[fpgaminer]

SPOILERS:

Not the person you're replying to, but

> what are the deeply philosophical themes of this game in your estimation?

Pascal's story is perhaps the most succinct microcosm of Automata's themes.

Pascal starts a village of peaceful machines disconnected from the network. They're trying to start a new life. There's hope of a future without violence; of growth and evolution for the machines instead of an endless cycle of death.

But then the cataclysmic events of Automata occur and the machines, fearing a painful, tortured death at the hands of the networked machines, choose to take their own lives.

Pascal had taught these machines fear. He(/She/They) is torn by feeling responsible for their deaths, because he is the one that taught them to fear. It is all his fault. He asks you to wipe his memory. He can't bare to live with the pain of knowing what he's done.

It's not known how much time has passed between the end of mankind and the events of Automata. It's not known how many times Pascal has started a village, taught his machines fear, watched his children kill themselves, and repeat the cycle. Just like all the other colonies of machines: endlessly repeating a cycle of hope and death.

But as the player, you get to choose NOT to wipe Pascal's memory. To let him live on, despite the pain. Through the seemingly endless cycles of pain and death you can choose hope. Hope that maybe, somehow, one day the cycle will break. You choose to push on despite it all.

Just like the ending credits. You, the player, have repeated the game OVER and OVER again. The same gameplay. The same story. Repeated endlessly. Not just by you. But by the machines and androids through NieR's history. And by all players who play the game. Repeated again and again.

But during the credits you FIGHT past that. You push on. Knowing all the pain, all the characters you've had to watch die repeatedly, all of Yoko Taro's torturous gameplay you've had to suffer through. You, the player, choose to push forward. You hope that by continuing, the cycle will end and you can find a GOOD ending for these characters you care about.

The philosophical implications of all this is that NieR: Automata's endless cycles of pain, death, and hope are reflections of human life. Your life isn't unique. Billions of humans, just like you, have come before you, lived their lives of happiness, sadness, pain, hope, and death. Again, and again, and again. To what end? What is the point? Why live on watching all that you love and care for die? And why live on knowing that you, too, will die and others will repeat your cycles?

Because by pushing forward despite the pain, despite how many cycles may have come before you and may repeat after, you CHOOSE to continue. You hope that one day, the cycle will break. Things will get better. Knowing everything you choose to fight.

As the lyrics of one of the first songs in Automata state so clearly, "This cannot continue. This cannot continue. This cannot continue."

> There are themes of how people go through inescapable self-destructive cycles of hurting each other or whatever.

So yeah, that's the point. The game is filled with cycles of inescapable death and hurt. 2B cries when she kills 9S, because she's had to do it SO MANY TIMES. It's her fate to continue the cycle of killing 9S.

But that's not the point of NieR, and why the last act of Automata is so important. You the player have to suffer through those endless cycles, and repeat the same gameplay, to put you in that frame of mind. So that at the end you can choose to CONTINUE despite it all. You the player don't know that the last ending is hopeful. You're choosing, even though you think the game is all about inescapable self-destruction, because you HOPE for something better.

Hope is the overarching theme of Automata. Perseverance in the face of seemingly endless cycles.

(And yes, I've repeated my point a number of times, as a reflect of the theme of repetition in Automata :P)

There are many other little philosophical ideas scattered throughout Automata. But the above is the main one (in my mind).

[anotherman554]

"The philosophical implications of all this is that NieR: Automata's endless cycles of pain, death, and hope are reflections of human life. Your life isn't unique. Billions of humans, just like you, have come before you, lived their lives of happiness, sadness, pain, hope, and death. Again, and again, and again."

I agree partially with you but contrary evidence is that when you replay the game the second time it isn't actually a new cycle, it just shows events from 9s's point of view.

When you play it the third time it's not a new cycle either, just a sequel campaign.

That said, is what you wrote above really a philosophy? Or is it just a theme?

I mean, Blaise Pascal is most famously known for Pascal's Wager, an argument to believe that the Christian God is real.

Pascal the robot is a pacifist who likes children. Is there really a connection there?

