Trivia / Taro Yoko

• Breakthrough Hit: All of his games before NieR Automata were cult hits in the west at best, and he generally wasn't very well known as a creator. After Automata's critical and commercial success, he has effectively been put on the map as someone to look out for when it comes to the Japanese video game landscape.
• Creator Backlash: He doesn't seem to hold the first Drakengard in very high regard. He's stated that the game turned out poorly because of cavia's inexperience with action games, combined with Executive Meddling from Square Enix forcing them to rush the game's release.
• Doing It for the Art: His approach to writing and directing games is highly experimental, and undertaken with the explicit purpose of standing out from other games and making players think about common video game tropes they take for granted. He is aware that his work will likely alienate many people, but the ones who do connect with it will probably love it.
• Method Acting: While working on the YoRHa raid for Final Fantasy XIV, he created a character to know how the game works, which means he got to know the highs and lows, especially the early game's intense Padding and Slow-Paced Beginning.
• Money, Dear Boy: He claims that he concedes to his superiors and likes to joke about doing anything for money, but he's also stated that if they don't tell him what to do however he will experiment and do things they might not want him to, because they didn't ask. According to Yosuke Saito: "Yoko often says that he’ll do anything as long as he gets money, but there’s no one that doesn’t move for money as much as him. He’ll only do what he really wants to do".
• Rule 34 – Creator Reactions: After the release of the NieR: Automata demo, he said this on Twitter regarding the influx of 2B porn:
  Collecting and passing them around is a pain, so it would be great if someone could zip them all up and distribute them every week.◊
• Trolling Creator: In several ways, though in particular his games seem to loathe completionists as many of the sidequests seem designed to make 100% completion as tedious and infuriating as possible. Not to mention: Drakengard's Ending E is one of the most infamous joke endings in video games, and it's canon to a future title of his.

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