10 NieR: Automata Details That Spoil the Plot Early

Despite NieR: Automata boasting one of the most complex and captivating stories in video games, it’s incredibly difficult to grasp everything in a single playthrough.

The game’s narrative is so profound that it incorporates even the mechanics, aesthetics, and sound to convey its messages, making multiple playthroughs highly recommended to fully appreciate its splendor.

Truth be told, you’ll likely enjoy the game enough to still feel motivated to play it again, but it clearly provides ample reasons to experience that feeling in the first place.

Therefore, to celebrate its narrative magnificence, there’s no better way than to explore many of its incredible details through a list of ten NieR: Automata details that reveal just how much of the story is hidden in plain sight.

10

The Bosses’ Names

The Identity of Society is Reconstructed

Since Nier, Yoko Taro has concealed a significant portion of his enemies’ identities through their names, and the bosses in this title are once again a demonstration of this approach.

Marx, Engels, Simone, Adam, Eve, Hegel, Auguste… When you finally recognize the names of each of these adversaries, you not only anticipate part of their fate based on the history of their real-life counterpart, but also what they represent for the game world.

Named after historical figures of human civilization, the bosses serve as yet another tool to reference the robots as the new specimens carrying out humanity’s will to organize itself as a society and evolve, highlighting the complete absence of the original species.

By replacing the biological with the mechanical, there’s a new species on Earth tasked with carrying the torch of ‘humanity’, and their desire to name and organize themselves like us is a vivid demonstration that, ultimately, they aren’t actual enemies.

9

Access Points and Teleportation

Disposable Avatars of a Greater Goal

Much of the game’s story revolves around the identity of sentient beings, a detail the title practically screams from the very conception of the save system.

Rather than being an extradiegetic mechanic, NieR: Automata justifies this tool by explaining that androids upload their consciousness to a cloud so that, upon the death of their bodies, their data can be restored to a new unit.

While it might initially seem like a mere curiosity, it’s a tacit demonstration of contempt for a fundamental human characteristic, consciousness, which is treated as a mere commodity, immediately raising concerns about YoRHa’s true intentions.

An organization that claims to protect humanity cannot implant consciousness, however limited, into androids and then intend to use them like disposable tissues. Therefore, the save system is not only thematically coherent but also foreshadows a major plot twist in the game.

8

The Animals’ Behavior

An Indifferent Ecosystem

One rather interesting element of life in this universe is the presence of living flora and fauna, which would be difficult to expect from a post-apocalyptic world experiencing a supposed global conflict.

The fight between androids and robots is undeniable, but the existence of other species whose ways of life have remained virtually unchanged doesn’t make much sense, unless, in reality, no such conflict actually exists.

When it’s revealed that both groups are merely tools of the will of humans and aliens, two parties that vanished so long ago that there’s almost no trace of them, it makes much more sense that the war’s depth and complexity aren’t actually that great.

It’s a very, very minor detail, though I’ll never forget my first encounter with a moose in the game, because its unexpected company threw me off so much that I started developing conspiracy theories from the first second.

7

2B Only Disregards 9S’ Feelings

An Impossible Distance to Maintain

During the first few hours of gameplay, 2B’s disdain for 9S’s feelings is quite pronounced, constantly arguing that androids can’t afford such displays of emotions.

However, when we see her interacting with operators like 6O, who is quite colorful and emotional but still receives no reprimand from the protagonist, the differential treatment of her partner becomes suspicious.

Of course, when you discover 2B’s true identity, it’s logical that she tries her best to keep 9S’s sentiments at bay, struggling to lock herself away in an icy prison, unmoved by the warmth of his affection.

That she is ultimately incapable of doing so is something we all know, and this detail is just one of the numerous ways 2B demonstrates her attempt to hide her immeasurable love for 9S at the game’s beginning

6

The Androids’ Blindfolds

Turning a Blind Eye to the Truth

I’d venture to say no aesthetic decision in NieR: Automata is left to chance, much less one as prominent as the black visors that the androids wear without exception.

Although they’re used as an advanced HUD, they symbolically represent the wearers’ blindness to the true nature of their actions, completely deceived by YoRHa.

It’s so blatant that I can understand how you might overlook it on your first playthrough, though on subsequent routes, it becomes impossible not to see these blindfolds as the clearest indication of the organization’s desire to conceal its true motives.

