Gnothi [S]eauton. Nier: Automata’s pristine mechanics and byzantine mythology cannot mask its troubled gender politics

Fri 23 September 2022

“The day when it will be possible for the woman to love in her strength and not in her weakness, not to escape from herself but to find herself, not out of resignation but to affirm herself, love will become for her as for man the source of life and not a mortal danger. For the time being, love epitomizes in its most moving form the curse that weighs on woman trapped in the feminine universe, the mutilated woman, incapable of being self-sufficient.” — Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex

If anything, Nier: Automata keeps you on your toes. Its yearning to be subversive is reflected in its gameplay, its worldbuilding and in its narrative. It is more often than not so surprising in its configuration and presentation that it is likely to make the player think or ponder. It wants to question just as much as it wants to be questioned. Yet, neither the game's pristine gameplay nor its byzantine mythology can ultimately mask its very rote, very common ideas of gender roles and patriarchal masculinity.

Warning: This piece contains spoilers for the entirety of Nier: Automata.

Gameplay-wise, Nier: Automata is adding and removing things at a constant pace that is both pleasing and disorienting. Most video games add specific gameplay mechanics at disparate intervals to teach the player specific game verbs. Go here, climb that, shoot this, press X to pay respects. Games then iterate on these verbs, combine them in ever more interesting ways until finally the player has mastered all these different mechanics, all so they are finally ready to face the Big Bad with all the verbs they have learned. Games teach language, so you can graduate after the final exam.

Nier: Automata doesn’t believe in gameplay verbs. In fact, one of the first things the game tells you is that this game doesn’t autosave, you have to manually save, but how will be explained only much later in the game. So it tells you: There is a mechanic, you’ll need that mechanic, but we won’t tell you how to use it until you’ve played a while. Once you start the game for the first time you are immediately greeted to a sidescrolling, arcady bullet hell shooter. Whereas all the trailers and high gloss screens of the game promised a fully realised 3D open world with acrobatic swordplay the first actual gameplay is decidedly not that. A few minutes later, the camera shifts, the shooter disappears and the swordplay is introduced. Still no open world, instead long corridors, action heavy cutscenes and a boss fight. The prologue ends with the main characters dying, defeated.

Nier: Automata doesn’t believe in gameplay verbs because it doesn’t want you to understand its language, more importantly it doesn’t want you to graduate. In true RPG fashion, crucial mechanics are buried in obfuscated menus and submenus, never really explained. Unless the player puts in the work themselves simple things like increasing the number of available abilities aren’t accessible. But this isn’t despite the game’s otherwise spotless polish in other areas, these things are deliberately difficult. There is a futility in Nier: Automata’s gameplay design that wants to reinforce the futility of itself, its world and its main cast’s actions.

One of the major plot devices in the game’s narrative that is also prefaced right after the introductory section, is that all of the main characters are robots, in one way or another.¹ Every individual encountered, including enemies mindlessly shooting at the player, is an artificial being. The game expressly references philosophical debates about free will, individualism and humanism often touched upon in works of science fiction. That Nier: Automata is very much interested in these philosophical debates is emphatically underscored by how consistently it tries to name its secondary characters after actual past philosophers, either European continental or Chinese classical ones. Pascal, Kant, Engels, Confucius, the list continues.²

While the point can be made that the game raises the philosophical question what it means that every character in Nier: Automata, be they friend or foe, is a computer, the game seems to have only a passing interest in the philosophical subject of what it means to be (non-)human. In an oft cited, very early scene the protagonists witness what can only be described as an orgy. This is contrasted by the futility of the exercise as it is made clear that the machines have no sexual organs, neither need for nor ability to bio-sexually procreate. Clearly, the exercise is meant to be metaphorical, the machines acting out a fantasy the player is yet unsure what to make of. But a metaphor for what? That being human is the most important thing in the universe? That civilization only ever looks backwards, to that which is already dead instead of into the future? Moreover, what is important to remember is that the playful re-enactment of adult behaviour is a common and understandable exercise of children. The haphazard, absurd performance of complex social interactions and systems exercised by the machines over the course of the game is exactly as nonsensical (from the viewpoint of a spectator) as children trying to figure out — on their own terms — how the systems around them work and what their place in them is supposed to look like.³ Without more context this scene runs the risk of identifying the machines with human children, infantilising them and thereby infantilising its subject matter.

