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How would you make NieR: Automata a better game?

Recycler

Active member
I'm not saying it's bad, because by all means it isn't, there are just some things I personally would improve about it.

Technical:

Improve the graphics so that they're more hi-res, instead of what we see in unmodified versions of the game. Get rid of the invisible walls and have natural-feeling barriers telling the player where they can and cannot go. Make the environments more varied, and have the physical areas of the map be significantly larger, so that it isn't jarring to go from a barren desert to a lush temperate forest to coastal ruins in only a few thousand feet.

Have the enemies level up with the player, so that people who grind to Level 99 aren't replaying the game and getting bored as hell killing everything in one hit. In fact, get rid of leveling altogether, and have how much damage the player does be based on their gear and skillset, as well as the type of enemies they're fighting. Also, improve the difficulty settings so that Hard isn't so hard and Normal isn't so easy. Maybe have Hard be that enemies do 200% more damage and have 200% more health, instead of doing 400% more damage and nothing else.

Find a balance between having Autosave and not; Maybe give the player the chance to save at the beginning of every sub-chapter, with an "Are you sure you don't want to save?" message if they choose no, and if they choose yes, have them dropped in where they left off instead of an Access Point when they load up the game again.

Storytelling:

My biggest gripe with Yoko Taro is that he put so much interesting content into mediums that most players will never see, like side novellas and stage plays, and even an optional in-game text adventure that could have been a phenomenal DLC. Put this stuff in the center view instead of on the side so that the story is more complete and players aren't left with so many questions.

Get rid of the joke endings. They're pointless, and they don't even have any cutscenes, not even Ending Y.

Make it as stupidly obvious as possible that Ending A isn't the end of the game. Don't just have a text blurb after the credits telling players that there's more stuff to see; give them a "Start Route B and continue the story?" option as well, so that they have no excuse to think it's the end.

So, yeah. Those are my two cents, and I hope this thread encourages others to share theirs' as well.
 
Could you elaborate?
Maybe the way he went about it wasn't optimal but I appreciate that your exploration is rewarded with infos, stories and so on. Even the swords you use all have their stories and tales to tell if you take the time to improve them. To me it makes it all so much more compelling than simply getting a lore dump like so many games tend to do.

The joke endings themselves have the added benefit of enticing the players to discover more of the world, to see what kind of crazy or funny endings the developpers may have thought of. (And discover more of the world at the same time)

I also thought the way they handled saves rather creative in how they incorporated it into the gameplay.
 
@NotArcanist Thank you for your honesty. What about my post do you agree with, if I may ask?
The environment was repetitive and a bit dull in some places. Especially the desert. The way environment changed so quickly too was a bit weird and there were a lot of places that were missing a "je-ne-sais-quoi' to really feel post-apocalyptic.

But considering the limited budget they had, that's understandable, it wasn't exactly expected to succeed as much as it did.
 
The environment was repetitive and a bit dull in some places. Especially the desert. The way environment changed so quickly too was a bit weird and there were a lot of places that were missing a "je-ne-sais-quoi' to really feel post-apocalyptic.

But considering the limited budget they had, that's understandable, it wasn't exactly expected to succeed as much as it did.
The quick change of environment was weird, yep, but I really appreciated the Pripyat feel of an abandoned place the city had. Considering the background story, it felt adequate to me.
 
The quick change of environment was weird, yep, but I really appreciated the Pripyat feel of an abandoned place the city had. Considering the background story, it felt adequate to me.
It is more places like the desert that were dull outside of a few locations like the ruined apartments. I also found the Castle of the Forest part a bit... yeah. It really didn't feel like the ruin of an old world/remnant of a cultural heritage that somehow survived and more like a strange fake simile of one. Maybe the Machines were the ones to built it but why is it in ruins then?
 
It is more places like the desert that were dull outside of a few locations like the ruined apartments. I also found the Castle of the Forest part a bit... yeah. It really didn't feel like the ruin of an old world/remnant of a cultural heritage that somehow survived and more like a strange fake simile of one. Maybe the Machines were the ones to built it but why is it in ruins then?
If it feels like a fake simile, then it is good. A very large part of the theme of the game is about machines trying and stumbling at understanding and copying what they believed humanity was. I wouldn't be surprised that the amusement park was just as fake and machine-built as the castle likely is. That game is about... cargo-cult by the cargo itself. It makes the machines so much more human than any human-looking body could.

Hell, they could have built the castle as a ruin from Day 1 because that's how they found other castles in archives and didn't understand the function of it. They mimic, they fail at understanding, but they try, and what is not to admire in this perseverance at trying to understand this strange mystery. Everything is fake in this game. That's the point.
 
I also found the Castle of the Forest part a bit... yeah. It really didn't feel like the ruin of an old world/remnant of a cultural heritage that somehow survived and more like a strange fake simile of one. Maybe the Machines were the ones to built it but why is it in ruins then?

Hell, they could have built the castle as a ruin from Day 1 because that's how they found other castles in archives and didn't understand the function of it.


This is apparently the backstory of the castle. In all likelihood it was rebuilt by androids that grossly misplaced where a 15th Century German castle should go.
 
What sort of budget would a game like Automata have? The most I ever heard was that it was "under $20 million".
I don't think they disclosed it but it wasn't that big considering he didn't have any money or manpower left for DLCs when the game came out in 2017.

With such an insane success though, he is likely to get more resources for the next iteration.
 
I don't think they disclosed it but it wasn't that big considering he didn't have any money or manpower left for DLCs when the game came out in 2017.

With such an insane success though, he is likely to get more resources for the next iteration.
Dunno if more money will make things better. The quality came mainly from the writing and the concepts at hand.
 
Being able to see 2B's anus around her thong, like in real life.