[Jochim]

> Is there really a connection there?

The parallel is that Pascal's Wager is an argument from fear. The Pascal in the game introduces his children to the concept of fear in the same way that the real Pascal proposes we should fear the consequences of disbelief in an unknown. Yoko taro then shows us what he believes to be outcome of the philosophy that underpins Pascal's Wager when the children destroy themselves out of fear of events that do not come to pass. They destroy themselves out of that fear of the unknown.

[brobinson]

>It's not known how much time has passed between the end of mankind and the events of Automata.

Doesn't one of the texts you pick up state that the last humans were wiped out some time around the year 3,xxx? (so like 8,000 years prior to the game or thereabouts)

[fpgaminer]

I may be misunderstanding the lore; I'm certainly no expert. But I was under the impression that YoRHa is the one that believes it's year 11XXX or whatever. And YoRHa and their backstory are fabricated. Basically most of the Automata story should have repeated many times before. It gets "reset" whenever the machines defeat YoRHa and the machines rebuild YoRHa and set them up with a fresh backstory. So YoRHa would always believe it's the year 11XXX. When actually it might be 110,000 for all we know (and poor Pascal's village will have been murdered 10 times...).

I guess it's not really important the exact chronology. Automata is abstract enough that story details are more like flotation devices than concrete structures. The point is that much of the Automata story has been repeated over, and over again, and both you the player and YoRHa are oblivious to this (until the last act).

[anotherman554]

It's my understanding that there are two different factions, Machines and Androids. The Machines were built by aliens and the Androids were build by humans.

I don't remember anything in the game about Machines rebuilding YoRHa. Did you mean Androids rebuilding YoRHA?

I don't remember anything suggesting this has been "literally" an endless cycle, in fact I believe they say the aliens were only killed 600 years before the events of the game. (Specifically the YoRHA commander says nobody has seen the aliens in 600 years and then the main characters find the corpses of the aliens and Adam says he killed them.)

So absent any further plot twists (and I don't recall any) the events of the game would have to be at least a bit different from previous cycles before 600 years in the past, and I don't believe there's a suggestion that the exact events of the game ever happened before.

I googled this very quickly and don't see any consensus that your interpretation is correct, but my search was hardly thorough.

[brobinson]

One of the revelations from the machine AIs (red girls) is that they intentionally kept an opponent around to force their continued evolution (referenced in Jackass' report [1]). IIRC they also knew about (or installed?) the backdoor in The Bunker.

[1] https://nier.fandom.com/wiki/Machine_Research_Report

[setr]

>that they intentionally kept an opponent around to force their continued evolution

I don't remember the details of the plot well, but from that report, it's more:

1. Assigned goal: Defeat Enemy

2. Defeats enemy, but realizes that if it's fully defeated, they can no longer fulfill their goal

3. Keeps the enemy alive, so they can have an enemy to defeat. But they're stuck with a contradiction

4. Start corrupting the network to force evolution, to find a solution

That is, keeping YoRHa alive and fighting is independent of the evolutionary task -- it's a side-goal, to fulfill their base requirement (Defeat the Enemy). Keeping YoRHa around is necessary for the android's continued existence, and really all it's for.

The evolutionary task is a search to find a way to get out of this current state (endless war; contradictory/nonsensical setup).

[brobinson]

Interesting, I thought the repetition was the "machine wars" and they were on the 14th iteration or whatever it was. I've played through it twice, but I didn't pick up anything about the entire YoRHa setup being repeated. Maybe it's time to play through it again.

[fpgaminer]

shrug I definitely don't know for sure. Clemps on YouTube has a theory that "Automata leads to the events of drakengard 3,which lead to events of drakengard 1,which lead to events of nier which lead to Automata." So there's at least the possibility that it loops that way. Which is a bit ... odd. I just thought it repeated in the sense that the machines use the YoRHa backdoor, wipe them out, and start over again.

I don't recall exactly what the Red Girls say, but I thought they implied that they'd built YoRHa multiple times. Don't remember now though...