The problem with Nier: Automata is that even though it is interested in philosophy, it seems incapable to engage with it. Across the entirety of its multiple endings and playthroughs the game never commits to a particular standpoint or theme, rather it touches different aspects. Just as the player is moving from one visually distinct setpiece to another its themes ebb in and out without ever taking full form. If the high quality of its polished gameplay is an indication to the creators’ intent of perfection then the apparent lack of thematic, philosophical stance can only be seen as just as deliberate.

Mayhap that in itself is the game’s standpoint? A narrative reinforcement of the world’s futility? Why, then, shy away from embracing nihilism, the philosophy that “everything is nothing” and existence is futile, paradox even, altogether? When Bloch, Marx and Kant are able to be named, why omit Nietzsche — the philosopher synonymous with the philosophical debate of nihilism — if that is your focal point all along?

Or, perhaps, Nier: Automata does not cite Nietzsche because it does not know how to cite philosophy in general. Perhaps it doesn’t know the differences between idealism, fideism, nihilism and existentialism. It is quite impossible to gauge how the characters in the game are supposed to consistently overlap with the philosophical works of their real world counterparts. Blaise Pascal, for instance, never disconnected from the social hierarchies he found himself in to build a self-sufficient community with like minded people (Leo Tolstoy would have been a better namesake) rather he criticised society from within.⁴ Likewise, that the ever next-in-line king of the Forest Kingdom where all machines are feudatory subjects and ever subservient is named after Immanuel Kant is just as puzzling. One could make the argument that the lives of the machines in the Forest Kingdom, who have disconnected from the central hive mind and developed a sort of self-consciousness are still beholden to a dead authority and thus still unfree thus echoing Kant’s famous Latin phrase sapere aude. But if so, then the game never explores this reading more fully. Instead, the player kills but all of the members of the Forest Kingdom and then the game chooses to kill the baby king Immanuel the moment he is introduced. If there ever was a deeper meaning hidden within that Forest Kingdom the game made absolutely sure that it dies together with the Kingdom and its monarch.

Any involved reading of the game’s juxtaposition of its characters and real world philosophy sadly lacks the textual depths and thematic explorations so as to be more than conjecture. In the end, the game leaves nothing more than hints and nudges, creating the veneer or illusion of narrative and philosophical insight. This is Nier: Automata’s grand folly: to mistake signified and signifier. For citation of a thing is not equal to the thing itself. Themes and ideas have to be explored not just splashed across the canvas hoping that the resulting picture amounts to more than a smudged image.

Take the story of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. When exploring the machine village the player comes across a robot named Jean-Paul (apparently in some non-english versions of the game the robot is named Sartre). Jean-Paul seems very interested in philosophy, speaking in a rather sophisticated, at times opaque tone. This intellectualised aura resulted in him being very popular amongst the other robots, as can be witnessed in a special side quest that is dedicated to Jean-Paul and his devotees. Turns out, however, that he is completely uninterested in the enthusiasm and affection the other robots have towards him resulting in his complete dismissal of the gifts he receives and of the persons gifting them. In short, Jean-Paul is kind of a jerk.

That Nier: Automata not only includes Jean-Paul Sartre but also his longtime life partner Simone de Beauvoir — the two were famously living in an open relationship and never married — is only revealed much later in the game. Before visiting the machine village for the first time the player has to run and fight through a literal theme park. At its end awaits a boss fight in a theatre stage with what can only be described as a deranged robot who is dangerously obsessed with beauty. The whole fight is one of the most disturbing scenes of the entirety of the game, with half-dead and crucified marionettes shooting at the player until finally, the robot boss lies defeated. Though only on the second playthrough of the game when the player has to defeat the same boss the machine's name is revealed — Simone (and, just as with Sartre, in some languages of the game she is named Beauvoir). The ensuing scenes further show that the robot desires the attention and love of another robot (Jean-Paul), these feelings go unrequited, however — so she decides to become beautiful, for “beauty is what wins love”. Her subsequent actions became ever more grotesque in her elusive and ultimately futile quest for beauty.

