Welcome to the State of the Arc Podcast! Today we’re discussing NieR Automata, a philosophical and introspective game that is actually really fun to play. In this episode, we talk about how the game was made, and what needed to come together in order for it to happen. This is an amazing game and one that seems to marry gameplay with story in a unique way. We talk about Yoko Taro, Yosuke Saito, Keiichi Okabe, Akihiko Yoshida, and of course, philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Sartre, Nietzsche, Pascal, and many others. If you like the podcast, please leave a like and a comment letting us know. Thank you, and please enjoy!
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24 Comments
Two things to add here: First, we're now aware that the video Casen found of Taura (not Taro) taking off the Emil mask is, in fact, NOT Yoko Taro. I'm sure we'll bring this up again in the future as a correction. Secondly, here's the link to the coca-cola ad we referenced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts_4vOUDImE&ab_channel=Coca-Cola
I sure hope you guys spend years talking about this game, like it deserves. 😋
I'm very interested to hear what Mike and Casen's thoughts on the final ending, ending E. I feel like I'm in the minority when I say I really didn't care for it and to some extent I think it undermined the themes and gravity of the rest of the game's narrative. It's a cool idea and it's a fun experience from a meta-perspective, I just don't think this was the right game to have it in. Mike mentioned he had some reservations about the in-universe explanation for Nier's ending D ("feels over reals" he said), and I think ending E in Automata has the same issue, but to a greater extent. I don't really want to say more on it in fear of spoiling people but I am very interested for when they get to it.
When we live from our perceptions we get lost in them and can't find one another. When we live from our being we all meet in the same place.
Oh my god.
I love everything you guys do, but this is on another level. I LOVE Automata, and the two of you dissecting it is such an amazing match. I'm buckled up and ready for this insane journey!
looking forward to this one a lot, I skip over episodes of games I plan to play so I can listen when I get to playing them so I've had to wait for the last 10 weeks to see what was coming next.
Nice vid
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I wish I enjoyed this game more than I did, I hope your podcast will make me remember the game more fondly 😅
I am in the minority I am sure, not looking forward to this game being covered. it always seemed overly pretentious to me, and was more interested in philosophical themes without a coherent beat to beat plot and story to back it up. be interested to hear your thoughts, but I am sure its gonna be alot of praise for the themes without much criticism of the presentation of those themes. I dont think the storytelling was particularly good, but the themes were still powerful. which made it an odd mix for me.
A few comments:
1) The distinction between one's primary motivation and one's god is purely a matter of semantics. Whatever one considers to be of highest value is, by definition, what one worships.
2) While it's certainly the case that people from different cultures/religions frequently have more in common than they realize, I'd argue that there is one conflict that can't be reduced to the intentional manipulation of average people who'd otherwise recognize each other as basically the same at heart: the conflict between those who see the cosmos as fundamentally good and therefore seek to align themselves with it, and those who see the universe as hostile and therefore seek to carve a place for themselves in spite of it.
3) Killing is the strongest — and therefore most appealing — symbol for overcoming a hostile obstacle. Whether anything literally dies is a secondary concern at best. (See: fighter pilots calling any shot-down aircraft a "kill" even if the adversary pilot punched out… or the aircraft was an unmanned balloon) I'd argue that this has an awful lot to do with the frequency with which "kill" features as a verb in videogames, and that there's a significant amount of abstraction going on in the way that we process it. (I always thought that the "ludonarrative dissonance" arguments about Uncharted were silly, because no matter how impressive those games' graphics were, the combat sections still came across as an abstraction for "Drake was confronted by a bunch of bad guys and faced X degree of challenge, but ultimately won.")
4) Considering human beings to be biological machines seems to miss the more interesting connection between humans and androids, which is the fact that both humans and androids are defined much more by conditional logic than by atoms and electrical impulses.
Possibly the best episode of this podcast thus far. Eagerly looking forward to the next episode!
Maybe you guys can see the anime too , because there's a lot emotion the android you can see rather than the game itself
@45:56 Something I found very interesting about NieR:Automata was the dates used for events that take place during the 14th Machine War.
I would recommend to anyone going deeper down the NieR rabbit hole: Google any date mentioned in this game. Maybe also subtract 10,000 years.
I happen to live in a dangerous city. Seriously, don't visit here. The rumors are true, the gangs have taken over. There is a reason people say that.
Anyway, thanks for this analysis. I look forward to seeing the upcoming episodes.
One of my favourite game of all time. Here we go, I haven’t played it since 2018 I believe, so time to play this gem again with you guys and listen to this beautiful soundtrack! ❤
The profound thing most people got out of this was big anime tits and thongs
Ohhhhhh yeah, I've been waiting for this since I mistook Nier Gestalt for Nier Automata and got hooked on this podcast. Finally! Bring it on!
Great video and conversation, very interesting dive into the themes of the game. For an interesting view of what afterlife is or can be I recommend watching the sitcom "The Good Place", it starts very light hearted but by the end it goes very much into the philosophy of meaning and what would life forever would be like.
So glad you're covering this game!
Yes yes yes!! Can't wait
22:55 – The character designer for FFXVI is Kazuya Takahashi. He was one of the illustrators for FFXIV between A Realm Reborn (2.0) and Stormblood (4.0).