Line #30 Headscratchers/Nier


1	* Where did Yonah go in ending C? After [[spoiler:the fight with Kainé begins]] she just seems to disappear.
2	** She was probably still there, just out of sight, as she appears in ending D.
3	* Where did Yonah's Black Scrawl go? When we finally see her in Part 2, she shows no signs of it, nor is she the worse for wear after apparently having this life-threatening disease for five years. [[spoiler:Is getting possessed by your Shade the cure for it or something?]]
4	** [[WordOfGod Yoko Taro]] says she still has it, and is doomed to die. She did seem rather weak in part 2 though - walking a few steps takes quite a lot out of her.
5	* The infobook. [[spoiler:The Shades being unable to live without the Shadowlord makes no sense. The prologue shows Gestalt!Nier (who ''is'' the Shadowlord) fighting against the Shades, and there is clearly no "Shadowlord" at that point in the timeline, which clearly shows that they are capable of existing without a leader.]]
6	** It's not that [[spoiler:Shades can't exist. It's that 'non-relapsed Gestalts' can't exist. Sentient Shades like Gretel, Kalil and her mother, Roc, the Shades hiding amongst humans in the Aerie, and possibly Gestalt Yonah herself can't retain said sentience without the specific element produced by Gestalt Nier and harvested from him for 1300 years, so any similar Shades still alive by that point would eventually relapse and become mindless and hostile. The Shadowlord himself is a very unique kind of Gestalt, able to maintain a very close likeness of his human form, and apparently has the power to put Gestalts back in their Replicants all on his own. When he's destroyed (and he doesn't just fade away like other Shades, his death animation is just as unique) then the source of this element is also gone, and with Weiss 'also' gone there's no way for Project Gestalt to return the remaining Shades to their Replicant bodies]].
7	* Ok seriously, is the giant shade that [[spoiler:attacks Nier's village at the end of part 1]] called Jack or Knave of Hearts? If its the latter, then I think the official game guide needs an update.
8	** In playing cards, before they were called Jacks, they were called Knaves.
9	* Even after getting the ability to unpetrify people, Emil never sees fit to fix all those poor statues in his mansion? Why?
10	** Maybe they've been petrified so long they can no longer be restored, or maybe Kaine's... unique nature allowed her to survive petrification.
11	* How exactly do [[spoiler:Replicants]] get made? They seem to be flesh and blood so they were more likely "grown" like you might a clone, but at some point it is said [[spoiler:they are sterile and without android overseers they'll die out. So how are new Replicants]] produced in a world that has approximately medieval-level technology?
12	** Not all of the [game] world has medieval technology -- Nier hardly expressed any surprise at the robot-filled Junkheap, or even the factory-like facility itself. Even the Weapons Lab merited little response other than where its hidden entrance was. But anyway! There's the implication that the [[spoiler:Androids have their own, hidden facilities for cloning Replicants. ''Grimoire Nier'' mentions that, at some point, Replicants go to the Androids, are made to sleep for a while, and when they wake up they suddenly have a child. Since the late human world regularly created Replicants to use in the war against Legion, it's easy to assume that at least some of these installations still exist somewhere.]].
13	** They are sterile because their genes aren't in them [[spoiler: they are in the Shades, that's why the black scrawl is a DNA sequence, the body is reacting to a the relapsed feedback and collapse.]] Basically they are streamed data that can't be downloaded by someone else.
14	* Is Tyrann the Gestalt for anyone we know?
15	** Not from the game, but according to the radio drama, he was originally Masayoshi Yura, the commander of the Shinjuku area defense force. He was well-known for his ability to get results, and better known for his sadistic way of doing so. [[spoiler:He was also somewhat of an accidental Gestalt; his Replicant data wasn't preserved due to a dishonorable discharge from the military (that is, he ran for his life during an isolated disaster) and has been spending his life as a Shade body-hopping.]]
16	* The Shadowlord's defenses make no sense. Why are the children on the path directly toward the Shadowlord instead of away in some safe area among the massive area surrounding Shadowlord's place. Shouldn't they have Goose on the frontlines to fight Nier's team before they have a chance to massacre everyone. And if Popola can destroy the bridge why not just do that in the first place.
17	* On another note, why is Popola so helpful to Nier? Giving him transport to the Shadowlord and giving him direction even when he had been wandering aimlessly for five years. What does any of that accomplish for her or Shadowlord's plans?
18	** The Shadowlord needed Nier to become [[spoiler:human]] again. And, presumably, Nier needed to be in the Shadowlord's ... shadowland for it to work. Obviously, the Shadowlord dying and the twins failing to subdue Nier were not part of the plan.
19	* How is it that no one in the village ever noticed that Devola and Popola never age? Nier even comments at one point that she doesn't look a day older than when they first met, but he doesn't seem too bothered by it for some reason. You'd think that some of the elderly villagers would be a bit more shocked about it though.