How bizarre a representation of de Beauvoir’s philosophy and her relationship with Sartre. The same de Beauvoir who counts amongst the most prolific philosophers of western philosophy and who in her seminal work The Second Sex formulates her criticism of women’s oppression by the patriarchy is in this game the namesake for a person violently stuck in her emotional reliance on a man. The contrast between character and philosopher couldn’t be more stark: For one, de Beauvoirs relationship to society, the bourgeoisie and herself was hardly as uncritical as the game would make it appear, just as the relationship to Sartre was hardly as one-sided and dependent. For another, de Beauvoir’s thought is one of self-empowerment and liberation against an oppressive system for “it is not women’s inferiority that has determined their historical insignificance: it is their historical insignificance that has doomed them to inferiority”. Nier: Automata’s Simone on the other hand is seen not acting out of external pressure of conformity but out of a self-imposed, vain and self-serving motivation to be loved by another, as if to say that it is women’s own choices to be beholden to the concept of beauty and be seen (or not seen) as an object of desire.⁵

Nier: Automata has been lauded as being inclusive and queer-positive and its depiction of gender and sexuality sure is a far cry above and better than what can generally be consumed in the AAA video game space. Automata’s prequel famously included an intersex character and if the creators are able to build mechanics that can replicate the queer experience then that is unequivocally a good thing. If the game and franchise can be a safe haven and projection space for queer and non-binary perspectives and communities then this must be heralded as an invaluable achievement. No amount of criticism can or should take that away. However, the game’s main story itself doesn’t do a whole lot with the themes and ideas of non-heteronormative and non-cis viewpoints. It only alludes to them, cites them as little nudges to the knowing audience. Just as with it’s thin engagement with the philosophies it is inferring Nier: Automata is a story about female or non-cishet male protagonists only on its surface. Digging a little deeper and far more tired old perspectives present themselves.

To be able to unearth and untangle the game’s main story it is necessary to explain its narrative structure. The game — as do its predecessors — includes many different endings, although only five are relevant to the actual story, which spans across 17 chapters. After playing through chapters 1 to 10 with the female Android 2B to get to the first ending, the game retells all 10 chapters from the perspective of male Android 9S, the partner of 2B. These chapters see 2B and 9S bonding while battling other machines and unraveling the twists and turns of Nier: Automata’s mythology.

After the second credits roll at the end of chapter 10 the story continues with chapter 11 which functions as an interlude between the first part of Nier: Automata’s main story and its second part. The player sees 2B fighting together with 9S alongside other YoRHa — the androids primary affiliation — units, their allies soon see themselves faced with a virus that is turning all of them against the pair and sees the destruction of their homebase. The two try to escape but while 9S can get to safety 2B gets infected by the virus herself. Shortly before her death she meets A2 with whom she shares parts of her memories (which here is an amalgam of individual knowledge, past events, feelings and personality) until she is stabbed by A2, an act the game codifies as merciful.⁶ That last action is witnessed by 9S from afar, although from his viewpoint, the game let’s us know, it is seen as an act of aggression. After the scene both are rendered unconscious by an earthquake, an enormous structure ascends from the earth and the Nier: Automata title card is shown, signaling the beginning of the game’s second half.

The game is subsequently structured by two chapters each for A2 and 9S, the sequence of which can be determined by the player. A2’s chapters show her bonding with 2B’s support unit Pod 042 and the leader of the autonomous machine village Pascal. The other two chapters focus on 9S’ slow descent into madness. The game’s story closes with two chapters that periodically switch viewpoints between 9S and A2 as they ascend the final dungeon of the game: the enormous structure that emerged from underground, called the Tower. Nier: Automata culminates in a confrontation between the later protagonists where either A2 sacrifices herself for 9S or both succumb to their respective injuries.

Without spending too much space on the convoluted world building and mythology that acts as the stage unto which the main story unfolds, what is of importance here is the actual shown development of the game’s protagonists. From the outset it is made clear that 2B (the B stands for Battle unit) is diligent and dutiful, ever pressing forward to the assigned objective while looking out for her comrades, chief among them her partner 9S. He on the other hand is defined to be a Scanner unit (the S in his name), ever curious, ever questioning. What unfolds is reminiscent of the classical pairing of differing personalities emerging to be better together and the game soon shows both characters to develop strong feelings towards each other. This sees its climax at the end of the first half of the game's main story where 2B is forced to terminate⁷ 9S after the final battle: Their feelings so strong for each other that he transfers himself into another machine close by — their bond so strong, they could never be separated.

Reinforcing the connection between 2B and 9S by having the player witness the fostering of their relationship across two almost identical playthroughs, the shock of seeing her permanently die at the beginning of the game’s second half is immense, harrowing even. It is curious then that as soon as the game decides to kill off the leading female character, it introduces a new one: A2. The rest of the game could have easily been entirely about 9S — and in a way it absolutely is — but for some reason the game’s narrative insisted on replacing the female lead instead of taking her away entirely.

