The End of Service: A NieR Re[in]carnation Postmortem Retrospective

[Note: This feature is intentionally spoiler-heavy, and assumes cursory knowledge of the DrakenNieR universe. This article aims to give players who missed their chance to play NieR Re[in]carnation a synopsis of the game’s three story arcs.]

In 2021, live service mobile game NieR Re[in]carnation launched to mixed reviews. The ensemble cast approach and setting which seemed to bear no resemblance to Replicant and Automata, left much to be desired. Yet, Yoko Taro’s short-form storytelling (ranging from vignette to novella) appeared only to help the game as it eventually reached its conclusion.

And reach a conclusion it did. In late March 2024, NieR Re[in]carnation‘s final story chapter was released. One month later, the servers were shut down. All account data, stories, cutscenes, and combat sequences are gone for good. Though fans hoped for an offline release, the developers stated in a live broadcast (summarized by Dengeki Online) that no such plans were in the works. There will be a 500-page book published later this year that will capture most of the game’s story beats, including some that never made it into the game before its shutdown, but there is no word of a possible English release.

Despite being a huge NieR fan, I initially avoided playing NieR Re[in]carnation for three reasons:

1. In 2021, my phone was too old to run it.
2. Gacha mechanics are the worst.
3. The narrative didn’t appear relevant enough to the core game for me to take the time to play it.

By early 2024, I had resolved problem 1. Problem 2 never goes away. But problem 3? Oh, how wrong I was.

Fortunately, mastermind Yoko Taro dropped big hints that fans were ignoring a game with a well-crafted narrative that ties more things together than I could have initially guessed. At the end of each show during the 2024 NieR concert series The End of Data, the word “REPENT” would flash on the screen, with one of the “E”s shifting to a “3.” During this concert run, Yoko Taro posted on Twitter/X the single phrase “r3incarnationan” [sic]. I interpreted these statements from Taro to mean, “Hey, y’all ignored this legitimate sequel because it’s a live service mobile title, and it didn’t do well, so now it’s being shut down early. Repent. Play the game. NieR 3 is NieR Re[in]carnation.” This was also happening as a second mobile NieR game from Tencent Games was canceled early in development. So maybe Taro was just salty about all the bad news in NieR land.

In any case, with two months left before the shutdown, I finally decided to install NieR Re[in]carnation and learn the truth for myself. What was it all about? Did it have any meaningful connection to Replicant or Automata? Were the character stories interesting? Was the game fun to play? What could I accomplish before April 30th?

I got my answers. And now I would like to share those answers with you.

Orienteering: When, Where, and With Whom

Most of NieR Re[in]carnation takes place within a strange location called The Cage. In the game’s first (of three) story arcs/seasons, you’re introduced to The Cage while playing as a voiceless young girl, guided by a cute floating ghost under a white sheet named “Mama.” As you move through The Cage, you witness the memories of other people’s lives, learning their stories through vignettes while traversing stylized 2D landscapes or in a simple visual novel format. These memories coalesce into weapons, which you can use with that character in side quests or even as part of the main quest’s future missions as you build three-person teams. If you’ve played any previous entry in the DrakenNieR universe, the concept of “weapon stories” should be familiar.

The first season introduces ten characters through these memories, in addition to the two main characters of the first season: the little girl is Fio, and the monster that serves as her counterpart is Levania (season one’s title is The Girl and the Monster). It is common for both the main characters and side characters to have their stories paired. In an environment that fits the Drakengard setting, the story of exiled prince Rion is paired with that of Dimos, the clockwork soldier tasked with protecting him. In a dystopian future where humans fight unending waves of violent flowers, husband 063y and wife F66x each have stories to tell.

As for Fio and Levania, we learn that when you play as Fio in the first half of season one, you are actually playing as Levania, after he consumed Fio’s dreams and became human. The second half of season one then serves as a flashback where you (as Levania) explore The Cage alongside a chipper, verbose, inquisitive Fio and a black-sheet ghost companion called The Carrier. After fully exploring the memories of the other ten characters, things come to a head as Levania, the dream-eating monster whose sole desire is to become human, discovers that in completing his mission, he will be trading places with Fio, making her into a hideous monster. We also learn that The Carrier has some nefarious motives, while Mama continues to prove a faithful companion whose interests involve Fio’s well-being and Levania’s redemption. The body switcheroo is undone at the end, and it seems Fio and Levania will be just fine.

In the second story arc, The Sun and the Moon, we meet estranged siblings Hina Akagi and Yuzuki Kurezome. These two come into The Cage following intersecting, sometimes inverse, paths of one another. Hina is accompanied by a ghost named Papa, whereas Yuzuki is accompanied by a ghost named Mama, but decidedly a different Mama than the one Fio and Levania had. This new Mama has an annoying talking baby with her, and her dialogue (including different voice acting) shows a clearly separate personality.

