Nier - Underappreciated Beauty

I have a friend out in Ohio by the name of Kevin. He's one of those kinds of guys who has a burning curiosity for those lesser-known games destined to be passed up by those with interest only in the big-budget titles like Call of Duty and Halo. Perhaps if video games these days cost a little less, more people might take a risk on games they know less about, such as this little gem released on PS3 and 360 this past May, Nier. Even though I do love me some games, I have to admit that $60 is a pretty big investment for a lot of us nowadays, especially with the economy being the way it's been. That money is an even bigger risk when the game comes out, and ends up scoring mixed reviews, most of which tend to lean toward the negative. I like to read the reviews of gaming critics from Game Informer, 1up.com, or even IGN, but there are some cases where the critics are just...wrong.

Luckily for us both, Kevin thought the same way about the naysayers. He decided to take the risk I couldn't afford to at the time, and snatched up the PS3 version of Nier. Neither of us were expecting great things, but the game's trailers and screenshots still held an awful lot of promise.

Nier was developed by a lesser-known developer known as Cavia, and published by Square-Enix in May of 2010. It followed the story of a man (Presumably named Nier, although the game allows you to decide what his name will be) and his tireless search for a cure to the Black Scrawl virus that has afflicted his daughter Yonah, 1300 years after the same virus had killed off most of humanity around the world.

The world has been reduced to a near-feudal collection of tribes and hamlets scattered about the ruined, green wreckage of our once-proud civilization, and although life is tough, the father holds himself together with the help of Yonah; she is his very reason for existing, and the sole excuse for him to continue living. Everything he does, and by extension everything you do, is for her. The fact that humanity is dying out is...irrelevant.

The Black Scrawl virus is not the sole concern of those living in the world beyond the apocalypse though, as a plague of ghostly, otherworldly creatures known as Shades stalk what humans remain. What the Shades are, and why they have hunted humans to the brink of extinction, are just a few of the mysteries that the storyline of Nier attempts to answer, and it does so in a way that I can only call unique and beautiful.

This world, although it is a future vision of Earth, is dissimilar from our own through the existence of magic. Magic is a key ingredient in the fight against Shades, although the only two entities capable of using magic are two special, talking and floating books named Grimoire Noir, and Grimoire Weiss. They embody the duality between light and dark, good and evil...although it isn't quite clear at first which one symbolizes which.

Grimoire Weiss, as he demands to be called, is your companion. He is found early in the game, held prisoner by the game's first boss fight, a pair of hulking armored statues stood in silent patrol in the ruins of what once was an apartment building. By the time the game takes place, such a simple thing as an apartment building has come to be altered into what looks to be a cathedral, empty aside from the unintelligible shrieks from the Shades that inhabit it. Your daughter Yonah had run to that building, away from your watchful eye, all because she had hoped to find a flower called the Lunar Tear, in hopes that it might grant her wish to be cured...but instead, it brings you to Grimoire Weiss, who in turn may truly have the key to a cure for Yonah.

The story continues from there, growing from a personal tale about saving your daughter, to an incredibly bizarre tale of how it was that humanity managed to kill itself...

To say more would spoil it, though it's difficult to make heads or tails of the story until the credits are rolling...but even then, it isn't enough! A part of Nier's innovation lies in the fact that the storyline you see the first time through the game is literally half the story; after the credits, the game asks if you would like to play again from the middle. It isn't long before you discover that the game has hidden the truth from you...and that the missing piece changes the entire meaning of the story. Throughout Nier, you feel as if you are heroic...you feel as if you were doing the right thing...

...until you are finally able to hear and understand what the Shades are saying.

That single change to the game changes everything...and it makes you almost feel disgusted at yourself.

This incredible twist in Nier's storyline during the second playthrough doesn't even touch on the myriad of reasons to fall in love with Nier's charms, however. The game is unique not just in story, but in all areas.

