NieR Automata Ver1.1a #01 — Replaying the Tutorial

January 7th, 2023

 

Yeeep, this sure is what I remember of the game.

Three down. Halfway done, just an idol, psuedo-idol, and cheat power show to go. Nowhere but down.

Impressions:

See, animation industry? Someone can animate action. Even with awful CGI for no particular reason. As I mentioned in the season preview, I only played Automata through the tutorial, but I did so twice, because it softlocked and then the camera decided an elevator shaft was too much to deal with and it'd rather just leave the game entirely. So I'm familiar at least with the first thirty minutes, and we've not yet escaped the tutorial. This is on top of removing the bit where you rip off the giant robot's arms to beat it with them. My memory is not so good of it as to say whether or not they've really made significant enough changes to the intro bit as to set it apart from the game, or one of the game's half dozen individual timelines, so I'll leave that to others to inform me of my ignorance.

I think people will generally be pleased, but like usual with these things, I'm not sure there's a significant difference here between watching this and watching a playthrough. It's certainly well animated, but it's not like this was an SNES or PSX game where the animations were largely in your imagination. I will say that the animation style is often a little weirdly jittery, with characters moving excessively, which looks particularly strange since their clothes and hair are usually bolted in place like plastic… and then they'll swing their head and hair flops realistically as the animators suddenly remembered physics exists. That's a minor complaint though.

I assume that most people just want to see the first twenty minutes of the game transposed into an anime, and… well, this is that. For better or worse. Which is a entire cliffside above any of the mountain of cheat power 'action' garbage this season is otherwise offering, but still something I find a little hard to get all that enthusiastic about. Maybe it'll get me to give the game a third shot though.

   

Posted in Nier | 3 Comments »

3 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Chipp12 says:

    From what I’ve heard Yoko Taro wanted to deconstruct the anime adaptation as well but producers were against it so I’m sure it won’t be that different compared to original (though there’s a character that wasn’t in game but in a stage play instead so there’s going to be some additional stuff I guess)

  • Tiresias says:

    I like Nier Automata but the game is already cinematic enough that I don’t know why I need a video adaptation.

  • NeclordX says:

    This is probably the most accurate videogame anime adaptation I remember watching.
    But honestly I don’t know if thats a good or a bad thing. I used to think being faithful to the game was a good thing. Nowdays…Im not that sure