grimoires Noir and Weiss together would have saved the Gestalts, but it would imply the complete genocide of the Replicants.

After the endings: Grimoire NieR and the Drama CD

This is where the game ends, but not the story. The last two stories in Grimoire NieR are set after the endings.

Grimoire NieR: Around the World in Eighty Days

This story concerns Emil, as a head, having a cute adventure in the wake of ending B. It has been translated here by way of Chinese forums. It leaves the choice at the end of the game ambiguous.

Emil rolls about, struggling wtih getting stuck in sand. He makes his way into a rocky area, and attempts to build a body out of rocks. But it’s too heavy.

On day 17, he reaches a less desolate area, and chases some waterfowl for feathers. But he only ends up plunging into a lake.

By day 26, he’s had little success. He’s harassed by a wolf. A few days later, a big cat plays with him. He finally figures out he can fly, and decides to gather materials for a new body.

A month later he’s gathered a large supply of materials. He’s fought a giant spider on the way.

On Day 66, he reaches Seafront. But a large flock of seagulls attacks. He falls in the sea and a Dunkleosteus (one of the rarest fish in the game) harasess him.

Finally, on day 80, he starts assembling a mechanical body. But in the process he blows himself up and ends up flying back to the desert.

Drama CD: disc 2, track 2: Lust

The final (non-high school AU!) track on the Drama CD concerns Kainé, three months after ending D. You can read a fan translation here.

Kainé is back to the work of killing Shades, earning the admiration of the people at a village. But it’s far from fulfilling. Though no longer possessed by Tyrann, nor quite so hated by the villagers, she still isolates herself far from other people. Each night, she’s bedevilled by a recurring dream.

She’s woken by Shades, and soon learns that they’re attacking the village as well. She rapidly destroys the Shades. Entering the house, she finds that one of the villagers—an unnamed boy—has died. To the horror of the rest of the family, she attacks the corpse, crying because no matter what she does, people still die.

Kainé flees the village, alternately crying and laughing. Falling by the side of the road, she finds a Lunar Tear. She doesn’t know why she’s still crying…

Ending E

And then… NieR RepliCant v1.22…, with very little fanfare, introduced an extra ending… albeit one that we’d encountered before, in the Grimoire.

Here’s what I originally wrote about the story The Lost World:

The game really fleshes this out and adds some tantalising details, so let’s narrate it…

Ending E requires you to start a new save file and play through the game up until the second battle with Hook. (Something of a pain, but if you’ve played the game this far, speedrunning up to that point on normal mode is trivial.) This time, in the cutscene where Nier pulls Kainé out of the void, his arm abruptly glitches and disappears.

Kainé wakes up from this dream at her old home near the ruins of the Aerie, struggling to remember “something extremely important”. To her current memory, three years ago she saved Yonah from the Shadowlord, fighting alongside Emil. She saved Yonah, but she was crying… and she still can’t figure out why. Emil’s staff rests beside her hut.

So now… you get the chance to play as Kainé! Like we’ve been waiting for since the beginning of the game. She has an incredible moveset full of kicks and flips and spins, just an absolute joy to play. Lacking magic (since Tyrann is gone), she gets two extra moves, a stinger and an AoE spin, and the game gives you an opportunity to test it out on some shades. Also she naruto runs. It’s amazing.

Sadly the whole ‘three years on’ game world is not available as Kainé, so you can’t go check out what’s become of Façade. If you go to “Yonah’s village”, Kainé doesn’t enter, saying it looks fine from outside. If you try to enter the Junk Heap, there’s a fence outside, warning that the robot activity has intensified. You can also find a dead boar on the plains—seems that the dream of Kainé boar-drifting has yet to be realised!

If you visit the ruins of the Aerie, Kainé remarks:

I killed so many shades while I was trying to rescue Yonah. But somehow, I have this strange feeling like… like somehow they’re not all bad. …couldn’t for the life of me explain why though.

POV: Kainé verbal abuse and kicking

This segment is the opportunity to get a certain easter egg achievement. If you push the camera underneath Kainé to look up her skirt, and leave it stationary for a few seconds, she’ll mock you and kick the camera away forcefully. Keep doing this ten times and you’ll go through a whole series of dialogue before Kainé kicks you to death, giving a game over screen.

All right, fuck off and die you pervy little shit! … Creepy bastard must have had a death wish or something.

At this point, you get an achievement.

I realise as one of teh trans I should render an opinion on this. Honestly? It’s a great riff on the similarly phrased achievement in Automata, and has very little to do with getting the player to go ‘haha she has a dick’ (which would certainly undercut the thrust of the narrative). They could probably have anticipated the controversy and phrased the achievement differently.

The forest cleans up

On her way to check on Yonah, Kainé encounters a guard out on the plains, who reports that contact has been lost with the Forest of Myth. So you head over there, only to discover everyone is dead… and strange robots are coming out of the tree.