Many games adhere to a strict genre, but Nier attempts to buck this trend in a very different way from other multi-genre games (Such as Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption), by gluing together genres that make almost no sense together. One part of the game has you shooting from a top-down perspective at obstacles, just like the old arcade game Asteroids. Another beautiful section of the game is a full-on text adventure, similar to early PC games like Zork (These parts of the game feature some of the most beautifully-written passages I have ever seen from within a video game). Some parts of the game feel like an RPG, with a system of leveling up and improving skills, but even then the gameplay simultaneously feels like a hack n' slash action game.

The real showstopper though has to be Nier's incredible soundtrack. With 43 songs on the official OST, over half of them feature vocals of one kind or another...all of which are in a language made to sound like futuristic versions of Gaelic, Portugese, Spanish, Italian, French, English and Japanese all swirled together into a lyrical stew. None of the songs have any true translation, but it is all because they are sung in a language that isn't supposed to exist yet. One of the most incredible songs in the soundtrack is a forlorn, beautiful track sung by one of the game's many colorful characters, Popola; it is called "Song of the Ancients", and it never ceases to send a chill down my spine knowing that the 'ancients' in the song's title are none other than us. Not one of us will ever be able to understand the music...but we know just by listening that it is the sad tale of our civilization, and how we were lost to the winds of time so many years ago. Have a listen!



Isn't it ethereal, and yet so strangely forlorn? It's...like passing on a prayer to those long gone, those who will never hear what you wished for them, and yet it is all that can be done. The last remnant of their memory embodied in a song, and echoed for all those who live on...

Gives me shivers every time I hear it! And that's just one song among MANY that are just...stunning. Try listening to "The Wretched Automations", or "Emil - Sacrifice", or even "Temple of Drifting Sands"; they're all flat-out excellent, in my opinion.

The music is beautiful, some of my favorite of the entire year in fact, but that doesn't mean Nier doesn't still have some problems; which contributed heavily towards the negative critical reception that Nier gathered, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Many critics couldn't stand the gameplay structure, such as this quote from Gamespot's Nier review: "This dreary action role-playing game has its worthwhile moments, but they're separated by countless hours of fetch-quest tedium.". A few other critics, such as this one from the New York Times, had something positive to say: "Incredibly, Nier even forces the player to read. Some of the game’s most powerful moments are presented simply as white text on a black screen. In the context of a medium in which almost everything is displayed visually, these prose segments in the form of memories and dreams ignite the imagination and lend the overall experience a rare depth. No game I have played since 1999’s Planescape: Torment has made such effective use of textual storytelling.". I would tend to agree with this, really; the text sections truly are beautiful and effective, showcasing some of the best writing I've seen in a long, long time. Still, it shows just how mixed the feelings were on Nier. It should be fairly obvious which side of the debate I stand on.

Nier is a flawed, but beautiful game; I'm proud to say I own it and have beaten it twice. I have my friend Kevin to thank for the willingness to dig for a hidden jewel, and find that rare, unappreciated gem hidden away out of sight, destined to get almost none of the respect it deserves. It's a true shame then, that after Nier was released, Cavia was disbanded and absorbed by its parent company, AQ Interactive. Nier was their last hurrah, and to leave on such a beautiful and thought-provoking final note is perhaps the best way to go...but even so, those who played Nier and loved it for what it was will be saddened they had to go.

Oh, and as a final note, if you took a look at the "Song of the Ancients" video above, you might be wondering why there are two versions of the game; Nier Replicant and Nier Gestalt. Nier Replicant is the original version, released only in Japan, in which Nier (the father) and Yonah were brother and sister, not father and daughter. Nier was a much younger character, with a completely different design in the Replicant version, and the developers at Cavia thought American audiences would not be as receptive to such a young character. Because of this, they decided to make a version of the game called Nier Gestalt, which featured a tougher, older protagonist who was looking to cure his daughter. Nier Replicant was only released on the Japanese PS3, while Nier Gestalt was released on the Japanese XBox 360, and was also ported to the American and European PS3 and 360. Take a look at the picture below to see just how radical the character changes were for the two versions!