So who is A2, the female protagonist replacing 2B? While she was briefly encountered during chapter 6 and described as a renegade android it is only after the interlude and 2B’s death that A2 becomes a character in her own right. She is presented as a self-dependent and self-reliant person with no care or use for an affiliation and people to look out for. Quite clearly the game wants to present 2B and A2 as polar opposite individuals: not only are their personalities diametrically opposed even their names seem to be mirrors of each other. But despite all their differences they are alike in developing a deep bond with 9S. Narratively and in regards to the personal developments of its characters, Nier: Automata is about the romantic/sexual relationships of 9S, first towards 2B and later A2. What is interesting is that in their personal relationships with 9S the differences of the characters of 2B and A2 are reflected, perhaps defined even:

Seldom does 2B, the dutiful soldier, chart her own course of actions. Rather she is pushed from quest marker to quest marker, be it on the behest of her command, her allies or 9S. The game’s semi-open world mechanics reinforce this by starting anything but open and only unlocking parts of the map after advancing the linear story. The game is so adamant in portraying her as a passive protagonist it is revealed late in the game that her entire existence revolved around 9S: She was created as a failsafe designed to terminate him if he ever would discover the truth behind YoRHa.

By contrast, A2 does not have such a connection by design to 9S. It should follow, therefore, that their relationship must be developed and earned. Earned by 9S most of all if it is supposed to be an equitable relationship in which both can flourish. But instead of telling a story of building a relationship the game decides to retroactively force on her 2B’s destiny/responsibilities by having her surveiled (and very much nagged) by the former’s support unit Pod 042 and by having her literally inherit 2B’s memories. Moreover, the dying android even makes A2 promise to take care of her raison d’être, 9S. Fundamentally, the game knows full well that the character of A2 would under normal circumstances not even waste a second look on 9S if it wouldn’t be for the responsibility — or is it a curse? — she inherited from her narrative predecessor. There is no building of relationship between A2 and 9S. She is made, with very little agency of her own despite her apparent urge for independence, to run after him.

But what of 9S and his role in his partnerships? In the first half of the game he is shown to be a sweet, almost innocent kid who is equal parts curious and helpless, as he needs A2 to survive in the hostile world they find themselves in. It is his curiosity that is leading to new questions being asked by the revelations and discoveries in the world, which in turn are leading to new quests and objective markers for the player. In the second half of the game, however, he is a self absorbed, choleric man hellbent on his self destruction and the ruination of all of his surroundings — for if he is in pain so shall it be just that everyone else is, too.

This is where the characterisation of the game’s protagonists and the relationships Nier: Automata has ordained for them becomes a full circle and reveals its troubled gender politics: When his partner is indulgent and attentive it is fine for 9S to be pushy, nosy and constantly mansplaining; when his partner is self-reliant and independent it is appropriate to be toxic, to throw tantrums and to employ gaslighting. Both types of relationships 9S is shown to be able to lead are ostensibly based on violence that view the man as the singular deciding entity. They are both two ends on a spectrum of patriarchal domination of female identity that at the same time demands obedience and thankfulness from women. While 9S is free to satiate his curiosity and ultimately destroy his surroundings, literally because he decides that that is in his right, both his partners’ actions are determined by the social systems they find themselves in. Not least of which the normative system performed by 9S who is demanding and expecting behaviour from both female androids at a constant pace. What bitter irony it is then that it is social systems like these that Simone de Beauvoir decried as the male gaze. How enlightening it is that the game is so little aware of this despite the inclusion of a character named after the great philosopher.

But a standpoint like the one heralded by Nier: Automata’s story can only be entertained by the conviction that men in relationships are naturally allowed and privileged to behave in such a manner. Relationships are to be cared for by the women while the men are out hunting and providing sustenance. If the relationship is ailing then that has to be accommodated by the female partner and consequently, if the relationship ultimately fails it is the women that failed. That the game is very much beholden to that conviction is made apparent by the way that it takes all the agency of 9S away from him before 2B gets infected and dies. As if to make sure that there can be no doubt that he isn’t to blame for the end of their relationship. The relationship ended due to external factors, unbeknownst to him until it was already too late.

