NieR: Automata Making Fan Service Fashionable

I’m guessing anime fans are some of the most dehydrated people on the face of the planet…


Cause they always seem thirsty as hell

On a somewhat related tangent (wait for it), I’m always on the look out for some great behind the scenes moments and deep dives into “how the sausage is made”, so to speak, even though in reality, I would never actually want to know how literal sausage is made, as the process is grotesquely horrifying, so that was a very poor choice of words to try and enforce my metaphor with some impactful meaning, but it’s the end of a work week and I’m quite tired, you see. More to my point, having some insight from industry juggernauts and alumni of the old school variety giving their two cents on the inner machinations of what exactly makes gaming tick is always a delightfully welcomed and insightful experience. Though, on occasion, I am left just ever so slightly rather confused about the information I come across.


This was an intentional self-burn, to be fair, but
have you checked out any of the titles from the Kingdom
Hearts series recently?

In this realm of thought, I bring to the fore a quotation from a big wig cut from the Sony cloth and days of yore, Shuhei Yoshida, who recently spared a few moments in an interview being passed around in relevant circles, to share some perspective on the breakout success of 2017 action title, NieR: Automata:

“I think the Japanese game industry was revived after NieR so much so that I would say it was before NieR and after NieR,” Yoshida said. “To put it simply, I think NieR: Automata was the title that made people realize ‘let’s make something Japanese.'”

Interesting share by Yoshida, who has been around the block once or twice, but one that also comes as a complete shock to me, making me scratch my head wondering if I was paying close enough attention to gaming in the 2010’s as much as I thought I was. While Automata was undeniably successful in leaving it’s mark on the industry, I don’t ever really remember a lull in Eastern influences within the gaming world, neither in presentation, relevancy, or popularity from my recollection, which leaves me wondering why out of all games, Yoshida cites it more than others. The quote has been rattling in my brain for a couple of days now, and as I continue to ponder it, it does thrust into focus the undying urge to go back and do a quick retrospective of just where Japanese games seemingly dropped their native pretense and started chasing a more Western approach to design within the gaming world, or perhaps it was just trends he was referring to?


Exhibit A, B, C, and D maybe?

I’m not sure if that’s what he’s referencing exactly, though there does feel like more to this story, at least a piece missing that makes the mystery left more to the imagination without one being deeply familiar with the zeitgeist at the time. However, I never really stopped gaming in the 2010’s and have done so for decades now, so for something as large as this to have eluded my observational powers seems quite queer. If you factor in the notion that as an analogue of Eastern influences in entertainment, anime has been nothing but trending upwards and continuously gaining popularity for awhile now, and that both anime and gaming seem to run quite close to each other in terms of both audience reach and influence as well, I stand correct at what I thought was an already admirably track record on Automata’s behalf, and am now even more genuinely curious to go back to it, and re-explore titles from that time period, to better understand the context.

Ultimately, there’s plenty of room in the gaming world for all walks of life and perspectives, so if something high quality has a bias or a source of inspiration that resonates with people, gamers everywhere will benefit….

…which is why I would have never assumed that a more Japanese stylized influence would ever go out of fashion, cause anime fans are thirsty as hell, and gaming has a lot of overlap with that fandom, and NieR: Automata is all of that to a T. I guess people were less thirsty in the 2010’s?



Seems doubtful.

~Pashford

Pokémon Disaster

Gotta catch em all…after beating them mercilessly into submission of course!


If only this kid lived in the world where Big Boss
exists, he could have a whole different set of issues
with this kind of enthusiasm

Writing dark deconstructions involving the Pokémon series never gets old, and quite frankly is a seemingly endless treasure trove from which to mine from. Which is a good thing, too, as I’m not always immersed balls deep into any one game in the series, in spite of multiple titles usually coming out during any given year, though my amorous tendencies for the series remains unabated. As I’ve briefly mentioned before on ATE, I have had a tenuous relationship at best with Scarlet and Violet, as the games just represent what I deem as an excessive low point for the series, which makes it a serious difficulty in swallowing the dreck that represents Pokémania in any tolerable fashion. Even the thought of booting Scarlet up at the current moment makes me shudder, as the title is such a trial in patience on every conceivable level.


What Pokémon Scarlet and Violet should have been called

Though the titles have shaped up a bit through patches and post launch content, it’s a day late and a dollar short, quite honestly. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: just because a game has an awesome approach to game design, doesn’t mean everyone needs to ape it. I know it’s inevitable, and especially in a day and age where the triple A gaming industry is always looking for a sure fire hit, you’ll bet your ass that anyone who’s anyone is going to crib notes from something as prolific as Breath of the Wild without batting an eye, but carbon copying the experience while losing the series DNA in the process does active damage to the brand, and nothing positive for anyone in the long run.


How I imagine most conversations go during
Pokémon developer brainstorming sessions

I guess since the publisher is at least shared in this case, one developer publishing under the Nintendo banner borrowing from another developer could *at least* be somewhat justified as colleagues of sorts sharing notes, but Pokémon never needed to go full open world in the first place, at least not the mainline titles. It was an experiment better saved for a side project, and to be left at that, as it makes Scarlet feel far too aimless in it’s scope when you really pair down the entire experience. The industry goes through ebbs and flows with this kind of thing all the time, as you’ll see something like Street Fighter II, Mario 64, GTA III, Halo, WoW, Minecraft, or Fortnite touch down like a mother fucking meteor on the face of the gaming planet, and everyone wants to make the same colossal impact, sometimes spawning entire sub-genres of *insert game killer here*, and thus the new trend will be born.


Sometimes the comparisons of quality work as
intended if not quite literally, though not all are so lucky***

And while I iterate now for the sake of transparent acknowledgement, Scarlet and Violet were obviously never billed as a Zelda Killer, but the lengths of effort in which the devs themselves went to compromise the very foundation of the Pokémon design ethic ended up coming off as a net-negative, and upon reflection, just completely sabotaged the whole notion of quality therein.

Being inspired is one thing, but make sure not to lose your own identity in the process.

~Pashford

(***EDIT: Dark Cloud rules, by the way.)