Across their parallel stories, Hina and Yuzuki lead us to meet six more “memory” characters with their own weapons. Saryu and Priyet are students at a magic academy not unlike Hogwarts. Marie and Yurie are two AIs built to govern a city in the future that straddles the utopia/dystopia fence. Yudil and Sarafa are a thief and princess, respectively, whose interactions and storyline suggest twists on the stories of Scheherazade’s One Thousand and One Nights. Neither sibling is aware of the other’s presence until they meet in a fateful encounter that parallels the A2 vs. 9S encounter from endings C through E of NieR: Automata. Yes, in playing this story to the end, you are asked to choose who will win in a clash to the death between Hina and Yuzuki. After playing it out twice for yourself, once with each person winning and seeing the dread and pain resulting from one sibling cutting down the other, a third path opens to put down your weapons so these two get a true, happy ending. Somewhat.

The reason Hina and Yuzuki decide to kill each other is that, in all the variations of their pasts (they see different versions of their past lives, and this is important), Hina kills her mother and Yuzuki kills his father. The two siblings have their fallout years before their “present” form as teens, resulting from a messy divorce between the parents. Hina goes to live with her father, while Yuzuki stays with his mother. The father is unemployed and deeply depressed, while the mother is in the hospital suffering from some form of chronic illness. As each child cares for their respective parent, they come to further resent the other parent for causing this suffering. For example, Hina believes that her father is poor and depressed because in the divorce, the mother took all of the family’s money and misspent it, racking up debt. Yuzuki, however, claims all the debt comes from the medical bills and that one of the reasons his mother is unwell is because the father physically and verbally abused her.

Meanwhile, throughout their Cage-y adventures, Hina has a ghost-Papa, and Yuzuki has a ghost-Mama. The dialogue between these floating ghosts and the two teens is poignant, to say the least.

However, the introduction of Hina and Yuzuki was one of the aspects that confused me the most. In their memories, the two live in modern-day Japan, carrying the kinds of smartphones that only became popular in the 2010s. That did not fit the DrakenNieR timeline for me. After all, doesn’t Drakengard Ending E occur in 2003? The Queen-beast, Caim, and Angelus all die in Tokyo, and the particles of their dead bodies quickly lead to the White Chlorination Syndrome that begins to wipe out humanity. By 2030, the world is in absolute ruins, as seen in the NieR Gestalt & Replicant prologue sequence. So how are Hina and Yuzuki living it up in what looks like 2020 Japan?

We get the answer to that, and so much more, with the third and final season, The People and the World.

We learn that the work Hina and Yuzuki did under the guidance of the new Papa and Mama was actually the work of NieR Re[in]carnation‘s true antagonist. While we don’t have a name for this being at the outset of season three, it’s clear that said being sent Papa and Mama to use Hina and Yuzuki’s story and conflict to open a portal of sorts. This portal, we come to find out, is to a server on the Moon. Season three opens with the introduction of our final playable character, an android named 10H, and a pod companion named Pod 006. Oh yeah. Now things are starting to come together. Elsewhere in Automata, we witnessed talk of a few androids that protected a base on the Moon. Well, that’s 10H. She’s been up there a long, long, long time. (How long? We’ll get there.)

Fans of NieR: Automata likely remember these details from the game’s plot and true ending. The androids are fed the narrative for thousands of years that humans are alive and well on the Moon and are waiting for the androids to defeat the machines so humans can return and reclaim their planet. “Glory to Mankind!” and all that, right? You, and the playable YoRHa units 2B, 9S, and A2, eventually learn that humans are almost certainly extinct, though there may still be something important on the moon.

The Payoff: How, Why, and What Now?

The pacing of NieR Re[in]carnation‘s story in the third season is truly wild. Everything comes out. First, we learn that The Cage is a data center storing every facet of human existence, every story that could be told about humanity. Most of all, we learn that The Cage is a quantum computer that explores all possible realms and all potential variants of stories. This is significant because, in the gameplay itself, there are various side stories for each of the game’s total 21 characters (the five main and 16 memory characters). Sometimes, these side stories flow smoothly with what we learned in the main Weapon stories, but other times, there are clear contradictions. For example, all of Hina and Yuzuki’s side stories portray them as part of the Hamelin Organization. I was again quite confused when I first saw this, though I was happy to see Hina and Yuzuki fitting the “canon timeline.” But with the quantum computer, it becomes clear that we’re dealing in some canonized multiverse territory. In fact, as part of the season three events, all the characters’ memories/data are transmitted from the Moon, to a bunker satellite, then to Earth. On the bunker satellite, Hina and Yuzuki learn the story of the Queen-beast and the beginning of White Chlorination Syndrome (or WCS), and they are both confused. Thankfully, Pod 006 explains this occurred in a different timeline than the one they were familiar with. And yet, with the side stories available, we see in another timeline that Hina and Yuzuki remained friends and allies fighting for survival, and would later lead significant missions in the fight against Legion, though they also expose the corruption of the Hamelin Organization in their own ways.

