Game Narrative Analysis 

For my Critical Game Analysis Assignment, I decided to analyze Nier: Automata. The game demonstrates reception theory as it deals with themes of finding meaning for oneself. This is mainly shown through the game’s usage of Binary Opposition. In Nier Automata, you play as an android, tasked with fighting against machine lifeforms that threaten to wipe out the remaining human beings that take refuge on the moon. Both the machines and the androids constantly try to find meaning for their existence.

 

The machines are seen developing their own societies and attempting to mimic human life as a way to find meaning for their existence. The machines also fight the androids for seemingly no other reason then that they were originally tasked with fighting the androids. The androids fight the machines for the same reason. Both sides are later revealed to be fighting for dead masters, with humanity already being wiped out for thousands of years, and the aliens (the original creators of the machines) having been wiped out by the machines themselves long ago.

 

We can also see the player characters struggling to find purpose. Since both humanity and the aliens being wiped out for thousands of years was one of the android’s biggest secrets, we the player as well as the protagonist at the moment, 9S, struggle to understand what it is that we are fighting for. After all, if humanity is gone then what reason would we have to destroy the machines. 9S, specifically finds his existence totally pointless and spirals into insanity, showing extreme hostility to both the machine lifeforms (potentially still because thats what he was created for) and the androids (of whom were lying both to themselves and to the machines, in hiding the fact that all their fighting was ultimately pointless).

 

The game also employs Jesper Juul’s rule definitions, as the player is forced to exert effort to succeed in the game, seen in the game as an option known as auto-chips which allow the player to put more or less effort into completing the game based on their skill level. The player is also attached to the outcome of the battle between the machines and the androids, as the machines are shown as being ruthless beings capable of destroying all that the protagonist cares about, making the player feel like the end goal is to get revenge on the machines.

 

The game then subverts this expectation by making the player feel like they’re losing even when they are succeeding (the player has the option to kill off different characters for the promise of different “endings”. Most of these characters are not initially hostile to the player and killing them feels like the player has become the antagonist. As there is an ending for each letter of the alphabet, the player is forced to enact these senseless murders for the sake of “progression”.) This concludes my Critical Game Analysis, thank you for listening.