Square Enix published the original NieR Replicant game in Japan in 2010, with NieR Gestalt being released a couple of days later to the rest of the world. The games were received well for the most part, being praised for their story and characters. However, the gameplay left much to be desired and struggled to engage players. Side quests were annoying and combat felt sluggish in places.
However, as we’ll soon discover, this didn’t stop fans from loving it and its sequel. A sequel whose incredible mainstream success gave the original a second chance to find its place in the hearts of the fans.
Cultish
For years, the game was seen as merely a cult classic, beloved by a group of fans but with no plans beyond that singular game. Fast-forward five years to E3 and fans saw the rebirth of the series in NieR Automata, a game we’ll get into in the future, and the series grew to mainstream levels and garnered a massive following. Much of that following was centred around Automata, with it being the more known and, admittedly, better game.
However, many people were drawn to the original through hints of it in Automata, and in this era of remakes and remasters, fans of the original, myself included, saw a glimmer of hope. With the remake’s release on the horizon, I’m going to be going into the development histories of both the original and Automata in a future piece. Today we’re kicking that off with the games that started it all, and hope you’ll join us for a little history lesson.
To first speak of NieR, we must talk a little about another series; Drakengard. Known in Japan as Dragon-On Dragoon, the series was developed by Cavia and published by Square Enix, just as NieR would come to be. Much like NieR, Drakengard has multiple endings and the events of the fifth precipitate the spin-off. This ending, however, was originally designed as a joke.
Strangely, it became the game’s most famous sequence due to how bizarre and disconnected it was from the rest of the game. Surprised by the reactions of fans and developers, Taro would go on to build the foundations of NieR from this scene.
So Nier
First revealed at E3 2009 as simply NieR, the game went through a rather odd development cycle. When first revealed, it was going to be one game for both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, however it was soon revealed that the game was going to have two versions that would be exclusive to different regions. For Japan, there would be NieR Replicant, and for the rest of the world there would be NieR Gestalt, or just NIER.
At this point, the game had been in development for almost five years. Director Yoko Taro and Producer Yosuke Saito had been doing a number of interviews in preparation for the release, talking about the early versions of the game and how many changes it had gone through, both in console versions and in gameplay. Sitting down with Famitsu, they said how they originally wanted to make “a spectacular RPG like the Final Fantasy and Star Ocean series” but that soon turned into an action game.
A or J?
This decision was originally seen by Taro as Saito following the current trends in the industry, but he would eventually elaborate that he wanted to take advantage of the work that Cavia had put into Drakengard and ensure it wasn’t wasted, believing that if they cut out the flying sections then they would be able to put all their focus into creating an action game.
Aspects of the original JRPG plans remained, however, in the form of various side quests. As game development went on, many ideas and features were suggested and experimented with, though not many made it into the final product, with the ones they left receiving overall mixed responses. This development cycle of coming up with a bunch of ideas and being unable to settle or deciding to just scrap them would not only be present in the gameplay, but in the story as well.
Eventually, Yoko Taro was tasked with the story development and took quite a long time to settle on the story. Eventually, he settled on taking the aforementioned Ending E of Drakengard and using it as a base on which to build his story, with Taro saying he wanted to present a “different kind of horrible” than in the past.
When learning of the intention to make NieR a spinoff, Saito requested that the game was made in such a way that people who hadn’t played Drakengard were still able to understand and enjoy the story. While developing that story, Taro experimented with a lot of concepts.
A Tale to Tell
He wanted to make the story “like a Shonen Jump” in that he was trying to capture that feeling of euphoria when the hero is saved by trusted allies. Unfortunately, he failed to capture this feeling due to his accidental obsession with the risks of characters’ actions, something that is found throughout NieR’s multiple playthroughs and endings.
The story would eventually land on its feet after being juggled by the indecisive Taro. But not without retaining parts of its early concepts, with books being a main plot point in the form of Grimoire Weiss, a floating book full of words and wit, as well as Shades, the main enemies of the game.
With the project taking shape, Saito and Taro decided to ensure that they had the North American and PAL localisers and marketing team involved in the development process. They wanted to make sure that this game turned a profit and, with the poor sales Drakengard had in the West, they wanted to ensure they knew what they had to do to maximise profit potential.
Immediately, they were told two things. First, as a multi-platform game, they were told that the experiences shouldn’t be the same. This was the origins of the father and daughter concept.
“Too Comical”
Secondly, the storyline was criticised for being “too comical” for a western audience, and that a child swinging around a big sword wouldn’t be seen as serious enough for the narrative. A realistic hero would be their way of garnering more attention and appeal better to adult players in the west, which is what they would need with Taro’s storyline. The argument between Saito and the western team lasted an entire day until Saito relented. However, Taro wasn’t the happiest with this decision and his motivation began to decline. Eventually, it was settled upon that the Japanese version of NieR would keep the original brother and sister storyline.
However, this decision came with an underestimated workload. Father Nier needed a new design, new dialogue and aspects of the story had to be changed in the western version. This led to developer exhaustion and Saito dodging his superiors’ inquiries over the cost of these changes, confident that they would get both versions out.
Lessons Learned
This, plus many other issues, were resolved as well as they could be and NieR hit the shelves. The game, as previously mentioned, met a rather mixed response from the audience. Combat was clunky and the game felt rushed in the mechanics areas. But this didn’t stop a devoted fanbase from gathering around this new title and singing its praises, with Metacritic showing a Metascore of 68 and a User score of 8.6, along with IGN giving the game a 7/10.
Unfortunately, the fan’s love wasn’t enough to drive the game to any notable success. NieR fell to the wayside, seemingly destined to be no more than a brief entry into a brand new world.
NieR was a great game that suffered from a far-from-great development cycle. The indecision and conflict behind the scenes led to the product suffering and, seemingly, thrown to the wayside. What went into bringing the critically acclaimed sequel, NieR: Automata to life? We’ll have to find out in our second NieR retrospective.