During the events of season three, the constant dialogue comes with new information that clarifies and elucidates so many hanging threads of DrakenNieR. The quantum computer that is The Cage explains how the Gestalt and Replicant versions of the first NieR game can both be true. The NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139… Ending E scenario that left people scratching their heads? That proves to be especially important, as the building of The Cage server and Kainé defeating an entity known as “Him” to defy fate and restore the memory of Nier (the person) is all covered here. We learn that “Him” is an AI that bears witness to all variants of all history for all eternity, over and over. He observes everything that makes up The Cage.

And eventually, “He” gets lonely and out of himself pulls out a “She” or “Her.” I’ll note the obvious parallel to the characters Adam and Eve from NieR: Automata here, but in terms of scope, the He and She duo loom far larger. The two exist and observe the variations of history together forever, until one day, strangely, Kainé shows up and kills “Him,” leaving “Her” to exist on … erm … “her” own.

Now comes the really wild part. If you remember NieR Automata (and I’d recommend watching the ongoing NieR: Automata Ver1.1a anime as a refresher), you’ll recall the central AI that controls the entire machine network, the presumed antagonist of the entire story. She is called “N2” or “The Red Girl” and sometimes appears as a pair of creepy little girls. In the lead-up to the NieR Re[in]carnation finale, we learn through the records of The Cage that the machines ultimately lose in all timelines, yet The Red Girl goes on to exist, alone and despondent. Feeling pity for what she has experienced and missing her friend and creator, “Him,” the entity “Her” invites The Red Girl to merge with Her. The Quantum Server continues to exist on Earth, but The Cage on the Moon gets detached before things get wild. And I mean really, really wild.

Through satellite array jumping from the Moon to the bunker to Earth, eventually, the team shows up on Earth. Specifically, Pod 006 hijacks a physically identical pod on Earth, then guides the team (held in her data and displayed for you to see on a projected screen) through a fortress where “Her” awaits. Within seconds, the team notices something wild about Earth: it has been terraformed to look exactly like The Cage. Turns out, however, the chicken and the egg are swapped. The quantum server has always been built to reflect the topography and architecture of Earth, in whatever state it’s in. In other words, for an indefinite but very long period of time (centuries? millennia?), Earth has been turned into a series of elaborated structures in differing environs. We later learn this architecture is patterned after the home of the aliens who created the machine life forms: that The Red Girl, absorbed into Her, saw fit to turn Earth into a facsimile of her home world. Take a moment to consider the significance of flowers (Drakengard 3, the lunar tear, the Prisoner duo in NieR Re[in]carnation) and plants in general, when remembering that throughout NieR: Automata we’re reminded that the machine lifeform network is “very plant-like” and “made in the image of its creators” (the aliens we know nothing about). The brick, stone, and wood sprawl of this world has a plant-like growth to it, albeit with inert materials.

Through a series of easily-overcome story battles, you’re hit with one revelation after another. We learn much more about 10H and her time on the Moon, why “Her” needed Hina and Yuzuki to clash to open a portal to The Cage, what “Her” intentions are, and finally, just how important Fio and Levania are. In the final scene, Fio makes a wish to end Her’s loneliness by joining with her in the real world, and somehow, it happens. This power for entities to cause something to happen with no realistic mechanism may be seen as a literary deus ex machina. But in the context of Yoko Taro’s DrakenNieR-verse, it marks Fio and/or Levania as a “singularity”—someone who can stand outside the expectations of fate and actually change history, including multiverse history.

NieR Re[in]carnation‘s final FMV cutscene shows Fio as a “real girl” outside the data-based Cage, alongside an actualized Her, standing amidst the rubble of the castle-like structure on Earth. A random nearby machine also comes online after millennia of inactivity, suggesting life and change are coming to the Earth. What might that look like?

It’s tough to say. The screenshot above is one of many little data hints you could find in the last 30 days before the servers shut off. These hints, alongside data files hidden throughout the game seemingly written by the observer Android and narrator of Drakengard 3, Accord, suggest that either the Quantum Server has cycled through over 60,000 life cycles of human history, or that it has taken 60,000+ years of processing data since the server (The Cage) first came into existence, that the final events of NieR Re[in]carnation occur.