But in reality no relationship is ever fully one-sided — heterosexual or otherwise. It is but that one person is doing an unfair amount of work for the relationship to survive while the other is mostly benefiting from the arrangement without putting in a lot of effort themselves. And yes, sometimes, such a one-sided partnership will end. But only for one partner does it seem abrupt and unfair. For the other, it might have been a very long, painful time coming, with hardship and stress increasing every step, moment after moment becoming more disorienting until finally the end was inevitable. Viewed through this lens the game’s first half can be described as being about a cis-gender, heteronormative couple falling in love and the game’s second half being about a man trying to cope with the mess he made (or at least didn’t care enough to prevent). But instead of telling a story of guilt and redemption, of working together on a healthy relationship for his new partner and himself as equals, the player is shown a character willingly descending into madness after not getting the happy-ever-after he himself didn’t really invest in. Nier: Automata, the conclusion can be drawn, is about a male protagonist who is unable to cope with his own feelings and mental health and therefore is always in need of a female character tending to him.

To be perfectly clear: A well-written story about mental health is nothing to be critical of and would be an achievement in the Triple-A video game space. However, Nier: Automata’s story is decidedly not that. Instead, due to its narrative structure it is a story about how female-coded characters are supposed to be conscientious and caring while male-coded characters are free to do as they please and aren’t supposed to care nor are responsible for their own well-being, much less that of their surroundings. As if mental health is something that is completely fine if it is externalised unto others, regardless of whether the people unto which it is externalised upon are mental health professionals or one’s romantic partner. If you happen to write about mental health the normalisation of extorting emotional labour is not the way to go about it.

But perhaps this reading is too critical of the game’s themes anyway. Perhaps Yoko Taro and team managed to tell a very profound thesis by using very small philosophical nudges — indicating, but never actually pointing fingers, never actually deciding to stick with a point. Perhaps all the juxtaposition of human philosophy and machine lifeforms trying to archeologically fetishise human culture is all just very ironic. Perhaps PlatinumGames landed exactly on the edge of Occam’s razor, making it impossible to discern whether there is a deeper meaning to any of this or not. In the end, it doesn’t matter. The game’s underlying narrative never amounts to anything more than the story of a privileged Big Boy who did not get what he deemed he deserved. In the end, it is the uncritical story of being male in patriarchal society where changing anything or wanting more than what is preordained by the systems around us is simply an exercise in futility.

We need more games willing to subvert the status quo, for the status quo has oppressed too many for far too long. It seems prudent to state that the criticism leveraged here isn’t meant to disparage Nier: Automata as a work of misogyny (it isn’t) or imply that Platinum Games have a sexist agenda (they don’t). Instead the criticism here tries to trace the contours by which systemic issues of patriarchal oppression are transported in the stories we consume and cherish. While active physical and psychological violence are too often a part of many real-world relationships, it is far more often our behaviours, learnt by emulating the world we see around us, that performatively recreate systemic imbalances of power that eventually lead to sorrow and pain —  even when we never meant to hurt anybody, much less our partners. What is important is that we analyse these stories and systems so we can cut out what doesn’t serve us all, as partners, as communities, as people, going forwards into a better future.

fin

1. Technically the game distinguishes between Androids and Robots, but that distinction serves solely to distinguish between allies and enemies. The terms will be used synonymously here using lowercase. If the narrative analysis warrants it, the uppercase versions are used. ↩︎
2. Curiously, proper names in Nier: Automata’s world are reserved for capital R-Robots as well as some androids in the game’s main hub, the Resistance camp. The game’s playable main characters and all androids from their chief affiliation, YoRHa, only have short, abstract denotations with one character from the latin alphabet and a short number. Incidentally, this serves to reinforce that the main characters are ultimately disposable and replaceable. About to die? Simply upload your recently collected data (memories) and you’ll awaken in a backup version of yourself. ↩︎
3. For an in-depth analysis of Nier: Automata's analogy of robots trying to behave like humans in the absence of humans and by way of archaeological artefacts you can read this excellent article by Kastel. ↩︎
4. In consideration of the final scene of the in-game Pascal and his flock where they are all willing to commit suicide, perhaps Albert Camus would have been a good namesake. ↩︎
5. For a dissenting interpretation of Simone de Beauvoir's in-game representation read this article by Jon Sorce. ↩︎
6. As can be witnessed in another possible ending, succumbing to the virus does not mean death but living a life not under one’s own control (akin to a state of Zombieism). ↩︎
7. While “terminate” sounds unnecessarily mechanical it is important to stress that 9S is not killed. An almost identical (with a few hours of memories missing) 9S is produced shortly after that scene. ↩︎