The robots use the same attack pattern as the robots in the Junk Heap, but they have a completely different design, looking like a cluster of pipes. Their origin in the Divine Tree is covered by a magic barrier. So you fight your way through them, the barrier disappears, and enter a tunnel.

As you descend the long spiralling tunnel, the roots of the tree start giving way to metal pipes and thick braided cables. A voice addresses Kainé as she descends…

Boy: Welcome to the sea of humanity.

Girl: Welcome to the cemetary of sin and punishment.

The voice actors for these two characters ‘Boy’ and ‘Girl’ are the same as 2B and 9S from Nier Automata. We’ll see the characters shortly.

The voices identify Kainé as a Replicant—the first time the word is voiced in the game. They explain the nature of the tree.

Boy: This is an integrated information-management database designed to resemble a perennial plant.

Girl: It transmits phenomena recorded in its memory unit.

Got all that? Big magic computer. They inform Kainé that by killing the Original Gestalt, causing the rest to run wild, she has caused the deaths of ‘countless Replicants’.

Finally Kainé enters a large, round chamber and we get a glimpse of Boy and Girl, emerging in cocoons of wires. They slightly resemble a young 2B and 9S, but also Adam and Eve, with perfectly white clothes and skin. Kainé wastes no time cutting through their bodies. Their outfits are patterned in a way that heavily resembles the YoRHa uniforms, and they summon a large robot to fight Kainé. As she fights, they drop some more info:

Boy: We are the administrators.

Girl: The administrators of this forest.

They have been long watching the ‘recycled vessels’ of this ‘recycled world’, and invite Kainé to entertain them. The robot has a decent handful of attacks, and it’s a much more mobile enemy than most of the bosses, but it’s not an especially hard fight at this point, and Kainé has little trouble smashing it.

The next room, the Boy and Girl manifest a small army of robot doubles of Kainé, at “the point in your journey when you were strongest”. They describe their makeup:

Girl: A collection of microscopic, plant-based propulsion units bound together with Maso particles.

Boy: The same as this very forest.

Girl: A massive forest of memories coalesced by the triumphs of quantum mechanics and Maso research.

Boy: A forest that records anything and everything about the world.

Records, huh. This voices are of course aimed at the player, and Kainé doesn’t understand a word. She’s not impressed by the weakness of her copies, but the voices promise they will keep coming indefinitely.

Kainé: God damn you’re annoying!

I’m going to tear these freaks apart, eat the pieces and shit ‘em into a trash can!

Singularity

Kainé starts to flag under the onslaught, and takes a hit, when abruptly, Emil enters to defend her with a magic shield. He’s gotten his robe back, and now has four arms to go with it. He soon deduces that the magic circle is the energy source for the robo-Kainé swarm, and sets to destroying it. The administrators note the new arrival impassively. Fighting with Emil triggers Kainé’s itching sense of amnesia, and then, well:

Boy: Unusual phenomena-fluctuation observed.

Girl: Singularity signature detected in Replicant Kainé.

Boy: Fascinating.

Girl: Terribly fascinating.

At this point everyone who plays DoD 3 starts making a little noise like a kettle starting to boil—oh wait, just me? Well, in any case: ‘singularity’ is the term Accord used for entities like Zero, people whose actions create an explosion of diverging timelines. And one of Yonah’s diary entries mentioned Accord coming by Nier’s village to sell weapons…

Emil overcomes the barrier, and they proceed onwards. The knotted cables give way to white cubes, just like Adam’s Copied City in Automata, and the inside of the Tower.

Boy: Beyond here lies that which was lost.

Girl: The final hope… for you to obtain.

Kainé and Emil emerge into a massive white void full of structures made from similar cubes, in what appears to be a rough approximation of the garden with the bird fountain in the Shadowlord’s castle. Kainé admits she’s been worrying about Emil… (Team Kamil, back in action again! says Emil irrepressibly) and Emil admits he’s also getting this feeling of amnesia.

Emil sense an enormous magical power as they procede through the copied castle into a reconstruction of the room where they fought the Shadowlord. At the end of the room is a white cube surrounded by pulsing circuit board traces. There is nothing to do but attack it. Immediately, you start getting bullet hell patterns, which you need to dodge as you run down the room.

Boy: That is the core frame of this forest, within which a great variety of information is stored.

Girl: Inside it exists all that this world is, including the memories you have lost.

Snatches of Nier’s voice sound as Kainé repeatedly runs down the room and attacks the computer.

And then… AND THEN!!

You end up in a different kind of void full of cubes: the grey hacking space of NieR Automata. This time, a black cube manifests. The administrators appear in a blur of pixels and advise Kainé that she’s found her memories. All the attack effects turn into more voxelly variants.

Kainé attacks the cube, and shades start appearing—though they are merely reconstructions, the administrators note, of the “true humans you slaughtered on your journey.” When attacked, they explode in a cloud of black cubes.

Boy: You are a foreign entity in this world.

Girl: An error created by a discrepancy between memory and record.

Kainé fights a recreation of Kalil crying over Beepy’s body, then Gretel, repeating her speech during the second battle about the damaged Gestalts who supported her.