20	** The first generation probably questioned it, but by the time of the game that's just the way things are. Everyone is a [[spoiler:Replicant taken from the data of their respective Gestalt]], so every generation probably looks the same. Having two people who don't age is just one step beyond that so it likely doesn't raise any eyebrows especially with few travelers from foreign areas.
21	* How come Emil and Kainé camp just outside the village? Emil owns a mansion that is about a minute away, yet they both sleep outside.
22	** My interpretation is that the "real" distances between towns and dungeons are actually much larger than depicted in the game, and that Seafront isn't ''really'' forty seconds away by foot from your hometown. The distances are "shorter" during gameplay in order to expedite the story and focus on more important things. Within the reality of the game, it's probably a good hike from the mansion, so it's easier for them to spend the night outside the gates than to hoof it back and forth.
23	** From a letter from Nier to Yonah, it's clear at least Seafront is some distance away from the village, enough that he mentions the sight of the ocean and questioning whether she's been eating properly.
24	* In the beginning of the game Nier makes a pact with Weiss to fight the shades and save Yonah. Which doesn't raise any eyebrows except for the fact that it's presumably a ''Drakengard'' pact which changes everything. Pact magic is explicitly a part of Nier's backstory and even helps explain some of game's more cryptic moments such as why [[spoiler:Tyrann is able to erase Nier from existence to save Kainé. It's just pact magic at work. Emil turning into a weird skeleton can also be explained by him pacting with his sister for power.]] The thing is that these two examples are consistent with pact magic in the sense that there's a pact ''price''. [[spoiler: Nier forfeits his existence and Emil forfeits his appearance, which is a fitting price for both them.]] However Nier's pact with Weiss doesn't seem to cost him anything. Plot hole much?
25	** Not how pacts work in Drakengard to begin with, Shadowlord outlived his pact beast, they reengineered the pact magic to make project Gestalt.
26	** There is absolutely nothing to suggest that the "pact" that Nier and Weiss entered is in any way similar to the big-time Drakengard Pacts, let alone the magical science of Emil, Tyrann and Kainé's symbiotic existence, or the ending sacrifice. They probably don't even operate under the same rules of magic. For that matter, the pact between Original Nier and Noir ''itself'' is drastically different from the one with the Replicant and Weiss.
27	** To me it seems as they never made a proper pact to begin with, Weiss just hangs around Nier as a follower. Pay attention in the game whenever you use magic and you can see that all of it originates from Weiss, not Nier. Nier simply channels it but doesn't use it.
28	** From ''Grimoire Nier'', there is pact magic in the world, but it's not between Weiss and Nier, it's [[spoiler:between the original humans and the corpse of the Red Dragon. In ''Drakengard'' pacts are based on the exchange of souls; it's the fact that the dragon's corpse is soulless that allows humans to undergo the Gestalt process.]]
29	* Are Devola and Popola really androids? I know they are thousands of years old but every indication is that they are entirely organic. They bleed, they can get drunk, and they apparently even have sex drives (Nier comments once that Devola gets really "friendly" if she drinks even a drop of alcohol).
30	** Androids are defined by a humanoid appearance. Mr. Data will always remind people "I am an android" instead of a robot. Just assume sufficiently advanced tech that allows them to function as close to humans as possible. Also compare replicants from Blade Runner/DADOES, who are androids that are made from organic material instead of metal and wires.
31	* In the ''Replicant'' version of the game, why does Shadowlord seem to grow up the same way as Brother Nier himself? Does his appearance always match that of his Replicant at the time? If he had existed as a Gestalt for over 1,400 years, it seems odd that the 5 year time skip would only then physically age him.
32	** Maybe he has some subconscious control over it and having his little sister in front of him aging caused him to subconsciously change how he appeared?
33	* Exactly where did Emil's butler come from? The mansion was over a thousand years old and was abandoned a long time ago so when did the butler arrive? Was he another android and just took care of Emil as part of his cover?
34	** he, and the other identical non-active butlers, are androids. you can see Sebastion glitch out and Weiss comment that he's not human. Considering Emil was implied to be made by the same people that made project gestalt, it makes since that they'd put androids in charge of watching him.
35	* Is it ever actually explained how or why the Replicants gained sentience?
36	** There were unforeseen problems that arose from using Nier as the original Gestalt. In game it was mentioned that this was found out by Devola and Popola long after the fact. These problems included the Replicants gaining sentience.
37	* So in Yonah's diary entries, she makes several references to writing letters to Nier while he's away working, as well as the letters he writes back (specifically mentioning that he only writes her letters every ''other'' day). During the quest to find the ferryman after the timeskip, Nier himself states that he had never written a letter; this would have been at least five years after Yonah could have written those entries. This really struck me when I first heard it and I expected some sort of foreshadowing, but is there actually any reason for this?

Context Headscratchers / Nier