...Yoko Taro made a horrible, horrible mistake when he spread that shitty "perfectly rendered butthole" meme like the flu...

Like, I'm sorry if I'm being rude, but I can't stand it when all people think about when they look at NieR is "that game where you blow up a girl to look at her panties". I'm not saying that you, @50 Icy Spear Mends Space are like that, and I apologize in advance if this is rude, but I feel that that comment highlights a problem the fandom has.

It's frustrating as hell, to put it mildly.
 
...Yoko Taro made a horrible, horrible mistake when he spread that shitty "perfectly rendered butthole" meme like the flu...

Like, I'm sorry if I'm being rude, but I can't stand it when all people think about when they look at NieR is "that game where you blow up a girl to look at her panties". I'm not saying that you, @50 Icy Spear Mends Space are like that, and I apologize in advance if this is rude, but I feel that that comment highlights a problem the fandom has.

It's frustrating as hell, to put it mildly.
Why do you have a problem with that? Curious to hear about it. God knows I've cranked it to more than a few images & videos of futa tubby banging nunez.
 
Why do you have a problem with that? Curious to hear about it. God knows I've cranked it to more than a few images & videos of futa tubby banging nunez.
It's unnecessary and unwelcome in a game which value lies in the concept and meta-narration. The loli part is necessary to the narration in that it makes the characterization a complete uncanny valley, all three main characters being doll-like in contrast to the blunt machines while both groups are undergoing a narrative process that is deliberately unsettling in their search for humanity. Going too far however with stupid kink makes it much easier to miss the entire point of the story.

It'd be like adding huge gunfights in Tarkovsky's Stalker or space battles in Kubrick's 2001.

Take Blade Runner 2049: the sex scene was designed to be unsettling, to reach that moment of uncanny valley that disturbs the viewer on the multiple implications of a biological android getting it with his virtual waifu through a human prostitute. The disturbing nature of the scene is key to its strength. Going with porn or stuff kills the value of the work. I'm happy to actually have learned of this in this thread rather than before or during my playthrough.
 
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It's unnecessary and unwelcome in a game which value lies in the concept and meta-narration. The loli part is necessary to the narration in that it makes the characterization a complete uncanny valley, all three main characters being doll-like in contrast to the blunt machines while both groups are undergoing a narrative process that is deliberately unsettling in their search for humanity. Going too far however with stupid kink makes it much easier to miss the entire point of the story.

It'd be like adding huge gunfights in Tarkovsky's Stalker or space battles in Kubrick's 2001.

Take Blade Runner 2049: the sex scene was designed to be unsettling, to reach that moment of uncanny valley that disturbs the viewer on the multiple implications of a biological android getting it with his virtual waifu through a human prostitute. The disturbing nature of the scene is key to its strength. Going with porn or stuff kills the value of the work. I'm happy to actually have learned of this in this thread rather than before or during my playthrough.

That's just you being pretentious.


On the thread topic: make it run better than shit. I should not get stuttering when there is nothing about but dirt and sandy robots; not when I can run Doom 2016 on ultra and get 45FPS.

The difficulty spikes need smoothing out too, if I do every side quest before progressing the story, the next story mission should not have a mob that 2 shots me. I'm good at video games, I ain't that good.
 
That's just you being pretentious.
Sorry if you can't actually take a step back and look a bit further at the narration. But don't worry, you have many Call of Duty games to enjoy for their story. Or you could try Serious Sam, it should fit you well too.
The difficulty spikes need smoothing out too, if I do every side quest before progressing the story, the next story mission should not have a mob that 2 shots me. I'm good at video games, I ain't that good.
The only difficult part of the game is the Touhou-level nightmare at the end to unlock the final ending. Everything else is pretty easy if you take a few minutes to understand the mechanics and get decent chips for your characters. Don't blame the game design when it's pretty well done by people known for their experience in the field.
 
Sorry if you can't actually take a step back and look a bit further at the narration. But don't worry, you have many Call of Duty games to enjoy for their story. Or you could try Serious Sam, it should fit you well too.

I enjoy story in games and quite liked Nier's. All of the series has quite good storytelling, though it's often rather nihilistic in nature, leading me to prefer Automata's more. It falls flat on environmental storytelling however, with the set being relegated to background detail and the whole "earth is dead" thing being outright told to you up front.

I can just enjoy porn as well as getting the full experience of the game and neither one affects the other. Because I can separate them. Like most rational people.

The only difficult part of the game is the Touhou-level nightmare at the end to unlock the final ending. Everything else is pretty easy if you take a few minutes to understand the mechanics and get decent chips for your characters. Don't blame the game design when it's pretty well done by people known for their experience in the field.

They place an extremely high level quest right near a story mission. Where you have to track down an awol android specifically. Doesn't help that for me said tracking mission broke and was uncompletable forcing me to restart, but walking along and suddenly being 2 shot by a miniboss mob while going to a different quest was not in any way pleasant. But sure, blame my playing.
 
Why do you have a problem with that? Curious to hear about it. God knows I've cranked it to more than a few images & videos of futa tubby banging nunez.

@Rufus Shinra summed up things rather nicely in the post after yours. I'm fine with sexualization in video games (otherwise I would loathe the original NieR game for featuring Kainé and her even-more-revealing outfit), I just want it to mean something other than fan service.

The difficulty spikes need smoothing out too, if I do every side quest before progressing the story, the next story mission should not have a mob that 2 shots me. I'm good at video games, I ain't that good.

Maybe it's because I only played on Easy Mode with the auto-chips equipped until my latest playthrough, but I personally had the opposite problem; Do too many side-quests in Route A and you're fairly over-leveled in Route B. When I fought Simone it was a cakewalk, despite me being something like 5 levels below her.
 
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