The Speculation: What’s Missing, and What’s Next?

One great irony about NieR Re[in]carnation is that it tells the story of The Cage and those who maintain its integrity. For whatever reason, androids, machines, and other entities (including those with their own will inside The Cage) all see value in preserving these records. But this game itself, having been planned as a live service game that was woefully cut short—story arc three was rolled out so fast it didn’t get an English dub, for example—has no backup. As mentioned at the top of this article, Square Enix plans to publish an extensive art and story book for the game. But, even with how text and narrative-heavy NieR Re[in]carnation was, the book stands as a poor substitute for the game.

Compare this to SINoALICE, another Yoko Taro title, which seems to be a canon part of DrakenNieR now, if only because 10H found or wrote all of their stories in her library (see screenshot above). When the global servers for SINoALICE were closed in November 2023, there were no consolations for fans. However, Japanese players got something very cool that sadly did not occur with NieR Re[in]carnation: an offline archive mode that includes access to all of the story sequences, FMVs, and artwork via their local player data. What a great option for data archiving! Meanwhile, if players of any region try to log into NieR Re[in]carnation, they simply see a message about the game being over.

And that was it. On April 30th, 2024, it was game over for fans. Even though I only utilized the last two months, it is painful to have invested so much time learning the main and side stories of all 21 characters. The writing styles of Yoko Taro, Yuki Matsuo, Yuki Wada, and Sotaro Hiroe work so well for short-form vignette storytelling that feeds into a much larger narrative regarding strife, grief, despair, and catharsis. The fact that NieR Re[in]carnation ends with a note of hope, something akin to a real “happy ending,” was a genuine surprise. Though compared to the multiverse of suffering we see throughout the game, I suppose it’s fitting to have something good somewhere.

I think of Sarafa’s side story, a variant of the Bluebeard folktale wherein she learns the mad king she has been married off to has a penchant for bride-killing. The added twist provided by the writers is that Sarafa’s mother knew exactly whom she was marrying her daughter off to, that it had been the plan all along. When Sarafa returns alive, having killed the king to save herself, her mother expresses anger and disappointment. “Now we’ll never have trade with that wealthy kingdom.” And now we know why Sarafa doesn’t smile anymore.

In other side stories, we witness 10H in past or alternate incarnations, including one where The Cage is under the ocean instead of on the moon. As 10H becomes more curious about the true nature of her mission, Pod 006 has to stop her from learning too much, similar to the relationship between 2B and 9S. The consequences of such an alternate reality existing in the timeline beguile me. Nonetheless, this side story also exists in English-localized printed media: you can find it as part of the Short Story Long collection entitled A Much Too Silent Sea.

I hope you can see just how significant NieR Re[in]carnation was to the franchise writ large. I wrote this article hoping to elucidate that singular point, and because there seems to be precious little capturing the main story of this now-defunct game. I will point to one resource I found helpful and would encourage you to watch: a 40-minute summary video from YouTuber TheSamUtari.

Finally, I’d like you to consider the trajectory for what’s next, given this incredible storytelling with a massive ensemble cast that calls to attention the times, places, and realms of this franchise. Where does the story go from here? I’m not entirely certain, of course. We may never know what Tencent’s canceled mobile title would have revealed. Meanwhile, the NieR: Automata Ver1.1a anime continues, with small but notable departures from the in-game story, now fitting with the canonization of the Quantum Server/The Cage. The end of this series may give hints as to what’s next. They have already portrayed Pods with ghost sheets over them a la Mama/Pod 006 during the post-credits puppet sequences, and there are rumors that 10H will appear in some form or another.

However, the only option I see going forward is that the singularity event from Fio and Levania, observed by Accord, creates a convergence for the many timelines, a meeting point for a linear future beyond the cyclical eternities that Him and Her had seen. Should the developers choose a route other than that, they will only be filling in more of the endless stories that have occurred within The World or The Cage. Alternatively, Taro could create a game that re-tells the narrative of NieR Re[in]carnation in a AAA-budget single-player action RPG so that all fans can experience the plot of the presumptive “NieR 3.”

But for my money? I think it’s time to talk about breaking and converging trilogies. If we’ve had three Drakengards and three NieRs, what’s on the other side? Some fourth game that acknowledges the histories of both, the merging of magic and technology and lots of insanity with time, history, memory, and alteration of all of the above? That’s what I think this series deserves, and I would love to see what Yoko Taro and others could do on the other side, in a world where Fio and Her live on “IRL” alongside The Cage.