In terms of influences on Platinum, the original Nier is an obvious one, though the team did look westward - if only for a short time. But the team at Platinum always had the ambition to make an RPG." "We had to create everything from scratch - we were in quite an uncertain mode for quite a long time. "Technically, it was a big challenge for us," says game designer Takahisa Taura, whose previous work includes The Wonderful 101 and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. The big thing for us is this collaboration effort with Platinum Games, so we'd rather forget about the sequel part - as far as we're concerned, it's a new game."įor Platinum it feels like new territory as well, and while its signature action is front and centre, Nier: Automata is more explicitly an RPG than anything else that's come out of the Osaka studio (the sadly cancelled Scalebound aside - a topic that's expressly off the menu in this interview). "Nier and Drakengard are the same world, if you like, but they're completely different storylines. "The only thing in common is the universe," adds Taro. If you play the game without knowledge of the original, you can just go to YouTube to get more information." Even though it is a sequel, it's a standalone game and complete as it is. "Let's not forget, as a creator I don't like games which require previous knowledge of earlier games. "Well, seven years is a long time!" says Saito. Why go for a follow-up to Nier, then, and not for something entirely new? Were it not for the boozy whimsy and the willingness to wrong-foot the player at each turn - two facets you sense Platinum were always going to be comfortable with anyway - you might even have a hard time pinning this down as a follow-up to the original Nier. Platinum's fingerprints are all over this one, and while Nier: Automata remains resolutely an RPG, it's the action that comes to the fore when playing the opening hour. "Yeah, we're very glad we didn't go down that route," says Saito. Nier 2 as a mobile game? Taro says the original idea was along the lines of Farmville - something that surely would have gone down just swimmingly with the fans. So we got two different projects together, and maybe the best option was doing a full console game." We were inspired by Platinum Games - they were great fans of the first Nier, and their suggestion was remaking Nier as a Vita title. "This collaboration was suggested when we'd just come up with the idea of making the Nier sequel a mobile game. "The timing was amazing, miraculous," says Square Enix producer Yosuke Saito. How it came about was thanks to a twist of fate befitting the game itself. Of all Square Enix's RPGs to get a sequel, Nier felt like the least likely, though given its cult status it's certainly the most deserved. "My doctor wasn't very happy about the condition of my liver. So, now that Nier: Automata's finally done and dusted - it's been out in Japan a short while, with the Western release following next week - there's one question that should give us some indication of how it's all shaping up. But when I drink I make better games, so that's okay." In the end it hasn't really changed how much work I do. Platinum's removed that by working so well," he said back in the aftermath of Nier Automata's unexpected announcement. "All the time I spent on the original getting angry at the development team. The last time I met Taro, director of famously off-beat action RPG games such as Drakengard and Nier, he told me how easy it's been working with Nier Automata developer Platinum Games, and how their good work frees him up to indulge some of his own interests. Yet for all those protestations, he's an amazingly blunt, frequently hilarious interviewee - even if you're never quite sure where the affected persona stops and the actual truth lies. Yoko Taro is a strange and brilliant man.Ī self-confessed loather of interviews, he often elects to speak to the press behind the eerie, grinning moon-like mask he wore to announce the sequel to Nier, one of his strangest games to date.
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