Nier: Automata gamers are collectively shedding their minds over a room. It’s not simply any room: Nobody, save for seemingly one individual, has been in a position to entry it. Even the participant who found the chamber doesn’t seem to know the right way to enter it, which makes the entire thing further confounding.
It makes a sure diploma of sense that Nier: Automata remains to be rife with secrets and techniques, provided that the bottom sport, a totemic action-RPG from PlatinumGames, is enigmatic sufficient by itself proper earlier than you issue within the mess of fan intervention. First launched in 2017, Nier: Automata demanded you play by it a number of instances to unlock its many endings. Additionally, you possibly can see a type of endings by means of consuming a fish. Bizarre sport!
Yesterday, modder and dataminer Lance McDonald posted a clip to Twitter exhibiting a participant coming into a room within the Copied Metropolis, an space in Nier: Automata identified for its Bavarian structure and absence of shade. “Nobody else has labored out how they managed to make this secret door seem,” McDonald wrote. The video has picked up greater than two tens of millions views on Twitter; right here’s the unique:
Whereas the key is at the moment blowing up on social media, the entire has truly been occurring for about two months, spurred by a cryptic sequence of Reddit posts by person Sadfutago. (Sadfutago didn’t reply to Kotaku’s request for remark.)
“Howdy how do you open the church ?,” Sadfutago wrote on the extremely area of interest (190 members) r/NieRFanart subreddit two months in the past. “Howdy, i’m new to reddit and wish to know the right way to open the church in Nier’Automata [sic].”
Nobody responded.
A month later, Sadfutago reposted the identical question, this time on Nier: Automata’s less-niche (19,000 members) devoted subreddit. Gamers have been incredulous however useful.
“Are you able to describe the constructing you’re asking about a bit extra? There’s not likely a ‘church’ that I can keep in mind,” one wrote. “I don’t assume you possibly can enter any constructing within the copied metropolis. We’re going to wish some screenshots,” responded one other. Sadfutago requested if there was a photograph button on Reddit, after which shared a hyperlink to a web page on Imgur, the favored photo-sharing platform, that confirmed two screenshots of Nier: Automata semi-protagonist A2 standing in a sparsely embellished church—a setting not beforehand identified about within the the sport.
Nobody responded.
Sadfutago then took to the definitively not-niche (168,000 members) major Nier sequence subreddit, posting a video, filmed vertically on a cellphone, exhibiting the situation of this church: the again wall of the courtyard that serves as a chamber for the boss struggle in Automata’s Copied Metropolis degree. The clip cuts off proper as A2 enters the room.
Individuals responded this time, however most of the most outstanding messages targeted on disputing the clip’s veracity. One individual “name[ed] BS.” One other identified how the footage proven to this point was paper-thin: The 2 screenshots have been framed from a conveniently obfuscated perspective, the one clip of video proof lower off at simply the suitable second, and why was the video filmed through cellphone and never, say, game-capture software program anyway?
Over the weekend, Sadfutago posted a video clip that shuts all of these queries down. Over the course of 45 seconds, A2 enters an antechamber, descends a several-story-high ladder, and strolls down a grayscale hallway that results in LotR-style twin doorways, behind which lies the church.
Some skeptics raised the likelihood that that is all a extremely subtle mod, however, as McDonald identified on Twitter, Nier: Automata doesn’t enable for environmental modding to this diploma. Plus, a follow-up clip comprises beforehand unheard dialogue from A2—not the kind of factor modders might simply get. Something is feasible, in fact, however there’s a vanishingly small likelihood that this discovery is the results of a mod. This morning, Nier producer Yosuke Saito weighed in on Twitter, writing, “Everlasting thriller…”
This newest discovery comes practically two years after Nier: Automata gamers discovered the sport’s “remaining” secret. Final January, the modder and dataminer Lance McDonald cracked open what was then believed to be the sport’s “remaining” secret: a hidden cheat buried within the sport’s code that basically lets you skip on to the ending. Nier: Automata director (and notable jokester) Yoko Taro recommended it was the very last thing gamers had but to find within the sport, cryptically writing “three years and 10 months” on Twitter—a reference to how lengthy it had been, on the time, since Nier: Automata got here out. One of many official Automata Twitter accounts also said the “remaining secret” had been discovered. Nier’s neighborhood broadly accepted that McDonald had certainly discovered the sport’s remaining secret.
Seems: Nope.
Very like how gamers of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are nonetheless making new discoveries—opening “impossible-to-open” chests, supercharging customized weapons—half a decade after its launch, Nier: Automata has confirmed a wellspring for fascinating discoveries. I’m glad gamers aren’t achieved tapping it but.