Kainé protests. “I kill shades. That’s all there is to it.” Impassively, the administrators summon her worst memory: Hook. But upgraded.

You can make headway at first: the attack pattern is similar. As she fights, Kainé recalls: someone was there when she first fought him.

Differences come as Hook summons the orbs: abruptly, they turn into human figures, who each shoot out rings of white and black bullets. Afterwards, Hook hops up into the sky, attaching itself to an invisible wall, and slams the arena. There is no avoiding this, and Kainé starts staggering weakly, unable to effectively fight. The human figures start shouting the taunts from the Aerie: “Get out, half-breed! You disgust us, you disgust us all! We don’t want you!”

The last prose segment

As you take more hits, the screen gets more glitchy and distorted, until Kainé falls down. And you get… another prose segment. Unfortunately this prose segment does not seem to have been copied onto the wiki, or anywhere else that I can find. So I made a full transcript here!

The short version is that Kainé is pulled into a kind of lotus eater dream, in which her memories of the present slowly fade. She’s in the Aerie with her grandmother, confident despite the villagers’ hostility… but as she visits the apothecary, everyone starts to disintegrate around her. She runs to her grandmother’s house, but both she and her grandmother disintegrate.

The story ends with Grimoire Weiss’s voice intervening, reminding her what she’s fighting for. Somehow, he’s the only one who remembers Nier existed…

“Do hurry back now…
hussy.”

The white flower

We return to gameplay, and Kainé gets access to all the powers of Grimoire Weiss—though it seems a simulation of him which flickers every so often. Now armed with the full suite of magical powers, Kainé can shoot Hook down when he jumps up onto the invisible wall. All the spells have new, more simple and geometric models suitable to hacking space.

Kainé: Hey Weiss… thanks.

Weiss: Have you been in your cups again?

Kainé: (amused) Fuck… your face.

Weiss: That’s more like it!

As Hook is defeated by a pummelling of two giant blocky Dark Hands and a huge laser beam, the administrators get blown away too into a cloud of white sparks:

Boy: So this is a Replicant’s potential!

Girl: Possible futures are…blending with the time we currently inhabit!

I hear a song!

At last, we hear Nier’s distorted voice, begging Kainé not to do this, to go back. Kainé retorts, her voice cracking, over a montage of the scenes at the Aerie where she joined the party…

Shut up, shut up, shut uuup!

I already made up my mind!

Nobody tells me what to do! I swore I would be a sword!

I swore that I would be YOUR sword! Do you hear me!

So I am going to get you back, and I don’t care what it takes!

Who the FUCK do you think you are to just up and disappear like that, huh!?

I’M the one who gets to decide what my life means to me!

It’s MY life, and I’ll do whatever I want with it!

So quit wasting time like a brainless fuckwit and GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE NOW!

The player is given a yes/no choice, very similar to ending D: “Do you want to recover the person you cherish?” and warned that doing so will delete their Kainé save, and restore their old save files. The animation of all your menu items disappearing plays in reverse, and, indeed, your ending D save file is restored. (Though in fact only the most recently loaded when you got the ending, I think.)

Grimoire Weiss signs off once more: “I leave the rest to you… hussy.” And we get a final cutscene: an enormous Lunar Tear rises out of the ground over the forest, looking very much like the rise of the Tower in Automata, and gradually blooms. Emil flies in, and sees Kainé crouched on the flower’s stamen, her arms wrapped around a naked pre-timeskip Nier.

The two give a final set of voiceovers:

Kainé: Our journey may have been meaingless.

Emil: Our past may have been a mistake.

Kainé: But we’re not going back.

Emil: Even if this world comes to an end.

Kainé: Because this… This is the world with the people we cherish.

The camera pulls back over the giant flower to the first few bars of Ashes of Dreams.

Although visually quite similar at first glance, this flower does not appear to be the world-ending Flower of DoD3. But I’m sure Yoko Taro wants us to notice the similarity…

The encore

After ending E, an additional menu item appears, in which the characters—all inexplicably alive—say goodbye and thank the player, and engage in a little banter. You can listen to it here:

What next?

The next game, NieR Automata, takes place after another, far greater timeskip. But as ever, there are some side materials to help fill the gap, including some very unexpected turns like P-chan’s ascension, and a totally left-field alien invasion. We’ll cover that in the next article, which will focus on the last remaining track of the Drama CD (titled The Space War), the story The Fire of Prometheus, the YoRHa and Shōnen YoRHa stage plays, and a selection of Automata novellas.

The blame for the failure of the Gestalt program is laid on Devola and Popola. But rather than simply disposing of all Devola and Popola models, the android powers that be program the survivors with an overwhelming guilt, and mark them for hatred and discrimination.

As far as what happens to Nier, Kainé and Emil… we don’t really know. Before long, however, Nier and Kainé will die out with the other Replicants, leaving only Emil. Emil will persist down the thousands of years… but that’s a story for the next post.