Perhaps the primary reason is that they look incredibly cool, but even if that’s the case, the narrative interpretation they allow helps you connect the dots just by looking at their designs.

5

2B’s Reaction to 9S’ Sacrifice

The Frustration of Repetition

Following the pattern of moments where 2B is genuinely unable to control her feelings for 9S, the prologue itself reveals the authentic concern she feels for him.

The fight with the Goliath forces the scanner-type to enter combat mode to protect 2B, who displays a vivid sense of frustration upon seeing that, once again, 9S’s nature will lead him down the same old path.

Our protagonist channels the pain of having to begin repeating the cycle of curiosity and death these types of androids bring with themselves, emphasizing that her apparent distance is merely a tool for coping with a preemptive grief.

This happens within minutes of starting the campaign, so it’s unlikely you’ll pay much attention to it until you rewatch the entire sequence and realize how easy it was to decipher 2B’s love for 9S.

4

2B’s Deployment Isn’t a Reconnaissance Mission

But One of Execution

When 9S wonders why they would send 2B on a reconnaissance mission if she’s supposedly a combat droid, who would have guessed that such a simple and plausible question would be the prelude to one of the game’s most impactful revelations.

Indeed, 2B isn’t there for the first objective of the campaign to scan the terrain, nor even to fight any threats that might arise, but to take 9S’s life if he flies too close to the sun.

2B’s pain, 9S’s fatal curiosity, YoRHa’s lies… So many elements converge in this simple question posed at the very beginning, which is an absolutely brilliant way to foreshadow the plot.

It sounds like typical filler dialogue, though it plants the seed of doubt about the true reason for 2B’s presence and, consequently, the motivations behind the supposed objectives the androids are assigned.

3

The “Nines” Mistake

A Love Hard to Hide

Little by little, 2B softens towards 9S, and it’s easy to interpret this as simply a consequence of spending so much time together, but the reality, as we’ve seen repeatedly, is much deeper.

This becomes evident when, after 9S asks a reluctant 2B to call him “Nines” as a term of endearment, she eventually succumbs to her unconscious affection and (almost) calls him that way.

Once again, this is part of the endless subtleties in the relationship between the two protagonists, which always allow you to glimpse that there’s something more to it, and it’s not just a one-sided connection on the part of the curious explorer.

However, the game handles this in such a way that it can go unnoticed, which is part of its brilliance. The reality is so stark in the face that you barely see it, and yet it’s impossible to ignore it once you recognize it.

2

Androids and Machines’ Origins

Same Materials, Same Fate

As the story nears its end, it’s revealed that the physical origin of both androids and robots is the same, since the former are created from recycled cores of the latter.

This is a divine irony that highlights the utter absurdity of the conflict between the two species, who are not only made of the same material but also fight for the same nonexistent causes, albeit on opposite sides.

When you consider that both species are vulnerable to the logic virus and base their existence on imitating an external collective, coupled with the fact that the composition of the androids’ black boxes isn’t revealed until very late in the story, drawing the parallel becomes inevitable.

It’s an almost comical tragedy, with a shared destiny and origins unknowingly for an indefinable number of years, encapsulating the futility of the cycle NieR: Automata so insistently teases.

1

“It Always Ends Like This”

A Tale of Cycles and Death

As the last demonstration of 2B’s love for 9S I’ll allude to in this article, I believe no phrase more encapsulates the reality behind the story than the iconic line “It always ends like this” during Route A.

With the tears of an executioner reliving the pain of a seemingly endless cycle, her words summarize almost their entire existence, underscoring that this situation has already occurred before.

9S’s relentless curiosity, which leads him to overstep his bounds and become corrupted, and 2B’s painful responsibility, which leads her to destroy his current self so he can be restored to a previous version, are two sides of a recurring tragedy.

Of all the entries on this list, none raises alarm bells as much as this one, because it touches on so many elements, such as the characters’ backstories and the reality of their missions, that I dare say it marks the moment when NieR: Automata truly unleashes its narrative potential.

It is, obviously, much more direct than all the previous ones, though it’s also impossible to anticipate that such a short sentence can summarize so crudely but precisely the true hell that’s experienced in the game’s world.